Did I say one week? It appears I meant two. Holidays with the family and all that. Here's the last bit, finally. Beware: language and ambiguous endings. Thanks for reading.
Kaidan hurried out of Udina's office, but there was no sign of Shepard. She'd only left a few minutes before him, but she'd been moving fast. She must have been eager to avoid seeing him again. He knew where the Normandy was berthed, and rushed off in that direction. At several points, shouts of what sounded like his name echoed in the corridors behind him, but he ignored them every time. He reached the airlock that he'd paced in front of, waiting for Shepard to emerge, but the ship was already gone. She'd gotten her Spectre status reinstated after returning from the dead, mostly thanks to Anderson's influence, and that had probably helped her make a quick escape. Kaidan slumped against the paneled wall, deflated. At least she'd gotten to pull rank on someone else for once. But he had no idea how to proceed; she could have gone practically anywhere. She didn't answer to anybody anymore, and if she didn't want to be found, she wouldn't be. Anyway, given that she had stolen both a ship and a crew from The Illusive Man, she had bigger and scarier things to hide from than him.
His stomach churned a bit at that thought; he knew Shepard could more than handle herself, but The Illusive Man had literally brought someone back from the dead. He had resources at his disposal that many world governments would envy. And he couldn't be happy about losing control of a weapon as useful – and, certainly, expensive – as Shepard. Well. Kaidan squared his shoulders. That only made it more crucial that he find her. Who knew what her future looked like now, caught between the Alliance, the Reapers, and Cerberus. He had to talk to her, he had to explain... but also answers, he wanted to know what she did, he had to be ready for what was coming... he supposed he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do if he were actually able to catch up with Shepard. There was a lot there, some of it of galactic importance. And some of it didn't matter to anyone but him. And it all kept him up at night.
So, if he were going to think logically about it, he had a few decent ideas of where to start. The simple fact that he had beat Shepard here to the Citadel suggested that the Normandy 2 wasn't in the best condition. The original model would have been able to travel much more quickly than his ship, and the new one had to be vastly superior. He didn't have many details, but the ship Cerberus had built for her had many improvements over its predecessor. On top of that, Shepard had called upon the unique skill sets of her more talented recruits in order to tweak the ship in various targeted ways, all in the hopes of surviving the unsurvivable. Now, since she didn't have Cerberus funding anymore – and, in fact, was likely pretty interested in staying off The Illusive Man's radar – she would have to find rare parts as cheaply as possible, and pay well enough that any professionals she hired wouldn't tell tales. So, she had a few logical options: she could head to Illium to see if Liara could help her out, she could go to Omega to make some deals of her own, or she could call on the Shadow Broker to pull some strings.
Kaidan thought it most likely that Shepard would start with the Shadow Broker, but that bit of reasoning didn't actually help him much. He, of course, had no idea who the Broker might be, or where he operated from. And even if Kaidan had that information, what would he do with it? Shepard might have made nice with the Broker, but she was, well, Shepard. With her force of personality, she could do things like that, things that normal people dismissed as impossible. It wasn't like he'd be able to give the Broker a quick call and ask for a favor. He supposed that left Liara as his next best bet – if Shepard went there for help, maybe he'd catch up to her. And if not, he could beg Liara for some more information. He wasn't too proud for that, and maybe the asari would have a bit more sympathy for his current motives. Anyway, that plan appealed to him more than running off to Omega. He couldn't stand it there. He always left feeling like he would never get clean again. Nothing but crime, subjugation and misery as far as the eye could see, with the closest thing to a bright spot being Afterlife – a sewer of organized crime and a playground for the rich. He could be winning when it was necessary, but Kaidan didn't fancy attempting to butter up the criminals that were the core of Aria T'Loak's empire.
