Content warning for this one, talk of character death and mourning and some imagery that may be upsetting. Please use caution when reading.

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

...

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

-Tennyson

Kaidan sits on a bench in the Presidium, waiting for Anderson. It's warm and artificially sunny; a few human children tear past him laughing at a hanar bobbing along, a little boy with dark hair and a pretty older girl. A female turian scolds them, muttering under her breath that humans don't know how to control their young and should never have been allowed on the Citadel.

He doesn't move on the bench, he doesn't want his dress blues to get wrinkled; it took fifteen minutes to iron them to perfection this morning. He doesn't play with his omni-tool like most people, fussing with text messaging someone or checking the extranet. He drinks a coffee (carefully so as not to spill it) from the salarian run, human themed coffee stand and stares out over the great lake and sees nothing.

Shepard has been dead for a month.

The news won't stop talking about it. It's all over the extranet.

The person he loved more than anything has not breathed for a whole month today. She has not laughed, cried or gotten angry. She has not shot her pistol, used her biotics or smiled in that way that made her eyes crinkle and the small dimples appear in her cheeks. She has not kissed him, or called him LT, or ate cereal. There is no one left alive to call him LT, he hopes Ash will take care of her. Shepard has not barked at Joker, has not chatted to Garrus and has not let Kaidan crawl into her bed.

A month ago he held her and now she is a corpse who will never, ever do those things again.

She is rotting, her cells breaking down. She is turning into dust and maybe if she hit Alchera there are insects there that have found her broken body and have crawled into her eyes and ate her pretty blue irises that Kaidan took a lifetime learning and maybe they are laying eggs in her organs and the coffee is rising up Kaidan's mouth and he wants to vomit and he can't breath-

Death is final. Death is sudden. He hates it. He wants to tear his heart out and never feel a thing again.

Shepard had been afraid for him, she had been afraid to lose him. She should have been afraid for herself.

She should have left Joker behind, he thinks bitterly.

And he hates her for that, too. He hates himself.

Hate is such a loyal companion, one faithful constant. They should make it a law for the universe, like Newtonian physics.

But this one can be called Alenko's Laws.

First law: An object caught in grief experiences hate unless at rest, caught in dreams. There is no equal and opposite force unless her gravity returns.

Kaidan's lips turn up bitterly at his musings, and he drinks more coffee to wash down the bile that has risen in his mouth. The children's laughter echoes in his ears and he wished they would be quiet. The coffee tastes like shit, but it's the only thing keeping him on his feet most days. Shepard's pull of gravity, the thing that attracted him inexorably to her, won't come back. She will spin away from him forever. It's a universal constant, whatever planet he is on, no matter how much biotics he uses, no matter how strong he becomes. He can't fight this gravity.

He still can't pull himself out of the jaws of grief for even a moment; everything he does and says, everything he touches is infected by it.

There's a great black ocean and he is drowning. The only life buoy he can see stands on the shore alone, a ghost. He can only see the pale moon of her face, and the dark wild stands whipping in a violent wind. She turns and walks away and Kaidan goes under, gulping down salty mouthfuls of black water.

There's razor sharp teeth biting at his skin all the time, it feels like he is hopelessly punctured and all his insides have drained out, leaving nothing behind.

How could it all have ended like this? After Saren and Sovereign and all that fighting? He was meant to be her partner and follow her into hell.

He can't eat solids, things he puts in his mouth taste like cardboard. Every time he tries to swallow solids his throat closes up tightly. He's lost ten pounds already. He's drinking too much. He spends nights at the bar but can never seem to drink enough. It just gives him migraines that leave him chucking up whatever he managed to drink into grimy alleyways on the way back to the barracks.

He doesn't cause a scene, he never yells. He acts completely sober except for the shake in his step, the wobble that sometimes sends him falling into his own vomit. He never gets kicked out of the bar; in fact they welcome him every night. If he caused a scene, then he would get reprimanded by the Alliance and have his bid to get back on duty jeopardized.

Kaidan always did have iron control since he learnt that the lack of it caused snapped necks.

The bar is making a fortune on the solider with the dark hair and the darker eyes.

The brass won't allow him back yet. Anderson is stalling his requests.

Kaidan mostly feels like punching him in the mouth, Shepard's surrogate father or not.

His mother keeps calling, asking when he is going to bring that woman he kept talking about back home.

