The Commander Takes a Shower

The boarding team had returned to the Normandy bedraggled and exhausted, with a defiant Jack in tow. Despite my usual morning clean-up, our trip to the grungy prison ship Purgatory—and dealing with the sleazy turian who had run the place—had left me feeling even more filthy than the bloodstains on my clothes and in my hair would suggest. All I wanted was to toss my armor in the scrubber and take a long, hot shower. I got Jack settled into the “basement” and headed up to my quarters.

Among the many improvements Cerberus had made to the new version of my beloved ship had been the relocation of my cabin to its own deck, accessible only by elevator, and tripling the size of my space. My old quarters had been converted to an office for Miranda Lawson. That self-aggrandizing bitch actually made me miss Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, who at least had been sweet despite her wrong-headed prejudice against aliens. I liked to think that Ashley would have come around, as Pressley had, had she lived long enough to finish the mission with our rag-tag crew to see how we all worked together to destroy Sovereign. Miranda may have brought me back to life but being forced to bring her on my ship rankled badly. What had she done for me lately, besides question my judgment in front of my crew? Between Miranda and Jacob Taylor I was getting pretty tired of Cerberus lackeys publicly undermining my every decision. At least I could leave them on the ship while I went out with more loyal team members and got some work done on yet another attempt at saving the galaxy.

The door to my cabin hushed open and I quickly stripped off my disgusting armor. It was covered with enough different colors of blood from the recent battle to make abstract art worthy of a museum, but all I wanted was to be clean. I tossed the whole mess into the scrubber and grabbed the robe I’d picked up on our last trip to the Citadel. Although I was thrilled to have a comfortable, roomy place where I could enjoy a little privacy, the bathroom design left quite a bit to be desired. The shower had no walls. Every time I turned on the water it sprayed the entire room. I’d devised a way to shield the toilet paper, mostly, but I still had to wipe down the seat every time I finished bathing or suffer sitting in a puddle the next time I used the head. I hadn’t found a way to keep a towel dry while I showered, though. I held my robe at arm’s length to keep it clean as I crossed the room and draped it over the chair just outside the door. As I did, the picture of Kaidan Alenko, so thoughtfully placed on my desk by some well-meaning crew member, caught my eye.

Of all of the encounters I'd had since I’d been so rudely re-awakened a few weeks ago by reprogrammed mechs trying to kill me, of all of the times I’d been shot at or warped against a crate like rag doll, that disaster of a conversation on Horizon had been the worst. In my mind, it had been a few months since I ordered Kaidan into the escape pod while we tried to save the crew of the first Normandy from the shocking attack. Of the two years between punching the button to launch Joker and being ordered to grab a pistol and Miranda ordering me to start defending myself at the Cerberus facility I had only a few glimpses, quick blinks of faces and light in a stretch of darkness and pain. Memories of my too-brief time with Kaidan were fresh in my mind and I could almost feel his touch when I thought of him. I’d used every resource Cerberus could offer but even they didn’t have full access to Alliance personnel assignments. I hadn’t been able to track him down between missions until The Illusive Man had told me that Kaidan was in the middle of a colony under attack. When we saw him on The Normandy's view screens, frozen by the bugs, and then the Collectors loading pods into their ship, I thought I had lost him forever just as I had finally found him.

I had thrown myself into the ensuing battle fighting as much for revenge as to protect any remaining colonists. When the the Collectors' ship fled and the smoke cleared, I had been ready to head back to this very cabin for a good cry when Kaidan appeared like magic before me. After a warm hug, during which I restrained myself from dragging him back around that corner, he had turned angry, accusatory. The sudden reversal had made my head spin and I feared that I’d sounded like a complete idiot, able only to say, “It’s good to see you.” Good to see you?! I was fighting the desire to crawl inside his armor with him and stay there for a week and that was the best I could do? For the hundredth time I smacked myself on the forehead. The conversation had only worsened from there. Everything I said made him angrier and finally he stalked off, throwing insults at even Garrus, a turian more dedicated to righting wrongs than anyone I’d ever met. I stood there, stunned and gawping, before someone finally suggested we return to the new Normandy, built to replace the one destroyed on the last good day of my life, the last day I’d seen his face.

