A/N: Not much on author notes, just a thank you for the continued reviews, alerts, and favorites. They mean a lot! So please leave a review if you have a moment! They are fantastic motivators! :D
Disclaimer: Bioware.
After Our Darkest Hour
Chapter Seven – Facing off With a Memory
Kaidan didn't really like how quiet Shepard had become after Toombs' comm call, or the way she had shut down; throughout her mission to unite the galaxy, she had seemed to hold together remarkably well. Thessia had been the real first indication she was wearing down, shutting herself off because she had admitted that she had felt like she was failing. He could only imagine how she felt in this moment. If she hadn't spared Toombs, saved him, the colonists would likely never have met this fate. He could only imagine the guilt she must be feeling. He wasn't naïve enough to believe she wasn't blaming herself for this. He wanted to say something, do something, but after she had seemingly brushed off his concern, he found himself at a loss.
They continued to move through the central comm center of the colony, Shepard stopping occasionally to scan for life signs with her omni tool. Her continued frown didn't help ease his worries. She was generally a caring person, often too lenient and forgiving, understanding, but even he doubted Toombs would be getting a second chance. Shepard wasn't going to let him go, not again, not after what he had done.
"He has to be here somewhere," Vega commented, glancing around the room they were in with a precise gaze, not overlooking a single detail of its layout.
"How big is the colony, Shepard?" Kaidan asked and she turned her somewhat shuttered face toward him. He didn't want her to shut him out; he wasn't going to let her.
"I don't know if they expanded it, but it seemed the same as when I was here last. This is the only place he could be," she mumbled somewhat, tapping a few keys on her omni tool. "We went through most of the buildings already."
"Loco pendejo probably set up a trap."
"Let's not rule it out." Shepard put away her omni tool, letting it fade as she took a look around the room. "We have the comm tower and landing pad ahead, just up those stairs, and maybe some miscellaneous offices."
"Why is he doing this, Shepard?" Kaidan frowned. "Is it just because of Cerberus?"
Shepard smiled a bit sadly. "You weren't the only one put off by the fact I was working with Cerberus. Well, more like using them. I was going to take out the Collector's any way I could and they were the only ones willing to listen. It's what they brought me back for." She sighed. "Not that the Illusive Man didn't regret that – he found out the hard way that he couldn't pull the strings of someone not willing to be his puppet."
Kaidan was at a loss; now more than ever, he regretted the harsh way he had treated her, and how little trust he had actually had in her. He'd let his hate of Cerberus warp his belief in her. He should have known better. Even after she had saved his life, not once, but twice – first the Collector attack on Horizon, then the Cerberus Coup on the Citadel – he'd still doubted her. He was a fool to think he'd really loved her; what kind of person didn't trust the one they loved?
"Anyway," Shepard's voice brought him out of his morose thoughts. "I was sure it was the Illusive Man and…Miranda, who spread the word I was with Cerberus, even before I was sighted alive. Toombs got wind of it, no doubt looked into it, and then sent me a message. It was essentially a threat."
"He threatened you? Definitely loco," mumbled Vega, shaking his head with a grin.
Kaidan frowned. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Shepard blinked once, then twice, a smile cracking its way over her supple lips. "Kaidan, I appreciate the concern, but we both knew he wasn't stable. Hell, even I had to go through mandatory therapy after Akuze. I didn't think much of his threat at the time. I had…" she waved her hand emphatically, "a bigger issue to attend to."
He supposed that was true. He probably wouldn't have paid much attention to it either had he been in her shoes. "Where do you think he is hiding?"
"Personally? On the landing pad. Easiest way to escape should his plan backfire. He wants me dead, but I'm not so sure he is ready to die himself to see it through." She sighed and looked off toward the stairs. "He was already suffering from severe PDST. I didn't think he could get any more unstable than he already was when we found him, Kaidan. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have let him go."
Just as Kaidan would have approached her and said something reassuring, Vega was there, patting her on the shoulder. "You couldn't have known he would do this, Lola." Kaidan frowned, feeling an unfamiliar churn in his gut; was he actually jealous? Vega was a flirt, after all.
