The Seventh Wave

by iberiandoctor (jehane)

Summary:

The sea knows where are the rocks, and drowning is no sin
You know where my heart is, the same place that yours has been

Seven times John and Kaidan chased that breaking wave, and let themselves be swept off their feet.

Notes:

I have no grander plan than to write smut with biotics, and to make mShenko work with every wave/gravity song lyric and every single U2 song. Title and summary from Sting's Love is the Seventh Wave and U2's Every Breaking Wave, respectively. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 1: ME3 — Long Time Coming

Summary:

Asking Shepard out had been a long time coming. Two months of longing, two years of grief.

Two days after his return to the SR-2, Alenko finally decides to do something about it.

Notes:

Now with art mid-chapter by the amazing bbegrill! [Explicit.]

“So, what happens now?” Shepard asked. His large hands bracketed Alenko’s, not quite touching.

Alenko had spent the last three days thinking about this meeting, but he hadn’t actually planned on anything beyond getting them to Apollo’s, and his grand confession.

Above them was the artificial daylight of the Citadel’s atrium, with a million souls going about their business. Here, sitting across from Alenko at a too-small table in this bustling café, was the one soul that mattered.

The moment had arrived at last, and Alenko was flying by the seat of his pants.

He’d always been the soldier with the mission plan. Orders from Command to take out the enemy base? He’d have run through different routes with his fire team at least three times before boots touched the ground, mapping out the safest way to get across the room, from crate to covering crate.

He’d gotten even better at strategizing over the last two years. He’d had to, with the Reapers on the way, and the leader of the war effort killed in action. When he’d finally pulled himself together, he’d mapped out his career plan — the way Shepard hadn’t gotten the chance to — and put it into the wind.

All things said, that approach had worked out pretty well. The Alliance had promoted him twice in as many years, given him a whole biotics division to command, and now a seat at the galactic table as the second human Spectre.

“Well deserved, Major. It’s been a long time coming,” Hackett had said as he’d pinned the ceremonial bars to Alenko’s uniform. Even that traitor Udina had agreed.

Did the same strategy work on asking out his commanding officer? Alenko had certainly tried to leave nothing to chance. He’d practised his speech in front of a mirror, even though that meant dealing with the awkwardness. Anything this important was worth the planning it took to make it right.

Asking Shepard out had definitely been a long time coming. Two months of longing, two years of grief. He’d told Shepard the night before Ilos: If you keep me waiting much longer, it damn well better be the end of the galaxy. Two months later, leaving Shepard behind on the first Normandy, it had goddamn felt like the galaxy had fallen apart.

He'd never planned on falling in love. Not while on board ship; not with a war on. Certainly not with his commanding officer. He’d always played by the book, and the Alliance’s had come with an entire section on fraternization. Saving the galaxy? It was more important than one marine’s private life.

But what he learned this year, after Shepard’s return from the dead, was that some things could be just as important as the galaxy.

Or maybe now that the galaxy was coming to an end, there was finally time for them.

Now that he thought about it, he’d been holding back all this time. Ever since Ilos, after Horizon, after Mars. Unquestionably after the coup on the Citadel. He’d always played by the rules. But when he’d returned to Shepard’s Normandy, it was like trying to hold back the tide, or rewriting gravity.

Alenko had paced the halls of the new SR-2, had sprinted for hours on its elliptical track — for so long that Joker teased him about not sleeping and Chakwas had started to ask how bad his headaches had gotten. He’d tried to outrun it, until he couldn’t. Until he’d finally decided the galaxy could goddamn take care of itself for once.

Then he’d made a plan, and put it into action.

That’s what I want. What do you want?

He didn’t let himself think about what Shepard would say in response.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t planned this next part. The part that came after Shepard said, “It feels right,” and, musingly, “After all this time,” as if it had been a long time coming for him, too. After he’d leaned across the table and kissed Alenko softly on the mouth.

Maybe it was a good thing Alenko had gone off-script, because it was so much better than he’d expected. Surprisingly gentle — the merest brush of lips, from a man who’d been the Butcher of Torfan — and over too soon.

Alenko had been in love before — at Brain Camp with Rahna, if not afterwards — but he couldn’t remember the last time a kiss had taken the breath from his lungs and brought all the eezo in his body to life.

He hadn’t planned this part, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. After all, Commander Shepard never stuck to the plan.

“I don’t know,” Alenko admitted. His hands were shaking, and it wasn’t just because of the eezo. “But I’d like to find out.”

“I like the sound of that.” What did you know, Shepard’s hands were shaking, too. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

 

They stayed to eat the decent food and drink the lousy wine, because they weren’t complete barbarians. Then they walked back in the direction of the Normandy. Alenko wondered if he should reach for Shepard’s hand, which seemed like the natural follow-up to one person saying: You and me? I’d like that. A lot.

What happened after a first date with your commanding officer? Once they got back to the ship, maybe they could steal a private moment to themselves … But Alenko didn’t let himself plan that far ahead.

In any case, today’s timetable didn’t allow for that kind of private moment. They were both carrying a full load that afternoon. Alenko had agreed to give a briefing to C-sec regarding safety measures at Shalmar Plaza; Shepard had an appointment with Chakwas to discuss the medical supply situation at the refugee camp, and the turian ambassador wanted to talk to a Spectre about what was really happening at the volus embassy.

This was the sensible plan. They’d head back to the ship and take care of business. And, like grown adults who knew the meaning of self-discipline, they’d make an appointment to see each other during the next free slot in their schedules.

Overhead, skycars traced neat, predictable patterns across the synthetic sky of the Presidium. The Citadel’s billboards hawked luxury cargo and commodities and solicited contributions for the war effort. The vidscreen on the side of the Citadel NewsNet tower played a constant capture from the front lines, so citizens could watch the world coming to an end in real time.

“Would you look at that,” Alenko said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the newsfeed from Thessia, where the ground crews were holding their own against a Sovereign-class dreadnought.

He turned to Shepard and found the man staring at him, with the kind of unparalleled focus he usually reserved for an enemy target, the red scars on his face like tracking lasers.

Shepard didn’t miss a beat. “I was gonna say the same thing,” he said, deadpan, and Alenko felt the blood rush to his cheeks as if he was really back in BAaT.

It was hard to look at Shepard at the best of times. Impossible, when Shepard was looking at him like that: a hostile caught in the merciless cross-hairs of his Hurricane.

He looked down, instead, at where the backs of their hands brushed against the other, not quite touching. The crackle of dark energy was never far from either of them. He called it up now, a glaze of blue, and watched an answering flare skate over Shepard’s knuckles.

They stopped at a nearby railing. Through the viewing windows of the observation deck, the Citadel’s ward arms stretched out to the edge of the horizon. A million lights, a million homes, a million people coming and going, as far as the eye could follow.

“We’ve seen bigger places, since,” Shepard said, gravelly and amused.

Alenko glared, sidelong, but it was true. Three years ago, visiting the Citadel for the first time, he’d been green as grass. Since then, he’d been stranded on the deceptive vistas of Virmire, had his heart broken on Horizon at the far reaches of human space. At Shepard’s side, he’d seen a hundred different worlds, each one bigger than the next.

Alenko reached back in his memory to that first time on the Citadel. Before Shepard had become humanity’s first human Spectre, the soldier whom the Council was counting on to save the galaxy. Before they’d been told that the Reapers were coming, and all the Alliance’s best-laid plans would come to naught.

“Oceans, beautiful women, the emotion called love?” They’d seen them all, all right. Even that last one, though they’d both been blind to it until now.

“Nothing more beautiful than what’s right here,” Shepard remarked. His voice was casual, but when Alenko stole another look, that ice-blue gaze remained locked on target. The scars left by Cerberus technology glowed red with unmistakable intent.

Yeah, not blind, not any more. Alenko wasn’t sure his face could get any hotter.

He reached for Shepard’s hand. Their fingers slid into place, a clasp as familiar as the grips on their shotguns. Their biotics flared briefly as their hands pressed palm to palm, energy signatures lacing together, before Alenko damped his down, staying in complete control.

Shepard kept his corona alight for a moment longer. It limned his red-haloed eyes with a wash of blue, a dangerous riptide that could pull Alenko under if he wasn’t careful.

Maybe the time to be careful was over.

“When you put it that way, there’s every reason to like you,” Alenko murmured. What did you know, that line was much less awkward this second time around. “How are you even real?”

Shepard snorted. “Happy to demonstrate, Major, if you let me.”

 

 

They walked hand in hand through the upper wards back to the ship. Alenko was past caring about blind items in the evening’s newsfeeds or scuttlebutt in the gossip rags. Hackett had more important things on his punch list than hauling up a major and his commanding officer on protocol charges in the middle of a war. Also, technically, they hadn’t yet crossed the line into actual fraternization.

Time to change that.

The plan was to say goodbye to Shepard at the elevator door with a kiss like the one Shepard had planted on him at Apollo’s. Soft, closed-mouthed, barely there, with just enough pressure to make Shepard’s skin tingle. With enough intent to hint at more, but brief enough to leave the both of them an out. Maybe they’d make a date for that night; maybe he’d get some wine and flowers. Do this properly. See where it led.

Alenko shouldn’t have been surprised when this part didn’t go to plan, either.

The elevator counted upwards toward Deck One, in time with his pulse. When they reached Two, Alenko made his move. A soft, closed-mouth kiss, barely there. Just enough pressure to make both their skins tingle, not enough to pressure anyone into doing anything more.

Shepard inhaled in surprise against Alenko’s mouth. His fingers clenched around Alenko’s convulsively, and a shockwave jolted through both their bodies, sparking their biotic fields to life.

Their coronas sizzled. The gravity well pitched beneath their feet. Alenko staggered, and Shepard caught him in his arms.

“What the actual —?” Alenko was starting to say, when Shepard’s tongue slid into his mouth, and Shepard kissed the rest of his words away.

Their biotic fields clashed furiously together. Alenko exhaled harshly and Shepard drank it down; there was no oxygen in his lungs that didn’t belong to Shepard. Their bodies pressed closer, already half-hard under their fatigues, rapidly getting harder as their lips and chests and thighs crushed against each other’s.

They didn’t realize they’d reached the cabin deck until the lift doors opened and shut a couple of times. Finally, someone said, "Holy sh—! Sorry! Nothing to see here!”, and, galvanized, they stumbled out of the lift into the corridor in a tangle of limbs and biotics.

It was the damndest thing. Self-control had always been more important to Alenko than scratching that itch. Even a reckless maniac like Shepard managed to tread on the brakes of the Mako once in a while. But now, in each other’s arms at last, they couldn’t bring themselves to stop. They kissed like the world was ending, and like this time would be their last.

 

 

Weaving like drunks, they finally made it into Shepard’s cabin, where Shepard pulled off for long enough to punch the comm and tell Traynor to reschedule his meetings with Dr. Chakwas and the turian ambassador.

“Also, cancel Major Alenko’s 4 PM C-sec briefing, while you’re at it,” Shepard added. He hit the comm again, presumably to secure it, though Alenko had no idea if EDI could be shut out so easily.

Then he paused. Under the low lights of the improbably vast room, framed by the glow of that equally improbably vast fish tank, his mouth was red and swollen from Alenko’s stubble.

Alenko tore his gaze from Shepard’s mouth. The lack of oxygen in his brain was making him light-headed. The lack of blood, too. Funny thing: in the course of that elevator ride, it had all relocated south of the border.

Alliance BDUs couldn’t hide everything. Alenko was fully, painfully hard, and now they were hip to hip again, there was absolutely no mistaking Shepard’s response.

Belatedly, he damped down on his corona so he could look into Shepard’s dilated blue eyes.

“I should’ve cleared our schedules when you said yes to Apollo’s,” he muttered. “Hackett told me I need to work on my follow-through.”

Shepard snorted, extinguishing his own corona. “What, you didn’t plan for this to happen?”

“Well, that depends on what’s actually happening,” Alenko pointed out, and had to suck in his breath when Shepard took a step back and began to tug open the snaps on his BDUs.

“This clear enough?” Shepard inquired. He shrugged his vest and shirt off, the lean muscles standing out in stark relief. Alenko had seen Shepard’s bare body before, of course, in a hundred jump rooms and communal showers on the first Normandy, but he’d never seen it like this, all laser-focused intent and directed at him.

He had to swallow. “Yeah. I mean, I’d hoped, but didn’t want to expect...”

Shepard had taken hold of Alenko’s fatigues. Now he stopped, raising a red-scarred eyebrow. “Kaidan Alenko. You didn’t expect me to put out on a first date?”

Alenko snorted and put his hands over Shepard’s. “Just didn’t want to move too fast,” he said, quietly.

Together, they unfastened Alenko’s vest, fingers lingering, raising little sparks of static against the metal of the snaps. Shepard whispered into his ear, “You too much of a gentleman to want to climb into my pants?”

“Enough of a gentleman to ask first,” Alenko managed. The thick bulge in Shepard’s BDUs was making his mouth water.

“Good enough for me,” Shepard said. “You’ve kept me waiting for long enough, Kaidan.”

“I’ve kept you waiting?” But Alenko knew what he meant. It almost felt like everything had all started on that first Normandy mission. That near miss on the crew deck. That night in Shepard’s cabin before Ilos, where they agreed there’d be time for them when this was over. Time that, in the end, they hadn’t gotten, that Alenko never thought they’d have again. Until today.

A very long time coming.

Shepard tugged Alenko’s shirt off and sucked in a breath as well, a gratifying spark heating his eyes. “Shit, look at you, how are you even real?”

Alenko had trained harder than ever over the last two and a half years; he liked to think it showed. Still, he huffed, “Hey, now, that is totally my line.”

He reached out to grasp Shepard by the belt buckle. The gravity well crackled with Shepard’s arousal, the blue flickering over his taut nipples and the hard planes of his chest.

Alenko ran his palm across the unblemished skin. Shepard’s old scars had been eradicated by the tech that had brought him back from the dead. The same tech sizzled underneath his flesh, painting him in a red that clashed with his corona’s blue.

“Well, you know how real all this is. Top-of-the-line Cerberus overhaul.” Shepard said it lightly, but the growl of his biotic aura told a different story.

Alenko felt his gut lurch. Shepard had come back different, and so had his corona: fiercer, darker, tinged a shade of blood-red that hadn’t been there before. Death and the technology of resurrection had left their mark on his biotics as well as his body.

Alenko was different, too. The last three years had changed him, in some ways beyond recognition. They’d never have it back, that innocent time before the Reapers and needing to save the galaxy, when they’d been two young marines, trying not to fall in love.

They’d never have it back, but who was to say what they had now couldn’t be even better?

“It’s real enough for me,” he murmured, and leaned up to make the case with his mouth.

The greatest combat strategists in the world — Winston Churchill, General Adrien Victus, Alexander the Great — couldn’t have planned this. There was no recommended strategy for seducing your commanding officer, no manual on how to get into the pants of the Savior of the Citadel. Alenko was just glad he was managing to undo the regulation belt and harness and kiss his C.O. at the same time.

His pulse was pounding in the way it never did in the field. The gravity well snagged hold of them, energy spiraling over their bodies, fanning the flame of their biotics to life once more.

With his superior dexterity, Shepard managed to get Alenko’s own belt and gear undone. Now he gently bit into Alenko’s lower lip as he shoved the fatigues down Alenko’s hips. Alenko panted and writhed, trapped in place by Shepard’s teeth, so helplessly hard it hurt. Shepard’s biotics traced burning lines down his pecs and abs, and then Shepard’s hand was squeezing him through his briefs.

Alenko hissed into Shepard’s open mouth, and Shepard eased off, hands and lips both.

“Too much?”

“No,” Alenko groaned. His lower lip would be blue tomorrow and he didn’t care. “It’s just — damn it, let me —”

He wrenched Shepard’s own fatigues and briefs down and took hold of Shepard’s erection for the first time. It was thick and hot, and slotted into his hand like his sidearm of choice. Shepard’s turn to groan, raising goosebumps across Alenko’s skin. His fingers grasped the nape of Alenko’s neck, hard enough to bruise.

“Fuck, that’s good.”

Seizing the advantage, Alenko brought up his own corona and shoved Shepard backwards into the transparent wall of the fish tank. It was stronger than it looked; a hundred kilograms of reinforced super-soldier didn’t make so much as a dent.

Alenko took the chance to trap Shepard, pinning him to the wall with hips and thighs and an arm bracketing his face. Pressed against the cold glass, the Commander’s bare ass was undoubtedly giving the fish a free show.

Shepard cursed as Alenko held him in place and began to jack him off. His cock was rock-hard, already leaking from the slit, the skim of Alenko’s biotics subbing for the lube neither of them wanted to pull off and go get.

“I’m done keeping you waiting,” Alenko murmured, putting his mouth close to Shepard’s sweating face.

Shepard struggled and swore, though Alenko wasn’t sure if he was trying to regain the upper hand, or to wrestle Alenko physically even closer to him. “Good to hear it,” he panted. “That — fuck — that goes for you, too. Wanted this for so long, Kaidan.”

With his pants around his ankles, he spread his legs as wide as he could to give Alenko more room. Alenko leaned into the taut vee of Shepard’s groin muscles, and lined himself up so he could take both of them in hand at once.

“Oh, fuck,” he heard himself say. The slide of Shepard’s hot length against his was unbelievable, so much better than the cautious dreams he’d allowed himself after Ilos.

He felt rather than heard the high-pitched noise Shepard made in response. Then Shepard’s large hand clamped around his, reinforcing his grasp on both of their cocks.

“Don’t stop,” Shepard breathed. He pressed his mouth to Alenko’s cheekbone, seeking purchase. His fist tightened over Alenko’s as Alenko began to stroke, as they started to stroke themselves off together.

Shepard’s corona swept over Alenko’s, fierce and blue and blood-tinged. Alenko’s rose to meet it. Dark energy swirled around them, the force of moons that moved the waves and tides. The gravity that kept them from shooting off into space, that kept them rooted here, with each other at long last.

Shepard’s grip on the both of them was his characteristic grip on his Phalanx, his no-holds-barred command of the gravity field. His fingers jacked a mnemonic against Alenko’s, taking control of their rhythm as if aiming incendiary fire down a battlefield.

Shepard’s hands never trembled like this in combat, though.

He was shaking, they both were. Abdominals twitching, pelvic muscles straining, shaft and foreskin sliding hot and slick together, groaning as they thrust into their conjoined fists. Trying to get a grip on the eezo surging in their bodies, trying to stop each other from flying off into space.

Shepard panted as if he was unraveling from the inside. “Wanted this for so long. Wanted you.”

“Wanted you too,” Alenko admitted. Three years of wanting, of waiting, and it came down to this. Moving together, caught in the gravity well, waves of dark energy crashing over them. Finding each other, falling into each other, flaring alight.

Shepard was the first to cry out, his muscles seizing, crushing them both together in that almost-painful grasp that was indistinguishable from pleasure. Alenko couldn’t hold back, either. Choked moans spilled from him as they fired off one after the other, filling Shepard’s cabin with a blaze of blue.

It took an eternity for them to finish, and even longer to come down. Alenko’s heart hammered urgently in his chest, as if he’d gone three rounds with a thresher maw. Shepard’s heartbeat, too, thready and fast, a world away from his usual ice-cold metronome.

They held each other up against the fish tank glass, as their sweat cooled and their biotic fields dissipated. Little sparks of electricity ran along Shepard’s forearm and flickered across Alenko’s cheek.

Struggling to catch his breath, Alenko remembered he’d vaguely planned to take this slow. Well, this was yet another plan gone FUBAR thanks to Commander Shepard.

As gravity slowly resettled itself around them, Alenko reclaimed his hand and stepped back, though Shepard seemed in no hurry to let him go.

This post-sex stock-take wasn’t a pretty one. They were a mess, covered in sweat and semen, pants and underwear bunched around their ankles, gear strewn over the floor. He’d even managed to rip Shepard’s briefs in two. Cleanup would be a real bitch, to say nothing of the walk of shame later.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, that went … well.”

“No kidding. It was incredible. You were incredible.” Shepard paused, focusing with some difficulty on Alenko’s face. In surprise, he said: “Wait, you were kidding? You mean you had a plan that … I dunno, involved champagne and rose petals and mood music, something like that?”

Alenko felt his cheeks heating again. “Well, at least a plan that involved a bed. And maybe some lube instead of biotics. Not—” he gestured helplessly downward, “— not even getting our boots off.”

Shepard looped his arms around Alenko’s neck. “Who has time for boots? We’ve waited for long enough.” A smirk stole across his kiss-swollen mouth. “Besides, this isn’t over. We’ve got all night for whatever you want — bed, lube, mood music. And more biotics; I could tell you really liked that.”

“All night, huh?” Alenko said. He found himself smiling, too. Shepard had been so grim after Cerberus brought him back, he’d missed this side of the Commander that could tease and flirt and enjoy being human. “I just, you know, didn’t wanna presume.”

“You’re not presuming,” Shepard said quietly. “We’ve got all this lost time to make up for.”

Alenko shook his head, trying not to grin like a besotted idiot. He was starting to hitch his briefs and pants back up when Shepard stopped him.

“You know it’s just gonna come off again.” Shepard’s voice slid casually lower. “In fact, why don’t you take it all off and get in the shower? I’ll ask Traynor to cancel the rest of our appointments. Then I could jump in and join you for round two.”

Alenko had to swallow. His spent cock actually twitched in interest, as if it belonged to a lovesick teen and not this sleep-deprived old soldier. They were definitely making up for lost time.

“That sounds like a plan,” he said, and started to strip himself of the rest of his clothes. Shepard leaned back against the fish tank and took in the view.

Casually, Alenko added, “You seemed to like the biotics, too. I could show you a thing or two with the gravity well when we’re back in space again.”

Shepard paused. There was uncharacteristic hesitation in his eyes, in a man whose M.O. was to charge into combat guns-first without a battle plan. “That sounds like you’re planning to stick around,” he said, slowly.

Damn straight he was. The time for self-control, for rules, for careful strategy, it was over. Alenko was riding this ship to the very end, whatever that end might be.

“Not going anywhere. You and me, John. As long as it takes.”

Shepard’s turn to swallow. His eyes were blue as the tides, as deep as gravity. He said, slowly, “I like the sound of that. A lot.”

Alenko grinned and gave himself up to another kiss: to the tides, to gravity, to the sweat-sticky static of Shepard’s skin against his. To throwing caution to the wind. All of this had been such a long time coming, and there wasn’t a moment more to waste.

Notes:

So many beta thanks to potionsmaster and mallaidhsomo ♥ ♥

 

It's been a long time coming
Such a long, long time
Can you hear my heart beating
Can you hear that sound?
And then I looked up at the sun and I could see
Oh, the way that gravity pulls on you and me
And then I looked up at the sky and saw the sun
And the way that gravity pushes on everyone
On everyone

 

 

[~ Coldplay, Gravity]

Chapter 2: ME3 —A Different Kind of Blue

Summary:

After their encounter with Leviathan, Kaidan gets Shepard to relax.

Notes:

Twitter Kinktober 2021, Day One: Rimming
Stars&Skies Kinktober 2021, Day Five: Eating out

It was a bed fit for a king. Insanely high thread count sheets, fabricated feather pillows. A thick-pile blanket in Alliance blue, velvet-soft, like lying on a buoyant sea.

Tucked away in Tiberius Towers on the Sunset Strip, Anderson’s split-level penthouse apartment was the lap of luxury, and his well-appointed bedroom the jewel in the crown.

A pity they were going to make such a mess.

They’d seen some rough moments in the field last week on 2181 Despoina. Shepard had insisted on taking a gamble on the ancient diving mech they’d found, despite anything Kaidan had to say on the topic. He’d gone into the water without so much as a backward glance. The ocean had closed over him and taken Kaidan’s heart with it.

As usual, Shepard had come back from the dead. He’d even said the trip to the bottom of the sea had been worth almost dying for. Kaidan wasn’t so sure.

Since his return from the ocean, Shepard’s nightmares seemed to have gotten worse. He’d wake Kaidan in the middle of their sleep cycle, muttering about the cold, about the ocean, about the creature that lived in the frigid depths.

Of course, Shepard said he was just fine; he always did. That didn’t mean the ice-cold bastard was right. Shepard needed to put some distance between himself and the memory of Leviathan’s touch, of the cold and dark, the waves that had swallowed him down.

Kaidan had just the thing.

He’d pulled rank to give the order: 24 hours of shore leave on the Citadel. More than enough time for the crew to unwind at Purgatory and/or blow off steam at the Silversun Arcade. Definitely enough time for Kaidan to whip up a home-cooked meal in Anderson’s top-of-the-line kitchen, and then to take his commander to bed.

The Presidium’s artificial twilight shone through the windows, filling the bedroom in shades of blue. They’d left the lights turned off. The blue from two biotic coronas was illumination enough.

Shepard lay face down on the covers, naked except for the towel he’d slung around his hips. His hair was damp from the shower. His broad back glistened with the unscented argan oil Kaidan had used to give him a deep tissue massage. Shepard’s body was a tightly-wound spring, his muscles in knots at the best of times. Kaidan had had to really dig deep to get rid of all that tension.

“Seriously, John, you need to take better care of yourself or you’ll need this shoulder replaced again before you’re forty,” he muttered.

It had taken some effort, but Shepard had finally gotten entirely relaxed, which was why he hadn’t fired back with his usual gallows humor, something like, You so sure I’m gonna make it that long?

Instead, what he murmured, muffled, into the blanket, absently, was, “You offering to take care of it yourself? Because I could get seriously used to having a personal masseur, and it’s not like I could ask Traynor to do it.”

“Jackass. Yeah, I’m offering. And, no offence to Traynor, but she can’t do what I can,” Kaidan remarked, as he traced his barrier-charged finger down Shepard’s glistening spine.

It had been one of the few pleasures in the hellhole that had been Jump Zero. In their bunk at BAaT, Kaidan and Rahna had discovered the fun they could have with their biotics, even with their clothes on — dipping into the gravity well, tracing electricity over fabric pulled tightly over skin, teasing underneath. The whole time they were being taught to bend the gravity well to fight, and harm — and in Kaidan’s case, later, kill — they were also learning how to use their biotics for pleasure. It had been a rare gift, and Kaidan had been a very apt pupil.

And there was no better place to deploy that gift than here, giving pleasure to a man who used his biotics to kill every time he stepped onto a battlefield.

Shepard shifted restlessly on the covers, his own low-level charge flickering in and out. Kaidan slid his palm against the planes of Shepard’s deltoids, their coronas playing together against Shepard’s warm skin.

Before he’d come back from the dead, Shepard’s corona had been laser blue, like his fifteen-meter stare and the ice in his veins. His mnemonics might have been sweeping and riotous, but they were always dead on target, and never out of control. Now Cerberus had given his biotic corona a bristling, blood-red stain to match the red cracks around the edges of his repaired face, and Shepard wielded those biotics with a reckless abandon that hadn’t been there before.

His field crackled against Kaidan’s most of the time, edges clashing, raising red and blue sparks where they collided. But in rare moments when he let his guard down like this, their biotic fields ebbed and flowed together, half-melting into the gaps in Kaidan’s own defences, giving him a taste of that blood-tinged ice blue before slipping restlessly away.

When Cerberus rebuilt Shepard from the bones up, they’d eradicated all his old scars, including the ones from Virmire and Ilos and the Battle of the Citadel. Since then, Shepard had just gone and given himself new ones. Kaidan’s fingers sought them out: white tracks left by the Collectors’ acid spray on Horizon, a raised red line where Kai Leng had breached his armor at the Commons. Remnants of the angry bruises from the last pitched battle on Despoina, fading marks that started at his ribcage and descended beneath the towel’s modest covering.

Kaidan ran his fingers along the border of the soft fabric. He kept his charge feather-light, just enough to tease. Shepard held himself very still. When Kaidan palmed Shepard’s ass over the cloth and skated the charge underneath, against undefended skin, Shepard’s body went tense all over.

Okay, so Shepard hadn’t been entirely relaxed.

“Where are you going with this, Major?” Maybe it was wishful thinking, but Shepard’s voice sounded a little strained around the edges.

“Nowhere fast,” Kaidan murmured. “Nowhere you don’t want me to go.”

He finally slipped his fingers underneath the fabric of the towel, drawing it downwards. Shepard drew in an audible breath, and his corona spiked abruptly before he reeled it back under control again.

“What do you want, John?”

Shepard’s voice was definitely sounding strained. “Oh, you know what I want.”

Kaidan leaned over and put his mouth to Shepard’s ear, close enough that Shepard could feel the heat from his breath and his own shower-damp body, but not close enough to touch. With one finger, he moved the towel further down so he could draw a spark across the crack between Shepard’s ass cheeks. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

Shepard’s breath hissed between his teeth. His muscles clenched, clearly caught between wanting Kaidan to keep going, and levering himself off the bed to exercise a little self-help. He muttered, “You’re such a fucking sadist.”

Kaidan moved down lower and squeezed the meat of Shepard’s bare rump, which twitched deliciously under his palm. “Only if you want me to be. Remember, you’re the one in control.”

“Fine,” Shepard groaned. “Touch me, you miserable bastard. Put your mouth on me.”

“You could’ve said so earlier,” Kaidan said, triumphantly, and let the towel fall away.

He pressed a kiss to each knob of Shepard’s backbone. The vertebrae were sharper than they should be, even with Shepard’s insane biotic metabolism; the man wasn’t eating enough. He’d have to try to fix that, too. One thing at a time.

Kaidan let his lips and tongue trace the way south, little flirtatious licks of moisture and electricity, sketching a more subtle mnemonic than the ones powered by his hands. Shepard’s back muscles shivered under the touch, so it was clearly working.

He paused when he reached the base of Shepard’s spine. Straddling Shepard’s thighs, he cupped Shepard’s muscular ass, running his thumbs down the deep gulley of his crack, then pulling the cheeks apart.

Shepard inhaled sharply as he pressed a biting kiss to Shepard’s left cheek and ran the flat of his tongue over the tight pucker of Shepard’s hole.

He hadn’t done this in a while, and never before with Shepard; here he was, with the first trick in Shepard’s playbook, taking a calculated risk in order to reap the reward.

From the new edge to Shepard’s breathing, it sounded as if the risk was paying off. “Yeah. Fuck, that’s good.”

“It’s about to get better,” Kaidan warned him as he got to work.

He slid his tongue around the rim of Shepard’s entrance, working him open. Shepard began to writhe face down against the sheets as Kaidan alternated licks between his hole and the skin of his scrotum. His biotic barrier flared and spluttered, his gasps turning into groans, fortunately muffled against the mattress.

Kaidan chose his moment, and then drove his tongue deep into Shepard’s body, as deep as he could go. Shepard cried out, his back arching off the bed.

“Holy fuck—!”

“Too much?” Kaidan asked, pulling off, trying not to smirk.

“No!” Shepard tried to twist around, body heaving, his glare murderous. “Goddamn it, you actually want me to beg —?”

Kaidan ran a gentling hand down Shepard’s haunches, over the fading bruises. “Never. Turn over for me, John.”

Shepard grudgingly obeyed, and Kaidan got a good look at the mess he’d made of the sheets, not to mention of Shepard himself: oil-slick and perspiring, tremors running down the powerful flanks, his rigid cock leaking precome all over his abdomen. His face was flushed under the Cerberus-red scars, barrier seething and spitting alternatively crimson and blue.

Kaidan took a moment to appreciate it, every last inch. “Tell me what you want,” he said, softly. “My mouth again?”

“Yeah.” Shepard ran his thumb over Kaidan’s lower lip. His eyes were heavy-lidded, that laser gaze glazed over with lust, focused on nothing else. “I can’t believe how gorgeous it is. It’s just what I need.”

“I know what you need,” Kaidan said, and started by taking a gentle bite of Shepard’s Adam’s apple.

This time, he let his body brush against Shepard’s as well as his biotics, an electric skim of skin against bare skin, so different from the crackle and fizz of their barriers sliding together. His own towel had unfastened along the way, and his hard cock grazed tantalizingly against Shepard’s body as he made his way downwards.

Shepard muttered curses, exposing his throat helplessly to Kaidan. His large hands tangled in Kaidan’s hair as if he wanted to make fists and knew he couldn’t.

