ruthless Shepard choosing to save the rachni queen on Noveria because she's tired of being a bogeyman and is losing hope in herself and wants to at least be able to Save Something
A mixture of strangeness, intimidation, and...admittedly, a pretty face that would turn heads, if someone can look past the blood attached to her history.
Unfortunately, the sleeper pods fail to subjugate his migraines.
He rouses from sleep, stumbles his way out of his pod, and sees that most of the crew is also off duty. The mess is empty as he steps out into the dim lighting, rubbing his temples, aside from a lone figure sitting at the table with a steaming thermos clasped in her hands. The air carries vague hints of sugar and flowers with it, and he's grateful that it isn't any stronger than that, for the sake of the throbbing pain building in one side of his skull.
Shepard's eyes listlessly stare down at a datapad set on the surface of the mess table. Her gaze is empty and dark circles ring her eyes more prominently than he's seen them before. There's no doubt in his mind that she isn't absorbing a single word she's reading.
"Commander?"
She blinks, then glances up at him, her face unchanging. "Oh. Hey, Alenko."
"I guess neither of us can sleep, huh?" He attempts a polite smile, but his headache makes it difficult. "That doesn't mean you need to keep yourself working, though."
"Too much going on in my head. I need an outlet for it."
Even the dim lights in the mess make his eyes pulse, but he decides to hazard taking a seat next to Shepard—well, with one seat of space left between them. The thought of sitting directly next to her makes him feel...funny. Not any way that he should be feeling, that's for sure.
"Well, there's plenty of nightmare fuel to go around. Are you still thinking about what happened with the Thorian? Or Major Kyle?"
"No." Shepard pushes the thermos toward him, and Kaidan accepts it without much thought. "It's the vision I had from the beacon."
Kaidan's eyebrows shoot up.
"I just got done talking to Lia—I mean, Dr. T'soni earlier," she explains. "But going over it with her only helps so much. She doesn't know anything about the Reapers, so it doesn't fully help me when I want to feel less crazy."
His shoulders droop a little. Part of it is a sense of relief, and the other part is the fact she still feels some obligation to be formal around him, even when the two of them are the closest to 'completely alone' that they can get.
"That explains why you've been going to see her so often."
"Of course." Shepard gives him a sidelong glance. "She's the only other one who's seen the vision for herself, thanks to the asari mind-melding, in addition to being the prothean expert."
Something that he'll never be able to fully understand or witness for himself. Something that he can't help her with. A rift that can't be filled. He clears his throat. "Makes sense."
"Did you think something else was going on?"
Kaidan can't come up with a good answer to that. He's never been great at lying, and the migraine doesn't help with his creativity.
Or his mental filter for what comes out of his mouth.
He avoids taking a big whiff of the tea's aroma, but he uses putting the thermos to his lips as an excuse to be silent.
Shepard's eyes wrinkle in a sly smile. "Alenko...are you jealous?"
His chest feels tight. It's foolish, beyond foolish, but some part of him is. Some adolescent part of him that he has yet to bring into full maturity.
"You know that rumors go around the lower deck." Quickly, he tried to regain his footing. "And I don't think the aliens you bring aboard are subject to the same regs as Alliance marines are, but it's all just gossip at the end of the day."
She's still grinning at him, the side of her face cupped in her palm, and the way her hair falls in her eyes with the tilt of her head isn't helping his case. "You don't seem the type to get fixated on rumors."
"Not usually, no."
"Not usually? What makes this different?"
Kaidan isn't sure how to take this. Is she simply teasing him, trying to get under his skin on purpose, or is there something else in the twinkle he catches in her eye?
"I can definitely say you're nothing like any other person I've served under in my career, Shepard."
A sound escapes her that's something like a weary, quiet laugh, and she leans back in her chair to stretch her arms above her head. He makes a point of looking away as her chest pushes out with the arch of her back, in time with the way she lets her head drop behind her. It doesn't feel as if she's doing it on purpose, though, despite the topic of conversation.
"I think the both of us need to get more sleep." She gets out of her chair and moves to step past him, but before she does, her hand rests on his shoulder for the briefest moment. It makes his thoughts stutter, and again, he doesn't think it's on purpose. Not with the genuine, soft quality her smile has taken on. "We'll talk more later, Kaidan."
