Shepard Finds Her Soul Mate | By : KTT2123 Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 5864 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect nor its characters. I am making no money from this. |
Character's thoughts will be italicized and surrounded by asterisks.
This is the first fanfiction story I ever started. The fans that love my Criminal Minds fics, this is the fic made all of those possible! I started only wanting to fix the ending of ME 3 but it turned into a soulmate fic starring Garrus and Shepard. It was quite ambitious for my first, currently at over 100,000 words and not close to finished. I've been working on this off and on for a couple of years. My muse was not so kind to me in the beginning.
There will be some Kaidan bashing. It is not that I don’t like him because I do! He’s my second favorite LI, after Garrus. I like him best with Male Shep though. I just feel Kaidan got off WAY too easy for all his judgments and mistrust. I think Shepard would have been much more upset than in the game, especially considering he says he trusts her but continually doubts her.
This story begins at Horizon, when Shepard and Kaidan meet for the first time since her death. Afterward, Garrus is there to pick up the pieces. References to prior Kaidan and Shepard relationship but mostly focused on the development of the relationship between Garrus and Lily Shepard. While based on the ME 2 & ME 3 video games, I do change things as it's my story and I can do what I with it! Keep in mind, I have not read any of the comics/books. Anything OCC is completely mine.
*Kaidan’s here and alive!* Commander Lily Shepard grins at Kaidan Alenko, so happy he’s alive and here. She is ecstatic to finally find another trusted friend from her old crew. She had searched for him when she had awaken but hadn’t found him or any way to contact him. “Kaidan!”
The sentinel stares dumbly at the diminutive human vanguard, *Shepard’s ALIVE? How?* Kaidan embraces Shepard, the woman he thought was dead, the woman he had loved. She somehow looks the same and yet completely different. Her black hair with her characteristic violet streaks is longer than it used to be and in a simple ponytail, instead of a bun. Lily’s mocha skin appears perfect and completely unmarred. The scar she got from Mindoir, the cut across the corner of her lips is noticeably missing. Looking carefully over the little skin exposed, Kaidan can see she is missing other distinctive marks: the burn mark on her neck from the Citadel battle, the tip of her left ear that used to be missing from a bullet during the Skillian Blitz, and the bump on her nose from where it had been broken in boot camp training. All those marks are gone, the scars that showed her history erased as if they had never been there. Alenko doesn’t understand, *Who is this person? Who looks like her but doesn’t?* He looks into her violet eyes, which are shining with shock and happiness. Her remarkable eyes are still as vivid and unique as always, gleaming with that familiar intelligence and strength.
A mere second later, he yells at her, “Shepard?! I thought you were dead! For two long years, I’ve grieved you. Have you been alive this whole time? How could you do that to me? How could you let your death tear me apart when you obviously weren’t dead?! I loved you! Why didn’t you contact me?! Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?!” Rage radiates from the biotic’s entire body. It distorts the once familiar face into something almost unrecognizable to Shepard.
“Kaidan, let me explain. I was dead. It took two years to bring me back. I asked Anderson—.”
“Stop! Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not—”
“Bullshit!” Alenko’s chest is heaving with his swirling emotions. “Just stop. I had heard rumors that you weren’t dead but Anderson stonewalled me. Does he know? Does he know you’re alive?” Kaidan abruptly raises a hand, stopping her answer. “Nevermind. Obviously those rumors are true, you aren’t dead. I’m here on Horizon because Alliance intel hinted that Cerberus might be involved in the human abductions. The question is whether the other rumor is true or not; are you working with the enemy? Are you with Cerberus?”
“The Alliance turned its back on these colonies, Kaidan. Someone has to stop them and Cerberus is willing to help me do that. It’s more than the Alliance is willing to do. I can’t just sit back and watch millions be taken and do nothing, even if I have to work with Cerberus to do so.” Lily’s face earnestly pleading with her once friend to listen to her, to believe in her as he had in the past.
Alenko takes a step back from the woman he had once loved. “So it’s true. You’re with Cerberus. Garrus too? How could you?! Does the end justify the means now, Shepard? We both know what Cerberus is like, what they are capable of! You turned your back on everything we believed in. You betrayed the Alliance. You betrayed me!”
“Kaidan please, you know me. I don’t answer to Cerberus. Our alliance is temporary, only until I can stop the Collectors. How could you think otherwise? Don’t you know me at all?” Her heart is breaking at the condemnation on his face. A man she and trusted with her life now sees her as nothing more than a traitor, as if she is as bad as Saren had been.
I want to believe you. I do. But I don’t trust Cerberus, I can’t. How can you? What if they are manipulating you? What if they are working with the Collectors? What if they are behind it?”
“Kaidan—”
“Don’t. I don’t know who you are anymore. You are not the woman I remember, the woman I loved. I know where my loyalty lies. I’m an Alliance soldier. Once upon a time so were you, pity you seem to have forgotten that.”
“Come with me. I don’t trust Cerberus, either. But I am willing to work with them if it saves millions of lives. I need people I can trust.”
“I will never work for Cerberus and if you were really Shepard you wouldn’t either. Maybe you lost that part of you, along with your scars. I have to report back to the Citadel. The Alliance brass can decide whether to believe you or not.” Alenko turns and stalks away without a backward glance, leaving a dazed Shepard behind.
LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV*LS*GV
After Horizon, Shepard goes straight to her quarters. She cannot bring herself to make her rounds after her conversation with her once boyfriend, now ex. Picking up his photograph, she wonders, *Is he right? Am I a traitor? To the Alliance, to him?* She looks at herself in the mirror, touching the places on her face where the now healed glowing red scars used to lay, touching the places where her battle scars had once been before Cerberus rebuilt her. Doubt envelops her. The pain from the man who had once said he loved her, of Kaidan’s harsh words and rejection crush her. The pressure of all that has happened since she awoke is simply too much for her to bear, her mind flashes through it all: her crew members’ deaths, her own death, her resurrection, the loss of her friends, her crew, the loss of their trust, facing their doubts and anger, working for a terrorist group…with people she really doesn’t know or fully trust yet, adjusting to her cybernetics. Horizon and Kaidan are just the last straw.
So much has happened, with no time for her to adjust or to grieve. Lily is strong, incredibly so but even she can’t be strong all of the time. She’s still human…everyone has their breaking point and Lily has reached hers.
Tears begin to fall and before long Shepard is sobbing. She carelessly undresses and curls into a ball on the floor of the shower. The hot water cascades over her as she continues to weep. “Why didn’t you let me explain, Kaidan? You have had two years to deal, yet I’ve had so little time to adjust. I’ve lost two whole years! I am the same while everyone and everything has changed around me.”
I have twenty chapters done. But the middle has some huge gaps that I need to fill. Updates will be sporadic as I am currently writing Criminal Minds fics and a Grimm fic, beta'ing for multiple authors, as well as co-writing a Harry Potter-Criminal Minds fic and two others. But no matter how long it takes or if no one but me likes this fic, I will finish this fic! I might not continue to post if no one shows interest but I won't ever abandon it.
I would appreciate reviews and/or ratings!
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