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Kaidan was laying in his hospital bed, the pale environment of the room was cold and sterile. He’d already memorized his surroundings in the few hours he’d been awake. Most of the the monitors he was hooked up to were behind his head, which made it hard to see the information on them. They created the only noises he could hear, besides his own breathing. He’d figured out which one was monitoring his heartbeat, since it beeped in time with the pounding of his head. Luckily, the migraine that he woke up with was dulled by the pain meds that the doctor had given him. Rather than focus on the muted metal around him, he took to watching the hovercars speed past the window of his room. It was a reminder that life was still going on, even with the Reaper threat looming over everyone’s heads.
The Reapers - the very thing that Shepard was out there trying to figure out how to fight. He’s couldn’t deny that he had been disappointed once he realized that she wasn’t there when he woke up. He had wanted to send her a message as soon as he woke up, but the doctors wouldn’t give him his Omni-Tool, stating some sort of procedures that had to be followed. He was starting to form the argument to get him his Omni-Tool back so that he could make sure that Shepard was alright. He wasn’t even sure if she wanted to see him, considering how he’d been acting on Mars. When he heard the door whizz open, Kaidan turned, ready to state his case to the doctor, but cut himself off when he saw Garrus was standing there.
"Kaidan." It wasn't a greeting, it wasn't a question.... It was an accusation. The Turian who spoke to him now was not the same one that he remembered from two years ago. The former C-Sec operative sat on the chair next to his hospital bed, keeping his eyes staring straight out the window. If it weren’t for the fact that his eyes nor facial plates moved, he would have thought that Garrus was admiring the view of the Presidium from his window.
"What brought you, Garrus?" It was a legitimate question, though Kaidan asked it carefully. The serious tone to the Turian’s voice made Kaidan suddenly very aware that he was mostly naked, which made him pull his blanket up higher on his chest.
“Stop doing that, Alenko. You look like a girl when you do that,” the turian closed his eyes as he shook his head slightly. Kaidan let the sheets drop back down, slightly embarrassed of Garrus’ comparison. The turian didn’t pause long before continuing on, "But to answer your question, I've been waiting to talk to you ever since we ran into you on Horizon all those months ago, and I wanted to do this before Shepard finds out you’re awake." The turian took a deep breath, before continuing on. "Do you have any idea how much you hurt Shepard that day? What you did to her?" It was a slap to the face. Luckily for Kaidan and his rattled amp, the Turian seemed to be holding himself back from giving him a rather non-metaphorical beat down as well.
"She was already having a hard enough time coming to terms with what happened. I've talked to her myself, Kaidan. She tried explaining to me how it felt to be gasping for air in the vacuum of space one second and then waking up in a Cerberus facility that was under attack the next. And I don't know about you, but I couldn't imagine coming out sane from that, but somehow she managed to hold herself together pretty well. She was herself still."
That was when Garrus finally turned towards him. "Then you step back into her life on Horizon. You - the person that she loved the most in this whole damn wide universe. And what did you do? You basically spat in her face and told her you didn't trust her. Do you know what that did to her?" Garrus was practically yelling now. "She started changing after that. She started becoming darker, more cynical. For Spirit's sake, she pushed a merc through a glass window from fifty stories up."
Garrus calmed some. "I tried to be her friend through it, Kaidan. I really did, but she needed you there. Since you've come back into the picture, she seems to be becoming herself again. Don't you dare do anything to damage her more, or her turian best friend will find you, and he will kick your biotic ass through a window himself."
Garrus then threw a couple of datapads down onto a table, which he then rolled to sit next to his bed. "You don't deserve to know, but these may enlighten you. This headpiece isn't just for show you know. I recorded some stuff, and I think that these may enlighten you to what you did. And you do deserve the grief of knowing that." Garrus pointed to one particular datapad, a Cerberus symbol was on the top corner. "That one I had EDI get for me. It's all the files Cerberus had on the Lazarus Project... the project that brought Shepard back. She even managed to pull a few security videos."
