#i should just change the name of this fic to kaidan lies around on the ground crying

[infiltraitor-n7]

After Alchera, herons and hamsters

I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | VIV | X | XI |  ao3

Here is a sliver of time, snicked from the shockingly small amount they had been given, that he could never shake the feeling that he hadn’t hoarded properly, that he had wasted, seconds spilling over the edges as he carelessly assumed seconds would turn into minutes into hours into months into years into the rest of their lives, as if time were a rifle with an endless clip—

Watching a vid, blue light flickering across the white walls, under a blanket even though they were both sweating, slick skin sticky where they pressed into each other. The sharp planes of her shoulder were hard under his cheek, but she absently ran her fingers through his hair and he didn’t want to move in case she came back to herself and stopped. The hamster, toted around with Shepard anytime she knew she’d be on shore leave, huddled in its wheel, framed by the window.

The marines on the screen encountered the enemy on foot and one performed a particularly graceful move that broke her opponent’s neck, the snap vivid through the speakers. Shepard made a happy, satisfied sound.

They had worked out a deal: for every action vid Shepard wanted to watch, they watched one of Kaidan’s soap operas. He never understood why someone whose job it was to kill would want to watch actors pretend to do it in their downtime.

“It’s soothing to see the fake,” she had said.

“The fake?”

“Yeah, when they do something impossible, that would never actually work in life, but the music is swelling and everyone is good looking and the good guys win.”

“So good guys winning is fake?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We’re the good guys, Shepard,” he had said, and she had looked at him with that expression he could never read.

“You’re a good guy,” she had finally said, curling her palm around the back of his neck.

“So I’m not gonna win, huh?”

“S’why I’m here. To make sure you do anyway.”

He had stared at her, but she had just turned back to watching, making pleased noises every time the bullets found their mark.

He had worried that she would be bored watching his soaps, but she seemed to take as much satisfaction from watching the characters break each other with words as she did when they used weapons.

“That was fucking clever,” she had said, after a particularly well-played villain machination that ended with the love interest turning their back on their true love.

“I thought you liked seeing the good guys win?” he had asked.

“Yeah but it’s a soap, right? There will be a happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t mean shit unless our couple goes through some shit.”

He had snorted, and the music had swelled.

Now, in this remembered sliver of time, she suddenly jerked, as if she had seen something in her periphery (even when she was resting, she was watching), and she sat up, neck stretching as her eyes searched for the movement. He made a little sound, a hitched breath of complaint, and he reached for her but she said, “Look,” and he looked.

A heron sat perched on the balcony railing on the other side of the window.

They watched in silence, the vid paused, as the large bird tilted its head, as its wings shifted, as the moon’s reflection from the water dappled across its hunched form.

“I’ve never seen one in real life,” she whispered.

“There are a lot around here. The orchard is in the middle of a wild bird refuge,” he murmured back.

“That fucker is majestic.”

“You think that until you hear it squawk. Their calls are not exactly pretty.”

“Don’t ruin the illusion, Alenko.”

The hamster in the window must have finally seen the bird then, because it started running frantically, the clattering of the wheel spinning shattering the silence. The heron lifted, flapped, and sailed out into the dark.

“Good job, Captain Ham. If that had been a frag grenade, you’d be dead,” she informed the hamster.

“At least you get to keep your illusions for a while longer,” he said.

She reached out and picked up her beer bottle, offering him a swig. “Let’s drink to that.” She smiled, and pulled him down onto her shoulder again, rough fingers dragging through his wild hair as gunfire filled the room again.

Now, standing in her apartment on Arcturus, Kaidan wonders if the hamster’s frantic, futile running hadn’t been some kind of metaphor, as his heart thuds in the silence. In his mind he fingers that sliver of time, bracing for the inevitable cut as he traces the moment’s contours. He steps cautiously, as if the place is rigged with trip mines, but then jerks to a halt as he notices that the small space doesn’t smell like her— but why would it, when she hadn’t been in this apartment in months, in over a year maybe. The air filtration system had probably sucked all scent of her from the confined space and been pumping in neutral, recycled oxygen through all those seconds minutes hours days he had spent with her across the galaxy.

