Notes: Updates will continue to be slow, but I hope my readers will stick with me for the ride.

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Chapter-specific notes: Takes place after Horizon in ME2, probably slightly after the related Shepard/Garrus chapters Zombie, Half-Spoken Words, and The Continuous Thread.

And thanks again to all the people who've taken time to encourage me by adding me or my story to favorites or alerts. And, most especially, thanks to those few who've written reviews. I welcome your interest, thoughts, and ideas-even constructive criticism. Your support is always appreciated, and often instrumental to maintaining the inspiration necessary to develop a story.

Waiting for the Alliance to return and pull him off Horizon had to be three of the hardest days of Kaidan's life. They reminded him... they were far too reminiscent...

He felt stranded-

well, he was stranded, actually.

Kaidan snorted with humor and poured another three fingers of whiskey into the glass, raising it slightly, swirling the contents in the light filtering through the window...

and cut his eyes quickly away from the landscape outside.

Oh, it was lush and green. Bright. Cheerful. Idyllic.

And it reminded him he wasn't alone, not quite.

There were people outside, talking loudly, moving quickly, trying to cover all the thousand and one tasks of the missing...

There were so few of them. The bustle and the noise only seemed to emphasize the emptiness of the settlement surrounding them. A ghost town.

And Kaidan, like the rest of them, felt like he must be a ghost to be living in the midst of it.

He felt dead.

Lost.

Exposed.

Abandoned.

He felt like he had-for days-on Alchera.

And he didn't know if he could take it.

He wished... he almost wished... he'd gone with them. Just to avoid it. This feeling. The waiting.

He tried to stay busy, he tried not to think, but they were always there in the shadows, lurking, waiting, whispering... doubts, desires, confusions, questions...

Them.

His two closest friends. The last two people in the universe in he'd ever expected to see again.

He was the one living in a ghost town, but he was the one who was haunted.

Maybe he was dead and didn't know it.

Maybe he was never going to get off this rock again.

Maybe that was for the best.

Because if he did, he didn't have the faintest idea what he was supposed to tell Anderson.

That he'd seen a ghost?

Kaidan gave another snuff of bitter laughter and raised the glass again, doing his best to burn the sudden lump in his throat away.

The thing that bugged him, the thing he kept coming back to most, was that she was with Garrus.

Back on the Normandy, before she'd died, Garrus knew Shepard better than anyone... well, better than anyone but him.

No matter how good the fake was, she couldn't fool him.

Garrus might have been a bit of a shot in the dark, but he'd always been a straight shot nonetheless.

Kaidan found it hard to believe he'd ever countenance joining up with Cerberus, even if Shepard had somehow faked her death...

and as much as it looked as though she had...Kaidan's heart kept whispering in his ear that she would never, never, never have put her squad or her crew in danger, let alone destroyed the Normandy, just to walk away. Shepard didn't run away from anything. The geth, husks, the thorian, Wrex's outrage, Sovereign, Saren, Ashley's sacrifice, the Council's disbelief...

she'd faced them all dead-on.

If she was going to join Cerberus because she was frustrated with the Council and the Alliance, no doubt she would have made damn sure everyone knew instead of pretending to meekly follow orders. When had she ever done that?

She hadn't.

That was him, all him.

And that-he-had gotten her killed.

He knew it and he hated it.

He wasn't sure who or what he hated more-himself for following orders or her for telling him what to do and expecting-no, knowing-he was going to do it... especially when she could have prevented this morass of feeling that had him tangled up inside. Saving people was what she did, wasn't it? And saving him would have been so easy.

All she had to do to save him was to come back to him alive.

But, she hadn't, had she?

He'd hoped. And he'd waited...

He'd waited for so damn long.

He'd waited too damn long.

But, then, that wasn't the point, was it?

It wasn't Shepard. It couldn't be.

Shepard, the real Shepard, would never have walked away from the Alliance, not without asking him to come with her...

Doubt brushed the edges of his mind just the way her fingers had ghosted along the nape of his neck in a lingering caress the night before Ilos. And, just as it had then, every fine hair on his body stood at attention, pimpling his skin with a chill of shock and awe.

She'd told him she doubted she deserved to be addressed by her rank...

Maybe that had been her asking... or about to ask...

but they'd gotten swept up in the moment...

Apparently she'd found the time to brief Garrus.

That bothered him, and what bothered him more was that it wasn't really that much of a surprise.

But if she'd asked Garrus, if he'd dropped out of sight, left the Citadel to go and join her, why had he seemed so genuinely surprised-even outraged-to find Kaidan had been hearing rumors he hadn't mentioned to the rest of the old squad?

Really, he'd been doing them a favor, sparing them the restless nights that had plagued him so horribly, the hours spent waiting, remembering, straining for the sound of her approaching footsteps...

Garrus had to have known something...

He was with her, wasn't he?

But even so, how could they possibly have arranged...

it wasn't her.

It couldn't be her.

She wouldn't have left him waiting this long.