A handsome man, tanned, olive skin, dark eyes and hair, looks up at her as she walks toward him, his awkward half-smile teasing at her memory. He makes her feel warm. Safe. Something she has not felt in a long time.
Who is he? I know him...
His uniform fits perfectly. Military. Alliance blues. Her eyes drift down to his lips and she is suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling of having kissed them.
Kaidan... The Normandy... The Normandy! Shit!
Shepard's heart starts racing as panic sets in. The last thing she remembers is the explosion that ripped the Normandy in half and sent her careening through space.
Breathing... Breathing! She remembers struggling to breathe. She opens her eyes to a white ceiling. She finds she cannot move. Were she not paralyzed, the sudden, intense fear would have her frozen.
Where the hell...! How...? What's happened? Where is everyone? Did they...?
A female voice cuts through her thoughts: "There. On the monitor. Something's wrong."
"She's reacting to outside stimuli. Showing an awareness of her surroundings." A male voice came from somewhere nearby. "Oh my god Miranda. I think she's waking up."
"Damn it, Wilson. She's not ready yet. Give her the sedative!"
A face comes into view, dark featured but beautiful. Miranda. "Shepard. Don't try to move. Just lie still. Try to stay calm."
"Heart rate's still climbing." The man from before breaks in. He must be Wilson. "Brain activity is off the charts. Stats pushing into the red zone. It's not working."
"Another dose. Now!" Miranda orders. There's the slightest hint of panic in her voice, but she is clearly the one in charge here.
"Heart rate dropping. Stats falling back into range. That was too close. We almost lost her." Wilson voice eases into a relaxed tone as Shepard's vision starts to fade.
"I told you your estimates were off. Run the numbers again." She catches Miranda chiding before her hearing deserts her as well.
It's difficult to feel anything other than searing pain - the feeling of raw, recently burned and blistered skin - but ever so slowly the drugs take effect. She feels the fuzziness of the sedative, but struggles to maintain consciousness. She doesn't recognize either voice or the accented woman's face. But try as she might, she's fighting a losing battle. Not unlike that one time...
The attack on the Normandy by an unidentified starship... She sees it as if from a distance; she feels no emotion. They are making a survey of a sector where ships have been vanishing - sent to hunt down the remaining Geth outside of the Veil. Joker's voice comes over the comm, warning of evasive maneuvers. She barely has time to get into her armor before the first blast wracks the hull.
In painfully slow motion, Aurin Shepard gives the evac orders, sending the SOS to the nearest Alliance vessel. Kaidan Alenko rushes to her side. Since they met one year ago, he has been a steady support. One she has come to rely upon in her most desperate times of need. But not now: now she needs him to get everyone to safety. He's the only one she can depend on for that.
Another shot rips into the hull and a large part of the upper deck crashes into the mess hall on the crew deck. Wires violently ripped out of the ceiling and walls are sparking, starting little fires. Grabbing the fire extinguisher, Kaidan tries to put one of them out, but there really is no time.
"Kaidan, go. Now."
She knows Joker will stay with the ship, his baby. She has to get him to safety. If she could get him to the escape pod just off the bridge, there should be enough time for them to make it out, too.
Making her way up the stairs to the CIC the ship shudders under another blast; the airlock has engaged on the doors.
Fuck! Hull breach.
With her helmet on, she pushes the code and the doors open. The Normandy has been opened to the vacuum of space. Even with all that she has seen in her 29 years, the sight cuts her to the core. The silhouette of the planet they were orbiting is beautiful but terrifying. The silence is haunting.
My home...
But Joker needs her and, as always, she will do what she must. With care and a little difficulty, she makes her way to the cockpit, the mag lock in her boots keeping her from drifting away. She can see her pilot, Jeff "Joker" Moreau, through the shimmering blue mass effect field shielding the cockpit, madly trying to maneuver the dying Normandy away as the enemy ship comes around. He is not wearing a suit of any kind. She'll have to get him to the pod quickly.
"Commander! I can still save her," he cries.
"The Normandy's dead and so are we if we don't get the hell out of here!" Shepard screams at him, grabbing his arm to lift and carry him away from the helm, wincing as she feels the fragile bones crack.
Sorry, Joker, but I have to get you out of here!
They limp to the pod and she gets him inside, just as another blast from the enemy ship rips into the already mutilated Normandy. Knocked back from the airlock, she manages to grab the wall and hit the emergency eject, sealing the pod and jettisoning Joker to safety before the next explosion rips the ship in two, slamming her against a broken wall and out into space. Something doesn't feel right. Her suit is losing pressure and possibly oxygen. Struggling to find and stop the leak, everything goes black.
She's in Captain- no, Councilman, Anderson's office. Fuming, Kaidan Alenko at her back, she is arguing with her former Captain.
"What the hell do they mean, sending us after Geth? Geth! You and I both know that they are not the threat. We should be out investigating any leads on the Reapers. We have to find a way to stop them!"
"I know, Commander. I am trying to get them to see that. Humanity may have a place on the council now, but they are still reluctant to work with us. And they are dead set in their ways. Give me some time, Shepard, and I promise we will be back on the right track."
Though Anderson had only been sworn in as humanity's representative on the council a week ago, he already looked exhausted. Shepard was beginning to think she had doomed him to a fate worse than death. She'd had little choice in the matter, really, Udina was an insufferable fool and Anderson was the best man for the job.
"I'm sorry, Captain, I know. I just..."