"Yeah." Kaidan. How in the world is he supposed to interpret that? "I'd like that."
He watches her leave, datapad in hand, but her gait gives nothing away. No confident swagger or deliberate sway of the hips. The door to her quarters opens for and shuts behind her without further fanfare.
Only a few steps away, and yet it feels like miles, with an ocean between.
"I can't say anything about your past. I can't imagine what it was like to go through all that, or to be in that position," he says, "but just because I don't always opt for violence—it doesn't mean I'm much of a hero myself."
The smile vanishes. She studies him, and her gaze feels especially scrutinizing.
"I think the fact you knew to step away says a lot. You're acknowledging your limits. You know when you might've made a misstep."
She scoffs. "Missteps with a body count?"
"This mission is anything but simple, Commander," he says. "I think I'm starting to learn what running with a spectre who's trying to fight the impossible is really like."
Her lips curve into a frown, and her arms fold over her stomach in a mock protective barrier.
"It would be easier, wouldn't it?" Shepard says, soft. "If this had happened to any other squad. If we weren't the ones having to deal with all this mess."
We.
"Respectfully, ma'am, knowing all this is going on? I don't think there is anywhere else I'd rather be right now—trying to stop it, I mean."
Shepard appraises him again, as if searching for holes in his statement, holes in his resolve, and maybe there are some but none of them are big enough to make him turn his back on this—on her—now, or anytime soon.
Then, she smiles. It's weak, but it's genuine, with a hint of light in her eyes.
She ends up wiping it off her face almost instantly.
"No. Nothing feel-good for me right now. Not after what just happened," she says, shaking her head as if to reorient herself and correcting her posture. "Not until we get these scientists out of here and help Zhu's Hope."
"Sounds good to me, Commander."
Shepard promptly passes him by and makes her way to Liara and Doctor Juliana, who are too engrossed in conversation to notice. Kaidan swipes a hand across his brow as he watches her leave.
Maybe she's not the picture perfect hero that she seems convinced she must become, no, but she's not a monster either. Far from it.
At this point, it's hard to say what she would have to do to make him change his mind.
A moniker like the Butcher of Torfan makes Kaidan think of some tall, sharp, foreboding figure, broad in stature and with a dangerous enough look in their eye that everyone around would know not to mess with them.
He doesn't picture Shepard, a woman nearly a foot shorter than he is and at least a few years his junior, with freckled, alabaster skin, and wide eyes that might be more suited to a rabbit than a naval officer.
Still, even as he stands stiffly and watches her scroll through a datapad in-between her greetings of the rest of the Normandy crew, he can see traces of it in her. Her boots move one in front of the other across the floor of the bridge in a stilted, calculated gait, like her limbs don't quite fit. Her face is kept free of any expression, and her eyes are distant. The dark shade of her hair matches almost perfectly with the black material of her belt-covered armor, giving her more of a presence than she would have in lighter colors. More of a sense of edge about her.
A mixture of strangeness, intimidation, and...admittedly, a pretty face that would turn heads, if someone can look past the blood attached to her history.
He's not sure if he can.
"Lieutenant Alenko?"
Kaidan looks up. She's standing in front of him with the datapad in her hands and her eyes looking him up and down. Her gaze is as detached as it has been while she assessed everyone else.
Her eyes are the color of the sea back home. There's a scar that sits on the top of her left cheek, just beneath the eye on that side, and only partially hidden by her hair.
"That's me, ma'am." He clears his throat, then offers her a quick salute, before dropping his hand firmly back down to his side. "It's not every day that you get to work with an N7. I'm honored to be here."
Shepard's eyes linger on his face, but again, if there's any emotion in them, he couldn't begin to identify it.
"Marieke Shepard," she responds—even the way she speaks is flattened. "I read your file."
His lips briefly form a nervous half-grin. "Was there anything that caught your eye?"
"No. I expect good things. That's all."
The slightest bit of pressure, but not something he hasn't heard before. Not nearly enough to make him sweat.
"I'll be sure not to let you down, Commander."
