Remains of Alliance CentCom campus

Vancouver, Canada

1 hour after the start of the Reaper attack on Earth

Aboard the SSV Normandy

Kaidan

As soon as Cortez landed the battered Tiderium in the Normandy's shuttle bay, Kaidan ran for the cockpit, his combat boots thudding on the deckplates. Joker was alone in the cockpit, managing more holographic flight interfaces than any single person should be able to. "Should I just say thank you now, or wait until we're clear?" Kaidan rasped, standing awkwardly behind the pilot's seat.

"I'd rather you threw yourself out the airlock, you self-righteous ass, but I'll take the thanks, as long as you promise to space yourself once we breach atmo." Joker's voice might have been tight, but his hands moved over his instruments like lightning. A less-than-pleasant smirk twisted his bearded face as he looked over his shoulder at his former friend. "Now, you wanna go on and tell me to get outta here as fast as I can? Because I've already planned out how to tell you to kiss my ass, and I'd like to get to it sooner rather than later. Sir."

Kaidan controlled his surge of frustration. Joker's snarking could wait, but the mission couldn't. "Quit giving me shit and get us to the landing zone ASAP. We're extracting Anderson."

Joker snarled at him. "I'm not leaving without Shepard."

The pounding in Kaidan's head was a dulled roar, but it was nowhere near gone, and his temper was already frayed. "You think you're the only one, Moreau?" he snapped. "Last I heard, Shepard's with Anderson. If she's not, then I'll damn well find her." Flickers of biotic discharge lit his eyes, betraying his emotional state despite the rigidly controlled expression he wore. "Now, are you going to do your fucking job, or do I have to haul Cortez up here to replace you and relieve you of duty?"

Joker blinked, a speculative look crossing his face, but started altering his flight calculations, checking the unforgiving calculus of mass and thrust versus gravity and collision variables with consummate skill. "Well, now... Thought the brass might have promoted you out of your little inappropriate emotional attachment, but apparently, I was wrong."

"Yeah. You were." Grim-faced, Kaidan braced himself on a seatback as the Normandy turned her considerable power toward kicking the bonds of gravity squarely in the balls. "ETA to the landing zone?"

"Few minutes, maybe." Hands moving across the holographic helm display with deceptive ease, Joker casually rolled the ship across the blasted landscape, dodging fire as he flew. "More if our ugly buddies upstairs insist on sending me dance partners."

In spite of everything, Kaidan found himself smiling. It was a small smile, and it made his head hurt more, but it was there. It felt good to hear Joker's familiar snark again, even though the pilot was still righteously pissed at him over what happened on Horizon. "You were always the better dancer, Joker."

"Nice to know you remember that. Major."

The Normandy's communications array came alive in a burst of static. "Normandy? This is Anderson. Do you read?"

His scrap of humor fading immediately, Kaidan leaned over the comm. A muscle in his jaw worked tensely. "Admiral! What's your location?"

"By a downed gunship in the harbor." Anderson's deep voice warped with the interference cluttering the line. "I'm activating its distress beacon. Send support - we've got wounded down here!"

Kaidan felt all the blood in his body drain into his feet when Anderson reported wounded just before the line broke again. Clenching the seatback in a white-knuckled grip, he looked up, only to see Joker watching him. "What?"

For once, Joker looked dead serious. "Does she know?"

"That I loved her?"

Joker sneered at him. "That you still do, asshole."

Kaidan closed his eyes. "Shut up and fly, Moreau."

"Fine. Ignore me. Won't change anything. You're still the most obvious lovesick ass on the Normandy." Joker studied his holographic instrumentation with a flat, professional gaze. "I've got a lock on that beacon. We're approaching - shit! Here we go again! Hang on!" The Normandy slewed gracefully, tracer fire arcing past her nose, and her weapons arrays roared a response.

Within a minute, Joker was reporting, "We're at the LZ. Whoa! Will ya look at that? Looks like the commander is pulling one of her patented one-woman stands against overwhelming odds again." The helmsman grinned, his teeth flashing whitely and his green eyes gleaming underneath the brim of his cap. "I've always loved backing her up on those. Ah, just like old times. Minus the volcanoes, naturally."

Joker triggered the comm burst and a pair of torpedoes simultaneously, evaporating the Reaper squad that was advancing on Shepard and Anderson, along with a good chunk of the landing zone. "Calvary has arrived!" The Normandy swooped above the chaos, wheeling gracefully over the harbor as she maneuvered into a pickup position.

"Get us down there, Joker!" Kaidan was running flat out for the cargo bay before he even finished giving the order.

Vega was hot on his heels, moving with surprising speed for all his muscle. "Major! Maybe you should suit up?"

"Just give me a rifle, Vega." He caught the rifle the bigger man threw him on the fly. His flat, dark gaze lasered around the area, lighting on a private standing bewildered by the equipment lockers. "You!" The marine snapped to attention. "You're armored. Get armed and come with me."

Kaidan barrelled into the cargo bay just as Joker lowered the personnel ramp. The smeary sunlight burst into the area, blinding him for a second, and when he could see again, he felt his heart twist in his chest.

A slender figure in battlestained combats raced across the destroyed landing zone toward the Normandy, hurtling obstacles with an athletic ease that belied six months of house arrest. Almost absently, Kaidan fired on a husk that was charging at her; he couldn't have looked away from her if he'd wanted to. Come on, come on... You can make it...

Shepard took the destroyed walkway at a speed that surprised him but probably shouldn't have, and didn't even hesitate to leap the ten foot gap between the Normandy's ramp and the nearest solid ground. She stumbled upon landing; Kaidan grabbed her outstretched arm before she could actually tumble, pulling her onto firm footing on the personnel ramp. Biotic static crackled around their clasped hands for a split second, racing over their skin. Startled, Shepard looked at him, her dark eyes wide for a split second before her expression shuttered.