He had rang her from the Normandy when they were near a comm buoy, breathless and uncharacteristically excited over a month ago to say he'd met someone and that they were busy at the moment but next shore leave he'd love to introduce them. Ami Alenko had been terribly flustered and happy, she had said she was going to get her hair dyed and styled to make a good impression and make his father be extra nice and put his good clothes on and asked what Shepard's favorite kind of cake was. He had laughed and told her he would ask and find out. Kaidan still doesn't know and never will. He had forgotten to ask Shepard.

He usually doesn't get serious enough to bring a girlfriend home to his folks. His mother knows him well enough to pick up on the fact that the woman was something special to him.

She had made up the guest bedroom and aired it out and put the large handmade quilt on the bed so Shepard didn't get cold since it was winter in Canada.

She had seen the attack on his ship on the news and once he had fielded her panicked call, making sure he was ok, she had been politely enquiring about how he felt about losing his CO. He had said he was coping and she hadn't realized at all that Shepard had meant anything more than a professional relationship to him.

Kaidan starts dodging her calls. He had never told her that Shepard was in the Alliance too, he hadn't wanted his dad to get angry about that. Instead, he eventually mumbles that they broke up, that it just didn't work out. His work life was just too hectic.

Ma sounded so disappointed.

Kaidan just wants to get back to work. He wants to find whatever ship was responsible for the Normandy's destruction. He wants to kill them.

He's stuck on the Citadel until Anderson is satisfied that he's been going to a grief counsellor, working through some of his rage. But he doesn't have any, he tells Anderson. He feels fine. Just a little sad now. The funeral and the outburst at Joker was an aberration, he argues. The heat of the moment. He didn't mean it. It was just delayed stress from the attack.

Kaidan is actually a good liar when there is nothing inside to stop him. Sometime he wonders if this is how sociopaths feel all the time. Lying used to feel wrong. Shepard had teased him that he was never any good at it.

Kaidan goes to the grief counsellor. He goes to all his appointments, perfectly on time and says the things he is meant to say.

That it was a shock, the attack was violent.

No, he feels no ill will towards Jeff Moreau.

Yes, it upset him for a little while but he is over it now.

No, he is sleeping and eating.

Yes, Shepard was a good commanding officer and he misses her.

Losing two comrades in the space of a few months and crew members is tough, but he is dealing with it.

Yes, he is appropriately mourning.

He says that he writes old fashioned letters to her and burns them as a coping mechanism, but Kaidan really does nothing of the sort. He says that he visits the makeshift memorial on the Presidium but really Kaidan adds half an hour to his commute just to stay three blocks away from it at all times.

The counsellor is ignorant of their true relationship and he likes it that way.

He goes back to the barracks at night, climbs into his neat Alliance bunk and does not think at all. He closes his eyes and he sees nothing. He does not picture her face, or her smile or even her voice when she yells. He is calm, his hands folded across his stomach and the blankets carefully arranged over him. He is the very model of an Alliance soldier. There is no ghost beside him in the bed, sleeping with her fist under her chin against his front and the gentle swell of her chest pressed against him. He does not reach out in the night expecting a warm, soft body there.

Sometimes he lays there all night, not sleeping at all, but in a fugue. He prefers the not sleeping part.

In his dreams, it is different. They are confused and so real. He dreams in color and sound, better and more alive than any holographic vid. He sees her face again and he is in love.

In the dream they are on the Normandy still. It is not on fire. They are in her comfortable bed and naked and wrapped around each other. They are joined. The sheets are sweat-soaked and smell of sex and Shepard. They move together, a perfect give and take. His body wants hers in his dreams, used to being with her every night. He wakes up unsatisfied every morning and can't bring himself to fix it himself; it feels wrong to think of her like that as she drifts in space, a corpse. He doesn't have warm showers anymore; he doesn't give himself the comfort.

He was too used to the smell of her skin, the feel of her under his hands. She had small scars, one just above her right breast, one on her bicep, another on her inner thigh. They were shrapnel wounds and marks from her childhood.

In his dream, he kisses them all and he loves each and every one. His kisses his way over her flat belly, over her hips and up her spine to her neck. Sometimes she cries when he does that and he doesn't know why he dreams like that. Dreams are meant to be perfect. They are meant to be his escape but even they are tainted.

He sits on the Presidium bench and waits and waits for Anderson and feels nothing at all.

The older man walks towards him; he seems shorter than normal, less imposing and broad.

Shepard had loved him, had always spoke about him with such reverence and childish pride. Almost hero worship but Kaidan sees no hero now, just a broken old man.

"Lieutenant." Anderson nods, and Kaidan stands to salute him crisply.