He had gone to her attorney, and he had learned that she had left him everything, somewhere between their gunfights and careening across distant planets, Wrex blowing chunks in the back of the Mako, between their frenzied fucking in the downtimes and their laughter in the canteen as Ash and Garrus arm-wrestled and Tali recorded for posterity and credits changed hands as bets were won and lost. Somewhere in between she had written a will and he knows now that her betting wasn’t just for laughs— when she scored at the casinos, she’d set aside sums for investment, and she had a fat pile of financial assets that she had never touched because she was busy saving the galaxy instead of spending credits.

He stands now, in her private space that doesn’t smell like her, hands loose at his sides, wondering about all the things he’ll never know about her. He knew that she had grown up poor on Mindoir. Maybe that’s why she had been so careful with all of her careless winnings— that reckless compulsion to win, tempered with the fear-propelled need to save the results.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know why he has come here. He has no plans to empty the apartment, and he has no plans to live in it. The attorney had given him the access codes per Shep’s will, and he had avoided even thinking about them. But today he woke up and found himself standing in front of the door, his arm lifted so that his omni-tool could do its thing. He had stopped, chest shuddering as terror began to garrote him. People swept past, going about their normal unfucked lives, and he struggled to look normal while his throat choked itself. He called Ishida.

“Kaidan.” His shrink squinted at him through the vidscreen.

“Hiya.”

“You look like shit, what happened?” He tilted his head, and Kaidan knew he was looking at what was behind him, his clever mind ticking through possibilities.

“I’m at Shep’s apartment.”

Ishida just waited.

“I’m scared,” Kaidan cleared his throat.

“Of what?”

“Dunno.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Yeah.” Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck. He watched Ishida watching him, and felt the terror slowly bleed out of him. After a few minutes, he could think straight. “I guess I was afraid of how much it’s going to hurt to step inside there and see all of her things, and,” he paused, breathed. He made a little flailing gesture, but of course Ishida couldn’t see it— the movement  just waved the vidscreen around. He continued. “See all these bits of her that I never knew about while she was alive. See her things when she hadn’t prepared for me to see them, you know? Like I’m trespassing, or something.”

“But it’s not her apartment anymore. It’s yours,” Ishida said.

“Yeah, but—”

“She must have wanted you to see what was in there. She wouldn’t have left it to you if she hadn’t.”

Kaidan didn’t respond. He thought about Shepard saying that she was always prepared to— he blinked. That she was always prepared to die. At any moment. That it was just her job.

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to meet you there? I know your ass is all alone out here, so if you need someone to be with you, I can take the time out of my exceedingly busy schedule to hold your hand,” Ishida said evenly. Kaidan snorted. Somehow he had gotten used to how his therapist said the rudest things in the most genteel tone of voice.

“No. It’s fine.” He took a deep breath. “I can do this. Thanks, Doc.”

“I know you can,” Ishida said, and then promptly disconnected.

Kaidan squared his shoulders, and entered the apartment.

Now, he shakes his head again. He inhales deeply, but it just smells like Arcturus always smells. He is surprised to see the place is filled with plants. Vines and ferns and cacti and some little bushes with delicate little flowers blooming. She must have some sort of automatic hydration system, because he knows no one has been in here since before her death. He had no idea she had any interest in botany. He drifts further into the apartment, notices how the plants are pretty much the only decoration so far. No art. No personal knick knacks. Just a riot of green, and dishes strewn across the kitchen counter. The lack of Shepardness after all that fear of falling apart in her personal space is almost like a punch to his solar plexus. He sags and moves towards the bedroom.

As he turns, he spots a pile of clothing stacked sloppily in the corner. He blinks, then almost breaks his knee against the coffee table in his frantic scramble to reach it.

“Fuck,” he chokes, hopping a little as he grabs the first garment his hands touch and shoves his face in it.

