Shepard's breath steamed out in a plume as she tucked her helmet under her arm. Frost crystals hung in the air. Icicles gleamed overhead on the blackened rim of a collapsing roof. This had been an outdoor shopping center at one point. One point before the reapers set it on fire. On the horizon, twilight outlined the shadow of empty habitats.
"Figure it out?" Shepard said.
Ice crunched under her boots. Her shadow fell over Cortez. He was buried head and shoulders in the shuttle's back hatch.
"I think it's the propulsion sync." Cortez grunted from inside the hollow space.
"Need help, Esteban?" James leaned a hand on the shuttle.
"Unless you can materialize another mechanic, no."
"Got Scars and L2. They get turned on by circuitry, right?"
"I said a mechanic." Cortez's words were lost in a string of low grumbles.
"Welp, can't help you there." James pushed off the shuttle. He met Shepard's eyes with a shrug. "At least the husks are muerto. Too bad 'bout the colony though. Think they liked living here? The inside of my nose is frosted."
Shepard threw her helmet into the shuttle and dropped to her heels beside Cortez. "What do you need, Cortez? Want the Normandy to pick us up?"
"This atmosphere would wreak havoc on her external thermal grid. Adams would be complaining about it for days, months, years. However long we have, he'll be telling the story."
"Hey. What kind of attitude's that?" Shepard thumped his side. "Days and months."
Cortez pulled his head out. "I don't want my last days spent ducking corners when I hear Adam's footsteps."
"He'd blame you for this?" Shepard waved at the defunct shuttle. "It's just a climate malfunction or whatever, right?"
"Don't know." Cortez dug back into the shuttle. "I don't understand it. I ran all the usual system checks. It's like there's a disconnect between the main control board and the left propulsion drive, but that's impossible. I checked the wiring last week."
Shepard sighed and pushed up on her knees. "I'll give you a little time to root around, but then we're calling the mothership. I'm done with this place."
Dusk gave the residential area an eerie black and white, old-movie quality. Ice sparkled on the picnic benches. Streetlights with broken blubs lined the empty roads. Silence. Complete silence. If she looked closer, she'd see dead husks crystalling with frost and sinking into the snow. Shepard pulled her eyes away.
James slouched against the shuttle. His Omni-Tool screen whooshed with the sound of shuffling cards. Games. Dead colonists decaying in the cold around them and he was sharpening his skill at the card table. Shepard frowned, opening her mouth, then stopped. The rigid set to his jaw and the sharp focus in his eye wasn't his usual game face. Shepard passed by him instead and patted his shoulder.
Kaidan wasn't anywhere in sight, but Garrus had only wandered a few meters from the shuttle. His black widow leaned against the wall of a parking arcade. Snow shimmered in his talons.
"Not a lot of snow on Palavan, right?" Shepard stopped beside him.
"None." He dropped the snow. "Damn cold out here."
"Thinking the same thing myself." Her breath misted the air between them.
"Noveria was a blizzard. This, though, silent. Peaceful. Like to think there's peace now."
"Yeah, sure." Shepard put her back to the colony. "Peaceful."
Garrus gazed at the shapes over her shoulder. After a moment, he sighed and his eyes shifted back to her face. "Wish Tali was here."
"Cortez was wishing for a mechanical engineer." Shepard studied Garrus. A smile tickled her lips. "That's not what you meant, though, was it?"
Garrus shrugged. He grabbed his rifle and fiddled with the barrel. "She always wished she saw Noveria. She's never seen snow. Cold and miserable stuff, but pretty. Peaceful. She might like it." Garrus caught Shepard's smirk. He narrowed his eyes. "Don't look at me like that."
"Of course not," Shepard said. "Myself, I was just wishing Joker was here. If we're picking. I'd like to gently white wash him."
"Because of the jewelry?"
"Hell, yes. Because of the earrings. All the crap he's given me. I am a woman, you know? Doesn't mean anything if I wear the trappings of one once in a while."
"Heard all about it in the mess." Garrus paused. "What are curlers?"
