A/N: Thanks to everyone who added this story to their alerts. Special thanks to Enchanter TIM for her support.
Images of broken light, which
Dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe.
(Lennon/McCartney)
Chapter 2 – Images of Broken Light
Two years later, Staff Commander Alenko had a ship – the SSV Shangai –, a crew and they were fighting… geth. He knew all too well that was not the fight the Alliance should be investing in, but there was nothing he could do about it. He just had to coordinate the clearing of one last geth outpost in some unremarkable planet and then he and his crew would get a well-deserved two-week shore leave.
After the job was done, the SSV Shangai docked at the Citadel. Most of the crew went to get transportation to whatever systems they wanted to spend their leave in. Kaidan decided to stay at the Citadel, where he had recently gotten an apartment. His closest friends – Gunnery Sergeant Derek Brown and his XO Lieutenant Gregory Scott – also stayed at the Citadel.
Derek was engaged to Dr. Chloe Michel and Greg was married to biomedical engineer Jenna Wright. They were all close friends and it was only natural that they would try to find someone for the only bachelor in their group.
After a lot of pushing, Kaidan finally agreed to go out for drinks with Jenna's younger sister – Dr. Jessica Wright.
"Please, call me Jess."
"Alright… Jess."
She was nothing like Shepard. Five minutes talking and she had already touched his right hand that was resting around his glass over the table. Twice. That easy intimacy was strange. Well, it shouldn't be, after all there were no regs to hold them back. But, still…
"I'm a dermatologist."
"Dermatologist? That's… safe." It was all he could think of to say about that.
"Safe?" she smiled, kind of amused. "Yeah, I guess it is."
She wasn't fresh out of med school. At age 29 she had actually already built quite a reputation for herself. If you had a bad case of acne or got molluscum contagiosum from an asari, she was the one you wanted.
She dealt with acne, pimples and moles. No burnt victims, no skin cancer, no blood. It was refreshing to be around someone like that, someone who did not have to deal with death, loss and tragedy on a daily basis.
They talked, endured a couple of awkward silences, had a few drinks, talked more easily, laughed and then he walked her home. After a polite goodbye on her doorstep, he went back to his place thinking that dating wasn't as bad he had thought it would be. Maybe it was time for him to really let himself have a life again. Yeah, it was time.
He hadn't even gotten home yet when his omni-tool beeped. It was a message from Admiral Anderson. "Commander Alenko, we have a situation. Come to my office ASAP."
"These are security vids retrieved from the prison ship Purgatory. They sent a generic distress signal before going silent two days ago. We thought a prisoner mutiny had led to the massacre that took place there, but… here," Anderson said, hitting the key to play the vid, "see for yourself."
Kaidan found it hard to trust his eyes when what they were seeing was Commander Stella Shepard very much alive, in the company of two Cerberus operatives and shooting down humans and aliens, prisoners and Blue Suns guards, giving hell to anyone who crossed her path.
"This can't be really her, sir," Kaidan uttered, struggling to keep his voice blank. There was too much going through his head right now – memories, hope, doubts, pain, hurt, anger…
"I sent her a message asking her to come see me," Anderson said.
"Did you get an answer?"
"Yes. She'll be here in three days."
That did it. Kaidan seemed to have forgotten how to breathe and wisps of dark energy escaped his hands, causing Anderson to eye him suspiciously. He had to say something, anything, before the Admiral started asking questions about his obvious distress. "Can I be here when she comes, sir?" he breathed out as he fought to regain control of his emotions.
"I'm afraid not, Alenko. The Alliance has just received some important intel on who's behind the attacks on human colonies and which one is most likely to be targeted next. We'll be sending you there to investigate."
Anderson briefed Kaidan on his new mission and informed him he would be leaving in six hours.
It was the weirdest thing, being aware but completely unable to move. Defenseless, he watched as those mysterious swarms paralyzed all the colonists, as the Collectors – a race he wasn't even sure it really existed until now – arrived in great numbers and started shoving people into creepy pods and taking them away. There was nothing he could do but wait for his turn to be taken. He had heard what had happened in Freedom's Progress, Ferris Fields and other remote human colonies and he hadn't been able to wrap his mind around the fact that everyone had been gone with no shots being fired, no signs of battle. Now he was learning exactly how it had happened.
The Alliance intel had pointed out the terrorist group Cerberus as the most probable culprit behind the deserted human colonies. He was learning now first-hand how wrong their intelligence had been. Whatever it was that had paralyzed him, it was much stronger than stasis, totally different from cryo and definitely no known technology. It made him feel weak, caused the buzz of his biotics to cease completely and drastically slowed his heart rate.
