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1.
Shepard isn’t fast enough.
One of the tanks hurtles towards him, flung into the air by Harbinger’s beam, and he tries to dodge. But a Brute had gotten through his shields earlier and torn a wound in his side – shallow, and slathered with medi-gel, and healing, but a wound nonetheless – and as he cuts to the right to avoid the tank a sharp pain spikes through him, tearing the breath from his lungs. He stumbles, and he isn’t fast enough, and his last thought before it hits is that there is no way tanks should be able to move that quickly.
He is vaguely aware of a blue haze surrounding him and feels the warmth of Kaidan’s presence, and then he blacks out.
It is Kaidan’s voice that brings him back, seconds later, yelling hoarsely at him to Get up, Shepard, oh god, open your eyes. He forces them open to meet Kaidan’s frantic brown ones, and watches as his brow smoothes over in momentary relief, only to furrow up again. The next time he speaks, though, his voice is much calmer.
“Okay. Okay, good.” He gives Shepard a cracked, piecemeal grin. “Glad you’re back with us. You’ve got some broken ribs, and –” he gestures to Shepard’s leg, and the too-big hunk of shrapnel sticking out of his calf – “well, there’s that. And you probably have a concussion. Minor head wounds.” His hands are flying over Shepard’s body, not touching, just pointing out the areas of injury. “But you’re gonna be okay, if we can get you help.”
Before Shepard can process, Kaidan glances away, the universal marine habit when talking on the comm. “Normandy, we need an immediate evac. Shepard is down. I repeat, we need an immediate evac.”
His hand shoots out and grabs Kaidan’s shoulder guard. “What? No. No. I didn’t come this far – goddamnit – ” He tries to get to his feet and stumbles, searing pain whiting out his vision at the edges. “Kaidan, help me, we have to get to the beam –”
Garrus’s hands are suddenly holding Shepard’s shoulders, and where did he even come from? Shepard’s focus had been so narrowly on the Conduit and on Kaidan, and he feels a pang of guilt for not even thinking to check on the well-being of his best friend.
But he’s still waiting for Kaidan’s answer, for Kaidan to turn to him and say, yes, of course you’re right, let’s go, and the seconds tick by and nothing comes. And Kaidan won’t meet his eyes, scanning the skies until he spots the Normandy coming in.
“Shepard, come on. We have to get you out of here.”
Shepard almost wrenches his shoulder out of its socket with the force he’s using to get away from Kaidan and Garrus, get back to the Conduit, the only thing that matters right now. One step on his bad leg and he’s back on the ground, face twisting in the pain he can’t ignore – feeling like his leg is being ripped off, head throbbing and aching, Brute wound in his side doubled and joined by the hot, crunching agony of broken ribs moving in ways they never should with every breath he takes.
Kaidan grabs him under his shoulders again before he can protest, hauls him to his feet, and Garrus takes his other side. They speed-hobble to the Normandy’s open door and Shepard feels Kaidan’s supporting arm disappear.
He turns, still not believing that this is happening, grabs Kaidan’s arm again.
“No. No, no, you don’t understand, I have to get to the beam, Kaidan, we can’t win this otherwise –”
“Shepard, you can’t. You’re injured. Badly. You’re bleeding out from all over and you probably have internal damage too. You need medical attention.”
“You can give it to me, you’re a field medic, we can do this together.” He’s jerking against Garrus’s restraining arm now, desperate to get away.
“No, I can’t. Damn it, Shepard, don’t make this harder than it is.”
“Harder?! Kaidan – fuck, Garrus, let me go – Kaidan, I need to do this, everyone is counting on me, it’s my responsibility.”
Kaidan steps up to him, close and in his face. “Not anymore. You’ve done all you can, John. Let someone else take over.”
“Not you.” The words are out of his mouth before he knows what he’s saying, and he sees Kaidan’s eyes widen, just barely, and then he leans in and presses a hard, passionate kiss to Shepard’s mouth. It feels like a goodbye, and Shepard’s insides roil in a way that he knows isn’t related to his injuries.
“Don’t leave me behind,” Shepard pleads. His voice cracks.
“I’ll be there when this is over.” Shepard could always trust those soft whiskey eyes, and he wants so badly to believe Kaidan’s lie, but the false hope in his voice is betrayed by the truth that Shepard sees when they look at each other. “I love you,” Kaidan says, and Shepard’s frantic attempts to break free redouble. Garrus is leaning backwards now, using all of his weight and both arms to keep Shepard with him.
“I love you too,” is all he can say, and Kaidan cups his face for a moment before he turns and sprints towards the Conduit.