"He was going on about my hair too? Oh, I'd white wash him cleaner than bleach. Be feeding him snow, mouth and nose. I'm not doing it for Kaidan. I just … It's- you know, nevermind. I really do wish he was here now I've imagined it."
A commotion drew Shepard's attention. By the shuttle, Cortez stomped to his feet. His eyes sighted on Shepard, expression stormy.
"Oh no," Shepard muttered.
"I found the problem," Cortez said through his teeth.
"What is it?" Shepard wandered closer.
"This!" Cortez waved a fistful of frayed wires at her.
"Wires? Can you fix it?"
"Yes, but I want to focus attention on this." He rattled the wires in the air again.
"What? You're blaming me for those … Oh." Shepard studied the ends of the wire. "Those aren't …"
"Gnawed? Chewed? Nibbled? Ripped apart by gerbil teeth?"
"Gerbil teeth. I'm off the hook then."
"Hamster teeth."
"He was barely in there." Her mind shifted back to the second escape while she was, uh, preoccupied. How long had that been? It couldn't have been that long.
"But you can fix it?" Shepard asked again.
"Yes, but -"
"Then fix it," Shepard said. "Can't be undone. It could have been anyone's loose hamster."
"Anyone's loose hamster?" Cortez bent the wires in half.
"Whoa, whoa. Esteban, chido, hombre." James put an arm around Cortez. "Let's go fix up our ride. We can put up hamster wanted posters later, capiche?"
"She told me he didn't get into anything."
James steered him back to the shuttle. "You know Lola's track record with fish. Hamster's on borrowed time anyway. Just put some snow down your collar and dazzle us with your fix-it skills."
Garrus stopped next to Shepard and gave her sideways look.
"What?" Shepard said. "I'm getting better with it. Now I wait for the click when I shut the cage."
"Can't wait to tell Tali about this."
Shepard snorted. "Where's Kaidan? I need moral support while you're all slandering my poor, innocent-until-proven-guilty hamster."
Garrus tilted his head toward the shadows deep inside the parking garage. Snow footprints disappeared into the dark.
Shepard clapped Garrus on the arm. "Don't let Cortez maroon me here as by proxy punishment to my hamster."
"You get marooned, Shepard, I get marooned. Wouldn't leave the planet without you."
Shepard grinned. "You should bring some snow back for Tali. Different effect than seeing it. Maybe the next snowy place we come across, she can see it properly."
Garrus scooped up a talon full of snow. "Might just do that."
XXX
"Kaidan?" Shepard trudged around the snow-crusted husk of a burned skycar. Frost coated the windshield's jagged glass. Black marks scorched the doors, and stuffing spilled out of the torn leather seats inside. Around her, the snow concealed a dozen other wrecks like bodies under a white sheet. Kaidan stood just beyond the parking garage's shadow facing an untouched field of snow. He glanced over his shoulder at her.
"Edge of the habitat." Shepard stopped next to him. "What're you doing out here?"
Facing this direction, there was an endless stretch of powder reflecting the night sky. Snow-capped mountains, rocky and forested, rose in the distance.
"Headache?" Shepard asked.
"Hmm? No. I just … I don't know." He folded his arms and gazed up at the sky. "How many moons do you think there are? Up there."
Globes hung in the sky, a scattering of color, pinks to gold. A spectrum of sizes shining brilliant to dull. The moons were countless.
"Cortez found the issue with the shuttle," Shepard said.
"He's ready then?" Kaidan dropped his arms.
"Not yet. Finding the issue is only step one of resolving the issue." Shepard rubbed her arms from the chill. "He's accusing my hamster of gnawing the wires. Allegedly. No proof."
Kaidan gave a weak smile. "Hasn't called for teeth impressions yet?"
"Need a warrant."
"Think they make hamster-sized polygraphs?"
Shepard chuckled. "You know what? Let's start a rumor about the Normandy's rat infestation. Joker's very suggestable. A few chewed up wires in the cockpit …"
"I suppose you want me to leap onto a chair with a screech. Throw a shoe at the wall."
"Preferably in front of a full mess hall. Lay it on thick. It has to convince Cortez."
Kaidan smirked at her out of the corner of his eye. "They take the rumor too seriously and put down rat traps ... Better start listening for the snap when you close the hamster's cage. Could end badly."
