Ch 13: Been So Blue Without Blue

James closed his eyes, feeling the adrenaline rush surge through his body, electrifying the fibers of his monstrous muscles like the lightening strike that brought life to Frankenstein's creature. The mibbles were almost upon the squad, and the soldier instinctively switched to his shotgun for close combat. His heart beat faster, faster, racing ahead, goading him to try to catch it, but he never would until the fight was finished.

James opened his eyes to find himself staring into those of his enemy. Grinning, he squeezed the trigger. The mibble was blasted apart before its first hiss, spraying James with mibble guts, to which bits of the thing's blood-stained fur still clung. Lola was shouting orders, but they barely registered; adrenaline saturated his system, burying everything except his desire to destroy, his craving for carnage.

"YYYYEEAAARRGGHH!" His war cry was the last thing the next few mibbles would hear. The last thing they would see was a beast barrelling straight towards them, eyes alive with some re-awoken primal instinct.

Pieces of mibble flew everywhere, slapping against his face. He pushed back, colliding hard against three more; they exploded on impact. Feeling hot mibble breath on his neck, he pelted the sky with fire. From above, five balloons popped; their skins splattered to the ground.

The chattering of sharp teeth registered like claps of thunder in his hyper-alert mind. He spun around just in time to spot a large brown mibble approaching Lola from behind, butt flap swirling in preparation for its final push. The Commander was enthusiastically slicing through mibble after mibble with his omniblade – but he would never see the other in time. "Time to take you down a size!" he shouted, cutting one in half. James aimed –

– and before he could do anything else, the mibble exploded, painting Lola's back red. Huh. Didn' even have t' pull the trigger tha' time. James frowned – an action using about eleven hardened facial muscles. Huh… I don' think tha' makes sense. He looked around, but Pooh Bear was preoccupied with another group of mibbles. James shrugged, looking up at the clouds. Guess Lola's got some badass guardian angel –

Tiny fangs pieced into the side of his neck. "Grrarr!" James shouted. He clenched the attacking mibble and pulled, thick arms making short work of the creature – but its teeth were still embedded, along with most of the rest of its mouth. Grimacing, James ground his jaws against the sting – but another adrenaline boost erased all thoughts of pain. The mibble had added fuel to his raging fire.

"Breathing kinda heavy there, aren't you, Vega?" Lola's voice transmitted through the squad's helmet comm system.

"Adrenaline … rush," James gasped between breaths.

"Well, ease up a bit. You're turning Garrus on."

"What the hell, Shepard."

In his peripheral vision, James saw that Pooh Bear had taken up a position within a half-hidden crevice in a nearby rocky hill, affording the turian both protection and a good position to shoot from afar – but why someone would ever bother with those, James couldn't say.

One, two, three, four, f… four and another … More mibbles than James could count dropped dead around him at the end of his shotgun, creating a ring of corpses. They kept coming, eager to die. His chest pounded, head light, almost delirious from the rushing influx of oxygen through his gaping mouth and flaring nostrils.

James kicked the next mibble that stupidly came too close, smashing it between the eyes with the deep treads of his boot before finishing it off with one blast of shotgun pellets. Spotting a group of four just past a large rock, he vaulted over the obstruction; one hand still flat against the boulder's surface, he fired a shot; the kickback jerked his right arm hard, but his aim was true, and four mibble explosions sent ripples in the air.

Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum. Blood thundering in his ears, head throbbing with the beat of life pushed to its limit. Gun scorching his palms, hot from overuse, the warm spray of blood, his overactive body. Burning of sweat in his eyes, but no burning of muscles so used to exertion. There was no pain. There was only being alive, or not being at all.

A black mibble disappeared over a ridge. Legs pumping, James gave chase …

"AW, FUCK!" the com-system exploded. Lola!

Leaping forward, he cleared the ridge, just as Pooh Bear's voice echoed in his helmet: "What's going on down there? Mibbles closing in on your position!"

But James, finally, had stopped, frozen. His breathing and heart rate slowed as his core cooled; he felt like he'd just been dunked in subzero water. The adrenaline was draining fast out of his system, slamming the brakes on his speeding body and mind. He blinked twice before he could process the forms before him, and again before he could believe it.

Lola knelt over the corpse of a mibble, black with a white blaze. His rifle lay forgotten at his side. Instead, he held his lowered head.

No matter how tightly his fingers squeezed his skull, the searing pain just wouldn't let up. It had come on suddenly, as it always did, and so intensely that Kaiden couldn't even string the necessary words together to damn his L2 implants. He cringed into a fetal position – not that he had much choice, stuffed as he was in the trunk of the Kodiak. His eyes rolled as another torturous wave passed over him, shredding his mind apart.

Shepard … Shepard …

Something different coloured this particular migraine, something beyond the routine physical suffering. An empty throbbing in the deepest pit of his gut: regret, loss, guilt. Emotional pain … but not his own.

Shepard!