All of that came flooding back when I looked at Kaidan’s picture on my desk. I’d kept it so prominently displayed only because of the conciliatory message I had received a few days after things had gone so horribly awry on Horizon. While I was still hurt and angry at the unfairness of being so peremptorily accused of having changed by a man I had formerly known as calm and circumspect, his tentative olive branch had made me realize that Alenko was just as at sea as I was. In addition, he was bearing a guilt that compounded his own conflicting emotions: he’d gone on a date. While part of me wanted to secure the name and location of the woman with whom his friends had set him up, in case an opportunity to pay her a visit should arise, it finally brought home to me that I had lost two years of my life. I may remember our love as having been interrupted recently enough to measure the time in weeks but Kaidan had thought me dead for two full years. As much as I’d like to believe that he could never love anyone again after having been loved by me, I could hardly fault the man for a half-hearted attempt to continue his life. Would I not have allowed my friends to convince me to have coffee with someone after grieving for two years? And yet I couldn’t think how to respond. The longer I waited the harder it was to begin, and the impersonal format made it that much harder, teasing me by holding out the promise of delivering exactly the right words if only I could write them.

With a heavy sigh, I turned to the bathroom and started the water. I relaxed into the heat as steam filled the room. I soaped my hair and stood, contemplating the scars that still riddled my body. Many had faded to nothing more than faint lines over the months that I had been kept unconscious but a few remained tender and had been chafed raw by my recent exertions. The worst ran across my ribs under my right arm, where the last of Miranda’s repairs had reconstructed the crushed bones around my refurbished organs. Dr. Chakwas had offered to heal them completely for me but I found the reminders of the strange turns my life had taken more important that mere appearances. It was only after battles that they really bothered me. I soothed them with thick lather and thought again how good it would feel to finally go directly after the Collectors who had given them to me in the first place, directly or not. I was interrupted in my contemplations by a knock on the door, something unheard of in my recent tenure as the newly-risen captain of this resurrected ship.

“Are you there, ma’am?”

That voice! The pounding of the water on my head was clearly distorting my hearing. It had sounded exactly like Kaidan but that was impossible. How could he have found me, much less gotten to the Normandy? But my heart nearly stopped in my chest despite the reassurances of logic.

“Please, I need to talk to you,” came the voice again.

“Kaidan?” I called. “Yeah,” he answered, sounding a little sheepish. Without pause, he launched into what sounded like a prepared speech. “I’ve been thinking about Horizon, and about us. I know I was over the top, that I never gave you a chance to explain anything. I was so shocked to see you standing there, despite all of the rumors that you hadn’t died. There you were, riding to my rescue again like nothing had happened and I was so angry that you could be so strong after being gone for two years. I’d just watched you solve the problem I’d been struggling with for weeks and then mop up the very creatures who’d left me lying on the ground, helpless. I felt like an ass and that’s how I reacted. I’m sorry.”

I was thankful that he couldn’t see me. Blood rushed to my face and tears spilled from my eyes. That he still felt deeply enough for me to find me this way, to put himself out so far in the hopes that I still loved him, moved me beyond words. I opened my mouth but couldn’t think of a thing to say. My silence must have made him doubt me, and he continued. “I’ve had some time to think about what you said and I realize now that you must have been as stunned as I was. I never thought about what you might have had to go through but now I understand that you might as well have been dead for most of that time, for all that you could have done. Cerberus held you prisoner, drugged unconscious almost the whole time and only let you go when the base was attacked.”

I finally found my voice. “Who told you that?” I asked. “I may have been unconscious but they literally brought me back from the dead. They have their own reasons but without Cerberus I would be so much space debris right now.” How could I be in the position of defending Cerberus? I thought. I hate the things they stand for and the tactics they use. But Kaidan made it sound like I would have chosen differently when my only other option would have been death.

