Age 23
Her name was Gemma. She served with Kaidan on the SSV Tai Shan. He had gotten plenty of welcome attention from women in boot camp, and Gemma was no different. She was attractive with strawberry blond hair and full lips. He liked to sneak away with her while on duty into the nearby bathroom, and furiously work out their tension. He knew they could be dishonorably discharged if they were caught, but he'd be damned if his father would ever be proven right, and Gemma was good at keeping secrets.
A small contingent of soldiers was sent down to some planet that Kaidan couldn't remember the name of in the Skyllian Verge. A group of batarians was attacking a human agrarian colony. Kaidan was sent for his field medic skills and Gemma for her sharpshooting.
It wasn't long until Kaidan was feverishly attending to the wounded. The group of batarians was fiercer than they had anticipated. Gemma took a defensive position beside him to keep Kaidan free to work. He looked up quickly just to have Gemma push his head down and take a shot directly to the face. She flew back, hitting the wall behind her. Her hair painted a large streak of blood as she slumped down lifelessly.
Numb, Kaidan floated among the injured, which was the remainder of his group. He then grabbed Gemma's sniper rifle and took out the last remaining batarians. A few days later, the Alliance gave him his first commendation for quick action while under fire. All Kaidan ever saw when he looked at that letter was Gemma's face, destroyed by a batarian shot that should have been his.
Andrew Alenko sent a message of congratulations. Kaidan didn't even read it.
Age 25
Another tour of duty, another commendation. Kaidan thought the Alliance must hand them out like candy to field medics. This time, however, he saved his commanding officer's life by patching a compound fracture in the man's leg which had punctured his femoral artery. This was only after he shut the ship's decon bay doors on a group of colonists that had been infected with an alien pathogen that caused violent tendencies before they would succumb to a painful death.
In his dreams he heard the howling of the colonists as the ship left them to die. Sometimes he would be with them crying out for death to take him. He would awake sweaty and screaming.
He went all out on the shore leave that followed. Kaidan found many willing women to temporarily make him forget. He found a red sand dealer who wouldn't rat him out to the Alliance. (The Alliance was paying dealers high rewards to turn in soldiers who were abusing the drug.) The booze flowed freely as well, especially to a "hero." Kaidan felt like a transparent fraud, but he lived it up with them anyway.
The morning before he had to return to duty he crashed. The drugs, the buzz all wore off. He felt raw and wounded. His matted hair hadn't seen a shower in over a week. He sat up and looked at the sleeping woman lying beside him. He didn't know her name and he didn't care. The money on the nightstand said she didn't care who he was either. He took the last hit of red sand as he stood up.
Kaidan stumbled to get his clothes back on. He picked up his pistol that he always had on him just in case. He carefully examined the gun, turning it over and over in his hands. He started to wonder what a gunshot felt like. What did Gemma feel when she died? Did time stretch out as the bullet bored through her eyeball, exploding it, then crashed into her brain, creating a tunnel of searing destruction before it cracked the back end of her skull, exiting with such force that it removed nearly a third of her head with it?
Kaidan stood there, pistol pointing at his own eye. He could just pull the trigger. The migraines would be gone, the ache of disillusionment would be gone, the spectre of death that hung over him would finally be gone. He could just surrender himself to that inevitability. If he could just pull the trigger…
A woman's scream startled Kaidan into dropping his gun. He looked in horror as he thought about what he almost did. He never touched red sand again.
Age 27
The structure and tight regulations of the Alliance had become a security blanket to Kaidan after that shore leave two years ago. He no longer flouted the rules, but instead ran his entire life by them, even on shore leave. One day he decided to visit his mother, which he did rarely even when he was home at his own apartment in Vancouver.
He knocked politely at the door and Natsuki opened the door, pulling her son into her arms. "Kaidan, I'm so glad you are home! I'm so proud of the man you've become." Andrew stepped out from behind her. Kaidan flinched. He thought his father was out on another tour of duty. Surprisingly, Andrew smiled at his son. Kaidan couldn't remember the last time he had done that.
"We're both proud of you, son," Andrew said, as Kaidan left his mother's embrace. Andrew held out his hand. "You are a real asset to the Alliance and you're a credit to the Alenko name." When the younger man saw that his father's approval was genuine, a little bit of life began to creep back into his soul.