Kaidan was sure that his crew had questions when he ordered the ship off to Illium for no stated reason, but that good old Alliance discipline held firm. He spent the transit time musing on how to handle a ground team; he knew it wasn't safe or smart to wander the surface by himself, but he didn't want to put any of his soldiers in the position of having to lie if this adventure went square. If he could have pulled it off, he would have left his entire crew behind and gone searching for Shepard on his own. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he thought they'd all be okay, discipline wise. Excepting himself, of course. The crew had merely followed the orders of their commanding officer, and directed the ship to a Council world, if an unseemly one. And then they'd stood by and waited, while he did something or other. They had no reason to suspect that he was doing anything other than following his own orders, and so had no reason not to accept his command. No one could reasonably reproach them with anything. Actually, given the info that he had on Udina now, it was possible that no one would reproach him with anything either.
All of his worrying was for nothing anyway; when he finally made it to Illium, it was only to be disappointed. Liara was gone, and her assistant had vanished as well. That killed his only decent hope for reliable information. There was only one person he knew that would be both able to find out what had happened to Liara and willing to tell him, and that was Liara herself. His head was starting to hurt. Maybe that was a sign. Maybe chasing Shepard across the galaxy just to deliver an apology that she had no real reason to even accept was a bad idea. Maybe he should just let this go. What was he even hoping for, anyway? Was it really about apologizing, or was he just looking for more information? Some kind of interrogation would probably elicit an even worse response from Shepard than an unwelcome apology. Although, she had proven willing to tell him what he needed – no, deserved – to know, at least when she really had no choice. Why the hesitation on her part? Didn't she trust him? And had she really meant what she'd said, that she had hurried off to Horizon just because he was there?
Kaidan had been trudging gamely back towards his ship along the gleaming pathways of Illium, but that thought made him stop and stare numbly in front of him. God, that was it, wasn't it. That was what was torturing him, the idea that she still cared for him in a way that she didn't for her other former crew mates. He just couldn't let it go... because he couldn't let her go. He hadn't really been sure how he felt about her until, in the classic way, it had been too late. Her death had made it clear to him just what she had meant to him, and he had mourned accordingly. He'd been unable to move on accordingly. It had become the new defining moment of his life. And now, it had been erased, or at least undone, and he wasn't sure what that meant for the eighteen months of his life that he had spent trying to get back to normal. Was he mourning for his mourning period now? That was just messed up. This, this would be the absolute worst thing he could do, to lay this pile of emotional damage on Shepard's doorstep. It wasn't like she had anything on her mind these days, right?
Finally coming back to himself and realizing that he was being buffeted by angry shoppers trying to get past him, he started walking again in the direction of his ship. If he couldn't get Liara to help him track down Shepard, and if he lacked the connections to make a request of the Shadow Broker, then he would follow through on his only other thought. He would head to Omega and see what he could find out. He knew from Anderson that Shepard had worked with Aria in the course of her mission; she'd had little choice, since a few of the people she was looking to recruit had been big names on Omega. Garrus himself, if the gossip was true – supposedly, he'd been the vigilante called Archangel and cut a bloody swath through the criminal underworld. Kaidan had no way to be sure, but in his experience the gossip about Shepard, especially the more ridiculous stuff, had a way of being true. So. That meant that, if he could just come up with a reason why Aria would actually want to give him some information... well, that was the rub, wasn't it? He had nothing to bargain with, and nothing was free on Omega.
Reaching his ship's airlock, he stiffened his shoulders. He'd just have to improvise. At least he was really horrible at that, that made this whole trip more appealing. Combine that with his poor acting skills, and this ought to all go really well. And his crew, they'd love this idea. Maybe now was the time to separate from them, find passage on a trade ship or something so that he could keep this whole adventure quarantined from the Alliance side of his life. Maybe it was time to acknowledge that the Alliance part of his life was probably over. It might just have been Udina who'd been using him and lying to him, but probably not. Anderson certainly should have been aware enough to know what was going on; if nothing else, he'd been aware of the whole Horizon debacle, and that was enough.
