A/N - this chapter isn't really an epilogue per se... we wrapped up their story in the last chapter, but rather, this is inspired by an idea my son gave me... I ran with it... Hopefully you'll enjoy! This takes place in the time between TTT and Twist the Knife - the sequel...
As usual, I give Bioware all due credit, and thank StoneburntHeart for her continual support~
Shepard woke from the dream with a gasp and stretched her arm out beside her to make sure Kaidan was still there. They had shifted in their sleep and he was laying on his side, facing away from her, but still her hand met warm, bare skin and she sighed with relief. Just a dream, then. She rolled toward him, intending to cuddle against his back and go back to sleep, but apparently he had heard her wake or felt her touch and it had been enough to wake him, too. He rolled over and met her eyes with his slumberous whiskey gaze. He leaned down and kissed her softly then asked, "Bad dream?" as he searched her eyes.
She knew he was concerned that it had been another of the nightmares that had frequented her – both before the Normandy, thanks to the Prothean beacons, and more horribly, after, when memories of the crash played out in her head in a torturous loop – so she rushed to reassure him. "Not bad, not like that," she told him. "More weird..." she added, unsure how to explain it.
"Weird?" he questioned. "Weird like Joker dating EDI weird?" he probed, remembering the one time they had laughed for hours over that one. She had dreams that would put most vid writers to shame – sometimes horror vid writers, but occasionally, the comedy ones, too.
"No, not exactly," she replied with an evasive sigh. She really felt stupid for waking him over this now.
"Shepard," he said when it appeared she'd try to dismiss it. He was trying to get her to leave old habits of bottling things up and not talking to him about them behind. If it was enough to wake her, and send her searching for him in a panic, it was enough to talk about. And deal with. Then they could hopefully go back to sleep and get enough rest to chase after the endless bundle of energy that was their son tomorrow. But now, he persisted. "Just tell me, ok?"
She blew out a long breath and nodded. "You're going to think it's stupid," she warned, but dropped it after the look he sent her. "Fine," she said, a little sullenly. "I dreamed that I was the one who died when the Normandy went down. And Cerberus brought me back."
He drew her close against him and wrapped his arms around her in response to the stress he saw on her face though he was sure she'd deny the effect the dream had had on her. When she settled against him, he spoke quietly, "It's not a huge surprise... Cerberus sent the Collectors against us, and their target was always you. I was just the backup plan. So dreaming about it the other way now isn't all that strange, right?"
She nodded against his chest and he thought that might be the end, easy enough to banish this one. But she sighed again and continued. "That wasn't all," she told him. Then she fell silent.
He pushed aside a moment of irritation that he sometimes felt when dragging an issue out of her felt like pulling teeth. He reached for the patience borne of infinite love he had for this woman – his life, his heart, the mother of his child – and stroked her back softly. When he was completely calm, he asked, "What else was there?"
"In my dream, Cerberus was good," she said and sounded like she didn't believe it even in her dream. "Or at least, not totally evil. And they convinced me that working for them was the right thing."
"Some of what Cerberus wanted could be construed as good," Kaidan stretched... really far... in an attempt to placate.
She slapped her palm against his chest in irritation. "That's not true and you know it," she growled. "But in my dream, it was more... gray, I guess. And I got sucked in..." she trailed off and sighed again.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"They convinced me that the Alliance had turned their back on me – similar, I guess, to what happened to you," she rushed to explain, "but in my dream, it was much more brutal."
"Ok," he replied, more to keep the conversation going than in total understanding. To him, the Alliance had completely turned their backs on him – they just hadn't accounted for Shepard or Anderson. Which gave him the perfect opening... "What about Anderson or the Council?"
"The Council is never helpful in any reality," she dismissed with a wave. "And Anderson completely stonewalled me. Acted like he didn't even know me. And when I asked about you, he acted like we didn't mean anything to each other."
"So he sent you away, like he did to me?" Kaidan asked in clarification. When she nodded, he went on, "Well, what about me then?"
"You," she said with a growl... She hit him again, and this time, it was harder. "You were the worst... We met up on Horizon, like what really happened, and you were there installing AA turrets. But in my dream, that wasn't a cover story. It was really why you were there."
