Standard Disclaimer: All characters, places, etc. are property of Bioware. Original characters belong to me.

Author's Note: As I have only just completed Mass Effect 1, I really have no standing to be writing this (I have, however, seen a lot of youtube videos on the beginning of ME3). But this story sprang from a single line that came to mind, Kaidan saying he wasn't leaving Shepard behind again. When I started it, this was a drabble. However, the editing process was... um... yeah. Not so much drabble any more...

Alliance Central Command Headquarters

Vancouver, Canada

Courtroom Access hallway

James

Lieutenant James Vega had never planned on crossing the line of professionalism he'd always adhered to. He blamed Shepard.

He'd been assigned as her guard dog six months ago today. She'd stayed "just an assignment" for all of two days; after that, they'd started on the odd, slippery slope to friendship, almost against their collective wills.

James was an honest man; Shepard was quiet, but strongwilled as hell, she was gorgeous with that dark hair, pale gold-dust skin and vaguely almond-shaped dark eyes, and falling for her would have been easier than breathing. He wasn't entirely certain he hadn't actually fallen a little in love with her at all - hell, maybe there was something there between them, maybe there wasn't. There were nights when he would have given his left arm to find out for certain, to take that little step closer, to inhabit the rarified air scented with her skin and shampoo and finally know what it was to touch her. Yeah, there were some nights...

But James knew damn well that Shepard needed a friend a lot more than she needed a lover. In any case, it would have been impossible for him, given their circumstances, to be that lover without the creepy overtones of broken trust and a captor/captive relationship. So he'd stayed her friend. God knew, Shepard deserved at least one friend.

It was a Friday, and Admiral Anderson sent him to get Shepard. It wasn't unusual for the brass to pull her out of her solitary cage for a short hop. When he knocked on her door, James made very sure to pay her the respect she was owed. He called her commander. When she reminded him he shouldn't, he saluted again, just so she'd get the idea he was serious. So she'd know he was on her side. When she laughed, he felt a warm glow in his chest. War on or not - and Centcom couldn't seem to get its collective head out of its ass long enough to figure out which one it was - he'd made his friend laugh. It was shaping up to be a good day.

This time, though, Admiral Anderson met up with them almost immediately instead of waiting in the interrogation rooms like he usually did. Vega trailed his charge on the way to the Defense Committee, keeping a respectful distance from the admiral and Shepard when they talked, since he'd technically been there as a glorified guard dog. Shows what the Alliance brass knew. He wasn't a guard dog, he was a marine. Shepard was a marine. They stuck together. If he wanted to be more, well... Vega was used to wanting things he couldn't have.

A uniformed aide approached Anderson and beckoned the admiral in toward the Defense Committee's sanctum santorum. She didn't so much as look at the disgraced commander, as if she were afraid Shepard's pariah status - or her imagined insanity, since she kept insisting that a race of giant sentient machines were coming to wipe out all life in the galaxy - were contagious. James bristled. Fucking hell. Did nobody remember the Battle of the Citadel anymore? After all Shepard had done, getting disrespected by a person who'd probably never seen anything more dangerous than the inside of a badly-organized file cabinet or more nightmare-inducing than a government form was not gonna happen. Not on Jimmy Vega's watch.

"Hey, Shepard." When the commander turned, he gripped her hand, the contact making him too aware that for all her inner steel and her height, she was still wand-slender and half his weight. "Good luck in there. I know you'll give 'em hell."

Shepard was smiling that little quiet smile she got sometimes, and she was smiling at him with warmth and camaraderie, and that was beyond great... That warm glow was in his chest again, and he had no idea of what he was supposed to do about it, or even if he should do anything about it. He just knew he liked it.

"Shepard."

A husky voice James had never heard before, halfway down the tenor scale and full of a quiet strength, sounded out near where Anderson was standing. Shepard stiffened as soon as she heard her name called; James saw the shock bloom in her eyes in that split second before she covered it. Shepard was... what? Rattled? in six months, he'd never seen her look like that. What the fuck?

James put himself firmly back in guard dog mode, standing silently off to the side as the officers conferred. He didn't really listen in so much as not ignore it when he could hear every third word they spoke; it was enough to confirm that Shepard did indeed know this new officer. That she was glad she'd bumped into him. She called him Kaidan. Not Major. Kaidan.

