AUTHOR'S NOTE: I always felt that Shepard's personal life was a little lacking in drama. Relationships are never that clean, especially if you played femShep and chose to do both Kaidan and Garrus. I mean, I understand that it's a galactic war and getting upset about your boyfriend is a bit silly. But hey, that's what fan fiction is for, right? I have a few Shepards. This one is Kendal. She was with Kaidan, but after his rejection she chose Garrus in ME2. I always wanted her to be angrier with Kaidan for what he did, so this is my take on it.

Blind panic wasn't even the right word for it. Kaidan didn't really believe there was a word for the feelings he was grappling with.

Vertigo. Terror. Unreality. Anxiety. Mind numbing fear.

Tali had had to physically restrain him in the hovercraft as Shepard ran toward a goddamn Reaper, on foot. He had punched the Quarian squarely in the mouth, or at least, he had punched her in her "Induction Port". He felt awful about it later. Tali had literally laid on top of him, to keep him from interrupting the Commander's act of suicidal bravery.

He couldn't lose her. Not again.

The first time Shepard died had nearly broken him. He had never told her, but six months after her death, he had been given a mandatory leave of absence to "clear his head". In reality, Captain Anderson had removed him of his duties and told him to get his shit together before he could come back to service.

Kaidan had been a wreck. He drank too much and too often. He began neglecting his duties as an Alliance officer. He punched his new CO in the face. He had known that eventually, his behavior would no longer be overlooked. In a way, he looked forward to it. He spent a lot of time on Earth, staring out at the bay with a glass of Whiskey, wondering where it all went wrong.

Now, suddenly he had her back. After two years of feeling lost and out of touch with the world around him, he suddenly felt alive again. He felt...happy. Instead of drifting through life in a fog, waiting for purpose, he suddenly had direction again. He had a purpose, a goal, a life, and Shepard was at the center of it.

And right then, a Reaper was lurching it's way toward the center of that world, charging a laser that could wipe her off the face of the galaxy forever.

He should have trusted her more. He always should have trusted her more.

A few minutes later, the Reaper was dead and Shepard had brokered peace between two races which, moments earlier, had been determined to commit genocide against one another. Kaidan was left feeling foolish for his violent opposition to her actions, but the fear remained. It twisted in his stomach. That unsettling anxiety that he would lose her all over again. How many times could she face these impossible odds and still come out alive?

Back in the Normandy, the reaction to the Commander was predictable. There was much cheering, toasting and back slapping. No one on the ship had seen just how close to annihilation the Commander had really been. They didn't see the monstrous machine looming over her, coming ever closer, that one red eye burning and burning...

Tali, still happily dazed by the unimaginable turn of events, was able to see the deep anguish in Kaidan's face as he quietly escaped the welcome party and disappeared into the ship's lounge. She glanced to her left and saw that Garrus was watching, too. He shook his head, mandibles quivering.

Hours later, the ship had calmed. There was still much to do and Shepard didn't allow much drinking onboard. Though the crew insisted that peace between the Geth and the Quarians was reason enough to open their only bottle of brandy, Shepard had ordered them to save it for their shore leave on the Citadel. She had then disappeared into her cabin, and hadn't been heard from since.

For her part, she was taking a very long shower. Kaidan wasn't the only one who couldn't shake the image of that burning red laser. She had been able to feel its heat as it screamed past her, again and again. Sweat pouring down her back, electricity and fire crackling in the air, that giant creature looming over her, the terrible trumpeting sound of its rage...

She shivered and counted down from twenty.

In the heat of battle it was so easy to focus on the enemy and ignore her fear. It was the part of her personality that had made her so successful thus far. She could tune out any distractions. The world would narrow to the pinpoint of her scope and nothing mattered but the fight. She lived for the satisfaction of the "pink mist" as enemy heads exploded in her sights.

But afterwards. After the pop, pop, pop of gunfire had quieted. After the ground stopped shaking and her shields stopped sparking. It was afterwards that always ate her up inside. It made her restless, uneasy.

The sound it made, screaming and thundering and sonorous and terrible. The eye of the Devil bearing down on her, her only protection: a targeting laser and a thousand ships, thousands of miles away...

She shivered again and counted down from twenty.

When her skin was pink from the heat of the water and she was nearly half asleep, she finally stepped out of the shower. She thought about putting on her uniform and going out to visit with the crew, but decided she should take advantage of her exhaustion and get some sleep. Therefore, she was still wearing a towel when she left the bathroom and stepped into her cabin.

She also wasn't alone.

Kaidan leapt up from her desk the instant he saw her. He didn't even wait to be acknowledged or greeted. He didn't even seem to notice her state of undress. He strode three steps toward her, grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her into a ferocious kiss.