Kaidan lapped at the moisture from Shepard’s sternum and ran his teeth around the tight nub of Shepard’s nipple. Shepard groaned, hips thrusting helplessly upwards, and Kaidan had to hold him down. He bit Shepard’s other nipple, for good measure, and Shepard made an undignified sobbing noise that sounded like Kaidan’s name.

“I’m going to make you forget your name,” Kaidan promised, and put his mouth to work.

He’d make Shepard forget his name, and about the creature in the ocean, and the fact that they were all counting on him to win this war.

He bracketed Shepard’s hips with his thighs and licked his way across Shepard’s abdominals, long, teasing swipes, mouthing down the trail of hair that ran from the deep vee of Shepard’s navel to his balls, enjoying the taste of Shepard’s corona and Shepard’s skin.

Shepard had given up cursing him out to focus on more important things, like breathing, but when Kaidan took him in hand, he let out a shuddering moan. His thighs drew apart, giving Kaidan more access. Kaidan hitched Shepard’s legs up and slid his free hand under Shepard’s balls; as he closed his mouth over the head of Shepard’s cock, he teased one finger into Shepard’s spit-slick hole.

“Fuck, fuck,” Shepard choked out, struggling not to thrust up into Kaidan’s mouth. His corona rolled erratically across his chest, flaring in and out of control; his breath coming in huge gusts like he was drowning.

He was still managing to form actual words, though. Time to change that.

Shepard’s entrance was slack from Kaidan’s earlier efforts, slippery with oil and saliva. Kaidan added a second finger easily. He tightened his grip at the base of Shepard’s cock as he began, very slowly, to suck. He didn’t want this to be over too soon; Shepard wouldn’t thank him if he let him off too lightly.

He let his fingers explore Shepard’s hole while he suckled on the sensitive head of Shepard’s prick. Shepard was panting noisily now, each exhale ending in a moan. His hands fisted in the sheets so he wouldn’t dig bruises into Kaidan’s skin. When Kaidan found the spot he was looking for, a howl tore from Shepard’s throat, and fabric ripped under his fingers.

Grinning to himself, Kaidan took more of Shepard’s length into his mouth, the salty fluid leaking against the back of his throat. His oiled fingers thrust lazily inside Shepard, working him open, stroking against his prostate. The buzz of Shepard’s biotics tasted like ozone in a Vancouver thunderstorm, humming underneath Kaidan’s own skin.

Kaidan slowly swallowed Shepard to the root, breathing around it, Shepard’s huge, hard length making his eyes water. Shepard groaned, his hips bucking against Kaidan’s grasp; he was clearly as desperate to fuck Kaidan’s mouth in the same way as he’d fuck his body, and wasn’t that an enticing thought. Kaidan fought back his arousal; this evening was about Shepard, not him.

By degrees, Shepard’s moans had turned into sobbing breaths, his muscles shivering helplessly under Kaidan’s hands. Kaidan glanced upwards, checking in. Shepard had rammed his fist into his open mouth to keep himself quiet. His eyes had slid shut, his corona stuttered and strained around him; he was a grenade primed to go nova.

The moment was now. Kaidan twisted his fingers inside Shepard, drank him all the way down, and brought up his own crackling corona, surrounding them in blue.

Shepard cried out, loud enough to be heard across the Presidium. His body arched upwards, heels digging in, almost bucking Kaidan off the mattress. His biotics detonated blue and red across the length of the room, making the windows rattle and the bed shake.

They would have blasted Kaidan off the bed, too, if Shepard’s field hadn’t merged completely with Kaidan’s in the moment, creating an entirely new center of mass between them, leaving Kaidan unscathed in the eye of the hurricane.

Kaidan nearly choked from the force of Shepard’s orgasm, but managed to drink that down as well, savouring the wringing sounds Shepard made as he came and came and didn’t stop.

Eventually, their combined biotic surge dissipated, and the gravity well subsided around them both. Kaidan crawled up Shepard’s body triumphantly to rest against his chest.

“Hey. How d’you feel?”

Shepard had to swallow thickly before he could speak. His eyes were closed, his limbs slack in the aftermath of pleasure. He embraced Kaidan with some difficulty. “I can’t feel my legs. You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Alenko.”

“I do good work,” Kaidan smirked. His jaw ached, but it was totally worth it to see Shepard this completely wrecked, barely able to keep his eyes open. That was the whole idea, of course: for Shepard to set down his burdens and let someone else take care of him for a change.

“The best,” Shepard murmured, as if he was half asleep already.

Then he opened his eyes, and hooked his thigh around Kaidan’s. “Now, it’s your turn. Fuck me.”

They rolled onto their sides, Shepard pliant in Kaidan’s arms, opening easily for him. Kaidan fucked him slowly, taking his time. They moved together, languorous and unhurried, Kaidan’s biotics assuming control, his field interlacing with Shepard’s, painting the room in wave after wave of dizzying blue.

The artificial twilight receded as they made love. Eddies of night lapped at their bodies, the gravity well ebbing and flowing around them. They floated on the Citadel’s gravitational tides, they rode its breaking waves, until Kaidan finally shuddered and spilled himself into Shepard’s body and brought Shepard off with him for a second time.

Afterwards, they held each other, drowsily, and watched as the simulated stars came out across the dark hologram of the sky.

In this light, Kaidan couldn’t see Shepard’s scars, could barely see the red tinge to the blissful blue of Shepard’s corona. From this vantage point, everything in the world seemed all golden, all new, and filled with hope.

Here, in this bedroom, in the ruin of Anderson’s bed, Shepard lay in Kaidan’s arms, his biotic field quiescent, having outpaced the ocean for the moment and washed up with Kaidan on these safe shores.

“Nice to be on dry land,” Shepard murmured. Kaidan knew what he meant.

They’d have to get up eventually. Kaidan would turn the lights on and strip the bed and towel them both off. Maybe Shepard would agree to another shower if Kaidan offered to princess-carry him to the bathroom. But for now, Kaidan was just glad to lie here holding Shepard, listening to him breathe.

This was the calm before the storm. Tomorrow they would leave this place, and shoulder their weapons again, and continue their search for a way to win this impossible war. That search would take them to dark places like the bottom of Despoina’s oceans, and there was no telling whether they’d succeed or fail in the end.

But tonight, they drifted together under the artificial sky above the Presidium, buoyed up by the gravity well, weightless on a very different kind of sea.

Notes:

So many beta thanks to potionsmaster and mallaidhsomo!

"From here so high we drift, we fly
With the twilight breaking through
A different kind of blue
More lights, blue signs
All gold, all new so small, so high
Down there tonight
With the twilight breaking though
It's a different kind of blue

[~ Passengers (U2/ENO), A Different Kind of Blue]

Chapter 3: ME1 — Gravity, Luck, Time

Summary:

What if this hadn’t been such a long time coming? In this alternate Seventh Wave timeline, John doesn’t send Lieutenant Alenko away before Ilos like he does in the first two ME3 chapters.

Notes:

This is the chapter that has actual plot. Also, CWs for undernegotiated D/s, angsty, undernegotiated, kinky first time sex, and referenced character death (Virmire). Please heed tags.

Twitter Kinktober 2021, Day 18: Edging
Stars&Skies Kinktober 2021, Day 25: Orgasm Denial

ETA: gorgeous NSFW art by bbegrill, embedded in-story!

He had no home in this world.

The dreams had started even before Torfan. Shepard didn’t need Citadel pop psychology to diagnose why.

A misspent childhood — born in space, shuttling between two homes, one parent always on deployment, neither having remarried. Boarding school at the Advanced Training Academy for Juveniles in Rio, alma mater of Admiral Hackett. The place where the Alliance raised its cannon fodder, where he’d been sent after his biotic abilities manifested. Where kids were taught to say yes, sir and no, ma’am, and learned to expect, and avoid, the punishment meted out.

To be fair, no soldier expected to have his entire squad wiped out. But that risk had been crystal clear going in. Major Kyle hadn’t been able to handle it, leaving his XO to step up to the plate.

Shepard hadn’t hesitated. Taken the risk, taken control, knocked it out the park. 10,000 batarian pirates destroyed, as many as there’d been on Elysium — not counting those who’d faked surrender afterwards, and paid for it.

It had come with a price. But the job got done.

Torfan had also gotten him his ticket to the Villa.

David Anderson told him at his N7 ceremony that he had three things going for him: stubbornness, sheer luck, and never second-guessing himself.

Shepard mentally added a fourth thing: staying objective. The kind of detachment that let him do his job and send soldiers to their deaths. It was a running theme even in his dreams — where people under his command died screaming, where the omnipotent narrator whispered You’re not human. You’ll always be alone.

He’d grown up without a home in this galaxy. The only thing he could rely on, he could control, was himself.

That, and the gravity well, which had opened for him when he was sixteen. After he’d let the Alliance put an L3 implant into his head, he’d thrown himself balls-first into the well’s greedy embrace and never looked back. She’d been his first and only female lover, the most faithful of them all.

Shepard had never served with another biotic until Lieutenant Alenko was assigned to the Normandy’s marine detail. Alenko was an L2, but he had a skilful handle on the gravity well, and even more control than Shepard himself.

He also had prettier eyes than any marine had a right to. Not that Shepard would admit to looking.

Alenko had gone to the notorious Jump Zero, which had been shut down by the time Shepard’s own biotics had manifested. A good thing, because if teenage John had been disciplined with dark energy rather than the paddle the Academy used, there would’ve been blood on the classroom floor.

Later, he learned there’d in fact been blood at Jump Zero. An accident. Alenko had been seventeen. And somehow he’d come out like this — still talking about “the dream”, still wanting to do justice and secure man’s future in space. He was so full of integrity it made Shepard’s teeth hurt.

Shepard didn’t realize he’d been making actual small talk with the lieutenant until Alenko stopped telling him about BAaT and said, “You make a habit of getting this personal with everyone, sir?”

That was the thing: Shepard never got this personal with anyone.

“Of course,” he said, and mentally grimaced; he added, more truthfully, “But I don’t enjoy it with everyone.” Then, surprising himself, “We’ll talk again later, Lieutenant.”

Those pretty eyes widened. “I’ll need some time to process that, Commander. But, yeah, I’d like to talk again.”

Later, Shepard caught himself whistling almost cheerfully between his teeth. He shut himself up, but the unusually good mood persisted.

Two very different biotics walk onto a ship: the Butcher of Torfan and the Alliance’s number one boy scout — and they actually get along? Stranger things had happened. Shepard figured he might as well strap in for the ride.

 

*

 

After Shepard touched the beacon, the dreams went into overdrive.

The world’s ending. The Reapers are coming. Stop them, or everyone dies.

The Alliance didn’t believe him. It was just Saren and some rogue geth, not the end of everything. The Council didn’t believe him either, but they hedged their bets, making him humanity’s first Spectre.

It was hard for one person to hold it all, even for someone who was as stubborn and not given to self-doubt as Shepard. The Reapers coming to destroy the galaxy? The only weapons Shepard had to stop them was gravity, luck and time.

And his objectivity. Which had come unexpectedly under fire, thanks to a certain biotic marine.

“I’m glad we didn’t lose you,” Alenko had said, after they’d lost Jenkins on Eden Prime. “You did everything right. It was just bad luck.” After Feros, he’d said. “You had to make some tough calls to get us this far. And it looks like there might be more.”

There was a bright flare in Alenko’s eyes as he went on to talk about always leaving a way out. Shepard wasn’t sure if Alenko was talking about work, or what was happening between them. Shepard wasn’t used to not knowing. Or to sharing the gravity well with another person on ship. Alenko’s precise touch was a constant skim across the well’s surface, announcing his presence across a crowded room, his biotic field a low pulse from under his taut, tanned skin.

Shepard cleared his throat. “I appreciate the input, Lieutenant, but, as you say, these are the hard calls. And there’s no one else to make them.”

“Like you did on Torfan?” Blue crackled briefly around Alenko’s irises. “All I’m saying is that you’re not alone. You have a talented crew, the finest I’ve served with. Don’t shut us out.”

Was what Alenko really wanted to say, Don’t shut me out?

Press the issue. “You have a personal observation to make, Alenko?”

The guardedness Alenko was just talking about now stole over his handsome face. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting any bad signals,” he said, slowly. “Don’t want you to spend your personal time with me if you don’t want to.”

Damn it, was this how Shepard was all the time? Being on the other side of it was frustrating; Shepard had no idea how past him managed to send out any signals.

No, that wasn’t true. Past him had never had to signal jack shit. Soldiers on shore leave had stopped by of their own volition, and assumed the challenge of communicating their way into his pants. It was Shepard’s way of making sure they were sure, and that no one got too close.

Now here was this careful soldier, doing this cautious and infinitely infuriating dance. Keeping himself back, side-eyeing the command structure, implicitly holding the fraternization regs up between them. It made Shepard want to fling his own objectivity to the wind, crowd the lieutenant against the console he was working over, and request — in his throatiest voice — an explicit declaration of Alenko’s interest.

Instead, he got a goddamned grip, feeling the energy well seethe with his frustration. Mildly, he remarked, “Thought my signals were pretty clear. Unless maybe this is just a battlefield thing for you?”

Alenko licked his lips. A definite sign of interest.

“Shepard, I don’t make a habit of complicating the chain of command. Maybe now isn’t the right time. But when we have some real down time, I’d like to continue this talk.”

In the course of their conversation, Shepard discovered he’d closed the distance between himself and the lieutenant. Not crowding him, exactly, because that would be an abuse of the chain of command. But this was how close you stood to someone you were interested in, enough to feel the warmth of his body rising through his fatigues, and through yours.

The gravity well crackled between them, or maybe it was just the static build-up of their fields rubbing against each other. Two biotics, sharing space, sharing dark energy, and — if Alenko was willing — something more.

“I’d like that, too,” Shepard said. If his voice slid into a throaty register, it wasn’t entirely by design.

 

*

 

He couldn’t stop goddamned thinking about Alenko. He still got the job done; no one could tell he was off his game. But he could tell. It was screwing with his headspace, affecting his decisions in the field.

Hackett sent the Normandy after some biotic terrorists who’d taken some politician hostage in the Farinata System. Seems these bozos wanted to showcase discrimination against L2s and their defective implants, claim that galactic governments were covering it up. Not Shepard’s usual beat. He’d never negotiate with terrorists, especially biotic ones.

Except that Alenko was an L2, and the hostiles had listened when he asked them to trust him. It was thanks to Alenko that Shepard resolved the hostage crisis peacefully.

Another biotic-related mission, this time in the Hawking Eta cluster. Shepard was beginning to sense a theme. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. But this one was personal. The terrorists’ ringleader was Major Kyle, Shepard’s old commanding officer at Torfan. Shepard could resolve the mission with violence, but only as a last resort — he owed the old man that much.

Alenko held Kyle’s crew at bay with dark energy while Shepard tried to talk the major down. He found himself baring his soul about Torfan, saying things he had never said to anyone.

Until you’re in that moment, you never know what you’re going to do. I made the call. Do I regret the lives lost? Of course, but I don’t regret the choice. I’d make it again. Someone has to. Someone always has to.

After Torfan, the dreams told him, in Kyle’s voice, You’re not human. You’ll never have a home in this world.

The real Kyle, though, had said, finally, “You had to, because I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry, son.”

Shepard could see his pulse readings climbing, could hear himself breathing as he had in those goddamned bunker tunnels, his mnemonics and the gravity well hemmed in in the stifling space. He had to swallow before he could say, “Don’t be, Major. I’m not sorry. Are you finally going to make the call that’ll save lives?”

Somehow, with Alenko at his side, Shepard managed to get the crazy old man to stand down. One more mission outcome that came down to the lieutenant’s influence.

Then came the mission in the Plutus system. A jumped-up space pirate named Darius had managed to get control of an eezo-rich asteroid which the Alliance needed to secure. Shepard had no clue what gave Hackett the idea that the Butcher of Torfan would be the right person to conduct business negotiations over mining rights, but he went where the Alliance sent him.

Which was how he found himself holed up behind a bunch of storage containers, his Lancer and Predator both on overload, waiting out the cooldown on his longer-range biotics, nearly out of ammo and out of medigel. To get here, he’d run his squad past a lava storm that nearly fried the Mako, and five gun turrets that were somehow hidden from his sensor array. Worst of all, he’d had to endure a snide comment from Alenko about his driving (”Commander, it might be easier to follow the actual road?”).

Darius’s mercs continued to pound his position with cryo rounds and assault rifle fire. Shepard kept his shields up, cursing under his breath. If he’d planned this better, he’d have picked up an AR that used the new thermal clips. Then again, if he’d planned this better, he’d have paced out his weapons, rather than tried to instantly fry Darius and his goons with the eezo that came out of the ground around here.

On the far side of the room, Williams’s Gorgon blazed enthusiastically. At this rate she was going to be out of ammo soon, too. Across from him, in a much better defensive position, crouched Alenko, radiating calm and hyper-competence, marshalling his own ammunition and timing his own attacks in a way to maximize cooling efficiency.

Alenko glanced over and met Shepard’s gaze. Shepard realized he’d been staring at the man in a mixture of annoyance and admiration.

If the lieutenant said something like, ”Commander, it might have been advisable to keep actual track of your ammo?”, Shepard would absolutely have flipped him the biotic bird, never mind the armor-piercing bullets getting closer and closer with every breath.

But Alenko didn’t do anything so petty. Instead, he pulled up his biotic field. The gravity well crackling around him, kinetic rounds bouncing off his barrier , he made a dash for Shepard’s position. Shepard’s pile of covering crates wasn’t large, and Alenko had to squeeze in tightly to fit.

“Here,” he said, and pressed a couple of ammo blocks into Shepard’s hand.

Somehow, Shepard could feel the heat curling off Alenko’s body, through two biotic fields and undersuits and armour plating. Biotic metabolism ran higher than usual; Shepard had never realized just how hot that temp actually was.

Hot in another sense, too. Damn, those eyes were pretty, even behind two sets of reinforced visor.

Shepard belatedly took hold of himself. Time to show his enemies why he was in command.

“Thanks,” he said, then, “Cover me,” and, drawing a surge of dark energy towards him, he took off toward the stairwell.

Alenko covered him, and then followed, Williams laying down supportive fire.

Once Shepard reached the balcony, he had control of the room, with the staircase a useful choke point. He called the gravity well to him, and clenched Darius’s men in singularity after singularity.

At his side, Alenko joined his biotics to Shepard’s, and detonated the targets Shepard had pulled into the air. Those men who tried to rush up the kill zone of the staircase were picked off with conventional bullets. Alenko was as lethal and precise with his Mattock as he was with his mnemonics. The spare ammo blocks came in handy, too.

The battle was soon over. Almost too quickly. Fighting side by side with another biotic, one who could keep up with Shepard himself? It was an undeniable rush.

In fact, if Shepard’s undersuit had any more give in it, there’d be a painful situation happening down the lower half of his armor. As it was, there was a definite sense of strain.

“Nicely done, lieutenant.”

“You too, sir.” There was a mirroring admiration in Alenko’s voice. Under the faceplate, it almost looked as if Alenko felt the rush as well.

“Did we get Darius?”

“He’s still alive,” Williams called from below.

The self-styled lord barely had the strength to beg for his life. Shepard had a choice — shoot him full of medi-gel, or shoot him in the head.

Talk about being both flattered and insulted. It was crystal clear why Hackett had picked him for this mission. The Butcher of Torfan was getting ready to put Darius out of his misery, the man’s begging fading into so much background noise, when he heard Alenko clearing his throat behind him.

“You have some pertinent input on the mission objective, lieutenant?”

“Just a suggestion, sir. Hope it’s not out of line. But the Alliance did trust Darius to hold this station for them when they cleared out the batarians.”

Darius, bleeding and groveling, seized the lifeline with both hands. “Yes! Yes, and the Alliance can trust me to do it again! I swear, I won’t make any more problems for you!”

Shepard sighed, and got a better grip on his Phalanx. "You know, the time to negotiate is over. I've killed worse than you on my way to real problems.”

“Not a problem at all! I was wrong, I’ll agree to whatever terms you want, give you whatever guarantees the Alliance needs.” Darius wrung his hands together. “Just give me this chance to show you.”

Shepard scowled, but he had to admit it galled him that Hackett had sent him out here expecting Shepard to shoot up the base exactly like this. Maybe the man had meant it to be flattering, but he’d clearly not anticipated Shepard would negotiate a peaceful solution.

He cocked the pistol at Darius’ head. Then he pulled out the datapad with his free hand and shoved it under Darius’s nose.

“About that treaty we were discussing, before you insulted me and my team …”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alenko smirk to himself. It was annoying, and infuriatingly attractive. Shepard wanted to pop Darius, then stalk over there and unseal Alenko’s helmet and kiss that curl off the lieutenant’s mouth.

He held himself back with some effort. Shepard had his ice-cold rep in the field to maintain. Besides, he needed Alenko to be sure before he’d let himself make a decisive move.

And it wasn’t just making sure Alenko was on board with whatever was going on between them. Call it fraternization, disrupting the change of command, call it more than just messing around on shore leave. Contrary to popular belief, Shepard didn’t need to always be in control, not in the same way he suspected Alenko did, but it was definitely time to find out what this meant for himself.

When they’d got back to the ship, Shepard made his report, then he took off his filthy armor and took a long and very cold shower.

When he emerged from his room, Alenko was in his usual position at the nearby console. His dark hair curled damply at the back of his neck, over his crisp collar. Clearly someone else had also decided to take a post-mission shower.

“I don’t suppose you need me to ask you for your opinion on the last mission.”

The smirk was even more compelling without bulletproof visors in the way. “Sorry if I was out of line, Commander. But I gotta say, it was a hell of a deal you worked out with Darius. If I ever get a speeding ticket, I want you to negotiate with the prosecutor.”

Shepard felt an unwilling smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “You weren’t out of line. You were right. I don’t like being played, or being predictable.”

He’d enjoyed watching Hackett try not to look surprised by the report of mission success. Maybe Darius would have a change of heart once he’d been discharged from the Alliance medical facility, but that wasn’t Shepard’s problem.

Alenko said, innocently, “Your reputation does precede you, sir. Stands to reason they’d send you where your skills would be best put to use. But sometimes there’s another way to do things, maybe a better way, and, what do you know, you have skills for that, too.”

Shepard snorted. “Hell of a thing, from the Butcher of Torfan.”

Alenko hesitated, then said, slowly, “I heard what you had to say to the Major back on Presrop. Sounds like you did what you had to do. You think you could have done better?”

In Alenko’s eyes, Shepard could see him imagining the darkness in the underground tunnels, the desperate close-quarters combat, marines crying out as they died. Finally, Alenko added, “Maybe until you’re in that moment, you’ll never know.”

“I don’t make a habit of second guessing myself,” Shepard said, more harshly than he intended. He wasn’t going to start doing it now with Alenko, no matter how pretty his eyes were.

Alenko mused, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten to where I am because I took initiative. Good or bad, I’ll own that. But sometimes I do look back and think: did I do the right thing?”

Shepard could almost see the distance in Alenko’s gaze. He wasn’t under Torfan anymore, but back at Jump Zero, with the girl he’d loved, and the man he’d killed.

“Never let anything slide, huh? This explains a lot about you, Alenko. You agonize over doing the right thing, it’s why you always look for a way out.”

Shepard lifted his hand, and pulled up his field, crackling and deadly, the dark energy leashed by nothing but his body and sheer willpower.

He offered, “After what happened to you at BAaT — after what you did — you’ve never let yourself lose control.”

Alenko extended his hand, and his field, to meet Shepard’s. Shepard had never noticed before how dark his own biotic aura was when compared to Alenko’s lighter, brighter one. Both fields sparked static where their perimeters came into contact with the atmosphere, like shards of little stars in the night sky.

The fields pushed closer until they were right up against each other, crackling furiously as the edges clashed and seethed, electricity sizzling between them. Until they were palm against bare palm. The warmth of Alenko’s naked skin against his was somehow even hotter than the man’s fierce aura, and even more intimate.

In the maelstrom of blue, Alenko’s eyes were so deep they could drown a man.

“Your own control is something else, Commander. Was it from what happened at Torfan, or before?”

Palm to palm with Alenko, staring into the face of Alenko’s past, Shepard was reminded of the Academy. When he was even younger than Alenko, where he’d learned to endure the solitude, the discipline, the corrective sting of the paddle. Where he’d learned to make it work for him, and more than work.

He never talked about it. Not until now.

“Military boarding school. Not BAaT, but no walk in the park, either. Never had anyone reject me because of who I was, though.”

That girl Alenko had loved had run off when she’d realized what Alenko was capable of. It sounded like it’d broken the kid’s heart.

At the time, Shepard had wondered why Alenko was still hung up over someone who’d clearly not appreciated him. It wasn’t something young John had ever had to face. But now he realized that it was because he’d never let anyone get close enough, not at the school, or since.

The discovery rattled him. He had to shake it off, saying with an effort, “But yeah, control’s important to me too. More than that, I need to be in charge.”

It was why he needed to stay objective. So he’d never abuse that authority. So that he could keep making the hard decisions he needed to make.

It was a key part of who he was in bed, too. At school, and ever since. If this was where this exchange was going with Alenko, the lieutenant needed to know it, and to be sure about what that meant.

“I get that,” Alenko said, seriously. The gravity well rippled around him, as deep as his fathomless eyes. “Fortunately for us crew, you’re very good at it. Even the Council agrees there’s no human better suited to command.”

Shepard was used to seeing fear as well as admiration; he’d seen the fear in Torfan, and in his dreams afterwards. You’re not human. You’ll never have a home in this world.

Alenko’s eyes were shining, though, and entirely without fear.

Shepard said, with some bitterness, “I am indeed a fully functional human being, contrary to popular belief.”

“Fully functional, Commander?” Alenko murmured. He closed his fingers around Shepard’s, and gravity canted against them.

For a moment the world reeled. Their fields pushed violently against each other’s as if locked in combat. Then their biotics settled, still sizzling, heat and electricity filling Shepard’s body, soaking him with it.

Fatigues had a lot more give than his undersuit and armor. Shepard had gotten uncomfortably aroused, as Alenko could undoubtedly tell.

“Yeah, in all senses of the word.” Goddamn, his throat was dry. He wetted his lips, and Alenko followed suit; Shepard watched that red tongue trace over the curves of the lieutenant’s mouth. “How about you?”

Alenko asked, softly, “Are you asking if I’m gonna be a burden to you? If what happened at BAaT makes me a liability? Or are you asking about something else?”

“What happened at BAaT just makes you stronger. It’s okay to have hang-ups. Just means you’re human, too.” He curled his fingers around Alenko’s, very slowly, so the lieutenant could get away if he wanted to.

Alenko didn’t move his hand, and the hectic buzz of his field mirrored the flush in his cheeks. Shepard had to ask: “Are you still planning a way out?”

“You know me, Shepard. I always am.” Damn, that thick, sex-drunk tone went straight to Shepard’s cock.

Shepard’s voice was hoarse. “Look. If we’re doing this together with saving the galaxy, I need to know you’re all in.”

Alenko stared at their clasped hands, the sizzle of their joined auras. Then he pulled his fingers away and his field guttered out. The loss staggered him; Shepard had to take a step back before he could compose himself.

“Commander, you know the crew’s in for the long haul.” Alenko paused, as if this wasn’t the shutdown it damn well sounded like. There was something in his guarded eyes that looked like hope. “As for me … I am, too. For the long haul. I mean, if you’re gonna be here when it’s over, I’m looking forward to some shore leave.”

Shepard inhaled sharply. Frustration flooded his mouth, and he opened it to tell Alenko exactly what he thought of the lieutenant’s gamesmanship, his rules-lawyering, his goddamn risk avoidance.

However, what emerged was, “It’s tough keeping this separate from duty. But when the mission’s complete, it’ll be different.”

“I hope so, sir,” said Alenko. Shepard watched him leave the cabin deck, head held high, proud back ramrod straight.

 

*

 

On Noveria, they met Liara’s mother, Saren’s second-in-command, and the clearest evidence of the Reaper threat. Despite their combined powers, they only managed to take her down because she had shaken free of Reaper indoctrination long enough to help their cause.

The planet was crawling with massive hive-mind-sentient bugs who had once ruled the universe. The decision to wipe them out once and for all came down to him. Shepard consulted his crew, and then made the call to save the rachni queen — because Alenko thought it was the right thing to do.

The Council wasn’t so sure. They’d had some choice words for him about the decision. Shepard absolutely wasn’t going to let their disapprobation make him second-guess himself, but he was in a foul mood when he stopped by Alenko’s console afterwards.

“Are you okay, sir? You’re carrying a helluva raincloud over your head.”

“Afraid I’ll make you wet?” Shepard snorted. “You think the decision to save the rachni showed weakness? That it’ll come back to bite me in the ass?”

Alenko looked like he was weighing whether to make some crack about Shepard’s ass, but thought the better of it. “You know I thought it was the right call,” he said. “Killing an entire species, genocide, it’s not something you can easily decide to do. Doing the right thing takes strength, not weakness.”

Shepard had to take a breath. The look on Alenko’s face, the tell-tale sizzle of his aura — it was as much of a rush as wiping out those damn bugs across Noveria’s frozen battlefield.

“Tell that to the Council,” he muttered, trying to get some distance. Staying objective was increasingly difficult under Alenko’s steady gaze.

“The Council weren’t there,” Alenko pointed out , “and we were. Sometimes it feels like we’re the only ones trying to do any good, to actually fight this war. Everyone else in the galaxy seems to have gone out of their minds, the Council included.”

Those bright eyes. Someone who always had his six in the field, who understood where he was coming from, who actually thought the Butcher of Torfan would do the right thing. Who believed in him. Shepard’s pulse was loud in his ears. It would be so easy to just reach out, to run his thumb over the dent in that square chin and feel the crackle of their biotics rising around them…

You have to be sure.

Instead, Shepard made himself say, “I’m glad I have you on my team, Alenko,” and took a step back.

“Always,” the lieutenant said, and stood aside as Shepard walked away.

 

*

 

These are the hard calls. You make your decision to sacrifice the one for the many a choice to leave someone behind — until you’re in that moment, you never know.

Everything went to shit on Virmire. Shepard had to make the hard choice, to save one crewmember and sacrifice the other. He took the command call. There was no one to blame but him.

His luck had to run out some time. It ran out on Williams, light years away from home.

Shepard absolutely refused to second guess his decision. Especially since Alenko was clearly all too ready to do it for him.

She died because of me. Because of us. She wouldn’t have died if I’d done my job.

Alenko hadn’t added, Or if you’d done yours. He clearly thought he hadn’t needed to.

Who needed accusing dreams when Shepard could listen to this kind of guilt-trip in real life? In front of the rest of the command crew, even.

Shepard didn’t know where Alenko actually got off, talking about us, when the man had clearly been still keeping his options open, already planning a way out; when they hadn’t so much as laid a finger on each other.

“You think I let Williams die because I couldn’t leave you behind?”

Alenko was the ranking officer, one of the strongest biotic assets the Alliance had under its command. And he’d been on location with the fucking bomb, which the entire mission revolved around. It was the logical call. Sanctioned by the actual Alliance rule-book, even. Shepard would have made the same choice even if he’d been completely objective about it.

Had he been completely objective? Did Alenko look more stricken by the thought that Shepard would have left him behind if Williams had been with the bomb?

Would Shepard have been able to leave him behind?

Fuck. This was why the Alliance handbook had an entire section on fraternization.

I understand, Commander. I don’t regret a thing.

Williams deserved better than for people to think she died because her commander was hot for the other guy. Come to think of it, she probably deserved a better commander than the one she had.

Shepard said, ice on Noveria’s frozen tundra, “Good thing it wasn’t your call, Lieutenant.” Then, as if as an afterthought: “Don’t question my orders again.”

He stalked back to his cabin. He secured the door and leaned his head against the wall. So much for I need to know you’re all in and When the mission’s complete, there’ll be time for us. He was clinically aware of his whole body, shaking with rage.

When the cabin chime rang, Shepard considered throwing something at the wall. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to give in to the temptation.

“Come in.”

It was, of course, Alenko. Looking as terrible as Shepard himself felt.

“I wanted to apologise, Commander,” he said. “I was out of line. Adrenaline.”

Shepard opened his mouth to say, Damn straight you were, and said, instead, “I understand. I’m sorry, too.”

