Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my opened ears
Inciting and inviting me.

(Lennon/McCartney)

Chapter 3 – Shades of Life

Back on the Citadel to meet with Anderson, report his findings and get his new assignment, Kaidan also considered calling Jess for a second date.

"I read your report, Commander. I'm glad Shepard arrived in time to rescue you," Anderson said. "It is unfortunate, though, that half the colony was abducted."

Kaidan just nodded.

"Are you okay, Alenko?"

"Do you think it's really her, sir?"

"You don't? C-sec has the best scans in the galaxy. They say it's her."

"But, do you believe she was really dead for two years?"

"I know it's hard to believe it, Commander, but I learned to expect anything from Shepard. Thank God she's back, even if it's the work of Cerberus. The Council reinstated her as a Spectre, but they won't do anything else for her or for us. Neither the Council nor the Alliance recognizes the Reapers as the real threat here. Shepard is humanity's best hope and she wouldn't have the resources to do what she's doing from anyone but Cerberus."

Kaidan hated how much sense that made. Clearly, he wasn't thinking when he had called her a traitor.

Back in his apartment, instead of calling the doctor, he decided to write Shepard an e-mail. It took him a long time and a lot of rewrites and when he finally hit 'send' he still wasn't happy about it. It was that damned habit of his of always leaving a way out that again had kept him from telling her what he really wanted to. At least he had said he was sorry for the way he had talked to her back on Horizon. But then he had told her about his date. Why on earth would he mention that? He had been in one lousy date and it hadn't meant anything. Mentioning that was more than leaving a way out, it was a childish attempt to hurt her. He should have waited longer to write that e-mail, waited until he could get a hold of that emotional rollercoaster her unexpected return had thrown him in. Dammit! Now the shit was done. It was best to wait for her reply and then just ask her, beg her if needed, for her to meet him, so they could talk privately and in person.

After that, every beep from his omni-tool made his heart race with hope that it could be a message from her. He got one from Joker first.

Jackass.

That was all the message said. Yeah, he probably deserved that.

Then he got one from an unknown sender.

Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, my name is Miranda Lawson – Normandy SR-2 XO. I speak in behalf of Commander Stella Shepard and her crew. If you make any other attempt to disrupt the Commander's attention from the mission she's expected to perform, whether it comes in the form of messages written with the intention to disturb her emotional balance or another display of passive-aggressive attitude towards her if a random encounter between the two of you happens to take place again, you will be considered hostile and there will be retaliation. We are on a critical mission and failure is not an option. We cannot afford any distractions or emotional upheavals. We need the Commander at her best. Humanity depends on her. Do not try to contact her again, I warn you.

Thank you for your attention.

It was a rather polite way to threaten someone. And it meant Cerberus was reading Shepard's mail. Joker too. Great. He wondered if she knew that. She probably did. Nothing ever escaped her. She probably didn't mind or she would have done something to prevent it.

He re-read Miranda's message, trying to extract every bit of information he could from between the lines. It looked like his harsh words on Horizon and his lame e-mail had affected Shepard to the point that her crew had been able to notice it. It was hard to believe that. He had never seen a crack on her Commander Fucking Shepard mask once she'd put it on. Hadn't she moved on? Was it possible that she still… loved him?

But then two whole weeks had gone by and he still hadn't gotten a reply from her. She had turned into a ghost, haunting him every day, driving him insane. He would hear her voice in every freaking store on the Citadel, her vid punching the insufferable reporter Khalisah Al-Jilani had gone viral, her name would show up every day in random Alliance reports – for sending them compromising intel on Cerberus (was she with them or not?), for returning the dog tags from the SSV Normandy crew that had been killed in action, for turning Ronald Taylor over to them, for saving the SSV Broken Arrow. Not a day would go by without her name popping up a couple of times in front of him.