Shepard screams, a raw, primal sound that blends and disappears into the unmistakable roar of Harbinger’s beam as it opens fire, the Normandy takes off, and Kaidan is lost.
2.
With all the strength he has in him, plus some he didn’t know he had, Shepard bellows to the ceiling.
“Joker! What are you doing?”
“Getting us out of here, sir,” comes the reply, less snarky than Shepard was expecting, and that throws him – but only for a second. Because Kaidan is out there, alone. He shudders. Even the thought is intolerable to him. This cannot happen. This cannot be happening.
“Turn back. We need to get Kaidan.”
“Negative, Commander. It’s too hot. We’re fast, but not that fast.”
His shoulders are shaking with rage and pain, throbbing through him, adrenaline (and maybe Garrus’s arms) keeping him on his feet. He doesn’t notice the unnatural tightness in Joker’s voice.
“As the Commanding Officer of this ship, Lieutenant Moreau, I order you to turn. the fuck. around.”
“No.”
Liara and Tali have materialized out of somewhere. He’s not really sure where, or why they’re here now. James’s strong presence is on his left, where Kaidan had been just moments ago –
“Joker, I swear I will come up there and systematically break every bone in your body.”
He senses a shift in the atmosphere at his threat. Frightened looks are passing among the crew, especially those who don’t know him all that well. Good, he thinks bitterly.
“I will accept the consequences of my actions, sir.”
“DAMNIT, JOKER –”
“I will not be responsible for your death a second time, Shepard. I can’t.” It’s the first time he’s ever heard Joker raise his voice. The comm squeals a little.
He’s frozen for a second, and before he can react some silent signal must have passed between James and Garrus, because they are bodily dragging him towards the elevator. He struggles again, twisting in their grip desperately, because he has to, has to get back to Earth, back to the Conduit, back to Kaidan. He doesn’t even have a plan right now, just – he’d jump off the ship in nothing but a hardsuit if he had to, anything, he’d take any spark of hope, if only…
The elevator doors close and the men release him. He slams forward, fists pounding against the metal, leaving bloody streaks as he falls to his knees. No, no, no, he’s chanting, even as the metal warps and blurs in his field of vision, pain distorting his world almost as much as the upside-downness of being left here, helpless, everything wrong and backwards.
At some point he’s started crying. Heavy sobs rip his voice apart, and tears streak the blood and soot and grime on his face.
He feels two pairs of hands carefully lift him to his feet and lead him to the medbay. He goes, docile, mind reeling in confusion and refusal, this must be a nightmare. It’s not until Chakwas instructs his escorts to hold him down that something starts to sink in.
He thrashes. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Liara in the doorway, horrified, her hands over her mouth as she watches his limbs flail uselessly against Garrus’s and James’s strong holds. Or it might be horror at the noises that are coming out of his mouth, animalistic growls and threats and screams interspersed with hysterical wailing. Some very distant part of him knows that he isn’t making his case any better, but he is overpowered with a physical need, rooted in his marrow, to get back to London.
London is where everything important is. London is where Shepard was supposed to make his sacrifice. He had been prepared to give himself up, and knowing that Kaidan is there, in his place – it chokes him, sticking in his windpipe until his eyes widen fearfully and he makes sparse, drowning gasps. Chakwas immediately recognizes what is going on, and with no hesitation, jabs a needle into his neck. His muscles relax involuntarily. He can’t struggle anymore, but breathing is easier.
He wishes it wasn’t.
3.
Muscles lax and unresponsive, Shepard realizes that if he wants any chance at all at getting back to Earth, he’s going to have to persuade someone. He works his neck muscles, and his head rewards him with a limp flop to one side.
“Garrus,” he slurs, eyes pleading with the turian. Garrus’s armor is spattered with blood, stark and red. Probably his.
“Garrus, listen to me. Kaidan’s down there. He was there at the beginning, remember?” He winces internally at how childish his voice sounds.
Garrus makes an uncomfortable, noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.
“You remember that time a bunch of Thorian creepers swarmed you, and he threw them all off? You would have gone down if he hadn’t been there.” With great effort, Shepard lolls his head in the other direction.
“James. Jimmy, he’s had your back. That Brute on Mahavid that almost had you, he put it in stasis long enough for you to get your shotgun out and rip him apart.” James looks away.
“Joker,” Shepard yells in desperation, last syllable going shrill.
“I’m not getting into this with you, Shepard.” Joker’s voice crackles through the comm.
