A/N: Thank you to everyone who added this story to their alerts. If you feel like reviewing too, I would really appreciate it.

This was supposed to have four chapters, but we're looking at most probably seven now. I still want to cover a post ME2/pre ME3 shenko reunion and, maybe, the events of the Arrival DLC.


Limitless undying love, which
Shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe

(Lennon/McCartney)

Chapter 4 – Limitless Undying Love

Waking up with a shapely feminine leg over his and a soft hand resting on his chest was undoubtedly pleasing and Kaidan decided to stay in bed a little longer, enjoying that feeling. His fingers trailed the elegant ones splayed across his chest. Long nails. Shepard's nails were short. They had to be because armor always included skintight gloves.

Damn! Couldn't his brain focus on anything else but Shepard? Upset with himself, he sat up abruptly.

"Hey, you. Late for something?" Jess asked, idly stretching her arms.

He looked at her and all that had happened last night came back to him in a rush. Amidst the booze, dancing, Chinese food, more drinking and sex, he remembered getting an unexpected call. He needed to see what that was about, but also needed food and a shower. His stomach growled, demanding he would see to it first. He hesitated for a moment. Should he make Jess breakfast? Yes, probably. She was in his apartment after all. But then should he bring it to her in bed or that would be too much? It was still early. Should he ask if she would like to sleep a little longer? It was best to take a quick shower first until he could figure it out. Or should he offer her to use the bathroom first? Would she want to shower there? Should he get her a clean towel?

Dealing with the aftermath of casual sex was something he was not at all familiar with. And Jess was still waiting for his answer.

"No. Uh… take your time. I think I… I'll go make breakfast," he said, but went into the bathroom instead and took a quick shower. It helped him clear his head and he finally decided the best way to handle breakfast.

He put on some pants but didn't bother with a shirt and headed to the kitchen. Starving as any biotic would be in the morning, he made eggs, bacon and pancakes and set the table for two. He went into his room to call Jess, but then he heard her in the shower.

Through the closed door to the bathroom he asked, "Do you need anything?"

"No, thank you. I'm fine," she yelled from inside.

"There are clean towels in the –"

"I already found them," she interrupted him.

All right… He wondered what had he done to make her feel so comfortable in his apartment. All he remembered was thinking of Shepard the whole time while in bed with Jess. Sex with Shepard was always passionate and hungry, if not a little desperate. They always made love as if it were the last time. Joker was right – he really was a jackass. How could he make up to Jess for sleeping with her while thinking of another woman?

He couldn't talk about that shit with Greg. Derek, then. As soon as Jess left his apartment he would call his friend.

Feeling a little better, now that he had some kind of plan, he made himself a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs and sat in front of his terminal to check out his messages while waiting for the doctor to come out of the shower.

There was a message from right about the time he had gotten that vid-call request in the middle of the night. No ID. Subject: Re: About Horizon. He opened it. There was nothing written, but there was a vid attached. The second he hit play, his heart was already racing, his mouth going dry, his palms sweating…

"Kaidan, I'm sorry I didn't send you a reply sooner. I guess I just didn't know the best way to tell you this…"

Shepard cleared her throat, shifted on her chair and squared her shoulders, as if she was trying to make herself more presentable to him. "I really died," she started. "The Shadow Broker was going to sell my body to the Collectors, but thankfully Liara retrieved it… me… before that happened. She gave my body to Cerberus, because they told her they could bring me back. They wanted me to do what no one else was doing – fight the Collectors and the Reapers."

Just by the way she paused and swallowed he could tell she was not very confident about what she was going to say next. "You don't need to take my word for it. I'm sending you right now the Lazarus Project files. That's the ironically poetic name Cerberus gave to the disturbingly unnatural thing they did to me. I wish you would take my word for it, though. The images in those files are very… upsetting, to say the least, and I don't think you should see them. I don't want you to suffer any more than you did already. But, I realized I can't live or die in peace knowing that you think I betrayed you, that I left you, that I might have forgotten that night before Ilos…" she broke eye contact, blinking away the threat of tears in her dark eyes. "Ilos…" a sad small smile passed quickly through her lips. "I just couldn't go where I'm going right now without setting the record straight with you."

