He'd have to break onto the Normandy SR-2. What a headache that was going to be.
Operative Miranda Lawson clearly did not want him within ten meters of her precious Cerberus-issued vessel - a fact he could hardly begrudge her since he would have done the same were it the SR-1 and their positions reversed... though in her defense, he probably would have shot her on sight if she'd shown up with that Cerberus logo and he appreciated her not taking that particular approach with him - and she likely had any number of standing orders to ensure that he was not allowed to be so.
For all the pleasant interactions he'd had with the Normandy SR-2's VI, the surprisingly pleasantly-voiced "EDI" he'd kept hearing about, VIs - even ones with gambling problems - didn't just decide to creatively interpret their orders simply because they liked someone. An AI might, sure... but that was precisely why no one used AIs. EDI was out.
He could probably sweet-talk Tali into getting him aboard. He'd missed her terribly when she'd returned to the Migrant Fleet; the SR-1 engine room had seemed so empty without her and as much time as he and Garrus had spent together tweaking the Mako, Garrus didn't love real systems engineering the way Tali did. He wouldn't go so far as to say that Tali had been like a little sister to him - if anyone had held that particular position, it would have been Ash - and he highly doubted that, homesick and lonely though she had been, she'd thought of him as a big brother... but they'd admired each other and enjoyed each other and in the business of saving the galaxy, that was priceless. But he hadn't spoken to Tali in years. He knew she was on the team... and she certainly knew he was one of Lawson's 'consultants'... but... He shook his head. Tali was out.
Garrus then? He was busily eliminating that option as soon as it popped up. Vakarian had been there at the beginning, he'd been there on Horizon, he'd been with Shepard when Alenko himself hadn't been and of all the old crew, probably should have been. He doubted Garrus Vakarian, Shepard's friend, would be particularly pleased with Alenko suddenly showing up, no matter how much Alenko begged... and Garrus Vakarian, noble turian, would never indulge the fancies of a man who had left his unit when they needed him the most. Never. Garrus was out.
Jacob Taylor might be an option. He didn't know Alenko from any other jarhead on the Citadel, except that he was patiently - albeit unsuccessfully - training Shepard. But then again, how long had he been working with Miranda Lawson? The Alliance reports were sketchy on timelines but it was likely they had some kind of history; the boys down in Intelligence had done enough network analysis to indicate relatively strong ties between the Lawson and Taylor entitites. If Lawson had left standing orders not to let Alenko aboard the ship, Alenko doubted Taylor would be willing to go against them. Taylor was out.
Jack might. She liked going against the rules and creating havoc. Alenko arriving unexpectedly on the Normandy SR-2 to speak to her commander would certainly allow her to do both. Then again, he was pretty sure he'd seen her name come through on the C-Sec arrest records data feed that Captain Bailey sent him. Again. Jack was out.
The Japanese girl with the tactical cloak might help. Kasumi. Speaking of whom... He glanced over his shoulder as he walked, looking for the telltale shimmer of a cloak either powering up or down, then returned his attention forward, berating himself for paranoia. Lawson was contagious. Of all of them, though... Kasumi might actually not only be willing to help him but might actually wantto help him. Especially if he told her why he needed to see Shepard.
Of course, that presupposed that Alenko himself knew why. He wasn't quite clear on that point yet. He just knew he had to talk to her. He could worry about the details of the conversation after he figured out how in the hell he was going to get to her.
He ran through the SR-1's schematics in his head as he strode briskly through the Citadel, reversing the path that he and Lawson had taken earlier. He didn't have access to all of the SR-2's specs but given the design genealogy, there was a good chance that most of the more fundamental secondary design choices remained the same. The lithium heat sinks, for example. If the SR-2 was using a similar IES to the SR-1 - and there hadn't been enough time for an entire generational jump in the tech, so it probably was - then the hull would be outfitted with a similar heat sink matrix and venting capabilities... Yes. Yes. That would be it: the primary external vent to the maintenance shafts underlying the primary heat sinks in the outer hull. That would be the way in. He'd spent enough time rooting around in the SR-1's that he could probably find his way around in the SR-2's even without the specs.
