Fic: All in a Day's Work- part 2
Bruised
“Anyone remember what planet we’re on?”
Irien looked over her shoulder at Kaidan and Garrus sitting behind her in the cramped quarters of the Mako. Garrus looked positively clueless - she was proud, as she realized this, that she’d been improving her skills at reading the body language of other races - and Kaidan looked so baffled by the question that she had to laugh.
He flushed in embarrassment, but grinned at her. “Commander, you’re the one who’s had us check out every chunk of rock in the galaxy,” he said with mock accusation in his tone. “How am I supposed to keep track of them all?”
“You’re the one who is supposedly good with maps and stuff,” she replied with a grin, looking skeptical.
“And yet you always drive!”
“Well, obviously with my superior reflexes-” she began, but she paused for a moment when she saw the look of surprise and some fear on Kaidan’s face.
“Brakes, Commander, brakes!!” he shouted.
As he said this, she realized that she’d had her foot on the accelerator while they’d been talking. She turned back to look out the front window just in time to see the world shift suddenly as she drove right off the edge of a cliff.
Oh shit, this is gonna hurt, Shepard thought with a mental sigh. Though she did her best to slow their fall with the thrusters on the bottom of the vehicle, there was only so much she could do, and the three of them held on tightly, trying to brace themselves against the sudden bounces and drops. She didn’t do a good enough job to make the fall less jarring, and her knee was slammed painfully against the metal front of the interior after one particularly harsh bounce.
They finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, right-side up fortunately, and all sat there in silence for a moment, all trying to calm themselves down. Irien looked back at Garrus and Kaidan. “You two all right?” she asked, slightly breathless. They both nodded wordlessly, and she nodded in reply. “Oh good. ‘Cause, I think I banged my knee up.” She reached down to poke at it through her armor and winced.
Kaidan squirmed up through the cramped quarters to get next to her. “You okay?” he asked, looking up at her in concern.
She nodded and grinned ruefully. “Not the worst injury I’ve ever had. I’ll live,” she grinned. “It might even teach me a lesson about watching where I drive.”
He reached over to pat her on the arm comfortingly. “Commander?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
He looked at her, his face completely serious. “How about I drive next time?”
They locked eyes for a few moments, completely silent, until Irien couldn’t contain her giggles anymore, and the two of them dissolved into helpless fits of laughter.
***
Broken
Shepard leaped out of the way of yet another rocket launched by Saren - or what was left of him after Sovereign had activated his implants. He’s awfully spry for a turian skeleton, she thought as she took careful aim and fired another few assault rifle rounds at him. He wasn’t looking so good anymore. Not that he looked so good to begin with, what with him being dead and all.
“Lift incoming, Shepard!” Kaidan shouted, and the Saren-zombie went flying slowly through the air, allowing her to fire uninterrupted without worrying about rockets coming her way.
Those bullets were the straw that broke the camel’s back - a horrible scream ripped through the air. Nothing living could make that sound, she thought grimly. Saren collapsed onto the ground and burned up in an unnatural red fire, leaving not even ashes behind.
Joker’s voice came through her comm. - he’d included her in his transmissions to the Arcturus fleet currently assaulting Sovereign. “Its shields are down! Now’s our chance!”
Liara and Kaidan approached her where she stood looking out the large windows of the tower, outside of which Sovereign was slowly falling over and glowing with uncontrolled red lightning. She turned to smile briefly at them. “Good work, guys,” she said with sincerity. It’s almost over, just let the fleet take Sovereign down... she thought, concerned but hopeful.
“Hit it with everything we’ve got!” Admiral Hackett commanded, and the sky outside the window lit up with the explosions as the ships launched their remaining missiles at the Reaper.
She caught sight of the Normandy, which flew high above the rest of the group then executed a perfect turn to angle back downwards. “Hard on my flank! We’re going in!” Joker called out. As he flew straight down, a missile scored a direct hit on Sovereign, causing a huge explosion through its middle before the entire body of the ship blew up.
