Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

Ashley Williams requested a read receipt be sent when message 'Cards on the table' is read. Do you want to send a receipt?

From: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
To: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
Subject: Cards on the table

Kaidan,

We're back, and my real mission is over. I'm sure it's still classified, but I don't care any more. You are more important to me than my old orders.

I couldn't tell you that I was with Cerberus because I was infiltrating them for the Alliance. Cerberus tried to recruit me after Shepard died, giving me all this crap about how they felt for my grandfather. I turned them down but when I reported it to my CO, I got orders to go in under deep cover and find out what they were up to. When it turned out they were trying to revive Shepard, of course the Alliance wanted me to stick around and keep an eye on her. You know I'd never want to join Cerberus, being an Alliance soldier is in my blood. I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I was there or that they brought her back before we ran into each other on Horizon.

I've left Cerberus - we all did after destroying the Collector Base - and I'm back out of cover with the Alliance now. They pulled me out after Hackett asked Shepard for a favor and it ended badly, you probably saw it on the news. Shepard's under house arrest at Vancouver HQ if you want to see her.

And I'm sorry I never replied to you after Shepard died. I was a mess without her, without you, and you being a mess too was too much for me. Once I pulled myself together, it seemed like it was too late, and then I was undercover and I didn't want to lie to you. If I could go back, I would have tried harder. Maybe we could have helped each other.

I miss you. But I understand if you don't want to talk. I just need to know that you read this, that you know why I was with Cerberus and why I never wrote back.

- Ash

From: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
To: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
Subject: Read: Cards on the table

Your message

To: Kaidan Alenko
Subject: Cards on the table

was read.

Ashley Williams requested a read receipt be sent when message 'Reaper testimony' is read. Do you want to send a receipt?

From: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
To: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
Subject: Reaper testimony

Kaidan,

I'm testifying about the Reapers at Vancouver HQ next week - hopefully this means they're finally going to do something about the metal bastards. If you're free, and you want to be there, your testimony could really help. You always had a way with words. We'll just be two Alliance soldiers who went through Reaper hell and lived to tell the tale, not... what we were once.

- Ashley

From: Kaidan Alenko <[email protected]>
To: Ashley Williams <[email protected]>
Subject: Read: Reaper testimony

Your message

To: Kaidan Alenko
Subject: Reaper testimony

was read.

Ashley stares at the door before her in the Alliance home base barracks. All she has to do is knock. Anderson's not only confirmed that she has clearance to visit if she wants, but specifically requested her presence. The guy assigned to guard duty is someone she's served with before. The Alliance could not have made it easier for her to make amends.

She raises her fist.

And then lowers it, and backs away. She'll try again after her testimony, she decides. She could bring some good news along with her apologies. Maybe that will help make up for everything.

As she makes her way towards the mess hall, she goes over in her head what she's going to talk about this afternoon. She heard Sovereign, she fought Saren, she downloaded EDI's scans of the disabled looking Reaper before she left, she has her helmet cam vids of the human Reaper on the Collector Base. They have to listen to her this time.

"Ash?"

There aren't many people in the Alliance who call her that any more, her new covert operations teams still sticking to "Commander" or "Williams". She whips around.

"Kaidan?"

In the months since she saw him on Horizon, he's started to gray, he's put on muscle, and though he's still within grooming regulation standards, he's scruffier than he'd usually let himself get on the SR-1. It's a good look for him, though one that makes her wonder what her former lover's been up to. Better still is his face as he looks her up and down, despite his pointed read receipts and lack of real response to her e-mails.

"I just gave my testimony about the Reapers," he says. "I... was hoping I'd catch you."

Ashley tries not to hope for too much. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." He steps aside for some officials passing by; she follows suit, and doesn't miss how his eyes remain on her rather than watching for when they can resume their place. "Are you free? Do you want to get off base for a bit?"

She hadn't thought she'd ever end up back in his orbit, but she can't waste the opportunity. "Sure."

