The colored lights and bass-heavy music of Purgatory assaulted Kaidan's senses as the entered the dark club. He'd been to places like this before, of course; the Normandy crew had spent a fair amount of time in Flux, over on Tayseri Ward, back when they'd been going after Saren. This place just seemed to have a different atmosphere, however. Desperation, maybe, he thought, cynically. "So this is really where you want to be?" he asked Shepard.
She shrugged. "It's where everyone else is going to be," she projected her voice over the music. "It's apparently quite the destination for pretending Reapers don't exist for a few more hours."
"So that's not what we're doing?"
She smirked. "Sort of. Except when we're done here we'll go kill Reapers. Oh, hey, there's Jack." Shepard waved to a tattooed woman in a leather jacket and cargo pants.
"Shepard, hey, I didn't think you were gonna show!" Jack yelled, then turned toward Kaidan. "Who's the boyscout?"
Shepard smiled and put an arm around him. "Jack, this is Kaidan."
Jack examined him closely, eying him up and down. "Not bad. Not bad at all. But how's he in the sack?"
Kaidan gulped, hoping that the lighting of the club would obscure the blush rising to his face. He turned to Shepard, who was grinning and nodding her approval.
"Good deal," Jack continued. "Still, definitely more your type than mine. He scares too easy."
"You know, Jack was teaching the biotic class at Grissom Academy, before Cerberus hit the place," said Shepard, refusing to give up.
Always the peacemaker. Fine, he'd try. "Hmm. I actually had a biotic commando unit I was training back on Earth. I just hope their putting what I showed them to good use."
Jack nodded. "You know, you're okay, boyscout."
"You know," Shepard injected, "Joker said he was gonna head down here, too."
"Yeah," responded Jack, "he was heading down below with his fem-bot. Don't worry, I already gave him shit for it; you two kids have fun."
"Actually, Shepard, you go ahead. I think I'll wait here." Kaidan was willing to work with Joker, for Shepard's sake, and she had every right to keep her own friends. But there were some things he didn't want to reopen right now.
"Shepard!" Joker called to her as she approached, waving to the bartender to bring them both drinks. "I thought Kaidan would be joining you."
"Oh, he's back there talking to Jack- wait, why did you think he'd be joining me?" Joker hadn't even acknowledged their return to the Normandy earlier, and the CIC had been otherwise near deserted.
"Oh, it might have had something to do with you two racing past me a few hours ago, barely able to keep your hands off of each other. Or did I read too much into that?" He smirked at her. "But seriously, you're subjecting him to Jack? Alone?"
She shrugged. "His choice."
Joker's face fell. "Yeah, 'cause that's not gonna backfire," he mumbled. "Still," he continued, more clearly, "I'm glad things worked out for you. Really. You deserve it, Commander." He sighed and took a drink.
She tapped his arm lightly. "So what's up? You're acting weird. Weird for you, I mean."
"It's this place. These people. It's not the same as it was a few weeks ago. Like it's finally starting to sink in for people. D'you feel it?"
She looked at the drinkers at the crowded bar, the dancers upstairs, the couples and small groups sitting at tables and on couches, heads close together to hear each other speak. On the surface it was the same as it had ever been. But the drinks were being consumed more determinedly, the dancing was more frantic, the conversation quieter than it had been the last time she was here. "Yeah, I feel it."
"It's desperation. They can't ignore anymore, so they're trying to escape, to forget. And maybe they've got the right idea." Shepard frowned. "I don't mean give up," he clarified, "you know I'm in this thing til the end, no matter what happens. But maybe just let loose, do the things you want to do, even if it might be a bad idea."
"Anything specific you had in mind?" His gaze wandered toward EDI, who was seated at a nearby table. Right. She had eventually come to terms with EDI's physical form, and had even come to appreciate her company. But Shepard wondered what the AI could really offer Joker, not to mention what EDI herself might get out of the relationship. Still...
"I think it's crazy." Joker's face fell. "Hey, let me finish. I might not understand what you guys have. It is pretty crazy, you have to admit. But if love was rational, well, my day would have been a whole lot lonelier. I know how much you care about her; you put your ass on the line with me to stick up for her. Now, I don't know what's waiting for us at the end of all this, but I know that no one should have to face it alone. So-"
Shepard was interrupted by a flash of blue and the sound of a biotically charged fist hitting a table. "Fuck you!" the voice was unmistakably Jack's. "You have no fucking idea!"
"Oh, hell." Shepard started pushing through the crowd to where she'd left Jack and Kaidan.
"Told you that was gonna backfire," Joker said, waving. "See you, Commander."
"What the hell? And they put her in charge of untrained kids?" Kaidan demanded as Shepard dragged him away from the club and the crazed biotic woman inside. "I mean, what the hell was that?"
"You tell me," Shepard said as they reached the elevator. "You were the one talking to her. Something must have set her off."
"She was telling me about her class; I was telling her about my squad. We were actually finding some common ground. I mentioned that biotic training had come a long way since Brain Camp, that she would have just been a young kid when it shut down..."
"Shiiit."
"What?"
Shepard's voice grew quiet as they made their way through the docking bay to the Normandy. "We... scouted out an abandoned Cerberus base last year, on a planet called Pragia. They had used it as a biotic training facility. Jack grew up there."
"Grew up?"
"Yeah. I've got something to show you when we get upstairs." Back in her quarters, Shepard shuffled through the documents on her desk and tossed him a datapad.
