His knight in N7 armor
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We’re good together.
Chapter 13:
Backlash
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: FemShep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3
Story Summary: Shepard has a idyllic life on the Pacific with Kaidan and their daughter. She’s human councilor. The galaxy is at peace. Caught in an abnormal nighttime storm, she wakes up in bed with a different man and in a place she doesn’t remember.
“Shepard!” Wreav bellowed over the gunfire. He held up a hand, and his men held fire. “Shepard! We’re going to kill you. Come down and die like a warrior. Falling to your doom is the fate of a coward.”
“Don’t do it, Shepard.” Kaidan lifted his voice above the chasm’s wind. “He’s underhanded.”
Wreav drew closer to the chasm’s edge and waved at the open area to either side of him as if in invitation. Kaidan’s posture sharpened. Through the veil of their biotic shield, he watched Wreav’s slow steps with an intensity Shepard knew well. He had a plan.
Wreav was a still a good distance from the chasm’s edge. His kinetic shield flickered over his armor. Even if Shepard had the reach in her biotics to touch him, his shield would block a Pull. A Warp or Reave would only send Wreav staggering backward out of the range of their biotics. It wouldn’t be enough to take down his kinetic shield. Kaidan’s stretch with biotics was better than hers, but even he couldn’t break Wreav’s shield with one biotic hit.
“Kaidan?” She tried to draw his eye, but he was focused on Wreav’s steps, like a pointer watching a duck fall from the sky.
Tension coiled in Kaidan’s shoulder tighter and tighter. Step by step. Wreav stopped.
“Shepard! Come down. Last chance, then you die like a pyjack crawling out of an egg.”
Wreav had reached a stopping point and appeared content to continuing standing there. Kaidan’s lips pulled to the side in a disappointed frown. If Shepard could trust anyone’s plans blindly, it was Kaidan’s.
“Hey, Wreav!” she shouted down at him. “I’d sooner come down to stomp on a pyjack crawling from an egg than bother with you. You’re not worth killing, gentockatam!” One worthy of the genophage. Her time in Tuchanka was proving invaluable.
Wreav nostrils flared. He roared like he’d been physically struck. He charged at the chasms edge raising his rifle at them. The four krogan behind him opened fire. Wreav took one more step.
Kaidan really enjoyed serving on the SR-1 with Commander Shepard.
It’s a long elevator ride, so why not say it?
Damsel in Distress
Pairing: FemShep/Kaidan Alenko, Mass Effect 3
Summary: Celebrating the victory on Rannoch, Shepard has too much to drink. Not everyone aboard has Shepard’s best interests at heart. Someone sees opportunity.
~*~*~
Shepard teetered to her feet and braced a hand on the card table. “Whoever said you couldn’t fight a reaper mono a mono? Answer’s Kaidan, by the way.” She threw back the shot. “Salud!”
The portside lounge was overcrowded, full of booze and celebration. Most of the senior crew were here. Orbiting Rannoch, finishing up peace talks, it was nice having something worth toasting. The geth and quarian were on the same side for the first time. She didn’t want to think about the sacrifice to get there. That was for another time. Tonight, light years from a port, it was shore leave without leaving for shore. Well earned. Needed. Granted, some responsible parties still held the reins upstairs.
“Haha! You’re learning, Lola.” James reached over the card table and clinked Shepard’s glass. “Salud!”
“Is it normal for a military vessel to carry this much alcohol?” Liara hovered over the card table.
Most of the partiers buzzed around the bar across the room. Others lounged over the furniture and crowded by the door toasting and talking over each other. Only a few were willing to go head to head with James at the card table: Garrus, Tali, Kaidan, Dr. Chakwas, and Shepard herself. Dr. Chakwas was a card shark, but a sleeping one at this point. She rested her face in the crook of her elbow breathing in a steady snore.
Tali looked up at Liara. “This is a special – hic hic.” Tali put a hand to her chest. “Special – hic – Special occasion.”
James laughed and pointed at Kaidan. Kaidan sat at Tali’s side. “Got your work cut out for you, Major. Your student’s about to fall off her chair.”
