And here is the second chapter. Apologies for the delay in posting this, the servers went down for a while...

Thanks so much for reading, it's been really encouraging getting some good feedback for this! I hope you enjoy the rest.

Chapter Two

Shepard stood very still, her hands clasped, her head bowed. And Kaidan stared at her, unable to look away, as everything fell into place.

No wonder this was the chink in her armour. No wonder thresher maws, the creatures that had caused so much pain for her on Akuze, froze her solid when she saw them. Shepard was a soldier. She must know that on missions, people got hurt and killed. It was hard to lose a squad, that was obvious, but someone with strength like hers could cope with that. But someone with the name Isaac Shepard could only be family. And losing family… that must be very, very different.

'Your...' he began, then hesitated, wondering how to finish the sentence. Father? Brother? Husband, even?

'My father,' she clarified, her voice barely louder than a whisper. 'Except he wasn't just my father. He was my best friend. I told you I was born into the Alliance. He was… he was always there. He was a fact, something that just was. He taught me – put a pistol into my hand the day I was old enough to hold it steady and taught me to shoot. Almost everything I am is made from what I learned from him. And on Akuze, he asked for me to be part of his command. Because he knew he could count on me, no matter what we found down there.'

Her hands were clutching each other so tightly now that they were trembling. It looked painful, and Kaidan wished he could put his hand on top – just very gently, just to try to get her to stop hurting herself. He didn't think she even realised she was doing it, and he wanted her to stop. But to do it would be very definitely out of line, so he kept still.

'And when the threshers hit…' Shepard's voice was a little louder now, but no more steady. 'He did what he always did. He put his squad first. Ordered us to retreat while he distracted them. Threw grenades at them, yelled and chucked rocks, made them focus on him. Everyone else ran, and I – I couldn't leave him. I tried to go back to help.' She shook her head numbly. 'He yelled at me to get running, to follow the others. 'Get out of here, Helen! Get out there and live. You live, you be amazing, and make sure I didn't die for nothing, your hear me?' He had this nickname he used to irritate me... he called me his little lamb. Because of the surname, see. Dad humour.'

She gave a weak smile and carried on. 'He said, 'Go, little lamb. I'm proud of you. Go and make me even more proud. That's an order.' And then one of them fell on him and dragged him down...'

She relaxed her hands at last, but only so she could press them against her face. A shudder shook her shoulders, and Kaidan decided that if she actually cried he would have to do something to comfort her, CO or not. But all she did was to draw in a long, shaky breath, place her hands back on the table - not squeezing them together this time, thankfully. Her eyes, though, were wet.

And strangely enough, it didn't surprise him. Because over the course of the past few minutes, she had proven to him that she was as human as the rest of them. Well, except for Garrus, Liara, Tali and Wrex, but… this wasn't about being 'human' as in biologically human. It was about being human as in emotionally human. And really, she always had been. It had just been hard to see that behind that shield of constant strength.

So he leaned towards her a little and said, 'Are you all right, Commander?'

She blinked a few times, and gave him a faint smile. 'Honestly? I don't know. I watched my father die. And then I failed to save the rest of my squad. You don't just move past something like that. But it was six years ago. It still hurts, but you don't let that get in the way of your duty. Unless you have a deep-rooted phobia you thought you could beat, but it turns out you've got no control over it…'

'You had enough control to get us out alive.'

'It was subconscious.'

'Yeah, but it worked.'

'But if we run into another thresher, and I freeze up like that again, we're all dead.'

'Fine. Then I take the wheel and do whatever it takes to get us out of there.'

Shepard stared at him for a moment. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. 'You're right. That solves the problem. The only reason for it not to work is that I'm afraid of letting the team down. Because they'll see, and that shows them that there's something they can't rely on me for. And that's the other thing I'm afraid of, I guess, after thresher maws. Letting people down.' She put on a clearly forced smile. 'I guess them knowing I have this weakness is the lesser of two evils, if the second is all of us getting eaten alive.'

Kaidan drew in a deep breath. 'Shepard, they wouldn't care.'

There was yet another short silence, as they both absorbed the fact that he'd just called her Shepard, rather than Commander. He was glad that she hadn't responded with any anger to any of his previous not-entirely-protocol-abiding comments, because it meant his stomach didn't seize up quite so much this time. And to his relief, she didn't challenge him, merely raised an eyebrow as if asking him to go on.

So he did. 'We've followed you into so much already. Eden Prime, the Citadel, and Therum – you led us through all of that. No one's going to turn their back on you because of this. You're our commander. And if we run into a thresher maw on our next Mako trip, and I have to take over, then fine, I'll do it. It's just something we'll have to work around, same as, I don't know, same as how we have to keep Tali in the middle of the group if we're surrounded, because she's the most fragile, or... or how we have to give Wrex a wide berth if he goes into a blood rage in case he hits one of us, or how I have to keep going down to the med bay to restock on painkillers and make sure my brain isn't being eaten by my implant... None of the rest of us are invincible. You don't have to be.'