Her lips slowly widened in a smile, and she felt as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. We won. It’s over. She started to turn around to leave, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a piece of the Reaper floating directly towards the tower. Though it was small compared to the other pieces, it was heading right for them - and would crush them all if they didn’t get out soon. She turned around to Kaidan and Liara, not bothering to hide the panic in her voice. “Go!” she shouted.
She didn’t know whether they saw the thing coming or not, but they both trusted her and instantly obeyed her order, turning to run as quickly as they could toward the stairs.
The piece of Sovereign hit the tower with a huge crash, ripping up the floor and making parts of the ceiling collapse on top of them. A large chunk of floor being torn up threw Shepard forward suddenly. She stretched out her arms to brace her fall when a good-sized part of the ceiling landed on top of her, crushing her left arm beneath it with a sickening crack and knocking her head into the floor.
She screamed in pain and shock and almost blacked out for a moment, but fought to stay conscious. She struggled with the chunk of rock, pushing it off of her with a grunt of effort. I’ve gotta find a place to avoid anything else falling on me, she thought, cradling her left arm, which she suspected was broken even through her tough armor. She crawled toward a leaning piece of the building a few feet away that seemed to be braced pretty well on another part, collapsing under it and panting with the effort it had taken to move.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. It seemed like forever, with the sharp pain in her arm making her conscious of every second that went by, but how long her “seconds” really were was a mystery, as time didn’t seem to be moving along at quite the same speed as normal. Her head was spinning from the knock she’d received. Being concussed doesn’t help with keeping track of time, she thought dryly.
Irien wondered what had happened to the others. She’d been able to protect herself - well, mostly - but had they made it to safety? Would the last thing she said to Kaidan be a command to run? And what if she didn’t make it out - and, she thought, this was quite possible. Would his memories of her be of a woman who only gave into her feelings for him when she thought she might die a few hours later? Would he think back on their missions together and remember all the people she’d shot and killed in front of him?
I want us to share more than violence and death, she thought, almost desperately. I never told him anything - I just kept all my secrets while he told me his whole life story. I want to tell him about growing up on starships, about going to military schools, about all the trouble I got in when I was younger. I never told him about my training, my teachers, my friends. She shook her head and felt tears welling up in her eyes. He even tried to get me to open up to him - he asked me about the Blitz, and I didn’t tell him a damn thing. He’ll just remember me as some dumb soldier who knew her number was up sooner rather than later and kept all her secrets to herself.
Her world narrowed to the rock that had protected her as thoughts of her past and of Kaidan raced through her mind. She wished he was there so she could tell him everything she was thinking, like she’d so failed to do before. It almost felt like she was drifting off to sleep - her world was so unclear, and every sound she thought she heard could have been real or a dream, she had no idea. At one point, she could have sworn that Kaidan walked up and offered his hand to her, but when she reached out to take it, her shoulder screaming at her in pain, she grabbed onto nothing, and whimpered slightly when she realized he was just a vision.
Eventually, she began to hear a sound consistently, not the sporadic voices in her mind of her friends coming to help her or Kaidan telling her to get off her ass and find him, not the echo of people in her memories, not her own mental voice chiding her for all the things she failed to do. The sound was louder, too, than the crackling of the flames burning the once-beautiful trees around the tower. Are those... voices? she wondered, struggling to sit up a little.
“Captain Anderson!” she heard a male voice call out, sounding excited. “We’ve found them! They’re in here.” Was there really someone there, or was it just a dream of rescue? There was a scraping sound of rock on rock then a loud thud - her concussion-dreams weren’t that vivid, as real as they seemed. Had they found Kaidan and Liara? Let them be all right, she thought desperately. Please don’t let them be hurt too badly.
“Take it easy. It’s over,” she heard a voice say faintly, echoing her thoughts from earlier. He sounds so familiar, she thought, but her thoughts seemed to be moving so slowly and she couldn’t place it. “You’re safe now.” It clicked. Captain Anderson - it’s Captain Anderson, and he’s coming personally to rescue us. She almost started crying again in relief. “Where’s the commander? Where’s Shepard?” she heard him ask.