Of course, there was the slight chance that for some reason, Shepard or Lawson had recently had the ship under silent running and as soon as he set foot into the heat sink matrix, he'd be roasted alive... but even if the IES had been active just moments before docking at the Citadel, there had been plenty of time for the heat to release and... Yes, it would be fine. There would be no reason for them to test the IES while docked at the Citadel... in fact, they had every reason notto in case those looking at the ship didn't immediately recognize her as a second generation Normandy. Yes. It would be fine.
He flew up the flights of stairs to his apartment, taking two steps at a time.
He'd just need a hard suit with some ablative mods for heat resistance... magnetic boots, naturallu... of course a stealth microweave underlay that would redistribute his body heat to the hard suit's power infrastructure since the one thing any shipboard VI worth its salt would be monitoring its heat sink matrix for would be extraneous heat signatures... an upgrade to his omni-tool processor just in case he got caught - he could take on a VI but if Tali got in the mix, he'd need the extra speed...
He skidded to a stop.
"Hi," said Shepard.
She was leaning against the wall next to his door, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded over her chest. She wasn't wearing armor, her lithe body swathed instead in a form-fitting, black-and-white, high-collared uniform bearing a gold Cerberus logo. Her hair was pulled away from her face; the latter had been washed and scrubbed to a healthy pink, the former... well, he wasn't sure, he never had been. But it was tied back the same way she always did before a mission... he'd seen her do it so many times, just a seemingly careless handful of the locks, an effortless flick of her wrist, a perfunctory snap to tighten the bindings, and then her helmet...
He must have been staring at her for a long time because she finally unfolded herself and pushed herself off the wall, asking, "May I come in?"
He shook his head roughly. "You'd better," he said, unlocking the door and gesturing for her to enter before him. "In that uniform, either you're going to get arrested or I'm going to get court-martialed. Or both."
She looked momentarily surprised... and then something else that was immediately smoothed over... but just nodded silently, entering the tiny apartment without another word. He grimaced. He hadn't meant to say that. Well, he had. But not like that. And not so soon. Or maybe... He scrubbed a hand over his face and followed her.
She walked into the center of his tiny living room and made a quick visual scan. It was something she always did, regardless of her location. A quick scan, her eyes moving quickly but methodically over her surroundings, identifying possible chokepoints and cover points, mapping out escape routes and possible entry points... It had driven him crazy for the roughly forty-eight hours between the first time he'd noticed it and the first time it had saved his life.
"Um." He tried to think if he had any food or drinks in the apartment. He had a few energy drinks, he was sure, since he always kept them around just in case... but unless Lindsay had left something, he didn't think he -
"I don't need anything, thanks," Shepard said. She clasped her hands behind her back.
"Okay," he said.
He looked at her.
She looked at him.
"I'm not working for Cerberus," she said finally.
He snorted. "You're not?" He folded one arm over his middle, balanced the other on it, rolled his lower lip between a thumb and forefinger... then jerked an abrupt nod at her. "That" - and his dark eyes fell down to her chest where the gold Cerberus logo stood out brilliantly against the white and black - "says otherwise."
She looked unimpressed. "I don't work for Cerberus," she repeated. "Not anymore than you do. Maybe less actually. Cerberus doesn't pay me." She waved her hand, expression pained, before he could respond. "Sorry. Unnecessary. Immature." She ran a hand over her face then sighed and let her hand drop back down to her side. "Of my entire team, you'll only find one person who actually works for Cerberus... and I just need more time with her. Everyone else... they all work for me, Kaidan. They might be on Cerberus's payroll... but they work for me."
"I don't believe that," he said.
"You of all people should," she countered without heat. "You were wearing an Alliance uniform when we stole the Normandy. We both were. When you had to make a choice though, Kaidan... you chose me. Not the uniform." She gestured in the general direction of the Citadel's docking bays. "Give them a chance. They'll choose the same. When it's crunch time, they'll choose me. Every single one of them. Even Miranda. Just wait."