Kaidan sat in silence for a moment as Garrus walked out of the room. There were quite a few datapads lying in wait next to him. He picked one up, ignoring the Cerberus files for now, and by what he could see of the time stamp on the file, it was the day after he'd seen her on Horizon.
"You sure you want to do this, Shepard?" Garrus' voice came through loud and clear. He must have been driving the shuttle, as he was looking straight at the controls.
"I have to see it," Shepard's voice was strained. Even without seeing her face in the video, he knew there was a lot troubling her. Garrus must have looked up at that point. Kaidan could see a snowy landscape... And some scattered wreckage. Only as the shuttle drew nearer did he realize that it was the wreckage of the SR-1. When they landed, Garrus stood, turning to look at Shepard, who was already walking out of the door into the cold environment. "I want to do this alone, Garrus. Stay here." Garrus stood for a few minutes, then walked his way out of the door, following the imprints Shepard's boots left in the powder. When he got around the corner of the shuttle, he could see Shepard standing, her helmet facing the hull of the dead ship. The name blazing out harshly into the cold. She stood there for a few minutes before moving towards a small pile of rocks, where she knelt and picked up a small item.
Garrus followed her through the terrain, watching as she picked up small items along the way. Only after Kaidan saw her pick up about ten of them did he realize that they were dog tags. She collected the crews' tags. A sinking pit hit the bottom of his stomach as he watched her get to the remains of the old galaxy map. Pressley spent most of his time there. She stood there for a while, her concentration focused on a small datapad on the ground. As she continued on, she started running towards a new object. When she finally reached it, she fell to her knees, reaching towards a helmet. Her helmet. She sat there, holding it on her lap for a long time. After five minutes, he started seeing her shoulders shaking, before she pulled the helmet into her chest, her shoulders arching forward.
She was crying.
The video clip ended. Kaidan didn't know what to think. The Shepard he'd known had been so strong, so... Resilient. He'd seen her get beaten and bruised on the battlefield numerous times, without even so much as shedding a single tear, and she had broken down crying in the middle of the Normandy's crash site. Kaidan wasn't sure how to process that.
He picked up the next datapad, not sure of what he would see next. According to the time stamp on this one, this was the day he saw Shepard on Horizon. Once again, he saw the dark interior of the shuttle. Garrus was sitting across from Shepard, his focus solely on her, but in the corner of the image he could see the back of the Cerberus guy’s head piloting the shuttle. Shepard was sitting, her elbows planted firmly on her knees and her face buried in her hands. What part of her face that wasn't covered by her hands was blocked by the short, auburn hair that fell around her. She was in her full body armor, which told Kaidan it must have been either before or after the mission. Which it was, he wasn’t sure. "What's the matter, Shepard?" Garrus' voice finally broke the silence.
Shepard finally looked up. Her face pale. "Kaidan is down there, Garrus," her voice finally came out, cracking slightly around Kaidan's name, giving away her fear. "The collectors are hitting this colony, and Kaidan is there. There's been no one left behind at any other colony. What if they get him, Garrus?" Her eyes were pleading Garrus to give her any kind of reassurance.
"Alenko is a good soldier, Shepard. It will take more than a couple of bugs to take him down," came Garrus' response. Shepard still seemed unsure. "Either way, Shepard, we'll find him down there and then we'll give him Mordin's countermeasure so that the seeker swarms will have no effect." That finally seemed to allay some of her worries, her face becoming more determined as she pulled her pistol from its holster and loaded it. Garrus stood up, too, then followed her out the now open shuttle door.
The video skipped forward, the same date was marked on it, and the crew were now back on board the Normandy. Garrus was sitting in the mess hall, his visor pointed at the cup in front of him. Something caught his attention, causing him to turn and look towards the med bay. Shepard had just walked in, and the brief glimpse that even Kaidan saw showed that she had a bloody nose and a bruise starting to form above her Kaidan noticed the faint glow coming from the scarring. Kaidan remembered looking at the scars on her face when he spoke with her on Horizon, but the glowing he must have overlooked because of the sunlight that day. What the hell had Cerberus done to her? "Dammit," Garrus cursed as he stood up and briskly followed after her.
