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She ran through the burning trees, chasing after the child. "Stop! Let me help you!" she called to him. But each time she called out to him, he disappeared and she was left standing alone. Finally, she saw him again and gave chase once more. She skidded to a halt as she saw where the child was standing, directly in the path of a Reaper's deadly beam. "Run! Run towards me! Please!" she begged him. It was too late. She could do nothing but watch helplessly as he was swallowed up by the beam before it continued towards her.
"No!" Kate screamed as she bolted upright in bed, heart racing. She felt the bed shift as Zaeed sat up and his strong arms gently encircled her, pulling her back against his chest.
"You're safe, kitten," he whispered in her ear as he brushed strands of hair from her face. "Which one was it this time?"
She rested her head in the crook of his neck and absently scratched her blunt nails over the back of his hand. "This time, it's not me." She sighed. "There was this little boy back in Vancouver; I used to watch him playing every day outside my window. When I was escaping after the Reapers landed, I found him hiding in an air duct. I tried to convince him to come with us, but he ran off, further into the ducts. I saw him get onto a transport as the Normandy was leaving. The transport got destroyed as it was taking off, fucking disintegrated by a Reaper beam. He had looked me straight in the eye as he was getting on that transport, Z. Like he knew he was gonna die, that he could have trusted me to take care of him. And then, he was just... gone."
"You couldn't have saved him, Kate," Zaeed said after awhile. "Is this the first time you've had this one?"
She nodded slowly. "I hardly ever sleep without some kind of nightmare anymore. Not since the Reapers landed. But all the others have been about..." She trailed off into a whisper so soft he couldn't hear her.
"Kate?" He shifted her around and gently cupped her face in his hands. He saw the haunted look in her eyes and he knew then that her other nightmares had been about him. "All of them?" he asked quietly.
She nodded again. "Every single one since the day I left Earth. I was so scared when I couldn't reach you and my dad hadn't heard from you and... I was... I thought I'd lost you forever."
"You're not going to... I'm hard to kill; you of all people should know that, kitten," he said as he held her tight against his chest.
She buried her face in his shoulder and he felt her shaking. It took him a moment to realize she was laughing. "What the hell is so funny?" he asked indignantly.
"It's just... you and Garrus can't stand each other, yet you're basically the same person."
He frowned. "How's that exactly?"
Kate sat back and looked at him. "That... what you just said about being hard to kill? That's exactly what Garrus said to me when we met up with him on Manae."
"I see. So tell me something. If we're, as you say, basically the same person, what made you choose me over him?"
She didn't hesitate at all as she answered, "He and I could never have what you and I have, and not because he's a turian. Sure, we could date, but it wouldn't be much different than what I had with Kaidan. Or like what I had with Joker back before..."
"So what is it then?" Zaeed asked. He already knew the answer, had always known, but he needed to hear it from her.
She brushed her fingers over a tiny scar on his throat, where her thumbnail had gouged the skin when she'd punched him all those years ago. "You alone have seen me at my weakest, my most vulnerable. And you were there for me when no one else could be. I was completely broken, in many ways, and you helped pick up the pieces and made me whole again. No one else in the entire universe will ever be able to make that claim, nor would I want them to." She leaned in and kissed him. "I love you, Zaeed. I always have."
"I love you too, Kate," he said as he ran his fingers through her hair. "I just wish we hadn't been too stubborn to see it all these years."