James' chest began to burn, just a little.

When the committee aide ushered Anderson and Shepard toward the closed chamber, James just stood where he was. Technically, he hadn't been dismissed and Shepard was his duty station, so he should probably stay right here. For when Anderson called him to bring the commander back to solitary. Or Shepard needed a friend.

So it was as her friend that he leaned slightly closer to the major, who'd apparently already finished his business with the Defense Committee. He tried not to loom too much, but he didn't try too hard. "Sir? You know the commander?"

The other man watched Admiral Anderson - watched Shepard, James' suspicious mind insisted - vanish behind the doors of the committee chamber. "I used to." He waited a beat before turning intelligent dark eyes on the younger man. Unlike most officers, or even most enlisteds, this man didn't seem to feel the need to either back up to gain space, or posture to make sure the larger and more muscular James knew who was alpha dog here. "Lieutenant Vega, right?"

James fought the completely annoying urge to salute. The only other people who made him feel like that were Admiral Anderson and Shepard herself. "Yes, sir."

"I've read your file, Vega. You do good work. Very good work. You should be proud of Fehl Prime."

James had pegged the higher-ranked officer as by the book type on first glance; what happened on Fehl Prime had hardly been textbook, so the observation came as something of a surprise. Equally surprising was the knowledge that this man knew him, knew enough to pull his file. "Is there a reason you looked into my record, sir?"

"Yes." The major stepped out of the way of the people coming and going with such frenetic activity in the hall. "Let's talk, Lieutenant."

They found a relatively quieter spot down the hallway off the main courtroom access. Alenko leaned one shoulder against the wide, reinforced window; James opted for maintaining a relatively rigid posture. He wasn't about to risk getting a black mark in his so-called impressive file by being accused of insubordination.

When the major spoke, his voice was carefully neutral, but to a seasoned card sharp like Vega, the tone was too flat, too casual. "What's your current assignment, soldier?"

"Something tells me you already know, sir."

"Well, you'd be right. I also noticed that you called Shepard "Commander"." The other man paused, and there was a challenge in those dark eyes. "You know she's been relieved of duty."

Oh, now it's on. Vega let himself light his considerable temper. "With all due respect, Major, the commander deserves all the respect I can give her, and more. The Alliance brass can go screw itself."

He got the distinct impression that, although the Major didn't actually laugh, he really wanted to. He could almost see his lips twitch. "Probably not a good thing to say to someone who's reasonably up there in the Alliance brass, soldier."

"Probably not, sir. But you're not some pencil-pushing cabron, are you? I just placed your name. You're Major Kaidan Alenko. You were with Shepard on the Normandy SR1. You helped stop Saren Arterius, saved the Citadel and the Council."

Alenko gave him a slight nod. "And you're Lieutenant James Vega, who, when not serving with distinction on Fehl Prime, took out a gang of Batarians on Omega with a broken vid screen and a knife when they called for Shepard's head on a pike. Now, since we've established who we both are..." The major's voice deepened with command. "Tell me about the commander."

James fought a hot flare of jealousy, somewhat unexpected and definitely out of place. He wasn't sure he cared. "I'd rather not. Sir. If you were really with her, you'd know all you need to about the commander."

Alenko actually smiled at that, but this time the expression didn't reach his eyes. "She hasn't lost her touch, then. She almost always has that effect on people. Well, unless they're complete rat bastards." There was a haunted look on the major's face for a split second that James didn't think he was supposed to see, before he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Is she sleeping? Eating?"

James debated with himself for a couple of seconds. Realistically, Alenko could probably just read the daily logs of Shepard's captivity - sorry, house arrest - and find out what he wanted to know. But he prided himself on being a smart guy, and knew damn well that the major, whatever his motivations, wasn't after data. He was after impressions. "The commander eats. Some. More if I cook for her. Doesn't really sleep worth a damn, though. Keeps waking up. Nightmares." He hesitated, hovering on the cusp of honesty, then decided to go for it, partly because he found himself wanting to hurt this man who'd put that look on Shepard's face. "She seems sad. Spends a lot of time praying. Lot of time working martial drills in her cell. The guards always come around for that one, watching the security feeds. They say it's because they want to make sure she's not trying to escape, but I know they're just being assholes." James tactfully left out that he'd personally pounded the man who'd made some crude comments about Shepard's flexibility. He hadn't even gotten written up about it; he figured he had Anderson to thank for that. "She spends a lot more time reading now that they're letting her have some material. Tactical assessments. Some field reports when they want her to consult. They won't let her have her instruments. She seemed to take it pretty hard when they told her they hadn't found her flute with her other gear when they confiscated everything from the Normandy."