She gives him a quick nod, and then moves on, stopping to initiate the same rote introduction with the next crew member. Checking off a list.
He can't decipher whether what she's said to him stands out from the others, and he knows that he shouldn't bother straining his ears to find out. It's not his business.
Shepard might not be the type of XO he wants the approval of anyway, if 'butcher' is still an apt title for her handling of things.
It speaks to someone who cares more about results than methodology, and he knows where that's landed other people before.
A few feet away, the crew member she spoke to before him—Jenkins, he thinks the name is—is clasping his palms together, over and over again. His eyes dart from Shepard, to elsewhere on the ship, then back to Shepard, before meeting Kaidan's.
"Do you think she wants me here? I couldn't tell at all."
Kaidan offers a shrug. That implies she didn't give the same 'I expect good things' assessment to everyone. "She does seem a little inscrutable, but I think if she didn't want you here, then she would've said something. I wouldn't worry about it, Corporal."
"I hope so," Jenkins replies, clearing his throat. "Between Captain Anderson and the commander being here, I don't want to make myself look like an idiot."
Kaidan steps close enough to put a hand on Jenkins' shoulder. Some of the tension leaves him at the contact, but not all of it.
"I've been there. You'll do fine. You'll do even better if you worry less about impressing anyone and just focus on doing your thing. If you get too distracted or excited, that's how you end up making mistakes."
Jenkins nods at that, but doesn't say anything else. Not at first.
"I heard that a spectre is going to be joining us," he says, quiet. "Do you really think this is just a shakedown cruise?"
Kaidan glances back at the commander. She's not paying any attention to him, speaking to the ship's head engineer, it looks like. Her eyes are on the data pad, and her brows are scrunched together.
The sharpness is subtle, layered beneath superficial disinterest, but he can still sense it. Not someone he expects the Alliance to select to simply test out a ship, no matter the ship's importance, and that's without getting into Captain Anderson's elaborate record.
"Probably not, Jenkins. But we'll see."
***
Ash and embers rain down on Eden Prime.
Kaidan's walking pace is lockstep with his heart as he approaches Jenkins' collapsed body. He keeps his gun ready in his hands, in case more of the drones peel around the corner with the intention of putting him on the ground too.
"Alenko," the commander says in a warning tone, but restrained. Quiet.
It's not an order.
Jenkins is still. His shoulders don't shake with pain. His body doesn't shift with breath. Holes from the drone lasers punched clean through his chest. Crimson pools out onto the ground, staining the scorched earth beneath him. Past the clear pane of his visor, his eyes are glazed over.
Kaidan kneels next to Jenkins and flicks open his omni-tool. No vital signs. Nothing.
Gone.
He releases a shaky breath. Reaching under the pane of Jenkins' visor, he gently pries the man's eyelids closed.
Shepard comes up behind him. Her breather leaves most of her face visible. Her eyes are as distant as they've always been as they come to land on Jenkins' body, and her own gun also remains held at the ready.
"Whatever those things were," Kaidan says, "his shields were gone in less than a second."
Almost as quickly as you took the drones out afterwards.
Shepard continues to stare at Jenkins' body. Her fingers readjust their grip on her rifle and her shoulders take on a harder line than they did before.
Then, in stilted movements, she holsters her weapon, raises her hand to summon her own omni-tool and—calmly and deliberately—taps something out on the holographic display. He assumes it's notifying the Normandy, and perhaps also Nihlus, without crowding verbal comms like the captain asked.
"We'll have to leave him. The mission takes precedent," Shepard tells him, as her omni-tool closes. "Don't lose focus."
Kaidan nods tightly. "I...I won't, ma'am."
"Good."
He watches her retrieve her rifle once more. Her wide-eyed stare trains on the horizon, alert for any signs of more of the mystery drones, and she stalks past him, taking point. Despite their unknown enemy, there isn't a trace of hesitation in her. No fear. Only hard lines in her shoulders and in the rest of the way she carries herself.
Which gives off the air of a predator more than anything. The embers falling from the sky outline her and her slim black armor in a red glow.
Regardless, he falls into step behind her.
"Any idea what we're up against, Commander?"
"No," she answers, coldly. "It doesn't matter."