There was no response that she heard - the two of them must have gotten further than she had, and hadn’t seen the ceiling hit her. She pushed herself to her feet with her good arm, nearly falling over in the attempt, and she started making her way toward where she thought the voices had come from. She stumbled a few times on the way, nearly falling, but she managed to keep her feet while cradling her broken arm to her chest. She clambered over pieces of building and Reaper, limping heavily.
Her movement made noise, which, she saw as she climbed a bigger piece, had gotten the attention of the rescue crew - someone from C-Sec was helping Liara stand up, while Kaidan was leaning heavily on Captain Anderson’s arm. They all turned at the sound of her footsteps, and the looks on their faces were so joyful that, even through all the pain she was feeling, she couldn’t help but smile. Just moments before, she had felt like she had no energy left, but seeing her friends alive and relatively unharmed gave her the strength to stumble up to them. A C-Sec worker approached and offered her his arm, but she waved him away and shook her head.
“Miss me?” Irien asked with a grin, her voice wavering a bit, and Captain Anderson laughed.
“You sure know how to make an entrance,” he told her, shaking his head in disbelief as she stopped next to him. She was unsteady on her feet, but she looked over at Kaidan, who hadn’t spoken to her yet, and he stepped closer to her and held out his arms to help her stand. She reached out with her good arm to give him a hug, but decided standing on her own was far too difficult and collapsed happily against him.
She looked up at him and smiled, unsure what to say, but he solved her speechlessness by leaning own to kiss her passionately. Surprised, but pleased, she returned the kiss, and heard Captain Anderson’s good-natured chuckles. She pulled away regretfully but with a smile.
“Don’t you ever,” Kaidan said forcefully, looking into her eyes, “scare me like that again.” He shook his head. “I thought I lost you,” he murmured.
She shook her head and reached up to touch his cheek gently. “You’ll never lose me,” she told him, and as he wrapped his arms around her for a hug, she leaned against his chest and closed her eyes, smiling and feeling like the luckiest person in the universe.
***
Not sprained
Shepard woke up shivering. Though she was groggily puzzled by this fact for a moment, she realized that the cause wasn’t a fever from an illness or fear from nightmares - it was simply that she was no longer covered with blankets. She sat up a little, rubbing her arms with her hands to warm up, and glanced at the clock on her table. 0200 hours. She had been dozing - among other things - on her bed since early evening. But, she thought with a smile, because a certain troublesome boyfriend of hers liked to stretch out and, apparently, steal all her covers, she had woken up freezing. She chuckled quietly to herself, unable to be angry even though he inadvertently woke her up, and rolled onto her right side, feeling completely and utterly relaxed.
Boyfriend, she thought with a smile as she looked at him. I can definitely get used to calling him my boyfriend. She felt like a giddy teenager who’d just been asked out on her first date - something she didn’t really get to experience as a teen, as she didn’t date much back then. She’d had relationships since then - she was 29 after all - but none of them had been very serious or lasted long, and none of her boyfriends had even come close to Kaidan. I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.
He looked perfectly content, she thought - his face, handsome as ever, had a hint of a smile, and she saw none of the worry lines that were usually present. She hated to wake him, but it would be impossible for her to get back to sleep, chilly as she was. She sat up fully and, without using her still-broken arm, attempted to slowly pull some blankets out from where he clutched them possessively to his chest.
Kaidan wasn’t a terribly heavy sleeper, and Shepard noticed his eyes fluttering as the movement disturbed him, waking him up. His eyelids slowly rose, and brown eyes met green as he smiled at her. He sat up a little, letting go of the blankets, and grinned, embarrassed, as he realized what she was doing.
“You’re a cover thief,” she told him matter-of-factly.
He attempted to look innocent, then flushed slightly. “I didn’t know,” he told her. “It’s been... a while since I shared a bed with anybody.”
She scooted over a bit and lay down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around her to pull her closer. “I’ll find some way to forgive you,” she said, her voice slightly muffled against his chest.