“We’re hustling you.” Kaidan folded his arms and tipped back in his chair. “Your call, Vega.”
Chapter 14:
The Shard
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: FemShep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3
Story Summary: Shepard has a idyllic life on the Pacific with Kaidan and their daughter. She’s human councilor. The galaxy is at peace. Caught in an abnormal nighttime storm, she wakes up in bed with a different man and in a place she doesn’t remember.
“The timelines are like rows of marbles fixed in place in their own separate grooves.“ Miranda gazed at Shepard through the holoscreen on her desk. "At one point in time, there are many different realities co-existing. If one marble gets dislodged from its timeline, it rolls back and forth, clicking against the other fixed marble to either side, nothing happens. It slips back into its spot. Dislodge two marbles right next to each other, both marbles roll around. Maybe they find their original spot again, no difference. But what if they don’t …”
“I rolled into the other marble’s divot?”
“Theoretically.”
“What happened to the other marble?” Shepard said slowly.
“It found the other open divot.”
“What?” Shepard shot to her feet, turning the chair over. “What the hell does that mean?”
Miranda gazed lazily at the screen. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
“This Shepard – the one who leaked Alliance intel; used her boyish lover as a patsy; who seduced the foreman of her trail; who lied, cheated, and killed her way through countless missions in some self-aggrandizing fury – that marble rolled into my spot?”
“As you rolled into hers.”
“This is just a theory.” Shepard shook her head. “It’s wrong. Ambassador Mason was caught in the same storm as me, had the same Mass Effect Shard particles in her skin, and she disappeared. Disappeared. She wasn’t replaced. They couldn’t find her at the large banquet in Vancouver. That’s what happened to me on that side. I just disappeared.”
“And what did you do when you woke up here?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do?” Miranda folded her hands behind her back.
“I … I ran.”
“There you go. Mason disappeared. She didn’t vaporize. It’s been weeks. They’ve probably already found her.”
Shepard chewed her lip. “This other Shepard. I appeared in her body. Do you think she appeared in mine, at my home? My family’s there.”
“She wouldn’t harm them. No reason to worry about it. Worry about you.”
“She’s a maniac, Miranda.” Shepard hunched over her desk and looked closer into the screen. “I haven’t met anyone yet who she hasn’t hurt or used.”
“She’s not a maniac.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “You don’t know her. She’s you. Only made a few different decisions.”
“Whatever she did to Kaidan here, she hurt him. I never would have done that.”
“You don’t even remember what ‘that’ is, do you?”
“I don’t want to.” Shepard slammed down into her chair. “I can’t think about hurting him.”
“But these memories are returning. If it’s an important memory, which it sounds like it is, then it will come back. These memories are chronological, moving closer to the present, correct?”
“Does that matter? They’re just dreams.”
Miranda paged through a black and white journal article on the screen and magnified a section. “Here, Temple talks about the marbles. They’re stuck in place, remember, until they’re dislodged? Imagine, they’re fixed in place with epoxy. The right mix of energy and sigma constant will break the marble loose from the epoxy. As the marble rolls and settles back into a divot, its own or another other broken-free marble’s divot, then the epoxy takes hold again. The epoxy hardens until the marble’s as fixed in the divot as it was at the beginning.”
Shepard’s mouth went dry. “What are you saying, Miranda? These memories are the epoxy? Fine. Then I won’t sleep to remember them.”
“The memories aren’t the epoxy. It’s like feeling the stickiness of the epoxy starting to set. It’s only a sign.”
“And once the memories reach the night we switched?”
“You’re set in place. Forever. So is the other Shepard.”
Catch up on Sideways
I have paused posting while I finish the second draft of Sideways Part 4. I’m posting the story as an omnibus five books series. The first three books are complete and available.
If you’ve thought about jumping in, now is the perfect time to catch up.
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Summary:
How much can someone without a starship impact the galaxy? Shepard has decided, not much. Her life is controlled by agendas and council meetings. Kaidan’s moral guidance is starting to chafe. Once, she was Hero of the Galaxy. Life brimed with wild adventure and daring victories. She made a difference. Now, she lives a dull, quiet life on the Pacific as a family woman and politician.