“Joker, you were best friends on the SR-1.” Silence. “I know you still care about him. I know you got past… got past what happened.” More silence. “What if it was EDI down there, Joker?”
“I would not wish for the crew to put themselves in undue danger for my sake, Shepard. I believe Major Alenko would feel similarly.” EDI’s smooth synthetic voice does nothing to soothe his rageful helplessness.
“I don’t care how Major Alenko feels,” he snarls. “I care about saving Kaidan’s life. Joker, you’d do the same damn thing if it were EDI.”
“That’s different.” Joker’s voice finally comes through, low and weary and like he knows he’s getting into an argument he can’t win.
Shepard is tired of this, tired of people telling him they’d follow him through hell but only as long as it’s selfless. Only as long as Shepard is the one to fall on his sword.
He is bitter and angry at the war for making him a slave to duty and for taking away his freedom, his happiness, his life, before he turned 30 – and then for rebirthing him into a fire of betrayal and mistrust that he’s only just conquered. He hates everything that stands between him and Kaidan right now, and everything that ever has. And he hates, with every twitch of his powerless muscles and beat of his useless half-machine heart, everything that is trying to kill the only thing that has kept him going, kept him grounded, kept him human.
“Shepard,” Garrus breaks in hesitantly, “if anyone can handle themselves down there, it’s Kaidan.”
Garrus’s placating tone is the step over the line Shepard didn’t know he’d drawn. His resignation drains and ignites into fury, never mind his position, prone and unmoving – he is Commander Shepard and the love of his life is probably already dead, and he should feel reassured because Kaidan can handle himself?
His teeth bare in an ancient, universally-recognizable threat.
“Handle – handle himself? Handling himself isn’t what I’m worried about. I’m worried about him going head to head with the entire Reaper army, alone and abandoned because –” his voice hiccups with emotion – “because the people who were supposed to be his friends are too cowardly to stand with him. And I’m angry because you traitorous bastards are holding me down –” and now he struggles futilely against their hands, still gripping his weak arms – “instead of helping me get back to him.”
He’s sobbing again, panicked and still unwilling to admit to reality, part of him needing to believe that Kaidan will just walk through the medbay door.
“Shepard, we would, but –” Tali’s three-fingered hand rests on his shoulder and he redirects his glare to her.
“But what? But you’re just relieved that you made it out, why tempt fate twice?”
She ignores his outburst, continues. “But the odds of us actually getting back there alive are staggeringly low, and you’re no good to anyone if you’re dead.”
“Fuck the odds,” he spits, “I would fight for him; I would fight to my last breath for any of you, but especially him, and damn if you don’t all know it.”
“What if it were you in his place, Shepard?” Tali’s voice has a tinge of agitation to it, the first he’s heard, and he would be grateful if everything else wasn’t so fucked up already.
His tailspin worsens at hearing the question. “It should be me! I should be the one down there! I’ve already died once, the universe doesn’t want me – the only reason I was brought back was to die again. It should be me, not him, he has a life ahead of him, and he deserves, god, he deserves so much more than dying alone on a battlefield because I wasn’t strong enough or fast enough!”
“Listen to yourself, Shepard,” Garrus says, firmly, commandingly, loudly. “Listen to yourself and ask yourself what Kaidan would say if he heard you talking like that. Ask yourself if it isn’t an insult to the Major and everything he does and all of the love he has for you – because he does love you, anyone with eyes can see that – that you would be willing to throw your life away instead of fighting to live for him – ”
The Normandy suddenly bucks and sways nastily and then rights itself.
“Guys? The Citadel arms are opening. It’s doing something. The Crucible is doing something.” Joker’s voice is shaking, awed and terrified. “Hackett’s calling for a full retreat to the rendezvous point.”
“No, no, that means he did it, he’s there,” Shepard cries, voice hoarse from screams and despair and sudden yearning hope. “We have to go back for him, Joker, you can’t leave him – please.”
If word of his behavior right now ever gets out, he knows that he could be full-on crucified for fraternization. His judgment is compromised in the worst way, the burdens of love and heartbreak and responsibility, personal and aching, making him single-minded and half-sane.
He hears a violent swear from the cockpit and the Normandy accelerates, hard enough to actually feel it, and he knows it’s in the wrong direction. Gathering all of his strength, he jerks upwards, dislodging Garrus and James, and makes it halfway to the doors before his wounds and the muscle relaxant drop him more effectively than a bullet ever has. So he crawls. He crawls, and he hears the doors open and he drags himself through them until his arms give out, and it’s all for nothing. He knows, then, that he failed. Again.
4.