Shepard's internal instincts told her that the best means of incapacitating an enemy who chose to attack in this fashion would be to kick him in the gnads.

Which she did. Instinctively.

"Jeez, Shepard-!" Kaidan fell to the floor with a pained moan, grabbing at his crotch a little too late.

Shepard instantly felt guilty and fell to the floor with him. Forgetting about her towel, she put both hands on his shoulders.

"Kaidan! I'm so sorry it was totally instinctual, I'm so sorry. I told you never to sneak up on me!"

Her hands found his face and made him look at her. Seeing the worry on her face, he finally stopped groaning and started laughing.

"It's, ow, okay," he said. "I shouldn't have jumped you like that."

Seeing him smile, albeit painfully, made her feel a little better.

"I mean, I don't mind being jumped now and then," she said coyly.

Kaidan suddenly cleared his throat, and gestured toward the towel on the floor. Shepard realized, then, that she was still naked and wrapped it quickly around her, blushing.

"What are you doing here, anyways?" She said, standing. She offered Kaidan a hand, and he took it. "And how long have you been in here?" She added.

The question seemed to remind him of why he was there, and something dark returned to his expression.

"What the hell were you thinking, Shepard?"

Standing there, relatively vulnerable, in a towel, Shepard didn't take well to being questioned. Especially not in that tone of voice. Her shoulder's stiffened and Kaidan realized he was in for a fight.

"I guess I was thinking that one or two races would go extinct if I didn't do what I did," she said angrily.

"But taking out a Reaper...on foot?"

She stormed down the steps toward her bed and the dresser, intent on finding pajamas or at least something that didn't need to be held to stay on her body. Kaidan followed after her, like a worried mother hen.

"It's not like there was much other choice," she said, roughly throwing an Alliance shirt and some underwear onto the bed.

"What, like how you had no choice but to work with Cerberus? There's always another choice, Shepard."

He knew he had said too much when she froze in the act of looking for pants. He expected her to turn on him, to throw something at him, or maybe kick him where it really hurt again. But she didn't. Instead, she continued what she was doing, and refused to meet his eyes.

"If that's the way you want to see it, then I can't argue with you. I did what I had to. I've always done what I had to."

Her voice had gone into that deep, cold register that she reserved for diplomats and people she didn't really like. Kaidan felt his stomach turn. Hadn't he tried this before? Hadn't he spent enough time condemning her for the things she had done? She had worked with Cerberus to defeat the Collectors. He had turned her away in anger, and she had understood. He questioned her actions during the Cerberus coup, doubting if she would not have pulled the trigger on him. She had understood. And here he was, yelling at her for destroying a Reaper and saving not one race but two, from destruction and still, she understood. In all this time, after everything that had happened, she had never shown him anything but understanding and kindness.

Kaidan grabbed her shoulders and forced her to look at him. At first this only made her angrier, until she saw his face.

"But why does it always have to be you?" He whispered.

"Oh, Kaidan," she said softly. The fight sank out of her and was replaced with sadness.

This time, when he pulled her in to kiss her, she did not knee him in the groin. His kiss was fierce and desperate. She could feel his hands shaking as he touched her, his breath sharp and shallow. It was the first time they had kissed since she had died more than two years ago.

The pure needing between them was intense. They needed to touch each other. She needed the comfort of his embrace, the strength of his shoulders, the softness of his skin. He needed to feel her, to know she was alive, that she was real and not just another haunting nightmare. They had been mutually avoiding it for weeks, ever since she invited him to rejoin the crew. She would swear she could feel him, where ever he was on the ship, as if his was a burning presence she could practically taste. Now, that desperate wanting made him hold her so tightly, it hurt, but she didn't care. She bit his lip and might have drawn blood, but he didn't flinch.

"I want you," he murmured hotly in her ear, and she pulled him to the bed with her.

Later, with only the shimmering blue light of the fish tank, Kaidan lay awake, tracing the soft lines of her body as she slept.

He was exhausted. Shepard had not been forgiving during or after. Sometimes he hadn't been able to tell if they were still fighting or making love. Sometimes it was so slow and intense, he thought it might last forever. They had both fallen asleep at first, but Kaidan had jolted awake from another nightmare of Shepard's corpse floating through space.

But there she was, sleeping soundly beside him. Her hair, now dry after the shower, had been mussed into cowlicks which he knew would free themselves from her ponytail in the morning. Resting there beside him, she had none of her usual defenses to hide behind. He could see the deep circles beneath her eyes, and the crow's feet which were quickly deepening around them.

Gently, he began tracing his finger over her body as she lay, uncovered, beside him. The cabin was warm after their steamy interlude, and she seemed content to lay on her stomach completely naked. He realized then, that he wasn't just admiring the soft curves of her flesh. He was looking for changes. Cerberus had supposedly rebuilt her and resurrected her from the dead. With that kind of power, what else would they have done to her?

