"What is this?" Kaidan Alenko asked as he took the small plastic container from the crewman. He was not happy that he had been brought to this end of the Lower Ward for the third time this month and the look on his face showed it. Petty Officer Brewster was too far gone to genuinely focus on the lieutenant, his eyes stuck in the waddling dance of his intoxication struggling to focus on what was probably two or three Kaidans shifting in his blurred vision.
"I'm talking to you, Petty Officer," Kaidan reiterated, adding a hint of urgency and anger to his voice, and a part of him hoped that the drunkard would not notice just how forced it really was.
"Brandy, sir," the enlisted crewman struggled to slur back, his voice seeming like it was elastic in his mouth. "Cheap kind, don't have 'em officer's pay as you got."
"That's sir, Petty Officer Brewster," Kaidan scolded as he examined the bottle. It was a plastic pint, the kind sold so that a customer could easily get his fix without risking leaving a hazardous pile of glass on the floor during his drunken stupor. They were not difficult to acquire in the seedier end of the Lower Wards, an area that reeked of ventilation, unwashed bodies, and the stale alcohol he had caught Brewster drowning himself in.
Kaidan pulled out a chair across from the crewman. The hard angle wasn't going to work, he admitted to himself as he sat down. Out of habit he patted the creases out of his uniform when he was seated, doing his best to maintain appearances as the ranking officer, a role he was still loathe to play.
It had been two months since the incident, which was all he was willing to call it. The details of the SSV Normandy's destruction had been hashed over, written down, notarized, transcribed, argued over, cross referenced, debated, rewritten, argued over again, and used as both a tool of politics and abuse more times than Kaidan could count, and officially it was being referred to as the Alchera Incident, or Case Nine Thirteen. To Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, however, it was just "the incident".
Many of the crew had not made it out of the inferno alive, including Commander Shepard, leaving Kaidan as the ranking officer of the "crew in transit". It was strange the way the military phrased things. The Normandy did not actually exist anymore, but he was considered its acting commander, and none of the survivors were yet allowed to perform any function that might jeopardize their "ability to maintain the integrity of the ship". Until the investigation was over, each of them were expected to continue on as they would, only without their home to anchor them.
Brewster wasn't the only one who had decided to try to drown out the images in extracurricular alcohol. At first it was a struggle for Kaidan, though when he realized that it was little more than anger at their own frustrations, he realized he was being petty, and attempted to let it go. He had lost more than any of them when the Normandy had gone down. He had lost a friend, a companion, a leader and as thoughts of a blue tinted room over the planet Ilos rushed through his mind he dared to admit, a lover. What had they lost, he'd asked at first. That was when he realized it: they'd lost Shepard just as much as he had, they had lost their home in the Normandy, the twenty crewmen whose lives were snuffed out in a single instant.
But there was something particular about the way Brewster looked up at him with those eyes that lingered in grief underneath a haze of booze that sent an angry chill up Kaidan's spine. He knew that look, a look that said that somehow the person had managed to insulate themselves against a pain that was almost too severe for words, and though it rang out with less volume thanks to the alcohol it was still there, perhaps it would always be there.
Shepard had had that same look. She had made herself an impossibly stoic statue for her people, and even after the disaster at Virmire she had still managed to keep her pose, though she had been visibly on edge. If anyone had seen her then, they would have thought little more than that she had been the commander they had all known and followed, albeit shaken by the loss of a member of their crew, like the rest of them.
But Kaidan knew the truth, was the only one who did. He was welcome in her quarters, even after hours, where the two would often lose themselves in conversation. Some of them had been soul touchingly deep, others had been little more than friendly banter as they laughed the night away. None had been like that night after Virmire.
He had spoken the exact same words to Commander Shepard that night that he had to Petty Officer Brewster.
"What is this?" he'd asked as he took the bottle out of her loose grip. She had already consumed half of its contents and the way her head was beginning to sway indicated that she had a rough morning ahead of her. It had been something far more expensive than the Petty Officer's brandy, a pricy scotch from Earth, meticulously grown in Scotland's highlands. One whiff of it without the cap on was nearly enough to make Kaidan's head begin to spin.