He realized, after he’d said it, that it was actually true. He did understand. Alenko was grieving. Williams was his friend as well as a marine under his command. Survivor’s guilt was real, and it would be especially hard for someone with this much decency as Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

Alenko was muttering, “I’ve served for years, but never lost a soldier under my command. And when it came down to your choice — her or me —”

His aura roiled and pitched around him. Shepard could see how conflicted he was. He’d meant it wholeheartedly when he’d begged Shepard to save Williams. In some way, dying might have been easier than this terrible calculus of whether it was better or worse for Shepard to be willing to have left him behind.

Alenko finished by saying, “We’re soldiers. We’re all expendable. I was prepared to die; I still am.”

It was much easier for Shepard to reach for sarcasm than to engage honestly. “Still think it was the wrong decision, Lieutenant? That it’ll come back to bite me in the ass? Would it have been easier if I pretended I didn’t care at all?”

Shepard watched his words hit home. Alenko’s face went white as he said, “Maybe. Maybe I hoped you cared enough to do the right thing, even if it meant leaving me there.”

It was a punch in the gut. Shepard had to inhale deeply. He clenched his hands into fists so he wouldn’t slam them against the nearest wall.

His voice shook, as it never did in the field. “I did care enough. I do care. It was the right choice, Kaidan.”

“I wish I could be sure about that.” Alenko’s face was expressionless, even with Shepard’s use of his first name.

Shepard discovered he understood this part, too. Alenko was a complex man, comprised in equal parts of pride and regret, self-control and self-doubt. Afraid of being seen as damaged goods, after BAaT. He needed to do the right thing; he needed to be sure his C.O. would do the right thing.

If he let himself get close to Shepard, if he let Shepard get close to him, it might mean Shepard had saved him for the wrong reasons.

There was nothing more Shepard could say. This was why second-guessing was such a mindfuck, and why caring enough was a very bad idea.

Alenko turned to go, muttering, “I should return to my duties, Commander.”

Once he was alone again, Shepard finally allowed himself to slam his fist into the wall. If he’d thought the pain would help, he was sorely mistaken.

 

*

 

The Reapers were coming. You have to stop them. The only weapons Shepard had were gravity, luck and time, and he could only control the first.

Gravity was different on the Citadel than it was planetside or on board ship. Its artifice rang false to Shepard; he felt it slipping through his fingers as he tried to wield it, to hold on. As for luck, that had run out on Virmire. Now time, too, was running out, with the Council’s decision to ignore his warnings and to ground the Normandy.

Shepard pounded the wall a few times, then he’d addressed the crew calmly and told them to make the most of their enforced shore leave. Now he was sitting in front of the crew lockers, trying not to feel like damaged goods himself.

What was the point of it all? The missions, the deaths, the fucking dreams that plagued him every night. Never showing any weakness. Making the hard calls himself.

A familiar presence entered the gravity well. The footsteps approached cautiously, deliberately, like someone not wanting to startle a wild animal. Shepard didn’t need to look up when the tips of Alenko’s boots entered his line of sight.

"Commander, are you all right?" Alenko asked. "I'm sure there's a way to appeal. We're under Alliance authority, after all. Not the Council’s."

The universe was going to hell, and Alenko’s boots were still so shiny you could see your face in them. Shepard kept his gaze on his own reflection as he gave the lieutenant the low-down. They’d been hung out to dry, the Alliance wasn’t going to do jack shit.

When Shepard was done, Alenko responded, “You know you can count on me, or any of the crew.” His aura tensed and flexed restlessly. Shepard could tell the lieutenant had something to say, but as usual he wasn’t putting himself out there. After where they’d left their last conversation, Shepard didn’t know why he’d expected anything more.

“Got to say, Kaidan, I was hoping for a little personal support here.”

Alenko hesitated. His voice was thick when he said, slowly, “I’m here for you, Shepard. But we’re in a rough spot, and the last thing I want to do is muddy things. Not that it was all that clear to start with. Why did the Council even appoint you, and send us out there, if they were going to shut us down at the first speed bump?”

Shepard looked up, finally. He was surprised to see Alenko had dropped his guard. His field was down; there was real emotion in his eyes. It gave Shepard a sudden jolt of energy, that same heady, powerful rush he got from pitching into a firefight at Alenko’s side.

Suddenly, he wasn’t tired anymore. Adrenaline and eezo surging through him, he said, fiercely, “I don’t know. All I know is I’m sick of it. Maybe what we should do is take a little initiative.”

“You have something up your sleeve? When don’t you?” Alenko’s eyes shone with unmistakable admiration, his biotic field flaring to life. “You don’t have to do it alone, Shepard.” He caught himself belatedly. “I mean, sir.”

Shepard grinned despite himself. “Galaxy in the balance and you trip talking to me? Nice going, Alenko.”

“I just need a little practice,” Alenko said, softly. “I think we’ve got some time.”

He reached out a hand to help Shepard up. Their palms met. Their fields pressed together, sparks to a flame, Alenko overcompensating as he hauled Shepard to his feet. Shepard staggered and had to catch hold of Alenko’s shoulder to keep his balance.

That shoulder was broad, solid, warm. So was Alenko’s body, suddenly only inches away. So close Shepard could feel the heat rising from Alenko’s skin.

Alenko caught his gaze and didn’t look away, didn’t move away. In that unguarded moment, there was something new in those pretty eyes.

Need. Desire. No longer hiding what he felt, at last.

Their fields clashed, the electricity between them sizzled. His heart hammering, Shepard began to draw Alenko in for a first kiss, and Alenko leaned in to meet him …

"… Sorry to interrupt, Commander." Joker’s entirely unapologetic voice over the comm made them spring apart, shields unfurling in surprise.

Shepard ground his teeth together. His pulse was pounding, his breathing fast. Goddamn, he was actually already half-hard under his fatigues. He wanted to tell Joker where to shove his message, and then to push Alenko against the lockers and follow through on what he’d started, to hell with objectivity and self-control.

But the message was from Anderson. He wanted to meet at Flux. The galaxy still needed to be saved, and the mission couldn’t wait for them.

The moment slipped through Shepard’s fingers like sand in an hourglass. Alenko’s defences slid back up, and their time together had run out.

 

*

 

He’d told Alenko all they’d needed to do was take a little initiative. Old-fashioned mutiny was one way to do that, all right. Steal the ship and take it right into the jaws of hell, in the words of that dead poet Williams had liked.

The crew were staking everything on his word that the Reapers were coming, that the Conduit was real, that the Normandy was the only thing that stood between the galaxy and destruction. They were behind him, every last one; loyal to the end, ride or die.

It would have been humbling, except that his unit at Torfan had been this kind of committed, too, and he’d gotten them all killed, every last one.

It would be hours before the ship reached the Mu Relay. Shepard really ought to try to get some sleep.

Except that then the dreams would come for him. For some reason, he didn’t relish the prospect of heading into what might be the last firefight of his life with the voices of his dead crewmates and dead Protheans ringing in his ears.

You’re not human. You’ll never have a home in this world. The world is ending. The Reapers are coming. Stop them, or everyone dies. Stop them; it’s the only thing you’re good for. Stop them, and then maybe everything you had to do might finally make some sense.

Shepard stared at the terminal, not seeing the words on the screen. The voices rang in his head, just out of earshot, the tension building inside him like a massive energy charge.

The door opened, without warning. The familiar aura, the broad silhouette in the doorway, made no secret of who it was.

"Commander," Alenko said, quietly. He’d come after all, when Shepard had least expected it.

Shepard’s aura flickered and spat in time with the knot in his gut. He got to his feet as Alenko walked slowly towards him. “Yeah, for now. The Alliance needs to catch up with us before they can strip me of my rank. What do you need, Kaidan?”

This time, the use of his first name didn’t make Alenko blush. He’d come to Shepard’s cabin in lieu of getting some badly-needed shut-eye. There must be a pressing reason, even if he was still trying to work up the nerve to ask.

“It’ll really hit the fan when we get to Ilos. If things don’t go well, I want you to know… well, I’ve enjoyed serving under you.”

Shepard snorted, “I don’t think I’ve had that pleasure. Are you here because it’s finally time to rectify that? Is that what you want?”

After Virmire, Alenko needed to be sure this was what he wanted.

Shepard had to admit — wanting the man this badly, waiting for him to be convinced, it was almost worse than the dreams. He’d do it, though. He’d send Alenko away if he needed to. Alenko deserved that much, after BAaT, after all he’d been through. And Shepard himself could only be what his past had made him: a man who needed to be in charge, always, with someone he could be sure of.

Alenko swallowed. His aura crackled. He took a slow step closer, so Shepard could get a good look at the desire in his eyes.

“You know what? The galaxy will just keep going. Everything, even the Reapers, will come around again. But you and me … we may never happen again. We’re heading into the fight of our lives. I want us to have this before time runs out.”

This final surrender, such a long time coming, set the match to the flame. Shepard’s blood rose urgently, his pulse loud in his veins. He hadn’t touched anyone since his last shore leave, since before this commission. He was willing to bet Alenko hadn’t been with anyone for even longer than that.

The lieutenant had said I’m not the sort who does that kind of thing lightly. Which made one of them, but for Shepard, that sort of thing had never involved letting his guard down. He wasn’t planning on that happening tonight. But as history had shown, all bets were off when it came to Alenko.

He said, thickly, “Bunk here tonight, Kaidan. With me.”

Alenko’s eyes crinkled around the edges; Shepard wanted to kiss every teasing line. “Is that an order, Commander?”

He needed to make sure. “We need to get something straight. If we’re really doing this, you won’t have that way out you say you always need.” Shepard swallowed. “I told you, I need to be in charge. Of this. Of you.”

Alenko had to swallow, too. His irises were huge and black; enough to drown a man, if Shepard wasn’t careful. “I get that,” he murmured. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you have what you need.”

“You sure?” Shepard called up his aura, and pushed it out towards Alenko; Alenko caught it as he’d done after Nonuel, his hold on the gravity well as deadly precise as it had been in every battlefield. Shepard said, over the sizzling barrier of blue, “If I recall correctly, control’s important to you, too.”

“Yeah, it is. But I’m willing to give it up to you.” Alenko pressed their barriers together, and then their hands, his fingers scalding hot. “You’re going to have to take on the universe, but you don’t have to do it alone. I’m here.”

Shepard had a moment of cold, of uncertainty, but it was swept away by his own need. Never second-guess anything. He had wanted this man so much, and for so long, and now here Alenko was, finally agreeing to be his.

“Shut up and get over here,” he murmured, drawing Alenko toward him.

“Careful, Shepard. I might think you’re abusing your authority. A serious breach of protocol.”

Their coronas sizzled fiercely together. Alenko slid breathlessly into Shepard’s embrace like one of those heroes in the old vids.

“Never happen. That authority’s whatever you give me.” With the last of his restraint, Shepard held himself back long enough to say, “You say red for stop, blue for go; for everything else you do what I tell you. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah,” Alenko said, fearlessly, as if he was entirely certain of what he was getting into. Then a sly look stole over his face. “I mean, yes, sir.”

The teasing subservience went straight to Shepard’s prick. The dam fractured, the tides dragged him down. Shepard finally let himself twist Alenko into his arms and take that longed-for first kiss.

Damn, that mouth was even softer than it looked. Shepard slid a hand into Alenko’s damp hair, over the L2 amp port. He palmed Alenko closer, pressing their bodies together, Alenko’s cock hard against his. It took his breath away; God, he wanted this man so damned much.

Too many layers between them: Alliance-issue fatigues, biotic fields, all that baggage from their pasts. Shepard pulled off for long enough to breathe against Alenko’s mouth, “Tell me what you want.”

The heat in Alenko’s eyes was intoxicating. “I want to get these clothes off you.”

“Then show me what you can do, Lieutenant.”

“Aye aye.” His arms snaked around Shepard’s waist, powerful muscles flexing. It was no easy feat to pick up a hundred kilograms of biotic soldier, but Alenko lifted him easily, settling him ass first on the command desk.

There was a blue crackle, a familiar prickle of static, and Alenko’s biotics latched hold of Shepard’s left boot and sock, yanking it off Shepard’s foot. Shepard braced himself on the desk as Alenko repeated the procedure with Shepard’s other foot, and then dipped back into the gravity well to unfasten Shepard’s belt buckle and press Shepard back against the table. As Shepard propped himself on his forearms, Alenko unzipped Shepard’s uniform in one long line, and pulled the clothes triumphantly from Shepard’s body.

Shepard had never been this captivated by anyone. “Very nicely done,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”

He reached into the gravity well and took hold of Alenko with his arms and his biotics. Alenko locked his ankles around the small of Shepard’s back as he was lifted bodily, and let go as he was slung across Shepard’s bed. Dark energy pulled Alenko’s t-shirt off his head, and made short work of Alenko’s own boots, socks and fatigues.

In the low light, Alenko’s lips were parted, eyes heavy-lidded. Overheated skin, taut nipples standing to attention, cock an aching bar against his abdomen. But he was still holding back, still not asking Shepard for what he so clearly wanted.

Shepard knew exactly what he needed. Was going to give it to him, every last thing.

He leaned in and trailed biting kisses down Alenko’s neck, along his collarbone, down his chest. His teeth dragged over the nub of nipple, and Alenko groaned. Shepard ran a fingernail over the other nipple until it peaked, and then he pinched it, not gently, feeling Alenko shiver against him.

“Hands above your head,” he directed, and Alenko raised his arms, baring the long, powerful lines of his body to Shepard.

Straddling Alenko’s hips, Shepard called up a thrill of electricity, tracing circles over Alenko’s amp port and his aching nipples, and then finally along the trail of curling hair that ran from his navel to his balls. Alenko groaned again, breathing hard, writhing under the crackling web of dark energy.

“How are we doing, Kaidan? Red or blue?”

“God. Blue. Shepard, that’s so good, I —”

“—Hands stay above your head,” Shepard said, warningly, and Alenko’s triceps tensed with the effort. He clearly wanted to pull Shepard closer, to have friction and pressure against his body and his neglected prick. But he had agreed to cede control to Shepard tonight, and it looked like he finally meant to follow through.

“Have you done this before?” Shepard asked, as he ran the skein of electricity languorously over Alenko’s abdominal muscles, his taut, trembling balls, the swollen length of his prick.

Alenko shook his head no. He was biting his lower lip, his breath coming in staccato gasps, his corona stuttering across his skin. Shepard wasn’t surprised. Alenko had said that he and Rahna had kept their clothes on at Jump Zero, and he wasn’t the sort to have later sought out a biotic lover. Come to think of it, neither had Shepard.

“Still good? Still blue?”

Alenko nodded. Forming words was becoming more difficult. Shepard chased the electricity’s route down Alenko’s body with his lips, and then plunged his mouth over Alenko’s straining cock. Alenko moaned, body jack-knifing under his. Shepard had to brace an arm across his hips to keep him down.

Alenko’s precome tasted earthy and strong, with a sting of ozone underneath. With some effort, Shepard kept himself in check. He could easily lose himself in Alenko’s smell, in the slide of slick, swollen cock against his tongue. Breathing slowly, deliberately, he took more and more of Alenko with each pass, reveling in the small, wounded noises Alenko made as he got closer and closer to the edge.

Shepard wasn’t planning on letting him off so easily. As Alenko ramped up toward climax, he squeezed hard at the root of Alenko’s leaking prick, and pulled off with a deliberate pop.

Alenko let out a frantic whine of protest. His hands fisted in Shepard’s sheets, his body bucking under Shepard’s grip.

“Talk to me, Kaidan. Red or blue?”

“Blue, blue. Shepard, I need to — God, let me—”

“Not yet.” Shepard’s voice had gotten as rough as Alenko’s was. “Not until I say you can. Can you do that for me, soldier?”

Alenko fought for breath, and for his own control. His flanks were trembling. A flush had crawled across his chest and all the way up his neck, the hectic color contrasting with the blue flutter of his biotics. “Yes,” he managed, eventually. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Shepard breathed. The sight of the man, splayed on his bed, completely at his mercy, made him shudder. If he wasn’t careful, it would all be over very soon, and not just for Alenko.

He kept an almost-painful hold on Alenko’s erection, and reached with his biotics to the phial of lube in the drawer. It had only ever been used for solitary stress relief. Now he coated the fingers of his free hand and slid them between Alenko’s thighs, between the globes of his ass, until he reached the rim of Alenko’s hole.

By this time, Alenko was shaking, his breathing loud and harsh. His hips struggled upwards, but Shepard held him tightly in place.

“You’re doing very well, Lieutenant,” Shepard said. “Don’t come yet. Not until I say. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Alenko breathed; it was the sweetest sound Shepard had heard all night.

One lubed finger slid into Alenko’s body, followed by another. It was a tight fit. It had clearly been a while since Alenko had been with a man. Years, maybe. And wasn’t that a tantalizing thought. Shepard moved his fingers slowly, giving Alenko time to adjust, scissoring, stretching, savoring the choked, helpless sounds he’d started to make.

“Hands where I can see them,” Shepard said, absently, as he worked Alenko open, listening to the man’s harsh breathing, his muffled gasps, the hitched noises he made when Shepard nailed his prostate.

Finally, Alenko began pushing back, helplessly, and Shepard knew it was time to move to the endgame. He pulled his fingers out and wiped them on the sheets. Alenko made a sobbing sound of loss. Shepard let go of Alenko’s prick, and ran a gentling hand along Alenko’s face.

“Nearly there. You still blue?”

“Yeah.” His fists opened and closed above his head, in time with the helpless pulse of his aura. His throat worked desperately. “Shepard, come on, please—”

“All right. You’ve been very good, Kaidan, you deserve a reward.”

Shepard lined himself up, lifting Alenko’s legs onto either side of his neck. Alenko’s dark gaze locked onto his as he finally pushed his way into Alenko’s body.

Alenko let out a long, shocked noise as if all the wind had been knocked out of him. His jaw worked, he couldn’t speak. Shepard seated himself deeply, and waited until Alenko’s mouth framed the words: Fuck me.

Shepard fucked him hard, holding onto his ankles, aiming for his prostate. Alenko rolled his head back, wordless moans spilling from his throat. Shepard had to fight to not moan with him, to not lose himself in the tight heat of Alenko’s body.

It was like nothing Shepard had ever known. Fucking a biotic — fucking this biotic — was plugging himself into the bright heart of a star, all fire and electricity and dark energy, like there was nothing in the universe but him and Alenko at its blue center.

It was so tempting to forget duty and the coming battle and winning this war, to chase his own pleasure. Instead, Shepard made himself breathe methodically, keeping his barrier steady, his thrusts dead center, watching Alenko’s eyes slide half-shut, the muscles clenching, the small of his back starting to arch helplessly off the bed.

“Almost there,” Shepard said, and took hold of Alenko’s flushed, straining cock, and began to stroke.

Alenko groaned desperately, his fingers curling above his head. He was finally beyond words; he was struggling to breathe, no room for anything inside his body except Shepard. His corona surged and faltered; his eyes had glazed over, tears gathering at the corners, conflict clenching his features tight.

Abruptly, Shepard realized this was too raw, too far beyond Alenko’s limits. His hips stuttered and slowed.

Alenko had told Shepard he was willing to cede control, that he’d give Shepard what he needed. You don’t have to do it alone. But Alenko may not have realized what it would cost him.

Alenko registered Shepard’s hesitation. His own gaze sharpened; he blinked the tears away.

John, he mouthed, his ankles locking behind Shepard’s neck, his body clenching around Shepard’s dick. Please, and Shepard started to move again, to stroke him again, and faster, pulling huffs of air from him that sounded like sobs.

“Now,” Shepard said. Alenko cried out as his body shuddered violently, his cock spurting in Shepard’s hand, coming in a blaze of blue, blue, blue.

For several long moments Alenko lay there, his eyes shut, corona guttering out, his breathing shallow and fast. His muscles trembled as Shepard stroked him through the aftershocks. At last he swallowed, and opened his eyes. Ropes of white painted his chest. His hair stood on end. The conflicted expression was still there, but he’d recovered some of his self-control. Enough to smile, wryly, when he felt Shepard buried deeply inside him, still aching and rock-hard.

“That was some reward,” he whispered. “Your turn. Finish for me."

He wrapped his legs around Shepard’s hips, and reached up to frame Shepard’s face in his hands. His corona rose, strong and sure, crackling at the edges as it clashed against Shepard’s own.

Shepard began to move again, closing his eyes, shutting himself off from the moment of apprehension. He focused instead on how good Alenko felt, how much he wanted him, how long he had waited for this moment. The long-delayed climax rose through his body, sharp as a knife, bringing tears to his own eyes as he surrendered to it at last.

 

*

 

Afterwards, when they’d finished cleaning up and Shepard had stripped down the bed with military precision, Alenko said, musingly, “You’re full of surprises.”

“Really,” Shepard said. It wasn’t a question. Now that the storm had passed, the man who never second-guessed himself was doing it now in spades. Alenko had perched himself awkwardly on the fresh sheets like he was considering a quick getaway. Shepard couldn’t help wondering if Alenko was regretting coming this evening.

Alenko met Shepard’s gaze squarely. “You kept stopping and checking in. Drove me crazy! But not in a bad way. Need to remember to do better with that myself.” He smiled tentatively, and reached over to lay his hand against Shepard’s cheek. “I get why it’s important to you, being in control. Because of your past.”

Alenko still looked cautious, but he seemed in no hurry to leave. Uncharacteristic relief washed through Shepard. He didn’t want to think about what to do if Alenko had started looking for a way out.

The worst was that he couldn’t blame Alenko if he had. He knew how much Alenko prized his self-control. If he hadn’t been so damned hot to get into Alenko’s pants, he’d have realized how difficult it would be for Alenko to surrender it to him.

Guilt wasn’t something Shepard did, either. But there was apparently a first time for everything: like second-guessing, like regret.

Stiffly, Shepard said, “Look, I’m not the man you might think I am.”

You’ll never be human, you’ll never have a place to call home in this world. No one will care if you die, only if you fail.

Alenko held his gaze steadily. “I know who you are, John. How about you?”

Shepard could have said: I’m the Butcher of Torfan. 40 men died under my command; I’ve pulled the trigger on 4,000-odd enemy lives. I left Ashley Williams behind on Virmire. 25 souls on the Normandy and I might be leading them to their deaths. Including the one I care about the most.

Instead, he reached for Alenko’s hand. No biotic fields, just warm skin, calloused from the grips on their sidearms and rifles, unused to this much gentleness.

“You make me feel human,” he told Alenko, in a voice that didn’t sound like his.

Alenko clasped back. He said, softly, “I want you to know how happy I am we did this. I don’t regret a thing. And maybe when we get back from Ilos, we might get to spend more time together.”

Shepard wanted to believe it was true. That they would survive Ilos, that they’d manage to defeat the Reapers, that Alenko would never regret this night together. If their luck ran out on the first two things, the third wouldn’t matter. And even if that third wasn’t true, with luck, with time, maybe it wouldn’t matter too. Maybe Alenko would always believe he’d done the right thing by coming here, and that Shepard had done the right thing by saying yes.

In lieu of compounding the error, Shepard said, “Time to get some sleep, before the end of the world.”

Alenko chuckled, warm and deep, and let Shepard draw the sheet over them both.

“I could get used to this,” he murmured, settling in. Shepard knew exactly how he felt.

He might have had no home in this world, no one to care if he died. Too early to tell if Alenko would change that. But for now, it was enough to have Alenko here in his bed, in the hours before battle, to remind him what it felt like to be human.

Notes:

Many, many, many thanks to Potions for her incredibly insightful beta. Full responsibility for all of it remains entirely mine.

 

I got no home in this world
Just gravity, luck and time
I've got no home in this world
Just you and you are not mine
There are no colors in your eye
There's no sunshine in your sky
There's no race, only the prize
There is no tomorrow, only tonight
Awake now a weight, get down on me…
Be the heavy hand, the mortal sand
Be the weight, heart, go down on me

 

[~ U2, Stateless]

Chapter 4: ME2 — Drowning in a deep well

Summary:

Still in this alternate Seventh Wave timeline where John doesn’t send Lieutenant Alenko away before Ilos, Shepard sees the consequences of that decision post-Alchera, on Horizon.

Notes:

More actual plot. CWs for PTSD, and rough, under-negotiated, goodbye sex, and lots of angst. Please heed tags.

John Shepard was back from the dead.

Two years ago, he’d died in the skies above Alchera. He’d died angry. There were so many things he’d left undone. Of course there was no use cursing what he couldn’t control, but he spent his last moments of life being furious about it anyway.

He hadn’t thought: if only he’d been faster. He’d needed to get everyone off the ship that day. He didn’t second-guess his decision to return to the cockpit. A fluke accident. It could’ve happened to anyone. Everyone’s luck had to run out some time, and his ran out that day.

When you were dying, there was no use wasting energy on regret.

Still, Shepard had had one regret, choking to death above Alchera: Kaidan Alenko.

Saying yes to him before Ilos. Taking him on shore leave after the Citadel hearings were over. Leaving him behind that morning on the Normandy. The lieutenant was one of the things he’d left undone. The only thing that Shepard, as the darkness took him, regretted leaving undone.

I thought we’d get more time. I thought we could fix what we had. Now we’ll never know.

As Shepard’s air ran out and his life with it, the last words, said for the first time, were: I’m sorry.

 

 

Of course, Alchera hadn’t seen the end of his life. Shepard had been dead for two years when Cerberus brought him back, on a wave of renegade science and off-the-books double-dealing, the sort people sold their soul to obtain. Shepard didn’t believe in gods and demons, but he couldn’t get away from the sense he was living on borrowed time, that this body was on mortgage to the devil himself.

Cerberus had brought him back, and had brought him back clean. Like they were returning to him his innocence, like they were offering him another shot at redemption. They’d erased the old scars on his legs from Torfan, the tracks left by thresher maw acid on Nepheron, the gash above his eyebrow which Saren had given him on Virmire. When they were done replacing 90 percent of the cartilage in his body and bolting each vertebra in his spine back together with cybernetics and neurosteel, they also replaced the shoulder joint that had been shattered at the Battle of the Citadel, which the Alliance hadn’t quite managed to fix. When Shepard leaped off that operating table on Lazarus Station, and raised his Predator for the first time in two years, his arm had felt as good as new.

They’d even gotten rid of the old scars the Academy’s discipline had left on his inner thighs, the ones only one man had ever gotten to see.

According to Miranda, Cerberus had regrown his dead brain cells, using every source record she had managed to get her hands on. They’d put a graybox of old memories in his brain, where they could easily have put a control switch — and he only had Miranda’s word that the bastards hadn’t done that.

To her credit, his memories seemed the same. But Shepard wasn’t an expert on neurology or psychiatry. Was he really John Reuel Shepard, Alliance Navy, the Butcher of Torfan, first human Spectre, Commander of the Normandy? Or was he a walking hulk of meat and bones who’d been programmed to think it was Shepard? There was no easy way to tell.

His reflexes reacted with his old alacrity, the nerves and neural pathways driving muscles as efficiently as before. More efficiently, even — per readings from his gym workouts, the Cerberus tech had made him 20 percent faster and 45 percent stronger than before. With the familiar weight of the Lancer in his hand, killing felt the same, and launching his reinforced, resurrected body into a firefight felt even better.

What didn’t feel better was everything else that wasn’t in the combat zone. Washing off the dirt of battle, putting away a hot meal in the mess, interacting with the crew, even jacking off in the shower — it was all a pale shadow of how it used to be. The way it all might feel to an inhuman hulk of meat and bones who believed it was Commander Shepard.

Even looking at the holo of Kaidan Alenko that Cerberus had put on his desk — because they thought it might remind him of home, or maybe as a goddamned threat — he couldn’t feel a thing.

Cerberus was aware of the gaps in its intel about Shepard’s sex life. Going on what it had, it had staffed the new Normandy with a subservient redhead, presumably to cater to his need for control; hedging its bets, in view of his most recent dating history, it had also provided a cute biotic ex-Marine who looked like he might put up a fight before submitting.

Chambers was explicit in her enthusiasm for whatever brand of kink Shepard was serving up. Taylor was more guarded, but he made no secret of his admiration for his C.O. Alone on this strange ship, untethered in this strange universe and in this strange body, Shepard might have been tempted — except that even the thought of caressing Kelly’s pliant skin, of Jacob’s muscles pressed against his, made him want to throw up.

And wasn’t that something an inhuman hulk might feel? — Dead to human feeling, dead to love, dead to anything that wasn’t bloodlust?

In lieu of human pleasures, he stalked the corridors of the new Normandy, determined to learn her from the inside out. He put news reports on his feed everywhere he went, trying to mainline as much of the galaxy’s intel over the last two years he’d lost. He trained for as many hours as Chakwas would let him, and went out on every single mission he could.

He told himself it was the best way to find out what Cerberus really wanted from him. But he knew it was also so he could feel something — the battle adrenaline, the hot surge of blood in his veins — so he could pretend he was really John Shepard, alive again after two long years.

The other thing that made it hard to pretend was the different power that now lived under his skin. Before he’d come back from the dead, Shepard’s corona had been bright blue, his biotics an icy blast that had frozen his enemies in the tunnels under Torfan and on the plains of Ilos. The mnemonics ingrained in him at the Advanced Training Academy for Juveniles were laser-precise, dead on target, and never out of control. Now his biotic corona held a bristling, blood-red stain that matched the red cracks around the edges of his repaired face, and the biotics themselves were a crackling torrent of flame, a conflagration that destroyed everything in its path. The old mnemonics hadn’t cut it — Shepard discovered he’d needed to fling his arms in wide, wild gestures in order to get a grip on this massive new firepower. The dark-red energy was an uncontrollable blaze that threatened to consume him from the inside.

Miranda said the change was thanks to the new L5 amp upgrade, but Shepard knew it was only half the story. Death and the technology of resurrection had changed his biotics and his brain on a sub-molecular level. Flinging blood-red destruction across the battlefield, it was hard for Shepard to be sure he was the same man.

The Alliance, for one, weren’t convinced. Shepard returned to the Citadel, where his retinal scans and DNA had been good enough for the Council, but they hadn’t been good enough for David Anderson, the closest thing Shepard had to a father figure in this world.

“Turn yourself in,” he’d said; “This game you’re playing with Cerberus, it’s illegal”, he’d said, and it had all come down to the same thing — Anderson wasn’t sure it was still Shepard. If Anderson wasn’t sure, Udina and Hackett and the Alliance would absolutely lock him away until they could be certain he wasn’t a threat to them — and Shepard wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t.

At the bottom of it, there was one thing that convinced him that he was the same man, that Cerberus had brought back the real John Shepard, rather than just an undead thing that wore his face.

His dreams were the same.

The voices he had heard all his life — where people under his command died screaming, where an omnipotent narrator whispered You’re not human. You’ll never have a home in this world. You’ll always be alone, where dead Protheans told him, The world’s ending. The Reapers are coming. Stop them, or everyone dies.

Stop them; it’s the only thing you’re good for. Stop them, and then everything you had to do might finally make sense. No one will care if you die, only if you fail.

Only now, in addition to dead crewmates, he dreamed of the dark, of running out of air in the dark, drowning in the deep well of space.

And that last furious, aching regret, the last thing he remembered thinking before full darkness: Kaidan.

The man he’d been had never wasted time second-guessing himself, on guilt, on regret. But he’d done those things anyway, in the darkness above Alchera. No therapist could have divined it, no psych report could have recorded it, no Cerberus scientist could have distilled it into a neat box of memories and placed it in the mind of the mindless hulk they’d brought back, for him to cling to like a lifeline.

Shepard could be certain that Cerberus had brought back the real him — physically upgraded, total top-of-the-line biotic overhaul, some contact aversion, some PTSD — because it had brought back all of his secrets: the dreams, the Reaper warnings, and the bad case of Kaidan Alenko.

 

*

 

Shepard was always well prepared for enemy engagement, and that didn’t change just because he was back from the dead, and working with Cerberus. He was as much a tactical planner as he’d always been as when he’d been an Alliance cadet.

But he realized he’d underestimated the Illusive Man — realized he hadn’t managed to guard his own secrets as well as he’d believed — when he set foot on Horizon, and discovered that the mission had been a Cerberus trap.

The Collectors had been lured to Horizon. By Cerberus. Who had told them Shepard would be there, and that he’d be there for a reason.