He takes the wheel of a skycar she doesn't recognize as Alliance or rapid transit, taking her through downtown Vancouver. Always coming straight into the Alliance spaceport means she doesn't actually know the area, whereas Kaidan, who grew up in Vancouver, whose gift from Shepard after defeating Saren was inspired by his hometown, navigates with ease.

Only when they've exhausted their comparison of what they mentioned or plan to mention in their testimonies and their recaps of the last six months does it occur to her to ask, "Where are we going?" as skyscrapers give way to suburbia.

"My parents' place," he says.

Huh. She'd thought he'd have his own, since he likes coming home between assignments rather than staying on the Citadel. "Are you introducing me to your parents?" She lets the corner of her mouth tilt up a little, testing how much she can tease him.

Laughing, he shakes his head. "They're out shopping. It's Mom's payday, so they'll be a while."

"Ah."

His eyes slide over to her, studying her closely. "I just thought we could get away from work, have some privacy."

"Yeah, I'd like that."

He parks by a house overlooking the bay. Getting out of the car, she's distracted for a moment by the view, her hand resting on the door, until he says, "It's even better from inside," his smile fond and familiar when she glances over at him.

She follows him upstairs to the house, pausing to remove her boots and pat a cat he explains is his mother's, and sinks into a couch facing a floor to ceiling window.

"Damn," she breathes, as he hands her an open beer, and then thinks to add, "Hey, I have my testimony about the Reapers this afternoon."

"I'll feed you," he says, so she nods and takes a sip: Some kind of craft beer that she'd never think to order for herself, but it's good.

"Damn," she repeats.

"That one's a local brew," he says. "They're too small right now to export off-world."

"That's it," she says. "Tell your parents I'm moving in: I like the view, the couch, and the beer too much."

He laughs, heading for the kitchen. "You can share my room," he says, and maybe something in her face is a little too serious when she meets his eyes, because he quickly ducks into the pantry.

"Why am I here, Kaidan?" she asks, once he's in the safer territory of making a salmon sandwich.

He pauses to take a swig from his own open beer on the counter - for courage, she's guessing, because he follows it up with, "Your e-mail. You were undercover in Cerberus, that's..."

"Yeah," she says, when it becomes clear he's not going to finish his sentence. "I was there for two years all up, and looking back on it is like remembering a really weird dream."

"What was it like? What did you have to do?"

"At first, it was just a security detail on a research station in deep space," she starts, and it's such a relief to finally explain it to someone who cares more about her than the mission that she doesn't notice Kaidan's finished her sandwich until he puts it in her lap and sits next to her.

"I'm glad you never had to fight any Alliance soldiers," Kaidan says as she starts eating (it is better than a sandwich has any right to be). "Seeing you in the black and gold after the way you spoke out every time our assignments ended up involving them... That was hard, Ash."

"I hated it," she says. "I didn't enlist because I wanted to be a spy; I did it because I believed in serving humanity. And the worst part of being at Cerberus was that in a crappy, twisted way, so did they. My Alliance trainers told me that was my way into pretending I was one of them."

"Bringing back Shepard is a hell of a way to serve."

"Yeah. At least it wasn't, say, experimenting on captives like Corporal Toombs, but I still wonder, if she'd had the choice..."

"Would she have chosen resurrection?" he finishes for her. "It's not a choice you really expect in life."

She nods, and keeps eating and drinking. He watches her, his face more thoughtful than a former lover with lunch probably deserves. When she raises an eyebrow - credit for your thoughts? - he says, "You say what's on your mind. You don't hold back. And you had to hide in plain sight."

"Finally," she breathes. "Someone who gets why I was the last person who should have been sent undercover."

"I get you," he says, tentatively tracing his fingers over hers, and it's been so damn long that she twines her fingers through his, even though it means she'll have to finish the sandwich one-handed if he holds on.