"Captain Anderson."

"It's going to be Councillor soon, actually." He motions Kaidan to sit back on the bench, so he does. Anderson settles down beside him. Kaidan doesn't look him in the eye, his gaze fixed on the lake.

"I see, sir."

Anderson looks at his profile; Kaidan ignores the movement out of the corner of his eye. "You wanted to speak about the compassionate leave I've put you on?"

"Yes, sir." He answers. "I wanted to discuss returning to active duty. The leave is unnecessary and a waste of resources. I feel that my skills will be better put to use out in the field. I want on the task force investigating the Normandy's attack and subsequent destruction."

"Denied." Anderson says flatly. "You look terrible, son. You look thin."

Kaidan looks at him calmly. "Sir, respectfully, I'm healthy. I passed the medical. That's not your call."

"The medical said you showed signs of PTSD. That your blood pressure is elevated, that you exhibited signs of exhaustion."

"And I still passed; everything was within range of acceptable Alliance health standards." He insists firmly and reasonably, Anderson shifts uncomfortably on the bench. "I feel fit and fine."

"Alenko-"

"Anderson."

"Shepard was special." Anderson starts and Kaidan already know what he is going to say. Everyone loves saying it. "I know how you feel but-"

"Again, respectfully sir, I doubt that. Shepard was just my CO, you knew her since she was a kid. It's different." Kaidan shrugs nonchalantly. "I'm fine. I'm no different from any other crew member and Adams has already been reassigned, as has most of my marine detail on my recommendation."

Anderson sighs, disappointed with his attitude. "If that's the way you want to play it, alright. I'll get you back on rotation. But permission to join the Normandy task force is denied."

"Sir. Yes, sir." Kaidan says with icy steel in his voice.

There's silence for a moment, both men watch the lake and the human children that are now throwing bits of trash they've collected from the Presidium walkways into the clear water.

Kaidan watches the little girl with rare cornsilk-colored hair shriek with glee and throw a Blasto candy wrapper. It flutters colorfully into it, and the child's mother rushes over yelling at the kids for being unhygienic. He thinks of bright cards falling around Shepard's face as she throws them into the air and looks away.

Kaidan stares into the darkness and the darkness stares back. He made the wrong kind of promise.

"Son...Is there anything you want to tell me?" Anderson finally says gently. "I know I'm a superior officer but whatever is said between us can remain that way if it will help."

"No, sir." Kaidan looks him in the eyes steadily. "What could I possibly have to say? It's all in my report."

Anderson falls silent again, and looks away to begin speaking. "I miss her. She was...happy the last time I spoke to her over comm. Tired but happy, and that gives me some comfort. She didn't have an easy life for a long time but she died doing what she loved, with a crew she cared about. Making sure they were safe. Soldiers don't often get to go out that way."

There's a cold hard pit of rage in Kaidan's stomach and he feels it flare to life like a mutant eezo nodule. He feels bitter words writhe and twist out of it, unborn, malformed and burning.

He hates Anderson too, for a moment. He thinks about turning and punching him in the mouth until he knocks his teeth out.

"With respect, I don't think she wanted to go out at all." He says, his voice low and sharp, his teeth gritted. "I don't think when the vacuum sucked out her air and...froze her lungs that she was thinking 'geez, what a nice way to go.' I think she died panicked, terrified, in pain and alone, sir. I only hope that when she hit the atmosphere that she was already dead."

Kaidan glances at Anderson and feels a tiny twinge of guilt. The older man's face is sunken and grey and he suddenly thinks Anderson is old and washed up. Kaidan's bitter words have actually brought a watery sheen to his eyes and he wants to snatch back the cruelness that has burst out. Shepard would hate him for these words. It's too late so instead he says nothing more.

"We're all alone in the end, Alenko." The old N7 soldier says and Kaidan hears the rebuke in it.

"We shouldn't be."

"You couldn't have been there." Anderson replies. "If you were, she would have hated you for it."

Kaidan says nothing. He feels nothing, what is there to say? He would have gladly lived with Shepard's hate if she was alive to feel it.

He should have been the one to go get Joker. Together even, they might have been quick enough. He could have biotically Pulled her into the escape pod, at least.

Joker should have been left behind.

Kaidan feels a twist of loathing in his stomach and knows it is for no one but himself. It burns the worst of all.

Anderson is apparently done with him and little angry. He says, "Dismissed."

Kaidan leaves and packs his belongings in the barracks. It's not much; everything was destroyed on the Normandy.