Kaidan did an about-face, and headed back towards the busy shopping districts of Illium. He couldn't get back on the ship and expect to fool any of his crew for a minute with his head falling apart like this. He'd go get a drink, think this out. Like most biotics, he generally tried to avoid too much alcohol, but he'd crawled into a bottle after Shepard's death and a bit of that same detachment seemed like a necessity to work through all this. Shuffling into the first place he saw, he ordered up something terrifyingly blue from the console and wondered if he could really break with the group he'd been a part of for his entire adult life. The unforgiving rigidity of military structure had been the only thing that kept him going after Brain Camp, and after the Normandy's destruction. Moving on to a bright red concoction, he mused that he had never really had a choice in his career – being a biotic meant that he would be tracked and harassed for his entire life anyway, and the Alliance had offered the only real chance of legal employment that wouldn't turn him into a freak show. Had he really been dedicated to the Alliance all this time, or had he forced himself to believe that in order to validate a choice that had been made for him?
The next drink was purple, and sweet. Why was he doing this to himself? All he wanted was to apologize to an old friend that he had treated poorly, not rethink his entire life. He was supposed to be calming down, getting ready to face the crew, but instead he was getting maudlin and emotional. Dredging up old hurts wasn't going to solve any of his current problems. But he couldn't pretend that he hadn't been affected by the things Shepard had told him. And by Udina's tacit endorsement of their truth. He wouldn't be so melodramatic as to say that everything he'd ever believed had been a lie, but it certainly felt that way. He rested his forehead on the cool bar top, and wished that, just for once, the answers would come to him.
"Alenko? What did you do to yourself? No matter. Anyway, I have a message for you." The voice was slick with a hint of burr, and right behind his ear. Kaidan's head jerked up without waiting for his brain to realize what was going on, and swung in the voice's direction. A drell was sat on the stool next to him, looking rather bemused. Kaidan squeezed his temples for a moment while scrunching his eyes shut, and was startled to find the drell still waiting when he looked again. The man looked a bit unhealthy and increasingly impatient, but was no doubt very real. There didn't seem to be any point in denying his identity; what did he have to lose at this point? He was wallowing in candy-flavored cocktails in an asari bar. A push in the right direction – or even the wrong direction – would almost have to be an improvement, if only for his self-respect.
"Okay. What's the message about? And who is it from?" The drell looked a bit surprised that Kaidan had finally spoken, and been reasonable at that. With a slight smile, he answered, "It's about the location of the Commander that you seek. And it's from the Shadow Broker, of course." Having successfully dropped that bomb, the messenger sat back to watch Kaidan squirm.
"You know where Shepard is? Or, the Shadow Broker knows where Shepard is, and is just going to send some guy to a bar to let me know? Do you think I'm stupid? Don't answer that. Nothing is free, especially not on Illium, and especially not when the Shadow Broker is involved."
The drell smirked. Kaidan was sure that he'd be openly laughing if he wasn't on the clock. "Indeed, this information is not free, Commander Alenko. But it has already been paid for. Commander Shepard recently did a rather large favor for the Shadow Broker, and the Shadow Broker feels that helping you to catch up to Shepard would be a good way of paying her back." The drell looked Kaidan over, and gave a small shake of his head. "Myself, it seems like a strange thing. But the Broker does have an odd sense of fairness, sometimes."
Kaidan eyed the messenger for a moment, trying to spot the angle he was working. This could be an attempt to lure him into an ambush by exploiting his connection with Shepard. Not that that would ever happen, he thought wryly. Well. He didn't think the Alliance would work this quickly, and if they wanted him they had only to order his own crew to arrest him. He wasn't sure anyone else was after him, except possibly The Illusive Man. Was taking the word of a supposed messenger for the Shadow Broker any worse then heading to Omega to beg for information from syndicate heads?
"Save the personal assessment, would you? Just tell me where to go." The drell met Kaidan's annoyed gaze with his own serene one, and then tapped his omni-tool. "There. I have sent you the relevant information. May I suggest that you clean up a bit first?" The man finally did laugh this time, and then slipped off the barstool and out of sight. He moved so quickly that Kaidan knew it would be fruitless to try and follow. His head now surprisingly clear, he paid for his drinks and set off towards his ship, pulling up the forwarded message on his own omni-tool as he walked. His pace began to slow as he actually read the message. This was not going to go over very well with the crew. Kaidan sighed. A drell had magically appeared and enabled him to skip all the information gathering that he'd been dreading, and this was still a career-ruining disaster. He just hoped it was worth it.