Without even being conscious of it, he was still doubting her.

Kaidan sighed, and put his head in his hands.

A moment later, Shepard stirred beside him. He immediately felt guilty that he might have disrupted her slumber. It was generally believed by the entire crew that Shepard wasn't sleeping much. But when he looked down at her, he realized she had probably been awake before he was. The expression on her face was all too knowing.

"What did I ever do to make you so afraid of me?" she asked softly.

Kaidan huffed a defeated little laugh.

"You died," he said softly.

She sat up beside him, her dirty blonde hair falling around her shoulders in waves. It was surprisingly long when it wasn't secured in a ponytail. He remembered she used to keep it shorter.

She ran her hands over his shoulders and lightly down his bare back, making him shiver despite himself. Her touch felt like little more than air passing over his skin. It was strange to think that she could be gentle, when so much of her life required brutality and strength.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She said quietly, reluctantly.

He looked back at her, smiling ruefully.

"Do you?"

She shrugged a little too quickly.

"For me it was only a moment or two. You had two years..."

"Do you remember it?" He asked suddenly. She looked at him, perplexed, a strand of hair across her face. "Never mind," he said hastily, "forget I asked."

"Do I remember dying?" She said, a bit gruff. "No, not really."

She was looking away from him, picking at a loose piece of string in the sheets. He knew by the tension in her shoulders that she was lying. Though a part of him desperately wished she would tell him everything, he knew that Shepard typically kept a lot of things to herself. He used to try and pry information out of her in the past, but had found that it was best to feign disinterest, until she was ready to talk. He grabbed her hand, and tilted her chin until she was looking at him. The expression on her face was irritated, but he knew she would listen to him.

"It's ok, you don't have to tell me," he said softly, and kissed her lips. "But you have enough troubles to keep you up at night. Lending them to someone else for a while, might be good for you."

"That's what the psych evaluators are for, when all of this is over," she said, smirking.

Kaidan wasn't impressed by the deflection.

"Yeah but what about now? How often have you used the ship's liquor stores to get you to sleep at night? How many solar days have you gone without sleeping at all?"

She pulled away from him, her eyes clouding with pain. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back down to the bed, before she could disappear entirely.

"Kaidan-"

"Shepard, I'm not the only who notices. They're all worried for you, but they have no choice but to lay all of the responsibility, all of their hope, on you. At least I recognize that you're human, Shepard. I know that no one can handle that much pressure without venting somewhere, even you."

"I-" she stopped, her expression conflicted. His heart twisted by the vulnerability he saw in her eyes.

"Don't get me wrong Shep," he said, smiling, "I would really like you to save the galaxy and all that. But someday you're going to have to stop fixing everyone else's problems and start dealing with some of your own."

"You used to be that person, you know," she said softly.

"What do mean?" he asked, startled by the confession.

"You used to be the person I turned to whenever I needed someone to talk to. But when I needed an ally, when I needed you, you didn't believe in me," her voice had gone cold and emotionless, and he felt his heart drop into his stomach.

"Shepard I'm-"

"Sorry...I know."

They sat in silence for a while. The vast emptiness of space passed by above and around them. The fish darted here and there, completely oblivious to the precarious state of the galaxy.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, "you have to go."

He sat up, surprised. She sat at the end of the bed, her back to him in the twilight darkness. Kaidan felt that familiar swimming in his stomach as he looked at her. She seemed so small, so defeated. He had never seen her so unhappy.

"This is about Garrus...isn't it?"

He liked Garrus, or at least he had. They had different opinions about the way things should be done, specifically, Garrus liked to go around the rules (very unusual for a Turian) and Kaidan tended to do things by the book. But they had always enjoyed each other's company. After the trouble with the Collectors was finished, and Shepard had been taken into Alliance custody, Kaidan had struggled with how to contact her. With the amount of red tape keeping her secluded until her hearing, he hadn't really been given a chance. So he had reached out to old friends and crew members, asking them how she was, was she ok, did she ever mention him?

In the end, Liara was the only one to give him the kindness of telling him the truth. While the Asari had been wise enough to avoid specifics, she mentioned that Garrus and Shepard had become...very close.

But he was a Turian. They couldn't even eat the same food together. In his mind, he began to make assumptions that "close" only went as far as friendship. After all, Shepard and Garrus had always had a remarkable rapport. Ever since the day they had stumbled upon him in the Citadel Tower, Shepard had always had a certain smile on her face when she talked to the ex-Citadel Security officer. But as he continued to discuss it with Liara, and a few of the others, he began to notice the way they quietly dissuaded him from his hope that he and Shepard still had a chance. After they had rescued Liara from the outpost on Mars, he had made sure he had an opportunity to talk to the Shadow Broker alone. Surely if anyone had answers, it would be her.