His friends insisted he should go out with Jessica again, probably noticing how disturbed he had been looking lately. They kept saying he had to resume his efforts to get his personal life back on track from the point it was before Shepard's return. As if it were that simple…

However he found himself in her presence again. Jessica's, not Shepard's. He hadn't asked her on a second date. Actually, Derek, Chloe, Greg and Jenna had set him up, saying everyone was going out for drinks at Flux and then not showing, so the two of them would be alone. Jess looked disheartened when she got their message with some lame excuse for their absence and Kaidan felt bad for her. He hadn't realized he had been such a poor company on their first date. Well, now that he was thinking about it, it seemed they were having a good time, but then he hadn't made a move on her the entire night and hadn't called her for a second date when she had made it clear she was interested, with all the touching and easy smiles. She must have thought he hadn't liked her after all.

He looked at the obviously disappointed woman in front of him and decided he would try to be a better date this time. He owed it to Greg and Jenna to give Jess a chance.


Jess had beautiful long blond hair. Shepard kept her black hair always short. She used to cut it herself. One time, right after she had become a Spectre, she had gotten back to the Normandy after completing some assignment in the Strennus System saying she was going to shave her head. All because her hair had gotten one centimeter longer than usual and an errant strand had fallen over her eye when she was about to take a shot at a merc. One missed shot and she wanted to shave her head. Leave it to Shepard to fight a varren with a nuke. But then he had managed to talk her out of it just by saying he liked her messy hair the way it was. He remembered how her eyes had widened just a little bit at his words and a small smile had tugged at the corner of her mouth and then she had settled for her regular cropped cut. She was his commanding officer and he shouldn't be giving his opinion without being asked, especially about something of personal nature, but the fact that he had and had gotten that reaction from her had made his heart pound like mad.

No! Stop that! Stop thinking about Shepard! This is exactly why you've been alone and miserable for over two years, he chided himself internally.

Kaidan signaled the waitress. He and Jess needed a drink fast so they could loosen up a bit. It worked and they were soon talking about movies and music and other trivial stuff. There was no mention of what was new on the heavy weaponry market, no discussion of strategies to assault geth, no agonizing over the Reaper threat and the fate of the galaxy. It was… relaxing. After having a few drinks, they danced – for him the latter was only possible after a considerable amount of the former.

Jess actually knew how to dance. She was not stiff and awkward like Shepard. Or him. Yeah, dancing was not for him, even after a few drinks. He wanted to get out of there.

The dance floor was loud and crowded, so they had to talk in each other's ear as he invited her to go get something to eat somewhere else. The way she pressed her body – clad not in armor, but in an incredibly form-fitting mid-thigh length silver dress with a backless halter top – flush against him and put a hand on the back of his head as she asked, "Right now?" almost made him change his mind and stay on the dance floor with her. But his biotic appetite protested and he curled a hand around her waist as he guided her away from the crowd.

As they left the club Kaidan thought about how normal things had been that night. Had he gone to Flux with Shepard, they would surely be leaving with some sort of odd assignment to complete. But with Jess there were no suspicious signals to track, no drug addicts having withdrawal crisis, no shady salarians with illicit scanners; no madness for him to be dragged into.

"So, where are we going?" Jess asked, interrupting his train of thought.

Where hadn't he gone with Shepard?

"If you like Chinese food, there's a new place not far from here. We can walk there," the doctor suggested.

Human food? Excellent suggestion. And a new place? Even better. It meant there would be no memories of him and Shepard there for sure, though that wouldn't make much of a difference if he didn't stop thinking about her. He readily agreed and tried to focus on the woman by his side; Jessica and her sexy little dress.

"I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite restaurant on the Citadel," a recording of his former lover's voice greeted them as they entered the Chinese place.

"You have got to be kidding me," Kaidan muttered under his breath.

"Is something wrong?" Jess asked.

"Let's find a table further from the door," the marine suggested.

"I'm sorry," a waiter intercepted them. "At this late hour we only do take-out."

Jess gave Kaidan an expectant look.

"Uh… I guess… we can eat at my place then?" he said, slightly embarrassed and totally unsure about what exactly he was proposing. He half hoped she would say no.

"Okay. You get the food and I'll hail a cab," she agreed, smiling warmly at him.

He wondered how much of what was happening that night was due to the many drinks he had had at Flux. But there was no way to undo his invitation now. He really was going to take a woman to his apartment.

And, shortly after, there they were.