A few days later, his doubts had only increased. His crew was following orders, but he could feel their eyes on his back when he walked the corridors. According to the Shadow Broker – or, at least, according to the drell who claimed to work for him – the Normady was in orbit around Kruban. That was the third planet in the Aralakh system, right next to Tuchanka. Which made a certain amount of sense, he had to admit, given Shepard's relationship with Wrex. It was a safe place to anchor while repairs were made, with powerful backup near by and the krogans' formidable reputation to provide blanket protection. Unfortunately, the same things that made the location a good choice for Shepard made it a dicey proposition for him. Kaidan felt like he'd left things with Wrex in a relatively good place. But he wasn't sure that he wanted to bet his life on that.
With that thought in mind, Kaidan had his ship give Tuchanka a wide berth on its way to Kruban. Ideally, he could avoid the guard dogs and just get to Shepard herself. His Lieutenant had just informed him that they were within sight of the planet, although there was no sign of a ship in orbit. Kaidan wasn't surprised. It wouldn't be like Shepard to be obvious, especially while undergoing repairs. His message from the Shadow Broker had contained a comm signature, and he hoped that that would be enough to get him access to his ace in the hole. If Joker wasn't willing to play ball, Kaidan didn't know how he would get to Shepard. He knew that Joker had no love for the Alliance anymore, but his loyalty to Shepard was unquestionable. The only unknown was where Joker ranked Kaidan: good for Shepard, or bad. If this whole trip was one long gamble, then this was the biggest chance to go bust.
Joker was not the problem. He'd been positively friendly when Kaidan had contacted him, and hadn't seemed surprised at all to hear from him. Kaidan had been provided with docking clearance, a long-winded description of how awesome the new ship was, and plenty of unsolicited advice about how to make nice with Shepard. And when Kaidan had actually walked through the airlock, expecting to see Shepard or at least her XO, Joker had been stood there beaming. The pilot had given Kaidan an abbreviated tour, continually mentioning leather seats, and pointed out various crew members. And then directed him to the lift, letting him know that the entire crow's nest was given over to Shepard's quarters. Kaidan had swallowed the uneasy feeling that Shepard somehow didn't even know that he was on her ship, and headed up from the CIC.
And, no. Joker wasn't the problem. The problem was the pissed off turian standing between him and Shepard's door. Garrus looked calm and unaffected, but he was a sniper. He always looked like that, whether he was about to pay someone an understated compliment or fire an explosive round deep inside their brain pan. The turian wasn't even looking at him, as though it were some sort of bizarre coincidence that the two of them had met face-to-face in the tiny foyer in front of Shepard's quarters. It was obvious that Kaidan was going to have to make the first move, unless he'd come this far merely for a chat with Joker and a peek at the new galaxy map.
Kaidan cleared his throat. "So. Garrus. Good to see you again. Thanks for all your help before. Any chance of getting in to see Shepard? I'd like to talk to her. Try and explain a few things..."
Finally, Garrus turned to face him directly. It should have been a relief, but the turian clearly wasn't going to make this easy for him. "What would you like to explain, Alenko? Why you called her a traitor? Why you've been busy second-guessing her motivations while she's been saving you and your people, and by 'your people' I mean humans? All of them. You have no idea what she's accomplished, Alenko, or the pressures that she's been under while doing it. You have no idea how much harder you doubting her made her job. You have no idea what you did to her!"