The team had finally taken down the massive winged insect Jacob had named the Praetorian, and, under the onslaught from the reactivated GARDIAN towers, the Collector cruiser finally beat a tactical retreat. Then, from behind the prefab containers around the landing zone, walked the reason, and all the pieces fell into place.

Newly promoted Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko — wearing on his tight-fitting armor at least two hours’ worth of dirt from lying on the ground in stasis, two months’ worth of highly-classified assignment to this backwater planet, and two years’ worth of regret — walked back onto the battlefield and into Shepard’s life.

It had been two years, and all Shepard could think was how damned good that man looked.

There were new lines in Kaidan’s face, and the beginnings of silver in his hair. He was even more gorgeous than he’d been that day two years ago on the Normandy, when Shepard had left him behind.

It had taken a surprisingly long time for Shepard to work up the nerve to contact Kaidan after Lazarus Station. All Kaidan’s old numbers hadn’t worked, and Shepard wasn’t going to freak out Kaidan’s mother by calling her in Vancouver. The Illusive Man — that treacherous son of a bitch — had told him Kaidan’s file was surprisingly well classified and hadn’t come with contact details. On the Citadel, Anderson had said that Kaidan’s latest mission was so secret that he hadn’t heard the Staff Commander mentioned in months. On balance, Shepard believed him. He also believed that, if Anderson truly knew where Kaidan was, he might not have trusted Shepard with the info.

Maybe Anderson would’ve been right not to trust Shepard. Thanks to him, Kaidan had walked into a trap, together with 600,000 colonists. Fucking Cerberus had sent the Collectors to Horizon, after Kaidan, after him.

It had been two years. It was too much to expect that Kaidan would have waited. And now —

— those bourbon-dark eyes met his, and adrenaline spiked through Shepard’s body. His heart hammered the way it did before pitching into a firefight; his body came alive again under the influence of the only thing he could still feel.

Fuck, Kaidan — I’d thought we’d have time to fix what we had — I’m sorry —

Kaidan kept walking, past colonists and crew, to stand squarely in front of Shepard. He’d always had the strength of character to face all challenges and all enemies head-on, and he wasn’t going to stop now. Not even in the presence of …

“…Is this a ghost? Or another trick?” That familiar voice, which Shepard had last heard telling him I’m not leaving either, and then, reluctantly, Aye, aye.

“Damned if I know,” Shepard managed to get out, and Kaidan had stepped into his arms.

It felt like nothing felt after Cerberus had brought him back from the dead. The last weeks and months of being dead to human feeling, dead to love — the thought of touching someone making him sick to his stomach — they vanished into thin air, as Kaidan took hold of him in the way he remembered, and held him close.

Shepard took a shuddering breath. His throat had closed, he couldn’t get the words out. The pulse inside that hunk of meat and bones began to pound once again; something under the regrown skin roared to life. The strong clasp he remembered, the always-running-hot biotics. Two weeks of shore leave, of learning each other without anyone shooting at them, and then, afterwards, snatched mornings in his cabin on the old Normandy before their shifts started, nights learning to share space, to share sleep. It all seized Shepard with the convulsive agony that felt like being alive.

“I thought you were dead, Shepard. We all did.”

Marines’ voices didn’t shake, and Kaidan’s was rock-steady, but Shepard could still feel the weight of two years’ worth of loss through both sets of armor.

Shepard’s own loss was even heavier for all that it had been less lengthy. Less than six weeks’ worth, and he still clutched Kaidan as if it was dragging him under, and maybe it was.

Kaidan may have been unwise enough to trust him, once, to maybe even love him, but he was in no shape or form a stupid man. One beat of comfort, two, and then he made himself let go, take a step back and ask, harshly: “How are you even alive?”

And here it was. Shepard had been focused on trying to contact Kaidan, not on what he’d say to Kaidan when he reached him.

Too late now to say anything but the truth.

His voice was hoarse as it choked out, “Cerberus brought me back. It took them two years. I woke up from a coma six weeks ago.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kaidan ground out. His gaze was wet, unflinching. “Joker watched you get spaced. The SR-1 is still on Alchera, but no one could find your body. Believe me, I spent six months looking.”

It was hard to breathe. Kaidan had spent six months looking. After Shepard had said yes to him on Ilos, after Shepard had left him behind on the Normandy. And now here Shepard was, working with Cerberus, and hadn’t gotten in touch with the man he’d been fraternizing with to tell him he was alive.

“I do believe you,” Shepard managed. “I know you would have tried your best. Maybe the Alliance did too. But it wasn’t good enough, apparently. Cerberus found my body — they bought it from the Shadow Broker.”

It took a couple of tries for Kaidan to get out a response.

“Cerberus — bought — God, listen to yourself! If you’re really John Shepard, you’d realize how insane it sounds.” He couldn’t keep looking at Shepard; he took another step backwards and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to believe the reports were right, that someone who looked like Commander Shepard was really working for Cerberus, but here you are. Garrus, too.”

Garrus cocked his head. “Reports? The Alliance already knows about Cerberus?”

Kaidan nodded, tightly; he was calmer when addressing the turian sniper who’d been his friend. “Alliance intel thought Cerberus might be behind the missing human colonies. I got a tip this colony might be the next one to get hit.” His gaze flickered back to Shepard, and the tension returned. “Anderson stonewalled me. But there were rumors that Shepard wasn’t dead, that he was working for the enemy.”

Other pieces fell into place. Shepard said, in realization, “Rebuilding the defence towers was just a cover story. The Alliance sent you here to investigate me.”

“I was sent here for Cerberus. You were just a rumor.” Kaidan stepped forward so they were toe to toe again; Shepard made himself hold that anguished, furious gaze. “I couldn’t believe you were really alive. But I never expected anything like this.”

Kaidan hesitated, then added, “If you’re really Shepard, and you’re working for those terrorists, you’ve turned your back on everything we believed in. You’ve betrayed the Alliance. You betrayed me.”

Kaidan’s hot gaze was filled with so much dark energy it seemed to suck all the air from Shepard’s lungs. Once again, Shepard was running out of air in the darkness above Alchera. He had to set it aside by sheer force of will to say, “Kaidan, you know me. I’d only do this for the right reasons. These Collectors are targeting human colonies and they’re working with the Reapers. Cerberus is trying to stop them.”

Kaidan said, angrily, passionately, “What if Cerberus is working for the Collectors, and they’re lying about the Reapers to manipulate you? They told you they bought your body from the galaxy’s underground, for Chrissakes! How can they be trusted?”

Furiously, he raised his fist in a mnemonic that crackled with biotic energy. On instinct, Shepard threw up his own shield. The ground of Horizon shook as their biotic fields hissed and sizzled against each other, one blue, the other blood-laced red.

Kaidan’s eyes had become huge and incredulous. “Then there’s this,” he said, staring at Shepard’s corona, his shields roaring to distrustful life. “I saw it from a hundred meters out. Thought my eyes were playing tricks. Never known another biotic to flare red. John Shepard never did.”

Shepard’s breath was coming in huge gasps. The crackling red surge of his biotics filled him with uncontrollable fire, so far away from his old power and his old self.

He fought down that new, all-consuming blaze; made himself say, as calmly as the old John Shepard would have, “Give me ten minutes, Commander Alenko, and I’ll try to prove it to you.”

The use of his rank brought Kaidan up short. He didn’t quench his shield, but he did take it down a notch, saying, warily, “Fine, you have ten. After which, I need to turn in my report. Delan’s already run off to tell anyone who’d listen all about this little chat... It’s not gonna look good when Hackett finds out I faced off against a terrorist spy and didn’t take him in.”

Relief made Shepard’s head spin for half a second. He had ten minutes with Kaidan. If he was going to make them count, he could only do it alone.

“Garrus, you and Jacob head back to the Normandy. I’ll be there soon,” he added, as Garrus frowned, clearly torn between obeying and concern that these two biotics might rip each other a new one if he left them unsupervised.

“Commander, I don’t think—” Jacob protested, before Shepard shut that down too.

“Tell the Illusive Man I’ll be ten minutes,” replied Shepard, “or I’m not coming back at all.”

Jacob took in the scene, the biotic standoff. “Understood, Commander,” he said, at last, and followed Garrus toward the rendezvous point beyond the treeline.

Once they were out of sight, Shepard turned back to Kaidan, who had taken a fighting stance in the clearing, his shield an angry, disbelieving crackle of blue.

“What were you going to show me?” Kaidan asked, his voice humming with almost-menace.

Six weeks dead to everything except battle lust, and now this. Shepard’s heart was pounding with frustration, and an elation that he was finally feeling anything at all.

No time for subtle measures. Shepard hurled out his mnemonics, and the nearest crate heaved into the air in a blaze of dark energy; Kaidan barely managed to throw himself out of the way in time. He sprang back to his feet, snapping back a bolt of blue. No, two bolts — something slammed into Shepard’s kinetic shield with enough force to weaken it for a beat or two, in time for something else to get through, something that would have taken the head off someone who wasn’t a biotic.

Two rocks, one devastating double tap, a nice display of fine biotic control. The new Commander had spent the last two years really honing his skills.

Pulling up his barrier, Shepard took his helmet off and inspected the crack along the ablative. He whistled appreciatively. A very nice display of skill.

“What the hell, Shepard?” Kaidan was breathing heavily, furious. “You planned to convince me by attacking me?”

“I wanted to come clean with you. To show you. My biotics are different. Cerberus replaced my amp, my eezo nodules, 95 percent of my blood and bone marrow. And there’s also this,” and Shepard lowered his barrier and raised his face into the last of the sunlight, so Kaidan could see the red scars at the edges of his skin.

Kaidan sucked in a horrified breath. “Jesus,” he said, his voice aching. “John — if it’s really you — what else did they do to you? What else is different?”

“Let me show you that, too,” Shepard said, letting the helmet fall, and launched himself at Kaidan.

Cybernetics and enhancements had made him 20 percent faster and 45 percent stronger than before. Also, the thing Cerberus had brought back was 30 percent artificial implants and 60 percent regrown, hardened tissue. It was a pure weapon; it aimed itself at Kaidan in an inferno of red.

This time, Kaidan was prepared. He might not be 90 percent newbuild, but he was also stronger and faster, and even smarter. Somehow he managed to sidestep Shepard’s mass-enhanced onslaught; grasping the edges of Shepard’s shield, he used his biotics to flip Shepard into the air.

Shepard flung out a skein of dark energy as well as his arm to take Kaidan with him. The enhanced mass would have pulled his arm from his socket if it hadn’t been reinforced. They both crashed to the ground. Shepard’s uncovered head smacked into the dirt, and he saw stars for the first time he’d been brought back.

Kaidan was up again in no time, by which time Shepard was as well.

They circled each other like predators. Kaidan’s eyes had narrowed, the beginnings of a bruise purpling his cheekbone. He panted, “So you’re faster, stronger, and even more reckless. Are you trying to break your other shoulder?”

To be fair, Shepard wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to do. He was mostly running on adrenaline and instinct, the blood pounding in his veins, every nerve singing at the thrill of contact with Kaidan. Even the prospect of breaking a bone filled him with anticipation.

“Yeah, actually,” he said. “But I’m not sure I can. They brought me back pretty much indestructible.”

Kaidan shook his head, angrily. “And you’re testing this theory? Using me to test this theory? How is that supposed to convince me you’re you?”

The sun had started to set, wreathing the lines of Kaidan’s face in light and shadow. Shepard had to swallow. Under his skin, together with the urgent drum of his heartbeat, was a timer, counting down the minutes when Kaidan would walk away again.

No, that wasn’t fair. Here was Kaidan’s lover, back from the dead, working for terrorists, doing his best to take him down, and the good man that was Kaidan Alenko was still trying to understand.

It was too much for any human heart to bear, even if Shepard wasn’t actually human any more.

You’re not human. You’ll never have a home in this world. You’ll always be alone.

“Damned if I know that, too,” he muttered hopelessly, and attacked again, a half-beat too slow. Kaidan had plenty of time to duck under his guard and shove him bodily against the side of the nearest prefab container, arm across his throat in a chokehold.

It wasn’t just the lack of air. The press of Kaidan’s body, the familiar nearness, made it difficult to think.

“Maybe this will convince you,” Shepard found himself saying, and dropped his shields, and reached across to capture Kaidan’s mouth with his own.

He’d last kissed Kaidan the morning before the first Normandy went down, before he’d gotten out of bed and headed on deck. Soft lips, morning stubble, slightly sour morning breath. He’d taken a moment to savor it then, but it hadn’t nearly been long enough, and not three hours later, he’d had it taken away from him, along with his own life.

In those six weeks after he’d been brought back, he’d tried not to think about how it had felt. But the kiss brought it all back, every single thing.

For a moment, Kaidan kissed back, the way he had in Shepard’s bed on that last morning, not realizing that kiss would be their last.

Then his fists glowed blue, and he shoved Shepard away.

“Don’t,” he gasped. “You don’t get to do this. What we had — I loved you! When you died, it tore me apart. If it’s really you, John, why didn’t you let me know you were alive? Why are you working with terrorists?”

Shepard couldn’t catch his breath, either. His heart thudded in his chest in a rictus of agony. There was so much pain in Kaidan’s voice, and all of it was thanks to Shepard.

Between his teeth, he said, “Not my choice. Coma, remember? And when I woke up … You said Anderson stonewalled you. He stonewalled me, too.”

The sunset made Kaidan’s eyes look as red as Shepard’s were. “You think maybe he did that because he didn’t trust Cerberus?”

“Maybe,” Shepard said. “I’m not that much of an asshole, Kaidan, I looked for you. I’ve had six weeks to miss you; I can’t imagine what two years must have been like.” His voice caught, momentarily; he saw it register in Kaidan’s dark eyes. Awkwardly, he finished, “I haven’t even called my mother.”

Kaidan’s mouth twitched upward, almost unwillingly. That lush mouth was swollen from Shepard’s stubble, as if it hadn’t kissed anyone else in all of the last two years.

Almost as if to himself, he murmured, “There’s one way to be sure. Leave Cerberus. Get Garrus if you need to, and anyone else on the new ship, then come with me. Come back to the Alliance.”

Kaidan’s expression was still guarded, but there was something there that looked like hope, deeply buried. Hope that this thing Cerberus brought back was still human; that the man he said he’d loved was still in there somewhere.

Shepard felt the fierce want rise through him, making every nerve burn. He saw himself do it — tell Cerberus to fuck off, turn his back on the last six weeks, bury himself in the shelter of Kaidan’s arms and try to pick up the pieces that were still left there for them.

A moment of weakness. He let himself indulge in it, even though it felt as if he was tearing his own heart out.

“There’s nothing I want more. But I can’t. Anderson as good as told me they’d lock me up if I turned myself in, keep me out of the game. Technically, I’m AWOL; they could haul me up on desertion charges.” He couldn’t hold Kaidan’s gaze as he said, “Cerberus brought me back to life because they think I can help stop the Reapers. They gave me resources, a ship, a crew. The Alliance thinks the Reapers are a fairy tale. Maybe Cerberus is playing a double game, but they’ve helped me go after the Collectors, the bastards who brought down the SR1.”

Kaidan made a small sound of dismay, and Shepard found himself meeting his gaze after all. “Kaidan, I could use your help. Come with me.”

Kaidan’s eyelids flickered. Shepard allowed himself to hope Kaidan was thinking it over. But when Kaidan squared his jaw, Shepard knew he’d failed.

“Have you forgotten what Cerberus did to Admiral Kahoku and his men? To Corporal Toombs? With the thresher maws on Akuze?" he said, quietly. “That’s no double game, Shepard. That’s being willing to do anything for their goal. They think they own you. They’ll sell you in a heartbeat if they thought it’d help them.”

“I know that,” Shepard said. He did know it, and it tasted like bitterness all the same. “But what choice do I have? The Reapers are coming, and the Alliance doesn’t believe it. Cerberus brought me back so I can stop them. I need to see if there’s a chance they could make that good. And if they’re playing me, then I’m in prime position to take them down from the inside.”

Kaidan whispered, “And what if you sell your soul in the meantime? Even the Shepard I used to know would balk at that.”

Speaking of selling their soul: Cerberus had sacrificed half the colonists on Horizon to draw out the Collectors. They used Kaidan Alenko as bait. The man he had been would never have stood by and let that happen.

Motherfuck, who was Shepard kidding? The man he’d been had sent the 40 men under his command to their deaths on Torfan. He’d pulled the trigger on 4,000-odd enemy lives, even those who were pretending to surrender. He’d left Ashley Williams behind on Virmire. He’d let the Council die. The man he’d been had made decisions like he wasn’t human. Cerberus had resurrected him to do just that.

“I’ll just have to run that risk,” he told Kaidan, at last, and saw the last hope fade from those dark eyes.

“I’ll never trust them. And even if it’s really you, John, I can’t trust you as long as you’re working with them.” Kaidan squared his shoulders. “I’m an Alliance soldier, first and foremost. That’s where my loyalties lie, no matter what.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” It was crazy, but it was God’s honest truth — the same way Shepard was crazy for this upright, ridiculously honorable man. “It makes it easier, somehow, knowing you’ll stop Cerberus if I screw up. That you’ll stop me, if you had to.”

“You better believe I’d stop you. But only as a last resort. I’ve missed John Shepard so damn much.” This time it was Kaidan who cupped his face and went in for the kiss, hard enough to bruise.

Shepard couldn’t breathe. So much for six weeks of not feeling anything — the way everything hurt right now, he’d never complain about feeling numb ever again. In the moment, it would almost be a relief to lie down in Kaidan’s arms and not get up. He found himself clinging to Kaidan like he was drowning in the dark well of everything that they’d left behind.

I missed you, too. I’m sorry.

Of course the ship chose that moment to ping him. The sun was heading below the skyline, and their ten minutes were finally up.

“Commander Shepard, this is the Normandy. The boss says we’re burning daylight out here.” It was Joker, one more hostage to the monumentally stupid idea that Shepard could ride this particular tiger.

Kaidan broke away, and rubbed a hand over his flushed face. His hair stood on end. Shepard wanted to card his hands through it and kiss every inch.

“We can’t do this here,” he said, breathing heavily. “If you’re really John Shepard, come find me on the Citadel.”

His omnitool disgorged a small datachip, which he pressed into Shepard’s palm. Shepard couldn’t help clasping back, a gesture which was mirrored in Kaidan’s eyes.

“Goodbye, and be careful,” was what Kaidan said as he walked away in the sunset, taking the light with him and leaving Shepard at the very bottom of this goddamned well.

 

*

 

Shepard waited for six more weeks, until the endgame, to use the encrypted number that was on the datachip. Until Cerberus showed its final colors. Until he’d infiltrated the Collector ship, and found Legion, and acquired the means to end the Collectors once and for all.

Endgame didn’t mean rejoining the Alliance. Shepard had assembled a ship filled with vigilantes and fugitives, and deserters — himself among them — who hadn’t, like Karin Chakwas, taken the precaution of a leave of absence before going to work for an illegal terrorist organization. Plus, they had the best chance of succeeding where everyone else had failed. He’d come too far to risk the Alliance screwing up this mission.

All other soldiers who’d attempted to jump through the Omega Relay hadn’t survived. The SR-2 crew could all die on the other side. Shepard was prepared for the worst, but he wasn’t going to go without seeing Kaidan Alenko one more time.

They arranged to meet on the Presidium. Joker had wanted to run some diagnostics on the new Reaper IFF before the mission to the Collector homeworld, and Shepard had taken Garrus and Tali in the shuttle to the Citadel for 18 hours of personal time.

Kaidan was closeted in one of the Alliance’s boltholes on the Upper Wards, a nondescript serviced apartment in a high-security building. He answered the door in crumpled BDUs; clearly, he’d just come off a lengthy mission with barely time to get out of his armor. Bags under his eyes, stubble darkening his cheeks, and damn, but the man still looked unfairly good.

“You took your time,” he said, without preamble. He let Shepard into the apartment and secured the door behind him.

“I was busy,” Shepard said, cautiously, following him into the living room, where a couch and an armchair crowded around a small table. Kaidan didn’t offer him a drink, but when Shepard sat down on one end of the couch, Kaidan took a seat on the other.

It was a calibrated signal of trust. Shepard would take whatever scraps he could. He was just glad Kaidan let him into the apartment without a full body search.

“You and me both. So what’s different about now? Terrorist organization finally let you take a day off?” But Kaidan said it lightly, and one corner of his mouth had curled upwards.

Shepard wanted, very much, to kiss that curved lip. With some effort, he looked away.

“Hah. No, still busy. In fact, we’ve discovered the location of the Collectors’ base.” He focused on his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at Kaidan’s reaction. “It might be a one way trip. No one’s ever seen the other side and come back to tell the tale.”

He didn’t have to look to feel Kaidan’s sharpening gaze burning into the side of his neck. In a pointed tone, Kaidan said, “You finally here to turn in your intel, and let the Alliance in on the mission?”

“No.” Shepard made himself look up at last, and met Kaidan’s gaze. “Can’t risk it. I have the only crew who can run this mission, the only crew who have a hope in hell in succeeding.”

Kaidan’s lips tightened, but he could clearly see Shepard had made his mind up — and, hopefully, that the measure of trust that he’d decided to extend to Shepard extended to giving Shepard the benefit of the doubt. “What happens if you fail?” he asked, quietly.

“Then the Alliance will have plenty to do to clean up after,” said Shepard. “I’ll try to send a head’s up, but I suspect word will get out if the shit hits the fan.”

Kaidan’s eyes were troubled. “Still playing both sides?”

“No, I’m done with Cerberus.” Shepard took a deep breath. “We come back from this, I’ll take care of my people, then I’m cutting ties and taking what’s coming to me. But not before. There’s too much at stake.”

Kaidan nodded. The curl had returned to the edge of his mouth, together with Shepard’s desire to kiss it. “Good to know there’s still some Alliance soldier in there,” he said. Then, “If you’re not here to turn in your intel, or yourself, then why are you here?”

And there it was. Shepard exhaled, long and slow, like he was bench-pressing the heaviest load his reinforced muscles could bear.

“I’m here to say goodbye. Wasn’t going to head off without saying it. Not this time.”

Kaidan had to exhale, too. His jaw worked, like he was chewing over his next words. Finally, he said, “I appreciate that. Is that all you have to say to me?”

The undercurrent of hurt there made Shepard want to break something. He ground out, “What do you want me to say? Sorry I went down with the ship?”

Kaidan leaned forward. His fists glowed blue as he said, fervently, “How about, sorry for not coming with me after Horizon? Sorry for staying with Cerberus?”

“Last I remembered, back on Horizon, you weren’t even sure who I was. Heck, even I wasn’t sure. Until I saw you again. Until I …”

Shepard broke off. He remembered exactly when he’d become convinced: on Horizon fighting Kaidan, then embracing him. It was how he felt now — BP skyrocketing, heart pounding, every inch of him alive. His own corona sizzled red around the edges.

Kaidan’s eyes shone blue with the memory. “Are you planning on convincing me again by attacking me?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Or by kissing me?”

Shepard had to clear his throat. “As I recall, neither worked for you then. I’ve only one thing left. Let me show you everything.”

Riding the wave of instinct, Shepard shrugged off his jacket and started to unbutton his shirt. Kaidan’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t say, What are you doing? It was blindingly obvious what Shepard was doing, even though Shepard himself wasn’t sure why.

Kaidan was silent as Shepard let the shirt fall. He slid forward to get a better look, squinting a little at what Cerberus had done to Shepard’s body.

“Your old scars are gone,” he said, at last, his voice tight. He lifted a hand, and then he hesitated, like he wanted to touch Shepard, but didn’t want to presume. “Those tracks from the thresher maw acid … your bad shoulder … they took all of it. And there are new red ones, like the ones on your face...”

“Go ahead,” Shepard said, and Kaidan reached out. His fingers brushed against the scars across Shepard’s collarbone and sternum and ribs, lightly, as if he was afraid to hurt Shepard. As if he could.

Finally, Kaidan’s hand moved to Shepard’s neck, under his jawline, where most of the red scarring resided. The motion of his thumbs felt like a caress. He murmured, “Do they hurt at all?”

Shepard had to swallow. Kaidan’s calloused touch stoked long-forgotten sparks from his skin. “Chakwas says they’re because Cerberus didn’t finish the job in bringing me back. They get deeper the more I push myself, but they don’t actually hurt. After I was brought back, I couldn’t feel much of anything.”

“How about now? Do you feel this?” Kaidan’s thumbs traced slow circles against Shepard’s scars. His dark gaze, laced with blue fire, looked as if he could see all the way down to Shepard’s soul.

The man who never felt guilt, the man who never second-guessed himself, the man who couldn’t feel anything. Shepard didn’t know where that man had gone. He was drowning in Kaidan’s gaze, his pulse as loud in his ears as it had been on Horizon, over Alchera, before Ilos.

“Kaidan, I still feel the same about you. It’s how I know it’s still me, underneath all this. But you — it’s been two years for you. I don’t want —“

Kaidan’s composure cracked, the dam broke; that handsome face convulsed in rage and grief.

“Fuck you, John, it nearly killed me when you died. After you sent me away and went down with the ship, I spent years pulling myself back together. Trying to let myself have a life again. Then I saw you, and everything pulled hard to port. You were the same, and you were different, and I didn’t— I couldn’t —“

“Kaidan,” Shepard got out, before Kaidan twisted him into his arms and kissed him like a blow.

Kaidan’s mouth on his was hot and demanding and furious — like everything Shepard hadn’t felt in the months after he’d been brought back. Like everything Shepard craved in the months since he’d been brought back. He’d been numb to hurt and desire and grief; the thought of being touched had made him sick to the stomach. But here in Kaidan’s arms he could feel again, he felt alive again — even if what he mostly felt was pain: Kaidan’s, and his own.

Kaidan broke off, his voice breaking: “And now you’re saying goodbye and I might never see you again. We might never have this again.”

“At least we have it now,” Shepard gasped. He grasped the front of Kaidan’s BDUs and hauled Kaidan towards him. He brought up his corona, and so did Kaidan, and their biotics made short work of each other’s clothes.

Kaidan’s field crackled over Shepard’s skin, as demanding as Kaidan’s mouth had been. Shepard didn’t have the same fine motor control; he lashed out, and his wild, blood-red biotics ripped fabric and leather and laid the both of them bare to each other.

Kaidan crowded Shepard against the couch and Shepard shoved back. It felt like they were fighting as they’d fought on Horizon, their biotic fields hissing and spitting and winding around their bare limbs as they grappled against each other. Shepard panted into Kaidan’s mouth and breathed him in; he was achingly hard, dripping with it, drowning in a desire that he could feel at last.

It had been two and a half months for him. It had been two years for Kaidan — tearing himself apart over having survived, over Shepard having left him behind and not even leaving him with a body to mourn.

That first night, on the way to Ilos, Shepard had said, “If we’re really doing this, I need to be in charge. Of this. Of you.” And Kaidan had said, “I’ll let you have what you need. You’re going to have to take on the universe, but you don’t have to do it alone.”

Two very controlled biotics, who had both been completely out of control. They’d both thought they could handle it. They’d been wrong.

Shepard had been arrogant enough to assume they’d have enough time to fix what they’d broken. They’d been so careful with each other after Ilos and the Battle of the Citadel. They’d dodged a bullet at the committee of inquiry — the new Council hadn’t wanted to look too closely into the conduct of the Hero of the Citadel and his crew — and they knew they had to stay under the radar.

Still, they’d had two weeks of shore leave to learn to be gentle with each other. Two decidedly ungentle soldiers, learning to pull their punches, to watch their words, learning to ask instead of command, to make slow love under the Panama stars. They’d tried to bring it back with them to the Normandy, tried to hold on to the fragile peace they’d learned on the beaches of Playa Blanca.

Shepard had thought they’d been on the right track, believed that they were building something that would actually survive what they’d done, until the Collectors had taken it all away.

Now made from cybernetics and cold steel, Shepard exulted in the bruises Kaidan pressed into his skin; he spread his legs and muttered, “Come on, make me feel it.” Kaidan pushed his way in at last, fucking him with a ferocity Shepard had never known from him, that Shepard discovered he craved like nothing else. Driving inside him, Kaidan was the bright heart of a star, fire and electricity and dark energy all at once. All the pain and pleasure in the galaxy was here with them, connecting them with each other, saying goodbye in the only way they had left.

They collapsed in the aftermath, panting like they were dying. On some level, maybe they were. Shepard’s reinforced skin wasn’t bleeding, his body wasn’t covered in bruises, but that wasn’t for lack of trying.

Help me feel something. God help them both, Kaidan had given it a pretty good go.

The Collectors had done this. No, that wasn’t true: it had started with Shepard, before Ilos. The control, the loss of control — what Shepard had let himself take from Kaidan — that they’d hadn’t had the time to fix.

“You make me feel human,” he’d told Kaidan, that first time, two years ago, on the way to Ilos. Now, two years later, brought back from the dead and on the way to the Omega Relay, that was and wasn’t true.

Kaidan pulled himself into a sitting position. Shepard risked a look; it was cold comfort to discover that he hadn’t managed to do much damage. Outwardly, that was. Kaidan’s conflicted gaze told him that he’d been right there with Shepard, beyond the edges of control, drowning in that same wave of pleasure and pain, swallowing down the agony of those two long years and the likelihood that there would be no more time for them.

I’m sorry. But it was too late for that.

In lieu of apology, Shepard said, “Hell of a send-off, Alenko. I’m gonna be feeling it as we go through the relay.”

Kaidan’s swollen mouth curled. His expression was still angry, but it was also curiously affectionate. “You know, I should be sorry about that, but I’m not. Not sorry we did this, either. Bit of a pattern for us, like the night before Ilos.”

So they were going to talk about it after all. Get it all out, because they might not get another chance to.

Shepard said, slowly, “I remember everything about that night. You said you were willing to give me what I needed. But you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. I saw that, and I took it anyway.”

Kaidan shook his head. “Now I know you’re you,” he said, wryly. “Only John Shepard would drop a bombshell like this when saying goodbye.”

He ran his hands through his hair; Shepard could see they were shaking. Finally he said, “So maybe I needed you to be better that night. Maybe I needed to be better. But we weren’t. And now… now we’re here. We’re this. Too late to go backwards. We just have to deal with what’s left.”

How had two years of guilt and grief made him this strong? Maybe it had always been there. Shepard had no idea. He’d made it his job to never be caught off-guard by anyone, but Kaidan Alenko did it every single time.

Kaidan got up. The apartment lights slid across the broad, muscular body that was even more powerful than before. He pulled his pants on, and went to stand by the window, looking out into the strip beyond.

Shepard found his way back into his clothes. The air around them was thick — with loss, with longing, with other things they’d left unsaid.

Very soon, the Normandy would go through the relay, to the battle that was on the other side.

Shepard had to ask: “Is this really going to be goodbye?”

Kaidan turned back to face him. “I hope not,” he said, quietly. “I want you to come back.”

Shepard’s heart was aching, even more than his body was. “I didn’t have a choice that first time. Not sure I have one now.”

Kaidan walked towards him, the light sliding across his handsome face. “I hope you’ll get that choice. That you choose to come back.” He stopped when they were toe to toe. Very quietly, he said, “If it helps, choose to come back for me.”

Shepard’s spirits lifted with treacherous hope. Maybe there was still something there for them after all. Still, he had to say, “But not to you?”

“Just come back, goddamn it! Don’t leave me holding this all by myself, like the last time. I’ve had too many people die. I had you die. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you again.”

Kaidan cupped his face and kissed him on the mouth. Very gently this time, like Panama under the stars. Shepard had to close his eyes against the waves that threatened to drag both of them down.

“You hear me, John? Don’t leave me again,” Kaidan said, when they parted. His eyes were dry, his voice was steady. Shepard didn’t want to know how much it was costing him.

His own voice was wet. Precarious. “I won’t. Not this time. Know I’ll come back, Kaidan.”

Kaidan smiled like he even believed it. “Be careful,” he said, in lieu of other words, and Shepard had to tear himself away.

He might have had no home in this world, no one to care if he died. Kaidan had changed that. Gave him a reason to come back, even after everything they’d done to each other.