“You’re going to defend them,” he answered hotly, “after what we saw of them on so many hidden bases? I can understand Joker’s desertion after he was grounded, but you? I thought I knew you better than that.”

“No,” I answered, “I’m not defending them. I’m trying to say that, in this case, we don’t know the ends but I’m pretty pleased with the means so far. I’m alive, I’m still a Spectre, and I can still fight to protect people. The Alliance couldn’t have done that, even had they wanted to.” I pounded my fist on my leg in frustration. What I wanted to do was open the door and fling myself into his arms but what all I could do was stand here, defenseless, rehashing the same troubled ground we’d stumbled over on Horizon. “I may hate what Cerberus stands for but they’ve given me a new start and I’m trying to make a difference in the universe with it. They don’t make decisions for me or control me, but they do have a stake in what I’m trying to accomplish.”

I heard Kaidan pacing on the other side of the door. Metal it may have been, but it was only a thin sheet, a rudimentary nod at privacy in a cabin built for one. I remembered his picture and froze, trying to think of a way to distract him but I heard him pick it up off of the desk, muttering, “You still…” and then falling silent for a time. “Do you remember when I told you that I was worried about you, that I didn’t want to see you doing the wrong things for the right reasons? I still feel that way. I don’t want to you be blind to the sort of people they are.”

The best thing about taking a shower on-board was the endless hot water, siphoning heat from the engines and recycled through filters to run forever. As I melted inside, I adjusted the spray to keep me warm and stepped closer to the door. I leaned my burning face against the cool metal and imagined that it was Kaidan’s shoulder, upon which I’d so often longed to lean in the past weeks. “I do remember,” I said. “I remember having someone to worry about me, to pull me back from that cliff.” I cleared my throat, my voice having gotten suspiciously thick. “But I also remember that you used to trust me to see the cliff for myself, as well.” I was crying in earnest, now, partly with relief that he could still sound so tender but mostly for how lost we both sounded. I muffled my sobs with the washcloth for a moment and continued. “Can’t you give me a chance to prove that you still can?”

“I’m so scared for you,” he whispered, sounding as though he, too, were pressed against the door. “I can’t lose you again but I see that Cerberus logo on the Normandy and it makes me want to throw a barrier around you so that they can’t manipulate your good intentions.” I pressed my hand against the door, wishing I weren’t in the shower so that I could touch Kaidan’s face. “I want to trust you,” he said, “but I can’t trust them.

“Hell,” he said, “Can I just come in there so that we can talk about this?”

“No!” I shouted, leaping back. I glanced down, seeing myself anew, scarred and exposed. There was nowhere to hide in this cursed room, nothing with which to shield myself, beyond the inadequate washcloth soaked with my tears, should he choose to open the door. I faltered on, “I’m…not dressed.”

After a pause, Kaidan responded softly, “There was a time when that wouldn’t have mattered.” I assumed that some evil power was punishing me with such a tempting opening and that I would open the door to find some horrible thing on the other side masquerading as my erstwhile lover. How else could I explain this turn of events? But leaping back into his arms wouldn’t solve our problems, despite the nearly overwhelming desire to do so. “I don’t think we’re quite ready for that just yet,” I said, cursing myself for being so upstanding and strong. I felt like a puddle on the floor but I clung to my dignity nonetheless. “You’re holding me hostage in my own shower,” I said.

“What?!” Kaidan sounded suitably shocked by the accusation and the moment was broken, sparing me the humiliation of immediate exposure.

“Yes,” I continued. “You’ve got my robe out there and I can hardly stand here, nude and dripping, while we try to have a serious conversation through my bathroom door.”

“Dripping?” Kaidan asked, carefully avoiding the other adjective I’d used. “Don’t you have a towel in there?” I could hear the smile in his voice as he said it.