Kaidan was prepared for Garrus' anger this time, but was no less hurt by it. He was determined not to get angry or make a scene on Shepard's doorstep, so he was willing to keep his justifications to himself. It was a strain though, and he wasn't sure how to respond to Garrus. He had to calm the turian's ire in order to move forward, but all he wanted to do was argue. His pride could only take so many hits. Garrus crossed his arms and stared at Kaidan, waiting for an answer. And Kaidan had just wound himself up to give a deeply inappropriate one when the door behind Garrus slid open. Shepard was framed in the doorway, and she looked profoundly unamused. The door was silent, so it was likely the look on Kaidan's face that caused Garrus to turn around. Some sort of nonverbal communication passed between Shepard and Garrus, and the turian turned wordlessly toward the lift. Kaidan stood frozen, staring at a region around Shepard's neck. The confrontation with Garrus had disrupted the various speeches he'd had planned, and he could only swallow reflexively. He could hear the lift's accelerators engage. He and Shepard were alone.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. "This is a surprise. Joker?"
"Yes. Also, the Shadow Broker, if you can believe it."
That surprised her. But she only looked startled for a moment before her upper lip quirked and she was suddenly laughing. Kaidan stared, surprisingly emotional. She'd always been angry or business-like or wistful when he'd seen her; somehow, to see her smiling was to underline that she was really still herself, still human, still reachable. He'd been so afraid that Cerberus had ruined her, that he had ruined her, but here she was chuckling at a friend's antics. She sobered, and gestured at the room behind her with her head. "You might as well come in then. Wouldn't want to upset the merry conspirators, would we?"
Kaidan followed her into her quarters. He paused just past the threshold to take it all in. He supposed the extra space was nice, but really? A giant fish tank? Shepard seemed to have read his mind. As she settled into a comfortable-looking chair just down the short staircase, she nodded towards the wall of water. "Can you believe that thing? I filled it up four times, but the fish kept dying. Usually after I'd had a really shitty day. So now it's just my large-scale model of an acidic ocean. That, and a big-ass nightlight."
More proof of a sense of humor. But it wasn't warming his heart anymore. If she was the same person that she'd once been, how could she live like this? "What is all this, Shepard? This ship, and this crew – what are you trying to accomplish here? All these people that you've supposedly converted, from Cerberus lifers, or from whatever else they used to be, what do you think you can do with them?"
She looked up at him, her face unreadable. He didn't think that she was even going to answer him for a moment, until a small sigh escaped, and her expression shifted. She was wary, he realized. He'd called her a traitor, and he'd repeatedly questioned her motives. Of course she was hesitant to level with him.
"Alenko, it's not just what I think we can do. It's what we've done. I'm not going to pretend that I've got the totality of the situation wrapped up here. I'm sure there are things I don't know. But you've got no idea what I've learned, what I've been dealing with, and you're really in no position to judge me."
"I know. I don't know what's been going on, because no one's been willing to tell me. Until you, not that you really wanted to. So, fine, you must have had your reasons, but I can help you. Obviously, you did something after the Omega-4 relay – when you got back, Anderson practically had a religious experience. I've never seen him so relieved, and I was standing there when you crawled out from under the wreckage in the Citadel tower. But I know it isn't over. There's not nearly enough of a cover-up going on. If you'd managed to actually neutralize the Reapers without everyone being confronted with them – well, it'd be like last time. They'd be quietly sweeping you under the rug somehow. But, Udina aside, the Alliance and the Council and, holy shit, even The Illusive Man are just letting you do what you need to. That tells me that they all know, whether they want to admit it or not, that something is still coming, and that they need you to deal with it. And I can help you deal with it, please. Please let me. I know you've got no reason to let me, but you're too practical to turn aside an ally. I mean, look at who you've been working with!"
Shepard had been listening quietly, expression diplomatic, until his very last sentence. Kaidan knew that he'd made a tactical error the second her eyes began to blaze with anger. He should have known better, he realized. If there was one sure way to earn this woman's ire, it was to insult her crew.
"Who I've been working with? Are you serious? Yes, I've had to recruit a few unsavory characters. And every one of them proved themselves to me, or else they wouldn't still be on this ship. And, having settled that, perhaps you'd like to discuss why I couldn't just get the band back together. Have any ideas about that, Alenko?"