James' gut hunch played out nicely when the major's eyes closed briefly. Yeah, update my ass, Alenko. This is personal. Good. We're on the same page. "With respect, Major, the committee is treating the commander like a trained monkey. The lady saved the heart of galactic civilization, and instead of listening to her, they're keeping her in a cage. They trot her out and make her dance every once in a while - more like she lets them make her - and when she tells them something they don't like or don't want to believe, they tell me to stuff her back in. It's not right. Sir."

Alenko was really looking at him now. James suddenly realized that the smarts he'd seen in the major's eyes earlier had only really been the tip of the iceberg, because right now, that intelligence was dialed up and focused like a full-bore mass accelerator cannon, and James had the disquieting notion that the man could see inside him and could pull every secret from his mind if he really wanted to. Between that and the major's quiet but undeniably forceful personality, James felt a lot like he'd just been shoved naked and unarmed into a cage match with an alpha wolf.

"Lieutenant. I'm going to ask this one time," Alenko said softly. "Just one time. And I want an honest answer. If you lie to me, I will know it." The older man took two paces forward, until he was well within James' space. The younger marine was bigger, stronger... and he actually felt threatened by the wolf he saw in Kaidan Alenko's eyes. "If you had to choose between Shepard or the Alliance," Alenko asked quietly, tension thrumming between them thick enough that the hairs rose on the back of James' neck, "who would you back?"

James set his jaw, well aware that he was literally tossing his entire career, everything he'd worked for, everything he'd made of himself after a childhood of pure crap, down the shitter with this single answer. Funny, he didn't care as much as he should. Maybe the commander had changed him, or maybe he was just tired of politics getting good people screwed. He straightened, and met the other man's stare with a steady gaze of his own. "I'm with the Commander."

"Hmm." The major stepped back, and he smiled, just a little. The tension flowed out of the area like air from a ruptured balloon. "I hope that's the right answer."

James felt a little dizzy at the sudden change, like he'd just narrowly missed a collision with a Mako. "Major? What... Wait." He peered out the massive window. "What the hell's wrong with the sky?"

Both men looked out the window at the unnaturally darkening sky. The major put one hand up against the glass. "What the - "

A deafening, inhuman shriek cut through the air, sending sonic tremors through the floor. Outside, the water in the bay whipped up into a frenzy of whitecaps. "What the hell?" James muttered.

Red lightning twisted through the clouds, and then black tentacles stabbed through the atmospheric cover, reaching down for the earth like a set of marauding fingers. A long, black body followed, looking for all the world like a giant, sleekly mechanical squid. A red light pulsed balefully at the center of the thing, crackling and building.

"Oh my God," James heard the major whisper roughly. "Get to cover!"

The two men sprinted away from the window just as the massive energy pulse touched down in the bay, strafing right for the defense committee chambers. A massive explosion shook the complex. Shattered light fixtures sprayed glass around him as James looked down the hallway long enough to see the shockwave from that beam rolling up from the committee chambers toward him. It tore through the corridor, carrying a tide of desks, debris, and bodies, He didn't have nearly enough time to get to cover, knew there wasn't any cover to be had in this bare hallway, not from the likes of that blast. He ducked instinctively, bracing for the impact.

There was a hum that he heard more in his bones than his ears, a firm static flash across his skin, a sense that he was standing at ground zero of a lightning strike... and the impact he was waiting for never came.

James looked up, and saw the entire world washed in blue.

Major Alenko stood braced in front of him, arms raised in the mnemnonic for a barrier, eezo energy flaring in a massive corona around him as he channelled it into a protective dome that stood between them and everything the blast threw at it.

"Madre de Dios," James muttered.