#look how cute the new palm pals cow is

[strawberry-playstation]

[ljandersen]

(Femshep/Kaidan Alenko, Mass Effect 3, Chapter 1 but works as a one shot)

Shepard’s ribs shrank tighter each passing minute.  Each minute they hadn’t reached the Citadel. When it happened the air had stopped moving.  The only sound she could hear was her own heartbeat. Then he fell limp, helmet lolling to the side.  The reality of it – Kaidan dead – felt like getting torn out an airlock. One moment everything’s safe, your boots are on solid ground, each breath alive with oxygen.  As it should be. The next, everything’s depressurizing, alarming, and you’re sucked into the vacuum of space, spinning and clawing at emptiness, gasping for breath. Like dying.  Her experience of it anyway.  

But he wasn’t dead.  He lay on a metal bed in front of her chair.  The med bay’s fluorescents flickered overhead giving his skin a waxiness she only saw on corpses.  She hunched forward. The folding chair wobbled and tipped her forward. One leg was too short.  It would drive Kaidan crazy if he was sitting here. 

She smiled despite herself.  “You remember the folding chairs, Kaidan?  Our ground team debrief. I’d always set up a circle in the corner of the cargo hold.  And after Feros? You can’t pretend you don’t remember. The wobbly chair. I could see it eating at you the whole time.  Each time you shifted your face would get more strained, jaw tightening, nostrils flaring. You started to sit ramrod straight.  Absolutely still. May have kept the meeting going a little longer than needed, I admit. Began to walk around as I spoke, brush against your shoulder.  Your chair would wobble. About the fourth pass, you started shooting me a death glare every time I came by your chair. Ha.  

"The moment the meeting ended, you smacked the chair upside down and started working at the feet.  I bent down, opened my palm. The missing cap for the back chair leg. Your face! You were all sputtery.  How did I even know where you would sit? I pointed around at all the chairs and dropped a pocketful of caps at your feet.  One for each chair, every back, right leg. Every one but mine. No one else even noticed. It only bothered you. Like I knew it would.”

She laughed and folded her hands on the edge of the metal table.  Bruises marbled his features, dark and growing like a shadow. Her laughter choked.  She cleared her throat and gave him a tight smile.  

“Remember the next debriefing?  Do you remember, Kaidan? You thought I wasn’t looking when you came in.  You exchanged our chairs. You had this cute, little canary-savoring smile when I turned around.  Adorable. But I suspected what you’d do. I even looked away so you could do it. You plopped down, smug smile, and … well, we both know what happened, don’t we?” 

Shepard scrapped her seat closer to him.  “I just meant to bother you, you know. Another wobbly chair, and I knew you’d be checking out the chair’s feet when you came in.  Couldn’t pull the same trick. I just … ha, I didn’t mean for it to break on you. Not completely.  A little too much aplomb in your victory drop onto the seat, I guess.  I still remember Liara yelling, ‘Oh, Goddess!’ and clutching her chest like she’d seen you shot. Garrus had to figure out what the hell happened. He bolted over, flipped the chair over, and found the loose hinge with an ‘ah ya.’  Then there was Ash, tearing up and pounding her leg. If Wrex and Tali had been with the ground team, you really would have had an audience. Krogan laughter shakes walls. You frowned at me, then dusted yourself off with an ‘oh, clumsy me’ shrug for everyone else.  You were so pleased with yourself before your ass hit the floor.  I remember you lurking in the doorway, seeing which chair I sat in. It didn’t wobble on me. Kept all my weight on my heels, pal. I knew your methods.”

He was so still.  For one cold second, she thought he was dead.  She lifted her fingers to his face and felt his breath, soft and faint.  The pressure released from her lungs.  Her fingertips crested over each lip.  Just a second to feel the softness of – She sat back sharply and cleared her throat. , 

“Anyway, you’re a good sport, Kaidan.  Still sorry it broke on you. Said as much when I caught you alone later raiding the mess.”  Shepard worked his gauntlet off and dropped it on the floor. She held his hand. His skin was cool, like his blood was already slowing.  Shepard bit her lips and concentrated on his face instead.  

“Remember how you got back at me?  And don’t tell me it wasn’t premeditated.  I still don’t believe you. It was Noveria, remember?

“They let me keep my gun, then put me through that little security tap and dance number.  I was posing for my dumbass clearance badge, and you cracked that stupid birthing cow joke.  For the record, I was laughing at you, not the joke.  That joke might be a showstopper at a seven-year-old’s birthday party, but uh, you need to adult-up your jokes.  Seriously, as a marine, I’m embarrassed you don’t know more dirty jokes.  Or maybe you do.  You better not have a cache of dirty jokes and still chose to give me the birthing cow one.” 

She traced his fingers.  She remembered his fingers intertwining with hers.  His hands holding her face.  Remembered the way he stroked her hair when Ash died, his face pressed down in her hair, his breath wet and catching.  She worked her fingers between his and squeezed his palm.