Kaidan chuckled, then shook his head as he gently touched her arm, which was still immobilized by a brace to facilitate quicker healing. “I’m sorry about this,” he told her, sounding a little sad as he looked at it. “I can’t believe I just ran off and left you behind when Sovereign hit the tower, I didn’t mean-”
“Shh,” she said, leaning up on her good elbow and touching his cheek gently. “I told you to run, didn’t I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
He shook his head. “I just- I know you don’t need me to, and I feel bad thinking it, but I still wish I could do more to protect you,” he said, meeting her eyes.
Oh Kaidan, she thought. What did I ever do to deserve you? “Kaidan, sweetheart,” she said, “I’m going to be hurting myself no matter what you do. Look!” She sat up and showed him her back, craning her head around and poking at her left shoulderblade enthusiastically. “Remember when I got shot here? You yelled for me to turn but I wasn’t quick enough. That was completely my fault. And then you helped me put medi-gel on to heal it.” He raised an eyebrow at her, so she continued. “And this-” She pulled her leg up, poking at the kneecap. “We were talking in the Mako and I drove us off a cliff. You even tried to warn me, but nope, I’m that bad of a driver.”
“But I got you pulled into the beacon on Eden Prime,” he told her pointedly.
“I’m glad you did,” she countered. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to deal with the headaches that thing caused along with the migraines from your implant.”
This seemed to give him pause, and she thought he would admit defeat, but he reached up to gently touch the scar on her eyebrow. “I asked you about this once,” he said quietly. “Elysium, you said. The Blitz.”
“I was rude,” Irien apologized, though it seemed to her that the hunt for Saren had gone on forever, and she barely remembered a time when she wasn’t in love with Kaidan. “It’s... I don’t really think about it very often. It’s not quite the perfect rescue of the colony everyone makes it out to be,” she said. She shook her head. “I used to blame myself, you know? I hated thinking about it because even though everyone praised me and gave me medals for it, I couldn’t help remembering the people I wasn’t able to save.”
He sat up and leaned forward to gently kiss the scar on her eyebrow. “We’ve all got scars,” he said as she leaned against him. “We’re all still healing.” Vyrnnus, she thought, and Rahna. She wondered if he would ever really forgive himself for what happened with his old teacher and the girl he used to love. “I just hope we can protect each other from getting any more of them.”
She kissed him. “You’re protecting me plenty,” she told him honestly, then smiled. “After all, you have managed to save me from one injury.”
Kaidan tilted his head slightly. “Oh yeah?” he asked curiously. “What’s that?”
She grinned wickedly. “I haven’t gotten any kind of sprain or anything. And considering what’s been going on, I count that as a miracle.”
He looked confused. “What are you- oh.” His face went bright red as he realized what she was talking about, and she laughed happily at her victory. “Oh, you think you’re funny, making me blush, hmm?” he asked, the color fading as he grinned at her. She nodded emphatically. “You are unbelievable, you know that?” he laughed. She tried to look innocent, but couldn’t keep a straight face as he pretended to scowl at her. He shook his head, then suddenly reached over to hug her tightly.
Pleasantly surprised by the affection, she hugged him back. “Not that I don’t enjoy these spontaneous hugs,” she said into the crook between his shoulder and neck, “but what was that for?”
“For bringing me on almost every mission,” he said, leaning to the right a bit to kiss her neck. She closed her eyes in happiness. “For putting up with me, even though I’m kind of a self-control freak sometimes,” he chuckled throatily, his kisses moving up her neck to her cheek. She was tempted for a moment to make a snarky comment - “Sometimes? More like all the time!” - but let it go for once. “For not getting offended that I want to protect you from everything bad in the galaxy,” he murmured, kissing along her jawbone. He leaned back and she opened her eyes to see him smiling at her. “For letting me into your life,” he said, gently touching her scar again.
She returned the smile. Her scars from Elysium had been something that kept them apart, she thought, just like his emotional ones from what had happened with Vyrnnus. They both had things from their past they thought would never heal.
She wanted to tell him how happy she was that he’d broken down those emotional walls around himself for her. She wished she could speak eloquently and cleverly like he always seemed to and tell him how he made her feel like a better person just by being around. We don’t need words, she thought. We understand each other. She leaned forward to kiss him without saying anything, and she could tell that he knew exactly what she was trying to tell him.