Alenko's eyes narrowed slightly and he opened his mouth to reply... but she interrupted him tiredly.
"I'm not Cerberus, Kaidan." She didn't have to tell him that she was thinking of their exchange on Horizon... the passionate, beautiful reunion between lovers that should have been but wasn't. "I don't know what else to tell you other than that they, out of everyone, are giving me what I need to do my job."
Alenko sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Shepard," he said wearily, "I know this may come as a surprise to you... but I don't doubt for a second that Cerberus is doing the right thing right here and right now. As much as it pains me to say it. And it pains me. It does. It fucking hurts. But I know they're giving you resources I know for a fact that the Alliance could and would never give you. They're even giving you resources that even as a Spectre, you'd never be able to get."
He ran a hand through his hair. "But Shepard..." He looked at her, dark eyes pleading. "Shepard, did you bother thinking about tomorrow? Tomorrow. Yesterday, Cerberus killed a hundred turians in cold blood because they wanted their research. A specially engineered hemorrhagic fever. 100% casualty rate. They died in agony, Shepard." He ran his hands over his face, pacing. "Today, well... today, Cerberus is saving humanity with Commander Fucking Shepard, Hero of the Elysium and Savior of the Citadel, at their helm. And I've never doubted you, Shepard. If anyone can do it, it's you."
He dropped his hands from his face and took step toward her, grasping her hands in his. They were warm and alive and painfully familiar. "But what about tomorrow, Shepard? Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Cerberus is going to go back to killing innocent people... and everyone is going to let them because of you. Because of what you helped them do today. Do you want that? Don't you see? Don't you see what's going to happen? They're terrorists, Shepard. They've killed so many... they've done so many horrific things in the name of human superiority. You know they have. You know it. We were together... we saw it all... we fought against it... you knowwhat they're capable of. You out of everyone..." His voice trailed off, helpless.
"I know," she said after a moment. She looked almost as helpless as he felt.. but she deflated before his eyes. She dropped his hands. "I... I know."
There was resignation in her voice that pulled at him. He squeezed his eyes shut. His ears started buzzing with white noise.
They shouldn't fight. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to... he didn't know what he wanted. To pull her to him, fold her into his arms and squeeze, revel in the fact that she was alive and breathing and here. To hold her at arms' reach and look into the eyes he never thought he'd see again. To drop her onto a planet filled with geth just to see her blow that shit up. To tell her... to say... all those things he should have...
He deflated too. "So... you're taking the amp," he said finally.
She half-smiled at him. It was painfully familiar in some ways. She never really smiled. She smirked sometimes... and her lips curved upwards sometimes... and she laughed sometimes... and her eyes, her beautiful eyes, sparkled, usually with devilish mischief, sometimes with humor, more rarely with other emotions... but she never really smiled. He'd cherished that half-smile of hers. The twinge in his chest reminded him that he still did.
But this one looked a little sad to him, a little melancholy, as if she were thinking of something long gone that had once triggered a real version of the smile.
"Yes," she said. "Given the circumstances, I think it's the best option." The half-smile flickered with uncertainty and faded away... then came back up as if she actively willed it to do so, though this time the sadness was obvious, palpable. "You always did know me best."
He'd certainly thought he had... but gazing upon her now - feeling the painful tightness in his chest, the tingling in his hands as he had to resist the urge to reach out to her, the deep ache in his gut that was half euphoric and half agony that she was here, now, alive and beautiful and breathing and in arms reach, as he'd spent years praying to any god he could find to make her - it occurred to him that maybe no one ever really or truly knew Shepard. She played her cards too close to the vest, she always had. Did anyone really know her? He'd thought he had. He'd thought she'd let him in. But maybe she just wasn't capable of it. Maybe she'd seen too many years, too many battles, too many deaths, to be able to simply let her guard down. He'd been so naive.
"Did I?" he asked. There was a tinge of bitterness to the question that he couldn't hide.
Her lips parted as if she were about to say something... then her tongue flicked out, moistened the lower lip, and she stayed silent for a long moment. Her eyes never left his though... nor did his hers. He'd never thought he'd see them again.
