After defeating Saren, Shepard and Kaidan are left with a big decision about the trajectory of their relationship. With the regs looming over their heads, it’s time to consider what they want. What better way to figure that out than some shore leave?
Read the full chapter on AO3
Sample:
Empty plates covered in the vestiges of pasta sauce littered the coffee table. Utensils were neatly tucked on top. Wine glasses with the last few sips left accompanied them. It was some fancy wine that Ahern had left here to mature. Admittedly, Jane didn’t know much about wine at all in order to understand what made one good or aged well, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Kaidan had remarked that it was a good vintage. Something she’d have to take his word for since, apparently, his family dabbled in wine. An interesting tidbit she never knew before now.
Jane watched Kaidan as he picked up his wineglass from the table before relaxing more comfortably back against the couch cushions. He let out a sigh as he looked out the window. They’d shared most of their dinners like this, hoping to see what a real sunset would be like here. The kind with vibrant colours as the sun sank below the horizon. Every single night before now hadn’t led to anything other than the sun dipping away into a dark night, but today was different. Today, they finally got their long-awaited answer as to what a sunset on Intai’sei looked like. She looked out at it with amusement, glad they finally got to see it.
“Blue, huh? It’s nice.” Kaidan said as he admired it, taking a sip from his glass.
She looked back out at it, too. “Maybe we should have guessed. Doesn’t Mars have blue sunsets?”
“And when was the last time you’ve been to Mars?” he asked with a laugh.
“Hey, now. I never said I’ve been there, but I’ve seen holos from the archives. I’ve always thought it looked nice.”
He nodded along. “Yeah, I’ve seen them, too. I guess Intai’se’s really not all that different. Maybe we really should have figured.”
You, my dear, know where the hurt lies buried. 😈 I will give you a snippet and a setting: post-war Reda Shepard needs a lot of time for recovery until she is closely herself again, both physically and mentally. This bit is set at the first time Joker visits Reda and James on Intai'sei in Shepard's retirement home, when she is fianlly doing somewhat better. Draft zero edition. And because I really like the scene and feel generous today, you get a little longer snippet. :D Thank you for the ask!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When joker first visits on intai’sei (he’s still the normandys pilot, he can’t just go places whenever he wants to) and shepard is up on her own two legs running (walking, very slowly walking, but she’s up and okay and on her own two damn legs) and she recognizes him and she’s glad he’s here and he just can’t-
“Can I hug you?”
It’s hoarse words, afraid, afraid to dare to hope that this is real, after all those endless months of misery when she was still on the normandy, after the doc said she wouldn’t be the same anymore, never ever again, and he started to talk himself into believing it because he just couldn’t stand watching her wither away and still having hope-
Her lips form an of course, he doesnt hear it but he can see it, and when her good arm draws him closer on his back, he covers his face on her shoulder and starts to cry.
She feels stiff. Standing and hugging someone is quite a challenge for her coordination, but for gods sake she won’t end this moment no matter how long they will be here like this with her legs feeling wobbly and her lower back in pain by the unusual posture and her ###
Her lips are pressed, brows furrowed, eyes staring at the other end of the room, while she tries to keep it together. Joker sniffs, he doesnt seem to try very hard to keep it together himself, and his arms sling around her just a little tighter. There’s a dozen tiny micro movements in shepard’s face. Witnesses of her trying to not just do the same. It isnt like she feels like shes about to cry - but the moment does something with her. It feels like he’s poking in something she didn’t even know she’d lost. Some feelings, memories, thoughts she hadn’t had in a long time. She can’t remember if they ever hugged like this - did she ever hug people? Did he? There was nothing coming to her mind thinking about it. But deep down she felt that she was missing something - she had been missing something, someone, a feeling or a thought that he just provoked in her. His smell isn’t familiar, and the hug isn’t. But he is. The way he looks at her is.
When he draws back from the hug eventually, he can’t even apologize. He just rubs his face with his sleeve, snuffles, and gives her a slight shrug. Sniffs again, and then he laughs, short and helpless, and it says everything.
“Want something to drink, Jefe?”
James has held back while their reunion. Hell, he gets it. He still gets that feeling at least once every day, every good day at least, and the good damn days keep adding up. which is a good thing, even if it makes them all too damn emotional.
Joker winces, almost having forgotten that they arent alone.
“Sure, yah, sounds good.”
“Reda?”
She nods and proceeds to the seating area, legs starting to give her trouble for all the unexpected standing and hugging.