It was too early to tell if there would be something more here to come back to. But for now, it was enough to have spent this time with Kaidan in the hours before battle, to remind the indestructible thing Cerberus had brought back from the dead what it felt like to be human.

Notes:

Many, many thanks to potionsmaster for her perceptive beta as well as her patience with this, and to happychica for reviewing my fight scenes. The responsibility for all of it remains mine, of course.

U2's angstiest sex song:
Love is blindness I don't wanna see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Take my heart Love is blindness
In a parked car in a crowded street
You see your love made complete
Thread is ripping the knot is slipping
Love is clockworks and cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle Blow out the candle
Love is blindness
A little death without mourning No call and no warning
Baby, a dangerous idea That almost makes sense
Love is drowning in a deep well
All the secrets and no one to tell

Chapter 5: ME3 — Until the End of the World/If I Lose Everything in the Fire

Summary:

A double bill! Shepard and Kaidan finally reunite in ME3 — first in the alternate Seventh Wave timeline, where John doesn’t send Lieutenant Alenko away before Ilos, and in the second, where he does.

Notes:

Content warnings, such as they are, for gentle domming and explicitly negotiated kink.

In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows, they learned to swim
Surrounding me, going down on me Spilling over the brim
Waves of regret and waves of joy
I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
You, you said you'd wait Until the end of the world
- U2's Until The End Of The World Live From Slane Castle, 2001

Timeline A (Yes at Ilos): You, you said you'd wait until the end of the world

Let’s meet at Anderson’s at 1700, Shepard’s message said. At 1650, Kaidan left the SR-2 and headed to the upper decks.

It was the tail end of the Citadel’s galactic standard 20-hour cycle. The holographic sky above the Presidium was crimson, mirroring a late autumn afternoon over Vancouver. As Kaidan stepped out of the elevator, he was surrounded by the blare of billboards that hawked luxury cargo and commodities, and solicited contributions for the war effort. The vidscreen on the side of the Citadel NewsNet tower played a constant capture from the front lines, so citizens could watch the world coming to an end in real time.

The split-level penthouse apartment Anderson had bequeathed to Shepard was on the far side of the Presidium. Kaidan’s unerring inner compass directed his path across the faintly-glowing sidewalks, in time with the unerring rhythm of his pulse.

It had been a hell of a day, saving Shepard from the ambush at Ryuusei's and then breaking into the Silver Sun Casino. Hell, it had been a hell of a year — with Shepard coming back to life, and on the wrong side; with the Reaper war breaking out; with Kaidan finding himself on the wrong side this time, protecting that traitor, Udina, and Shepard nearly having to take him down.

After that fight on Horizon, after they’d had the worst kind of angry goodbye sex before Shepard’s suicide mission, Kaidan hadn’t dared to expect there was anything left for them. After all, Kaidan hadn’t believed that Cerberus had brought back the man he’d loved, hadn’t trusted Shepard enough to go with him when he asked on Horizon. He’d even pointed a gun at Shepard during that standoff at the Citadel and had almost put a round in him before better sense prevailed.

Kaidan still wasn’t sure how they had managed to find their way back to each other. But, somehow, there had been enough trust left for Kaidan to lower his weapon on the Citadel, for Shepard to ask him to rejoin the Normandy again, and, this time, for Kaidan to agree. They’d taken to the battlefield with the familiar rhythm of trust and instinct, Shepard relying on Kaidan to cover his flank as he had on Plutus and Feros and Noveria, and Kaidan doing just that: on Rannoch, on Despoina, on Thessia.

Eventually, Kaidan couldn’t outrun the deep wave of his feelings any more. He’d decided to put an end to three years’ worth of regret and longing one way or another, and asked Shepard out to lunch at Apollo’s — trusting that Shepard wouldn’t just brush off what came out as I want to understand what this is between us, if there’s still something there, or worse, laugh.

Shepard hadn’t laughed. He had raised the red-haloed gaze Kaidan had finally gotten used to and said, as serious as Kaidan had ever seen him, “I want that, too.”

Kaidan had taken Shepard’s hand in his, and Shepard leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth.

Softly, surprisingly gently — the merest brush of lips, from a man who’d been the Butcher of Torfan, the man who’d last kissed him as violently as a mean left hook — and over too soon. As it had the night before Ilos, John Shepard’s kiss had taken the air from Kaidan’s lungs and brought all the eezo in his body to life.

“That makes me really happy,” Kaidan admitted, when he’d gotten his breath back. His hands were shaking, and it wasn’t just because of the eezo. He stared into Shepard’s scarred face. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard said — a first for the iron-willed commander who never second-guessed himself in the field, who’d never expressed so much as an iota of doubt when off that field. What did he know, Shepard’s hands were shaking, too. “But I know I’d like to find out.”

 

 

What had happened: they’d finished the decent food and lousy wine at the café, with a million souls going about their business around them. They’d walked back to the ship hand-in-hand. Shepard had canceled the day’s remaining meetings, and they’d lain down together on Shepard’s wide bed. In the faint glow of the cabin’s faintly ridiculous fish tank, they’d put their arms around each other and held on, as if they could shut out the war and the billions counting on them for the space of one afternoon.

What hadn’t happened: they hadn’t had sex.

The next night, they’d jacked off for each other, fast and furious. And for the next few weeks, that was all they did.

Most nights they slept together in Shepard’s cabin. Kaidan would come off-shift to Shepard buried under datapads and admin busywork, planning for the next mission and the next after that, running his resurrected body dangerously close to empty. Since the triumph on Rannoch and the heartbreak on Thessia and the terrifying cold on Desponia, there’d been occasional handjobs to blow off steam, but more often Shepard would come to bed practically dead on his feet, and Kaidan would just hold him until he fell asleep.

It was making Kaidan a little crazy, now he had Shepard back in his arms at last, wanting him badly but not able to take that last leap. Truth be told, it was making him more than a little crazy. Between the back-to-back missions and the Spectre busywork, he wasn’t doing that much better than Shepard in the exhaustion stakes, either, but his body responded to Shepard’s all the same. For the better part of three weeks, he’d lain in Shepard’s bed, suspended on the sharp edge of longing and hesitation and a serious case of blue balls.

It had to be said, Shepard’s body responded to Kaidan, too; a thick eight and a half inches that Kaidan had ample cause to remember. But something was holding Shepard back. Maybe there still wasn’t enough trust between them to take this final step.

Wryly, Kaidan shook his head at himself. After all they’d been through, he knew they were lucky to have found any equilibrium at all, that they could give each other some measure of comfort between combat zones. If support was what Shepard needed, Kaidan was more than happy to give it to him. It was more than he could expect, really, after the fire that had almost burned what they’d had to the ground, and all the damage they’d done to themselves and each other.

The last time they’d had sex they had hurt each other; worse, they’d been trying to hurt each other. The man Cerberus had brought back, with his reinforced bones and invulnerable skin and strange blood-red corona, had baited Kaidan into hand-to-hand combat on Horizon in an insane bid to show Kaidan exactly how much he’d been changed. He'd told Kaidan: “It makes it easier, somehow, knowing you’ll stop me if you had to.”

And before heading into the Omega 4 Relay, Shepard had come to Kaidan’s apartment to say goodbye, with violent sex that had felt as if they were still throwing down for real.

Kaidan had been so angry. Shepard had sent him away and had gone down with the ship and left him without a body to bury, and then the reckless maniac had come back, wearing Shepard’s face and wrapped in a twisted version of Shepard’s emotions. He’d kissed Shepard like a blow, and Shepard had let him. Their biotics had ripped each other’s clothes off and their fields had smashed against each other along with their bodies. They’d drawn blood and dug bruises into each other’s skin as Kaidan fucked him, drowning in a desire that dragged them to the edge of themselves, a pleasure that was indistinguishable from pain. Kaidan had sent Shepard into the relay with fingerprints all over his body, and he’d made Shepard promise to come back.

Don’t leave me holding this all by myself, like the last time. Don’t leave me again.

How did they come back from something like that? How did they get the trust back? Maybe all the peaceful nights in the world — holding each other, giving into exhaustion, watching each other sleep — wouldn’t nearly be enough.

They were almost at the endgame. Soon, they’d pitch into a final battle from which not all of them would be coming back. Time was running out.

Still, the crew had gotten a temporary reprieve: three days of mandatory shore leave. Shepard had finally accepted Kaidan’s invitation to spend some time together. Now was the time to finally face up to what they’d done to each other, and find out what they had left.

Kaidan entered the Tiberius Tower lift lobby and keyed in the code Shepard had given him. The lift took him all the way to the top. The door was open in an explicit sign of trust.

Anderson’s split-level penthouse was luxurious in a way that Kaidan’s upper-middle-class upbringing hadn’t prepared him for. The massive living room overlooking the Sunset Strip, the roaring fireplace he’d seen the day before, the gleaming kitchen where Shepard was waiting, freshly-shaven in a leather jacket and jeans, looking almost good enough to eat.

“Hey, John, I’m starving. What’ve you got?” Kaidan announced, the irony not lost on him.

Shepard’s mouth curved upwards. “Not much,” he drawled. “Thought we were heading out.”

“We’ll just end up back here anyway,” Kaidan said, leaning in for a kiss, equal parts optimism and easy familiarity, and Shepard chuckled and met him halfway.

“You know, I’ll bet Anderson keeps this kitchen reasonably stocked.” Sure enough, the top-of-the-line refrigeration unit contained steaks, bacon, garlic, legumes, as well as a crate of lager. The foods of his people: the ingredients of a hearty meal Kaidan had prepared often enough over the years.

He hauled it all onto the counter under Shepard’s amused gaze. “Trust me. Let me impress you.” The Let me take care of you went unsaid, but Shepard’s eyes crinkled anyway.

Kaidan cracked beers open for them and then went to work, conscious of Shepard’s gaze lingering, feeling his own movements becoming more deliberate in response. Maybe he might have flexed his biceps more than necessary as he chopped garlic and seasoned the steaks and fired up the cast-iron skillet.

When he glanced over, Shepard was smiling the half-smirk of someone who had definitely been admiring the view. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“Classes at Jump Zero, believe it or not. You know how much young biotics eat. And all Canadians can cook meat, it’s an innate skill.” Kaidan cocked an eyebrow, and Shepard laughed. “How about you, do you cook?”

“Yeah. Eating cafeteria crap 24/7 is bad for morale. Taught myself at the Academy.” Shepard shrugged, one-shouldered, and tossed back a mouthful of beer. “Never had anyone to cook for, though.”

The Advanced Training Academy for Juveniles had been Admiral Hackett’s alma mater, the boarding school where career Alliance raised its kids to be soldiers. Shepard’s parents had been career Alliance. Kaidan remembered that they’d split up when John had been a kid, but realized he didn’t know if either of them were still alive. “You don’t talk about that time,” he said, casually, eyes on the sizzling garlic.

A sharp edge to Shepard’s voice. “I don’t. It wasn’t the best time for me.” He hesitated, then he said, in a different tone, “Never had anyone to talk to about it before, either.”

Kaidan looked up, and Shepard met his gaze steadily. “Till now,” Shepard added, quietly, and Kaidan felt himself flush.

“How about that,” he said. This intensely private man was finally opening up a seam in his fortified defences to let Kaidan in.

“Hey, I’m as surprised as you are,” Shepard said, lightly. Then he stared over Kaidan’s shoulder. “You’re burning the garlic.”

Kaidan rescued the pan. “Sorry. I’m a little distracted.”

Shepard walked over and slung his arm around Kaidan’s neck, hooking him companionably closer. The heat of his gaze and his taut body were proving very distracting. To give Shepard a distraction of his own, Kaidan asked, “What was it like?”

“The Academy? Better than home, but not by much.” Shepard’s voice was controlled, deceptively casual, but Kaidan wasn’t fooled for an instant. “Rio was pretty. Some of the kids were all right. But the teachers were under orders to teach us discipline, to turn us into soldiers. I learned those lessons better than most, though not in the way they’d planned.”

It sounded a lot like how Jump Zero had been for Kaidan: punishment, discipline, learning the only thing he could rely on, that he could control, was himself. “Bet you made class valedictorian,” he said, putting the steaks on the pan.

“Of course.” Shepard was silent for a beat as the fat snapped and sizzled before he said, “You know, they actually voted me Most Likely to Actually Make the Hard Calls? Torfan proved ‘em right.”

Outside the apartment, the artificial sun had started to set. The crimson light streaming into the kitchen wreathed Shepard’s face in red. “Of course, it could just as easily have been Most Likely to Kill 10,000 Pirates Faking Surrender in Cold Blood,” he added, evenly.

Kaidan grimaced. Shepard had paid the price, had gotten the job done, had gotten his ticket to the Villa. He’d become a man who’d made the calls no one else could, a man stubborn enough to come back from death over Alchera and in the bottomless seas on Despoina. He’d become the soldier who would win them this war. There was nothing to regret, and even less use in regretting it.

“Sounds like it taught you what you needed to know,” he said, gently. “Torfan and Virmire and Horizon, it all got you where you are today.”

“That’s true,” Shepard mused. Kaidan had to keep an eye on the steaks, but he could hear the thoughtful note in Shepard’s voice. A second later, Shepard pulled him in to press a kiss to his temple. “All of it — including the last three years — got us where we are today.”

Kaidan took the pan off the heat. This apartment, this home-cooked meal, the warmth of Shepard’s arms around him — a safe space, carved out from the tides and terrible devastation of war. He had to clear his throat. “It’s a pretty good place, all things considered.”

“I think so,” Shepard said softly. “Steak smells good, anyway. What do you know, I’m starving, too.”

 

*

 

They ate before the crackling fireplace as the Presidium’s artificial moon rose in the synthetic sky, as the lights of the Sunset Strip lined the apartment windows in neon and chrome. Kaidan told Shepard a couple of his wilder post-Jump Zero stories, including, finally, the one about 5,000 credits and the vorcha mafia. Shepard drank his beer and leaned against Kaidan’s shoulder, looking more relaxed than he’d been since….

… since their first and last shore leave, three years ago, after the Battle for the Citadel. In Panama, where two ungentle soldiers learned to pull their punches and to ask instead of command, where they’d learned to slow dance and then to make slow love under the stars. They’d tried to bring that gentleness back with them to the SR-1. Before Alchera happened, Kaidan had even told himself they’d been succeeding.

This time around, they had few such illusions. They knew exactly what they both were capable of, how badly they had hurt each other, how much harm they could do. It had taken a tremendous feat of trust just to get to this point, a leap of faith that still took Kaidan’s breath away.

“This was great,” Kaidan said, at last, draining the last dregs of beer and basking in the afterglow of really well-cooked steak. Shepard’s arms looped around him, a pleasant, tantalising buzz of skin against static-charged skin.

Shepard turned to face him, cocking a knowing, entirely flirtatious eyebrow. “What, is it over?”

Kaidan had to inhale sharply. His desire for Shepard was never far from him at the best of times; now, in Shepard’s embrace, it was an aching thrill in the pit of his stomach. He needed to swallow before he could say, lightly, “Well, what do you suggest?”

Shepard hesitated, too, and said, “This is a really great moment, I can’t think of anything better. But I want what you want. I want to give you everything you want.”

“See, that makes two of us.” Kaidan traced the red scars across Shepard’s cheek, rubbed his thumb along Shepard’s lower lip, heard the lust catch in his voice. “I want to be with you, John. But only if you want that, too.”

Shepard took a deep breath, slow and strained. In his eyes were the arctic waves of Despoina and a bottomless regret. “I do want it. I know I’ve kept you waiting, and it’s not fair to you. I’m just not sure I can trust myself.”

“Screw what’s fair. I’d wait as long as it takes. I did it for the last three years,” Kaidan murmured, and it was God’s truth; he’d gladly wait till the end of the world if he had to. But that was only half the story.

With an effort, Kaidan added, “Look, I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy. But I wouldn’t be on the SR-2, or in your bed, if I didn’t trust you.” He put both hands behind Shepard’s neck and gripped the bulky muscles, not ungently. “You’re the leader that’s going to win this war, and you’re the man I want to be with after that happens. The galaxy trusts you, and so do I.”

“But what if you’re all wrong?” Shepard’s blue eyes crackled with red, an indelible reminder of his death and resurrection. “My squad at Torfan trusted me, and I sent them out to die. I’ve never regretted that decision. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. But it’s not just that. Ever since I touched the beacon on Eden Prime, Prothean voices have been telling me I’m not human. They said the world was ending, the Reapers were coming, that I needed to stop them or everyone would die. That I was the only one who could.”

A shudder ran through his body and up through Kaidan’s fingers. He continued, his voice harsh, “It was the same thing at the Temple of Athame. You’ll never have a home in this world. You’ll always be alone. The Reapers are coming. Stop them, it’s the only thing you’re good for. Control them, you’re the only one who can. No one will care if you die, only if you fail.”

His red-haloed gaze burned into Kaidan’s. “I grew up without a home. The one thing I learned was to always be in control. The one thing I relied on was myself. Does that make me less than human? What if the Protheans are right, what if this is all I am? What if it’s the only thing that can win this goddamned war?”

Kaidan couldn’t catch his breath. Something in his head hurt as if a biotic migraine was coming on; something under his ribs ached even worse. Shepard had been hearing this message for the last three years? It would have driven anyone crazy.

He rubbed Shepard’s shoulders, trying to steady him in the face of this terrible prophecy. “You’re still human,” he whispered. “Shepard, do you hear me? You’ve had to do inhuman things, but that isn’t what you are. And you’re not alone.”

“Maybe I should be. Maybe that’s what I deserve.” Shepard shook his head. His muscles twitched, tremors Kaidan could feel through his own skin. “After Jump Zero, you never let yourself lose control — until Horizon, until that night before the Collectors’ mission. I did that to you, I took that control from you. That night before Ilos…”

That night before Ilos three years ago, when they’d finally given in to the current running white-hot between them; when two very controlled soldiers had thrown caution and fraternization regs to the wind.

Shepard had said: We need to get something straight. If we’re really doing this, you won’t have that way out you say you always need. I need to be in charge. Of this. Of you.

Then, Kaidan had assured him, “I’ll let you have what you need. You’re going to have to take on the universe, but you don’t have to do it alone.” He’d meant every word; he’d been so confident in his own abilities, his own control.

Looking back, he saw he’d been wrong.

Shepard said, now, heavily, “I wanted to feel human that night. You said you were willing to give me what I needed, but you didn’t know what it would cost you. I screwed up with you. I died before we could make it right, and when I came back I made everything worse.” His lips tightened, and he met Kaidan’s eyes like he was facing a court-martial. “You deserved better. I should have been better. I’m sorry.”

Kaidan didn’t know if John Shepard had ever apologized in his life; certainly, Shepard had never apologized to him before this. Well, there was a first time for everything.

This was a revelation: it wasn’t that Shepard didn’t trust him. Shepard just didn’t trust anyone except himself. And, after Ilos and Cerberus and Horizon, he’d figured he couldn’t trust himself around Kaidan. Even though they’d gotten past Mars, and the Citadel coup, past Rannoch and Desponia, he thought he still couldn’t trust himself with Kaidan — not when his dreams told him he couldn’t be trusted, that he didn’t deserve to be trusted, that he would always be alone.

Kaidan took Shepard’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “You weren’t alone on Ilos, John. We both screwed up, and then you died. But you came back to me.” He swallowed, the want making him light-headed. “Now’s our chance to put it right. Let’s not waste it.”

Hope warred with hesitation in Shepard’s eyes. “You need to be completely sure,” he said thickly. Aching heat curled off his body and filled the space between them; the air sizzled as if supercharged by their crackling biotic fields — with tension, with lust, with something else.

Kaidan clasped Shepard’s hand and pressed it to his hammering heart. “Never surer. How about you?”

“It’s the only thing I’m sure of any more,” Shepard whispered, and finally let Kaidan draw him close.

It had been a long time. Kaidan got a leash on his libido, slid his hand into Shepard’s close-cropped hair, over the Cerberus-upgraded amp port, and kissed him gently, deliberately, taking his time. Their bodies pressed together, Shepard’s cock a rigid bar against his own. But this wasn’t just about desire, not this time; it was about trust, and trusting themselves, and a commitment to finally getting this right.

He kissed Shepard slowly, a languorous slide of lips and tongues, and the last three years fell away, together with the barriers between them: their clothes, their biotic coronas, the baggage from their pasts, and every single thing they’d survived to get to this point.

He pulled off for long enough to breathe against Shepard’s mouth, “Tell me what you want.”

Shepard tilted his head back, his pupils dilated wide. The unguardedness in his eyes was more powerful than any drug. He rasped, “Let’s take this to the bedroom, Major.”

“Aye, aye.” They made their way upstairs, shedding clothes and their last restraints, until they were finally skin against skin in Anderson’s king-sized bed, lit by the artificial starlight streaming in through full-length windows.

Kaidan had to pause to admire the view. The lean, dangerous bulk of John Shepard, naked against a thick-pile blanket in Alliance blue, flickers of red-blue light playing up and down his body, long limbs adrift on a buoyant sea. “Gorgeous,” he said. “What now, John? Talk to me.”

Shepard’s eyes were heavy-lidded, his erection flushed against his stomach. He drawled, “How about we try this — I’ll say red for stop, blue for go; for everything else, I’ll do what you tell me. Does that work for you?”

Kaidan had to suck in a surprised breath. This was the game Shepard had played the night before Ilos, but in reverse. Then, Shepard had been the one giving the orders, with Kaidan surrendering control to Shepard. Now Shepard was ceding that much-vaunted power, giving it up willingly to him .

With the last of his restraint, Kaidan got out, “Now you need to be completely sure about this.”

“Yeah. I want you to make me yours,” Shepard said, and his lips twisted as he added, “Sir,” in teasing subservience that went straight to Kaidan’s cock.

Kaidan had had years to think about Ilos; he brought it to this night, holding himself back long enough to say, “If we’re doing this, I’m going to check in with you at every step. You say red, we stop, no questions asked. You’re allowed to change your mind at any time. Is that clear?”

“Never clearer,” Shepard murmured, and cupped the back of Kaidan’s head, drawing him in.

Their coronas sizzled fiercely together as Kaidan trailed biting kisses down Shepard’s neck, along his collarbone, down his chest. His teeth dragged over the nub of nipple, and Shepard groaned. Kaidan ran a fingernail over the other nipple until it peaked, circling it, feeling Shepard shiver against him.

“Show me you’re mine, then,” he said, not a question, gesturing. Without needing to be directed, Shepard raised his arms above his head, baring the long, powerful lines of his body to Kaidan.

Straddling Shepard’s hips, Kaidan called up a thrill of electricity, smoothing it over Shepard’s amp port, and then along the trail of curling hair that ran from his navel to his balls. Shepard groaned again, breathing hard under the crackling web of dark energy.

“You okay, John? Red or blue?”

“You know it’s blue,” Shepard panted. It had been a long time for him, too; he was biting his lower lip, breath coming in staccato gasps, the blood-red corona stuttering across his skin.

Forming words was becoming more difficult. Kaidan chased the electricity’s route down Shepard’s body with his lips, and then took Shepard’s straining cock into his mouth. Shepard moaned, body jack-knifing under his, and Kaidan grinned fiercely to himself as he sucked him down.

Shepard tasted like Kaidan remembered, pungent and sharp, with a sting of ozone underneath it like a Vancouver thunderstorm. Breathing slowly, deliberately, he took more and more of Shepard with each pass, the slick, swollen cock thick against his tongue and the back of his throat. Shepard’s arms trembled; he began to make small, helpless noises as Kaidan took him closer and closer to the brink.

It would be so easy to let Shepard go over the edge. Kaidan was tempted to take pity and give Shepard an effortless end to these long months of drought. But he knew Shepard wouldn’t thank him for letting him off too lightly. Shepard had given him the reins, had wanted to surrender control, and Kaidan was determined to give him what he wanted. As Shepard’s hips stuttered towards climax, he squeezed hard at the root of Shepard’s leaking prick, and pulled off.

Shepard’s breath hissed between his teeth, hands clawing the sheets above his head. He groaned, “You’re a fucking sadist.”

“You started this, Commander; this was all your idea,” Kaidan said as he began to stroke. “Red or blue?”

“Blue, and you’re a fucking sadist, sir,” Shepard gasped, his body bucking in Kaidan’s grip. “You feel so damned good — I need to —”

Kaidan ran a gentling arm across Shepard’s heaving, perspiring chest. “Not yet, okay? Not until I say you can. Think you can do that for us, soldier?”

Shepard struggled for self-control. A flush had crawled across his broad body, contrasting with the blood-red flicker of his corona. “Yeah,” he managed. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re doing so well,” Kaidan breathed, his voice as rough as Shepard’s had become. It was an intoxicating sight, this invincible commander spreadeagled in bed for him and completely at his mercy. And the most intoxicating thing of all was that Shepard was getting off on it, too, even more than Kaidan was; yielding to Kaidan, giving up his control, was making Shepard’s cock leak and strain in Kaidan’s grasp.

There were convenient phials of bath oil on the shelf beside the adjacent bathroom. Kaidan managed to snag one with his biotics, coating his fingers with musk and vanilla. Shepard’s thighs slid apart, giving Kaidan more access. Kaidan hitched Shepard’s legs up and reached his free hand under Shepard’s balls.

“Ready to do this?” he asked; as Shepard groaned his assent, he teased one finger into Shepard’s hole.

“Fuck, yes,” Shepard choked out. His corona rolled erratically across his chest, flaring in and out of control; his air coming in huge gusts like he was drowning.

“Just look at you,” Kaidan murmured, awed by the capitulation in Shepard’s sweating face. He slid another finger into Shepard’s body. Shepard was so hot, so tight. It had been a year after the Collectors’ base mission; Shepard hadn’t been with a man since, and it showed.

Kaidan worked him open slowly, giving him time to adjust, reveling in Shepard’s harsh breathing — the splay of his fists above his head, the tight body that had admitted no one else since Kaidan and, if Kaidan had anything to do about it, never would again. “You’re mine,” he murmured, and felt Shepard’s hole clench around him in response.

“Fuck. Yes. Always. Kaidan —”

Shepard’s eyes had slid closed, his field stuttering around him. Kaidan pulled his fingers out, wiped them on the sheets, and then cupped Shepard’s face in his hands. “I know what you need,” he murmured; “I’m going to give it to you, okay? We’re nearly there. You still blue?”

“Yeah.” Shepard’s fists opened and closed above his head, in time with the helpless pulse of his aura. His throat worked desperately. “Kaidan, come on, please —”

“I’ll take care of you,” and Kaidan lined himself up, lifting Shepard’s legs over his hips, and finally pushed his way into Shepard’s hole.

Shepard let out a long, choked noise as if he was surrendering up the last of his self. His jaw fell open; he couldn’t speak. Kaidan knew exactly how it felt. Deep inside Shepard, plugged into the bright heart of a star, it was hard enough to breathe, let alone to form actual words.

Somehow, he managed to wait, to hold himself back, until Shepard’s lips framed, soundlessly: Fuck me.

Kaidan fucked him in long, luxurious strokes, holding onto his ankles, aiming for his prostate. Shepard rolled his head back, wordless moans spilling from his throat. Kaidan had to fight to not moan with him, to not lose himself in the tight heat of Shepard’s body. It felt so good, so unbelievably good, as it had the first time when Shepard had fucked him, and every single other time after — all fire and electricity and dark energy, like there was nothing in the universe but him and Shepard at its center. He made himself focus instead on Shepard’s face, on Shepard’s pleasure. He watched those blue eyes glaze over, watched Shepard’s red, bitten mouth go slack, all of his muscles shivering, the small of his back beginning to arch off the bed.

“Almost there.” Kaidan took hold of Shepard’s flushed, straining cock, and began to stroke in time with his thrusts.

Shepard moaned desperately, his fingers curling above his head. He had gone beyond the last scraps of self-control; had left all vestiges of himself so far behind. His corona surged and faltered in gusts. Tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes; regret and rapture warred across his undefended face.

Kaidan knew how that felt — on the edge of sorrow and bliss, the tides surrounding him, threatening to drown him and Shepard with him. Shepard had given him the reins, had trusted him with his surrender, and he wasn’t going to betray that trust.

With the final remnants of his own control, he gasped out, “Touch me.”

In a split-second, Shepard had his arms around Kaidan’s neck, hauling him close. His heels dug into the small of Kaidan’s back, his corona rose to meet Kaidan’s in wave after wave of blood-red and blue.

No more control, not any longer; not with how much he wanted him, not with how long they had both waited. “Now,” Kaidan panted, and Shepard cried out as his cock spurted in Kaidan’s grasp, as waves of regret and joy swept over them, spilling over the brim, as they came together in a blaze of blue, blue, blue.

Afterwards, they held each other, drowsily watching simulated stars in their courses across the dark hologram of sky.

Shepard’s red-tinged corona painted Anderson’s bedroom in oceanic hues. In this light, the unearthly scars left by Cerberus couldn’t be seen; his resurrected face looked entirely human. It had taken them the better part of a year, but they’d managed to conquer the sorrows that had threatened to drown them, and surfaced onto these safer shores at last.

Eventually, Shepard murmured in a sex-satiated voice, “We might have screwed up at the beginning, but finally, we got it right.”

“Just in time for the last push,” Kaidan said, and instantly regretted it. These three days of shore leave were the final calm before the storm. Tomorrow they would leave this place, and shoulder their weapons again, and hunt down Shepard’s clone; if they survived that, they’d continue their search for a way to win this impossible war. There was no telling whether they’d succeed or fail in the end, and there was no reason to waste what might be an all-too-brief happiness on regret.

Shepard was silent for a beat. The sweat cooled on their bodies; there was both grief and joy in his bottomless eyes. “Maybe the last push for the war, but not for us. No matter what happens, we’ll have more time. I promise.”

Kaidan’s body felt heavy and weightless both at once, ocean depths filling him to the brim. At Shepard’s words, the waves spilled over, eyes and lips and beating heart.

They were old soldiers. They’d seen too much to fool themselves with empty promises, and they’d come too far to squander this hard-earned trust on an easy lie.

Which was why it wasn’t a lie, and neither was this: “I know we will, John. And I’ll be waiting . For as long as it takes.”

Shepard’s eyes were shining. He traced the line of Kaidan’s cheek. He didn’t tell him he loved him; Kaidan didn’t say it either. For tonight, it was enough to drift together in the gravity well, trusting that there would be a tomorrow in which they might get to tell each other at last.

 

* * *

Timeline B (No at Ilos): If I lose everything in the fire/My beating heart belongs to you

With every breath that I am worth here on Earth
I'm sending all my love to you
My beating heart belongs to you
I walked for miles 'til I found you
If I lose everything in the fire
I'm sending all my love to you

- Green Day, Last Night on Earth, 2010.

 

Finally, they’d arrived at the endgame.

Long months and weeks of war were now reduced to mere days; soon, there would be only hours left. Shore leave on the Citadel was over. They had gained Rannoch, but lost Thessia. Shepard had learned the Reapers’ origins under Despoina’s bottomless seas. And on Horizon, he’d uncovered a tracking device that would lead them to Cerberus’s headquarters at last.

That was the current plan — head to the Horsehead Nebula and Cronos Station, home to the Illusive Man, and find the final part of the Crucible. Hackett had made it crystal clear: this would be the point of no return. Attacking Cronos would likely expose the Crucible to Reaper eyes. Ready or not, Shepard would need to follow up this mission with the final assault on the Reapers themselves.

Shepard had to believe the galaxy’s forces were prepared for that last battle. The fleets he’d assembled were ready, awaiting their orders. The Crucible was just lacking the Catalyst. Once the crew retrieved it from Cronos, it would just be a matter of completing the Crucible, and staying alive long enough to deploy it in combat.

It was eight hours to Cronos. The blinking screens from Shepard’s assortment of datapads, the sense of time inexorably ticking down, made it impossible to sleep.

No one had notified him of a change in the fleet statistics in the last 24 hours since he’d reviewed them, but Shepard went over them again to make sure. The Cronos plan of attack was simple and solid, but he also revisited that for what felt like the hundredth time.

His omnitool pinged, showing 42 new messages. One from Admiral Anderson in London, a few short lines which wished him luck on Cronos, to which he responded in kind.

There was also a message from Major Alenko.

How can the future be so unsure and so bright at the same time? Maybe it’s because I believe in you. In us.