“If I had a towel don’t you think I’d have opened the door by now?” I answered. Hot water still pounded on my back, no longer relaxing but instead a symbol of how absurd my life tended to be. But the evil mechanized door didn’t open only a little so that he could hand my robe in to me. It was either open or shut, and there was no in between to preserve my modesty. If I ever got my hands on the designers of this tortuous place they would pay for every oversight with their flesh. I wasn’t ready for Kaidan to see me, to see the evidence of how much Cerberus had had to fix of me, but could I trust him not to peek? I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to trust myself, were the situation reversed. This demon-spawned door, however, made mockery of any attempts at closeness. I couldn’t judge his body language, couldn’t stroke his face or let him lace his fingers with mine has we had so often done during private moments before. How could we rebuild our relationship when I was trapped, naked, behind this horrible metal sheet of a door?

“This is ridiculous,” I said, thumping my hand on the grey barrier. “I don’t know how you got here but I will not have this conversation through a goddamned door.” I slumped against the infernal thing, warmed now by the shower’s heat, not defeated but regrouping.

“Okay,” said Kaidan. “I promise not to look.” Before I could even move, the wet door whisked across my skin and I all but fell out of my own bathroom, past the robe that he was holding out and straight into his arms. His dutifully closed eyes popped open in surprise and an “oof” escaped him as I smashed into his chest. Despite that, he caught me neatly, closing his arms around me before I had a chance to fall. We both froze for a moment, eyes wide, as the water drenched him and we both realized how very, very nude I was. The moment drew itself out until I gathered my wits about me to salvage what dignity I could.

“You promised not to look, Alenko,” I reminded him sternly. With a smile, he closed his eyes once more but did not release me. I buried my head in his chest, torn between humiliation and sheer joy. He stroked my back and I relaxed into his once-familiar scent for just a moment, until I could decide what to do next. While far better than the door, being so physically unprotected made it difficult for me to feel strong emotionally. Our problems could not be solved by a simple hug or our encounter on Horizon would have been very different. Just for one minute, though, I let myself forget our recent history and just wallow in physical contact. When I felt his lips on my neck it seemed perfectly natural and I tightened my arms around his waist, snuggling in a little closer.

Despite my lack of attire, I was decidedly warm. Kaidan’s hands were less soothing and increasingly wandering, his teeth nipping at my skin. As his fingers passed across scars and ridges that hadn’t been there before, he lifted his head and whispered in my ear, “I’m so sorry.” I turned to look at him and I don’t know whether we started crying before or after our lips met. With a groan, he lifted me and propelled me backwards into the pounding water, letting that same door, no longer my enemy, shush closed behind us.

With his eyes still dutifully shut, Kaidan spun and pressed me against the door. He kissed me deeply and suddenly I was glad for the trusty metal because my knees would no longer support me. I rarely thought of myself as a woman, no more than I did as a redhead or as tall. It was just another adjective to help people pick me out of a crowd. With Kaidan, though, I was aware of my body every moment and constantly reminded that those parts had much better uses than inconveniencing me when I was putting on my armor.

Kaidan's hands swept up my sides and I gasped, first with pleasure and then in pain as he encountered the inflamed scar across my ribs. He opened his eyes in concern but I shook my head and gently closed them again. I wanted him to love me as he remembered me, to be that same person. The last thing I was interested in at that moment was his sympathy. I pulled his head back down and kissed him hungrily. With a growl, he moved his hands to my breasts, stroking and tweaking with equal parts passion and tenderness. We were both panting by then. I ran my hands over him but kept encountering wet cloth instead of the skin I so desired to feel.

“Off!” I commanded, tugging at his soaked shirt. The shower had turned it into a clinging mass that resisted my efforts to pull it up his body. He tried to help without stopping our kiss. Between the two of us, we managed to wrestle it off of him. His muscles, as hard and flat as I remembered them, felt so familiar under my hands that I could almost forget our recent history. I wanted to eat him alive or at least to taste every part of him. I rubbed my hands over his strong back and my mouth over his equally-impressive chest. Kaidan was not shy about returning the favor. He did everything by feel, keeping his eyes closed as I'd asked but tracing my scars with his fingers and his tongue as he found them. We had seen each other wounded before but for a time we'd been there to see the source of each hurt and to help each other recover. Having him find my new scars one by one was like having that same time together to heal. I hugged him tight to me, enjoying how happy he was to see me but again blocked by wet clothes.