Commander Shepard had looked at him with those long, glazed eyes, as though the alcohol had frozen tears just over her irises, like the pain itself had managed to be caught in time, which must have been a reprieve in its own way.
"I let that little girl die," Shepard had told him, drowning the words in another gulp of the scotch from a glass that Kaidan had not yet taken from her. He simply watched her. He had never seen the commander drink before, she had never seemed the sort. Indeed, he had rarely seen her this emotional – and there was something this moment that caused her to shimmer with a beauty he had not previously seen in her.
Of course Jane Shepard was a looker, a woman with the kind of body that was honed through marine training that any man would gawk at if they were confident they could do so without their necks being broken. He had even gotten the chance to spy on her beauty during their long, nightly conversations in the cabin. But something about this moment made her seem human – a way Kaidan had never looked at his commander before.
He was thankful then for the discipline and the respect for the crew of the Normandy, grateful that they would give the Commander's quarters a wide berth and not intrude on her on that night of all nights. Kaidan could see Shepard for all that she was in that moment, a heart broken mother to the fallen Ashley Williams as much as a commander responsible for making the hard choices. But what would a Petty Officer Brewster think if they saw the tear streaks on Shepard's cheeks? The half empty bottle of scotch? That drunken glaze over her eyes?
"You did-," Kaidan started, knowing his words were hollow as soon as they left his mouth, but Commander Shepard interrupted him almost immediately.
"You know why I did it Kaidan," Shepard said angrily. Kaidan felt the color flush out of his face, as though the anger were somehow directed at him. The intensity of her stare refortified that anxiety. A new tear raced down the commander's face, and unlike the first few he had seen since she made no effort to wipe this one away. "I did it for you. What happened to Ashley is awful…and I couldn't…I couldn't let that happen to you."
Kaidan had no words for that, only knew to grab her and pull her into a hug that shifted the commander's body against her desk, knocking the glass of scotch to the ground where it crashed into a thousand little pieces. She did not seem to care, wrapping herself in the hug with Kaidan.
"I let her die," she sobbed again, burying her face in his shoulder.
"It wasn't an easy choice," Kaidain said softly, running his fingers between her shoulder blades. "You didn't kill her though Commander. Saren did." He felt Shepard's fingers turn into claws that raked into his back. "You know that right?"
The grip loosened a bit as she tried to consider those words.
Kaidan was pulled all at once back to where he sat in the Lower Wards of the Citadel, looking at the drunken Petty Officer Brewster. He had not made any difficult choices, but that did not mean that he was not grappling with his own kind of pain, a pain that he felt only the brandy could cure.
Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko looked at the pint in his hand then shook his head.
"You can't have this back, Petty Officer," he said, doing his best to don his "officer" voice again, though a slight lump at the thought of Shepard made it difficult to sound convincing. "Go back to your dorm. I know you're hurting. We all are. But do you really think this is what the Commander would have wanted?"
Do you think this is what Ashley would have wanted?
Brewster swung his gaze around to look at Kaidan one more time. He had been distracted by the lights, the colors of the Lower Ward, but the lieutenant's words seemed to be penetrating the barrier of insobriety and begin to finally reach the disciplined soldier that lingered underneath.
The crewman looked down then in shame. "I'm sorry Lieutenant," Brewster slurred, though even in the slur it was genuine.
I'm sorry Kaidan.
"Go get cleaned up, no one has to see you like this. And for God's sake, if you need something, I'm here for you, I'm your lieutenant, is that understood?"
If you need anything, I'm here for you Commander.
Brewster blew out a sigh, a look of annoyance, then acceptance flashing across his features.
"Aye, sir," Brewster said as he struggled to get to his feet.
Kaidan watched the shell of Petty Officer Brewster struggle to find his way to one of the taxi cabs that lingered on the edge of the ward, a business empire built on drunkards like him. But in truth, as his eyes watched the brandy stained uniform, his heart was busy watching Commander Shepard as she began to pick up the pieces of broken glass, struggling to force a smile that seemed lost on Virmire.