"You did," she said. "You out of everyone. You did. I..."
He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her at a loss for words. Shepard was never at a loss for words. Whether she was fighting geth or killing Reapers or haggling with merchants or negotiating with terrorists or telling him in the middle of the devastated Citadel that she loved him... she was never at a loss for words. She didn't always say the right thing - it was only through his own instincts and Udina's polished aplomb that she hadn't started three wars just during Councilor Anderson's investment ceremony alone - but she always had something to say... and politically incorrect though it might be, it was always accurate and direct, sometimes uncomfortably so. Oftentimes uncomfortably so. But she always had something to say.
"I didn't think you'd doubt that," she said after a pause. There was a faint furrow in her brow as she made the confession and there was a hint of both surprise and confusion in her voice, as if someone had just told her with great authority that two and two equaled five and though she trusted the truth they spoke, she couldn't quite put her finger on how her math could be so wrong.
The white noise started to roar in his ears.
"I..." She paused again and the furrow deepened before she consciously smoothed it over. "I wanted you never to doubt that. I tried to..." Another pause.
The roar increased. What? What did she try to do? Convince him that she loved him? She did that. She did that in spades. And what good had it done? None. None at all. It had done nothing but leave a gaping vacuum in his heart, in his life, in his future... all where she should have been.
"I tried to make sure you wouldn't. I wanted you to be sure that I... That if anything ever happened, you would at least know that I..."
Know what? That she loved him? He knew that. She'd told him. She'd told him more than once. She'd shown him. She'd shown him every day. He knew it. He believed it. More than that, he believed that she believed it. And for what? For what? The thundering in his ears crescendo-ed and -
He flared involuntarily, a brilliant, furious blue, hands fisting at his sides and legs taking him toward her. "What good does that do, Shepard?" he exploded, coming to an abrupt stop inches from her. "What good didit do?"
His eyes, chips of biotic blue glowing white hot against the normal immutable dark brown, bored into hers and the saner part of his mind recognized from the sudden flash of her biotics that, despite the completely expressionless look on her face, he'd surprised her. Stunned her, even.
He turned abruptly away, jaw clenched. He forced the flare to subside but he could feel his skin tingling with it and he couldn't seem to unclench his fists. "Great, Shepard," he said. His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears, tight. "You loved me. You told me you did..."
… "I just want you to know that I love you," she said. She was standing on the uneven, broken, crumbling remnants of the Citadel's commerce hubs. Her face was covered in a combination of dirt smudges and swelling contusions with the faint outline of a hastily-wiped-away dribble of blood arcing down from her temple. She was sweating, her forehead glistening with her exertions against the rubble. Her hair was in utter disarray, sweaty and tangled, and if she'd tried to put it up before they'd dropped the Mako on Saren's ass, no vestiges were left of the binding. Her armor was battered and dented. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Ever.
… "I love you." He'd heard the words. He knew he had. She'd come apart in his arms, tightened around him, reckless and heedless and beautiful and perfect, with his name exploding from her lips just as her back had arched desperately and her head had been thrown back... and though that in and of itself had been enough to throw him over the edge, he knew he'd heard the three words. He'd lost control of his biotics, he'd lost control of himself... everything around him had been a brilliant white of release... but he'd heard her murmur those three words.
… "I love you, Kaidan Alenko," she said, voice dangerously quiet, her sparring gear damp with sweat, her cheek already swelling with the blow he'd tried so hard not to land on her, "but if you ever so much as think about pulling another punch against me, I will give your detachment to Shaw and throw you off this boat before Joker can say 'disengaging FTL'."
… "I do love you," she said matter-of-factly, "and that's precisely why Commander Eddings from the Annapurna is going to be administering your N3." She held a hand up and he managed to choke back his protests. "Am I better than him? Yes, of course I am. But don't kid yourself, Kaidan. They know we're sleeping together. We've just given them the luxury of looking the other way because we're important and we're good. That may not last forever. If it ends - when it ends - I'm not going to give them any room to question your achievements." She raised an eyebrow at him. "That and Eddings owes me for saving his ass a few years back. He'll beat the shit out of you properly."