“Anyone remember what planet we’re on?”
Irien looked over her shoulder at Kaidan and Garrus sitting behind her in the cramped quarters of the Mako. Garrus looked positively clueless - she was proud, as she realized this, that she’d been improving her skills at reading the body language of other races - and Kaidan looked so baffled by the question that she had to laugh.
He flushed in embarrassment, but grinned at her. “Commander, you’re the one who’s had us check out every chunk of rock in the galaxy,” he said with mock accusation in his tone. “How am I supposed to keep track of them all?”
“You’re the one who is supposedly good with maps and stuff,” she replied with a grin, looking skeptical.
“And yet you always drive!”
“Well, obviously with my superior reflexes-” she began, but she paused for a moment when she saw the look of surprise and some fear on Kaidan’s face.
“Brakes, Commander, brakes!!” he shouted.
As he said this, she realized that she’d had her foot on the accelerator while they’d been talking. She turned back to look out the front window just in time to see the world shift suddenly as she drove right off the edge of a cliff.
Oh shit, this is gonna hurt, Shepard thought with a mental sigh. Though she did her best to slow their fall with the thrusters on the bottom of the vehicle, there was only so much she could do, and the three of them held on tightly, trying to brace themselves against the sudden bounces and drops. She didn’t do a good enough job to make the fall less jarring, and her knee was slammed painfully against the metal front of the interior after one particularly harsh bounce.
They finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, right-side up fortunately, and all sat there in silence for a moment, all trying to calm themselves down. Irien looked back at Garrus and Kaidan. “You two all right?” she asked, slightly breathless. They both nodded wordlessly, and she nodded in reply. “Oh good. ‘Cause, I think I banged my knee up.” She reached down to poke at it through her armor and winced.
Kaidan squirmed up through the cramped quarters to get next to her. “You okay?” he asked, looking up at her in concern.
She nodded and grinned ruefully. “Not the worst injury I’ve ever had. I’ll live,” she grinned. “It might even teach me a lesson about watching where I drive.”
He reached over to pat her on the arm comfortingly. “Commander?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
He looked at her, his face completely serious. “How about I drive next time?”
They locked eyes for a few moments, completely silent, until Irien couldn’t contain her giggles anymore, and the two of them dissolved into helpless fits of laughter.
***
Broken
Shepard leaped out of the way of yet another rocket launched by Saren - or what was left of him after Sovereign had activated his implants. He’s awfully spry for a turian skeleton, she thought as she took careful aim and fired another few assault rifle rounds at him. He wasn’t looking so good anymore. Not that he looked so good to begin with, what with him being dead and all.
“Lift incoming, Shepard!” Kaidan shouted, and the Saren-zombie went flying slowly through the air, allowing her to fire uninterrupted without worrying about rockets coming her way.
Those bullets were the straw that broke the camel’s back - a horrible scream ripped through the air. Nothing living could make that sound, she thought grimly. Saren collapsed onto the ground and burned up in an unnatural red fire, leaving not even ashes behind.
Joker’s voice came through her comm. - he’d included her in his transmissions to the Arcturus fleet currently assaulting Sovereign. “Its shields are down! Now’s our chance!”
Liara and Kaidan approached her where she stood looking out the large windows of the tower, outside of which Sovereign was slowly falling over and glowing with uncontrolled red lightning. She turned to smile briefly at them. “Good work, guys,” she said with sincerity. It’s almost over, just let the fleet take Sovereign down... she thought, concerned but hopeful.
“Hit it with everything we’ve got!” Admiral Hackett commanded, and the sky outside the window lit up with the explosions as the ships launched their remaining missiles at the Reaper.
She caught sight of the Normandy, which flew high above the rest of the group then executed a perfect turn to angle back downwards. “Hard on my flank! We’re going in!” Joker called out. As he flew straight down, a missile scored a direct hit on Sovereign, causing a huge explosion through its middle before the entire body of the ship blew up.
