Author's Notes: This story was written for the Mass Effect Flash Bang 2014. It wouldn't have been possible without a handful of people, including my marvelous betas Eleneripenneth, Galtori, and Afirethatwillneverburn, my test readers Edenprimes, Ladyamesindy, and Bioticbooty, and my wonderful husband who stepped up to the plate when I needed to buckle down and work, and who helped me through plot holes and breakdowns.
This is Bioware's sandbox; I'm just playing in it.
And can I just add - it's really really good to be back.
Cold Barrel Zero – The calibration of a SWAT sniper rifle so that the first (cold) shot will hit a target at 100 yards. Subsequent rounds will diverge due to barrel heating.
_
The Presidium park was incredible this time of the year; the weather was the usual 73 degrees Fahrenheit, but what Kaidan loved most was that some of the most gorgeous flowers and trees from Earth currently bloomed and flourished in the section of the park now called Amanda Shepard Memorial Plaza.
Kaidan rounded the path that curved gracefully around the prominent low stone wall with the name of the park affixed in large brass letters. He never paid it much mind, and didn't today, but true to form, Amanda did. His wife sighed as they jogged past it, a quiet sound that could have been mistaken for a runner's breath had he known her any less well than he did.
Normally, he wouldn't have said anything, but today felt different. He cut her a glance out of the corner of his eye, his mouth twitching with the effort not to grin, and responded with a brisk "Aye, aye, ma'am" as they left the wall behind them.
A second sidelong glance let him catch her wide-eyed expression of surprise and confusion, and then she actually laughed as comprehension dawned, a rich, warm sound Kaidan doubted he would ever stop cherishing. "If they're going to insist I'm dead, they could have at least gotten the name right," she managed around the dying edge of a snicker.
"Intelligence must have dropped the ball, ma'am." He ran his tongue over his teeth, his cheeks aching from suppressing the smile he felt tugging at his mouth. "Either that or it's a completely passive aggressive reminder from your mother that she still hasn't forgiven you for eloping."
"So if I understand you right, Marine," she grinned, "you're saying the Director of Naval Intelligence is either wholly incompetent or completely kowtowed by his wife? I'll be sure to tell the old man you think so little of him next time he calls," she teased, her eyes twinkling.
"If he were actually doing his job with any degree of competence, he already would have known," Kaidan teased back with a lopsided grin and a wink.
"Maybe he does. That would explain why he's always complaining about the way you sear your steaks."
Kaidan scoffed. "That's not proof of good intelligence work. That's proof of a poor palate."
She didn't say anything in response, but a smile bloomed across her face that she only barely tried to hide by biting down on her lower lip. "No comment!" she tossed over her shoulder as she pulled ahead of him. He chuckled after her, letting her go on, appreciating the view of her six. His legs were a good deal longer than hers; he could catch her if he really wanted to, but he knew she always needed to get in at least a mile a day where it was just her and nothing more than the slap of her own feet punctuating her thoughts.
In truth, a little solitary time probably wouldn't have hurt him at the moment, either. It had been hard to catch a moment to breathe lately, much less to try to get his own thoughts into the neatly compartmentalized order he preferred.
In the immediate wake of the Reaper War, there had been peace - stunned survivors across the galaxy had banded together and helped each other pick up the shattered pieces and sew the tattered remnants together again. It had been almost idyllic.
And then the gratitude and relief that all of civilization had actually survived had worn off, and the aches and the pains of trying to rebuild had taken over the feelings of general goodwill and galactic brotherhood. 2188 had actually been a particularly rough year, with fringe elements on Earth being among some of the most insidious. While the Alliance had perhaps been handling things a little imperfectly, they'd certainly been doing the best they could at the time with the resources available. But some of the rebuilding groups had levered what might have only been mild discontent if it had been left alone into something larger, something cancerous. There had very nearly been a revolt in the streets, and a couple of particularly pissed-off dissidents had even attacked the Alliance's Vancouver headquarters. Three good Marines had died before a sniper and a couple of his own biotic spec ops people had dealt with the problem.
After that had come reports of the Blood Pack and the Blue Suns and Eclipse running roughshod over the Terminus again. Like some kind of diseased flower spreading infectious spores, the old hatreds had bloomed across the galaxy.
Slowly, the galaxy had returned to its pre-Reaper status quo. Turf wars over red sand territory, illegal arms manufacture and distributorship, fringe "scientific" groups running illegal alien experimentation, the occasional assassination attempt against various members of the Council - and those were happening more often now that the Council had morphed itself into a true galactic governing body and had expanded exponentially to suit its new, more fitting role - anything and everything a depraved mind could conjure up, every sort of horrible atrocity that had ever been committed... It was all happening all over again as if the brush with complete galactic annihilation hadn't taught anyone anything.
They'd known the peace couldn't last indefinitely, but Kaidan had foolishly hoped that his children would at least have been school-aged before it had crumbled around them as if it had been made of nothing more complex and substantial than pixie dust instead of having been built upon the immeasurable sacrifices of countless people. Instead, his oldest son hadn't had the luxury of seeing his first birthday before even the Alliance News Network reports were once again tinged with cynicism.