As the med bay door opened, Garrus paused as he took stock of the injuries Chakwas was already working on fixing. Shepard wiped the blood from her nose off with the back of one of her arms, leaving a dark red smear down her right arm, which was already showing some dark bruises forming. The knuckles on both hands were raw and bleeding as well.
"Dammit, Shepard, what the hell were you doing?" Garrus asked, his voice turning to that of a scolding parent.
"Just blowing off steam. Me and Grunt decided to hold a little sparring match," Shepard responded, her tone icy as she kept her gaze fixed forward.
"So you decided to fist fight a full grown Krogan?" Garrus' voiced raised. "No wonder you're so beat up, Shepard. You do realize after all the times we've fought Krogan that they have much harder skin than humans do, right?" The sarcasm in Garrus' voice was thick. Kaidan couldn't help but pale at the thought of Shepard going blow for blow with a Krogan. He'd seen her face many down the barrel of a gun before while wearing full battle gear, but there she sat in a Cerberus Crewman uniform, which would not help protect her from any kind of blow.
"You should see Grunt," was Shepard's terse response. She kept avoiding making direct eye contact with the Turian. "His jaw was broken when I made my way up here. He refused to come get treated, saying he'd heal fine on his own." Shepard turned her gaze towards Garrus as Chakwas quickly walked out of the room, stating she needed to go check on Grunt. Shepard stood up, walking towards the med kit across the room. She quickly grabbed a disinfectant wipe from the kit and wiped it quickly over her bleeding knuckles.
"Did you forget I'm not a normal human with all these fucking cybernetics, Garrus?" Shepard snapped, holding her hand out as proof, causing Kaidan to take a sharp intake of breath when he saw that the wounds on her knuckles were healed. The only way anyone would be able to guess she had been injured in the first place would be because of the stray traces of blood still clinging to her skin. The bruise above her eye along with the ones along her arm slowly started to lighten and fade as Kaidan sat in shock watching the rest of the video. He couldn’t even focus on anymore of what was being sais. By the time it ended, all her wounds looked like they had never been there.
Kaidan sat and mulled over the last video in particular. He couldn't help but feel guilty after seeing how angry Shepard was about the cybernetic implants. He was suddenly reminded of asking her if Cerberus had done the same to her as the body they’d found on Mars. He now realized how that single comment must have affected her. He was about to look at the Lazarus project files when he suddenly realized that he didn’t need to see it. He knew Shepard was herself. He didn’t need proof that she was the same person she had always been, anymore.
The door opened again and this time when Kaidan looked, it was actually his doctor. “Here you are, Major Alenko,” she said as she handed his omni tool back to him. “You can have this back now.” Kaidan took it from her and immediately opened his email to try to send off a message to Shepard, but before he could do that, his attention was drawn to a new message from Councilor Udina.
Major Alenko,
I was relieved to hear that you made it off of Earth in one piece. I was less relieved to hear that Shepard managed to get you severely injured while at the Mars Archives.
With the Reaper invasion, the council needs more capable soldiers bolstering the ranks of the Spectres. Humanity could also use more representation as well, so I wanted to extend you an invitation to become the second human Spectre.
If you survive your injuries, I will come visit you to speak of this matter more in person.
Sincerely,
Councilor Donnel Udina
Now Kaidan wanted to see Shepard more than ever. How was he supposed to respond to that? He quickly sent off a message, trying to sound nonchalant about wanting Shepard to visit him, since he wasn’t sure if she even wanted to see him. He also tacked on the bit about Udina wanting him to be a Spectre. As he sent the message off, he couldn’t help but glance back at the datapads on the table. He’d have to remember to find a moment to thank Garrus later. Not for the datapads themselves, but for being her best friend and sticking by her when he hadn’t.