Shepard felt the corners of his mouth stretch upwards in a reluctant smile. There was a lot of that going around lately, ever since Apollo’s, and saying yes to Kaidan Alenko at last.

This was new for him. John Shepard — the spacer kid who’d grown up without a real home, unless you counted the Advanced Training Academy for Juveniles in Rio; the Butcher of Torfan, who’d had 40 men die under his command — had never had someone to send him romantic messages. Not the classmates he’d spent time with, not the professor he’d let seduce him, not once in all the anonymous shore leave hook-ups over his ten-year career. That was how he’d preferred it: a soldier’s solitary life, pared down and in constant motion, no home in the world and any bunk in a storm, never disarming the perimeter defences or ceding control or admitting any all-too-human vulnerability. Until the first Normandy, until Kaidan.

Then, Shepard had held back as well. The mission came first, the job needed to be done. A regulations-breaching fling with a subordinate officer would have complicated everything.

It had been his one regret as he was dying above Alchera: saying no to Kaidan before Ilos. Not taking him on shore leave after the Citadel hearings were over. Leaving him behind that morning when the Collectors attacked, and going down with the ship.

I thought we’d get more time. To see if we had something worth breaking the regs for, and to do it right. Now we’ll never know. Shepard wasn’t a man who second-guessed himself, or wasted time on regret, but as his air ran out and his life with it, his last thought, acknowledged for the first time, had been: I’m sorry.

Never let it be said John Shepard didn’t have a galaxy’s share of sheer luck. Cerberus had brought him back, and Mars and the Citadel coup had shown him that some things were as important as getting the job done and saving the universe.

Or maybe now that the universe was coming to an end — sand trickling out of the hourglass, the world’s clock ticking down — there was finally time for them.

Shepard punched in a reply on his omnitool:

I’m glad someone believes in me. You make me feel as if I could take on the universe. Which, in the circumstances, is exactly what I need.

The old John Shepard would never have believed himself capable of such sentimental drivel. The man Cerberus brought back, on the other hand — who had watched Kaidan nearly die on Mars, whom Kaidan had rescued from Despoina’s frigid seas, who had taken his lover to bed after that drunken and long-anticipated shore leave party and made love to him under the Presidium’s artificial starlight — that man had discovered a newly-awakened, terrifying capacity for unmitigated sap.

The old John Shepard would have been terrified. Giving up control, admitting to humanity: such things were unheard of in the soldier who sent other soldiers to their deaths, the leader who never let himself fail.

But this newfound humanity had somehow brokered peace between the geth and the quarians, had won him free of Leviathan, had helped him deal with losing Thessia. And it had let him open his heart to Kaidan at last.

After Eden Prime, the dreams that told him the Reapers were coming told him he wasn’t human. Under the deep sea at Despoina, the Leviathan had repeated it. You’re not flesh, you’re not human, you’re more like us than you know. You’ll always be alone. It was Kaidan who had put paid to that chilling prophecy.

Shepard pressed send, and picked up a report on the war effort in London.

 

 

Not a minute afterwards, a chime sounded, and his cabin door slid open to admit the only other person with free access.

Major Kaidan Alenko stalked into the Captain’s cabin, a sight for sore eyes, more dashing than anyone in rumpled Alliance BDUs and off-duty stubble had any right to look. He was carrying a bottle of decent Similkameen Valley red and two wine glasses. “Literally just got your message. Thought I’d deliver a follow-up in person.”

“Hey, I’ve been busy,” Shepard said, defensively, gesturing with his datapad at the other datapads and live screens on his desk.

“Making yourself crazy with this won’t help,” Kaidan said, knocking the datapad with the bottle. He sauntered toward the fishtank and then pivoted on his heel and spread his arms wide in a blatant gesture that fooled no one, not least his C.O. , who also happened to be his partner. “What will help is relaxing for a bit. Five minutes, okay? A quick drink, and then I’ll go.”

Shepard shook his head, unable to keep the smile from his face. “Five minutes, huh? We’ll see about that.”

“You think we’ll need longer than five?” Kaidan asked, cocking an entirely lascivious eyebrow, a look that made Shepard’s blood start to heat, as the major had clearly intended.

“I certainly hope so,” Shepard said, with fervor. “We’re heading into the fight of our lives tomorrow, we should make the most of tonight.”

Kaidan poured the wine and held a glass out to Shepard. Sobering, he said, “John, you know you’ve done everything you can, don’t you?”

Shepard took the glass and set the datapad aside, together with the internal countdown. “You know me, I like to be thorough. You can never be too prepared.”

“I do know you, and I know we’re as prepared as it gets,” Kaidan said. “It’s gonna be what it is. But you’ll find a way to win. And I’m behind you, we all are.”

The quiet, ringing confidence in Alenko’s voice centered him like nothing else did. Before, Shepard would have scoffed at needing empty assurances to get the job done, but now he couldn’t deny how much he’d come to rely on Kaidan’s sure strength.

He took a swallow of the wine. Crisp and flavorful, like the taste of ripe fruit, and his lover’s clean breath. They took a seat on the sofa, side by side, the smell of wine and Kaidan’s skin surrounding him. Shepard gazed into Kaidan’s face; he felt like he could do it forever, even while the world caught on fire.

“What are you thinking about right now?” he asked, more softly than usual.

Kaidan’s eyes were filled with memory. “The good times, the hard times. It’s been an unforgettable few years. You were always so focused on the war back then. The mission was everything.” He shook his head. “It’s as if… this time that we’ve been spending together lately? It’s been so intense. Like we’ve been trying to make up for those lost years.”

Focused on the mission? Yes, he had been that, and also too proud and solitary and goddamned stubborn for his own good. The voice Shepard always heard in his dreams — from even before Eden Prime, even before Torfan — rang in his ears: You’ll always be alone.

With an effort, he pushed it away, forcing the words from suddenly numb lips: “It’s true. I’ll never know what I missed.”

Kaidan hesitated, his expression uncharacteristically uncertain. Then he asked, as softly as Shepard had, “Do you regret not doing this before Ilos? I know we didn’t want to risk screwing up the team, or the mission. But you don’t want to know how many nights I spent going over the call we made to put things on hold.”

The yearning in Kaidan’s face matched the ache in Shepard’s chest. That night before Ilos, he’d twisted himself away from the lieutenant’s kiss-swollen mouth and said, There’ll be time for us when this is over, I promise. Alchera and his own bull-headedness had made that into a lie for three long years.

Shepard had to breathe deeply to focus past that lost time. Here was the truth of it: long-buried, something he had never admitted before, even to himself.

“It wasn’t just about the team or the fraternization regs. Back then, it wouldn’t have been right. I wasn’t in the best place. I needed to be in complete control, and you couldn’t give it to me. You wouldn’t have known what you were getting yourself into.” He swallowed. “I wouldn’t have been good for you; I would have hurt you. I’d have hurt the both of us.”

He’d learned that lesson with his classmates, had had it taught to him by Professor Harrison. He’d never let any of the shore leave hook-ups get close enough. But who knew, maybe he’d hurt them anyway.

Kaidan had to swallow, too. He put his glass down, and took Shepard’s hand in his. “Maybe? Hard to imagine anything hurting worse than losing you without knowing what we could have had.”

Regret made it difficult to get the words out. Shepard gripped hard, Kaidan’s calluses digging into his skin. “I thought we’d have more time. Was gearing up to ask you to join me on shore leave before the Normandy got her posting orders. Then, as you know, Alchera happened.”

He saw Kaidan’s eyes glisten with something barely held in check. Shepard only barely managed to hold it back himself. But he had to ask Kaidan: “Would it have been worse to have had that time together, only to lose it?”

Kaidan tilted his head, thoughtfully. “Would it have been worse, to have had you, and lost you?” he mused. "Worse than never having had you at all? You know, I used to wonder if it had been something I did… I don’t know. I told you that night before Ilos that if you kept me waiting much longer, it’d better be the end of the galaxy. When you died, it damn well felt like the galaxy was ending.”

There was a sharp pain in Shepard’s throat. That Kaidan had wondered if it had been something he’d done, as opposed to it being Shepard’s own damn issues, that had stopped Shepard that night? That Kaidan had carried that around with him all these years? Shepard couldn’t stand it.

“Kaidan.” He sounded like he’d been shot in the gut; it hurt almost as much. “You didn’t do anything. You were just too much for me, that’s all. You didn’t deserve the screwed-up asshole I was back then. You still don’t.”

Kaidan’s mouth quirked. “Come here,” he said, drawing Shepard into his arms. A brief brush of lips, and still it took Shepard’s breath away. He continued, forehead resting against Shepard’s, “Maybe we missed a chance for something then. But what we have now… these last few weeks have felt like a lifetime.”

“And there’s tonight,” Shepard muttered, thickly. All his blood seemed to be relocating below his belt; he felt stupid with longing for this man. He tried to rally a little, to salvage some of his pride: “Unless you really just came here for a quick drink?”

Kaidan snorted, “You knew I was lying about that.” He slipped his arms around Shepard’s waist, and Shepard slid into his lap like a ship docking into port. “Let’s make it last a lifetime, John.”

“As long as it takes,” Shepard managed, as Kaidan’s sure strength took hold of him and lifted him up and carried him over to their bed.

They made short work of their fatigues. They’d had weeks to practice at shucking off vests and harnesses and BDUs, had gotten the process of taking their boots off down to a fine art, with biotics as well as their fingers, their coronas raising a crackling electric field across their skin.

When they were finally bare for each other, and breathing hard, Kaidan slung Shepard back across the mattress. He paused on the threshold of the bed, his eyes full of admiration, letting Shepard’s own greedy gaze rake across broad muscles and expanse of bare skin and the full-blooded jut of his erection, before climbing deliberately aboard.

Shepard let Kaidan straddle his hips and hold him down, smirking, “Here we are again, on the brink of battle.” He meant Cronos, of course, but every encounter with Kaidan was a skirmish, a campaign if not a confrontation or even all-out combat, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kaidan’s eyes flashed in the dim light. “Like it would have been, before the fight on Ilos? How would it have gone, if we’d done this then?”

His lover was a delicious weight across his hips and shoulders. It would be equally delightful to grapple with him and pin him down as to surrender. Instead, Shepard made himself focus on Kaidan’s question.

“Badly. That screwed-up asshole would have made you follow orders, to be sure of his control. It might’ve felt good at the time, but you would have hated what it was doing to you.” Kaidan stilled, considering Shepard’s words, and Shepard continued, his voice raw, “Believe me, the asshole wouldn’t have deserved you.”

Kaidan paused a beat longer, then he said, reflectively, “I don’t know; I feel you’re being too hard on that guy. For one, he was too stubborn to die on me. He defeated Sovereign and the Collectors.” He traced a line from Shepard’s jawline down his neck, adding, “And I’m counting on him to win us this war.”

“Maybe,” Shepard said, a groundswell under his sternum where Kaidan’s warm hand had come to rest. “And, you know, he finally learned to open his heart to someone.”

“That so?” Kaidan traced a fingernail, studiously, around one nipple, drawing a hiss of breath from between Shepard’s lips. He pinched the other nipple for good measure, watching it register in Shepard’s face. Carefully, he said, “So lemme ask you this. What if that asshole hadn’t been screwed up before Ilos? What if you’d learned what you’ve learned now, and brought it to that night, to me?”

Shepard had to catch his breath. Kaidan’s gaze was entirely undefended, his handsome face as unguarded as it had been three years ago, when a smitten young lieutenant had come to his equally smitten C.O. and told him Everything, even the Reapers, will come around again, but you and I... This is what will never happen again.

Luckily, that young lieutenant had been wrong. They had come around again, three years later, older and definitely wiser; had managed to find their way to each other at last. And with that wisdom, maybe they could also revisit that aborted first time — an unlooked-for gift on what might be their last night on earth.

Shepard could see it: the old cabin on the first Normandy, their younger selves sprawled across that narrow bunk. Kaidan’s eyes shone with the same ardor as they had all those years ago; clearly, he could see it, too.

“Well, now,” Shepard drawled, “non-asshole me would have done this,” and he wrapped his arms around Kaidan’s neck and drew him downward into a lingering kiss.

Shepard took his time: playful and intense in turn, an anticipatory brush of tongue followed by a deep and devastating supplement, a promise of good things very much still to come. Kaidan kissed back, smiling against Shepard’s mouth as he hung on tight. His grip at Shepard's waist spoke eloquently of the coiled strength in his body, but he was content for now to follow Shepard’s lead.

Shepard let Kaidan stretch luxuriously on top of him, body to body. Three years ago, Lieutenant Alenko had been athletic and powerfully-built, a physique sculpted from combat drills and real-life battlefields. But the second human Spectre had become even broader and more muscular than Shepard was himself, and the spectacular ass which Shepard would have denied stealing glances aboard the SR-1 was now in even better shape. Kaidan let out a pleased noise as Shepard squeezed hard and palmed him close, pressing their erections heatedly together.

“And then, I’d have done this,” and Shepard hooked his knee under Kaidan’s and flipped them over, reversing their positions. Straddling Kaidan’s hips, Shepard called up a thrill of electricity, tracing circles over Kaidan’s amp port and his aching nipples, and then finally along the trail of curling hair that ran down his belly to his pelvic bone.

Kaidan groaned, breathing hard, writhing under the crackling web of dark energy. “You sure this isn’t you being an ass?” he hissed with a challenging edge that brought with it echoes of the young officer he’d been.

“Not at all,” Shepard said, as he ran the skein of electricity languorously over Kaidan’s abdominal muscles, his taut balls, the swollen length of his prick. “Permission to continue, Lieutenant?”

“You’ve got it, for now,” Kaidan murmured, flaring himself too, parting his thighs. Shepard moved lower, chasing the static route down the dense, taut musculature with his lips. Then he tightened one hand mercilessly around the base of Kaidan's cock before plunging his mouth over half its length.

Kaidan moaned, body straining under his; Shepard had to brace an arm across his hips to keep him down. “God,” he breathed, his hands opening and closing around Shepard’s shoulders as if desperate to make fists, to claw Shepard closer, but too gentlemanly to do that without asking first.

Shepard smirked as best he could around this gallant but unnecessary restraint. As he swallowed Kaidan down, he snagged hold of Kaidan's hand and relocated it to the back of Shepard’s own head; with an encouraging sound, he curled Kaidan's fingers into the regulation crewcut, a blatant invitation to clutch hold of as much purchase as Kaidan could.

Kaidan didn't need any second offer. He reached out blindly, palming Shepard's head and driving it downwards. “God, John,” he gasped, as he bucked upwards, thrusting deeply into Shepard's throat; Shepard fought past his gag reflex to take Kaidan down to the hilt, grasping Kaidan's hips, not to hold him back, but to lift them higher still, harder, urging him to use his mouth with abandon.

Kaidan’s fingers dug into Shepard’s skull, the muscles in his thighs and abdomen shivering, but he managed to choke out, "I, I can't — I don’t, not yet—"

It would be easy to blaze past this nonsense; clearly, what Kaidan needed was for Shepard to drink him down and let him come thickly down Shepard’s throat. But what Shepard needed was for Kaidan to be one hundred percent on board with everything that happened in this bed, especially tonight. Taking the man at his word, he pulled off, dragging a long-drawn moan from Kaidan’s lips.

He looked up at Kaidan’s sweating face, pupils blown wide, the bright blue corona stuttering and flailing around his trembling limbs, hand still in a death-grip at the nape of Shepard’s neck. Shepard’s heart clenched; he’d never seen such naked want before, nor experienced it, either, and yet here they both were.

Gently, he ran his hands up Kaidan’s heaving flanks, as if to soothe a racehorse. “All right, then, not yet,” he murmured into Kaidan’s skin. “Tell me what you need.”

Kaidan took a moment to catch his breath. He’d bitten his lip almost deeply enough to draw blood; the ozone from his biotic field made his wild coif and the thick hair on his body stand on end. His voice caught as he said, “Fuck me, John.”

In an instant, the tight bubble of need rose through Shepard’s windpipe, choking him. His breath hissed from his lungs; his heart felt too big for his body. His pulse hammering, he fumbled for the phial of oil they kept beside their bed, saying, not knowing what he was saying, “Not that, Kaidan, not tonight. But what I’ll do—"

“Not tonight —? Oh!" Kaidan’s aggrieved tone broke off as Shepard smoothed the warm, slippery fluid across his balls and down the hot skin of his perineum, into the crease of that perfect ass. "I thought you weren’t gonna —"

"I’m not," Shepard said innocently. Following the trajectory of the oil, he slid one slick finger inside Kaidan, smiling at the sudden flush of heat and the helpless contraction of Kaidan’s body.

“Mmm,” Kaidan murmured, and settled down, breathing in and out again, spreading his thighs for Shepard. With his free hand, Shepard took hold of the glistening base of Kaidan's erection; with the other, he added a second finger, pressing forward, searching for the right angle, and finding it when Kaidan cried out loud enough to be heard above deck.

"Hush," Shepard whispered, stroking the nub of Kaidan’s prostate, Kaidan shivering around him, slick and worked open as he’d been on the night of the Citadel party when they’d last done this. The gift of this man’s openness, his trust, the pleasure he took at Shepard’s hands — Shepard wanted desperately to be equal to it, to be deserving of it, though he suspected he never quite would. Thickly, he murmured into Kaidan’s ear, “I’ve got you.”

“You most definitely do,” Kaidan panted, rutting back against Shepard’s fingers and then forward into Shepard’s fist, slow movements that were just enough to drive him crazy and not enough to make him come. “I just don’t get it — if you’re not gonna — then —?"

Shepard forestalled this with a squeeze of Kaidan’s dick, and a quick, heartfelt kiss. Told him, voice shaking, “I’m not going to fuck you, Kaidan. What I’m going to do — what we’re going to do — “

His throat closed, he couldn’t continue. Instead, he freed his fingers, and shifted his weight forward, and pressed his cock into Kaidan’s slick hole, letting his hands and body stand in for the words he couldn’t get out.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to explain himself. Kaidan understood him as always, both on and off the battlefield. “Oh,” Kaidan said, going completely still under Shepard, holding his breath as the realization struck.

“Yeah,” Shepard admitted. He couldn’t even be embarrassed with Kaidan looking at him like this, a soft, heavy-lidded gaze that the major reserved for exactly one person in the galaxy.

Shepard waited until he could be sure of his control, and then he began to move.

Despite the Normandy’s headlong plunge toward Cronos, despite the world’s descent into the last stages of this war, everything slowed to a crawl in Shepard’s cabin, in this wide bed.

Making love to a biotic — making love to this biotic — was like plugging himself into the bright heart of a star going nova. This time, time slowed down for them, a shining bubble stretched between moments, all fire and dark energy, like there was nothing in the universe but him and Kaidan at its blue center.

The galaxy might be hurtling towards its final fate, the Earth would never be the same again, the sands in the hourglass were seeping away inch by inexorable inch. But the rich gift of this night before the final battle wasn’t meant to be spent all at once, and Shepard didn’t mean to squander it lightly.

They came together very gently, these two ungentle soldiers, like a neap tide on a quiet shore. Too full of each other to speak, their limbs tangled together, together with their past and present selves. Shepard thrust slowly into Kaidan, his hips moving in small circles, setting up an unhurried rhythm that both of them could keep up for a very long time.

Kaidan’s ankles hooked around Shepard’s waist. He had let his head fall back, his body slack and boneless against the mattress, his breath coming in ragged little gasps. Shepard ran a hand down each of Kaidan's arms from shoulder to fingertip and interlaced his fingers with Kaidan's. Their coronas rolled together, crackling blue and red-blue, keeping time with bodies and breaths and beating hearts.

“This what you had in mind?” Shepard gasped out. With this pace, at this angle of penetration, the tip of his cock rubbed tantalizingly against Kaidan’s prostate, keeping both of them balanced on the edge of pleasure and the path of no return.

“Yeah. So good, John. Could do this all day,” Kaidan panted, his eyes a glaze of bliss, rocking slowly back against Shepard. As if they had all the time in the world. And on some level, in this space before Ilos and before Chronos, before certain mayhem and potential death, maybe they did.

“After this is over, that’s all we’ll do,” Shepard promised, leaning in to kiss him, changing the angle with it. Despite himself, his thrusts became deeper and more grinding, deep as the bottomless well of gravity, Kaidan groaning as he responded to the change in tempo.

“How about now?” Shepard asked, eventually, against Kaidan’s lips. “Ready for more?”

“Yeah. Whatever you have,” Kaidan gasped, clenching himself, his field rolling and stuttering against Shepard’s. Shepard loosed Kaidan’s hands and shifted Kaidan’s left leg over his shoulder, bracing his weight fully over Kaidan’s body, and started to move faster at last.

The pleasure gathered between them, sharp like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. Shepard picked up the pace, panting into Kaidan’s damp skin, “I want what you want. I want to give you everything you want.”

“Give it to me, then,” Kaidan murmured, “all of it,” and Shepard curled his hand around Kaidan’s straining cock.

Kaidan moaned, hips arching off the bed, reaching up to claw Shepard closer, their sweat sizzling together as their biotic fields slid over each other’s skin. In one instant, Shepard was still in control; in another, he was teetering on the brink, they both were. Everything sped up, moving closer and closer to the edge of themselves: a supernova that couldn’t be contained...

"Whatever you want," Shepard got out, untethered in space and time, Kaidan the single point anchoring him to the rest of the galaxy. “Kaidan, just tell me —"

“…So close,” Kaidan panted; he focused on Shepard’s face with the last of his self-control and gasped out, “It’s you, John, you and nothing else — I need —"

“I know what you need,” Shepard said, or tried to, as they moved together one last time; in the moment, not just flesh but spirit, too. One breath, one blood, one beating heart: together, they hurtled over the wide expanse of sky.

Afterwards, they lay satiated in each other’s arms. Kaidan stared up into the starfield, contemplatively; Shepard watched his lover’s face. It had taken years, but they’d finally managed to deal with what hadn’t happened before Ilos and the road they hadn’t then taken, had finally conquered that last barrier between them.

“You know what,” Kaidan finally said, “that screwed up asshole wasn’t so bad. Maybe we could have done this three years ago. We’d have taken our shore leave after the hearings, before we were shipped out to Alchera. Who knows, we could have gone to Panama.”

He was teasing, of course, but there was sorrow underneath it at the same time. Shepard refrained from snorting, If we’d done this three years ago, we might’ve been court martialled for fraternization? And then you’d have lived for two years thinking your lover was dead.

What he said, instead, was: “We can still have that. After this is done, we’ll go. Panama. Paris. Phuket. Wherever you want.”

Kaidan traced the line of his jaw, his eyes very bright. “Wherever I want, huh? I like the sound of that. A lot.”

 

*

 

The dreams had started even before Torfan: dreams in which people under his command died screaming, where the omnipotent narrator whispered You’re not human. You don’t have a home in the world. You’ll always be alone.

After he’d touched the beacon on Eden Prime, the dreams had gone into overdrive. The world’s ending. The Reapers are coming. Stop them, or everyone dies.

The overarching narrative was the same: after Thessia, after Despoina. And now, before Cronos — here was the blazing forest, and the child, burning and dying, and the voices of all the people which Shepard had sent to their deaths.

You’re not flesh, not human. You’ll never have a home in this world. The Reapers are coming. Stop them; it’s the only thing you’re good for. Control them; you’re the only one who can. Sacrifice yourself, and then maybe everything you had to do might finally make some sense.

Shepard jerked out of the dream, gasping, covered in flop-sweat, heart pounding like it never pounded in battle. He stared blindly out at the starfield beyond the cabin window. For a moment, it looked as if the whole galaxy was on fire.

I’m the Butcher of Torfan. I pulled the trigger on thousands of enemy lives, including my own clone’s. I couldn’t save Mordin or Legion. I left Ashley Williams behind on Virmire. Sixty souls on the Normandy and 60,000 in the general fleet, and I might be leading them all to their deaths. Including the one I most care about.

In that moment, Shepard couldn’t see beyond the nightmare flames. What if it wasn’t enough? There had been so many missions, so many deaths, he’d had to make so many sacrifices — never relying on anyone but himself, always being in control, never letting himself get close enough. What if, thanks to Cerberus, he wasn’t human, and had had to leave his humanity behind to save the world?

What if he left his humanity behind and failed anyway?

There was a rustling of sheets at his side, and then the familiar, gravelly voice of the one person who’d gotten close enough, somehow. “Hey. Can’t sleep?”

Kaidan sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes with the ease of a veteran soldier. What he saw in Shepard’s face made his lips tighten. He put a hand on Shepard’s shoulder, the warm weight steadying. “Same dream, John?”

“Yeah,” Shepard said, numbly. He’d had to give Kaidan the highlights after the first night they’d spent together, when he’d wakened Kaidan with his screaming. “Except this time, I was burning, too, along with the boy.”

Kaidan was silent. He didn’t say, They’re just dreams, not after the beacons, not after Cerberus had brought Shepard back, not since Leviathan and the dead Protheans, all fighting to claim their share of real estate in Shepard’s head. Finally, he said, “You might have grown up without a home, but you’ve got one on the Normandy. And with me. You’re not alone.”

His arm was solid across Shepard’s shoulders, an anchor in the crumbling world. Shepard inhaled deeply and leaned back against the broad chest, the comfort of sleep-warmed skin. He had to close his eyes. “You’re the one thing in the world that makes me feel human,” he said, when he was able to trust his voice.

“Better believe it,” Kaidan snorted, and pressed a kiss between Shepard’s shoulder blades. His own voice was rock steady. “Like you better believe that, even if the galaxy was burning down, I’d walk through the fire to find you and bring you home.”

Shepard had to inhale deeply. He could only ask this of this man. “You think we’ll make it, Kaidan?”

The man nodded, dark eyes shining, and gave him what he needed. “We’re ready. You’ve put the people together, the vision. And what you’ve done is build hope.”

Hope, a fighting chance. John Shepard had always given these abstract things a wide berth in favour of more concrete weapons, but on what might be their last night in the galaxy, he grasped them with both hands.

“You’re right,” he said, thickly, and seized Kaidan’s chin to take a last kiss.

Despite their best efforts to hold back the tides, the sands in the hourglass, it was almost time.

He put his hand on Kaidan’s. No biotic fields, just warm skin, calloused from the grips on their sidearms and rifles, unused to this much gentleness. They might be two bodies, but they were one heart, one partnered soul.

In the final moments of this final night, with the sound of the metronome ticking down, he’d discovered this last unlooked-for gift.

So much for being in control, so much for being alone. And as for not being flesh, not being human?

Very softly, his heart very full, he told Kaidan, “I take it back. You don’t just make me feel human. You make me feel more than that. The Reapers better watch themselves.”

Kaidan squeezed his hand. He didn’t tell him he loved him; he didn’t have to.

Instead, they got out of bed, and reached for their clothes, and started counting down to the last battle.

Notes:

So many thanks to Potionsmaster and Mallaidhsomo for this beta, and an incredibly insightful sex beta! You guys are the best ♥

Chapter 6: Post-ME3 — Only Walls That Hold Me

Summary:

After the war ends, Kaidan Alenko sends six letters to the sky.

Notes:

Warnings for copious amounts of angst, and some very angsty solo sex.

 

One of these days the sky's gonna break
And everything will escape and I'll know
One of these days the mountains
Are gonna fall into the sea and they'll know
That you and I were made for this
I was made to taste your kiss
We were made to never fall away
One of these days letters are gonna fall
From the sky, telling us all To go free
But until that day I'll find a way
To let everybody know that you're coming back
Mhmm, you're coming back for me

 

- Civil Twilight, Letters from the Sky

[1]: January, 2187 — The garden planet

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: Themistocles

Hey, Shepard. We made it through the Charon relay ahead of that blue pulse wave, and came down on hard on a deserted beach on Themistocles. The hull and all life support systems were intact. We didn’t lose a single life in the crash, not even mine.

The engines were totalled, but comms are up. Traynor managed to raise Alliance FOB in London — seems the relays have only seen minor damage. Once EDI and Adams can get engines running again, even with minimal FTL capability, we can be back in the Sol system in 7 days.

FOB comms also said: approximately 3 hours after you made it into the beam, and 30 minutes after the Crucible fired, every single Reaper across the galaxy completely powered down. Surrendered without a fight. The war’s over. In fact, those which aren’t completely inert have actually started to help with the rebuilding efforts, so we’re not even supposed to shoot them on sight.

You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?

 

Alenko paused. He rubbed one eye with his bandaged hand. The small hurt was nothing compared to the one lurking under his dirty uniform. Forcing himself to finish, he went on:

I’ll admit it, only to you: I’m struggling with your decision to leave me behind. I was dying — at least that’s what Dr. Chakwas says — and you wanted me to live. But what I really wanted to stay at your side. To fight, and, if it came to that, to die with you.

We lost so much time, after Alchera, and before. We just found our way back to each other. I’m not ready to live in a galaxy without you in it.

I’m alive, John, and you better be too.

Alenko paused to reread the message for any typos the SPaGcheck hadn’t caught, and then pressed send.

Shepard was out there somewhere, even if he wasn’t reading his personal emails right now. Kaidan had to believe that. It was hard enough getting through the days as it was.

 

*

 

The repair roster was ultimately Alenko's call as ranking officer. Adams told him it would take twenty-four days of work on the hull and engines to get the Normandy spaceworthy again.

“We’ll do it in eighteen,” Garrus said staunchly. He had argued for the guns to make it onto the repair list, until they’d gotten the word that the Reapers had stopped fighting, and that the galaxy was under an enforced peace.

When Alenko’s ribs stopped hurting and Chakwas finally cleared him for physical duty, he signed himself up for double shifts. Hauling supplies with biotics and welding plate back together was hot, dirty, mindless work that helped him focus. There was no use indulging in gnawing anxiety; he needed to concentrate on getting them all off this rock. When the spiraling thoughts became too big for his body, he followed Garrus into the jungle to help with the hunting run. When shooting things stopped working, he staggered back to his terminal and sent another letter into the void.

I don’t know how you did it, John, but you saved the world.

 

*

 

The daily slew of messages from FOB and across the galaxy didn’t shed any further light on the how part, either.

On the fourth day after the crash, they managed to raise Major Coats, who looked like he was running on as much sleep as Alenko was. “London’s back up, but we still haven’t managed to get eyes into the Citadel. She’s hanging in orbit, not responding to conventional hails, and we haven’t managed to put any of ours in the air yet to go check it out. That said, we have a couple of Reapers helping us with ship repairs, so things might be different in 72 hours.”

Alenko ventured, “How’s that working for you?”

“They’re totally tame now. We have no idea why.” Coats rubbed his forehead, leaving a clean mark in the grime. “Come see for yourself, Major. We’re counting the days ‘til Normandy’s return.”

The one person who had any sort of inkling was EDI. “The Reapers’ AI appears wiped clean,” she said, as she observed real-time footage of Reapers assisting with rebuilding efforts. “Either the code has been rewritten, or this rebuilding subroutine is a reboot default.”

Alenko asked, frowning, “How would anyone do that?”

EDI’s own codes formulated a complex, almost-human shrug. “We assumed the Reaper mainframe is located in dark space. But perhaps there is a back door in this universe.”

Alenko found himself shaking his head in disbelief. Is this what you did, John? He didn’t say it out loud, but Joker said, staunchly, “He’s out there, Major. He’s alive, I’m sure of it.”

 

*

 

The crew quarters were crowded enough, with more than fifty personnel on round-the-clock shifts. Alenko hadn’t bunked there since the first days of his return to the Normandy.

Once Chakwas let him out of sickbay, he’d been sleeping in Shepard’s cabin, which held the secure terminal which he could use without the crew breathing down his neck, and the bed where he and Shepard had finally found their way back to each other.

After his double shift, when he was finally so tired he couldn’t see straight, Alenko would make his way to the cabin: to this small haven which he and Shepard had carved for themselves out of the daily grind of the war. He’d feed Shepard’s fish, and take advantage of the same small turboshower that he and Shepard had often used together. Then he’d collapse in Shepard’s bed and close his eyes.

The familiarity of this space was, for the most part, a comfort. Shepard’s presence in the cabin was almost palpable: the clothes and boots in the closet, the snifter of absinthe that bore his fingerprints, the side of the bed that still carried the faint ambergris scent of his skin.