And at last, she smiled. A proper smile. 'So, you don't think Wrex would mock me?'

'He's got no right to.' Kaidan shrugged. 'And if he does, I'll spread it around that he's scared of needles.'

'How do you know that?'

'I, uh, happened to be in the med bay when Doctor Chakwas called him down for his first medical examination. Protocol for new crewmembers, she said. It involved blood samples. Tissue samples. Samples of… other things you probably don't want to hear about.'

Her smile widened. 'I'd have paid to see his reaction.'

'It was... it was interesting. He threatened to eat her twice.' Kaidan grinned at the memory. 'She told him that she'd seen more maturity from cadets and that if he didn't stop whining, she'd use a blunter needle, record it, and find a way to broadcast the vid on Tuchanka. Never thought I'd see a krogan battlemaster cowed by a grey-haired medic. So yeah, I reckon you've got insurance there.'

Shepard laughed. It was something he'd never seen or heard her do before. Speak in amused tones, yes, chuckle, yes, but never laugh. It was a nice sound.

'Well, that's a comfort.' Her eyes were dry again, Kaidan was relieved to see. 'As for the others… they complain so much about my driving anyway that they'd probably be happy to see you take over.' She frowned. 'Though if we're not in the Mako and one shows up…'

'Is that likely? I mean, the only planets where we're out on foot are the ones where we're investigating the geth, and they seem to be hitting colonies, and there generally aren't colonies on planets with thresher maws –'

'Except Akuze.' Shepard shrugged. 'But I guess I managed there. I can manage again. I can. And if it looks like I'm not managing, then carry me if that's what it takes. I'm not letting a weakness of mine endanger the rest of you.'

'This squad trusts you to look out for us,' Kaidan told her firmly. 'And if we have to look out for you to make sure that you can keep looking out for us, that's fine.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'I think I lost track of that sentence somewhere.'

She let out a soft chuckle. 'Don't worry. I understood it. And thank you.'

Another silence, but this one was not like the others. There was no uneasy waiting for it to be filled with words. It was a comfortable silence, a silence that arose not because they didn't know what to say, but because no more needed to be said.

At last, she sighed and picked up the Edolus report. 'Anyway, I should see to this. Thanks for bringing it over.'

This was definitely a dismissal, so Kaidan pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. 'No problem, Commander.'

He was halfway to the door when he heard her call after him. 'Kaidan…'

He turned quickly; mostly out of surprise. He'd never thought he'd hear her use his first name.

'I've not talked to anyone about this in a long time. It's hard to talk about, and I'm not the kind of person who talks to people easily. Not about this sort of thing, anyway. So… thank you. For listening, and helping me through this. There's no one else I could trust with it.'

Kaidan looked at her for a moment. She was standing again, one hand on the back of her chair. And as he looked at her, he was given the strange feeling that he was seeing two people. She was the strong soldier she always was, and yet in her eyes there was a trace of something vulnerable and afraid, a lingering ghost of the young woman who'd watched her father pulled underground by monsters.

Had she really gone six years without speaking about this to anyone? Six years without a friend she trusted enough to tell these things to?

And a warm feeling rose up inside him as he realised that she had given her trust to him. Not just trust that he'd watch her back on the battlefield – he'd always had that from her. What he had now was a trust that he would protect her secrets and help her beat her weaknesses. That was something much more, and from her, from Commander Shepard, from Helen Shepard… it was humbling.

And it was a responsibility, too. Because underneath all that strength, she was vulnerable, and now he had a part to play in keeping her safe.

He would play it. He'd do anything to banish that shadow of pain from her eyes.

He wished he could find some way of expressing that, but there were no words. So he settled with, 'I'm glad I could help, Shepard.'

She smiled. 'So am I. Thank you.'

Kaidan returned her smile, and left her to the privacy of her cabin.

He felt different as he made his way towards the crew quarters. He couldn't put his finger on what was different, just that something was. Only to be expected, really – he'd seen a side to his commander that he'd always known must be there, but one he'd never imagined he'd see. And maybe he'd seen a new side to himself, too. After all, he'd made Shepard laugh. That was quite something. He wouldn't have thought that out of all the people on the ship, he'd be the one to finally make her do that.

And it was impossible to stop the thought from sneaking into his brain, that if he was the one she trusted to take over from her when she was frozen by a truly debilitating phobia, the one who she felt comfortable talking to about the darkest things in her past… maybe she saw something in him, just as he saw something in her.

He stopped walking.

That was what was different, he realised. He would never again be able to think of Shepard as an invincible warrior, as someone – well, inaccessible. Suddenly, she had become real and human, and… he guessed that something in his subconscious had decided that he might be in with a chance.

Before the thresher maw erupted from the ground on Edolus, he had been drawn to her. Now, what he felt was something stronger. Something that was simply more.