As busy as our mouths and hands were, those pants had to go. They may have done wonderful things for his ass as he was walking down the corridor but they had become an obstacle. I unfastened them and pushed them down enough to free Kaidan from his confinement. I closed a hand around him, relishing the feel of the hot skin against my hand and the immediate sound of his appreciation. It wasn't enough, though, so I knelt down, sliding his pants with me. I put my mouth to good use on his conveniently located flesh as I helped him to step out of the sopping things. Droplets covered him at once and I licked them off, covering the important areas thoroughly. Moaning, he grasped my shoulders and urged me to me feet. I took my time getting there, fueled by the increasingly urgent sounds coming from his throat. He opened his eyes and watched me work my way up his body, his every muscle taut under my tongue.

“No peeking,” I chided. “Don't make me blindfold you with your own shirt.”

“You have to stop,” he pleaded as I finally stood. “It's been so long. I don't want to rush this.” But he once again closed his eyes.

He wrapped his arms around me and we stood, calming a bit, letting the water run down our bodies. Our hands wandered over familiar territory, each of us finding new scars and knowing that we would have to talk about them before long. For this brief interlude, though, it was enough to simply be together. When he had himself under control again, Kaidan started a more aggressive exploration. He knew what buttons to push and proceeded to rediscover every one of them. His tongue was hot on my wet belly and his hands busily probed delicate skin. For a time, I leaned back against the door and lost myself in the pleasure of feeling him touch me, of the things that he was doing. Finally, I cried out, only increasing his efforts, but I could no longer be so passive.

“Wait,” I panted. I stepped around him and reached for the soap. As he rose I poured it over his shoulders and rubbed bubbles down his back, sudsing that spectacular ass and sliding my hands between his thighs and down his calves. I slid up his now-slick body and reached around to soap his chest, the ridges of his abs, and every inch of him that I could reach. “You might as well get clean,” I said.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me around him, crushing me against the door, his skin gliding over mine. “You, too,” he said, sliding himself against me, not entering yet but teasing and torturing. He grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled my head back, nibbling his way down my neck while he kept me pinned against the door with his hips. I used the leverage of the door, arching my back to press harder against him, encouraging him to go farther. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs around his waist. Both of us sighed as he finally slid into me and settled my weight to let him get as deep as possible. I was torn between reveling in the feeling and begging him to move, to show me just how much he had missed me.

We stayed there, barely moving for a time, lost in our own world and reconnecting with each other. Slowly, a glow started to build around Kaidan. He was releasing enough power to create a barrier around himself, pushing me away a bit but increasing pressure where it was most important. "I had to wait until I was sure I could control myself," he said. The barrier ebbed and flowed, my skin tingling every place we touched. I leaned back against the door and let the feeling wash over me, watching the glow reflected on the dripping walls, lighting the thick steam in the room.

Kaidan began to move gently. I didn't dare do the same, afraid to break this intimate mood or do something that would make him lose focus. I knew how powerful he was, both physically and biotically, and that he'd never intentionally hurt me. But I also understood that he had been holding his emotions in check for so long, that he'd been remembering and thinking about this the entire time I'd been gone. I wasn't sure it would take much more to trigger a release, despite his best efforts. The control he was exerting, keeping his power so tightly reined, was much more impressive than simply not releasing it at all. I knew that he would have to shut it down completely soon but I intended to enjoy every electric moment while I could. When he kissed me, his tongue in my mouth, I could feel him everywhere and nearly lost control myself. Is this why Asari are so popular as lovers? I thought, as Kaidan filled me again and again.

I couldn't bear the restraint any more. "Please," I whispered, pushing myself against him. With a groan, he dropped the barrier entirely, tamping down his power so that he could respond without endangering me. He lunged, deep and hard, and I dug my nails into his back. We abandoned all caution then, no longer able to hold back our desire. Soon we were making enough noise that I feared they could hear us in Engineering but I wasn't about to worry about that in the midst of this panting, pounding moment. Kaidan held my hips and drove us against the door as I clung to him, my teeth nipping at that delicate skin near the hairline that I knew drove him wild. It seemed to go on forever, building until I thought I might implode. I'm pretty sure I screamed at some point during that wild ride and I know that Kaidan shouted my name amidst all of our mutual encouragement, begging each other for more.