She wasn't done, that was obvious, and he didn't have enough of a death wish to provoke her. Despite the sharpness of her retort, she'd stayed seated until now. She jerked herself out of her chair, and began pacing in the space in front of her bed. "And you want answers? You want to know what Anderson's so happy about, but you came here rather than ask him? Hard to believe. But, fine. We'll keep it to bullet points so that you can get off my boat a little more quickly. The Collectors are the Protheans. The Reapers don't always kill all biological life. Sometimes, they make use of it. Saren was right about that, turns out. And humans? They had a hell of an honor picked out for us. Can you guess how you make a new Reaper? By parting out a whole bunch of organics. That's what we found past the Omega-4 Relay. A Collector base, and the baby Reaper they were building there. Out of human colonists. And we destroyed the entire thing. The Illusive Man wanted me to save the base, for 'research'. But I wouldn't trust him with a pistol, never mind something like that. Oh, and one other thing. The Collectors were being directly controlled by a Reaper patron. Which means their failure has been noted. And the Reapers are coming. Soon."
Kaidan reeled backwards, his back hitting the door. He stared at Shepard, searching her expression for some sign that she was trying to hurt him with this, that this wasn't all true. All he saw was what had always been in Shepard's eyes, ever since they'd learned about the Reapers: a fierce resolve to win, no matter the odds. He shook his head futilely, trying to clear his jumbled thoughts. He walked shakily over to the desk area to his left, and sunk down into a chair. He leaned his elbows on the desk, and dropped his head into his hands. Kaidan forced himself to breathe, reminded himself that he still had reasons for being here. As he looked up, he saw his own face – Shepard had a holo of him on her desk. For just a moment, he let that be the weirdest thing he'd learned all day. And then, he turned around.
"Why, Shepard? Why did you go to all that trouble to save my ass from the people I'm supposed to be working for, only to run away? Why not let me know that I was buried up to my neck in lies? It was small compared to all of this, but don't I deserve to know? I could have come with you on this mission. I could actually have been helping to fight the Reapers, instead of just burying my head in the sand."
"You wouldn't have believed me. You didn't, the only chance I had to talk to you. And I didn't actually know most of this stuff until six weeks ago. You think telling Udina would have helped? Even Anderson is all good intentions and no results. I don't have time to chase people across the galaxy, begging for their help. I asked you once. You said no."
Kaidan stared at her. He'd been putting his foot in his mouth every time he saw her, and he wasn't going to mess this chance up. He knew Shepard. He knew that she didn't have room to doubt herself. And he knew that she couldn't resist defending her decisions when someone implied that she was wrong.
"Dammit, Alenko. Don't make me talk to you about this. It's obvious, isn't it? It would be if you could manage to think of me as the same person you saw die. But you don't. And I guess, in the strictest sense, I'm not the same person, having been through new things. But you've changed too, probably more than me. You've had more time to change. But I can still understand why you do the things you do, because I know that you're still the same fundamentally honorable person you were when I first met you – you've just had to make some compromises. Well, so have I."
That couldn't be everything. "Shepard, please." It was never that simple. "Amelia. Please."
She started. She brought her hands up to her face, perhaps trying to hide the blotches appearing on her cheeks. "I... fuck. Fuck! Look, I knew you could handle Udina. You knew that mission was bogus before you went on it, I'm sure of it. You just didn't want to disobey an order. He wouldn't have been able to do that to you again. You didn't need me to protect you. At first, I didn't want to have to tell you how far it all went. And then, I didn't want you to realize their inaction was dooming us all. I didn't want to be the one to take away your faith in the last thing you believed in."
Kaidan was shaking his head before she'd even finished speaking. "The Alliance isn't the last thing I have faith in, Shepard. I've been rather poor at showing it, I know, I've let my fears and politics get in the way, let the brass get into my head... but it's you, Shepard. It's always been you."
She looked at him, chewing at her lower lip. He wasn't sure what else to say.