Half-lost in his thoughts, Kaidan continued following the gently curving runners' path through the park, enjoying the bone-deep familiarity of this portion of Shepard Memorial: here, the low paving stones that demarcated the boundaries of the path at the Shepard Memorial section's entrance and exit points gave way to a nearly impenetrable wall of chokecherry bushes as the path crossed under a thick canopy of Engelmann spruce, western red cedar, and silver pine. It wasn't BC, but it sure as hell smelled like it and felt like it, and some days that was good enough.
Today was definitely one of those days.
It was centering, calming, to be back in his element this way, as fabricated as it might have been. And right now he needed that focal point. He had only been home with his family for two days; for the six weeks prior he'd been digging his way through the filth of the Terminus, hunting down an asari weapons smuggler who also had a penchant for trafficking refugee children from what she called the "lesser" races.
The things he had seen in those six weeks had made Kaidan's stomach churn.
Kaidan pulled in a deep breath, letting the bright sharpness of the pine and the spruce tingle in his nose and fill his lungs, letting the musky, earthy smell of the cedar wash over him in waves, all of it pulsating and thrumming and driving in time with the beat of his feet against the pavement. He followed the path at a slow jog, letting the comforting scents of home help wash him clean of all of the ugliness of his last assignment.
When he reached the point where the chokecherry began blending with American holly bushes, the berries already bursting forth in vibrant red clusters thanks to artificial cultivation and genetic modification, he could just see the thick wall of crepe myrtles bordering the edge of the blind curve in the path ahead. Beyond that, he knew, lay the rhododendron and honeysuckle, and he could already smell the hint of magnolia wafting on the filtered air.
He couldn't see Amanda yet, but as he approached the hairpin turn, Kaidan could hear another runner approaching from behind. The other person's feet syncopated in a rhythm against his own. He began to drift to the right, ensuring that there was room for them both on the path, giving an instinctual check over his shoulder as he did so.
He knew that man.
Irving Coetzer, a corporal stationed at Alliance Command, was coming up behind him. Coetzer was a good kid, exuberant to the point of almost being over-eager. Some of that eagerness, Kaidan had learned, had been because his parents had both been spec ops and he'd dreamed of that career path, too, from the time he'd been old enough to fire a toy gun. In the end, though, Coetzer himself hadn't quite made the grade, but he was still hungry.
Which was how he'd ended up on Kaidan's shortlist of potential sources a handful of months back. The kid, it turned out, knew how to make himself invisible in his position at Alliance Command, and he had picked up some unofficial tricks of the trade from his folks. A string of minor cases broken thanks to Coetzer' intel had landed him on the very short list of sources Kaidan trusted implicitly.
Coetzer was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn't, Kaidan knew damn well, was a runner. So for him to be out on a quiet Friday afternoon in full running gear meant something was up.
As they rounded the turn, Coetzer pulled up next to him. There was no acknowledgment between them save a tight nod and a brisk "Sir" from Coetzer, but as Coetzer began to pass him, Kaidan felt his omni-tool vibrate subtly against his wrist. He kept his face carefully neutral, but his mind whirred as he watched Coetzer go. It could have been nothing more than coincidence – Amanda wondering where he was or calling to tell him that she was headed back to the apartment.
Or...not.
Checking now, however, would have been folly at best and dangerous at worst. Instead, he kept on the main path, following the crepe myrtle until he reached a fork. The left, marked by hibiscus and honeysuckle, looped back to the front of the park. The right, however, was lined by wood anemones and gradually wound its way to the grandiose magnolia tree, ringed by a bed of thick, full gardenia bushes, that was the centerpiece of Shepard Memorial. Kaidan took off down the right hand fork, knowing that Amanda, if she hadn't already left for home, would be waiting for him there so they could finish their run together.
As he rounded a final turn, Kaidan found his wife sitting on the grass near one of the benches scattered around the magnolia tree, feet kicked out in front of her and crossed at the ankles, face upturned and eyes closed as she leaned back on her arms. A small smile gently curved the corner of her mouth.
He took a moment to simply soak her in and enjoy the view. She looked damn near radiant. Especially when she opened her eyes and looked right at him, the little smile broadening across her face. Like she had expected him to be there.
Maybe she had. Warmth spread through his chest, bringing an echoing smile to his own face as he made his way over to her and dropped into a cooling stretch on the grass.
"Hey, you," Amanda murmured, giving him the once-over that never failed to nail him low in the gut.
"Hey yourself, beautiful. What's on your mind?"
"You talking about the stuff I can say in public or the stuff I can't?"
"Mmm. Let's stick to the fit-for-public consumption stuff, alright? Even Spectres don't get a pass if they use their authority to get out of a public indecency charge with C-Sec."
"Wouldn't want that to happen. Again." She grinned up at him. "So, where do you think Devin picked for dinner tonight?"
Kaidan barked out a short laugh and switched to stretching out his other hamstring. "Probably the loudest, flashiest place he could get a reservation. Probably somewhere expensive, and probably," he finished as they both stood and headed back to the path, "somewhere he had to namedrop one or all of us to get on the list. Come on, birthday girl," he said before pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "Let's finish our run and get home. You have a birthday dinner to attend tonight."
Amanda smiled, a curve of her lips that somehow sent riots of heat pooling in very inconvenient places. "Is that the only thing waiting for me at home, Spectre Alenko?"
He groaned, low and quiet. "Oh, hell no."
He pointedly ignored his omni-tool as it buzzed again with a secondary notification.