"Whoa! You certainly got a lot of food there, soldier. How many more people are coming to dinner?" she jested as he began setting the table, her pouty lips curled in an amused smile.

He shot her a confused look. What was wrong with that amount of food? It was food for two. Oh… right. For two biotics. For him and Shepard. God, this was never going to work if he didn't get Shepard out of his head. And now he was feeling self-conscious about eating in front of the doctor.

She must have noticed his sudden embarrassment, because she hastily changed the subject. "How about we have a drink with that?"

He had never had people over and he didn't usually drink. "Beer?" he offered, hoping she would accept. It was all he had.


He didn't know how they had gotten there, but there they were, in his bedroom, and he was kissing her and backing her towards his bed. He probably had had too much to drink. Even before having those beers in his apartment he had had too much to drink already. It was not like him to go to bars and dates, let alone drink too much and sleep with someone on a second date, but he didn't know who he was anymore, he didn't know who Shepard was anymore, he didn't know what they were anymore.

He needed something real to cling to. He wanted to, needed to feel human again. He tried. Dr. Wri– Jess, with her impossibly smooth and perfectly tanned skin, didn't feel real though.

Shepard's skin was pale from ever being fully covered by her armor. When had she had the privilege to lay undisturbed under the sun, wearing a bikini and sipping on a colorful drink? Never. Everybody knew the day Shepard would go for a holiday on the beach would be the day a Reaper would decide to claim the place for itself. And smooth skin? Not since she was eighteen and had taken a bullet during an Alliance operation to catch a drug lord and dismantle his gang in Rio. The wound hadn't healed properly, because she had asked some unlicensed doctor on the favela to stitch her up, and then she had been captured by the Alliance and her infected wound had only been discovered much later, when she had started running a fever. Actually, she had a few scars from before that, but they were… off-limits. She never talked about them.

No, this wasn't right. This night shouldn't be about Shepard. It should be about Jessica. Jess. He would never have to help this woman clean creeper vomit off her armor. He would never have to put her dislocated shoulder back in place after a krogan charge. He would never have to dig out with his bare fingers in the middle of the battlefield a polonium round lodged in her ribs. Not if Shepard really was out there, fighting the Collectors, the Reapers and keeping the galaxy safe. And Jess would never take a damned polonium round for him. She would never die for her crew, for her stubborn helmsman. Everything about Jess was safe and normal. Jess was all civilian – the complete opposite of the super-soldier Commander Shepard – which made her the perfect date for someone who needed to get over Shepard. And he needed to get over her. He didn't want to, though, and all he could think about was how this woman of impossibly smooth skin was nothing like his Shepard.


His omni-tool beeped, interrupting his sleep. It was a request for a video call coming from an encrypted channel. He chose to ignore it and put his tool on mute. It was four in the morning, a migraine was forming in the back of his head – it was probably going to be an especially nasty one because of his drinking the past night – and he had no clothes on. He was tired, asleep, with a naked woman by his side, thus in no condition at all to take a vid-call at that moment, especially one coming from an unidentified source. Surely it wasn't anyone on the Alliance and none of his friends and family. Could it be…? No, probably not. He had sent her a message and had her contact stored. If she were replying, there would be an ID.

His eyes shifted from his omni-tool to the woman sleeping on his bed. She turned and rested one leg over his and a hand on his chest. Her body was warm and it made him feel… something. Comfort. God, he hadn't realized how much he had missed this. Contact. Intimacy. Sex. It had been over two years since he had last… No. He was not going to start reminiscing about that again right now.

He ran a hand on her arm over his chest. It felt different from what he expected and he immediately went to try her leg that was draped over him. Definitely different and not the bad kind. Shepard was all sturdy and muscular. Jess was more lithe and supple. Her limbs were slender and delicate. It was a shame he had rushed into bed with her like that. That night's events were all hazy in his mind. He wasn't even sure if it were him who kissed her first or the other way around. And he didn't remember at all how they had gotten into his bedroom.

He decided he was going to go out with her again, but their third date would involve much less drinking, hopefully much less thinking about his ex and definitely much more enjoying Jess. She deserved it and he needed it.

He quickly fell back into a peaceful sleep. The migraine he had been expecting never hit.