When his headache inevitably subsided, the heartache remained. Kaiden didn't mind. After all, he valued his special connection with Shepard more than all else, more than any person, place, or thing orbiting the three hundred billion stars within this hundred-kilolight-year-wide galaxy. But with the reprieve from his migraine came clearheadedness; with clearheadedness came focus; and, with the right amount of focus, Kaiden could move the world.

Hold on, Commander. I'm coming.

Mentally preparing to execute his will, he scrunched up his eyes – out of habit mainly; in the pitch black of the enclosed trunk, there were no visual distractions. And with his clenched fists and a pulsating vein on his left temple, Kaiden reflected, he would have been the perfect subject for the Commander's genial teasings, likely one of his various constipation jokes. The Lieutenant smiled, softening his tense face. His Commander may have been out of sight, but he was never out of mind. That witty jibe he would have made lent Kaiden the final strength he needed.

A blue blast of pure energy slammed through the drowned shuttle, lifting its creator in its wake. Kaiden rode the biotic cushion through ninety metres of water in less than two seconds, before breaking its surface with the force and velocity of a torpedo. As the vast landscape below shrunk, details melding into patches of colour, his heart raced dangerously. He had forgotten a crucial lesson from his BAaT training: Summoning a biotic field was just as difficult as controlling one.

Finally, his concentration pushed to the limit, he slowed the orb of azure biotic fire to a stop. Floating inside, he scanned the land below for … there!

He reached the Commander just in time, arriving in a flash of blue light. "Shepard, no!" With a twist of a wrist, Kaiden biotically pulled the pistol Shepard had been raising to his own head out of his hand. It clattered down the stony hill. Rushing forward, Kaiden knelt next to his dear friend, who seemed unresponsive. "Sir?" he asked, placing a hand gently on his shoulder.

Shepard's eyes snapped up, locking onto Kaiden like two red missiles. The expression on his face made the lieutenant's stomach drop. "Kaiden, you fucking idiot! Why the hell'd you put Liara's mibble in the shuttle?!"

Kaiden hadn't even noticed the dead mibble, nor Garrus or James, for that matter; his concern had been solely for the Commander. Now his eyes flitted to the nearby corpse – the sad punchline of what is black, white, and red all over. "I … I'm so, so sorry, Commander," he said, tears springing to his eyes. Oh, God. What have I done? Shepard looked like he was going to hit him – yes, Kaiden had seen that look before, but never directed toward himself. And he would deserve it. But he refused to put a safety zone of space between them. His Commander needed him right now.

When Shepard didn't say anything, he continued, quiet so only the Commander could hear. "Look, if you want to kill me because of the mibble –" Kaiden swallowed " – I would die smiling, sir, knowing it was you who pulled the trigger. But –"

"This is pathetic." Garrus had stepped into view on the other side of Shepard. "What could a woman do to put you in this state?"

Shepard's chiseled chin quivered. "A bullet in the head solves everything…"

"Don't say that, Shepard!" Kaiden pleaded.

"Wai' … Where'd Ligh'ning come from?"

It took them a few moments to figure out what James was talking about. Garrus put the pieces together first, and frowned at what they made. "So he gets to be 'Lightning,' but I can't be 'Archangel'?" He sighed at the unfairness of life. "But, if I can believe my ears, Vega actually has a point. How did you get here, Lieutenant?"

Without taking his eyes off the Commander, Kaiden quickly explained how he'd locked himself in the trunk of the Kodiak after loading the mibbles on board. He knew it was so wrong, so stupid, to go against Shepard's orders, and he was ever so sorry, but he also knew the Commander would shortly need his help. How had he known...? He couldn't put it into words. He had just known. And although he had blacked out when they'd hit the water, a migraine, triggered by Shepard's distress, had wrenched him back into consciousness—

"I'm not 'distressed,' stupid!" Shepard snarled. He leaped to his feet, out of Kaiden's reach; Kaiden, who would follow his Commander to the ends of the galaxy, jumped up too. "You think I'm PMSing or something? Wanna stick me on the damn funny farm?!" Shepard pointed at them all accusingly. "You think I'm crazy, is that it?!"

Kaiden gasped at the mere suggestion. "Never, Shepard!"

"Yes," Garrus said seriously.

James shrugged, noisily unwrapping a protein bar. "Wha's 'crazy,' y'know?"

"Do you want the legal, clinical, or practical definition, Vega?" the turian snapped. "Crazy is putting your team at risk by breaking down in the middle of battle!"

"Go to hell!"

"And for what?" Despite Shepard's rhetorical order, Garrus continued, mandibles quivering in agitation. "You want to kill yourself? Fine! Do it for letting your squad down, or failing to stop the Reapers, or hell, to save the rest of us from further embarrassment. But this? Ridiculous."

Kaiden had nothing against turians in general, and had never purposefully broken one's neck. But no one hurt his friends. Especially not the best of them all. Biotic sparks tingled between his fingers …

But Shepard unexpectantly spun on his heels to stumble down the hill. No smart comeback, no parting comment? Kaiden exchanged a worried look with Garrus. "Let me talk to him."