It will take a few months for the Normandy to limp back to Earth after its crash landing. Which is actually better than everyone was expecting, all things considered.
EDI is dead. Shepard heard his own anguish echoed back to him moments after he collapsed on the floor – a painful, heartwrenching wail coming from the cockpit. If he had any emotional reserves left, he might have felt empathy for the other man. As it is, he is consumed with his private grief.
The war is over. He has a vague, nagging sensation that this is something he should be happy about, but emotion is a foreign language to him now, and it is hard for him to even imagine anything but this deadweight of depression. It makes him feel simultaneously like an empty shell – too similar to a husk to bear mentioning – and like he is burning up inside with an unspeakable depth of sadness.
The war is over, and for the first time in three years he isn’t needed anymore. For the first time in three years he is not Commander Shepard – he is just Shepard, now, just a man with his quiet personal sorrow, instead of the clamoring sorrow of billions on his shoulders. He knows distantly that when they reach Earth, he will have to be Commander Shepard again for a little while, but probably not for long. After all, when it came down to it, he was not the man who saved the galaxy.
Kaidan Alenko was that man.
Garrus and James have taken over as CO and XO, for all intents and purposes; Shepard spends most of his time in his cabin, and the crew does not bother him anymore. His squadmates came to see him every so often in the first few days, initially in the medbay and then in his cabin when Chakwas released him – but he wouldn’t talk to them, had nothing to say, and so they stopped.
Traynor lets him know whenever major milestones are reached: when the critical repairs were finished. When they took off again. When the QEC came back online – receiving-only, but it was a start.
So when she calls up to his cabin, several weeks into their return journey, he knows it’s important. He’s not interested, but he tells her to go ahead anyway. She’s just trying to do her job.
Instead of reporting the update in her usual brisk manner, she hesitates.
“Sir… I think you’d better come down and hear this for yourself.”
He blinks slowly at the comm and then decides he’d rather not. He’s too tired. The cumulative exhaustion from years of trauma and heartbreak and loss have caught up with him, and he finds that most days he barely has the energy to move, much less leave his quarters.
He’s lost weight. He forgets to eat sometimes. Kaidan used to remind him, before…
“No thanks, Traynor.” His finger is over the comm button, but Garrus’s voice breaks in before he can cut off the connection.
“Shepard. Come to the CIC or I will come up there and carry you down.”
He hardly has the energy to argue. So, instead of answering, he just closes the comm.
Two minutes later, his door hisses open and Garrus and James enter. “Come on, Shepard,” is all James says, before they each take an arm and heft him to a standing position.
It reminds him too much of that day. He looks at the floor and tries to stop seeing Kaidan’s determined, blood-spattered face and brown eyes full of love and apology and regret. But he goes with them, knowing that if it’s important enough for them to come up here, they’ll drag him whether he wants to go or not.
The elevator doors open on the CIC and he sees everyone crowding around Traynor’s station. Dozens of eyes turn to him and he drops his gaze again, but notices that the crowd parts to let him through – feet shuffling to the side to leave a clear runway. He raises his eyes slightly when he reaches Traynor, enough to see her hand activate an audio file. A nameless reporter starts speaking.
“ – been confirmed that one of the bodies recovered from the Citadel ruins was wearing dogtags with the name Shepard on them. However, positive ID has not yet been made. Reports are that the soldier was barely alive on discovery, with extensive blood loss, broken bones, and head trauma. He has been transported to an unnamed intensive care unit and is still in emergency surgery. This information contradicts eyewitnesses from Hammer team in London, who claim they saw Commander Shepard airlifted off the field after suffering life-threatening injury, but –”
Shepard is frozen in place. He is suddenly aware of his heart thudding against his ribcage for the first time in weeks. He is aware of his breath searing new life into his lungs. He is aware of his blood rushing through his veins. And when he looks up to meet Traynor’s hopeful gaze, the muscles around his dry, cracked lips do their best to remember how to smile.
Kaidan is alive.
5.
Shepard is like a new person after hearing that broadcast – most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he still retreats to his cabin – if it’s bad, for days at a time – and lets the depression take over, because it’s never that easy getting rid of something that’s twined itself so thoroughly into your emotions, and because he still worries, because they haven’t heard any updates, haven’t heard a positive ID of the not-Shepard soldier (even though it couldn’t be anyone else), haven’t heard whether he’s alive or dead on the operating table.
They get back to Earth, eventually.
