Kaidan Alenko reflects back on his life. The pivotal moments that shape him into who he becomes.
This is the introduction and then each chapter will be about a certain point in his life that changed him.
I hope you enjoy, and I hope you will take the time to review.
The sun crept over the horizon, heralding the earth in a soft, warm dawn. A tender melody drifted in through the open windows as the birds woke from their slumber, cheering in the new day. A distant roar of a speed car as it whizzed towards its destination. The tinkling laughter of children drifting up from the far corners of the house. Footsteps intermingled with out of tune whistling from Mrs Miller as she walked past his room.
Almost every morning these exact sounds greeted Kaidan's ears. He listened for every single one of them from the moment he woke. And without fail, they always made him smile. There was such pleasure in those simple things. For most people, they were mundane, nothing to be bothered with. But for Kaidan, it meant far more.
It was how he identified with the world around him. It was difficult now to do anything else but listen to life going on around him. Twenty years before, Kaidan had been rendered completely blind. He had been sent on a Spectre mission to capture some extremists. It had all seemed so routine. And it had been. The extremists put up a fight, but had ultimately been detained. However during the struggle, one of them happened to let off a flash bang grenade directly in front of Kaidan's face. He sustained damage to both his hearing and sight, becoming both deaf and blind from the incident. Luckily after a substantial recovery period, his hearing eventually went back to normal. However, the grenade had unfortunately caused irreversible damage to his eye sight. Even with the wonders of modern medicine, nothing could be done. So at the age of fifty-three Kaidan's life took a dramatic turn.
That inevitably turned into one of the darkest points of his life. He fell into a great depression. one moment he was all action, a Spectre, and one of the best soldiers in the entire galaxy. The next he was nothing. An invalid who couldn't do anything for himself.
Change can be so frightening sometimes can it incapacitate you. But no matter what happens, there is always a path to take you through that labyrinth of thorns. You just had to find it.
And that was how Kaidan managed to crawl his way out of the misery he had surrounded himself in. He reminded himself of what he did have, what he could still do. Yes he was blind, but he still had his mobility. In fact his hearing had become better than ever as it compensated for the loss of sight. Even his other senses had become more attuned. Food tasted better in his mouth, freshly cut grass became even more aromatic. And he had never quite realised how soft a flower's petals felt until then.
So when, twenty two years later, Kaidan was struck down again, the transition of change wasn't quite as difficult as it had been before. Sure he had his bad days when life did not seem fair, but then he would remember that he had so much to be thankful for. Mobility was extremely difficult for him now, but he could still touch, the scent of flowers till wafted in from the open windows, food still tasted just as good. And he could still listen.
A rare form of bone cancer had rendered Kaidan bed ridden. He had been like this for four months now. It was terminal. All the doctors could do was to make him as comfortable as possible for as long as he had left. And from their talk that inevitable end was drawing near now. Thankfully the drugs they were giving him helped a lot with the pain. They made him quite drowsy so he slept a lot of the time. But he always made sure to wake up early in the mornings. There was just something special about that time of day, he thought. A new day, a new beginning. He wasn't even sure how he managed it. Perhaps it was the soldier in him as he had always been an early riser, a habit ingrained into him over years of service.
Even though Kaidan had been handed this death sentence, he was surprisingly calm about it. It wasn't something that could be said about the rest of his family. His wife, children and grand children were all terribly worried about him, frightened of the final outcome. But Kaidan had come to terms with his fate. He had made peace with his life.
Time was all he had now, and limited at that. Every day Kaidan received visitors, his favourites being his grand children. Their innocent little faces cheered him so, they held a certain exuberance and optimism for life that had yet to be dampened by the complications of adult life. He enjoyed telling them stories from when he was a soldier in the Alliance. The Reaper war, and heroic tales of the great Commander Shepard.
The cries of "Tell us more, Grandpa!" and "Did you really fight off a thousand Geth?" and "Tell us again how Commander Shepard fought off that Reaper on Tuchanka by throwing a Thresher Maw at it."
Kaidan had to admit he had lived a very full life, dotted liberally with its ups and downs. Fate had handed him uplifting joy along with crushing sadness. Decisions had been made, good and bad. Some in his control, some not.
He had experienced quite a journey. Now that he was approaching the end, he found that he was reflecting a lot on his past. From that little boy, cowering in the corner when his biotics first manifested to becoming a Spectre and hero to the entire galaxy to the crippled old man that he was now.
Did he have any regrets?
He used to. Back when he was younger. There used to be a great many of them, mostly born of bad decisions and things that were ultimately out of his control.
But over the years he had learned to live with them. Had realised that they were cogs in a much larger machine that was there to determine his ultimate course in life.
Now Kaidan thought back to the pivotal moments that helped run that engine. Some good, some bad. But every one of them was vitally important in shaping him into the man he was to become.