"Thanks, James, but we have to stop him. I can't let him go this time."
Vega nodded and took point, heading toward the stair case with his M-96 Mattock assault rifle raised and ready. Shepard was right behind him, with her N7 Valkyrie assault rifle, Kaidan pulling up the rear with his semi-automatic Arc pistol. They moved cautiously up the stairs, Vega taking the right side of the door on top, Kaidan moving to flank from the left side as Shepard moved to take point. She glanced at both of them, all sharing a brief nod, before she hit the controls and the door slid open. Eyes remained down the sight of her rifle, scanning the hall in front of them for possible hostiles, before she moved in, signaling them to follow. The hall led straight to the comm tower, though offices lay to their lefts and rights, all in disarray and each containing at least one dead colonist, if not more.
"The hall breaks into two just before the door to the comm center. I will take point, Kaidan I want you to take the right hall and take the side entrance in. Vega, you got my back." Shepard gave her orders as they came to the break in the hall.
Kaidan wanted to argue, say that he should be the one at her twelve, watching her back, but he knew she was trusting him and his biotics to get the jump on anyone who may be inside if he came in undetected. "Aye aye, ma'am." He gave her a lingering gaze, their eyes locking for a brief moment, before he moved down the hall. He lost sight of them as he disappeared down the corridor, turning to corner and sliding along the wall toward the door. Once he reached the door, flanking it from the left, he tapped on his comm. "In position, Shepard."
"On my order." He waited, almost with bated breath. Toombs was most likely to be in there and knowing what he did about Shepard's condition, it was hard not to be worried. He had to let it go, or at least ease up, she was a Soldier, like him, and she wasn't going to let a romance, a family, stop her doing what she thought her duty was, though Kaidan was adamant in his belief that she had already went above and beyond her duty long before now. "Go!" He hit the console and slipped in through the doors on silent steps, catching across the room with a brief glance both Vega and Shepard. Toombs was on the far side, near the comm tower's exit door to the landing pad, unaware of his presence, his line of sight fixed squarely on Shepard through the scope of his Widow Sniper rifle, from where he crouched behind an overturned table.
"Don't move," Toombs said loud enough for Shepard and Vega to hear, both ceasing their movements at his order, both fully aware that the sight of his gun was trained on Shepard. "You can tell your other man to stand down, Alenko, I believe it was."
Shepard made a motion toward him and Kaidan narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. She nodded briefly, her eyes telling him to trust her. Gritting his teeth, he moved out from his hidden place behind a desk and joined Shepard and Vega on the one side of the room. So much for their advantage.
"I learned every layout of every building just for this, Shepard," Toombs said, as if he were reading Kaidan's thoughts, making him frown tightly, his biotics humming through him and threatening to flare around him. He wanted Toombs dead now, for simply having pointed a gun at Shepard.
Shepard kept her gun lowered, at her side; a deceptive sign of peace because Kaidan knew exactly how fast she could throw up her weapon and unload a barrage of bullets into the crazy corporal. "Toombs…it doesn't have to be like this." Her voice was calm, though he could see the faint bit of fear in her eyes that she could have hid from anyone except him. He'd seen that fear, when she told him that she would be waiting for him after they defeated the Reapers, and that he had better show up. As much as he fronted being brave, he too had thought they all would die at the hands of the Reapers; he had even told her, they knew it was goodbye. It was funny how some things turned out – one moment he thought they would all die, the next he was alive, she was alive, and he was to be a father.
"Yes it does, Shepard," Toombs voice made him refocus, fingers twitching briefly as he pushed back the urge to rip the sniper rifle straight out of the man's hands with his biotics.
"Toombs, you were a good soldier once; turn yourself in." She kept her voice calm, cool, almost reassuring, despite the anger he knew was boiling just under the surface.
"I'm no fool. They would execute me for this, but it needed to be done. I had to draw you out somehow and I knew Hackett would involve you if it was Mindoir." Toombs sighed, almost dramatically. Kaidan kept his stance tilted, firmly on Shepard in his peripheral vision, waiting for any subtle signal she may give him.
