"Commander Aether Shepard –Captain of the Normandy, the first human Spectre, savoir of the Citadel."
The words feel empty when they leave his mouth. They're all old titles, names they created for her funeral to try and paint a picture for those who couldn't fathom the woman they sought to describe. For the last two years, those same titles have been plastered on commemorative posters of her. They hang all over the Citadel. The memorial vids, too, repeat them in low, serious monotones alongside old footage of her in the field.
The titles always seemed insensitive to him. None of the people who call her by them ever knew her like he did. They couldn't know the warm sound of her laughter, the place she liked to be kissed on her neck or the beauty spot on her hip. They couldn't know just how much she had sacrificed, how selfless she was. They couldn't know that she would hate to be called a hero. How the word savoir would make her stomach roll if she were alive to hear it.
But he knew.
Because he had known the real Shepard.
Not the icon, not the legend and not the poster child the rest of the galaxy had up on a pedestal. He knew Aether. He knew her smile. He knew her eyes. He knew the way her skin felt and how she could drive him crazy when she'd drag the smooth backs of her nails along his arms. Just like he knew that sometimes, if you caught her off guard, you could strip the legend and the practiced façade away and find the frightened sixteen year old girl underneath who had just lost everything back on Mindoir.
He feels like a traitor for uttering the titles now. They come out of his mouth cordially, but they taste bitter. He knows she'll be able to hear the insults in between his breaths. Her eyes falter. And he hates himself for feeling guilty about it.
"You're in the presence of a legend," he gestures over at the colonist before turning his eyes back to her, "And a ghost."
The colonist murmurs something before stalking off, but Kaidan isn't listening. He's staring at her. Just her. Horizon and the massacre that lingers here in eerie silence dissolve. Only she remains.
She's staring at him in an achingly familiar way. Like she's trying to study him. His feet move forward. He has to get a closer look at her. The distance closes between them in a few slow steps. His boots scuff in the dirt. The sun slants on her face.
Cerberus got almost everything right. Almost. Garrus and some girl with elaborate tattoos stand behind her –and maybe they're convinced. But Kaidan isn't. He knows Shepard on a more intimate level than he's ever known anyone. So he knows what Cerberus missed. What they've fallen short on.
The basic foundation is there. They got her heart shaped face, her dainty chin and the pale skin –a concoction that she always complained was too prissy of a framework for a commanding officer. He used to laugh with her and agree. Aether never looked like anything worth fighting when it came to her face.
Cerberus got the eyes right too. They blink at him, heather grey and wide. The lips are fine. Pink and full –always a little too full for the softness of her face but you'd have never found him complaining about that. And the hair, that's right too. Cut right at her jaw. Bright, white-blonde.
But that's where the parallels between his memories of her and the Cerberus mock-job end. It's impossible not to see the differences. They're not subtle to him. They scream out and arrest his attention.
First, she's missing her scars. She's got more than a few new ones –they burn red, like her insides are fire and the heat is cracking the porcelain of her skin. But the old ones are gone. Arguably, they were his favorite part about her. For all her delicateness, they gave her an edge. They spoke of the Skyllian Blitz and how damn hard she'd fought for her squad. The first cut down her right cheek. The second was at the left corner of her mouth. A diagonal, slanted line that marred her lips. He often found himself running his thumb across it in private moments.
They're both missing. Among the other indiscretions are the lack of freckles over the bridge of her nose, the absence of a dimple in her cheek, a chemical shine to her hair, as well as the removal of the fair smile lines in the corner of her eyes and the rather endearing worry-creases in her forehead.
He's almost shaking with rage. It's taking everything in him not to let a ripple of biotic energy course through him, as bad as it's trying to break free.
God, he wants so bad to believe that this isn't Shepard. It would make it easier, to think she was some kind of clone. Some carbon copy. Something he'd never loved. But he knows her well enough to be able to look in her eyes and see part of his heart inside. It's her alright. But that makes it worse.
He's moved on. He's come to terms with his guilt, with his loss. He spent six months dragging himself out of the hellhole he dug himself into and for the last year and a half things had been returning to normalcy. He was even seeing someone. Nothing serious, nothing substantial –he never could quite shake off Shepard's touch or the haunting of her big, storm-cloud eyes. But he was at least trying. He was making something out of himself again. He was moving on.
And then she appears in front of him.
Two years unravel in a second.
"Aether," he murmurs.
He's always liked her name. He remembers them lying side by side in her bunk aboard the Normandy. He traced designs in her rib cage and asked her about it. She murmured a laugh and spoke fondly of her parents and how they went about naming her. Apparently her name was derived from ancient Earth mythology –Aether was a Greek deity. The god of the sky who embodied the air the gods themselves breathed. The substance of light. The glowing light and air of heaven.
They must have had big plans for you, he'd said with a smile.
Her eyes had grown faraway. Her smile sweet and sad.
Kaidan swallows. The memory is sharp. It gnaws at the headache growing in the back of his brain. Her eyes flicker over his face and he suddenly knows how to do nothing else but reach for her. He needs this. He wants to be angry and there's a time for that –but it's not right this second. Self-control leaves him and he succumbs to her.
She falls willingly into his embrace. They fit together. Even through the bulky armor they find each other, her head falls into the angle between his neck and shoulder and he presses the side of his face into her hair. She smells the same. Feels the same. A hole starts to burn its way through his chest.