"Fine," Garrus huffed, looking away. "I could use five anyway." He took a few steps, then slumped against a nearby boulder, eagerly absorbing himself with his omnitool.

Together, in silence, Kaiden and the Commander descended towards the lake. Bending at the knees, Shepard stared down at his own reflection in the still, dark water, with Kaiden waiting patiently behind him. "What the fuck is this?" Shepard asked, horrified.

"I … think it's love, sir."

Kaiden had never seen the Commander so scared in his life – now that he thought about it, he had never seen him scared at all.

"Aw, hell," Shepard said, running a hand over his handsomely broad face. "Go get me Chakwas. Or even that egghead egg-layer."

"It's not a sickness, it's …" How could he explain love to the Commander Shepard, who so callously killed his foes? Who could only bring about the salvation of the galaxy through valiant mass slaughter? Who dreamed of destruction, and whose nightmares must contain even worse imaginings? Whose destiny had hardened him to death, as well as love and life?

Kaiden shook his head sympathetically. "It's hard to explain. But it either makes you a superman or a wreck."

The beeping tore her from her dreams. What she'd been dreaming about, she couldn't recall; Liara was left with that uneasy feeling of having just left one universe, one she remembered nothing about, but one that had existed, if only for a few minutes in her head – and, now that she was awake, would exist no more.

Her groggy mind knew there was something important about that repeating sound... and even once she realized what that was, her groggy body did its best to slow her response. She pushed herself out of bed, the soft mattress giving in to her palms with a slight squeaky protest. Sensing movement, the automatic lights lit her quarters in a soft, white glow. The air was chilly, as she always kept it for sleep, and her thin nighttime gown offered little protection. Liara gratefully slipped her toes into her slippers

Still sleepy, she stumbled over to the familiar computer set-up, hand reaching out to answer the call. As expected, a flickering light accompanied the beeping – but its colour was green, not red. Her personal line. Odd; it hardly ever rang. Liara was not blind to the fact that ninety percent of her interactions were done under an infamous alias. The Broker had many agents, but Liara did not. Well, except one … sort of.

Her heart began to pound. There was only one reason she was called in the middle of the night, via this long-distance line, rather than the ship-wide system. It used voice communication only, a precaution she had made sure to take, so there was no need to cover herself up – or time. Mind racing at the millions of things that could be wrong, she wasted no seconds answering. "Yes?" Despite the many questions fighting to escape her control, just itching to be asked, that simple word was always the first she said. She hated the way it quivered, as if she still cared, as if she were worrying.

"No need to worry," the voice at the other end consoled her. "The target is alive."

Liara frowned, creasing between her eyebrow lines. "It is nearly morning. Should he not have returned by now?" A muffled, crashing sound – waves, she figured, given the oceanic climate of the planet – but no response. "Well?" she asked again, surprised by the snappiness in her voice. Did he, the one she had trusted to deliver the truth, think she couldn't handle it? Perhaps, for an asari, she was little more than a child, but she'd had a century of truth. Or, so at least she had thought, before joining the Normandy.

"I meant no offense," the voice replied, as if reading her mind … again. The idea disturbed her; one's mind should be a sanctum. Which is why we do not meld minds with just anyone, she reminded herself, only a little bitterly this time. "There was a crash, armed conflict, and … but everyone is safe. Alenko believes he can lift the shuttle out, and Vakarian is convinced he can fix the … extensive damage … with a few calibrations."

Her shoulders relaxed, but there were two more questions, as she always asked. And the answers were always the same. "Did you have to intervene?"

"Yes."

"And he did not see you?"

"Of course not."

Liara wondered if she could detect a note of pride in his tone. At the beginning of their unofficial contract, she had insisted they both use the same distortion software she employed as the Shadow Broker to disguise and deepen their voices. It also had the unnerving consequence of removing all emotion from one's voice. As she grew convinced that no one would catch on to her plan, she had eventually deleted the program from her personal communications, with little effect from his end in pitch or expressiveness.

She had been rather paranoid in her precautions, but no one could know what she was doing. Especially not "the target" – she did not appreciate his choice of words, but that was what she got for asking an assassin, of all people, to keep Shepard safe. There was a sort of ironic beauty in it.

"... Do you see him right now?"

"Yes." He didn't elaborate, and she didn't ask him to. She wasn't a stalker, after all; it was none of her business what Shepard was doing, so long as he didn't get himself killed doing it.

"Alright. Please keep me informed if the situation changes." The way she spoke, the assertiveness, she was again playing Shadow Broker for a strictly Liara problem. "But I believe this should be the last mission. Now that I no longer have a stake in the … it just seems improper, is all."

"That's unfortunate. I have very much enjoyed these outings. Although this particular planet is rather …unpleasant."

"Thank you, Thane."