… She grinned down at him and though her face was swimming just a little bit from the blow he'd taken to the head when she'd slammed hard into him and tackled him to the ground, the smile was unmistakable. It was that devilish smile his poor, overworked heart really could do without seeing on any mission ever again... and just a moment after he recognized it, the entire building blew up behind her with a deafening roar in a hail of prefab materials, a shower of random geth body parts and still-warm systems lubricant, a roiling wave of heat, and the promise of lots, and lots, and lots... and lots... of paperwork. She beamed triumphantly. "I love you," she said.
"... and you showed me you did..."
… He was in her bed before he even really knew what was happening. (Migraines were a bitch. They really were a real bitch. He knew a few others - one L2, others just normal humans with migraine problems - who got no warning whatsoever and were blindsided by them every time. He was lucky, though; fifteen minutes before the pain hit, he started seeing visual artifacts... random shapes, dark in the center but oscillating, sparkling rainbows around the edges... clumsily overlaid over what his eyes thought were there. Of course, in this particular case, he'd known ahead of time because he'd taken his emergency stim so he could have just enough energy to help finish off the Cerberus commandos trying their damnedest to kill Shepard; the stims always gave him migraines so it was a pretty easy guess.) He vaguely remembered stumbling back aboard the Normandy, held aloft between Shepard and Williams, wanting nothing more than to curl up on a bed in the medbay, have Chakwas turn out the lights (she always did), and sleep for the sixty, ninety minutes he needed to get over the worst of it; he'd feel like a wrung-out dish rag afterwards, but he'd be okay. Shepard didn't let him do that though. She'd grabbed him under his arm and had tossed him into her bed before he'd been able to figure out what she was doing, let alone to formulate an appropriate protest. The lights went mercifully dark, his armor disappeared, and he remembered falling asleep with a cool hand gently stroking his cheek.
… Ash had the weirdest assortments of things in her locker. A Bible. An e-mag describing in what he thought were rather unhelpful generalities about how to please a man. A vacuum-sealed tin of chocolate chip cookies. Other things he hadn't been able to see before his vision had blurred. He tried to run a hand over his face, maybe drag it through his hair... but a firm, warm hand intercepted it and held it tight. He couldn't see her - even if he raised his eyes to hers, something he would never do until he was certain they were dry, he couldn't have focused on her - but he could feel her eyes on him. "I'll help," her tight-sounding voice said and her fingers threaded between his.
… He couldn't argue with her logic. The fastest way was down... and he and Garrus had, in fact, been upgrading the Mako's suspension so yes, she was right: aside from that moment of weightlessness that always tempted him to toss his cookies, yes, they could probably drive straight over the edge, careen wildly out of control, see their lives flash before their eyes, slam hard into the base of the mountains, and survive. He just - He felt her hand drop to his thigh and he lost his train of thought. It was armored, of course - the thigh and the hand, for that matter - so it wasn't like he could actually feel it... but it didn't seem to matter. "Fine," she said, sighing heavily. "We'll do it your way." She sighed again. "This once. If anyone asks, it was because you looked so pathetic." She shot a half-smile at him. Someone calling him a wimp had never been so amazing.
… He felt like all eyes were on him. He knew they were not. He knew he didn't look like an L2. No one actually looked like an L2. He looked normal. He was just an Alliance marine. He was wearing the uniform and everything. They couldn't know he was an L2. He - She dropped into the seat next to him with a careless thud. "Sorry I'm late," she murmured to him. "Courtroom security didn't like my assault rifle." He stared at her. He had no idea why she was there. She hated legal proceedings; even the threat of legal paperwork gave her hives. She couldn't possibly even really know about the Systems Alliance Parliamentary Subcommittee for Transhuman Studies. She couldn't possibly care about reparations for L2 biotics. How did she even know about the hearings? He'd only mentioned it once and he was pretty sure they'd been under heavy fire at the time and his 'mention' had been nothing more than muttering about how even full reparations wouldn't help with that shit. But she was there. She was there. She half-smiled at him. "All right." She cracked her knuckles. "Let's get 'em."