"I was so scared," she says, still looking at their joined hands, and he raises them to press his lips to the back of her hand, the gesture far more romantic than she'd thought she'd ever get from him again after Horizon making her breath hitch. "I thought they'd see right through me. Forget the reprimands or dishonorable discharge from the Alliance, I thought Cerberus would kill me, or put me on the table in one of their weird experiments."

Kaidan lets go of her hand to wrap his arms around her. "You're safe now, Ash."

Somehow, even though she still has no idea what he thinks of her after everything she's done, here in his arms is the safest she's felt since Shepard's death, because she's not lying any more and she probably can't break his heart any more than she already has. Even in the afterglow with Shepard last year, her secret and her guilt had twisted her stomach so that she couldn't entirely enjoy it. She sags into his touch, and eventually, allows herself to touch him back, her hands spreading across his back.

In time, he withdraws, takes a drink and her hand, and says, "Tell me about working with Shepard."

She winces. "Working with Shepard, or spying on Shepard?"

He considers, then nods. "Yeah."

Both, then. "Working with her was..." She shrugs, unable to come up with a succinct adjective. "She's still the same. She wasn't happy to be working with Cerberus, but she was her: Driven, always trying to save everyone she could, getting everyone's take after missions. Cerberus brought her back exactly the way she was."

After another bite of the sandwich, she continues. "So spying on her was hell. I was basically talking about her behind her back, and no matter how much I said it was the same old Shepard, please bring us back, I had to keep watching, and reporting on her." She swallows, thinking of the hurt and betrayal on Shepard's face when they'd returned to Earth after her disastrous solo mission in the Bahak system: The Alliance was waiting for Shepard with handcuffs and for Ashley with her handler, the sheer difference like a mass effect field altering the gravity between them. "I hated lying to her most of all. I hated having to hide my mission from her, especially once we..."

She trails off, realizing she'll have to tell him.

"Once you what?" he prompts her.

"Once we got back together," she says, and an odd frown crosses his face. "This was a while after Horizon. I still loved her -" still does - "and she still loved me. I'm not proud of it."

As she finishes her lunch, he's far quieter than she'd expected. She'd have thought he'd be mad about them getting together without him, or about her entering a relationship with someone she was spying on and hurting someone he'd loved too. Hell, she thought he'd at least be more surprised.

She puts the empty plate and bottle aside. "It doesn't seem like this is news to you," she says, rather than suggest those reasons for anger.

"She's kind of implied it," he says, and she raises an eyebrow. She didn't know he was in contact with Shepard. "I visit when I'm around. She doesn't say a lot in front of her guard, and she certainly didn't spell that part out, but we've talked a little."

Ashley tries not to feel too hurt about him visiting Shepard and not replying to her e-mails, but fails. "I try to visit her every time I come to Van," she says instead, and then admits, "I chicken out every time." Almost knocking today was the furthest she's gotten in six months.

"She's hurt," he says, and she shuts her eyes as if this can block that fact out, but he puts his other hand over hers. "So I wanted to hear your side of things - more than you said in your e-mail, and in person."

Opening her eyes to look at him, she has to wonder: If their fledgling relationship of three had had time to grow more serious before Shepard died and orders pulled them apart, would he have been like this with her and Shepard, always trying to be fair to both of them? But she's also wondering, "Then why didn't you ask to meet me sooner? It's been six months since we left Cerberus, since I e-mailed you."

Without letting go of her, he shrugs. "I was wrapping my head around it all - corroborating your e-mails and Horizon with what I had access to, what I knew of you. Then I was promoted, and commanding a biotic covert ops unit doesn't exactly leave a lot of downtime for hunting down your old..."

They had never really named their relationship in '83, only called each other mine and ours and exchanged I love yous. "You were busy," she says, rather than trying to name it now.

"I was wondering whether I could forgive you."

She stares at him, floored that this had been a consideration. "So?" she asks. "Now that you've heard it, am I forgiven?"

"I'm getting there," he admits. "I do forgive you for hurting Shepard, for being with her without me."

"Hold on," she objects. "Horizon felt like a breakup to me."