There was a tense silence and Kaidan could see the hand holding her rifle tremble ever so slightly. "Toombs, I will only give you this once chance to surrender, before I will be forced to put you down myself. You murdered innocent people, Toombs, just like Cerberus murdered our squad. You have fallen to their tactics, you are just like them."
"Shut up!" The man snapped out, clearly insulted and irritated by her words. "You are Cerberus. You are the one who turned your back on the Alliance and worked for those traitors. I am not like them."
"Are you insane? Who else was helping with the Collectors? Would you rather have had me turn myself in and twiddle my thumbs while the Collectors went unopposed? While they kidnapped colony after colony and made them into human mush they fed into a human Reaper?" Shepard snapped back. "Yeah, that's right, they were liquefying us. If I had to use Cerberus to stop that, so be it."
The sniper rifle trembled slightly and Kaidan looked at the corporal to see the fear on his face at Shepard's words; even Kaidan hadn't heard the details of Shepard's mission to the Collector base. Every time he had asked, she had simply said 'I would rather spare you the nightmares'. "You could have done it on your own," Toombs insisted. "How could you go to them after what I told you?" Was the man crying? He couldn't quite tell. "Our whole squad, Shepard. They killed them all, every last one of them. Miles, Sailey, Boyd, Stevenson; all of them."
"You don't think I know that, Toombs? For the longest time I thought you were dead, too." She sighed, eyes dipping briefly to the ground. "I don't understand how you all died and how I made it back to the LZ, but somehow I did. I crawled my way back, bloody, defeated, and barely conscious. They took me to the hospital, I was out for days. I barely survived. I had to go through therapy, to avoid PDST, but I still had dreams, nightmares, of all of you." She raised her eyes back to Toombs, the silver-blue orbs suddenly hard as steel. "The Batarians wiped out my home, Cerberus wiped out my squad, I was not about to let the Collector's to do the same to people I cared about, even if I had to work with Cerberus."
The room was suddenly too quiet, Toombs' hands shaking. The rifle he had aimed on Shepard shook as well. Kaidan knew the man was weighing her words, and his options. "I'm sorry, Shepard, it's too late." The words made Kaidan's blood run cold and as soon as they were said, Toombs tightened his finger on the trigger and the bullet went straight for Shepard. It was suddenly as if everything fell into slow motion; as Kaidan dove for Shepard, he threw up a hasty biotic barrier, though it didn't help. Toombs must have used an anti-barrier mod on his rifle, because the bullet ripped straight through his barrier and slammed into his shoulder, blood splattering on his armor as he fell.
"Kaidan!" Shepard's voice rang out and as he caught himself on his knees, he saw her lift her rifle as Toombs was reloading his, and unleash a full clip into the unshielded corporal. He screamed, blood flowing from several holes as the bullets found purchase in his flesh, his body flying back from the force to the floor, where Kaidan could hear him gurgle on his own blood.
Shepard knelt beside Kaidan, signaling to Vega. "Make sure the bastard is dead," she hissed and the lieutenant nodded, running out of his direct line of vision to deal with the fallen corporal, whom he was sure was dead. "Kaidan, you damned idiot!" Shepard hissed the words, half broken as she hastily took in his wound; he was lucky it had been a through and through, that meant she could apply the medi gel without having to pull out a bullet first. He winced as she did just that, the gel cool at first, before seeping into his wound and working at repairing the marred flesh beneath his armor.
"Couldn't let him hurt you," he grunted, adjusting himself so that he sat, holding his injured arm.
"You think I wanted you hurt!" She snapped it out so fiercely that he knew it wasn't a question she expected him to answer. "Damnit Kaidan, I can't lose you either!" Her hands framed his face and she was suddenly kissing him, hotly, almost possessively. After a moment, she leaned back, and he could see that she was fighting to hold back tears. "Don't you ever do that again."
He grinned, almost cheekily, despite the pain. "Aye aye, ma'am."