"... and I believed you." He was vaguely aware that his hands, fisted at his sides, were shaking. "Don't get me wrong, Shepard. I believed you. I believedyou. You told me, you showed me... You loved me. I... but then -"
His voice almost, almost cracked. He finally managed to will his hand to release the white-knuckled fist it had made and dragged it through his hair roughly. "Then you were gone." He barked a laugh and even to his own ears it sounded just a little bit insane. "Gone. You. Shepard. Gone. Just like that."
He scrubbed the hand roughly over his face, feeling the shaking of his hands, the dangerous quiver in his biotics, the thundering in his ears. Control. He needed control. Control. Control.
He could feel her biotics thrumming, pulsing with an emotion that didn't show on her face. Funny that they'd be as familiar to him now as her touch, her smell, her voice had been to him then.
"I'm here now," she pointed out quietly.
He whirled around. "This isn't the fucking holos, Shepard!" he snapped and even he could hear the tinge of madness in his voice. He could hear it. L2s. They all went insane in the end. Was this his time? He could hear it. He could hear the end in his voice.
"We laughed about that fucking movie they made about us," he said with another snort of that terrible, mad laughter. 'Control!' a little voice in the back of his mind wailed but even it seemed to know it was a lost cause.
"Why? Why was it so funny? Because it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous! It made billions of credits, people throughout the entire galaxy had this perfect, rose-tinted picture of us... and it was ridiculous. It couldn't be true. Skinny-dipping in the moonlight of some deserted planet? Yeah right. I'd have given my right arm for that. You know it. But if you and I were ever in the water together on any kind of planet, it would a) not be deserted because we'd have an entire fucking legion of hostiles right behind us; and b) only involve nakedness because we'd been hit with incendiary splash and our armor was literally burning the fuck off of us."
He felt the insane urge to laugh again and managed to tap it down. Control. Control. Controlcontrolcontrol. Instead, he turned around to face her. God, she was beautiful. He never thought he'd see her again. He'd spent two years trying to come to grips with the idea that he'd never see her again, never have her smirk at him again, never touch her again, never see her do something batshit insaneagain...
He took a deep breath that was unsteady enough that it seemed to rattle in his throat. "Did you think me knowing you loved me was going to keep me warm at night?" he asked her. His voice was ragged, desperate. "Did you have some fairy tale idea that it would give me strength? A reason to live? Something to fight for? Did you think I'd somehow be able to melt it down, pour it into the Shepard-shaped hole in my life, and somehow be okay? Is that what you thought?"
Good god.
Her eyes glistened.
They glistened.
Shepard didn't cry. She didn't cry. She never cried. She didn't even have tear ducts. She -
"I did," she said. Her chin notched up and she stared at him defiantly. If she was aware of the threatening moisture in her eyes, she gave no indication. "I thought all of that. You can mock me all you want, Kaidan, but yes. I thought all of that. All of it. I thought the least I could give you was the knowledge that I loved you. More than anything." She swallowed and her chin lifted even more. "I loved you more than anything, Kaidan. Than anything."
She looked at him straight on. "I still do."
The words buzzed in his head. His ears roared. Control. Control.
"You have no idea what it was like," he said. He choked on the words but he could barely hear them over the dull roar in his ears. "No idea. No idea at all. And..." He had been running a hand through his hair and he ripped his hand out so quickly, so brutally, that he might have pulled hair out. No. No! Control. Control.Controlcontrolcont-
He flared a bright, vicious blue. "And what good does it do now?" he spat. "Nothing. Nothing. You loved me. Great. But now? You love me? You walk in here and tell me you love me? You don't fucking know me, Shepard." His voice broke this time. "You don't know me." The flare faded and he turned away from her roughly. "Shepard, you..." He let out a huff of breath that was almost a laugh. "You're the one who died. Funny you should be the one who loves a ghost."