Kaidan began to skim through the information she had provided. Subject Zero—Jennifer Mason—age 4- "Four?" he muttered, looking up at Shepard. She nodded and motioned for him to keep reading. The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four and Six died. No biotic change among the survivors... The subjects are out of the cells—they're tearing the place up. Subject Zero is going to get loose. I need permission to terminate... We're shutting Teltin down. What a disaster. We'll infiltrate and piggyback onto the Alliance's Ascension program...
When he'd finally finished reviewing the data, he echoed Shepard's sentiment. "Shit. I guess she was right. I had no idea." He was an idiot. He'd never considered biotics being trained outside of the Alliance. And the things Cerberus had done to Jack and those other kids... it made Brain Camp seem like a vacation.
"Don't worry about it, Kaidan." Shepard sat on the couch next to him. "It's okay, really. I talked to her; she's cooled off. You had no way to know." She was probably right, he realized. Still, he wished he didn't always manage to put his foot in his mouth so consistently. Shepard scooted closer and rested her head on his shoulder. "I guess I should have talked you into joining me and Joker."
"Eh," he shrugged, trying to stay non-committal.
She didn't buy it. "You really don't want to be around him, do you? What's going on with you two? Is it the Cerberus thing? Because Joker's not with them anymore either." He wasn't sure if she was kidding or not. He really wished it hadn't been so obvious. But she had always been so tuned into people; it wasn't easy to hide anything from her. He'd learned that on their first trip to the Citadel after Eden Prime.
"Shepard, it's not something I want to get into right now. I should really head downstairs; it's getting late." He stood, but she grabbed his arm in an attempt to keep him there.
"Kaidan, wait. I'm not going to force anything out of you. I... was just wondering, that's all." But her eyes were sad, and her tone made him wish there was more he could do. And maybe he could, eventually, but it was a lot to get over.
Kaidan spotted Joker at a table in the crowded banquet hall and grabbed a chair across from him. He wasn't going to lie, it was wonderful that so many people wanted to honor Shepard's memory. Yes, he was fortunate to have had the opportunity to serve with her. No, they didn't know who had been responsible for the attack that killed her, but yeah, he'd love a chance to take those bastards down. But it had exhausted him; he needed a break. So he sought out a place to hide, a quiet corner where he could just be honest with someone for a few minutes. Then maybe he could go back to the crowd.
"How're you holding up?" the pilot asked as Kaidan sank into the chair. Kaidan shook his head. His eyes were raw, but he wasn't crying. He wouldn't cry here. He'd expended his fair share of tears over the past two days, and he knew it would happen again tonight when he was alone, when he had the chance to retreat into himself, but now was time to play the dutiful officer, stoic yet proud. Was this what it had been like for Shepard? Always having to put on this persona, be the person they all expected her to be, even when her very heart rebelled against it? "You know," Joker continued, "Shepard would really be working the crowd at a thing like this."
Kaidan idly rubbed the back of his neck. He'd been this crap all day. He didn't need Joker's platitudes on top of everyone else's. "Shepard would hate seeing everyone make such a big fuss about her."
"You know, if I'd have known she was gonna play the big damn hero, I'd have dragged myself out of that chair, at least made a show of going for that pod. I'd have never made it, but maybe she'd have bought the effort... Dammit, Kaidan, I was trying to do the right thing. Didn't want to slow anyone down. But who was I kidding; of course she was gonna play the big damn hero. It's who she is. And now they're saying my priorities are out of whack; they're talking about grounding me, scheduling psych evals n' shit..."
Kaidan had only been half-listening, lost in his own grief, but what he heard was enough to stoke his anger, his repressed desire to lash out at something. "Is that all you care about?" He felt the heat rising to his face. "How soon you can get back into a pilot's seat?"
"I never said-"
He was no longer in the mood to listen. "Do you have any idea what it's like having to go out there-" he indicated the hall, "-and make nice to admirals, diplomats, her mother for chrissakes, the whole time trying to pretend she meant nothing to me?"
"Oh, stop acting like you're the only one who could give a damn! Like a quick fuck on the way to Ilos gives you some kind of special-"
Years of finely honed self control were all that kept him from decking Joker right there. As it was, his fists clenched beneath the table, his skin tingling with a biotic flare that he was sure could be spotted from across the room. "Fuck. You." He pushed his chair back forcefully and stood, hurrying to the nearest exit, barely making it to the outside corridor before the tears overtook him again.
The captain's quarters on the Normandy lay dark and silent except for the soft yellow glow of a datapad illuminating Shepard's face. Beside her, Kaidan slept restfully, but Shepard was wide awake. Shuffling through the datapads, she realized that since she'd left Earth, she'd really just been going through the motions. Following orders, doing what needed to be done, subsisting on determination and stubbornness and pure blind hope. But now, she suddenly felt the ability to distance herself from the day-to-day reality of the war, and look at the big picture. Or maybe, she considered, glancing down at the man lying beside her, I'm just now feeling the need to.
She checked the numbers again. The fleets the Alliance had available. What the Turians had added to that. Where they'd stand if they could add the Asari into the mix. The crucible, and how much had been completed thus far, and what more materials they would need. And of course, the most difficult, the current situation on Earth, and what losses they'd sustained there thus far. And she could only come to one conclusion. It wasn't enough.
She rolled over, trying to slip out of bed quietly, so as not to wake Kaidan. But her feet his the deck more loudly than she'd have liked, and she heard the soft rustle of bedsheets as a hand reached out to touch her shoulder. "Shepard," he muttered, half-asleep, "what are you doing?"
She slid free of his touch and stood up, bending over to pick up her datapads from the night stand. "I need to call Hackett."