His eyebrows raise. "It doesn't?"
Shepard's chin lifts to the sky. The distant horizon sports pillars of smoke, buildings, trailers, and farms where people once lived and worked burning away, producing the ash rain coming down on them now.
"They'll be dead soon."
After Shepard finishes that statement, her focus returns to the field, and the pair of them continue moving forward.
Kaidan doesn't let his focus waver, just as he was instructed, but in the back of his mine, he notes that the Butcher is a part of Shepard that is very much alive.
He can see the necessity of it, though. In this situation, it might be what will get them out of here alive.
'Might' being the operative word, because just as he knows what she did to her adversaries on Torfan, he also knows what happened to the people who were working under her.
***
No.
"Alenko, stop!"
To Williams' credit, her grip on him is absurdly tight, even through his armor. She keeps him firmly held back as Shepard is suspended in the air by the unseen force of the beacon, arms extended outward like a recreation of the crucifixion.
No. No. No.
He has no clue what's happening, but he's about to watch his XO die. He's sure of it, and it will be his fault. His failure. A consequence of what should've been an obviously stupid decision on his part.
The air pulses and hums with an energy that grinds into his brain and forces him to clench his teeth. He wants to squeeze his eyes shut against it, too, but he doesn't let that happen. He can't turn away from this like a coward. He needs to see it.
He can't see her face from this angle, but it looks like Shepard's body jerks against the force holding her in place, still trying to break out of it.
Helpless.
Then, the beacon explodes. The blast sends her flying backwards, and the back of her head slams into the metal platform beneath them. Her body goes limp in an instant.
Kaidan finds the strength then to break out of Williams' grip. The force that had been holding Shepard, that had initially pulled him in, is gone. The energy dissipates from the air as quickly as it came, and he's free to approach Shepard as his pulse thrums in his ears.
"Normandy?" Williams says behind him. "This is Ashley Williams of the 212. Commander Shepard is down—"
Kaidan's mind blocks out the rest of it as he kneels next to Shepard. Her eyes are shut, but a wave of relief hits him as he sees her chest rising and falling with breath. Just as he did for Jenkins, he pulls up his omni-tool and skims over her vitals.
Alive, and not dying either. Not as far as he can tell.
He digs an armor-clad hand into her hair to check where her head hit the platform, and it comes away bloody, but even he knows how much head wounds can bleed. Instead of letting his mind run any more wild than he already has, he returns his hand to the spot and holds it there to try to staunch some of it as he looks over the rest of her.
All the hard lines and edges are gone now. In a matter of seconds, she's gone from being a dangerous legend he was witnessing in action, proving her reputation every step of the way in how she systemically eliminated every geth they came across, to being just a person. As susceptible to mortality and injury as everyone else.
Williams' bootsteps come up behind him, frantic.
"Is she..?"
"She's okay, as far as I can tell, just unconscious. The Normandy better be on its way," he says. If he could reach his forehead, he'd be wiping the sweat off his brow. "I feel like an idiot."
"You kind of are," Williams admits. The frankness with which she speaks isn't something he's used to, but it's strangely grounding. "But at the same time, I can't say I blame you. Most people go crazy over Prothean stuff, so somebody else might've done the same."
He barely registers the reassurance that Williams is attempting to give him in her own weird way. His attention stays on his omni-tool, keeping an eye on the vitals. They're in the clear now, but that could change at any moment.
The earlier moments in the mission come back to him: not only Shepard killing the geth, but the way she behaved when it came to the surviving civilians they came across. The reassurances she gave them. The calm, measured way she speaks to everyone, even if that calmness is on the colder side, and even if some of her more compassionate statements came off as rehearsed.
You're safe now, he remembers her saying to the scientists, pointedly attending to the rounds on her pistol. We've made sure of that.
Small hints of personality peeking through, more than she's shown anywhere else, for a short a time as he's known her.
Maybe he got it wrong. Less a predator, more of a...protector.
A protector that grabbed him, threw him out of the way, and took his place when the beacon started to pull him in. Who put her own life on the line for the sake of someone under her command. For his sake, even though it would've been his own fault if the force from the beacon hurt or killed him.