He could feel her staring at him. He finally turned around to face her, waiting until the ominous shaking in his hands had at least lessened and the roar in his ears had at least dulled, and when he did, the careful neutrality on her face was his undoing. He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. "Do you feel anything, Shepard?" he asked her. "I wish you could see your face. Doesn't this hurt? Don't you... feel anything? Anything?"
Her throat worked for just a moment but when she spoke, her voice was carefully, perfectly even. "I feel a lot of things, Kaidan," she said. "Most of them hurt. None of them are relevant... save possibly for the one we just discussed and dismissed. I'm not here to discuss any of the others. I'm not even here for me. I'm here for you."
He huffed a near laugh. "No man left behind, Commander Shepard?"
She shook her head slowly. "Not if I can help it," she said. "But I think we learned the hard way last time that it's not always up to me and someone could get left behind. Last time, it was you. Chances are that this time it's going to be you again. I have more experience with the dying thing than most people, Kaidan. I died and I woke up and there was nothing in between. I woke up and the first thing I thought was how lucky I was that you'd managed to get me, despite that pesky O2 leak, and how I was going to buy Chakwas some brandy for working her magic yet again." She shook her head abruptly. "Two years, Kaidan. Nothing. Turns out you can't feel regrets when you're dead." She raised her eyes up to his. "I'm more worried about your regrets than mine."
He'd turned away from her as soon as she'd mentioned dying, pushing the heels of his hands roughly into his eyes, pacing on the far side of the room. "What do you want me to say, Shepard?" His voice was muffled behind his hands, sounding distant to his own ears, roaring once again as they were with white noise. He couldn't do this. He couldn't.
"Anything you didn't say before, Kaidan," she said gently, "that you regretted not getting to tell me then. Not very many people get a chance to -"
The roar in his ears suddenly evaporated.
"I don't have anything to say to you," he interrupted quietly, without heat. He didn't look at her. "Nothing that wouldn't hurt more to say than just to let lie."
He felt sure that she would prod him the way she always had done when she thought he was being stupid.
She didn't.
"If you have any recommendations for an amp," she said softly, "I'd appreciate hearing them. Send them to the EDI. She'll make sure I get them."
He wrapped an arm around his stomach... balanced the other on top of it... pinched the bridge of his nose. She didn't make a sound when she moved but he could tell by the dwindling buzz of her biotics that she was leaving. He didn't turn around.
"Oh! Excuse me," said Lindsay's voice from by the door.
"Sorry about that," said Shepard's. "Do you need help with all that?"
"Oh no, I'm okay," said Lindsay's cheerfully followed by a rather ungainly-sounding thud. "After the amount of kid puke I've bagged up today, stupidly overpacked bags of groceries are a welcome change."
"I bet," said Shepard's. "Take it easy on those flavor packets. MSG triggers his migraines. Good night."
"Good night!" said Lindsay's. And then a few moments later, much more clearly, "Who was that? She was so pretty. And her reflexes! Her eyesight might not be so good - she damned near ran me over - but she caught two separate tins before they hit the ground. Crazy."
He turned partially around, forcing a faint smile to his face. It felt more hollow than normal but she didn't seem to notice as she returned it and bustled past him and into his tiny kitchen with her oversized bags.
"She looks like the actress in that movie," she called over her shoulder. "The one about you and your old commander."
"Yeah," agreed Alenko faintly. "She kind of does."
"And why didn't you tell me those asari flavor packets give you migraines?" she asked, poking her head back out of the kitchen, her tousled brown hair adorably disarrayed and her white coat impossibly even more rumpled than when he'd last seen her. "It's a little bit out of my wheelhouse, I'll grant you, but I should be able to give you something for it."
It occurred to him that he had never told Shepard about the flavor packets either. "I don't know," he said. "I... guess it just never came up."
"Kaidan," she tsked, sighing and withdrawing back into the kitchen. "That seems like a pretty important thing to mention."
"Yeah," he said. He resisted the urge to look at the now-closed door to his apartment. "I... yes." He squeezed his eyes shut. "It was probably a pretty important thing to mention."