"Hey. I've been better about it."
"Kinda."
"He hasn't gotten out again."
"Because I come behind you and make sure it snaps."
"New plan then. I put vaseline on the cage walls. Solves the problem for good."
"Waiting for the lid to click is a heavy burden."
Shepard elbowed him. He laughed and flashed her a wide smile.
"What are you really doing out here?" Shepad asked.
He opened his hand. Mismatched Omni-Tools rolled together in his palm. There were four of them, scratched and mangled.
Shepard's throat went dry. "Bodies?"
"No, they're from the cars."
"Oh." Shepard hugged her elbows and turned back to the field. "I hate this place. Too damn cold."
Kaidan pulled her against his side. "Want my helmet? It'll help with thermal regulation."
She released a long sigh. "I can see my breath. It's unnatural."
"Natural enough to me."
"Vancouver gets this cold?"
"Mountains in the interior do. I didn't spend all my time in the city."
"Growing up with your family?" Shepard clarified.
Kaidan nodded. Shepard slid an arm around his waist and leaned into him. Light scattered across the pearly ground. Moonlight tinted the snow caps on the horizon. Her heart slowed listening with the silence. There was only the breathing beside her. Mist swirled in rhythm with the soft release of his breath. The air stung, a chill not from the cold. She could feel the colony at her back.
"Bet you never thought adventure in space would look like this," Shepard said. "Icy planet, scavenging Omni-Tools from burnt cars, leaving behind a colony of twice-killed people to rot in the snow. Listening to the silence, because you came too late."
Kaidan's arm tightened around her. "You're not too late. Maybe for the ones here, but not for everyone. You've rallied the entire galaxy. Don't hang on to one distress call heard too late."
"So, this doesn't bother you?" Shepard pulled away and faced him. "There were snowmen in the yards, Kaidan. Half-eaten roasts on the table. Christmas trees that never made the slash pile. You're standing here, staring at that blank field, and you're not thinking the same thing?"
"No, I am, but …"
"What?"
"There's nothing I could have done. Nothing you could have done."
"Just bad luck?"
"Yeah."
Shepard flexed her jaw and jerked around facing the mountains with her back to him.
"Sometimes it really is just bad luck," Kaidan said. He put a hand on her back. "If you let this creep into you like the cold, then our purpose here turns against us."
"Purpose?" Shepard spat. "This had no purpose."
"It reminds you what you're fighting for: the snowmen in the yards, not just bullet points on a plan."
Shepard throat closed, and she let the stillness stretch. Kaidan tugged her elbow. Reluctantly, she turned and he pulled her to his chest. She buried her nose into his neck.
"Hey," he whispered. "I know what a colony like this means to you."
Shepard's fingers dug into the back of his armor. He didn't say more. She was glad he stopped there. He knew what she saw in the abandoned meals and broken-down doors. She nestled her face into his collar, breathed in his aftershave, and savored the heat of his skin on her cheeks. He smelled like something you shouldn't be able to smell: safety and home.
"The mountains outside Vancouver," Shepard murmured against his skin. "They're pretty?"
"Yeah," Kaidan said softly into her hair. "I'll show them to you one day."
Shepard's smile stiffened, and her arms loosened around his waist. A sweet thought. But only that: a thought.
"One day," she said, but the cold crept up from her fingertips.
The hours and days were slipping away. There would be a day when all he told her would become true - the ocean surf, snowy mountains, families and fireplaces, spring flowers and fresh fruit, all the ordinary things. And him. He would be there with her if only for a second.
She'd see all of it in that one moment, the gray Inbetween of what is and what's lost. Perhaps bleeding out on the battlefield or flying backward from a grenade. In that one second, for one moment of one day, that's where she'd be: paradise, the darkening seconds of a stilled heart, the memory of him.
Shepard kissed his throat and smiled. For everything she'd accomplished, finding Kaidan was the reward. He was right about one thing. She needed to remember what she was fighting for: snowmen in the yard and for that final sunset, standing on the mountain top in his arms watching the twilight fade. It would be enough.