Finally he crushed me against that door, my new best friend, sending me over the edge again and giving in to the release he'd been holding back for so long. "I love you," I murmured into his ear. "I love you," he answered as he gently helped me to get my balance, my feet on firm ground once more.

Kaidan and I dripped our way across my cabin to the linen closet and playfully rubbed each other dry. I pulled my now-clean armor from the scrubber and tossed in his sodden clothes before I joined him in my bed. We lay close under the covers and listened to the bubbles in the aquarium, recovering our breath and letting our heart rates slow. It dawned on me that no one had come looking for me for more than two hours, an unprecedented event on either the original or my new Normandy and one that made me very suspicious. “You never did tell me how you found us,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my message,” said Kaidan, “and, well, someone told me that you’d been upset since we…'spoke' on Horizon.” Joker, I thought, you nosy little wonderful weasel. “I knew that we had to really talk, not write notes back and forth. Anderson helped me to arrange leave and borrow a shuttle from the closest space port to wherever you happened to be.”

“And have you been keeping in touch with many of my crew?” I asked archly, intending it as a joke.

“Of course not! They’re Cerberus operatives,” Kaidan said, sounding injured. While I found it adorable that he could be offended by the idea of even marginal involvement with a rogue group it also hurt that he still could not understand that these people were here for noble reasons; that, except for Miranda, they hadn’t joined this fight because Cerberus was involved but in spite of that fact. Even Jacob, who had been working for Cerberus during Miranda’s impossible restoration of my body, had joined them not because of the organization’s beliefs and aims but because Cerberus had offered the only way for him to continue the fight after my death. I propped myself up on one elbow and glared down at the man that I loved and with whom I was very angry.

“I do not consider any of them to be ‘Cerberus operatives’,” I snapped. “The Illusive Man may have provided the credits and equipment but those people are on this ship to stop the Reapers, the same as I am. Every one of the former Alliance members—on the bridge, in the corridors, in Engineering, every last one—has told me that they joined this crew because they could no longer stomach the outright denial of what happened and every one of them is as torn in their loyalties as I am.” Kaidan opened his mouth to protest but I kept going. “If Joker helped to bring us together than I will be forever grateful to him but don’t dismiss the rest of my crew as crackpots and amoral assholes just because they’ve made a different choice than you have, Alenko.”

“I would have thought,” Kaidan finally managed to interject in a frosty tone, “you would know me better than to think that I would paint an entire crew with so broad a brush. Besides, Joker just forwards me offensive jokes and raunchy pictures. It was Dr. Chakwas who got me onto this ship.” I goggled at him, never having suspected the good doctor of keeping such a devious secret. Kaidan stared just as hard, taken aback that he’d so carelessly revealed the name of his informant. Then we both burst out laughing. I laid my head on his chest and we chuckled together, knowing that this was semantics rather than a fundamental issue between us. His ethical objections to Cerberus and our having been separated so long meant that he didn’t know who was on my crew and had no reason to trust any of them, not even the few he had already known. I’d made a point of speaking to everyone on my ship, exploring their histories and learning to trust them. The Normandy couldn’t function without that effort. I’d done the same on my first ship when Kaidan had been with me and he knew how strongly I felt about getting to know my crew personally.

I may have been quick to defend those on my new ship but when I took a moment to think about it I realized that I did know that Kaidan didn’t judge people by superficial evidence. I recalled how he had learned that lesson as little more than a child I told him as much. He hugged me close and said, “I’m glad you do.”

