A/N: I will be working Mondays through Fridays, in the mornings, 20 hours a week. I will also be attending college for 12 hours a week. That being said, I will be busy but will not fall too terribly behind on my updates.

I'm sorry for my extended absence. I was participating in National Novel Writing Month; I did finish! I'll have the entirety of it posted up on my fiction press account at some point, it anyone is interested in reading my first full length original piece of fiction. I have also been busy with work and school and kids. The woes of adulthood, right?

I will be updating my ongoing pieces, please do not worry and again, I apologize for the month and a half that it has taken for me to return to writing. I love all of you so much for your continued support and for the comments and reviews that always brighten my day.

You all seriously rock, you have no idea. At 13 chapters, we passed 100 reviews, 100 follows, and 50 favorites; it boggles my mind! Thank you so much for your support of this fic!

Disclaimer: Bioware owns Mass Effect, even though I love writing about it.

A Path Rewritten

Chapter Thirteen

Kaidan tried not to pace his new quarters. Shepard had been dropped off on the planet Pragia with Garrus and Jack, two of her new squad that were not his biggest fans. Jack often was caught staring at him with a gleam in her eye that made his soul shudder; a mix of primal lust and equally primal hatred. Safe to say, he didn't want to be caught in a room alone with her. Perhaps it was a good thing that Shepard had opted to leave him behind on this one. The last thing he wanted to do was slip up and put his name on Jack's list.

He could admire one thing about Jack though; her vehement hatred of Cerberus. She hated the existence of Cerberus as much as he, if not more so. From what he understood however, her hatred was way more than justified; they had experimented on her, tormented her, held her prisoner throughout her entire childhood. It was a wonder she wasn't worse off in the personality department than she already was.

Jack's influence over Shepard could be alarming. While he wanted Shepard to stay as disconnected with Cerberus as she could, he didn't want her to end up like that, let hatred change her into someone she wasn't. He had almost let that happen to him and he still was, slightly. He had not entirely let go, as Garrus' little mission of revenge had shown.

That wasn't the issue at the moment. It was what Jack had asked Shepard to do for her. Not that he knew what that was, as Shepard had chosen to keep him in the dark since she didn't take him ground side. He had wanted to go but, again, he was glad he hadn't; in reality, he was torn between wanting to stay on the ship and wanting to be by her side.

Things were complicated between them, no doubt due to his careless words. There was chasm between them that had been formed the moment he'd seen the vids and heard the rumor that she was alive and working for Cerberus. At first he had thought there was no way that she was alive. The first thing she would have done was contact him, if he'd gauged their relationship correctly. He had meant a lot to her, just as she had meant the world to him. When he'd really and truly seen her on Horizon, there was no doubt in his mind that this woman was really Shepard; on the heels of that realization had come the hurt, hurt that had come from the knowledge that she hadn't bothered to contact him. His anger and his hurt had led him to say some very...unwarranted things.

He had never doubted Shepard. Hell, he had helped her steal the Normandy SR-1 to go to Ilos and had, with no regret, broken fraternization regulations to be with her. He knew she only did things for the right reasons and yet he had immediately turned on her on Horizon, hadn't he?

He groaned and smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. He had really made a mess of things, hadn't he? He didn't know where he stood, or where she stood, or where they stood, but he did know one thing – that he still loved her. Being away from her was torture, especially while she – or they – were in the employ of Cerberus. Who knew what the Illusive Man intended for Shepard.

That was one of the reasons he had allowed himself to stay here, or rather to come back here when he could have very well just walked away and not looked back. Well, he would have looked back, but he could still have walked away. Leaving Shepard to the Illusive Man's whims, however, wasn't something he found he couldn't do.

He fired up his omni-tool, checked the time, then sighed and shut it off when he realized only half an hour had passed. That wasn't a good sign; at this rate it would feel like days until Shepard returned to the Normandy.

He plopped down into the chair and sighed more loudly. He rubbed his fingers against his temples, feeling the beginning of a migraine coming on. They seemed to have become a daily – if not more so – occurrence since he'd returned to the Normandy.

Probably from thinking too much. Ah well. Where Shepard was concerned, he had a lot of thinking to do.

Things on Pragia weren't going the way Shepard had hoped. Yes, Jack had been upfront about her intentions to blow the deserted base of operations, that she had been raised in, to hell and back, but Shepard had hoped she could talk the biotic out of it. So far – no luck. She had barely stopped the woman from murdering one of the children – now grown like her – that had been raised there as well, and who had been planning to re-open the facility.

"Ready to blow this place to hell, Shepard?" Jack sneered the question.

"You really want to do that, Jack?" Shepard knew the answer, despite having asked it again for what had to be the twentieth time.

"You really should stop trying to talk her out of it," Garrus grumbled in his dual tone as he readjusted the scope on his sniper rifle. "If she wants to blow it to hell, I say let her."

Shepard sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose; she knew exactly why he was saying what he was. He still hadn't gotten over what had happened with Sidonis, that it was her – and Kaidan's – fault that the turian had walked away from Garrus' well aimed kill shot.

"Ah Garrus, I knew you'd come around." Jack grinned.

The turian flared his mandibles in a chuckle and shook his head. "Think what you want, tats."

"Tats?" Shepard's brow nearly hit her hairline.

"Nickname someone on the ship gave me," Jack shrugged, obviously not offended. "Fuck, it suits me well enough. I won't complain." She clucked her tongue and shrugged a shoulder. "Much."