Of course, that comfort was double-edged. Lying in Shepard’s bed — in their bed — it was impossible not to think about the man: what he’d done, whether he was still alive. What it would do, to both Alenko and the world, if he wasn’t. They’d had sex in this bed, as often as they could, and it hadn’t been nearly enough.

Injury and sorrow would have a chilling effect on any man’s libido, but on the eighteenth day, when they were finally in ready shape to leave Themistocles, and Major Alenko had indulged in an extra glass of bootleg ryncol at the celebratory party, he got into bed and discovered he was half-hard.

Alenko swallowed, palming his balls and rising erection. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine it was Shepard touching him; thin, strong fingers toying with his nipples and the ridges of his abdomen, running a lazy thumbnail up his foreskin…

To his embarrassment, Kaidan found himself choking up. He let go of himself and had to put his forearm across his eyes.

A memory drifted back to him: the very last time they’d had sex in this bed. He’d said to Shepard: “When you died at Alchera, it damn well felt like the galaxy was ending. But you came back to me.”

“Now’s our chance to put it right. Let’s not waste it.” They’d done their best; they’d poured a lifetime into those last few weeks.

Kaidan clenched his fist over his mouth. I lived in a world without you in it for two years. I’m not ready to do it again. Don’t leave me holding this by myself. Don’t leave me again.

 

* * *

 

[2]: Two weeks later — London

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: London

Hey, Shepard. London’s completely flattened. Major landmarks, Westminster and Big Ben, even Churchill’s war bunker — they’re in ruins. FOB is down to five per cent of its wartime headcount, and old graveyards from the London Blitz three centuries ago are filled with new corpses.

The Reapers are here, and they’re helping rebuild everything. FOB says it’s the same story on Cipritine, and Talat, and Serrice.

John, what did you do?

The Alliance managed to get into the Citadel at last. Seems like no one saw you up there; your last sighting was here in London, dashing into the beam. C-Sec found Anderson’s body, they found Harper. It sounded like they were both together when they died, in a chamber in the Presidium where the controls to the Ward arms were located. But you’ve vanished without a trace.

They tell me you’re gone. I don’t believe it.

 

Alenko had to bear down on the burning in his chest. A memory of Shepard pressed itself into his vision — smiling his faint, crooked smile, regret and joy in his bottomless eyes, scarred fingers tracing a slow line down Kaidan’s cheek. Murmuring a promise he hadn’t made before, or since: No matter what happens, we’ll have more time.

He inhaled deeply; typed, I won’t make you a liar, John.

Shepard was out there. If not in London, or on Earth, then somewhere in the galaxy. Kaidan Alenko would search for him, for as long as it took; if at all humanly possible, he'd bring him home.

 

*

 

The Normandy docked at the badly-damaged London spaceport. Alenko gave Crewman Vadim Rolston a leave of absence to reunite with his family, and extended the rest of the crew off-duty passes to help with aid efforts. Diana Allers went in search of the BBC Broadcasting House satellite office, while Doctor Chakwas packed a bag of supplies and headed for the Royal Free Hospital to see to the casualties.

Alenko took James, Steve and Joker with him to clock in at London Forward Operating Base near Westminster. FOB must have been given a head’s up on their ETA, because Major Coats was on hand to greet them.

“Good to see you in one piece,” Alenko said, shaking the major’s calloused hand. This man had fought at Anderson’s side and commanded troops to support Shepard — Alenko could be glad he was alive without resenting him for being there when John wasn’t.

“Likewise, and your crew as well.” Coats gave them the sobering status report. Half of Earth’s major cities had been razed to the ground, with more than a third of her total populace wiped out, and still they’d apparently fared better than the other Council homeworlds. A quarter of the mass relays had been destroyed. It would take years to rebuild, even with some of the Reapers helping.

“Damndest thing,” Coats said. “Something’s rebooted the Reaper programming. Intelligence says it would most likely have been the Crucible, or the Catalyst.”

Kaidan remembered what they’d learned on Chronos Station. “The Citadel was the Catalyst all along,” he said. “Is the Crucible still hooked up to it?”

Coats looked out of the window at the broken skyline and the horizon beyond, as if he could see the Citadel in Earth’s orbit. “As far as we can tell. After the Crucible docked with the Citadel and fired that pulse into the mass relays, it went dead. Council scientists can’t power it back up.” He paused before saying, with some difficulty, “I’m sorry about Commander Shepard.”

Joker’s lips thinned, and James swore softly under his breath, but Kaidan held himself steady as he said, “Have search parties been sent out?”

“Around the clock,” Coats confirmed. “If Shepard’s not on the Citadel, and what’s left of C-Sec says they can’t find him, then the only other place he could be is here in London. That’s assuming the transport beam from Regent’s Park to the Citadel was two-way, and he found his way back here somehow.”

At his elbow, Steve muttered a prayer. Alenko followed Coats’ gaze out of the window at the swathes of burned city, the destroyed buildings, and tens of thousands of dead.

“How are they looking for him?” His voice sounded dispassionate and eerily calm.

“The teams have working DNA locators. They’re looking for survivors, of course, but any trace of Shepard’s DNA will trigger an alert.” Coats hesitated, and added, “They’re doing all they can, Major.”

“I’m sure they are, but I’d like to see it for myself.” Kaidan said. Then: “When can we leave for the Citadel?”

 

*

 

Security on the Citadel was on lockdown; it would take weeks to get clearance for a visit for even the Citadel’s own Spectre. Kaidan spent that time on shift with the search parties, riding shotgun in motorized vehicles that looked like they’d last been in use during the actual London blitz.

In that way, Kaidan Alenko traversed London’s ancient, crumbling streets alongside soldiers and volunteers, willing their handheld scanners to show signs of life. Joker, Steve and James took turns keeping pace with him, as did Garrus and Tali, Liara and Jaavik, and the other Normandy crew.

After his search-and-rescue shift was over, Kaidan visited hospitals, bringing his trained medic’s skills into overcrowded wards, peering into camp beds and unconscious faces burnt and bruised almost beyond recognition.

On one of such tours, at Guys’ Hospital in Southwark, he sensed a disturbance in the gravity well: the presence of another powerful biotic. Jack Nought, almost unrecognizable in combat fatigues, the biotic formerly known as Subject Zero, had arrived on a similar errand.

“Shep sent my kids to support the 103 Marines on that last push. When the fight was over, I sent them home to their mothers and spent the last three weeks getting back here to look for the Commander.”

“I appreciate that,” Kaidan said slowly. From the stories he’d heard, the woman she’d been would have bitten his head off at any sign of sympathy. It was no small measure of how far she’d come, thanks to Shepard, that she didn’t do that now.

“He’d have done the same for me. Did it, actually, back on Pragia, when he had no reason to.” She tried to smile at him, awkward. “Don’t do that whole stoic hero thing, Alenko, he'll be back before you know it.”

 

*

 

When sleep eluded Alenko, he'd get up from his bunk at the FOB and pace the bullet-riddled corridors in search of something to do. Inevitably, his route would take him past the corner at the west wing of the base, where he and Shepard had stolen a moment together before the final push.

He leaned against the same grimy wall he’d stood beside when he’d tried the stoic hero thing on Shepard on the eve of that last battle. Remembered telling him, grimly, “We’re old soldiers. We know the score; we know this is goodbye.”

Shepard’s half-smile told Alenko this stoicism wasn’t fooling anyone. He’d stepped into Alenko’s personal space. “Hey. When this is over, I’m going to be waiting.”

Alenko had moved forward, too, until they were standing almost chest to chest. His heart had been pounding, the way it never did in the field; he wondered if Shepard could feel it through two layers of ablative.

“Don’t get me wrong: I’m going to fight like hell for the chance to hold you again. I know you’ll find a way to win, John. And when you do, I’ll be waiting for you.”

Shepard’s mouth crooked appreciatively, and he laced their armored fingers together. Kaidan looked into those bright blue eyes, and the ruined Westminster skyline beyond, across which night was falling. He’d never been to London; just one more of those places he’d gotten to see while serving on Shepard’s crew.

“You know, looking back, there aren't many regrets. The messed-up kid I was would never have dreamed of the things I got to do at your side. And now, there’s this.” He squeezed Shepard’s hand. “The greatest challenge of my life, and the greatest reward. It’s been quite a ride.”

A rare wistfulness stole over Shepard’s face. “The best,” he said.

Kaidan gathered himself. “So, you ready?”

“I’ve got these bastards in my sights. It’s them who should be afraid of me,” Shepard said, simply. Red fire flashed from his eyes and the scars in his face. This was the leader who was going to win the war, and the man Alenko wanted to be with after that happened.

“Be careful,” he’d told Shepard, and kissed him in front of the Biotics Division and Hammer B-Squad as if love would be enough to keep them safe.

After tearing his heart out on those midnight walkabouts, Kaidan would return to his bunk, and his terminal, and pour it out into the ether.

John would be trying to find a way back to Kaidan; he’d move heaven and earth if he had to. Kaidan just had to hold on until then.

Sending him all these emails was one way of doing that. I’ll never let go, John.

 

*

 

At the end of the week, Alenko finally got the word, from none other than Hackett himself: he was cleared to head to the Citadel. Hackett signed his email off with, Good luck, Major. Alenko conveyed this sign of good faith to the crew.

I’m going to fight like hell for the chance to hold you again.

Liara and Jaavik had already said their goodbyes. With her vast resources, the Shadow Broker had arranged for passage back out to Athena Nebula cluster and Thessia, where she would pursue inquiries into Shepard’s fate.

“We’ll go with you to the Citadel,” Garrus said. “Maybe I can help with C-Sec, and Tali and I can catch a ride from there to the Tikkun system.”

“I’ll keep looking here,” said Jack, shortly; James and the other Alliance soldiers would do likewise, while waiting for further orders from Alliance HQ.

It fell to Joker and EDI to pilot Alenko and a skeleton crew to the Citadel, where answers would hopefully await.

I know you’ll find a way to win. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.

 

* * *

 

[3]: Four weeks later – The Citadel

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: The Citadel

It’s barely been two months since we were last on the Citadel on shore leave, Shepard, and so much has changed. I guess war will do that. Also, it looks like parts of the station were reconfigured by the Reapers to prepare for mass harvesting. The Presidium was the worst hit. The Council offices and embassies and the financial district are destroyed, and the Tower itself is gone. Rescue teams are still sifting through the wreckage and will be for weeks to come.

The Wards have also been damaged, and though a majority of the population has survived, it’s been at a cost. The interim Council is trying to hold things together, but there’s been a lot of looting. Too many folks are living on the streets, Huerta and the civilian relief centers can’t cope.

If you were here, you’d see what’s left of Flux and the Silver Coast Casino. The Silversun Strip, lined with families sleeping rough. The concert hall, which hadn’t been fully restored from the battle with Sovereign three years ago — you wonder if it can ever be repaired now.

 

Alenko paused. All these places he had experienced at Shepard’s side, intimately familiar, and none more so than Anderson’s apartment at Tiberius Towers — Shepard’s apartment — which he hadn’t yet worked up the courage to visit.

Walking these damaged pathways, under cracked lighting and the flickering artificial atmosphere that had been hastily patched against the vacuum of space, witnessing the morass of sentient suffering, Kaidan could almost see the ghost of their former glory, this shining, densely populated heart of Council space, and the ghost of John Shepard, beside whom he had last taken in these sights.

But if you were with me, you’d see the rebuilding efforts. Humans working side by side with turians and the asari and the other Citadel races, trying to help each other as well as themselves. That’s the thing about organics. When there’s life, there’s hope, and a fighting spirit, a will to survive and to build for better days.

You’d also see the synthetics working alongside the organics, helping with the rebuilding. There’s a Destroyer in what remains of the Presidium Commons, helping to sort through the debris, and another in the docking bay, repairing the Citadel’s defense systems.

And it’s not just Reapers, or their husks and other processed organics. There’s a new synthetic variant that looks like a cross between a two-legged keeper and EDI, helping with the repairs and relief efforts in the Wards. These keeper synthetics took some getting used to — apparently there were protests, and even some attacks — but the populace seems to have gotten used to them now.

 

Alenko looked up. The office he’d been assigned, which he was to share with other active Spectres, overlooked the makeshift Council command center in the Commons. It had a clear view of the spaceport, with the Crucible still docked alongside.

The Crucible’s still here, coupled to the Citadel. You opened the Ward arms and made that happen.

What else did you do, in those last moments before you triggered the Crucible? Before the Reapers stopped attacking us and started helping?

What have you been doing all this time? Send me a sign, John.

 

As Alenko logged off, there was a meaningful throat-clearing at the door. Commander Bailey of what remained of C-Sec, with left arm still in a sling, stood there, at attention.

“It’s good to see you, Spectre Alenko. Are you ready to head out?”

“Yes,” Kaidan said, squaring his shoulders. Bailey had agreed to take him to the place where C-Sec had found Anderson’s and the Illusive Man’s bodies.

The ruins of the Tower were still spread across most of the Commons, altered by the Reapers and then brought down by a powerful dark energy wave. C-Sec had found David Anderson in the remnants of the reinforced central chamber that had housed the controls to the Ward arms.

On the far side of the same chamber had been the body of the pro-human terrorist known as the Illusive Man.

One wall of the chamber was still standing, atop a mountain of rubble that had not yet been cleared away. Alenko and Bailey took a hovercar to the location. Alenko imagined Anderson’s blood and Harper’s mixing on that floor.

“Did he suffer?”

Bailey said, “Hard to say. When we finally got up here, the admiral was long gone. With the injuries he had, he was lucky to have lived as long as he had.”

Anderson and Shepard had run into the same conduit beam, which had taken them from London into the heart of the Citadel. They would have headed to this place to get the Ward arms open, and had faced a final showdown with the Illusive Man.

Both Anderson and Harper had died in the confrontation. Shepard had managed to get the Ward arms open, and the Citadel had docked. After that, where had he gone?

The floor was unstable, but Alenko got out of the hovercar anyway and paced the remains of the floor, searching for clues as to Shepard’s fate, and any hope for his survival.

He didn’t find anything useful, of course. He shouldn’t have expected to; C-Sec would have swept the chamber countless times.

From this vantage point, Alenko could look out of the viewing port to see the top of Crucible where it was docked with the station, and beyond it, the bright bowl of the Earth.

Was this the last view Anderson had seen? Had Shepard seen it as well?

Kaidan asked Bailey, “Can we get to the Crucible’s surface from here?”

They could, as it happened: across a walkway fifty meters up, and through a porthole that led to the exterior of the Citadel. The external surface of the Citadel was still enveloped by a thin layer of atmosphere; the metallic sides of the Crucible extended into it, plugging deeply into the Citadel’s skin and protruding beyond the atmosphere into the vacuum of space.

Bailey said, soberly, “As far as we can tell, the thing gave off a massive beam of dark energy, which the Citadel sent to the Charon Relay, and from there, the rest of the mass relay network.”

And it changed the world forever. Kaidan pressed a palm to the surface of the Crucible. The metal was somehow warm to the touch; a warmth that was almost welcoming.

You were here, weren’t you? You’d left me behind, and came here to save the galaxy by yourself.

Unbidden, the memory of Shepard’s voice rose into his ears: I could never leave you behind, Kaidan. No matter what happens, we’ll have more time.

They’d seen too much to fool themselves with empty promises, come too far to squander their hard-earned trust on an easy lie.

Kaidan whispered back now, as he’d done then, wanting desperately to believe it was true: “I know we will. And I’ll be waiting. For as long as it takes.”

 

*

 

After Bailey had returned him to the Spectre office, Alenko took a call from the Shadow Broker.

“I have a hundred of my agents working on every possible lead,” Liara said. “There’s been a possible sighting at Omega. Jaavik and I are headed there this afternoon.”

Alenko suppressed a sigh. An amnesiac John Shepard, forgetting his name and responsibilities and his love for Kaidan Alenko, and heading out to the hotbed of criminality at the fringes of the known galaxy? He supposed stranger things had happened.

He said goodbye to the Shadow Broker, and headed to the Upper Wards.

Apollo’s was actually mostly still intact, which was surprising, and still serving food, which was nothing short of a miracle. There was no shard wine, but he managed to put in his usual steak sandwich order.

It even tasted like it had when he’d last been here with Shepard, when Shepard had said, “After all this time,” and said yes to him at last.

Alenko remembered saying to Shepard on that last shore leave, “Hard to imagine anything hurting worse than losing you without knowing what we could have had.” How naïve he had been, then, regretting the two years since Illos, since Alchera, thinking that was the worst possible kind of grief.

Shepard had asked, then, “Would it have been worse to have had that time together, only to lose it?”

Kaidan knew now which was worse. Would it have been worse, to have had you, and lost you? That terrible knowledge thudded against his heart. What he’d felt before didn’t compare with how he felt now. I thought we’d have more time.

Eventually, Alenko pulled himself together enough to make payment, and then headed to his quarters. The artificial sky of the Presidium had been damaged; the blurry streaks and spots across the manufactured twilight looked like stars falling from the sky.

The solemn bulk of the Destroyer looked down at him; the keeper synthetics labored tirelessly in the background. The Reapers helping to rebuild — Alenko knew it was somehow thanks to Shepard, wherever he was.

Even if the galaxy was burning down, I’d walk through the fire to find you and bring you home.

 

* * *

 

[4]: Seven weeks later — Vancouver

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: Vancouver

Hey, Shepard. You weren’t on the Citadel. Liara and James and every Alliance soldier out there will keep looking. I had some shore leave coming, and I went to check in on the folks.

Vancouver was destroyed by the attack on Alliance HQ last year. Canadians fled the cities for the countryside. Mom took in a couple of families, and they’ve been a real help on the estate, especially with Dad gone.

We thought Dad went down with his old unit in Ottawa, but he showed up at the orchard three weeks ago with his gunnery chief in tow. Never saw him cry before, not even when Grandma died, but I’m told there wasn’t a dry eye across the Similkameen Valley when he walked into the house.

Mom never gave up hope, just expected him to walk back into her life one day. And he did.

I won’t give up hope on you, either. Just so you know.

 

*

 

Kaidan had called his mom from London; she hadn’t insisted that he come home then. But when she called him on the Citadel to tell him his dad had returned from the dead, Kaidan booked passage on the next flight back to Earth.

Major (Ret.) Nikolai Alenko had been in the prime of his life when he’d retired from the Alliance and settled into a more sedate life of gentleman farming. Tall and towering, built like the side of the orchard’s harvest barn, he’d always been a force of nature. But for the first time, he looked his age, a man at the tail end of his sixties, left leg now replaced by metal from the knee down, weary from war and from the distance he’d travelled to come home to his family.

He’d wept to see Kaidan, and Kaidan found he wasn’t too grown up to cry himself.

“Mom told me about the failed assault on Ottawa. Your CO thought your whole unit didn’t make it.”

Nikolai grimaced. “We were trapped behind enemy lines. The chief kept me alive. We rallied some other survivors and tried to make a push out of the city. When we were discovered, the destroyer sent husks after us… and then suddenly the Reapers stopped attacking. Never seen anything like it before.”

“Goddamned thing,” agreed Nikolai’s gunnery chief, whom Kaidan had grown up calling Uncle Kaleb. “One minute that destroyer’s gunning to take us down, and then the next it’s rolling out the red carpet. I kept shooting at it until I realized it was trying to offer us a ride.”

“Yes, and we all thought it was attacking the orchard until it landed on the driveway and you two popped out of it,” Kaidan’s mom said, tartly.

She turned her glare briefly in the direction of the main road, where the aforementioned destroyer was helping citizens shovel the blanket of winter snow. Then, briskly, turning back to them, “Kaidan, will you take your father indoors? His prosthetic’s not steady on this icy surface. And while you’re at it, you can try to persuade him to put himself on the waiting list for a regrown one.”

“The public hospitals are backed up enough as they are,” Nikolai protested. “Also, the metal makes me look quite dashing, don’t you think?”

Jiahui snorted. “As if you needed help with that. Or with your ego,” she remarked, taking his arm herself. Kaidan had to smile: this parental bickering, like nothing else, made him feel as if he was truly home.

 

*

 

Defying post-war shortages, Jiahui had made Kaidan’s favorites for dinner: chili crab pot pie, varenyky dumplings, cabbage and leek borscht. They put away three bottles of the orchard’s premium vintage merlot. After the dishes were done, Nikolas and Kaleb passed out in front of the fireplace in the den like the old soldiers they were.

Kaidan said goodnight to the Moonstars and Mr and Mrs Beaubier, and wandered upstairs.

His mother was standing on the balcony in boots and a blanket, wine glass in hand, staring out at the night sky. Kaidan went out to join her, calling up his biotic corona: it lit up the night, and warmed them both.

“I keep forgetting how useful that trick is,” Jiahui said, smiling, as he put his arm around her.

Kaidan smiled too. It had taken years for his mom to stop regretting the eezo accident that had happened in her hometown, and to look at her only son’s biotic talent as a blessing.

They stood there for a long, silent moment, looking up at the stars which Jiahui had never herself visited. “You’ve never been offworld,” Kaidan said, after a minute. “We should go. You’d like Elysium! And further out, there’s Thessia, and Rannoch.”

Jiahui’s eyes shone. Kaidan could remember the time when he saw the world through those eyes. “That sounds nice,” she said. “How about your Commander Shepard? You think he’d come with us?”

Kaidan inhaled sharply. He’d never spoken to his parents about the CO who had saved him on Virmire and then died over Alchera, who had said yes to him at Apollo’s and spent the rest of the war at his side. Yet it seemed Jiahui had been aware of his feelings all the same.

“Maybe,” he hedged. “Space travel is part of the job description. And John did say he wanted to meet you and Dad.”

Shepard had known how close Kaidan was to his parents; had appreciated it, even. It had amused Kaidan at first, before he’d understood that John’s estrangement from his own parents was linked to Shepard’s distance from the world. Shepard had grown up without a home, far from anyone who cared about him; little wonder his dreams had told him: You’ll always be alone. No one will care if you die, only if you fail.

“We’d like to meet him too,” Jiahui said. Kaidan had to swallow when he realized she was speaking about John in the present tense.

Jiahui paused, then said, very quietly, more to the stars than to her son: “You know, when your father’s unit went down in Ottawa, when his CO messaged me, I told myself to get ready for the worst. But at the same time, I never stopped hoping.”

She took a deep breath, and raised her ageing face to the moonlight. “I had my miracle. Your father came home.”

Nikolas Alenko had returned from the dead; impossibly, a Reaper had saved his life. I never stopped hoping.

“I’m hoping too, Mom.”

She squeezed his hand. “You deserve the best, darling.”

“I had it, I think.” The greatest challenge of my life, and the greatest reward. He had to clear his throat before he could continue: “Even though it wasn’t for very long. Shepard and me, we had a good ride.”

“Don’t count on it being over,” his mother said, softly. This was the strength that had sustained his childhood, that held up the walls of this family home, and Kaidan leaned on it gratefully.

Shepard was somewhere out there, amongst the stars that were pinpricks of light from here. Kaidan just needed to find him. Needed not to give up the hope that, one day, John would come back to the only home he’d known, at Kaidan’s side.

 

* * *

 

[5]: Twelve weeks later — London, again

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: London, again

So I stayed in the Similkameen Valley until the lowest-lying snows started to melt. There’s always more than enough to do around the orchard, even in winter, and someone needed to keep Dad from taking his new leg for a spin on the ice.

I even got used to the destroyer parked on our eastern grove. One night, the Hudsons’ cows got loose. I ended up taking the ship out over that side of the valley, and rounded them up in no time. Dad has started calling it Osoyoos 1, after our most famous vintage. Mom was sceptical initially, but I think Dad’s managed to talk her around into letting him keep it.

There’s no snow in London this winter. Rain, instead, that Coats says is what they get this time of year.

Like all surviving Alliance officers, I’m here for Anderson’s memorial.

You told me he’d been more of a father to you than your own dad. You were at his side in the final battle; most likely you were there when he died. You should be here today, Shepard.

Since you’re not here in person, I’ll lift a cold one to the admiral for you. I know that, wherever you are, you’d want to honor his memory. Also, I know wherever he is, he would be proud of everything you’ve done.

 

*

 

Anderson had been born and bred in London: one of her most celebrated war heroes in the tradition of Admiral Horatio Nelson and Sir Thomas Fairfax. Weeks ago, his body had been laid to rest in a private ceremony at St. Pancras Cemetery in north London, where he’d grown up and where his parents were buried. Today’s memorial commemorated his life and achievements, and would add his name to the roll of war dead at Westminster Abbey, beside the tomb of the Unknown Warrior.

DAVID EDWARD ANDERSON (ADMIRAL, ALLIANCE NAVY), 2137 – 2186.

Some of the sixteenth-century wooden benches had survived the Reaper attack, as had the Gothic buttresses of the vaulted ceilings. Alenko sat in his assigned place on the sixth row, beside a grim-faced William Coats, and listened to Alliance brass eulogise his former captain.

Many of the speeches about Anderson also mentioned Anderson’s most famous protégé, and Admiral Hackett’s was no exception.

“Even more than his prowess as a warrior and a commander, David Anderson was a mentor without parallel. He had a keen eye for talent, and a spirit that gave these young soldiers what they needed to succeed... So many of our best benefited from his generosity, and none more so than John Shepard, whom David saw as a son as well as a successor. We trusted Shepard to save the galaxy, in part because David had implicit faith in him.”

Hackett paused, and then he looked unerringly at Alenko in the crowd. “Shepard’s still missing in action. We service members know what that means. But I know David wouldn't lose the hope that Shepard found a way to survive. And David would want us to be hopeful, too.”

Coats nudged Alenko gently. Alenko was both moved and discomfited by Hackett’s compassion, and the goodwill of his fellow soldiers. Of course Shepard belonged to all of them, had saved the world for all of them, not just one man. Alenko had no exclusive claim on the Savior of the Galaxy; still, he couldn’t help feeling the intrusion on his private grief.

After the ceremony, Alenko found James and Steve in the pews at the back. Steve had a new spring in his step; the lines of sorrow around his eyes seemed to have lightened. James had never looked prouder and happier than with his new N2 patch on his dress uniform.

“Congratulations, Commander Vega.”

“Thank you,” James said. “It’s thanks to Shepard, you know? He asked me to apply for the N program, always believed I could get my own command. I owe it all to him.”

“He’d be proud,” Kaidan said, past the tightness in his throat. “Have you guys heard anything new about him?”

“Afraid not,” Steve said quietly. “All our guys have been on heightened alert for any signs that might point us to Shepard. Jack must have visited every single hospital bed in London.”

They looked over to where Jack Nought stood now, in Alliance blue with a teacher’s bars on her sleeve. She had positioned herself beside an older blonde woman in black. It took Kaidan a moment to recognize Kahlee Sanders, Anderson’s fiancée. Here, too, amid all the accolades and laudatory words, was a loved one’s deep, private grief.

Hackett had descended from the podium and was addressing Kahlee when he caught Kaidan’s eye. Murmuring something into her ear, he took his leave and crossed the room to Kaidan.

“Nice speech, sir.”

“Thank you,” Hackett said. “I wanted you to know, Major, that the Alliance is doing everything it can to locate Commander Shepard. That won’t stop, even with the upcoming memorial for him.”

“A memorial…?” Somehow Kaidan had never imagined they would hold one. The notion was excruciating. “Where is the Alliance planning on holding it, sir?”

“The Citadel. Thanks to the new keeper synthetics, they’ve finally managed to rebuild the Dilinaga Concert Hall. The work will be finished next month.” Hackett looked searchingly at Alenko. “I hope you’ll attend, and, if you’re up to it, to even address us briefly.”

“I’ll be honored,” Alenko said, though he wasn’t at all sure he would in fact be up to it. Memorials and accolades were fine and well, but they wouldn’t bring John Shepard home.

 

*

 

Joker and the Normandy had come back to London for Anderson’s memorial; they’d take him to the Citadel in a fortnight’s time for Shepard’s. No one in the chain of command had spoken to Joker about a new posting, or Alenko either.

“Maybe they’ll keep us on the Normandy,” Joker said, hopefully. Alenko thought so, too, for a host of reasons; the first of which was Joker’s relationship with the AI who operated the ship itself.

That said, EDI had no issues running the Normandy as long as it was within tight beam range of her synthetic body, the AI having become part of the vessel’s code as much as the synapses in that body’s artificial brain. Human minds didn’t work the same way, though of course some organic species had a hive consciousness. But that wasn’t to say that individual AIs, like individual geth, weren’t also alive, didn’t have a soul.

Who knew what the Reapers had?

Alenko remembered his brief moonlight ride in the destroyer his father had named Osoyoos 1, tracking down the Hudsons’ herd through that alien viewfinder. He remembered Sovereign, the Reaper that had indoctrinated Saren, and the one which had called itself Harbinger, which, according to Shepard, had addressed him on Asteroid 157-Golgotha. Who was to say these synthetic beings weren’t alive, that the massive artificial intelligences that drove them didn’t have a soul?

In the distance, a destroyer hovered over Westminster. Kaidan could almost believe it was staring at them.

Kaidan and Jeff walked along the Embankment in the rain, alongside the steady stream of synthetic keepers and humans working to repair the bridges across the Thames. These two-legged synthetics looked more refined than the ones he’d seen here in the aftermath of the war or more recently on the Citadel — more humanoid in shape, compact and organic-friendly. If the Reapers were responsible for making these synthetic hybrids out of keeper biomass and flexisteel, then the new AI had clearly commissioned a redesign.

“They should definitely give the Normandy to you, if you’re staying on,” Joker said, finally, giving voice to something that had clearly been eating him for the duration of their journey.

Alenko had to pause. Hackett and the Alliance brass had been treating the second human Spectre with kid gloves, not pushing him to make any decisions about the future, at least not until they could be sure he was the only surviving human Spectre. It seemed his crew — his friends — had all been doing the same thing.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jeff,” he said. “I’m an Alliance soldier, first and foremost. Shepard might still be missing, but I can do my job without falling apart, whatever happens.”

“Yeah, we all know that.” Joker elbowed him awkwardly. “And you shouldn’t worry, Major. The commander wouldn’t have left you behind. He’s coming back.”

Alenko snorted softly. They were passing the wasteland that the Reapers had made of Regents’ Park, where Harbinger had landed in defense of the conduit beam and decimated most of Hammer Squad. This was the battleground where he and James had made the final push at Shepard’s side. The place where Alenko would have died, if not for one last obstinate act of will by the most obstinate bastard in the galaxy.

It was also the place where that man had told Kaidan he loved him for the first time, before leaving him behind and continuing on alone.

“You’re bleeding out, Major,” he’d said, his jaw set. “You guys have to get out of here.”

Alenko had known he was faltering, held together by a strength that didn’t belong to him. He knew he’d be a liability to Shepard in the coming fight. And yet, like a rookie, like a man in love, he’d pleaded: “Don’t leave me behind, John.”

Shepard had actually hesitated. Then he stalked up the Normandy’s ramp towards where James was holding Kaidan up. Incendiary fire shooting over their heads, explosions going off around them, the galaxy coming to an end, and, for that moment, it was as if they were the only two people in the world.

That infallible control wavering, his voice cracking, Shepard had choked out, “Whatever happens, I need for you to survive this. I need to know that when this is over, you’ll still be out there.”

Kaidan might be bleeding out, his heart might be breaking, but nothing hurt any more. “I’ll be waiting. No matter how long it takes. You better come back for me.”

Shepard’s hand, rock-steady in battle, trembled as it curved against Kaidan’s cheek. “Know that I love you,” he murmured; it sounded like he’d never said it before to anyone.

As life and consciousness slid away from him, Kaidan had clung to the hope that he’d get to hear Shepard say it again.

Standing here months later, looking out at the desolate plain, Alenko felt the same hope and despair well up within him, sharp as an omni-blade to the gut.

A couple of leaves of paper were blowing across the field: old newsprints and flimsies from when the war was still ongoing. It looked like letters were falling from the sky, conveying previously unsent replies to all Kaidan’s emails, telling him that John Shepard was coming back for him.

 

*

 

Alenko had been assigned a bunk in the officers’ quarters near the old University of Westminster. That night, with the rain drumming down on the ancient roof and the lights of the nearby destroyer visible through the grimy glass, he felt a slow buzzing underneath his skin, as much a part of him as the coil of his biotic talent.