She looked at the camera again and she seemed… hurt? Heartbroken? He had never seen that look on her face before. "Back on Horizon you said you loved me. Past tense," she sighed sadly. "You had time, Kaidan. I didn't. I still love you. For me it's been little over two months since we were last together. When I woke up and learned that two years had gone by… Damn! All I could think about was you! I wanted to find you, but Anderson wouldn't tell me where you were, The Illusive Man wouldn't tell me…" she looked down and took a deep breath before continuing. "I had to start from scratch. I had no money, I had to re-learn how to use my upgraded biotics, I had to build a new team…" she leaned back on her chair and cracked her neck – a nervous habit of hers he was very familiar with. She did that when she was distressed and under a lot of pressure, which was almost every day.

"I'm sending you dossiers on everyone in my team, by the way. I want you to know them. These are people I trust. They are thieves, mercenaries, assassins… geth…" She gave him a crooked roguish smile and added, "…yeah, I have an active geth on my ship. And an unshackled AI running things. Don't ask, just… read the dossiers, okay? These… people? Well, whatever they are, they are not only my crew, they are my friends. They are loyal to me and they are all heroes. I don't want them to be forgotten. They are following me into hell itself and deserve credit for their bravery and sacrifice. I say this because…" she ran a hand through her short, cropped hair, "…we'll be going through the Omega 4 relay any minute now," she said with a carefully blank expression.

Kaidan's breath hitched, his heart sunk and his gut turned into knots. He stood up abruptly, almost tipping over his chair. With clenched fists he began pacing in front of his terminal. That dreadful feeling of helplessness was taking over him again.

Her message continued playing. "Cerberus rebuilt the Normandy and my team worked their asses off to fully upgrade her. If not for your absence, I'd say she's better than the original. Also, I have Joker, Garrus and Tali with me. We are ready to face whatever it is out there. Still, we all know no ship has ever come back from the Omega 4 relay. It doesn't matter now, because we have to do this. We have to hit the Collectors where they live and do whatever it takes to destroy their base."

She detached her back from the chair, approaching the cam again. "Maybe it's a good thing you were so angry with me when we met on Horizon. It's not fair that I put you through all this again. I'm so sorry. I hope it will be easier for you this time. I don't know what I was thinking when I asked you to join me. I guess I let my feelings for you cloud my better judgment. But thank God you refused. This is a suicide mission, Kaidan, and I want you to live. I want you to find someone, whatever it's this doctor you're seeing or somebody else. I really want you to be happy. I need you to live, to have a wife and kids and a dog and all that shit we even talked and dreamed about a few times but deep down we knew it would never happen for us. You can still have it, though. I want you to be truly happy. I need you to be. I need you to do this for me. For us. For all we lost and sacrificed."

"ETA 5 minutes. Commander, I need you on the bridge," Joker's voice resonated on the background.

"Fuck, Alenko! You should've picked up this call, dammit! I could use looking into your eyes one last time." She shook her head, looking at her terminal camera in mocking disapproval, but her eyes betrayed her. He could see in them she was sad, hurt even. "I have your damn picture on my desk. It's a shitty one, but it will have to do. Better than nothing, right? I guess this is goodbye then. Take care, Kaidan. I…"

"Commander?" Joker's voice rang in the background again.

Shepard inhaled sharply and then breathed out, "…love you." She closed her eyes and lowered her head for a second. Looking back up, she uttered, "Shepard out."

As she said those two last words, her 'Commander Fucking Shepard' mask was already on and the message ended.

Kaidan let out a pained, frustrated growl. His biotics were flaring and he felt the sting of tears in the back of his eyes. Shepard had died on him once. He knew how it felt, how much it hurt and he knew he couldn't possibly live through that again. Active geth… AI… Omega 4 relay… goodbye… I love you… his head was spinning with the weight of her words, the madness of them.

Suddenly, a scream caused him to look over his shoulder. Jess had just come into the room to find all the furniture floating and then smashing against the walls and the floor.