"Right." Shepard turned her gaze back to Aresh. "What do you plan to do with him?"

"The fuck do I care?" Jack snapped. "You are the one who told me not to fucking shoot him. Guess he'll die in the blast."

"You just want to leave him here?"

"Again – the fuck do I care?"

Shepard sighed and nodded. "Fine, let's get out of here then."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Garrus sighed. "Sick of this place."

Shepard was too. Jack was a handful to deal with, but what she had went through, well, perhaps it was better that this place be blown to hell. They left Aresh in the cell, though he refused to come with them anyway. Once they were in the shuttle, Jack sat and started fiddling with the trigger to the bomb. Shepard merely watched and wondered if she would actually push the button as the shuttle began to lift off. This went on for a few minutes, until finally Jack looked up toward Shepard.

They stared at each other for a long moment and even though she had intentionally wanted to talk Jack out of this, she found herself nodding her acquiescence. Jack nodded back as Shepard hit the bulkhead to alert the pilot to the impending explosion.

A moment later and the Pragia facility was no more.

Shepard didn't have a moment to rest after they boarded the Normandy. Almost immediately on route to her quarters, Joker alerted her over the comm that Jack and Miranda were currently in an altercation in the XO's office. Great, just what she needed. She swiftly turned and readjusted her course, taking the lift to the crew floor. And of course, Kaidan had to be waiting for her there, didn't he? Nothing could ever be simple, could it?

"Hey," he greeted uncertainly.

"Now's not a good time, Kaidan." Shepard snapped, a little more forcefully than she intended. She heard the distinct sound of a piece of furniture hitting the hull of her ship.

"Yeah, sounds like something is, ah, going on."

"Right, 'bout to take care of it. One sec." She walked herself to Miranda's office. A few moments later, Jack stormed out, obviously miffed, but at least not raging mad as she had been originally. Apparently the whole altercation had come about when Jack had demanded Miranda to admit that what Cerberus had done to her was wrong. Of course Miranda had refused, but somehow, Shepard had managed to talk them both down, although thanks to Kaidan's momentary stall, she had almost missed that chance. She could have sworn the two were a mere second away from unleashing their biotics on each other – something not good when aboard a ship in space. They would likely tear a hole in the ship and then where would they be.

Kaidan was still waiting for Shepard when she left Miranda's office. He was half sitting on the mess table, his arms folded across his built chest. She could remember laying against that chest as if it were last week and again, she was reminded that it had been years, not weeks. She wondered if this bizarre lapse in her memories and current time would ease, yet she doubted that it would while things were still so...unsettled.

"All better?" He had the audacity to appear amused.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "For now," she conceded as she folded her arms across her chest. "Thanks to you stopping me though, we were seconds away from experiencing a hull breach."

"Did you take pictures?" Joker asked over the comm. Shepard found the nearest camera and glared openly at it. "Ah, sorry Commander. I'll just uh, go back to flying the ship."

"You do that," she grumbled as Kaidan chuckled.

"That bad?"

She nodded once. "It's always been like that. Can't blame her though, not after what we saw on Pragia."

Kaidan frowned and mulled silently for a few minutes. Then he lifted his eyes back to her face and sighed. "So what was it that she wanted you to do?"

Shepard had no doubt that that question had been burned into his brain in the time that they were gone. For a moment, she wondered if she should tell him. "Plant a bomb," she said with a slight shrug.

"A bomb?"

"A bomb," she repeated. "She wanted to blow the facility to hell. It was the place where Cerberus raised her, experimented on her. At first, I wasn't going to let her but after all that we found out...well, I wasn't about to let Cerberus – or anyone else – use it for that again."

"Shepard..."

"Kaidan, don't. You didn't see what we saw."

"Because you left me here," he grumbled.

"Only because you made a mess of things when Garrus asked for my help!" She snapped back defensively.

He sighed, rubbed his hand over his face. "Look, this wasn't why I came to find you. I wanted to talk."

"We're talking now."

"No, we're arguing...something we seem to be doing a lot lately."

They lapsed into silence after that. Neither of them knew what to say because what he said was true. They had been fighting almost every time they talked since he had come back aboard the Normandy. She looked at him sadly; her death really had changed things. She wondered now if there was a way to go back.

If there was, it was not going to be an easy path, that was for sure.

With a sigh, she forced herself to walk away and keep walking, even as he called out her name. She had to steel herself from going back. Once in her cabin, she sat at her private terminal and began to filter through her messages. One in particular caught her eye.

From: Cerberus Intel

Commander Shepard,

Contacting you per Illusive Man's instructions. He believed you would want to know that he had ordered Subject Zero's project shut down before the riot broke out. Cerberus personnel arrived to find all guards dead, along with most of the subjects. Any surviving children were treated for injuries, given mild amnesic treatments, and delivered to Alliance facilities as survivors of slaver attacks. A few surviving doctors were forcibly retired for their role in the project.

Per your report, the facility on Pragia has been destroyed.

She weighed the message's contents carefully. She found herself doubting them. The Illusive Man would say and do anything to get Shepard on his side, she wasn't naive enough to think otherwise. With a grim frown, she deleted the message and closed the terminal. Forcibly retired? Hell, why didn't they just say shot? She held no doubt that Cerberus personnel was expendable, given how her awakening had gone – Miranda herself had said it before.

Shepard was the key, what the Illusive Man wanted, who he knew could save them from the Collectors and the Reapers.

No pressure, right?