That changes when she wakes up in another timeline. War-torn, brutal, and hurtling toward destruction, it’s a galaxy formed by her renegade decisions. Here, she’s a despised war criminal. She’s sacrificed friends, compromised morals, and destroyed lives, all in the name of the greater good. Even the man she loves calls her his enemy.
To return home, she must steal part of a dormant mass relay. She can’t do it alone. She’ll have to win back friends, rebuild what she’s destroyed, and regain the galaxy’s trust. Her once-husband, now-enemy is key to everything. Lost, dark, and in pain, he has his own demons to slay. Helping her is the last thing on his mind.
Time is running out. Enemies and secrets stand in her way. If she can’t reach her goal in time, she’ll be locked in place forever. She’ll never see her family again. She’d rather die trying than face a fate worse than death.
Sideways Part 3
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Chapter 13:
Blackmail*
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: Femshep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3 (beginning, new chapter)
Summary: She is a peaceful politician who loves her family. The other’s a hated renegade at the center of war. Trapped in the others’ timeline, it’s a race to find the impossible before getting locked in place forever. Is the way home worth the ultimate sacrifice?
Shepard walked along the dark gravel path. The distant city lights lit the top of the pines on either side of her pathway.
Up ahead was a chain-link fence with warning signs which surrounded a dozen Alliance warehouses. This was where C-Sec would be delivering the shuttle for Alliance inspection.
A hoot owl made Shepard flinch. She clutched the proximity mine in her pocket and hurried faster through the dark. The fenced gate was still too far ahead to make out from this distance.
“Shepard, this is unnecessary,” Liara spoke on the comm in Shepard’s ear.
Liara had finally returned Shepard’s call. A few minutes into the conversation, and Liara was already acting like she was in charge and calling the shots.
Shepard pressed the comm tighter into her ear. “Hell it is, Liara. I’ve got an Alliance admiral threatening me to leverage Council favors. If he exposes me, it will destroy everything.”
“I’ve already sent a team.”
“To intercept the evidence as it’s handed over?” Shepard’s feet slowed on the gravel road.
A light fog off the ocean was creeping inland and gave the moon a hazy glow overhead.
Shepard checked the time. “Where’s your team? The shuttle is coming any moment. I’m already at the warehouses. It will only take minutes for Alliance IT to pull the data. Then there will be no getting it back, even if the shuttle is retrieved.”
“I could hardly intercept it in space without creating a larger incident,” Liara hissed in her ear. “My team’s enroute.”
“Is that freakish hulk of a salarian leading it?”
A guard house was ahead. It interrupted the chain link fence, crrating space for vehicles to pass through. A biotic shield faintly flickered across the fence wires.
“I sent Tazzik, yes. I know you don’t trust him.”
“You shouldn’t trust him either. I’ve seen soldiers like him. That glint in his eyes at the hint of violence. He’s your hit man, too, isn’t he?”
The forest was cleared back from the guard house, and overhead lights flooded the road. Tracks in the gravel showed recent passage of heavy vehicles.
Two guards with rifles on their shoulders were talking by the gate. One noticed her and called to the other guards.
“Call off your thugs,” Shepard reoeated. “I’ve got this.”
“If you try to do this yourself, they’ll know. They’ll have you on camera, and Alliance soldiers will testify you pushed your way into the facility.”
Spotlights swiveled, following her. An alarm cried up ahead.
“Your smash and run job’s going to have Alliance casualties, Liara. Call them off. Now.”
“He’s been ordered to destroy the shuttle. That’s all.”
“Like I said, I’ve seen his type. If he gets in a few head shots, it’s icing on the cake. I won’t get caught. Suspected maybe, but no proof.“
Two soldiers trotted down the gravel road toward her. As they neared, their eyebrows rose. They exchanged a look.
One of the guards stepped forward. “Councilor Shepard?”