The marine fell on his knees. He hadn't even noticed he was wreaking havoc around him. He had lost control like that only once before and he had killed a man – a male turian, as a matter of fact. It took him years to get over it and it had been only under Shepard's bold and daring leadership that he had regained the confidence to really unleash his powers on the battlefield.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Wright." You've just slept with her, asshole. "Jess," he corrected himself. "You have to leave. It's not safe here," he said, his voice raspy.

She recovered quickly from the sight of the trashed room. Straightening herself, she took a determined step towards him. "I know you're a biotic, Kaidan. You even flared once last night. It felt… very nice," she said softly, with a hint of mischief in her eyes. "And there's a lot of information on the extranet about the saviors of Citadel… L2, right? I'm not afraid. I… I'm sorry I screamed. I just wasn't expecting… anyway, can I help? I'm a doctor, you know," she offered kindly.

Great. Now she was probably thinking he was one of those crazed L2s. Well, he wasn't at first, but maybe he was becoming one now. "I… no, Jess," he replied, without meeting her eyes. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall and his head hanging between slumped shoulders.

She sat by his side. Dark energy sparkled around him again. It didn't intimidate her this time and she reached to hold his hand. "Tell me what happened," she asked.

He moved his hand away from hers. "I can't do this. I'm not ready. I'm sorry." He wasn't a jerk, but he was about to become one. All he wanted was for her to leave so he could finish destroying everything around him and grieve undisturbed.

"Oh my god, you didn't do this just because you don't want me here, did you?" she waved her arms around and hastily got up on her feet.

"No. No! Of course not. I just… I've received some bad news," he said lamely. There could not have been a worst time for him to decide to finally sleep with someone. This woman did not deserve this. And most of all he was not the kind of man who would sleep with someone and then throw her out. Or maybe he was, apparently.

She didn't look very reassured, but he just couldn't deal with this sort of drama right now. It seemed awfully petty in face of what he had just learned from Shepard's message and how her news was making him feel. "Please, Jess, I need to be alone. I'm sorry," he insisted.

Whether she understood or was just furious and never wanted to see him again, he couldn't tell, but at least she left.

Ten minutes later, Greg was contacting him through his comm. "Commander, are you there? What happened? Jess just called, told me to check up on you."

"It's… Shepard. She sent me a message," he found himself saying.

"Shit. Don't let this get to you, Alenko. You need to move on. Jess is a keeper. Shit! Shit! Shit! Jenna will be so pissed, she's gonna eat my liver. You can't sleep with my sister-in-law and then toss her aside. I never thought you would… Damn! That is not cool, man. Commander. Shit!"

His friend's nervous rambling didn't even register. "She went through the Omega 4 relay," Kaidan said in a low, shaky voice.

There was a pregnant pause. Greg seemed to be at a loss for words. "Six hours ago," the sentinel added, his voice no more than a whisper. It seemed more like he was talking to himself.

"I'm sorry, Commander. I'm coming over," Greg said.

"No. You stay there, Lieutenant. I want to be alone."

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think you should."

God, how he hated that expression! It never failed to make him remember Ashley and how right she had been when she had said what it really meant. He had never used it again after that.

"Do not come here, Lieutenant Scott. That's an order," Kaidan barked at his friend and XO, before closing his channel.

What was he supposed to do now? How would he get news on her? Was there even any news to be had? The Council and the Alliance wouldn't know what she was doing; she didn't trust them anymore. They probably knew less than he did.

Taken by frustration and regret, he paced and cried and smashed things for what it felt like forever, but it might have been just a few minutes, until he was feeling completely drained.

This was his last day of leave. How was he supposed to get back on duty tomorrow?

He dragged himself back to his bed. The floral scent of Jess' fancy perfume was all over the place. His sheets and pillows smelled like her and that triggered a nasty migraine, or at least he blamed it on that. He would have properly changed his bed if the throbbing pain in his head weren't making every little task a thousand times more difficult, if not impossible. He just yanked the sheets and covers off impatiently, turned off all the lights and threw himself face down on his mattress.