#really good fic
Pairing: mShenko
Rating: M
Summary: Sometimes, to find the way back you just need room to breathe. Or a quiet moment to work on your biotic techniques.
Aka, I wanted to write about biotics and a lot of feelings got involved.
~
Maybe they’re just destined for disaster.
Hard not to think that after Horizon. Mars. The standoff on the Citadel.
When Kaidan came back on board the Normandyhe thought maybe they’d finally get some air to breathe, and find a way to take the step Shepard hadn’t made three years ago into an escape pod.
And then came the distress call from Gellix.
Of course it was Cerberus. Ex-Cerberus or not hardly seemed to matter when Gavin Archer was one of the people asking for help.
The look on Shepard’s face when Kaidan laid Archer out on the floor with a fist is not one he’s seen before, at least not directed at him. Surprise. Disappointment.
You don’t know, Kaidan had wanted to say. You weren’t there.You didn’t see.
There was a time when Kaidan would have told Shepard everything about what happened on Aite. About the David and the geth, and how seeing a human being strung up on a dais and plugged in like he was nothing more than an OSD had cut him to the bone in ways he didn’t think he could be cut. I was like David once, he would have told him, while trying not to think about Vyrnnus’ broken neck. I was worth more as a tool than I was as a person.
But that was before. Before Alchera. Before Horizon and that damned Cerberus logo affixed to Shepard’s chest. Before Mars.
Before, he never would have needed to tell Shepard, because Shepard would have been there and seen it for himself.
But this isn’t before. This is now, and the middle of an evacuation while under fire from some still rather committed Cerberus forces certainly isn’t the place to unpack that baggage.
That’s when the other shoe drops.
Kaidan thought he’d hallucinated the incident on Mars. It had to be something his addled brain cobbled together in the aftermath of having his head crushed against a bulkhead. Shepard may have always been unpredictable under live fire, but he’d never tried to use himself as a mass-accelerated object.
No one’s thatinsane.
So when the laser dot from a Cerberus sniper finds Kaidan’s head out on the landing pad during the evacuation he expects a bullet between the eyes, not the turbulent heave of the gravity well hitting him like a kick to the solar plexus. One second Shepard is beside him, the next he bolts at a dead sprint, corona snarling like a fire inhaling fresh oxygen. And then he’s a streak of light.
What the fuck?
Kaidan gapes, too stunned to react. The red dot jerks right, a cry erupting from behind a bollard as a mass-accelerated human being barrels down on the hapless sniper. Shepard collides with her as he skids to a halt, shoulder checking her to the ground. One swift boom of his shotgun reduces her to a lifeless heap. He spins on his heel and stalks towards the shuttle without a backward glance.
Kaidan exhales, the hairs on his arms still standing on end, the remnants of one of the most powerful – and reckless - biotic displays he’s ever seen still crackling under his skin. What the ever-loving fuck?
Garrus shakes his head as he joins Shepard on the shuttle. Clearly the turian has seen this before. Clearly what had happened on Mars wasn’t a hallucination.
Kaidan takes a good, hard look at Dr. Cole when he boards the shuttle, and an even harder one at Gavin Archer, who immediately turns away, jaw already discolored and swollen. But Kaidan avoids Shepard, who is all too happy to return the favor.
What the hell had Cerberus done to him?
Read the rest on Ao3
Love it so much!