"I understand, Shepard. You have been through more than any of us. You've seen things we wouldn't dare dream, even in our worst nightmares. But aren't you supposed to be on medical leave? I can't imagine that arm has completely healed since you took down Saren. Get some rest. God knows you deserve it. The Normandy's not scheduled to ship out for a couple days. We'll meet again before that." Anderson looks over her shoulder to Staff Lieutenant Alenko, "Lieutenant, see the Commander makes it back to her quarters and actually gets some rest."
It was as close to a dismissal, shy of an order, as she was going to get. She nodded, saluted and turned on her heel. With a formal salute, Kaidan bid farewell to Anderson and walked out of his office at her side.
"Well, that went well," he teasingly chided her. "I don't envy the Captain, stuck between the Council and you, Shepard. But as long as we are on leave, however brief it may be, I plan on taking full advantage of the fact that you are going to need some help until that arm is healed."
"Please!" she teased, "You prefer strong, adventurous women, Kaidan. You wouldn't want me if I needed your help because of something as silly as a broken arm. However," she said, her lip curling in a half-smile, eyebrow arching slyly, "I do believe you promised that we would see where this is going once we got some down time, Lieutenant, and, well... it seems we've got some down time now."
"I like where you're going with that, Shepard. I'd carry you back to your room if I knew you wouldn't knock me flat, so how about we speed things up and take a cab instead?"
She smiled at him, reaching for his proffered hand with the one not in a sling, the static discharge and tingling biotic flare-up at the contact sending a shiver down her spine. At the nearest terminal outside the human embassy, he called up the Citadel's rapid-transit system and they took the first cab to the docking bay.
Clean-up crews had been working feverishly to repair the damage caused during the attack of Saren and his Geth and the destruction of Sovereign, but they'd made little progress in a week. The station barracks and officers' quarters that visiting Alliance crews would have occupied were badly damaged when one of Sovereign's arms crashed into it. Shepard and Kaidan had little choice but to go back to their quarters on the Normandy, even though they were on shore leave.
As a Spectre, Shepard was technically no longer a member of the Alliance military. She was bound to serve no one but the council. Kaidan, however, was still Alliance and had been a member of her crew. In order to not complicate the chain of command and risk openly going against Alliance regulations regarding fraternization, they only held hands in the cab as far as the docking bay. While there may be lower deck rumors and speculation about the Commander and her Lieutenant's budding relationship, the walk from cab to Captain's cabin was kept strictly professional.
They needn't have bothered with the formality; no one was aboard. It seemed that everyone, leave or no leave, was pitching in with the clean-up efforts. Still, they relaxed only after the door to her cabin was sealed and locked. Looking at each other, she could see the tension drain from his face as she felt it leave herself, shoulders she hadn't realized she'd tensed, relaxing. Why did she feel like such a child, afraid of getting caught? They had each made their own choice, coming to the same conclusion. There was no reason to feel guilty about their love for each other, yet still they did.
It was easier to forget about the regs with the adrenaline rush of facing the unknown on Ilos.
Thanks to the medical expertise of Dr. Chakwas and the preternatural healing owed to being a biotic, her arm was already mostly healed. Still, the expedited healing came with a high cost: she had to eat even more than usual just to be able to stay on her feet. The meeting with Anderson and the Council had lasted a little too long. Kaidan noticed her face go ashen, breaking the silence just in time.
"When was the last time you ate, Shepard? Let me make you something."
Gently grabbing her good arm with one hand and wrapping his other arm around her waist, he helped her over to the small table in her cramped quarters. His tenderness was unexpected. Sitting down, she smiled, leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
"That would be wonderful, Kaidan. Surprise me."
She dozed off to the sound of him rummaging around in the mini fridge. She could've sworn he was humming to himself.
A door opens to the room.
"Momma?" Such a tiny sound. Shepard cracks an eye open, turns toward the sound.
"Over here, baby. Come snuggle."
She hears little footsteps pad over to the side of the bed. She reaches out and pulls her little boy in under the covers to snuggle between Mommy and Daddy.
"Morning," she says.
"Mording," says the little voice as he snuggles in closer to her. Mommy.
Daddy rolls over and pulls closer to his family, smiling faintly in the morning light streaming through the window. "Morning, family."
She looks up from her son, smiles at Kaidan. He looks so much like his daddy. She thinks, closing her eyes.
She feels so relaxed. Right. The small bedroom in the apartment she shares with Kaidan and their son is home. But a faint thought niggles the back of her mind. A part of her, that she doesn't really want to listen to, is reminding her that this never happened. That the last she saw of her Lieutenant, she was ordering him to leave - to get to the escape pods. That the last thought she'd had of him as she drifted away from the wreckage of the Normandy - her Normandy - the last of her oxygen leaking out into the vacuum, was that she'd never see him again. Never get to find out what they had together.
I've died, she thought morosely. This must be that heaven that Williams believed in. She couldn't help hoping Williams' heaven was just as wonderful as hers.
"Shepard, wake up." Kaidan was sitting on the bed next to her, shaking her gently.
The shaking continued, but the voice she was hearing wasn't Kaidan's.
"Shepard! Shepard, wake up!" The unknown, yet vaguely familiar voice was insistently destroying her perfect heaven.
Another rough shake and she woke to the realization that they were under attack. She was in what looked to be a medical facility. The not-so-gentle shaking she was experiencing were explosions.
"Wake up, Commander." This time she recognizes the voice from before. Miranda. "Shepard, do you hear me? Get out of that bed now, this facility's under attack."
She sits up, raises a hand to her aching head. "Shepard, your scars aren't healed yet, but I need you to get moving. This facility is under attack."
A decade of training and an unusually strong need to survive kick in. She's soon off the bed and following the orders of someone she doesn't even know.