“Anyway, stop getting me off topic.  I’m complaining about Noveria.  You told me your damn decalf-einated joke.  I laughed.  At you.  And that was the snapshot they got.  I hollered for a redo, but you tap this sign on the wall.  Then that bitchy security guard started tapping it too.  No retakes.  No retakes!  Like a delete and re-click takes more time than walking over to tap a plastic sign on the wall.  Your picture, Ash’s picture – both serious, stern, soldierly.  Me?  You can see the back of my throat.  Hair in my mouth, one eye half closed.   It’s lucky I didn’t have snot bubbling from my nose.  Now, you can’t tell me that wasn’t premeditated, Alenko.  Maybe premeditated by minutes, the seconds between seeing the sign and dredging up your kid’s birthday party joke, but still.  Premeditated.

“I had to clip that picture to my chest.  Got barked at every time I tried to turn the picture around.  I just acted like it was an accident.  ‘Oh, really?  Turned around again?  You don’t say.’  And the screens, Kaidan!  If their greeting wasn’t a warm enough welcome, they flash my face over every screen in the compound.  A friendly reminder to let everyone know a Spectre was on the premise.  To encourage compliance with my investigation.  You never bought that either, right?  Yeah, no.  I didn’t think so.  Clearly keeping everyone on alert so they wouldn’t comply.  And that lovely security picture?  ‘Spectre Shepard is here.’  The dignified Spectre on all the giant screens haw-hawing, one-eye squeezed shut.  We’d come around a new corner and bam!  Another screen of it.  Then I’d hear the punchline of the birthing cow joke.  You whispering ‘decalf-einated’ at my back.  Ash snickering.  Imagine if the press had a copy of that picture?  You have a copy somewhere, don’t you?  Don’t even answer.  I know you do.”

She pressed his hand between hers and drew in a shaky breath.  His eyelids were blackening, no movement, not even dreaming.  The bruises deepened over his entire face.  She squeezed his hand and forced another smile.  He had changed so much.

“You had a nice trick back there, Kaidan,” Shepard whispered.  “Liara called it Reaving.  Fancy.  Trying to impress me?  You did.  You’re so confident too.  Bearing, voice, no more oscillating, hesitancy.  Good idea with the tram, with the short-range radio, that ambush in the control room.  I’d like to see you on the field directing a team.  Always knew you were special.  Leadership material if you’d only ever make a decision and not hold back, believe in yourself.  I always believed in you.  But you knew that didn’t you, Kaidan?”

His skin swelled across his cheeks and around his eyes.  His face was expressionless.  Vacant.  Because he’s dying.  Her heart twisted.  She sucked in a breath.

“It can’t end like this, Kaidan.”  She touched his jaw.  A light touch.  She didn’t want to make anything worse.  If his face was swollen, broken, and bruised, what did his brain look like?  That sharp, intense mind she missed.  She may have come back from the dead but he wouldn’t.  “The last thing we say to each other can’t be our words on Mars.  I’m not a husk, Kaidan, or the Illusive Man’s puppet.  Against all odds, I’m really, really not.  And I’m alive.  Maybe some new parts.  No one should see machinery glowing through their skin, but I’m still me.  What counts is here.  Right here.”

“Commander?” Jokers’ voice came overhead.

Shepard rocked back in her chair.  “Joker?  ETA?”

“Seven minutes out.  Medical transport standing by.”

“Good.”  Shepard stood.  She brushed her fingertips on his lips and felt the slow breath.  “Keep that up.  The breathing.  Unconscious part?  I’ll allow it for now, I guess.”  She ran her eyes over him.  Scuffed and bloody armor, black and blue face, his hair in disarray.  She touched his hair.  A faint energy crackled across her skin.  His biotics.  Her heart lifted.  It was like feeling the pulse of his heartbeat.  It showed he hadn’t gone.  He had to live.  She wanted to remember him face flushed and alive, not a shell with the soul draining away.

“Seven minutes, Kaidan,” she said.  Something from Mars came to mind, and her lips curve up.  She looked him in the face.  “I’m the person you loved, huh?  Said the same thing on Horizon.  Might have been nice to hear when it was present tense.  Before I died.  I’ll give you a pass though.  I’ve only told my parents that.  So, you got me beat even by putting it in the past.  Is it really so past, though, Kaidan?”  

She brushed his hair back again and chuckled.  “And, just so you know, Major, the hell I will ‘Kaidan’ you again.  You haven’t heard the last of it.  Ha.  And, I’ll mess with your folding chair.  Don’t put it past me.”  She bent down, hesitated – maybe she shouldn’t – she stamped a kiss on his check and pulled back with a snap.  “Five second rule.  So, uh, doesn’t count.  Not taking advantage of you.  If this was a fairy tale, you’d be thanking me right now.”

The med bay door slid open.  Liara swished into the room.  “Shepard, we’re almost there.  We should get him down to the bay.  Is he still …”

“Yes.  He is.”

“I’ll get James with the stretcher.”  She dashed away.

Shepard turned back to Kaidan and squeezed his shoulder.  “Hey, what do you call a cow that just gave birth?”  She rubbed a hand across her face and sniffled.  “I’ll find you some better material, Kaidan.  So … stand by.”

James and Liara burst into the med bay with a stretcher.  Shepard took the end from Liara and angled it next to his bed. 

“Let’s move him out.”

AO3:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/21369139/chapters/50901124  

FF:  https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13428855/1/About-Mars-Mass-Effect

Cover art (my sister): @ande2339 (Instagram)