Joker knits his brows at the sound of james calling her reda and not lola, or commander, or shepard. It feels so much like old times, but it isnt. It is-
It doesnt matter what it is, he tells himself, following shepard to the couch. There arent many things that matter anymore, but her being here, on her own two legs, being herself - that matters.
“There you go.” James hands joker a cup and puts another one on the table next to shepard. He takes a seat across joker.
The moment the steam reached his nose, joker’s brows lifted. “That chamomile?”
“Yup.”
“Where’d you get-“
A smirk creeps into the corners of james mouth. “Connections. It’s ya favorite, isn’t it, reda?”
Shepard nodds, lost in thoughts.
She isnt quite here, joker thinks. Not in the extent that he’d wished for. But damn, he doesnt dare to wish for anything anymore, so having her half here is better than everything he has witnessed before.
He doesnt know what strings james has pulled to get them a shipment of chamomile tea exactly - he’s pretty sure that stuff doesnt grow on a damn desert planet like intai’sei. He isnt sure anything grew here, but they’ve probably found ways to make some agriculture possible. But chamomile sure isnt at the list.
+
“How is everyone doing?”, shepard asks.
Tired. Joker cant help but think she sounds incredibly tired, even though James had reassured him twice already that today was a really good day. This is how really good days looked like?
“Great”, he repeats immediately. “Awesome! Everyone’s doing really good and-“
This is very stupid. Is that really what she wanted to know? And is what he’s said how he wants to answer that question?
He hasnt thought much about how this meeting would go before, or what they’d say. He didn’t think a lot of talking would be included anyway. He - he doesnt know what he had thought. Or what he is supposed to think now.
“Nice place you got here and all.”
That was just another stupid thing to say. He bites his tongue and shoots a short glance to james, who-
Did this asshole give him an encouraging nod? A smile even? Does former staff commander james vega encourage HIM to go on talking with shep, when he has been friends with her way longer than that marine beefcake over there?
For a moment joker gets irritatedly mad over how upset the whole situation makes him, despite just being relieved that shepard is up and running on her own damn two legs. This is-
Why was it all such an emotional mess?
“James can give you a tour”, shepard says, ripping joker away from his thoughts.
“What?”
“The place.”
She looks so bloody tired.
“Oh. Yah. Sure.”
Whatever, he thinks. He doesnt care much for this place despite the fact that it is warm and good and secure, a place for her to stay and get better and-
Will it ever be like it used to?
Will it ever be easy again? Or right? Will she ever-
Garrus was sitting on the couch in the dark, silent and lost in memory when he remembered the keycodes for Shepard’s apartment on Intai'sei. Instead of heading straight for Omega like he planned, he went there first. To grieve a little, if nothing else.
She was everywhere in that little place.
He found hairs on a chair that were clearly hers. Left over human bodywash in the bathroom. A whole host of other things, little things, that tore into him with how incredibly... mortal it made her seem. More than her death had, even.
Sometimes it was almost like she was there; he could practically sense her lingering presence. It made Garrus convinced he was crazy... then he decided he didn’t care.
The thermostat was set to human normal when he arrived, which was pretty chilly to him, but he left it at that the entire time. The solar panels had taken a beating from a recent dust storm, and he fixed them all. He spent over a month just wallowing, trying so-so-so hard to move on.
He never did manage that... but he did leave, eventually.
(Originally a background image for the Youtube recording of one of Recidiva’s amazing fanfics on Ao3. Saw it again while cleaning up old art files, and wanted to share the sudden stray thoughts.)
After defeating Saren, Shepard and Kaidan are left with a big decision about the trajectory of their relationship. With the regs looming over their heads, it’s time to consider what they want. What better way to figure that out than some shore leave?
Read the full chapter on AO3
Sample:
More than a week into their vacation, and Kaidan and Shepard were starting to run out of ways to spend their time. They may have considered all the groceries they would need for an entire month alone, but they hadn’t thought of things like activities to bring along with them. Hell, even a deck of cards could have gone a long way. They could only go on so many early morning runs before the sun became scorching. And as much as they may have been in something of a lustful phase of this relationship, there were too many hours in a day to occupy with that alone. As much as he was enjoying that aspect, it wasn’t all there was. He was desperate for the moments they would talk and laugh, and that’s what he wanted more of.
This is where Admiral Ahern’s storage had proven to be a lot more helpful than they initially realised. Not only did it provide an activity in and of itself to clean it out, but they had found a few treasures in there to put to use. And today, they just so happened to stumble on Ahern’s collection of paint supplies.
Kaidan couldn’t remember the last time he planned to do anything like this. He must have been a young kid before BAaT. Jump Zero stole his education away from the arts and turned it into war. It was almost enough to make him bitter to think about the things he’d missed out on, but he wouldn’t let that memory rob him of this experience with Jane.