"When you told me that Shepard and Garrus were close, you didn't mean they were friends, did you?"

The Asari's eyes seemed impossibly blue in the light from her many comm link screens. She glanced at him, briefly, as she attached a few more fiber optic cables. From the small sigh and the way her shoulders sank, just a few degrees, he knew that her answer would not be something he wanted to hear.

"No, Kaidan," then, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," he said softly. He knew that Liara had been infatuated since Shepard had rescued her from the dig site on Therum. They had that in common. Liara envied and admired the Commander's strength. After Shepard died, Liara had become more like her. She had become darker, more violent, more aggressive. Shepard had a way of changing people. She was a natural force, shaping the world around her.

Liara stepped toward him and put her hands on his shoulders.

"It isn't yours, either," she said softly.

"Of course it is," he said bitterly. "I rejected her. I pushed her into the arms of someone else."

"Shepard makes her own choices, Kaidan, you of all people should know that. Her and Garrus...they have something unique. She needs him."

And Kaidan couldn't help but reflect miserably that he needed Shepard, more than she would ever need him.

Finally, when the time seemed right, he had asked her about Garrus. He wasn't sure if she would lie, or if she would avoid the question. He shouldn't have doubted her. The Commander answered honestly, and he at last knew for certain that she had moved on in his absence.

"He means a lot to me Kaidan," she was saying, almost so softly he couldn't hear. "This would hurt him."

"Don't I mean anything to you, too?" He asked, and tried to put his hand on her shoulder.

She stood up abruptly, her hands curled into fists. There was just enough light that he could see the distress on her face. For a moment, he imagined that she might be crying.

"Kaidan..." she took a deep breath, "You and I were just beginning our relationship when we were...interrupted. We hadn't really had time to explore each other. That is the only reason this happened," she said, cutting the air with her hand. Her eyes met his across all the wounded time between them, and he saw the sparkle of unshed tears. "Your rejection on Horizon crushed me, Kaidan."

For some reason he felt angry. He had thought she was dead for two years! Two years he mourned her, and when she returned, she was working for terrorists.

"You were with Cerberus!" he said, standing to follow her as she turned her back against his accusations. She grabbed her t-shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head before stopping in front of the fish tank, watching the myriad of brilliant creatures as they swam lazily to and fro. "You came back from the dead! What was I supposed to think?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, she rounded on him, her eyes blazing with anger.

"You were supposed to trust me!" she yelled.

He backed up a step, shocked by the vehemence of her rage. He could see the flush in her cheeks, the way her chest heaved with emotion.

"Like Garrus?" he asked softly.

For some reason, this only made her angrier. Her lip curled in a snarl, and she jabbed her finger toward him, accusing.

"Garrus has followed me to Hell and back every time!"

"I guess now I understand why you take him with you on every mission," he snapped, "the others just say it's favoritism."

She looked startled for a moment, before pure rage took it's place.

"First of all, it is not favoritism if I prefer to take someone whose capabilities I trust on missions where failure is not an option-"

"Failure is never an option with you!"

"Let me finish! Second of all, the last time I left people I care about on the Normandy, they were taken by the enemy. Some of them died!"

"So... what? You take him everywhere to protect him?"

"No," she yelled, "I take him with me because he's never doubted me! Garrus has always trusted my judgement! Garrus has always believed in me! You," she hissed, her finger against his chest, "didn't."

Her eyes, glaring into his with ferocity and anger, suddenly dimmed. Her hands dropped loosely by her sides, and she turned away from him again. She crossed her arms across her chest, as if trying to hold all of her hurt inside.

"You stopped believing in me the minute the symbol on my uniform changed," she said softly.

Kaidan felt the flush of anger that had been burning in his face suddenly go cool. He had hurt her, more than he could have thought.

"I'm sorry Shepard," he whispered. "Seeing you again... I was just overwhelmed. I screwed up. I know that now. Do I really have to lose you again?"

Her answer, when it came, made all of the sensation in his body go numb.

"You already did."

They stood that way for a while, as Kaidan struggled with what to do next. He couldn't just walk away. He had walked away from her once already and look at where it had brought him. He loved her so fiercely, but he knew that nothing he said would ever make her turn back to him again.

"You love him...don't you?" he said quietly.

"...yes," she said, and he could hear the tears in her voice.

As he gathered his clothes and put them on, he could see her shoulders shaking. She did not turn away from her contemplation of the fish tank. She did not even glance at him, as he stopped beside her on his way out the door, and put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Shepard," he whispered, and kissed her cheek.

That night, as he made the lonely, awful trek to his rack, he could taste her tears on his lips.