Her lips slowly widened in a smile, and she felt as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. We won. It’s over. She started to turn around to leave, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a piece of the Reaper floating directly towards the tower. Though it was small compared to the other pieces, it was heading right for them - and would crush them all if they didn’t get out soon. She turned around to Kaidan and Liara, not bothering to hide the panic in her voice. “Go!” she shouted.
She didn’t know whether they saw the thing coming or not, but they both trusted her and instantly obeyed her order, turning to run as quickly as they could toward the stairs.
The piece of Sovereign hit the tower with a huge crash, ripping up the floor and making parts of the ceiling collapse on top of them. A large chunk of floor being torn up threw Shepard forward suddenly. She stretched out her arms to brace her fall when a good-sized part of the ceiling landed on top of her, crushing her left arm beneath it with a sickening crack and knocking her head into the floor.
She screamed in pain and shock and almost blacked out for a moment, but fought to stay conscious. She struggled with the chunk of rock, pushing it off of her with a grunt of effort. I’ve gotta find a place to avoid anything else falling on me, she thought, cradling her left arm, which she suspected was broken even through her tough armor. She crawled toward a leaning piece of the building a few feet away that seemed to be braced pretty well on another part, collapsing under it and panting with the effort it had taken to move.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. It seemed like forever, with the sharp pain in her arm making her conscious of every second that went by, but how long her “seconds” really were was a mystery, as time didn’t seem to be moving along at quite the same speed as normal. Her head was spinning from the knock she’d received. Being concussed doesn’t help with keeping track of time, she thought dryly.
Irien wondered what had happened to the others. She’d been able to protect herself - well, mostly - but had they made it to safety? Would the last thing she said to Kaidan be a command to run? And what if she didn’t make it out - and, she thought, this was quite possible. Would his memories of her be of a woman who only gave into her feelings for him when she thought she might die a few hours later? Would he think back on their missions together and remember all the people she’d shot and killed in front of him?
I want us to share more than violence and death, she thought, almost desperately. I never told him anything - I just kept all my secrets while he told me his whole life story. I want to tell him about growing up on starships, about going to military schools, about all the trouble I got in when I was younger. I never told him about my training, my teachers, my friends. She shook her head and felt tears welling up in her eyes. He even tried to get me to open up to him - he asked me about the Blitz, and I didn’t tell him a damn thing. He’ll just remember me as some dumb soldier who knew her number was up sooner rather than later and kept all her secrets to herself.
Her world narrowed to the rock that had protected her as thoughts of her past and of Kaidan raced through her mind. She wished he was there so she could tell him everything she was thinking, like she’d so failed to do before. It almost felt like she was drifting off to sleep - her world was so unclear, and every sound she thought she heard could have been real or a dream, she had no idea. At one point, she could have sworn that Kaidan walked up and offered his hand to her, but when she reached out to take it, her shoulder screaming at her in pain, she grabbed onto nothing, and whimpered slightly when she realized he was just a vision.
Eventually, she began to hear a sound consistently, not the sporadic voices in her mind of her friends coming to help her or Kaidan telling her to get off her ass and find him, not the echo of people in her memories, not her own mental voice chiding her for all the things she failed to do. The sound was louder, too, than the crackling of the flames burning the once-beautiful trees around the tower. Are those... voices? she wondered, struggling to sit up a little.
“Captain Anderson!” she heard a male voice call out, sounding excited. “We’ve found them! They’re in here.” Was there really someone there, or was it just a dream of rescue? There was a scraping sound of rock on rock then a loud thud - her concussion-dreams weren’t that vivid, as real as they seemed. Had they found Kaidan and Liara? Let them be all right, she thought desperately. Please don’t let them be hurt too badly.
“Take it easy. It’s over,” she heard a voice say faintly, echoing her thoughts from earlier. He sounds so familiar, she thought, but her thoughts seemed to be moving so slowly and she couldn’t place it. “You’re safe now.” It clicked. Captain Anderson - it’s Captain Anderson, and he’s coming personally to rescue us. She almost started crying again in relief. “Where’s the commander? Where’s Shepard?” she heard him ask.