After defeating Saren, Shepard and Kaidan are left with a big decision about the trajectory of their relationship. With the regs looming over their heads, it’s time to consider what they want. What better way to figure that out than some shore leave?
Read the full chapter on AO3
Sample:
As Jane walked back into the prefab, she still felt a lingering chill from outside despite wearing her N7 hoodie. As scorching as the days were, the evenings cooled off dramatically. She paused quickly to look back out the window, checking on Kaidan’s progress on their plans for the evening. Night had already fallen over them, and the stars were out and sparkling in the sky, casting him in a dark glow, but she could clearly see he was hard at work.
As much as this trip was meant to be for fun and to relax and to get to know each other more, somehow, today ended up being all about chores. Since this was her home now, she figured she might as well start trying to make it her own and a month alone together on a planet with not much else to do granted them a lot of time for that, along with relaxing.
They ended up spending most of the day cleaning out the storage space beneath the prefab. As much stuff that Ahern had left behind in the apartment itself, there was probably an equal amount of stuff crammed into storage. They worked through the entire space, sorting all of his belongings into things she wanted to keep or move up to the house or things she wanted to donate or throw away. There was so much to look through that it made the day pass by far more quickly than she ever expected it to, and it had completely gotten away from them.
There just so happened to be a nice patio set amidst the plethora of other belongings down there and Kaidan was setting up the lounge chairs at this very moment. Not only that, but there was some firewood piled in the back corner. As the night was setting in and she realised they hadn’t eaten dinner yet, she proposed the idea of a meal by the fire under the stars. It would be just like camping, but with the benefit of returning to their own bed whenever they wanted to retire for the evening. The best of both worlds as far as she was concerned.
Excellent choices from this WIP game list. You know where the hurt lies buried, my friend. @jedirangerpenguin also asked about "grounded", but since that has quite a few notes I will post about it twice. Will make a snippet post separately and keep this a ramble-post.
So, both of them are milestone stories about the relationship between Reda Shepard and James Vega. It's not hard to guess that "grounded" covers Shepards time of being imprisoned and James being her watchdog before ME3. Basically it will show how James slowly learns that his fallen idol, Commander fucking Shepard, is just human at the end of the day. And with being grounded for months, her body at some point decides that this is a good time to deal with all the stress she's been in (and that is especially the stress of being brought back from the dead, besides being responsible for a couple of hundred thousands innocent deaths and the reapers coming with her being grounded unable to do much), and decides panic attacks are the new way to deal with it. Meanwhile James still gnaws on loosing everybody on Fehl Prime. Within these months, both learn that being human is probably somewhat okay-ish, even for big buff marines like them, and they bond over that time.
"eggs" (the actual name will be different ^^' but so far it pretty much sums up what it's all about) is part of my post-war story covering Reda's recovery from being very broken to finding back to life. eggs is set at the latter end, when she's already doing much better. James has stepped down from being the Normandy's commanding officer to care for Shepard who needs 24/7 attention and Hackett made it clear that the Normandy isn't a rehab facility, but a warship. When Shepard has made it through the worst steps of recovery, they move to her apartment on Intai'sei. Down there, on a good day, she dreams about how he made eggs for all of them after the party of the citadel... It started innocent but ended up being pretty much heavy stuff. :D Just the way we like it! The eggs part of the story is pretty much progressed, so I might post a longer glimpse of that here soon as a teaser.
Now that I finally beat Ahern’s suicide mission (the last 45 seconds I was a ous wreck, the last 20 literally cowering in some corner praying not to die) my brain immediately goes into The Sims mode! I wanna know more about the settlements on Intai’sei, about the population, about Shepard’s possible time there. Especially mostly working on post-war fic these days, this gives me whole lot of new options (and for once they are peaceful, so we approve, don’t we?).
Do you have any headcanons about Ahern’s Shepard’s retirement home? Do you prefer it over the Citadel’s home or both or just the Citadel’s one? Does Shepard ever spend time there, mid war or post war? And finally: did you touch the topic in a fic or do you know any that address it and/or are set there?
(I hope it’s okay if I tag some of you folks, feel free to ignore, to reblog and add, answer, feel free to ramble if or if not being tagged and of course feel free to message me not to tag you! @tarysande @vorchagirl @theherocomplex @servantofclio @probablylostrightnow @guileandgall @chyrstis @swimmingtrunks @swaps55 @citadelsushi @theoriginalladya @ferzeldan @ljandersen @rpgwarrior4824 @natsora )
