Chapter 2: Boys don't cry

Krogan blood had a distinctive smell, one that the second human Spectre Kaidan Alenko had learned to recognize. Every time, when the combat with the bulky aliens was over, all he wanted to do afterward was to take a bath. He wanted to wash away the stench and change into a clean uniform.

Because of his rank, he could have chosen not to fight himself, instead coordinating the action from somewhere else. Still, he wanted to be on the battlefield, to be an example for other soldiers and also to not put his biotic abilities to waste.

After the combat the wounded were transported to Alliance hospitals and health centers. A preliminary battlefield report informed him that there had been no casualties on their side this time. He smiled. The krogan forces on Earth were dwindling, after about three and a half years of conflict.

Kaidan sank on the seat in the shuttle that would transport him back to Vancouver. When the vehicle took off, he knew that he wouldn't get much conversation from the other soldiers inside. For them, he was an authority and a symbol. They treated him as if he was unapproachable, although he kept a friendly attitude toward them. He had long ago stopped trying to fight the perception that young soldiers had about him. He didn't know if they were intimidated because of his rank in the Alliance, his Spectre status, or the fact that he had been part of Shepard's crew.

Knowing that he would have some time off until he reached the new Alliance headquarters, he allowed his thoughts to drift. His mind went back to the final moments of the war against the Reapers. The final words that he and Shepard had exchanged, their time to say goodbye. He had really hoped, deep inside, to see her again. That had been the reason why when they crashed on a strange jungle planet, and the crew decided to do a memorial for their fallen while the Normandy was being repaired, Kaidan had refused to put a plaque with her name on the wall. He really thought that she, somehow, was alive on Earth, and it turned out that he had been right. She had been alive when they did the memorial, but in coma and unable to communicate. She had died during the time it took the Normandy to return to Earth, with the mass relays gone.

The Normandy had been given to him, considering that he was the Alliance officer with the highest rank alive to ever fly on the ship. Not that he could do much with it now. EDI had gone offline the same day the Crucible was fired. Further analysis revealed that all of her files and processes had been deleted, for unknown reasons. Interstellar travel was now prohibitive until the scientists and technicians could figure out how to repair the mass relays.

The galaxy had become a very different place after the Reaper War. For a start, all of the allies that Commander Shepard had managed to get to help in the fight, were now stranded on humanity's homeworld, relaying on quantum entanglement communications to reach their planets. Hadn't been for the expertise the quarian had in growing dextro food anywhere, the dextro amino-acid aliens would have starved. The extranet, that had been based on mass relays comm buoys, was also gone, replaced on Earth by the old internet and on each planet by a local network.

The Alliance also had to deal with the mercenary bands like Eclipse or the Blue Suns. It seemed a good idea at the time to recruit them for the war efforts, but when it was over they only wanted to have their own profit.

Then, of course, there was the conflict with the krogan. It was almost a blessing that the mass relays weren't operational, because that meant that most krogan were confined on Tuchanka instead of throwing asteroids on Council worlds. Shortly after the Reapers had been defeated, the aliens realized that their genophage hadn't been cured, and they started their war against the Council. The salarians had officially blamed Padok Wiks' lack of skills in synthesizing the cure. They even offered another try for when the relays could be repaired, but the krogan had run out of patience. Other voices, however, rumored about sabotage. What most people agreed on was that if there had been a sabotage, Commander Shepard had no way of knowing it and that she had acted in good will.

Kaidan, who had known Shepard first hand, didn't know what to think. He had never spoken about the genophage attempted cure with her, but he had seen her kill Wrex on Virmire. He knew that she had never trusted the synthetics and therefore it wasn't hard to imagine why she had helped the quarians on Rannoch, even when it meant the extermination of the geth. However, he didn't know if she would have gone as far as to doom an entire organic species. Now it was too late to ask her. Everybody thought of her as the great hero, forgetting that once she had been nicknamed the Butcher of Torfan.

To be fair, not even he could say that he had understood Shepard completely. He had spent some glorious intimate moments with her, before the mission on Ilos and on several other occasions after defeating Sovereign on the Citadel. Then, she had died. Other people could believe that she had been only severely wounded, or even that she had spent two years undercover. Kaidan however had seen the Normandy explode, and the last escape pod empty except for the pilot.

He had mourned her, knowing that he had loved her but not sure if she had loved him back. Then, after two years, he had heard rumors that she was alive. He had seen her on Horizon and practically merged with her in a long hug. Still, he couldn't understand what was she doing with Cerberus. He had said words that he later came to regret. Of course, he had been right about Cerberus, but he didn't know all the circumstances that forced her to accept their help.

She had forgiven him, but he could never again be as close to her as he had wanted. She had accepted only his friendship. Kaidan heard that the times she had visited the Huerta Memorial, she had spent more time with a certain drell that with him.

After the Normandy had been given to him, after he had visited the grave of Valerie Shepard, he had done something that he wasn't proud of, but that he had needed to do in order to give himself some peace of mind. He had gone up to the cabin that used to be hers, and had read the messages in her private terminal. That man, Thane Krios, had called her 'siha' and said in no ambiguous words that he loved her. Had she loved him back? He could never know, and he would never be able to ask her. He gained nothing from speculating if with time she would have given him, Kaidan Alenko, a second chance.

He couldn't say that the life that he was living after the Normandy returned to Earth wasn't fulfilling professionally. There was a lot to do, and he was a man trusted by both the humanity and the Council. He was a respected General in the Alliance. He had become influential, although he wasn't used to it.

The shuttle landed on the Alliance headquarters in Vancouver. After a short debrief where he informed of their success, he went straight to the showers. He let the hot water soothe his muscles and his thoughts at the same time. The smell of krogan blood left his skin. It could as well be a smell he wouldn't need to feel often in the future, considering that all the krogan stranded on Earth were male and that with each mission fewer of them were left alive. With the genophage still in effect and the losses they had suffered from the Reapers, their numbers in general could only shrink.

When Kaidan finally reached his home, at night, he opened a beer and sat on one of his coaches, in front of the picture of the Normandy's crew. The picture had been taken during the party held in Shepard's apartment on the Citadel, after that incident with the clone and the actual shore leave they had, following that. There they all were, the survivors from the SR-1, from the suicide mission to the collector's base that Kaidan didn't participate in, and from everything else that happened while they were searching for allies around the entire galaxy. She was there, in the middle of the picture, calmly looking at her front. Just from seeing her face in that image it would have been impossible to guess her strength and her resolve.

"Cheers, Shepard," he said to the picture raising his beer, and he smiled. He would have liked to see her one more time, even if she couldn't reply to him. He regretted not being able to see her at the hospital when she was unconscious. He knew that she had visited him when he was in that state in Huerta Memorial, and he couldn't return the favor. That fact alone hurt more than the ongoing conflict with the krogan, the loss of the mass relays and the general state of disarray the galaxy was left in after the war.

When he finally went to sleep, he went alone, like he had for quite some time. Actually, the last time that he had slept with anyone beside him on the bed, had been when that short blonde haired hurricane still commanded the SSV Normandy SR-1. Missing her had become his normal state, to the point that he could almost laugh about it. Almost.