Which was a slightly frightening thought, but it was also… beautiful.

Smiling to himself, he headed towards the crew quarters. His bunk seemed like a good place to be right now. It had been a very, very long day.

Helen sat without moving for what felt like about a minute. Then she pushed the Edolus report aside – she'd see to it once she'd got her thoughts in order – and headed over to her desk. Dropping into the seat, she reached for a fresh sheet of paper and the nearest pencil. She set the tip to the paper without any real idea of what she would draw, but she often did that, and something always came to her. What came to her this time was a varren. She could picture it in her mind – left front paw raised, head tilted inquisitively, legs bent slightly as if it were preparing to run. With steady, practiced strokes, she marked out the head, shaded in a dark circle for the eye, and started on the line of the jaw.

Six years. Six years since she'd screamed after her father as the thresher maw fell on him and wrenched him down below the surface of Akuze. Six years without talking about it to anyone. The Alliance had directed her to a therapist, of course, that was standard procedure after anyone went through something that traumatic, but it… it wasn't the same. It had helped, but there was a difference between taking about these things to a professional whose job was to listen, and talking about them to a friend who listened because they wanted to.

She'd not had many friends since returning from Akuze. And that was her own fault, she knew that. She'd shut herself off from everyone while she tried to work out how to live in a world without her father. It had been stupid and pathetic and it had cost her, but it was done now. And it hadn't been too hard to deal with; she'd always been an introvert anyway. But it hadn't meant that she'd wanted to be alone. So when she'd found this team, this wonderful group of people willing to risk their lives for her, it had been as if some new energy had been pumped into her very existence, making everything more powerful, more real.

She finished the varren's mouth, and started to sketch out the shape of its legs.

It didn't surprise her that Kaidan had become the one she'd found herself willing to talk about this to. If anyone was going to listen without judging her, without thinking her a whiner, without the slightest chance of telling someone else, it would always have been him. And she didn't trust him just because he'd been beside her the longest, or because he was, like her, Alliance through and through. It was because he was, well, Kaidan.

Carefully, bending down so that her nose was almost brushing the paper, she started on the varren's clawed feet.

He was like her, in many ways. Reserved. Disciplined. By the book. Someone who didn't speak unless they had something worth saying. He had her sensitivity too – only multiplied tenfold. But he did have something she knew she lacked. She knew she was a good person, and she did her best to make sure that everything she said and did was reasonable and right. But Kaidan had a kind of genuine niceness about him. She remembered that she'd had him pegged as a truly decent person about sixty seconds into their first real conversation. That ... that wasn't common. And she knew she didn't have it. She was too hard to get to know.

A sweep of her pencil formed the varren's back.

He was a good man. A kind man. And she was so glad he'd stopped to talk. It had helped. It had really, really helped. Something told her that there weren't many other people who could have helped her in that way. Maybe there weren't any. While he'd been speaking to her back then, she'd felt like he was... seeing her. Really seeing her. Not just his CO, but her.

There was something special about him.

Helen dropped her pencil sharply, barely noticing that it hit the paper point-first and left a black streak out of place across the varren's back legs. Because this was another thing that hadn't happened in many, many years. Her, thinking about someone else as special.

She breathed in deeply and tried to gather her thoughts. She'd picked up from certain things that Kaidan had said and done in the past that he might have an interest in her. But she'd pushed the thought to the back of her mind and carried on. It just hadn't seemed important.

Not important? she hissed at herself silently. One of the kindest people you've ever met suggests that they have feelings for you, and you dismiss it as not important?

Feelings like that could be dangerous, she knew that well enough. Distractions from a mission as important as this could not be afforded. And then there was the fact that they had enough problems without one of their members suffering from a broken heart.

You really think he'd hurt you like that?

Except that it wasn't herself she was worried about. She was afraid of hurting him.

Because you care about him.

Helen let out a sigh and picked up her eraser, rubbing out the accidental mark she'd made. She wasn't one to lie to herself – at least, she hoped she wasn't. And the simple fact was that after what had happened today – after Kaidan had seen her weakness and helped her face it, after he'd talked with her as a person, not as a fellow soldier, after she'd realised just how much she trusted him – she would never be able to look at him in the same way again.

She didn't know where that left her. But one thing was for certain: it left her somewhere better, better by far, than she'd been twenty minutes ago. Better, she thought with a smile, as she began to sketch out the shape of the varren's tail, to be grappling with a possible attraction to someone than grappling with self-directed anger.

She'd been afraid, when she'd snapped back to her senses as that thresher maw collapsed on Edolus. Afraid of being seen as weak, when she so badly needed to be strong, for the sake of her team, and humanity, and all the galaxy. But that thresher maw had led her to this conversation with Kaidan, and that… that had not made her feel weak at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Helen set down her pencil and smiled. She felt better than she had in six years.

Being seen in weakness… it had only made her stronger.

END