Chapter Text
Spectre status is not exactly an offer she's expecting while trapped on bed rest. Udina, Ashley thinks, is insane to keep pushing it, let alone to offer it in the first place. She of all people does not deserve it, much less as humanity's second Spectre.
"Councilor, I'm honored by your offer, and I still need more time to think about it, but may I make a recommendation?" she asks, and at his confused look and nod, she continues, "Major Kaidan Alenko would be much more deserving of Spectre status. He leads a biotic company, he's been in the service for a long time, and he's... the most loyal person I know."
Udina huffs, and stands to leave. "I'll take that under consideration, but I need an answer, Lieutenant Commander," he says. The doors open just before he gets there, admitting Kaidan; Ashley thinks she might see Shepard behind him. "And I'm still waiting to hear from you, Major."
"Councilor," Kaidan says with a nod as Udina leaves. In the doorway, Ashley catches a glimpse of Udina talking to Shepard, and feels she's woken up in some kind of bizarre alternate universe. Then Kaidan's taking the seat Udina just vacated and pulling it closer to the bed. "You gave us a scare, Ash."
Ashley tries and fails not to read too much into the plural pronoun on top of him arriving with Shepard, but succeeds in not mentioning it. "Sorry, I'll try harder not to get my ass kicked by Cerberus bots."
He chuckles, looking much more like her Kaidan than the formal Major who'd greeted Udina. "How are you feeling?"
Her shoulder hurts. There's nothing to do in hospital. Her family's still on Earth except for her baby sister who's all alone. There's a war going on and she's stuck on bed rest. She has an offer of Spectre status. Ashley settles for, "A lot. I'd shrug, but my shoulder's broken."
"There's a lot going on," he agrees. "Shepard told me you were hurt - I came as fast as I could."
"From where?"
"I got off Earth on - you're never going to believe this - Shepard's mother's ship. And she said she'd heard about me from her daughter." Ashley starts laughing, and regrets the movements, but continues to grin as he adds, "I'm not sure if I want to know what Shepard told her."
"Geeze," she says, sobering. "Wonder what she's told her mom about me."
Kaidan smooths her hair from her face, and she closes her eyes at his touch. "Probably not what she was telling you on Mars and on the Normandy."
"You've heard, huh?"
"I've heard," he confirms. "She wanted to come and talk to you about it, but she's using me to check you're not too mad at her."
"Me, mad at her?" she echoes incredulously. "Like I have any right to be."
"Yeah, I thought you'd be feeling that way."
She studies him, then says, "Do you really think I have a chance?"
In lieu of an answer, he takes something out of his pocket and places it on her side table, then looks at her.
"You kept it," she murmurs. The tiny British Columbian jade carving of a bear had been Shepard's present to him after they'd saved the Citadel.
"I missed her," he says. "And I missed you." He pauses, and then adds, "And it's still nice to hold when I get migraines."
"Yeah, I bet."
He raises an eyebrow.
"Top drawer."
With a nod, he opens the top drawer of her side table and retrieves her projector, placing it behind the bear and projecting Alpha Centauri. He watches the stars orbit, and she watches him.
"When I saw you and Shepard on Horizon..." He points at the model. "I felt like the red dwarf."
"Proxima Centauri," she says, and he nods. "Most trinary systems are a binary star orbited by another star. Not really a model I'd want to follow with relationships."
"You've tried it?"
She shakes her head. "No more threeways since us. Just Shepard."
He nods. "Shepard didn't have anything to hold onto like we did, but I know she missed us," he says. "I think she'd like to at least try to forgive you."
Ashley looks at Alpha Centauri and imagines a non-hierarchical trinary star system - imagines her and Kaidan and Shepard together, but as they are now, older and tired and hurting and trying to heal, instead of the honeymoon period of their time together before the Normandy was attacked.
"Okay," she says at length. "Bring her in."
Kaidan gets up to let Shepard in from where she's no longer talking to Udina. Her eyes soft with concern in a way Ashley hasn't seen since last year, Shepard sits next to her on what had been Kaidan's chair and leans her elbows on her knees.
"Hey," Ashley says, since Shepard seems to be hesitating, and for lack of anything better, adds, "Your face is looking better," with a weak gesture towards her cheek, where she can't see the red light any more.
"So is yours," Shepard says, over a little scraping on the floor as Kaidan pulls up a second chair. "When we brought you in, you looked like - I thought I was going to lose you."
"You can't get rid of me that easily, Shepard," she says. "As I recall, you had to die to get away from me the first time."
There's an appalled edge to both Shepard's laughter and Kaidan's that makes Ashley smirk, but eventually Shepard quiets.
"I... I couldn't lose you with some of our last conversations being me bitching," she says. "Sure, I meant it at the time, but the Reapers have a way of making you realize... There are more important things."
