AN: Ok peeps this is the first chapter of my first ever fan fic. I've had it sat on my PC for almost a month now and been too scared to post it. Please be gentle with me. Advice welcome.

Chapter One

~Restless~

It had only been two weeks since they brought the house, their house... their home. For Kaidan it was the first permanent home he's had since before joining the Alliance at 22, for Shepard it had been longer. Her last home was torn from her at just 16 years of age, when Batarian slavers decimated the colony where she was born and raised. She'd never talked about that time in any detail, not to him, not to the shrinks who presided over her regular psyche evals, not to anyone. Kaidan had seen her file of course and watched the archive news vids, but that only gave him the bullet points. Slavers attacked Mindoir killing most of the colonists. All of Shepard's friends and family were killed in the attack. She fought back, somehow survived against all odds and was rescued by an Alliance patrol 2 days later.

That morning as he sat at the breakfast bar watching her attempt (all be it very unsuccessfully) to make them breakfast, he'd started to wonder if Mindoir was what was keeping her up at night.

The first week after they moved in together she had slept soundly, even her recurring nightmares about the boy she couldn't save when the Reapers attacked Earth and the visions from the Prothean beacon hadn't plagued her for months now.

He hadn't meant to snoop. When he woke up she was already in the shower, and if he had to guess she'd been up for quite some time, judging by the lack of warmth from her sheets on her side. He grudgingly climbed out of bed and headed to the kitchen to get himself a much needed coffee. While he waited for the pot to fill he figured he might as well check his messages, so he pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. She'd left her mail program open on the terminal they we're sharing until they got their shared office set up. His finger was just hovering over the 'Log Out' button when a message title dated four days ago caught his eye, 'Mindoir'. He stared at the title, until that moment he hadn't even thought that it might have been Mindoir weighing on her mind. It was to long ago surely. He believed she'd laid those demons to rest as best she could a long time ago. It had to be about 17 or 18 years since the raid. He sat at the terminal clenching and unclenching his fists, debating opening it. It would be wrong to access her personal messages, he really shouldn't do it. But this might be the answer, once he knew what was up he could help. He glanced at the ceiling as if he could see her in the bathroom above. The water was still running and she'd have to towel dry at the least before she made her way down to him. He could open the message, skim it and log her off in that time. He racked his hand through his hair, running it right down to the base of his neck where he worked the tense muscles with his battle calloused fingers. He brought his attention back to the terminal, sighed deeply and clicked 'read'.

TO : Shepard, Amanda:CMDAllianceNavyHQ

FROM : Knight, Kelly:SSS

SUBJECT : Mindoir

Commander Shepard

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you once again for your support of our charity over the years. We are hugely grateful for your continued generous donations. Thanks to you, we can continue to help slaver siege survivors like yourself, deal with their feelings of grief, loss and guilt over surviving.

As I'm sure you're aware, this year will see the 18 year anniversary of the Slaver raid on Mindoir. We at Slaver Siege Survivors (SSS) are planning to commemorate the day with a number of tasteful events and fund raising activities, culminating in the unveiling of a memorial wall listing those who sadly lost their lives during the attack.

I know this will be a difficult time for you and you must be extremely busy with your military commitments following the war, but we would be extremely grateful if (time permitting) you would attend the ceremony as a guest of honour and say a few words at the unveiling ceremony. Someone well known like yourself could really help us raise public awareness of the work we do, enabling us to help more people put the pieces of their lives back together.

I'd be more than happy to meet with you somewhere convenient to discuss this in greater detail. Any support you can give would be gratefully appreciated.

Kind Regards

Kelly Knight

Founder

Slaver Siege Survivors (SSS)

As soon as he'd read the message he felt immensely guilty for invading her privacy. With a shake of his head he logged her off immediately.

Now as he sat there watching the bacon become charcoal and hearing a steady string of obscenities fly out of Shepards mouth, the message played on his mind. The more he thought about it the more he felt sure that this was what was troubling her. The date stamp read four days ago, that's when he had started waking up to an empty bed in the middle of the night. She'd always have an excuse of course, 'I got cramp', 'I needed a drink', 'I had to use the head' and so on, but he knew her well enough to know she was lying and well enough not to push. Now it seemed he'd stumbled onto the answer.

That night they lay there together, bodies entwined. Her breathing slow, deep and even as she slept peacefully in his arms. He smiled as his eyes took in every aspect of her lean body, beautifully lit by the soft moonlight pouring through their bedroom window. Right then he didn't much care that they hadn't yet gotten around to putting up blinds, in fact looking at her now bathed in the soft light, he was quite grateful for it. Her short hair was sweeping gently across her face. Her arms, so delicate in appearance yet –as he had witnessed on many an occasion – capable of untold violence and destruction, rested gently against his firm sculpted stomach, her open palms pressed above his heart. His hungry gaze followed the outline of her body, past the scar under her ribs that marked the near fatal wound inflicted by Harbinger over a year ago in the fight for Earth. His eyes continued down to her hips and her long toned legs that were currently wrapped around his. He reached down to her knee and ran his rough hand up the length of her toned thigh, letting his fingers ghost a faded 6 inch scar and come to rest on her pert backside. He chuckled to himself as he remembered their first trip to the Citadel, after the mission on Eden Prime. It was the first time he had been on her six and not in a combat situation with gunfire raining down on him, the first time he had finally had an opportunity to notice 'the view'. He had been transfixed as she had jogged up the steps to the Presidium, her Onyx armour hugging and supporting in all the right places. He only managed to wrench his eyes away from the perfect curve of her backside when Ash cleared her throat dramatically at his side. He'd thrown a glance her way and violently flushed at the playful smirk plastered across her face. She tossed a knowing nod towards the Commanders back, her brows raised.

He spent the rest of the day trying to avoid checking the Commander out, but his libido had different ideas and he found his gaze drifting to her time and time again. He never dreamed back then that Shepard would be with him like this, fabulously naked in his arms and pressed up against him. His heart seemed to swell at the thought that she was his and his alone. He instinctively pulled her closer to him, wanting to breathe her in. She hummed happily and without waking, snaked her hand under his arm and pulled him in tighter in response. Satisfied that she was content and not likely to be disturbed by whatever was distressing her, he closed his eyes and let himself give in to sleep.