Sideways Part 3
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Chapter 12:
Chess Pieces
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: Femshep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3 (beginning, new chapter)
Summary: She is a peaceful politician who loves her family. The other’s a hated renegade at the center of war. Trapped in the others’ timeline, it’s a race to find the impossible before getting locked in place forever. Is the way home worth the ultimate sacrifice?
“Let me help you, Spectre.” Cicero crossed the conference room and offered his arm.
“I’d rather crawl on my stomach like a worm to my crutches.” She hopped to the wall.
Cicero followed her at a casual stroll. “Unfortunate happenstance. You don’t know how grieved I was to learn you were in that junkyard. If I had only known …”
“Cut the crap, Cicero.” Shepard stabilized herself on her crutches. “No one’s around for the act. I hope the Alliance enjoys its million-credit investment in a smoking junkyard.”
“It could have been enjoyed more.” Cicero glanced over at Kaidan, who was speaking to Ilk and the Dalatrass. “Well. Next time, I suppose.”
“Touch him, I’ll eat your heart.” Shepard drew his attention back. “Stop playing games. What do you want out of this? Why war? What’s in it for you?”
Cicero faced her and clasped his hands behind his back. “I wouldn’t have minded if you wanted to sleep with him. Perhaps that could have even been insightful. It’s this turn in you. You’re really choosing Alenko? Were you just biding time until his asari concubine was out of the way?”
Shepard clenched her fists, but evened out her breathing. She couldn’t afford another scene in front of the Councilors. “Kaidan hasn’t tried to blow me up or had the ship I’m on get attacked by krogan cannon fire.”
“You resent that? It’s only because you turned on me. In a way, Alenko is the one truly responsible for your misfortunes.”
“Jealous?”
Cicero’s lips twisted into a bitter grin. “Nothing so petty. Not in the way you mean it. Your dalliances, I never cared. But you betrayed me. That comes at a cost.” He grabbed one of her hands. She tried to jerk away, but he folded something small and hard into her palm. She yanked her hand away. “If you reconsider anything, come by my room. I know you’ll make your rounds – sell your points, rub shoulders, play to Tevos’s fragile asari sensibilities. Stop by my room. Perhaps there will be something for you to learn.”
“Go to hell.”
“Certainly, but you’ll be passing me on the way. If you start thinking clearly again, come to me.”
“Shepard?” Kaidan said cautiously, coming up behind Cicero
Cicero leaned into her ear. “Don’t cross me. If you come for the wrong reason, you’ll replay that choice in your head for the rest of your life.”
“Admiral Cicero.” Kaidan edged between them.
Cicero drew back, held her eyes a moment longer, then tilted his face slightly in Kaidan’s direction. “Lovely presentation on the Terminus System. Good night.” He spared Kaidan a glance and turned on his heels.
Kaidan folded his arms and watched him go. “Was he menacing you?” Kaidan asked.
“Cat tossing a mouse. He gets off on this.”
“The war is one big game to him.”
“There’s more to it. Has to be. He invited me up to his room.”
“His room?”
Shepard unfolded her fist. “Yes. He gave me his–” Her breath caught.
“What?”
Shepard swallowed against the lump growing in her throat. “I thought it was a keycard, but …”
Sideways Part 3
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Chapter 11:
Into the Abyss
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: Femshep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3 (beginning, new chapter)
Summary: She is a peaceful politician who loves her family. The other’s a hated renegade at the center of war. Trapped in the others’ timeline, it’s a race to find the impossible before getting locked in place forever. Is the way home worth the ultimate sacrifice?
Shepard woke in darkness. Blood and dirt mixed in her mouth. Pain lanced up her back. Her ears were ringing. Head pounded. Armor pinched and jabbed her ribs when she tried to sit up.
Then she remembered the fall. She was someplace metal and closed in. How long had she been out?
A blast was more felt than than heard. Her ears went silent of even the ringing, and she slammed headfirst into a metal beam. Dust and smoke enveloped her. She coughed into the darkness, spitting blood, and holding her side. The explosion sequence. It was getting close.
“Kaidan? Garrus?” Her comm didn’t even have static.