There was no response that she heard - the two of them must have gotten further than she had, and hadn’t seen the ceiling hit her. She pushed herself to her feet with her good arm, nearly falling over in the attempt, and she started making her way toward where she thought the voices had come from. She stumbled a few times on the way, nearly falling, but she managed to keep her feet while cradling her broken arm to her chest. She clambered over pieces of building and Reaper, limping heavily.
Her movement made noise, which, she saw as she climbed a bigger piece, had gotten the attention of the rescue crew - someone from C-Sec was helping Liara stand up, while Kaidan was leaning heavily on Captain Anderson’s arm. They all turned at the sound of her footsteps, and the looks on their faces were so joyful that, even through all the pain she was feeling, she couldn’t help but smile. Just moments before, she had felt like she had no energy left, but seeing her friends alive and relatively unharmed gave her the strength to stumble up to them. A C-Sec worker approached and offered her his arm, but she waved him away and shook her head.
“Miss me?” Irien asked with a grin, her voice wavering a bit, and Captain Anderson laughed.
“You sure know how to make an entrance,” he told her, shaking his head in disbelief as she stopped next to him. She was unsteady on her feet, but she looked over at Kaidan, who hadn’t spoken to her yet, and he stepped closer to her and held out his arms to help her stand. She reached out with her good arm to give him a hug, but decided standing on her own was far too difficult and collapsed happily against him.
She looked up at him and smiled, unsure what to say, but he solved her speechlessness by leaning own to kiss her passionately. Surprised, but pleased, she returned the kiss, and heard Captain Anderson’s good-natured chuckles. She pulled away regretfully but with a smile.
“Don’t you ever,” Kaidan said forcefully, looking into her eyes, “scare me like that again.” He shook his head. “I thought I lost you,” he murmured.
She shook her head and reached up to touch his cheek gently. “You’ll never lose me,” she told him, and as he wrapped his arms around her for a hug, she leaned against his chest and closed her eyes, smiling and feeling like the luckiest person in the universe.
***
Not sprained
Shepard woke up shivering. Though she was groggily puzzled by this fact for a moment, she realized that the cause wasn’t a fever from an illness or fear from nightmares - it was simply that she was no longer covered with blankets. She sat up a little, rubbing her arms with her hands to warm up, and glanced at the clock on her table. 0200 hours. She had been dozing - among other things - on her bed since early evening. But, she thought with a smile, because a certain troublesome boyfriend of hers liked to stretch out and, apparently, steal all her covers, she had woken up freezing. She chuckled quietly to herself, unable to be angry even though he inadvertently woke her up, and rolled onto her right side, feeling completely and utterly relaxed.
Boyfriend, she thought with a smile as she looked at him. I can definitely get used to calling him my boyfriend. She felt like a giddy teenager who’d just been asked out on her first date - something she didn’t really get to experience as a teen, as she didn’t date much back then. She’d had relationships since then - she was 29 after all - but none of them had been very serious or lasted long, and none of her boyfriends had even come close to Kaidan. I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.
He looked perfectly content, she thought - his face, handsome as ever, had a hint of a smile, and she saw none of the worry lines that were usually present. She hated to wake him, but it would be impossible for her to get back to sleep, chilly as she was. She sat up fully and, without using her still-broken arm, attempted to slowly pull some blankets out from where he clutched them possessively to his chest.
Kaidan wasn’t a terribly heavy sleeper, and Shepard noticed his eyes fluttering as the movement disturbed him, waking him up. His eyelids slowly rose, and brown eyes met green as he smiled at her. He sat up a little, letting go of the blankets, and grinned, embarrassed, as he realized what she was doing.
“You’re a cover thief,” she told him matter-of-factly.
He attempted to look innocent, then flushed slightly. “I didn’t know,” he told her. “It’s been... a while since I shared a bed with anybody.”
She scooted over a bit and lay down next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as he put his arm around her to pull her closer. “I’ll find some way to forgive you,” she said, her voice slightly muffled against his chest.