“This is still so awkward,” he continued. “I keep expecting to wake up and find that you’re a figment of my sad imagination. Every time we go back a step I’m afraid my alarm will ring and we won’t ever have a chance to make it up.” I was pretty sure I’d used my quota of tears for one day, but I felt a few filling my eyes, anyway. We lay together companionably for a time, thinking our own thoughts. Things may not be the same with us but I thought that Kaidan and I could manage to work this through, if given half a chance. The trick lay in getting that chance. If we failed to save the galaxy we never would, a laughably melodramatic truth that I couldn’t ignore.

Though I was still sated from the intense physical reconnection we’d enjoyed, I knew that much was still unresolved between Kaidan and me. We slowly considered everything that had happened while we were separated and what new threats now faced us. Finally, there was someone to whom I could admit how terrified I had been to wake up, weak and disoriented, surrounded by strangers. Being shot at had strangely comforting me in those first hours, bringing something familiar to the bewildering surroundings. Kaidan traced the scars on my body as we talked, gently outlining the dozens of places where I’d been pieced back together. He told me about how alone he’d felt, to have so suddenly lost not only me but the ship and so many of the crew to whom we had grown close while pursuing Saren. He had kept in touch with many who had stayed in the Alliance but had lost track of the strongest of our former team, Garrus and Wrex. I listened to him reminisce about the old crew and wished that we could stay here, holding hands and talking about them forever. I knew, though, that eventually we would have to talk about more than happy memories and physical temptations.

We were still on different sides of a conflict that, while dwarfed by the coming of the Reapers, was profoundly important to each of us. The Alliance had been Kaidan’s home for his entire adult life, a refuge after the “brain camp” training that had hurt him so badly, and it still held his allegiance. While it had let both of us down on more than one occasion, Kaidan still had deep connections with other officers, particularly former-Captain Anderson, who may have become a member of the council but was still deeply involved in Alliance decisions and influential among the senior staff. Kaidan told me how the two had grown close after the destruction of the Normandy SR-1, after my now-rescinded death, while they fought together to force others to believe the threat that Sovereign represented. While Jacob and most of the rest of my current crew had abandoned the Alliance and joined Cerberus in disgust over what they saw as the betrayal of my memory or a willful blindness to the truth, Kaidan could not give up on the family that the Alliance had come to represent for him. He told me how he and Anderson had been trying to make their voices heard, despite the displeasure of so many among the alien races and even other Alliance officers.

Anderson had long been a dear friend of mine as well as a commanding officer. I had recommended him for a place on the Council without hesitation and in the firm belief that he would make a difference in how the galaxy reacted to what I thought was the irrefutable evidence of Sovereign’s attack. It warmed my heart to think of him and Kaidan fighting for the truth together like in some old-fashioned vid and I was so grateful to know that they had had each other for support.

“I’ve been fighting to convince people for so long,” Kaidan said, “but without any new proof, without anyone having seen the Collectors much less being able to prove that they were abducting people for the Reapers, it’s been a losing battle.” He sounded so defeated that I squeezed him close for a moment. I hadn’t considered how hard it must have been for him to not only believe that I had died but that everyone he knew was under the same threat and refused to see it. While I’d lain, unconscious and drifting, he’d spent two years butting his head against the Council’s brick wall. He’d been walking a fine line between brutal honesty and insubordination, not wanting to lose the position he’d worked so hard to obtain but unwilling to allow our desperate battle to ultimately mean nothing.

Despite my long career with the Alliance, my loyalties lay not with any organization but with my mission and my crew. I owed them my loyalty and my every effort, as so many had become outlaws and renegades to join me for this mission. I didn’t trust Cerberus or The Illusive Man any further than I could drop kick the lot of them but I couldn’t deny that they alone had given me the opportunity to pursue the threat against which I had been fighting when ambushed by the Collectors two years earlier. While the Council and the Alliance had swept Saren’s betrayal and Sovereign’s real intent under the rug, Cerberus had returned me from the dead to continue my fight. The Illusive Man’s lies and manipulation had made it clear to me that this was, indeed, the same organization Kaidan and I had both grown to despise for Ferros and the other experiments we’d uncovered but they had provided me with the tools to continue fighting the Reapers. I had a new crew with a few old friends, a new and improved ship (with the exception of those damned bathroom doors), and information that would have been out of our reach in the Alliance.

