Bioware's party, I'm just crashing it. Call me Alice.

Chapter 28

He Said

I stared up at the ceiling after she'd gone, wondering at the fact that I was considering forgiving her. She wasn't the woman I'd fallen in love with two years ago. She was more driven, more desperate. But if she was right? If the Reapers were coming sooner rather than later? And she could stop them?

Yes, I helped her mutiny once. But the danger was clear and present. It wasn't chasing down a needle in a haystack, or one ship in an entire galaxy, to be exact. I sat up, leaning my arm on my raised knee and propped my head on my hand. What was more important to me, Shepard? Or my career?

If she kept treating me like one of her subordinates, my career.

I stood up and stretched. My migraine was better; at least the volus with the turbohammer wasn't pounding on the inside of my skull anymore. All that was left was the lingering after-pain that, if I wasn't careful, could cascade into another fairly quickly. After the last week of events, I counted myself lucky that this had been my first one in a while.

I sat down on the chair in front of my desk and put my head in my hands. She wasn't the woman I'd fallen in love with, but there was enough of her there that I still loved her, still thought about her every moment I was awake. Hell, my bed still smelled like her. It kept that part of me at the front of my brain that just wanted to find her and bend her over the nearest table, no matter who was around. I felt my groin stir at my very helpful imagination.

Sex would solve nothing. I needed a cold shower.

While the icy water ran over me, I started trying to figure out a way to show Shepard I wasn't going to take this lying down. Preferably before my crew was dumped. I knew Shepard would put them somewhere comfortable but remote. It's what I would do, after all. In my position, she'd do her best to sabotage me, probably up to and including setting the self-destruct. While I didn't want to go that far, I wondered if I could trick her into thinking I would. I couldn't count on any of her team to help me, nor could I ask for help from my remaining crew, they were too green and this wasn't a training exercise.

However, Shepard had gathered one hell of a skilled crew. I had no delusions about my tech savyness when going up against Tali, or that geth. They'd wipe the floor with me. I would need to do something that was too fast for them to counteract, or too subtle. I turned off the water and grabbed a towel. I had a plan.

I got dressed and started on the sandwiches Shepard had brought me earlier. A starving biotic needs to keep his strength up, after all. Chewing thoughtfully, I sat down to work. I needed to lay traps and false trails all over the ship's operating systems and firewalls. I knew I was up against a very talented quarian engineer, and a geth. While I wasn't sure what the geth was capable of, I knew what Tali'Zorah could do. I just assumed the geth was tougher to fool and would figure out my false trails faster. I disguised what I was doing, just in case Tali or Legion decided to run a diagnostic or something; my activities should turn up as nothing more than a normal subroutine. My only worry at this point was Shepard coming to check on me, or sending someone else. It was going to take at least 48 hours of work to get my plan into place.

That was a lot of open time to be discovered and stopped. And I had no idea of the ETA to our destination. I was afraid to poke around and look for our destination in case it gave off clues to what I was actually doing. I jumped at the door chime.

Blanking my monitor, I called, "Yes?" I stood up and walked around my desk.

The door cycled open and Garrus Vakarian stepped through, blinking in the dim lighting. I'd forgotten to raise it after my migraine and since I'd been working, I hadn't needed them on. "Commander, do you have a minute?"

I turned the lights higher and told him, "Yes, what's up, Vakarian?"

"I think you and I need to talk."

"Can't it wait? I'm in the middle of something."

He stepped closer and cocked his head at me, "I don't think it can. I didn't tell you everything about Omega, Alenko." His cheekplates flared in anger and he crossed his arms. "I - didn't take my betrayal well."

I smirked sardonically, "I doubt anyone ever takes betrayal well, Vakarian."

He looked at me steadily, "To the point of attempting to take out your betrayer with a sniper rifle in the middle of Zakera Ward? In front of hundreds of witnesses? Where you considered shooting through your best friend in the head, just to assuage your own guilt?"

I winced, "What stopped you?"

"She kept him talking. Made me see what had happened. My squad's betrayal was my fault because I put a man in a position he wasn't ready for. Yes, he betrayed us, but I failed him as a leader." He glared at me, but I'm sure the fierce gaze was directed inward, not at me. "Shepard helped me see the truth. She would never tell me that it was my fault. I don't think you humans would see it that way. But as a turian, it was my fault. I trusted someone that shouldn't have been trusted. But to have even considered, for a microsecond, shooting through Shepard just to assuage my own guilt, scared me."

He paused and I waited, sure he wasn't done yet. I may not know turians well, but I felt sure I knew this one, despite the two years' distance. "She brought me back, Alenko. I was obsessed and not thinking clearly. If she had let me shoot that man, the man that betrayed my squad, me, I'm not sure what would have happened to me. I certainly wouldn't be able to help her, now." He took off his scouter lens and crossed the room to hand it to me. Scratched into the metal were twelve names with one crossed out violently.

I looked up at him, "Help her? How?"