Suddenly, there was gunfire and about a third of the Collectors stopped loading people into their grotesque pods to go face whatever it was that had dared interrupting them. Did someone come to aid the colonists? How, if they didn't even have time to set a distress beacon or send any messages? Wouldn't these people get paralyzed too by the seeker swarms? Whoever it was, it was posing a real threat, because more than half the creatures had already left to fight.
The gunfire was getting louder, closing in. The pods had been completely abandoned now. All Collectors were engaged in battle. And then Kaidan heard… her.
"I'll take point. Jacob, on my six. Massani, inferno grenade now!" he heard her shout. Her voice sounded exactly the same – confident and determinate as she had always been on the battlefield.
The fight went on. His skin crawled when he heard one of the creatures make direct threats to her, calling her by her name, promising that she would know pain. If that was really her and not some Cerberus operative somehow using her face – and her voice, her skills, her prowess and obstinacy in combat? – so her death had been just a cover for her to switch sides? Before the Normandy had gone down, they had been spending a lot of time together. There had been no sign she might have been communicating with Cerberus or planning to leave the Alliance. Also, the Shepard he knew would never do something like that. It made no sense.
"Fuck!" he heard her yell and she followed that with a long stream of curses in asari, turian, quarian and human languages, ending with an especially nasty one in krogan she had picked up from Wrex. It had to be her. Only she could curse like that and it meant she was in trouble.
Alchera came to his mind – how he had sat in that empty escape pod waiting helplessly for the moment she would be gone beyond hope – and now he was feeling somewhat like that. Being helpless did not sit well with him.
The gunfire didn't cease for what it felt like hours. The agony of just waiting there, unable to move, unsure about what was going to happen… it was maddening. Then he heard the defense towers going online and start firing. The Collector ship fled and, all of a sudden, he regained his movements.
If there was someone, anyone in the galaxy who could pull off a rescue when there was no more hope, it was Shepard. She was there, alive. It had to be her.
And then he saw her and everything went to hell. She was with a man in a Cerberus uniform; the one that had appeared by her side in every security vid he had watched since the rumors about her return had started. Anderson kept sending him those damned vids and asking him for input on what she might be doing and the people she was with. So help him, being stationed on the dull colony of Horizon allowed him too much free time for his own good and he was spending hours thrashing over those vids, even after his reports about them had been long done and sent.
Besides the Cerberus operative, her other ally that day was a known criminal, founder of the Blue Suns, a mercenary and bounty-hunter called Zaeed Massani. The bad company wasn't all that was wrong at the sight of her. Her scars from Torfan – one on her upper lip and the other on her left eyebrow – were gone. The red glint in her eyes made it obvious they weren't real, definitely not the eyes he remembered. And the new red scars on her face indicated that was not his Shepard, but someone – or something – with too many cybernetic implants for comfort.
However her relieved sigh at the sight of him unharmed, the way her expression softened as she looked into his eyes and her sad smile caused his body to move on its own accord to hug her. It felt like home. Her scent was the same. The way her body felt against his was the same. Her height, her voice, her curses were the same. Her biotics felt different though, and he backed away.
He wanted to believe her, but her story sounded like the plot of a bad sci-fi holo-movie. He couldn't decide if he trusted that person to be her and in the end he had called her a traitor, but had told her to take care. It had been the worst talk ever. To ruin it completely, he had spoken his piece and then he had turned his back on her; he had simply walked out, fled cowardly from the conversation without giving her a proper chance to explain herself.
He hadn't gone very far though, before regret had dawned on him. Why was he acting like that? He owed her better than that. He should talk to her in private, ask more questions, try to make sure it was really her and see if she needed help. He didn't even ask if she was injured. He remembered a time when he would have given anything to have one more day with her. Now he had it and he was going to throw it away? He halted and looked back, decided to call her name, to try again, to make it better and to give her a chance. Give them another chance. But she already had her back to him and was looking down as she limped towards a shuttle with her team. The one on her right, the Cerberus operative, put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She looked up at him and said something Kaidan couldn't quite make out the words. The man replied with a warm smile and kept his hand on her shoulder until they reached the shuttle. Then, he helped her jump in.
The marine ran a hand through his hair and refrained himself from calling her name. He turned on his heels again. Over two years had gone by. He was trying to replace her and she had probably replaced him already.