Which doesn't sound like the Butcher he's heard about at all.
When the Normandy lands nearby, Chakwas feeds them instructions on getting Shepard back to the ship without hurting her further. He and Williams work together, with him hoisting Shepard into his arms, and Williams lightly holding Shepard's head in as steady a position as the two of them can manage throughout it. Anderson is the first face that they see on the ship, and Kaidan robotically fills him in on everything that's occurred since the mission began.
Including the mistake he just made.
The captain is inscrutable, but in the same way as Shepard, there are subtle signs in his posture that the man's mind is alight with concerns. With how much has gone wrong with this mission, Kaidan can't possibly imagine the full breadth of what's going through his head right now.
Once they get Shepard to the infirmary, Kaidan gently lays her down on one of the tables. He steps back as Chakwas sets to work in assessing her condition more thoroughly and getting Shepard's gear off her body, with Williams' help. Anderson dismisses himself to inform the rest of the crew about what's happened—the parts that aren't classified, anyway—but Kaidan doesn't want to leave just yet. Not when he's partially responsible, here.
"What can I do?" He asks, feeling somewhat useless.
Chakwas doesn't even glance up at him as she purses her lips. There might not be much he can do in this moment.
"It's cold in here, Lieutenant," she finally says, "I think the Commander has a jacket among her things. She might appreciate having it once she wakes up. Her locker code is 1823."
It's not completely made up to placate him, as the air in the infirmary would be chilly to someone who doesn't run as hot as he normally does, and since coming on the Normandy, he's always seen Shepard with the jacket in question whenever she's in her fatigues. He nods quickly, and hastily leaves the room to make for the lower deck.
As it turns out, there isn't much in Shepard's locker other than the jacket, but he doesn't dwell there long since he doesn't want to be invasive.
The fabric is emblazoned with the N7 logo. He stares down at it as he returns to the infirmary, and it brings him an odd sort of comfort.
If Shepard can survive N7 training, then she can survive this.
She has to.
***
Unexpectedly, after Anderson leaves the infirmary, Shepard is the one who finds him.
Kaidan goes stock still once he notices the commander headed his way. A spike of anxiety runs through him, but so does relief; despite how long she was out for, she's up now, walking, and slipping her arms into her jacket like it's any other day. Not in critical condition or comatose. At most, she looks a bit tired.
"Commander," he greets, throwing up a salute. "You're looking better."
"You were waiting out here for me."
"Yeah. I know you said it wasn't my fault, but it's hard not to feel like it was, ma'am." Kaidan's mouth suddenly feels dry. "I don't think I could've lived with myself if we lost you too."
Maybe not the best way to phrase that.
Shepard looks off to the side at nothing in particular. Her hands still fumble with the jacket. She looks...less steady than she did before, and he's not sure how much of that can be chalked up to a head injury.
Must be the dreams she had. Or whatever it was. She didn't seem all to sure herself when she explained it.
"Loss is something you get used to after a while," she finally says. "...but I appreciate the thought, Lieutenant. Do we have any updates on Jenkins?"
"I, uh, I think they're shipping his body back to the Alliance, ma'am. Something about research into the weapons the geth were using."
Shepard stiffens.
"...he mentioned that he grew up there," she says, quiet. "I was hoping there would be someone to bury him."
"I didn't figure you knew him that well."
"I didn't."
Kaidan presses his lips shut. He doesn't have the faintest idea of how to navigate conversations with this woman outside of what's strictly states in protocol, and she keeps veering off-script—both the script he usually runs with, and the script he thought he was developing for someone with the reputation she has.
Although...
"I don't think you could've done anything differently, Commander. It's the same thing as what you said to me: you didn't know."
Shepard works her jaw, still not looking him in the eye.
"...thank you, Alenko."
"Don't mention it."
She pulls the jacket tightly around herself, and then leaves, going to speak to Dr. Chakwas by the lockers. Kaidan can't think of much more to do other than watch her, partially out of the condition she might be in after being knocked cold for more than 12 hours and apparently being 'fine.'
The other part is his slow digestion of the fact he might well be in over his head with this mission—in more ways than one, and Marieke Shepard is one of those ways.