He looked away. It was odd seeing him without his optical device, he seemed naked. I handed it back to him. Attaching it back to his skull, he answered me. "You've seen how obsessed she is with the Reapers, right? She's fine day-to-day, but when they come up, or the Collectors, or mention of the Council's coverup, she starts reminding me of me, after Omega. I wonder if she'll shoot her best friend to get to her goal. So to speak. And I also worry what will be left after that."

I shook my head. The turian was more right than he knew. "She's told me she doesn't think she'll survive the Reapers, Garrus." The gravity of our conversation was sinking in and I used his first name for the first time in over two years. I wasn't going to trust him to help me, but if things went sideways and I lost what little I had of Shepard's trust entirely, it was good to know someone else had her back. "She's using up everything she is because she doesn't think there'll be an 'after' for her."

Vakarian looked at the floor, "I know. She told me that, once. I couldn't convince her differently then, either." He paused and looked up at me, "Convince her there are things worth sticking around for and I'll," he shrugged, "I don't know. I can't offer to help you get your ship back. I can't betray her like that. But I'll... do my best." I nodded. He seemed to take that as an agreement because he turned on his heel and left my quarters.

I sat down heavily at my desk. So I wasn't the only one who saw it. I didn't think Tali saw it, and I wasn't sure Joker or Doctor Chakwas did either, but the turian was close enough to her to notice her abrupt changes. I turned my monitor back on and when back to work, the problem of Shepard's suicidal tendencies running through the back of my mind like some sort of glitched subroutine. There were different kinds of loyalty. One was what Vakarian was displaying in following Shepard, no matter what. The other was not letting your friend, the woman you love, walk over an abyss she couldn't seem to see because her goal was on the other side.

Several hours later, my stomach and my increasing light-headed-ness warned me I needed to stop for food. The sandwiches had been quite some time ago. I carefully backed out of the latest detour I'd programmed into the engineering subroutines to lay my false trail. I double checked to make sure my intrusion could not be detected and shut down my terminal. I didn't want to stop working, but if I didn't eat, I was going to start making stupid mistakes.

I started to leave when the chime on my door pinged again for the third time that day. "Come in!"

Avery stood in the doorway with two trays balanced in each hand. "I thought you might be hungry. Thought I'd bring you some food on my way to eat."

I smiled, I really was grateful to her, but wary. "Thanks. Why would you do that? Trying to keep me from roaming the ship?"

She flushed red, her pale skin showing her every emotion as always, "Of course not. I was being nice. Look, it's kind of awkward to stand in your doorway with two trays. Can I at least come in and put one down?" I rushed over to take them both from her without thinking and set them both on the small round table in the middle of my room.

I froze for a moment, looking at both trays sitting there. Had I just invited her to eat with me? Is that what I really wanted? I looked back at her to find she'd stepped into the room and stood nervously, the door sliding shut behind her. She'd changed since she'd been in here earlier. The tight, low V-neck tank and tailored pants in dark grey made her eyes seem even bluer than usual. "Was that an invitation?" she asked, nervously.

I gestured to one of the chairs, "I guess it was."

I held her chair for her, which earned me a startled glance and a shy smile. When I sat down, she looked at me, her blue yes wide. "Why? Why did you invite me in?"

I looked down at my tray. I had no idea what she'd chosen for me. It was unrecognizable, but then most things to come out of the autochef were. "I - Why don't you trust me?" I blurted out. I wanted to yank the words back into my mouth the minute I'd said them.

She stared at me for a moment, her mouth open in astonishment. "That's - I - Because you don't trust me."

I met her eyes and it seemed we were much farther apart than just the table separating us. "I don't trust you, because you don't trust me, either." My stomach twisted and I was glad I hadn't eaten anything yet.

"That's - I don't know what that is," she finished, her face turning red again. I wasn't sure if it was embarrassment or anger. "Do you still think I lied about dying?"

I picked up my spork and pushed the faux-peas around on my plate. "Sometimes. Do you think I knew you were headed to Horizon?"

I glanced up to see her look down at her hands. Her napkin was probably a shredded mess in her lap. "Sometimes."

I leaned back and tapped my utensil on the tray. "So we each have a reason."

"And we've never talked about it. We just... hopped right into bed." Blue flickered up and down her body as she spoke. I wanted to pull her to me and reassure her I would trust her from now on. But it would be a lie. To myself and to her. Could I have stopped her before she reached this abyss had i come with her on Horizon?

"Was it a mistake?" I asked quietly, dreading her answer.

She looked at me, startled, then her expression softened. "I'd begun to think so. But now? No, no time I've ever spent with you has been a mistake, Kaidan. Whether I trust you or not."

I met her eyes again, the ones I wanted to willingly drown in like the ocean they resembled. I stood up and walked around the table to her. She turned in her chair toward me and I knelt in front of her, putting my arms around her waist. She held me against her, her strong arms wrapping around my shoulders, her fingers stroking my hair. "I want the last two years to go away, Avery."

I felt her kiss the top of my head, "Me, too."