"Ok, well, I can believe I was installing AA guns a lot more than I bought that story about you..." he said, trying to inject some humor into it. When he saw that her glare remained fixed in place, he realized they had reached the heart of the matter. "Ok, what happened?" he asked with a sigh and a mental cringe. He already wanted to kick his dream self and he hadn't yet heard what had put that look on her face.
"You accused me of betraying you and the Alliance and working for traitors," she growled.
He reared back in shock before he narrowed his eyes and saw that under her obvious anger was a hint of shame as well. "Why did I do that?" he asked.
"I might have forgotten to mention that I was really was dead for two years and not just had failed to contact you," Shepard confessed reluctantly. "And I might have tried to convince you to come work with Cerberus with me..." she added sheepishly. Then she growled in anger again and added, "But you said you loved me!"
"I'm sure I did... I would love you in any reality," he replied, scrambling for damage control.
"No, you didn't say "I love you' you said 'I loved you' – past tense," she spat at him in full blown anger.
"Ok, so not one of my finer moments of communication," Kaidan said, trying to soothe her out of the full-blown mad she was whirling herself into. "But I'm sure dream me didn't mean it that way," he added. Then he ruined any progress he had made with yet another moment of poor communication. "Besides, you just admitted that dream me thought that dream you had been back for two years with no contact and was happily working for Cerberus."
"Ugggh," she roared in angry frustration. "It was like I couldn't say what I really wanted to say... like every word was the script in a really bad vid. But you were no better!" she accused.
Since he only knew of one way to effectively end a tirade like this – especially when he really hadn't earned it – he captured her lips and kissed her senseless. When she was finally far less angry, he pulled back and smiled a bit into her drugged gaze. "It was just a bad dream," he reminded her, "Nothing like that actually happened."
"That's not all, though," she replied, still clinging to the irritation though she knew he was right and it was silly to hold it against him.
"Ok, tell me the rest," he said with a grin, knowing that once she got it all out, he'd just have to kiss her back from the mad again. Not a chore he would hate – far from it, really.
"Well, after I went back to Cerberus and you went back to the Alliance," she waved away his objections when he would have interrupted. "It's what happened in the dream... Anyway, a couple of weeks later, you sent me this email," she pronounced the word scathingly, as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
"An email?" he asked then couldn't help but cringe at her glare.
"Yeah. 'About Horizon...' Seriously, including the ellipses," she stated with emphasis. "In my dream, I couldn't wait to open it, thinking you had changed your mind, you were going to come back, to help me against the Collectors, we'd be together... whatever."
"I take it that's not what I said?" he asked meekly.
"No," she said very firmly. "Oh, you did apologize for Horizon and talked about how my death had affected you, which I could fully appreciate," she said with a nod, "but then you went on to talk about your date with another woman and how you were trying to move on!" and now she was back to glaring at him, "Then you had the nerve to accuse me of not remembering our night before Illos or it not meaning as much to me. And you wrapped the whole thing up with maybe."
"Maybe?" he asked in genuine confusion.
"'When things settle down a little, maybe... I don't know,'" she quoted.
He winced and mentally burned his dream self in effigy. "Why do I feel like I should apologize even though it didn't really happen?" he asked, mostly rhetorically.
She sighed and fell against him. She buried her face in his chest and muttered, "I told you, you'd think it was stupid."
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. "I don't think it's stupid," he said and kissed the top of her head. "But it was just a dream," he soothed, "Nothing like that could ever happen."
"Yeah," she replied. "Cause I'd kick your ass to hell and back," she threatened with a grin.
"And I'd ask you to," he replied with a matching one. "Is that it, then?" he asked to be sure his dream self wasn't coming back to bite him on the ass after this. When she nodded, he went on, "Good. So I think you should stop eating tacos right before bed," he added casually.
"Mmm, maybe," she replied then she realized that 'maybe' was now not one of her favorite words anymore and scowled.
"Maybe..." he echoed with a look that was definitely not a scowl as he drew her up for a kiss, "We should show dream us the way things could have been if they hadn't been so stupid."
"Now that's a maybe I'm looking forward to," she agreed as she met his lips. They spent the rest of the night banishing the dream and if they were a little slow chasing Caleb the next day, neither cared. Some sacrifices were worth making.