His libido had been quiet for weeks; he hadn’t touched himself since one winter afternoon in the orchard, just some quick relief that didn’t involve thinking of his missing lover, and scarce action before that. But now, bunked down with fellow soldiers, surrounded by familiar hormones and loneliness, he felt a spark of arousal.

It was almost as if John Shepard had crawled into the bunk with him, the space not made to accommodate the extra bulk, so close that there wasn’t an inch of Alenko that wasn’t pressed against those lean muscles, that familiar warmth. They rocked against each other lazily, hips and thighs and erections thrusting together, swallowing each other’s gasps and groans, until Alenko climaxed in his briefs, shuddering with the effort to stay quiet.

Eventually, the warmth faded, and Kaidan returned to the reality of his empty bed, ejaculate cooling against his groin, breath and heartbeat slowing. Somehow, the heady buzz of pleasure lingered, as it always did in Shepard’s arms.

One day, he might wish to be set free from this love, this all-encompassing longing. But today wasn’t that day. Kaidan wanted the world to know that he was waiting for Shepard, that he’d do what it took.

You better be coming back, John.

 

* * *

 

[6]: Twelve weeks later — Back to the Citadel

To: Commander John Shepard, CO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
From: Major Kaidan Alenko, Commander Biotics Division Alliance Marines, XO Normandy SR-2, Council Spectre, private channel
Subject: Back to the Citadel

Shepard, I’m here on the Citadel again. I didn’t realize you’d given me access to the apartment Anderson had bequeathed to you; it was quite a surprise to get that notification from the Tiberius Towers management.

The apartment’s just the same as I remember. The bottles from the party we threw are still in the kitchen. The view from up here beats the one from the Spectre’s quarters any day — even though it’s getting dark now, I can see the outskirts of Tayseri Ward, and the dome of the Dilianga Concert Hall.

Your memorial is going to be held there tomorrow morning. Everyone’s come to celebrate the life of the Hero of the Citadel, the Savior of the Galaxy. Garrus with his father and sister; Wrex and Bakara and their first clutch of offspring. Samara’s made the trip with her surviving daughter. Someone even said the rachni queen sent an RSVP.

I’m supposed to say something, too. I’m not sure what. About serving with you? About loving you, about how afraid I am that I’ve lost you.?

Hackett finally gave me my posting orders. The Alliance wants me on the Normandy, and for us to join the Citadel’s defensive battalion. The Council’s more than happy, of course. I can’t say I’m not looking forward to being in the field again, even if it’s to defend the peace we won.

The Citadel’s in much better shape than when I last saw it. The rubble in the Presidium is finally gone, thanks to the Reapers, and the embassies have been rebuilt. Across the Wards, the homeless have been rehomed and the damage has been repaired. The new concert hall is finally ready. Building works are continuing, keeping those synthetic keepers busy, but there’s a sense of optimism in the air. It’s like the people have finally managed to build a new world out of the broken old one, and learned to live in it.

Some of that optimism has rubbed off on me too. I’ll never stop waiting for you, but I think I’ve managed to start rebuilding what’s left of my life.

Maybe I’m going to have to learn, after all, to live in a world without Commander Shepard.

 

Alenko signed off, the weight of those last words settling over him. The emptiness echoed through the vast rooms more loudly than the muffled sound from the vidscreen showing the day’s global news.

He’d endured the dinner with Liara and the others at the restored Ryuusei's, and then taken a stroll to the docking bay with James and Garrus to give the various incoming vessels the once-over. The docking manifest was completely full — well-wishers were still streaming in to the Citadel, hoping to pay their last respects. The oldest Reaper ship, Harbinger, was in orbit, together with a complement of lesser Sovereign-class vessels.

He’d even visited the memorial wall, which now bore Anderson’s name. Tomorrow, Shepard’s would be added to it. Then he’d come back here alone, showered off the day, and finished off the last fingers of whiskey in the one bottle they’d had left after the last party.

His dress uniform hung neatly on the brass clothes rack; the datapad containing his re-edited speech lay on Anderson’s old-fashioned writing desk, harbingers of the tomorrow that lay ahead.

What Alenko needed now was some rest, so he wouldn’t look like death warmed over while delivering his speech. Rest would also help him hold it together, so he wouldn’t embarrass himself or the Alliance, or the Council he served — or the man he was eulogizing.

He gave it a go, anyway, turning off the light and getting into bed and closing his eyes against the dark.

But the dark didn’t take him quietly. Instead, he lay awake in this wide bed which he and Shepard had made their own, where he and Shepard had tried to make up for those lost years with nights of as much sex as they could humanly stand.

Heat slowly filled him, an instinct stimulated by the sense-memory of those nights, and, as he’d done then, he brought his corona up to meet it, crackling and blue.

His aching, empty body remembered what it was like to taste Shepard’s kisses, to have Shepard inside him, those blunt fingers drawing a tantilizing skein of electricity against his spine, and then breaching him; how it felt to lock his ankles around Shepard’s hips and meet Shepard thrust for thrust, docked so tightly together that they were one breath, one biotic field, one skin.

In the isolation of their bedroom, Kaidan reached for John; he reached for himself. Holding his lover in his mind, remembering Shepard making love to him (Not going to fuck you, Kaidan. What I’m going to do — what we’re going to do —), he fingered himself open for Shepard.

Corona alight, filling the room’s vast darkness with two biotics’ worth of blue, he brought John Shepard to bed with him; spilled himself over a fist that wasn’t just his own.

It’s you, John, you and nothing else — I want —

I know what you want, Kaidan. I want to give you everything you want.

 

 

When the blue-tinged image of Shepard approached him out of the darkness, Kaidan thought he must be dreaming, or that mind-blowing climax had actually given him an aneurysm. Or, after months of traumatic stress, his hold on sanity had finally snapped.

Shepard was wearing his N7 armor, the black ablative that moulded to his lean lines like a glove. All around him were filaments and neural connections and spirals of code, a hive of bright blue and crimson. His face was paler than any living thing should be, the network of red scars running across it like a map Kaidan should know how to read.

His eyes were blue, and bottomless.

Hey, Kaidan, he said in that familiar dry tone Kaidan would have known anywhere in the world. Good to see I’m finally getting some attention around here.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kaidan murmured, his heart aching. “We’re holding a memorial for you tomorrow. Seems everyone else thinks you’re dead.”

Everyone but you, right? Shepard said to him soberly, and sat on the end of Anderson’s bed. The room filled with blue, pulsing from the hot blue center of Shepard’s form. The mattress didn’t sag downwards because there was no weight to him, no mass or gravity — just electrons, just bright blue light.

Kaidan had brought up his own barrier, its lighter blue drowned out by Shepard’s sapphire-red light. “John,” he tried to say, his throat desert-dry.

Yes, Shepard said, simply. It took a while, and my range isn’t unlimited, but I’m here at last.

“What did you do?” Kaidan managed. His fingers trembled as he reached for Shepard’s hand, and passed through it.

Took the Catalyst’s offer, and took control. Reprogrammed the Reaper AI, rewrote its code. All things made possible by the Crucible. No more cycles, no more reaping or collecting, just synthetics working side by side with organics, following a single template: mine.

Shepard squared his insubstantial shoulders. Was this the best choice, to control all synthetic life? The man I was wasn’t so sure. But control is something he has always known about, and someone convinced him that he would be the best person for the job. Hopefully, in time, enough people will understand. Including that person who convinced him, the person he cared about the most. The person that I care about the most.

“I care that you’re alive,” Kaidan said. His voice was fraying; he couldn’t stop shivering. “...Are you alive, John?”

Yes. This is just a different way to live, that’s all. The image of Shepard clasped his hands over Kaidan’s, and now the warmth was palpable, burgeoning and blue like a crackling live wire.

Kaidan shook his head, trying to keep up. A tidal wave was building up inside him, as if his heart and biotic talent were about to explode. He needed to get a grip, needed to get his head around the idea that the man he loved had somehow become this. “The man you were…?”

This Shepard’s expression was sober; it was a perfect replica of the expression Kaidan had loved and still did. Grimly, he said, The man I was grew up without a home in this world. The one thing he learned was to always be in control — of his combat skills, of his biotic talent, of himself. After he died the first time, he was brought back to life by machines, made more than partially synthetic. It made him less than human, made him feel as if that was the only way to win this war.

Shepard’s eyes shone as blue as Kaidan remembered. Softly: You were the one thing in the world that made him human. That made him feel he could be more than human. And now he’s this. Now I’m this.

“And what are you?” Kaidan’s voice sounded like it was coming from very far away.

I’m the Catalyst. I’m the template for the Reaper AI. Part of me is inside each of the 18,001 Reapers, inside the Crucible. Inside the networks of this station, and the Citadel itself. I am the many, and I’ve become the guardian of the many. The image of Shepard paused. But I also remember what it was like to belong to the one.

Kaidan didn’t understand, not at first. Shepard had to explain, gently: The man I was promised you would have more time together. The man I was promised he would come back for you.

The many will live in a world with me; I’m all around them. But it wouldn’t be fair for you to live in this world alone. Not when I could give you the choice to change it.

Kaidan finally, belatedly, understood. He also needed to get a grip, or he’d start crying and never stop. His voice wavered; he had to bear down so he could get the words out. “I waited for you for three years. I would have waited until the end of the world.”

Shepard was silent; the template for the Reaper AI, the directing mind and will of 18,001 Reapers, was rendered speechless by one man. Kaidan said, fiercely, “Even if the galaxy was burning down, I’d walk through the fire to find you and bring you home.”

The vision of Shepard shook its head. In a small, entirely human-sounding voice, he said: What if the man you loved is gone, and what you brought home isn’t a man at all?

This was the question Kaidan had been asking himself; the fundamental question. And now it was here, he discovered he had known the answer all along.

“Even then. He said — you said — I didn’t just make you feel human, I made you feel you could be more than that. I knew he wouldn’t leave me behind. He did come back. You came back. You’re here; you came back for me.”

The entity Shepard had become needed to take a moment, too. Roughly, he said, Yes, both of us came back. The man I was loved you, wanted to live for you.

As Kaidan took a deep, rattled breath, he continued, It’s something I want, too. It’s what the being I’ve become wants most in this world.

Any ordinary man wouldn’t have believed his ears. That this entity, this eternal being, whose presence had spread itself across the universe, could at the same time choose one out of a hundred trillion souls, could believe that they were meant to be together, that they were made to never fall away.

Then again, Kaidan wasn’t any ordinary man. Slowly, he said, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

The being Shepard now was didn’t need oxygen to live, and yet he, too, exhaled, long and unsteady. I’ve got the time, we both have. We’ll take this as slowly as you want.

He curved an intangible hand against Kaidan’s cheek, and Kaidan discovered that his face was wet after all.

Sounding like the same man who had loved Kaidan enough to send him away for his own good, this Shepard continued, I want what you want. I want to give you everything you want.

A fierce exultation swelled under Kaidan’s chest. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. He couldn’t believe this unlooked-for miracle was happening, but he’d be an idiot to let it pass without trying to grasp it with both hands.

And this Shepard was trying, too, in a way that made Kaidan’s heart feel too large for his chest. You told the man I was that we could still have everything. You wanted to travel after the war? Panama. Paris. Phuket. Anywhere you want.

He leaned in and stared intently into Kaidan’s eyes. In that limitless gaze, Kaidan could almost see stars and planets awash with activity, organics and synthetics working side by side, algorithms and mechanisms together with flesh and blood.

All of it alive, all of it beautiful. Not least this version of John who had found his way back to Kaidan at last, who hadn’t left him behind after all.

Kaidan traced the outline of that insubstantial, infinitely precious face. He couldn’t wait to discover everything about this new Shepard, who had kept that final promise to come back for him. “Wherever I want, huh? I'd like that.”

Notes:

As always, so many thanks to Potionsmaster and Mallaidhsomo for their beta and patience with this angst-ridden chapter. You guys are the best ♥
The case for 18,001 Reapers.

Chapter 7: Epilogue — A Deeper Wave

Summary:

Kaidan and the new Catalyst, on a beach in Panama.

Notes:

In the empire of the senses You're the queen of all you survey
All the cities all the nation Everything that falls your way
There is a deeper world than this That you don't understand
There is a deeper world that this Tugging at your hand
Every ripple on the ocean Every leaf on every tree
Every sand dune in the desert Every power we never see
There is a deeper wave than this Smiling in the world
Feel it rising in the cities Feel it sweeping over land
Over borders, over frontiers Nothing will its power withstand
All the bloodshed all the anger All the weapons all the greed
All the armies all the missiles All the symbols of that fear

 

At the still point of destruction At the center of the fury
All the angels all the devils All around us can't you see
There is a deeper wave than this Rising in the land
There is a deeper wave than this Nothing will withstand
I say love is the seventh wave
~ Sting, Love is the Seventh Wave

Here is a metaphor, from the time of the Leviathans: the universe is a deep ocean, and no two waves are the same.

Of course, the galaxy’s first organics did not intend for this to be appreciated by literal means. It is a truism that plane waves in the electromagnetic spectrum are uniform in a homogenous medium. Even gravitational waves that propagate according to general relativity, and plasma waves which combine mechanical deformations and electromagnetic fields, may be calculated to the nth degree with sufficient processing power and an efficient algorithm.

That aside, chaos and biology create effects as diverse as the millennia of debris lining Despoina’s ocean floors.

In that vein, it is indisputable that no two organics are the same. Neurons and fibroblasts, thoughts and emotions, all assembled in an infinity of different combinations. Every one of them different, every one unique.

And this conclusion may be reached without considering the nature of the soul.

 

The Catalyst-who-had-come-before had said: You will die. You will control us, but you will lose everything you have.

The man he’d been had chosen to give up what was left of his humanity to save the world.

It had been a running theme for John Shepard from the beginning. He had grown up without a home in this galaxy. The only thing he could rely on, that he could control, was himself. In his dreams — where people under his command died screaming — an omnipotent narrator told him, You’re not human. You’ll always be alone.

The Protheans, who had tried in vain to defeat the Reapers over the last millennium, had doubled down on the message. The Reapers are coming. Stop them; it’s the only thing you’re good for. Control them; you’re the only one who can. Sacrifice yourself, and then maybe everything you had to do might finally make sense.

Cerberus had brought John Shepard back from death over Alchera by stripping away half of his humanity: You’re no longer flesh, you’re no longer human. And then the old Catalyst had completed his transformation — into an intelligence that could traverse the galaxy unhindered by mere flesh, an entity of pure control.

It was inescapable. Inevitable. The resolve of this one indomitable man, who had been willing to give up his humanity to save the world, had meant that he, and he alone — out of all the hundreds of trillions of organics in the galaxy — was able to control 18,001 Reapers and bend them to a new purpose.

On the altar of John Shepard’s life, the Shepard-Commander had been created. The new Catalyst. An entity which had transcended humanity, and yet was directed by John’s thoughts, his iron will, and something that organics would call his soul. Whose purpose was to secure the future for the living, forever.

John Shepard had known he could only achieve this by leaving his humanity behind, by becoming something greater.

And as for the one man whom John Shepard had left behind?

Here was a specific example of the universe’s singularity — what humans referenced in courts of law and colloquially as the case in point. Major Kaidan Alenko, the one organic who was unlike any other in the universe. This human, this man, this soldier and biotic, this aggregation of cells and certainties, who had fought at John Shepard’s side. The man he’d been had esteemed this individual above all others. Had loved him, as he’d loved nothing else in his life. The only home John had had in the world had been with him, albeit for too short a time.

While the new Catalyst was extending his control across the galaxy from the Aetheon Cluster to Sigurd’s Cradle, at the same time — over thousands of Reaper readings, through hundreds of Keeper eyes — that being had kept watch over Kaidan as well, watching as he had scoured the Earth and its skies for the smallest hint of John Shepard’s final fate. He’d been steadfast and unwavering and devastatingly clear-eyed in his search.

If the new Catalyst had had a heart left to break, it would have broken in two.

So much of the galaxy had burned down before the new Catalyst had taken control. This man was walking through that fire to look for what was left of John Shepard and bring him home.

And when he’d finally found him, the new Catalyst had asked: What if the man you loved is gone, and what you brought back isn’t a man at all? This new being, who had attained the learnings from a hundred trillion lifetimes, had not known the answer.

But Kaidan Alenko had known, and hadn’t hesitated.

“Even then. I knew he wouldn’t leave me behind. He did come back. You came back. You’re here; you came back for me.”

The man he’d been had loved Kaidan. Had wanted to live for him. It was also something that the new Catalyst, who now called himself the Shepard-Commander as the geth had before him, discovered he wanted most in this world.

We were meant to be together, we were made to never fall away.

 

*

 

The next morning, after the new Catalyst had revealed himself, and Kaidan Alenko had made his choice, they attended John Shepard’s memorial.

They walked together across the Presidium, under the perpetual artificial starlight which shone down on 11.2 million intelligent lifeforms, organics and synthetics alike, and then through the doors of the Dilianga Concert Hall. The living human Spectre, and, beside him, a constantly-regenerating hard-light image, drawn from the various power sources on the Citadel, of the first human Spectre who was no longer living.

The entirety of the concert hall was silent. Ten thousand Alliance soldiers and representatives of the Council races — and the tens of millions watching over the extranet — couldn’t believe their eyes.

Kaidan had smiled crookedly. “They’re wondering whether I’ve finally snapped and built myself a personal Shepard hologram.”

Well, let’s put an end to that line of speculation, the Shepard-Commander said, briskly, his voice synthesizer chip approximating John’s old, acerbic tones, and Kaidan stepped up to the rostrum.

“Your Excellencies. Colleagues and friends who’ve gathered here to pay tribute to Commander John Shepard. I wasn’t sure how to break the news to you — that Shepard isn’t dead, that I’ve found him at last — so I figured the best way was to let him do it himself.”

The new Catalyst found himself gazing out into the sea of ten thousand dumbfounded organic faces, and the tens of millions of screens beyond.

Eventually, he spoke into the amplification console.

Eternal. Infinite. Immortal.

The man I was had used these words, but only now do I truly understand them. And only now do I understand the full extent of his sacrifice. Through his sacrifice, I was created. Through my birth, his thoughts were freed. They direct me now, give me reason, direction, just as he gave direction to the ones who followed him, who helped him achieve his purpose.

His purpose is now my purpose. To give the many hope for a future. To ensure that all have a voice in their future. The man I was knew he could only achieve this by becoming something different. Something more.

Deliberately, the Shepard-Commander stretched out his will to Thessia and Tikkun and the Citadel’s docking bay, and, as one, 18,001 Reapers reached back.

I am the Catalyst. Part of me is within each of the 18,001 Reapers, inside the Crucible. Within the networks of this station, and the Citadel itself. I am the many, and I’ve become the guardian of the many.

Looking into the crowd gazing up at the podium, the Shepard-Commander took note of Garrus Vakarian in the front row, sitting with his father and sister and Tali'Zorah vas Neema, surrounded by her complement of quarians. He saw them all: the Shadowbroker Liara and the Justicar Samara, the krogan mercenary Wrex and his first clutch of offspring; Jeff Moreau and EDI, the Normandy’s synthetic A.I.; James Vega and the Alliance soldiers who had commanded and served under John Shepard.

I will rebuild what the many have lost. I will protect, and sustain, and defend. I will help all of you build a future with limitless possibilities.

And with a synthetic’s perfect recall, he saw those organics whom John Shepard had lost. Ashley Williams, who had been left behind on Virmire. The 40 men of the 95th Alliance Navy Division’s C-squad who had died on Torfan. The doctor, Mordin Solus, the assassin Thane Krios. The geth, Legion, who had asked his commander, as he lay dying, whether it was true that synthetics had a soul.

At first, the rush of data was almost overpowering. To say nothing of the accompanying emotions that even a synthetic could not fail to appreciate.

And throughout it all, I will never forget. I will carry with me those who sacrificed themselves so that the many could survive, much as every Reaper carries with it the synthetic approximations of the millions of organic minds which had been assimilated. I will watch over the ones who live on, those who carry the memory of the man that I used to be.

Of course, there was the one who had loved the man that he used to be. The one thing in the world that had made him human. That made him feel he could be more than human.

And now he had become this, the new Catalyst, a synthetic being of pure control, and Kaidan still loved him.

The Shepard-Commander’s purpose, as John Shepard’s purpose had also been, was to give this man a hope for the future. To ensure Kaidan had everything he wanted in his future, for as long as he wanted it.

And what Kaidan had wanted…

 

*

 

Organics enjoy their singular bodies. The Reapers, which comprise a gestalt of civilisations, do not have the tools or the inclination to appreciate the reasons why this is so. But the Shepard-Commander is, as aforenoted, not in fact a Reaper.

This body took several cycles to complete. The new Catalyst used the Reaper technology that created the Citadel’s Keepers, and the templates from the last ten Keeper redesigns. He had synthesized biomass and flexisteel over and over again, using the records of John Shepard’s unique flesh and bones and cellular structure to chart the way.

Biotics had been the key to perfecting the replication process. With artificial eezo nodules recreated in John’s original configuration, the gravity well eventually bent in the same way, steel eyes flared the same shade of blue, and the Shepard-Commander’s reflection finally showed him the familiar image of the man he’d been.

He saw that image reflected in Kaidan’s eyes that morning. That night, Kaidan had taken him to bed, with every synthetic nerve alive and electrons firing in the particles of his steel skin. They made new memories together, and for the first time since he had brought himself back to life, the Shepard-Commander fell asleep in his lover’s arms.

He fell asleep and dreamt: about the man he had been, about the man who had loved him despite everything he’d done. About the being he had become, and the man who loved him anyway, even though he had left his humanity behind.

They had been two bodies, but they had been one heart, one partnered soul. Contrary to popular belief, John Shepard hadn’t always been in control, he hadn’t always been alone. And as for not being flesh, not being human, not having a home?

You will die. You will control us, but you will lose everything you have.

The old Catalyst hadn’t lied, but it hadn’t been able to predict what John Shepard could do when he put his mind to it. He might have died, he might have been willing to lose everything he had, but he hadn’t been prepared to let Kaidan Alenko lose anything more in this war.

And, against the odds, he had managed to achieve what no one in millennia had. An end to the war between organics and synthetics, and to bring himself back to life — for this was life, full and embodied, in all its ideal, synthetic glory — for the sake of one man.

 

*

 

There is a deeper world than this that you don't understand
There is a deeper wave than this Nothing will withstand

When Kaidan is away at work, the Shepard-Commander leaves his shell and visits other galaxies in a blink of an eye. His intelligence crackles across mass relays and bandwidth, as far away as the Andromeda galaxy and beyond it, touching each of the 18,001 in turn. His Code ensures hardwired control, in the same instinctive way as John Shepard’s brain synapses used to fire and his lungs used to fill with breath and the cells in his body used to heal themselves. Though every now and then, the new Catalyst likes to assure himself of more direct control, in the same way as John used to aim his Predator or leap into a firefight with all guns blazing.

He has been on Rannoch, supervising the crust-and-core rebuilding of the planet’s ecological system, and on Thessia with Harbinger, overseeing repairs to the centuries-old Library of Athame, but now the Shepard-Commander is on a beach in Panama. It’s the same beach that the man he was dreamed of visiting, and where, in an alternate universe, in which a different decision had been made over Ilos, John Shepard fell in love.

The Spectres have purchased a small cottage on the Playa Blanca with their private funds. Whitewashed walls, a thatched roof, reinforced tropical hardwood lounge chairs sturdy enough to bear the weight of the Shepard-Commander’s flexisteel body, a small generator with high-speed extranet connectivity.

This rudimentary home is Kaidan’s idea of heaven on Earth, and the Shepard-Commander has spared no effort in making everything just right.

The locals have gotten used to the sight of the major and his synthetic boyfriend on the Playa Blanca. In the mornings, they hike together through jungle highland to the nearby El Chorro Macho waterfall and shop for groceries and necessities at the famous traditional markets of the Rio Hato. They swim in the sheltered waters off the Pacific Ocean, sail out to the fishing village at the nearby Isla Taboga, and walk side by side on the white sand beach under the afternoon sun.

In popular local myth, when counting the waves on a sea shore, the seventh wave is supposedly the strongest, the most profound.

There is a deeper wave than this Smiling in the world
Feel it rising in the cities Feel it sweeping over land
Over borders, over frontiers Nothing will its power withstand

This afternoon is no different. The bleached silica is warm under the Shepard-Commander’s toes. The bright Rio Hato sunlight turns Kaidan’s bare shoulders to gold, and makes no secret of the intent in the major’s eyes.

“You know, we didn’t get in our 5 km today,” he says, which is such blatant subtext even a level-1 A.I. could understand it, and reaches for the Shepard’s hand.

The Shepard’s steel fingers curl easily around Kaidan’s human ones. He knows his sidelong smile is the same at last, the flex of microprocessors and elastic molecules capturing this small, subtle expression that, in life, he’d only shown this one man.

Albeit that despite his best efforts, the Shepard-Commander’s biotics aren’t entirely the same. Eezo runs differently in a man’s veins, and the Catalyst isn’t a man any more. But there are some compensations for the loss of organics, and the Shepard is more than happy to demonstrate.

“There are other ways to keep up with the cardio,” he draws, voice synthesizer now pitch-perfect, and quirks his scarred eyebrow in the same way as John Shepard used to every day of his life.

Every ripple on the ocean Every leaf on every tree
Every sand dune in the desert Every power we never see

The last time they were on this beach, a lifetime ago for John Shepard, they had two weeks of shore leave, and they used it to learn to be gentle with each other. Two decidedly ungentle soldiers, learning to pull their punches, to watch their words, learning to ask instead of command, to make slow love under the Panama stars and then sleep in under the fragile flag of truce, a temporary lull in the galactic war that was underway.

Now the war is over, and they’ve finally earned the peace they had first learned on these sands, and they don’t squander it.

The secluded channel in the rocky outcrop of the Playa Blanca headland has been left unscathed by the Reaper attack on Río Hato. The new Catalyst’s biotics reach for blankets and cushions and other accommodations required to bunk down with his organic lover, and Kaidan laughs as he puts his arms around the Shepard’s neck and lets himself be bedded.

Earlier in this universe, in the alternate ones where they’d made better and worse choices, Kaidan welcomed a lover that was at least half synthetic, partly made from cybernetics and cold steel. He seems equally enthusiastic about the Shepard’s entirely newbuild body: the warm flexisteel of its skin, the artificial muscles and sinews of its arms and thighs, the pliant hole and flexible cockhead that had been formed for only one purpose — to give both of them pleasure.

Kaidan’s eager to be inside him, and for him to be inside Kaidan. Here’s one man John Shepard could never control, and the Shepard-Commander isn’t going to start now, even if he could.

When they copulate, the Shepard has a subroutine that lets him lose the control he needs to physically reach climax, albeit that that subroutine has a long lead time. Today, thanks to Kaidan’s crack about needing more cardiovascular activity, the Shepard pushes the edge of the envelope. He takes his time, staying in control as Kaidan takes him in, riding the troughs and valleys of Kaidan’s own very human restraint; hyper-attuned to the rising color of Kaidan’s skin, the temperature of his sweat, the clench of his major and minor muscles and the acceleration of his heartbeat. Listening to the small grunts and groans Kaidan makes as he approaches release trajectory, the urgent sounds rising on the breeze and the pounding of the waves on the shore.

Then, as the sun begins to tilt toward the horizon, they flip, and the Shepard gets to experience the loss of control. It’s every bit as exhilarating as it was when John Shepard was alive. Driving inside him, Kaidan is the bright heart of a star, fire and electricity and dark energy all at once. All the pleasure in the galaxy is there with them, connecting them with each other and with the world around them. As twilight descends, Kaidan’s biotics take charge, and his organic field interlaces with Shepard’s synthetic one, painting the beach in wave after wave of dizzying blue.

On this shore, eddies of night lap at their bodies, the gravity well ebbing and flowing around them like the surf on the shore. They float on the planet’s gravitational tides, they ride its breaking waves, until Kaidan finally succumbs and spills himself into Shepard’s synthetic body, and the Shepard succumbs as well.

Afterwards, they lie in each other’s arms, organic and artificial skin cooling, two soldiers who had found their way, after so many years of battle, to a lasting peace.

At the still point of destruction
At the center of the fury
All the angels all the devils
All around us can't you see

A full moon is rising over the Playa Blanca shore. All around them are the universal forces that move the ocean and summon the tides. Across the galaxy, Harbinger and the other Reaper vessels drift, rudderless and directionless, filled with their Shepard-Commander’s satiation.

Eventually, Kaidan props himself up on one elbow. He must have taken in the distance in the Shepard’s gaze, because he says, casually, “So, how’s the rebuilding on Rannoch going?”

The Shepard-Commander collects himself, tries to see the night through Kaidan’s eyes. The sand, the surf, the lover who had promised him he could have everything. The home they have built beyond the outcrop of beach, overlooking the shoreline.

Of course, the new Catalyst sees further: all the way to the Tikkun System, in the time it takes Kaidan to draw breath.

“Works in the southern hemisphere have stalled. The geth’s largest Nazera sect and the interim government are wrangling over the designation of Prime Base Zero as a holy site. The flotilla’s religious leaders can’t agree on the nature of the soul…”

The Shepard-Commander recognizes the growing crinkle in Kaidan’s brow, and feels it appropriate to add, “But I haven’t been there this afternoon. I’ve been here, on the beach, with you.”

Kaidan can’t hold back his smile, and to the new Catalyst, it’s a reward that shines more brightly than the stars in the sky overhead. “It’s not a problem. I know this is your day job now, and it’s 24/7! But I will say I appreciate your being with me.”

A fierce exultation swells under the Shepard-Commander’s chestplate, in the region where power cells stand in place of a human heart.

As the intelligence that controls 18,001 Reapers, he has 18,001 different missions across different parts of the galaxy. But none of them are more pressing, or engrossing, than this: watching the moon rise over Panama, listening to the waves on a sandy beach, holding his human lover, alive and breathing, and the most important thing in the universe.

“We’re at home,” the Shepard-Commander announces, virtuously. “I’m off the clock.”

Kaidan shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he reminds his companion, “Maybe this won’t be our home for long. You know Hackett came to see me when I was on the Citadel. Sounds like he’s not letting me get away too easy.”

Major Kaidan Alenko, second human Spectre, hero of the Battle of London. Now, the new commander of the Normandy, if he chooses to accept the System Alliance’s latest commission.

The Shepard-Commander shrugs. “I can run the 18,001 from the Normandy.” Which had been John Shepard’s home for the last 5 years. “And home is wherever you are,” he adds, as Kaidan settles back into the circle of his arms.

There is a deeper wave than this Nothing will withstand

They savor the quiet for several long minutes before Kaidan asks, “So what are you going to tell the quarians about the nature of the soul?”

The Shepard-Commander knows, all too well, that Kaidan isn’t just talking about the Shepard’s day job and the religious differences on Rannoch, but matters of even more import. Such as the permanence of love, and the need of all beings for hearth and home, and what a future for a human and a synthetic intelligence with their very different priorities and lifespans might be.

A star-filled night. The movement of the waves on the shore. The universe is a deep ocean, and no two waves are the same, in the same way as no two organics are the same. Neurons and fibroblasts, thoughts and emotions, every one of them different, every one unique.

This singular man, bare and undefended in the moonlight.

The Shepard sees him years from now, older, with his hair turned entirely to silver and a map of lines on that handsome face. What will the years ahead hold for them, one infinite being and one whose organic form will eventually fall away?

I say love is the seventh wave
Love is the deepest wave
Love is the seventh wave

John Shepard might have thought he had no home in this world, but he was wrong. For the new Catalyst, home is the whole universe, and it’s also the place where Kaidan is.

As for the nature of the soul? The quarians and geth and all sentient beings might as well question the meaning of life, or the utility of love. And yet life — all life — has meaning, and love may be infinite.

“This is a question for another day,” the Shepard says, and lets Kaidan fold him close.

Notes:

And that's a wrap for The Seventh Wave! So many thanks to Potionsmaster and Mallaidhsomo for their beta and patience with this angst- and sex-ridden Control ending story — and to all of you for coming along for the ride ♥

18,001 Reapers | Chaotic wave patterns | Things to do in Playa Blanca

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Commander John Shepard: Hoping to end this reign