"Welcome aboard, Shepard." He had time for a curt nod before he sighted down his rifle at enemy combatants that were approaching where Anderson still stood on the twisted steel remains of the walkway. As welcomes went, it was brisk, military, traditional, and impersonal.

Controlled.

Very carefully, Kadain prowled across the deck and shot another Reaper as Shepard tried to coax Anderson aboard, because he was a man who prided himself on self-control, and the last time he'd lost sight of that, he'd ripped enough of a hole in Shepard that even the noncombatant brittle-boned Joker was ready to take him on.

He, of all people, should have known better. He'd known for years what loss of control could lead to.

Rahna clutched her arm, screaming. Vyrnnus hurt Rahna. He hurt her. A military-issue talon split his lip, only his lip, because he'd jerked back out of reflex. He couldn't avoid the second slice, the one that tore open his side where he wasn't able to generate a barrier fast enough. Not entirely. The kick to his wounded side was a nova of fire across his torso. The pain was enormous, stabbing - broken ribs, probably. Vyrnnus' face was too close, his grip too strong. Kaidan felt a surge of panic, then... ice. Nothing but ice. The mnemnonic for barrier - an arm across the chest. Eezo surged through him, mixed with adrenaline. Vyrnnus staggered back a step, but the distance was enough, and Kaidan put everything he had into a kick. The dictates of Jump Zero's martial arts trainer flashed through his head; your legs are usually longer than their arms. Use that.

Kaidan used his training, used the hate for Vyrnnus burning in his chest, used the foreign element bonded to his nervous system, used everything. Vyrnnus hurt someone he loved. It was more than self-defense. It was defense of someone helpless. It was protecting someone he cared about.

Kaidan felt the tidal surges of his migraine beat at the base of his skull, heating his blood and twisting his gut. Eidetic memory was not a friend at that moment, images triggered by the misfiring neurons in his brain sliding through his mind even as his brain tried its best to explode out of his skull.

Dark brown eyes in a strong-featured face, pupils dialated with shock as he tore into her, ripping Shepard open with words because she was there, but she wasn't. Cerberus had destroyed so much, and now they were even destroying his memory of Shepard. He hated them for taking her from him again.

But did they?

Kaidan fought off the swimming nausea and the memories long enough to hear Shepard swear to come back for Anderson, to hear Anderson order them to the Citadel for help. He felt the thrum of the Normandy lifting through the soles of his boots, at once familiar and not, and felt that same spacey sense of disorientation that he felt on Horizon. Muscle memory and habit, not a clear directive, caused Kaidan to step back and reclip his rifle.

"Major." James was at his elbow. "We need to get you to medical. Doc needs to look at you."

"Not yet." Kaidan's voice rasped in his throat and caused a thrum of agony to spike in his head. "I'm not done yet."

Shepard was standing alone at the edge of the bay, face a carved mask of despair as she watched an escaping shuttle explode in a shower of blood and metal. Kaidan had a sudden flash of Noveria, of Shepard sitting in the snow, her hand steady on her gun, blank pain on her face. He wasn't leaving the cargo bay without her, not even if his head erupted.

"Joker. Close the bay doors."

"Aye-aye, Major. Heading?"

"The Citadel, all speed." Kaidan swayed on his feet as his stomach and his brain matter made a simultaneous bid for evacuation.

"OK, Major, time's up." Vega put one massive hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the elevator. "You're going to Medical. Come on, Lola, you too."

Shepard turned on him. The look on her face made the lieutenant back up a step. "You giving me orders, Lieutenant?"

"Me?" James somehow managed to look big, macho, and completely innocent, all at the same time. "Naw. It's the Major's orders. He's just not one for talking right now. Strong, silent type. You know how it is."

"I can go on my own." With a last look at Kaidan, Shepard strode for the elevator. "You take care of Major Alenko."

James waited until the elevator doors closed before he opened his mouth again. "Commander's pissed off, Major. What'd you do to her?"

Kaidan wanted to laugh. What had he done to her? What had he done to them? "I told her no."

"You said no? To Lola?" James shook his head. "Well, you're still alive, so either she really, really likes you, or you're even scarier than I thought you were." The younger man's large hand tightened on Kaidan's shoulder as he swayed again. "All right, sir. You walking or do I have to get all gentlemanly and carry you?"

"I don't ever remember being that smartass while I was a lieutenant." Kaidan staggered for the elevator.

"Sir. Thank you, sir." James didn't exactly drag the older man into the elevator as soon as the doors opened, but he certainly stuck close. Once the doors closed, James rolled his head on his shoulders. The pop of a vertebrae pierced the quiet. To Kaidan's oversensitive ears, it sounded like a gunshot.

"Major. I know you probably feel like shit, but... I gotta know, and I figure this is the last chance I'll have for some privacy. Why did you ask me who I'd choose? You know, back at CentCom. Before..." James cleared his throat. "You know, before."

The last thing Kaidan wanted to do was talk, but Vega was a good soldier. He deserved the truth. "Had to know whose side you were on. There's been a quiet little rumor that the commander was considered a danger. A liability." Kaidan closed his eyes, partly from pain, partly from disbelief that the Alliance he'd served so faithfully for so many years could even consider "permanently reassigning the liability with the Batarians". If he hadn't had some well-seeded algorhythms in the Alliance's computer systems... If he hadn't been a little too good with picking up patterns... He'd been looking for Cerberus hacks on Anderson's order. Looking for Cerberus moles. He'd found worse. "You were too close to Shepard. I couldn't risk you being part of an attempt against her."

James rolled his shoulders. "If I had been?"

Kaidan looked at him. Just... looked at him. "You'd be dead, LT."