She flipped on her Omni-Tool light. It flickered unsteadily. The beam splintered like something was broken inside. It was enough to make out the torn-out bulkhead of a warship, asari-made. The decaying essence of eezo made her skin sting. She was in an engine room. Her beam caught on a vaguely familiar corridor. She had been here before.
She had to get out. She must have fallen stories deep. The next explosion could kill her. She tried to stand. Her leg pinched. Pain shot up her thigh. She collapsed, biting her tongue against the sharp ache. Broken or fractured again. Probably the same damn spot.
There wasn’t any way out.
The realization choked her. Her own breathing was the only sound in her ringing ears. Dust swirled in the splintered light beam on her wrist. It reflected off the cavernous walls. Her tomb.
Cold leaked into her blood. She had been terrified Kaidan would be the one not walking away. All along it had been her. She was too deeply buried to ever make it to the surface in time. This was it.
The explosion tore through the metal, twisting and tearing apart the engine room. Heat burned over her.
Sideways Part 3
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Chapter 8:
Complications*
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, post-war
Pairing: Femshep/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: Mature
Available: AO3 (beginning, new chapter)
Summary: She is a peaceful politician who loves her family. The other’s a hated renegade at the center of war. Trapped in the others’ timeline, it’s a race to find the impossible before getting locked in place forever. Is the way home worth the ultimate sacrifice?
Kaidan hunched over in the metal folding chair, elbows on his knees, and stared at the polished linoleum between his feet. He held Avyn’s binkie in his hands. The crease between his eyes was so deep, Shepard asked if he had a migraine.
“This is taking too long,” Kaidan whispered.
“I’m supposed to be the impatient one, remember?” Shepard paced along the wall with her hands clasped behind her back.
Kaidan put the binkie in his coat pocket. He scrubbed his hands over his face and sat back against the wall with a thump. His eyes were raw and heavy-lidded.
“Something’s wrong,” he decided.
“It’s like you’ve never been to a medical appointment. Waiting’s half the time.” Shepard dragged a chair from the other wall and set it down beside him.
“If this is half the appointment, what’s that say about the talking part? If something needs that long to explain …”
It had been a long time waiting. Shepard’s heart picked up pace. No, no … She pushed down the knot forming in her throat.
She took his hand. “They probably profiled you for the questions type. Of course, they set aside time for the talking part.”
“Maybe they couldn’t get her to settle down.” Kaidan hunched forward again and held her hand limply against his knee.
“They were going to sedate her.”
“What?” Kaidan twisted around with large eyes. “I don’t remember Miranda saying that.”
“Because you were fussing with Avyn’s blanket.”
Kaidan went to the open doorway and peered both directions down the hall. “Sedation carries a lot of risks. If I’d known … She’s underweight for five months as it is. If there’s even a small error. A fraction of a …” Kaidan stopped with a sudden frown.
“What is it?”
Kaidan shuffled back a step. Miranda burst around the corner into the room. She met Shepard’s eyes for an instant and then looked away sharply.
“About time.” Shepard pushed herself up from the chair.
Miranda fiddled with a terminal mounted on a rolling cart. “Sorry about the wait.”
The screen on the wall lit up with a loading symbol. Miranda impatiently tapped the buttons on her terminal and frowned at the screen.
“Everything all right?” Shepard asked.
Miranda’s mouth tightened. She tapped the button again as if that would make it load faster. An image finally flickered onto the screen.
Kaidan’s hand slipped around Shepard’s waist as the holographic model came into focus. It was black and white, 3-dimensional and rotating, but clearly a brain. It was a jumble of tiny details, neural pathways and white matter. Kaidan’s fingers dug into her hip, and breath escaped from between his lips.
“What is it?” Shepard looked frantically between him and Miranda.
Miranda clutched her elbows and turned her face away. Kaidan stared frozenly at the image, his lips parted, barely breathing. Shepard’s blood raced.
“No.” Kaidan’s voice cracked. His arm trembled, and he cinched Shepard tighter against his side.
Shepard struggled to find her voice. It came out a boom. "What the hell’s it mean?”