"You weren't the only one lying on Horizon, Ash," he says, his voice as thick with emotion as it had been back then. "I didn't stop loving you. I still do, even with everything so messy. And there wasn't anyone else, after you and Shepard."

Even after he's been so touchy-feely with her today, she wasn't expecting him to still love her; the most she'd hoped for was old interest torn up by her mission. "What happened with that doctor on the Citadel?"

Kaidan looks briefly confused before he visibly figures out whom she's talking about and shakes his head. "Nothing happened with Ryota - it really was just drinks. I haven't heard from him in over a year."

His interest in men is news to her but utterly irrelevant in the face of his love for her. "I still love you too," she says, and he gives her his first real smile since they started talking, as hopeful and joyous as the first time she admitted she was interested in him. "But I also still love Shepard, and I can't hurt her even more."

He squeezes her hand. "So do I. I want us back, even with work, with her house arrest."

Damnit, his faith in them as a unit is still adorable, and still a little contagious. Three years ago, he'd been the one to raise the possibility that maybe, just maybe, no one would have to choose. "Do you really think she'd ever forgive me for this?"

"I think it's worth asking," he says. "I'm in town a few more days. If our schedules line up, we could go see her; I'll go in first and try to smooth things over a little for you."

"What, all this in front of Vega?" His shrug and earnest look say, Why not? She laughs and shakes her head, but says, "Yeah, okay. When are you free?"

He lets her use his omni-tool to set a time while he washes up. As he rinses out their empty beer bottles for recycling, on impulse she enters Dinner with Ash - you pick where into his calendar too, because if they're going to try this again, this time she wants just a touch of tradition.

She looks up to find him a breath away, though looking more at her than at his omni-tool.

"When did you cut your hair?" he asks, tucking it behind her ear.

"When we got back," she says, trusting he'll mentally fill in, from Cerberus. "I needed a change." She also started dabbling with makeup at the same time and for the same reason.

"I like it."

Three years ago, she suddenly remembers, touching her hair while it was down had always been a prelude to Kaidan kissing her, but today he holds himself back, even though his gaze is on her mouth. Maybe he thinks it would be too soon after hearing more details about her work with Cerberus and agreeing to try a relationship again. Maybe he's right.

Maybe, just maybe, he's wrong this time.

"Kaidan," she says, surprising herself with how steady her voice holds. "I'm going to kiss you."

"Please," he breathes, so soft that she only hears it because he's in so close, and she's not about to turn that request down.

She puts a hand to his cheek and kisses him, and for a moment, all the world is still. And then she shifts, her lips moving against his, and he whines low in his throat and kisses her back, wrapping his arms around her waist. Emboldened, she nips at his lower lip, and he opens up to her. It's all too easy to refamiliarize themselves with each other, to remember each other's mouths and what they like, until they have to stop to breathe, their foreheads touching.

"I missed you, Ash," he says, his voice aural whiskey.

"Mm, I missed you too," she says, absently brushing her thumb across his stubble until she thinks to add, "I can't believe they let you testify with this."

"It's just within regulation," he says. "I checked."

"I like it," she replies, and his eyes darken, and as he tilts her chin up to kiss her neck, he's careful to let the stubble graze her throat.

His hands drop to the back of her legs while he makes his way down her neck, and she realizes the second before he does it that he's going to lift her up onto the kitchen bench, standing between her legs. She hooks her ankles together behind his back and uses them to tug him towards her and keep him there, then grips his shoulders tight as he progresses incrementally down her neckline. Slowly, he slides his hands up her thighs; she doesn't miss how his thumbs trace abstract patterns on her inner thighs, nor does she object to it.

What she objects to is the time, when she happens to catch a glimpse over his shoulder of the clock on the oven behind him.

"Kaidan, wait," she says, loosening her legs, and he surfaces, his pupils blown and confused. "I should go."

His eyes widen, but he nods. "Sorry - too fast -"

"To my testimony," she specifies, and relief sweeps over him. She's not willing to call this a mistake just yet.