He gasps and hears himself laughing, shrilly. The hoodie stinks. Like cigarettes . He pauses. Sniffs again. Like cigarettes and… tequila? But also, underneath, like her. She never smelled like flowers, or fruit. She just smelled like her. Skin and sweat and gun oil and coffee. He is laughing because of course her dirty clothes reek of some shitty bar and of course they’re piled in the corner and thank the universe or the Goddess or whoever else that she was such a reckless slob sometimes because now he is pulling the hoodie over his head and it is stretching painfully across his broad shoulders but he’s surrounded by Shepard’s smell and he can almost feel her lying beside him on the floor, hungover as hell, both their mouths dry and horrible with morning breath, and her laughing in his face anyway, throwing an arm around his waist and saying, “Fuck it’s too early.”

“Really, if you think about it, time as we measure it planetside has no meaning in space,” he would say. “No early, no late.”

“Bullshit. It’s too fucking early for you to be philosophical. I have a headache that makes me sympathize with your biotic ass headaches and I don’t like sympathizing,” she groaned.

“Uh, the proper term is migraines, and no matter how crazy you’ve partied in the past, you have no idea how bad they are,” he placed his index finger on her nose and tapped. “No. Idea.”

“Not. Helping,” she bit out, tapping his belly with her knuckles before sloppily kissing him.

Now, he knows he would probably look unhinged if anyone were watching, but he drags the rest of the clothing back into the living area and spreads the pieces around himself. He bunches up a pair of her cargo pants and lays his head on them, curls in on himself right there on floor, arms around his knees, and he breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

He slips into sleep.

He dreams he is watching a flock of herons in space from the Normandy’s deck, wings eclipsing swathes of stars. He is confused because he has never seen herons fly together; they are always alone, perched gracefully at the edge of the water, their grating calls wrecking the peaceful view. Shepard is there, but for some reason her hair is shorn, her neck exposed, and he wants to run his fingers up the soft down on the back of her head—he reaches to fist his hand in the longer tufts on top and pull her back to kiss her, but she twists away and begins to unbolt the window, one bolt at a time, each chunk of metal hitting the deck like seconds ticking on an antique clock. He realizes she’s going to detach the window and dive in among the birds out there in the vacuum, and there is nothing he can do to stop her but he doesn’t know why. All he can hear is a hamster wheel spinning and the bolts striking the floor, one after another.

He jerks awake, and his back hurts, because he is on the floor. He is crying again, arms and legs flung out, his shoulders aching from the stretch and reminding him how hunched over he has held his body for months. He clutches at the sweatshirt and yanks it up to his nose and inhales, and the reasons behind the bar stench soaking the fabric make him cry harder, because he wonders now, even if she hadn’t died over Alchera, maybe he would have lost her in another way— to red sand, to the bottom of a glass, to her own twitchy fingers and filthy mouth and fragile neck and reckless disregard for her own safety. He can’t believe himself, how many seconds minutes hours days months he wasted believing that the time they had was an infinity clip, that he had all the time in the universe to learn all the things he didn’t know about her, instead of exploiting each ticking moment like the digits counting down on a time bomb. He hates every nanosecond he spent not looking, not asking, not demanding, not licking, not inhaling. The regret is crushing the meat of his heart, the self-loathing drenching him like an oil spill. His shrink said to just feel it. So he feels it. He keeps the hoodie’s neckline pulled up over his nose, like an oxygen mask, as his breaths come hard and ragged, and he lets his body throb with the missing of Shepard.

Eventually, in time, the time he burns through so carelessly, he stops crying—the inside of the sweatshirt is slick with his snot and tears. He sits up. He gathers the clothes he had spread all around himself and takes them to the little washing unit and puts them inside and hits the button before he can change his mind. He keeps the damp and now truly disgusting hoodie on as he turns to face the empty apartment, to begin sifting through the layers of Shepard’s life, a clumsy archaeologist amidst the ruins of her abandoned things.