Hackett greets them, keeps the reporters at bay. He tells Shepard, quietly, off to the side, that the man wearing his dogtags is still alive, but in a coma. It doesn’t look good. Shepard’s heart, broken, bruised, held together with pins and wires, hardly registers this, much to his surprise. But it seems he’s given everything he has. He’s died a thousand times over on the inside and once, which is quite enough, on the outside, and this… well, he isn’t surprised, if he’s honest, because nothing ever, ever seems to go right for him, any glimpse of happiness ripped away more painfully than he knows how to bear.
And yes, he knows he’s being selfish. Yes, he knows that he should be happy that he’s even able to be depressed, that Kaidan made it to the Citadel and saved the galaxy, because one life is such a small price to pay for the lives of every sentient organic species.
But Shepard doesn’t care, not anymore. He used to care so much.
He asks Hackett if he can go sit with Kaidan. Hackett tells him he can do whatever the hell he wants, and gives him directions and a skycar.
He gets to the hospital and everyone recognizes him. They waive all security, all restrictions, let him have full rein of the hospital and it just sickens him because he wasn’t the one, in the end. Because he gets to Kaidan’s room and there’s one Alliance soldier standing watch outside, and he just knows that if it had been him instead there would’ve been an entire platoon.
Kaidan deserves more than this. Shepard knows he wouldn’t want fuss, but damn if he doesn’t deserve more respect, more downright awe from the entire fucking galaxy.
Shepard goes into his room. Miranda is there. She glances at him, unsurprised.
“Shepard. They brought me in when they thought he was you. I kept them in the dark long enough to get some crucial groundwork laid for his recovery.” She pauses, and gives him some inscrutable look. “He will recover. He might not… be the same. I don’t know what happened to him up there. But he will recover, in time.”
“I’ll wait.” And he sits. Miranda doesn’t ask him how long, or are you sure, or we could get you a room. She just leaves.
And he sits.
He hardly recognizes Kaidan. His hair is shaved off. They used to joke about that, about how he was all eyebrows in basic and how he never wanted to go back to that particular fashion statement. Except his eyebrows have been mostly singed away as well, so his face just looks… empty.
He’s bruised, worse than he was after Mars, much worse. Redder. Angrier. The skin on one arm is too shiny. He tries not to think about why.
He tries not to think about anything.
People come and go over the next few days, bleeding into the next few weeks. They must sense – some distant part of him realizes – that he is back in his dark place, back before the broadcast that gave him something to fight for again. Kaidan hasn’t moved. A thin fuzz is showing over his scalp, almost symmetrical with the stubble on his chin. Shepard doesn’t want to know what he looks like.
People bring him food, sometimes, when they come. He doesn’t eat much but at least he isn’t losing any more weight. He is scrawny now, compared to what he looked like at the final push, months (months) ago.
Sometimes, on the night shift when he knows not many people will be coming by, he joins Kaidan on his bed. It’s the most emotional he allows himself to get. He curls into Kaidan’s side, burying his face in his partner’s neck (he was ticklish here, he would giggle—or if he wasn’t in a giggling mood, the other noises, the gasps and moans and the way he’d turn his head away to give Shepard more skin to map out with his mouth) and draping an arm across his chest. The steady rise and fall of his breathing helps Shepard sleep, even if the memories make it harder at the same time.
One morning – he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he got here, and does it matter? – he wakes up and knows instantly that something is different.
He is warm.
He has been in a constant state of coldness since the beam. He had gotten used to it. He is warm, now, as he opens his eyes, and then he can’t move, actually cannot move because he is meeting someone else’s eyes. Someone else’s very familiar whiskey brown eyes, and he has the sudden bolt of realization that he is warm because that someone’s arms are around him despite all the wires and tubes that want to hold him back.
He speaks and it feels creaky, ice splintering along invisible fault lines.
“Kaidan?”
What he expects is that Kaidan won’t remember him. That he’ll have suffered brain damage, be nothing like the Kaidan he fell in love with, say something like, Not that I’m complaining, but who are you and what are you doing in my bed. It’s what would make sense, given the pattern of Shepard’s life.
Instead, Kaidan smiles at him.
“Shepard.”
Kaidan smiles at him, and says his name, and everything changes.
He might collapse. He might explode. He sees a hundred futures branching out in front of him in a hundred different ways, and a bright glowing certainty settles deep and comfortable in his belly, where months of gnawing blackness had been only seconds ago.
He tilts his head up and kisses the corner of Kaidan’s mouth, and it curves into a bigger smile under his lips. Kaidan is alive, and awake, and back from the dead (and they’d joke about that in the years to come, how they had evened out, Kaidan finally catching up to all of Shepard’s “accomplishments”), and anything, anything is possible.