Kaidan chuckled, then shook his head as he gently touched her arm, which was still immobilized by a brace to facilitate quicker healing. “I’m sorry about this,” he told her, sounding a little sad as he looked at it. “I can’t believe I just ran off and left you behind when Sovereign hit the tower, I didn’t mean-”
“Shh,” she said, leaning up on her good elbow and touching his cheek gently. “I told you to run, didn’t I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
He shook his head. “I just- I know you don’t need me to, and I feel bad thinking it, but I still wish I could do more to protect you,” he said, meeting her eyes.
Oh Kaidan, she thought. What did I ever do to deserve you? “Kaidan, sweetheart,” she said, “I’m going to be hurting myself no matter what you do. Look!” She sat up and showed him her back, craning her head around and poking at her left shoulderblade enthusiastically. “Remember when I got shot here? You yelled for me to turn but I wasn’t quick enough. That was completely my fault. And then you helped me put medi-gel on to heal it.” He raised an eyebrow at her, so she continued. “And this-” She pulled her leg up, poking at the kneecap. “We were talking in the Mako and I drove us off a cliff. You even tried to warn me, but nope, I’m that bad of a driver.”
“But I got you pulled into the beacon on Eden Prime,” he told her pointedly.
“I’m glad you did,” she countered. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to deal with the headaches that thing caused along with the migraines from your implant.”
This seemed to give him pause, and she thought he would admit defeat, but he reached up to gently touch the scar on her eyebrow. “I asked you about this once,” he said quietly. “Elysium, you said. The Blitz.”
“I was rude,” Irien apologized, though it seemed to her that the hunt for Saren had gone on forever, and she barely remembered a time when she wasn’t in love with Kaidan. “It’s... I don’t really think about it very often. It’s not quite the perfect rescue of the colony everyone makes it out to be,” she said. She shook her head. “I used to blame myself, you know? I hated thinking about it because even though everyone praised me and gave me medals for it, I couldn’t help remembering the people I wasn’t able to save.”
He sat up and leaned forward to gently kiss the scar on her eyebrow. “We’ve all got scars,” he said as she leaned against him. “We’re all still healing.” Vyrnnus, she thought, and Rahna. She wondered if he would ever really forgive himself for what happened with his old teacher and the girl he used to love. “I just hope we can protect each other from getting any more of them.”
She kissed him. “You’re protecting me plenty,” she told him honestly, then smiled. “After all, you have managed to save me from one injury.”
Kaidan tilted his head slightly. “Oh yeah?” he asked curiously. “What’s that?”
She grinned wickedly. “I haven’t gotten any kind of sprain or anything. And considering what’s been going on, I count that as a miracle.”
He looked confused. “What are you- oh.” His face went bright red as he realized what she was talking about, and she laughed happily at her victory. “Oh, you think you’re funny, making me blush, hmm?” he asked, the color fading as he grinned at her. She nodded emphatically. “You are unbelievable, you know that?” he laughed. She tried to look innocent, but couldn’t keep a straight face as he pretended to scowl at her. He shook his head, then suddenly reached over to hug her tightly.
Pleasantly surprised by the affection, she hugged him back. “Not that I don’t enjoy these spontaneous hugs,” she said into the crook between his shoulder and neck, “but what was that for?”
“For bringing me on almost every mission,” he said, leaning to the right a bit to kiss her neck. She closed her eyes in happiness. “For putting up with me, even though I’m kind of a self-control freak sometimes,” he chuckled throatily, his kisses moving up her neck to her cheek. She was tempted for a moment to make a snarky comment - “Sometimes? More like all the time!” - but let it go for once. “For not getting offended that I want to protect you from everything bad in the galaxy,” he murmured, kissing along her jawbone. He leaned back and she opened her eyes to see him smiling at her. “For letting me into your life,” he said, gently touching her scar again.
She returned the smile. Her scars from Elysium had been something that kept them apart, she thought, just like his emotional ones from what had happened with Vyrnnus. They both had things from their past they thought would never heal.
She wanted to tell him how happy she was that he’d broken down those emotional walls around himself for her. She wished she could speak eloquently and cleverly like he always seemed to and tell him how he made her feel like a better person just by being around. We don’t need words, she thought. We understand each other. She leaned forward to kiss him without saying anything, and she could tell that he knew exactly what she was trying to tell him.