“I know you can’t stay,” I finally said, raising my head to look at him. The look of relief on his face pierced me to the heart, thought I knew that it only meant that he had been dreading saying the same thing. Some cheesy, romantic corner of me had been hoping that he’d thrown over his life’s work just to be with me although I would never have done so for him nor would I respect such a decision made on a whim. This wasn’t like Garrus leaving Citadel Security when the chance presented itself. That had been born from a long-standing dissatisfaction and a belief that he could make more of a difference to more people by leaving. For Kaidan, going AWOL would mean more than simply following his heart. It would mean turning his back on the life that he had built and letting down the hundreds of people who depended on him every day. Even for love, neither of us could be that selfish. Saying it so clearly, though, was much different than knowing it.

“I don’t want to go,” he said tenderly, “you must know that. But I’ve only got so much leave and I’m not ready to give up on the Alliance or on using the platform that Anderson’s seat on the Council gives us. You can’t deny that, when the Reapers find their way through, everyone will need to fight together.” He was right, I couldn’t deny it. I nodded miserably. It would be invaluable to have a strong, high-ranking person already in place to serve as a conduit for information and a center of coordination between my crew and ships from anyone else who could be convinced to join us. Anderson’s place on the Council left him just outside of the trusted Alliance core, his dozens of years of service notwithstanding. Kaidan was a decorated officer, well-liked and trusted by his men and women. He had many friends among the alien races that populated the Citadel, as well, and worked with people from across the galaxy. Who better to stay there, prepared to connect us all at the first sign of agreement? If I could have thought of a better candidate, alien or human, I’d have suggested him or her at once. Both of us knew that Kaidan had to go home and no amount of whining was going to change it. The issue wasn’t that he was leaving but that I was staying.

“I can’t act as some sort of double agent,” I said, “and I would never ask you to do it. But I’m still a Spectre, thanks to Anderson, and we can work together, despite being across the galaxy from each other.” I hoped that I didn’t look as bereft at this idea as he did, because the sadness on his face made me want to lock him in the storage bay until he’d been court martialed and couldn’t go back to the Citadel. That was no solution but his expression tempted me to try it nonetheless. If only I didn’t need the drip feed of insider information that The Illusive Man fed me to find and fight the Collectors I’d have had Joker fly us all back to the Citadel and pledged the new Normandy to Council use so that we could be together. I knew that TIM, as we called him, was using my need for that information to keep me working on his agenda but I also had no alternatives for getting it. I had to keep letting him believe that he was calling the shots as long as he kept giving me as much leeway as he had. For all that I hated his beliefs and reasons for manipulating me, his clues were the only things that kept us moving forward in our search for a way to stop the Collectors from abducting millions of colonists. Kaidan and I talked about Cerberus and TIM and I could see in his eyes that he could finally accept the method to my madness in continuing to work with them. “I know that I’m walking a fine line,” I said, “but at the end of it may well be answers that we desperately need and I intend to save as many people as I can along the way. I don’t know where TIM gets his information or how, so until I do I have to get it through him no matter the distortion.”

“That’s what brought me out to find you, my need to hear you say that,” said Kaidan. “I needed to know that they hadn’t brainwashed you, that the two years hadn’t been spent in some horrible little room where they genetically modified you and force fed you their propaganda. I had to see that you had doubts, that you were really still the same person I had lost.” Now the relief that showed on his face was more healing than hurtful. He kissed me sweetly, sadly, and said, “Now I can go back and be strong enough to do what needs to be done.” He moved to get out of the bed.

I tackled him. “Not so fast, Alenko,” I said. “We still have a lot of time to make up for and this time, Joker is not waiting for me on the bridge.” Laughing, we fell back into bed and began to do just that. Quite some time later, once more exhausted and smiling, we decided that it would be too hard for both of us if I went to the docking bay to see him off. He dressed and left, stopping for one last lingering kiss. I lay, sweaty and dozing, happy for the first time since my resurrection. I really need a shower, I thought and hauled myself into the bathroom once more.