She trembles in his grip. It's subtle. He's only privy to it because he's holding her. But it's certainly there, and as much as he's trying to convince himself it's battle fatigue, he knows he's wrong. Her arms tighten around him. He follows suit. He wants to tell her it will be all right. He wants her to stop shaking. He doesn't ever want to let go of her –what happens if he releases her? Will she disappear again?
God, he can't take that again. He can't lose her. To love her and put flowers on her casket once is enough.
"I thought you were dead, Shepard," he murmurs into her hair, "We all did."
She doesn't let go. He doesn't either. The silence drowns them. It's so damn quiet here now.
All those colonists. Nothing makes sense anymore –the people he was here trying to protect are gone, the woman he loved and lost is back and working for terrorists, and there's a white hot rage ripping him apart on the inside that he can't even assign a name to yet.
He breaks away first. And her reluctance to release him shreds him further. But he holds onto his darkness. He clenches onto the fire of anger roaring inside his belly and doesn't release it.
"It's been too long Kaidan," she says with a little half smile that's glaringly empty without the dimple in her cheek, "How've you been?"
Her voice is like honey and copper. The familiarity of it spikes his fury. She's smiling. Like everything is okay. Like his entire world hasn't unfurled in front of him. Like all of his work rebuilding himself hasn't just emptied out of him and fallen at her feet.
"That all you have to say?" he shrugs his shoulders back and scoffs, "You show up after two years and just act like nothing happened?"
Her smile falls. Hurt crosses over her face. It's subtle, but it's enough. He doesn't stop, though. He can't. His mouth burns with fire.
"I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real," he steps forward and thinks about reaching for her hands, but doesn't.
He looks down at the dirt and then to her hands. They look smooth. No calluses, no scars, no dirt under her fingernails. These aren't the hands he remembers. These aren't the hands that dragged him out of fire and hell itself to be at her side. Just how many nights did he wake up in a cold sweat thinking those hands were roaming his chest? Just how long did it take him to stop having nightmares about her clutching at her throat as she drifted off into the suffocating emptiness of space?
"I loved you," he spits out.
And the tense surprises both of them. Loved –not love. His fists clench at his sides with the realization. Of course he loves her. He'll always love her. But he can't. Not now. Not ever again.
"Thinking you were dead tore me apart," he continues, "How could you put me through that?"
It's childish. It's selfish. She's the one who died. And he's the one who left her. That's where the anger really comes from and he knows it. His guilt is unrelenting. He'd managed to quiet it over the last two years but it spikes up like oil to a flame remembering it all.
"Why didn't you try to contact me? Why didn't you let me know you were alive?" he demands.
He knows it's stupid to be blaming her. To make accusations. But he can't think straight. He can't think at all. All he knows is rage and guilt and the agonizing feeling of loving someone who is no longer themselves.
She wets her lips. Her eyes pass over him and study him.
"I'm sorry Kaidan," she murmurs, "I was clinically dead. It took two years to bring me back. So much time as passed –you've moved on."
He swallows hard. The sunlight catches her hair.
"I don't want to reopen old wounds," she finishes.
A rock falls to the pit of his burning stomach. So –that's how it's going to be? His head is whirring now like a machine on overload.
"I did move on," he says and then lowers his eyes, "At least I thought I did."
But he hasn't. It becomes clearer and clearer as the conversation continues. All they do is banter for a while. Shepard's always been stubborn. Then again, so has he. Their words are heated and empty as they jolt between them but he feels pieces of himself leaving with each one just the same.
He accuses her of changing. Forgetting her loyalties. Not thinking straight. She says he's being too emotional. How can he not be emotional? The love of his life is standing in front of him and his resolve is slipping through his fingers like sand. He's not so much angry at her as he is at the situation. How could fate let this happen? How could any play of destiny be so cruel?
They finish their sparring match in a matter of minutes. It's unclear who's won. He feels like he's lost everything regardless. Victory, if it's his, is cold.
"I could use someone like you on my crew, Kaidan," she murmurs as he turns to walk away, "It'll be just like old times."
The hope in her voice is enough to stop him in his tracks. It's a blind, desperate note in her voice. Through it, he hears what she's really saying.
Please don't go.
He swallows and turns his head over his shoulder at her. The delicate face. The full mouth. The new, angry red scars. There is nothing left of the woman he loves. And if there is, he can't afford to go looking for it. Not anymore.
"No -it won't," he whispers.
Her face doesn't change but he sees a flicker of something in her eyes that looks like pain.
"I'll never work for Cerberus," he adds on, as if that's the real reason for him walking away right now.
It's not.
They both know it.
"Goodbye, Shepard," he murmurs, and as an afterthought, "Be careful."
Then, he walks away. He doesn't look back. He can't bear the sight of her. The heavy storm-cloud eyes, the white skin and that distinct childish look of complete and utter loss.
He tears himself apart piece by piece with every step he takes. And when he's finally alone and far enough away to try and remove the feeling of her trembling inside his arms, he loses it. He stumbles into a crate as his body charges blue. A thunderous ripple of biotic power surges through him and he unleashes it with a roar into an opposing picnic table.
Then he crumbles to his knees and lowers his face into his hands. Kaidan grants himself a moment to self-destruct in peace.
i will always ship shenko. this moment always broke my heart while playing because as much as i wanted to be mad at him, i just couldn't because i felt like this was what was going through his head. poor babyyyy~
yay angst!