Recognizing her own words from the night before the Omega-4 Relay, Ashley has to blink back tears. "It was well deserved bitching," she says. "You were right about everything except orders to seduce you - and I'm sorry for all of it."
"I didn't need to hurt you for it in return," Shepard insists. "I'm sorry."
"I don't expect, or need you to be the bigger person all the time, Shepard," says Ashley. "I love you for you, even when you're awful; I didn't fall for the perfect hero you play in the interviews."
"We can all be sorry," Kaidan offers. "I'm sorry for how I acted on Horizon."
"You already apologized for that," Shepard says, but she takes both their hands as she turns back to Ashley. "Look, it's going to take time for me to trust you, to forgive you. But I still love you, so I want to work towards it. Especially if we'll be working together again."
It's not complete forgiveness, but hearing that Shepard still loves her is enough for a smile to break across Ashley's face. "I can wait. Or help. Whatever you need." She squeezes her hand, then adds, "Kaidan, please hug her for me," because she can't sit up enough to do it herself.
Watching their embrace - as close and intimate as an old couple, rather than two friends - she also asks, "Where are you two at, anyway?" They were talking on Earth, Shepard told him she was here, and they came here together even if Kaidan came in first to butter her up; Ashley doesn't miss how they sit a little closer both to her and to each other after the hug.
"Rebuilding," says Shepard, with a look sideways at Kaidan. "Getting to know each other again."
Ashley glances at Kaidan, who gives her an encouraging nod, then she looks at Alpha Centauri next to her. Clocking the movement, Shepard follows her gaze.
"You both kept them," she says, soft with surprise.
"Because we both still loved you," Kaidan says gently.
Taking a deep breath, Ashley gathers her courage. "Which is why I want to rebuild with you," she says. "The three of us, together, in a relationship again. The way we were strongest."
Her eyes bright, Shepard looks between them. "Are you two ganging up on me again?"
They'd come to her together on the SR-1, first when they were locked down and then as they left for Ilos. Ashley chuckles. "A little bit."
"I'm happy to take the blame again," says Kaidan. "I ambushed Ash for lunch the day the Reapers attacked, and we talked."
"We also made out," Ashley adds, because she's done with keeping secrets, and then tells Kaidan, "And Shepard made out with me on the way to Mars."
His eyebrows lift. "You had a fun day."
"Oh, yeah, made out with two of my exes, fought with one of them, almost died."
"This is a lot," says Shepard, looking a little stunned. "I, um. I'm going to get back to you on that, because I want it, but I don't know if it's the best idea right now with, well, us." She gestures between her and Ashley to specify. "And also because I'm going to need some alone time with the mental image of the two of you. But I will give you two an answer."
Holding in a smirk at the thought of Shepard imagining them, Ashley nods. "I can wait for you on that too." She looks to Kaidan. "Speaking of waiting, what's Udina waiting for an answer about?"
"Oh," he says, looking bemused. "He offered me Spectre status. I said he should try you instead because you'd do anything for humanity, for the galaxy. I'm still thinking about it."
Ashley beams. "He offered it to me too, and I recommended you."
"Stop being cute for the Council," Shepard says, amused despite herself. "First rule of being a Spectre."
"I'll keep that in mind," says Ashley, and she suddenly wonders if fraternization is among the limited rules for Spectres. Not that it matters too much now that she's an officer; now that they're not in the same chain of command. "Do you think I should accept?"
"I think that's up to you," says Shepard. "But I think you deserve it - I think both of you deserve it."
"That helps, Shepard, thank you," says Kaidan, and Ashley nods in agreement.
With all their apologies and wishes for a relationship out in the open, it's easier to talk, to catch up on what everyone's doing now, to worry about each other's families (Kaidan's parents were on Earth too). It's even easier to say goodbye when Shepard and Kaidan mutually decide to let her rest, knowing that this time they'll keep in touch.
Kaidan writes her, and this time Ashley writes back. Shepard calls, even though the time differences as she dips in and out of different systems means that half the time it's while Ashley's omni-tool is switched off for sleep. She presumes they're contacting each other.
When they're on the Citadel, they visit her in hospital, sometimes separately, sometimes together. Shepard holds her hand on her visits, the awkwardness between them evaporating with every stroke of her hair. Kaidan kisses her hello and goodbye when he visits alone (they agree not to rush Shepard for a decision), on her forehead or her cheek or her hand (they also agree not to go far without her), except for the one time he visits while Sarah's there as well.
"Kaidan, this is Sarah, my youngest sister and the only one of us with a hyphenated surname," Ashley says, because Sarah added her husband's surname after they got married. "Sar, this is Major Kaidan Alenko, my, uh..."
"Old squadmate from the SR-1," he rescues her.
"The cute one," Sarah recalls from the news vids she'd seen three years ago, and this time Ashley laughs and laughs instead of wanting to kill her, and Kaidan blushes scarlet and stammers his next few sentences, but after that initial hiccup they get along great, and Ashley entertains fantasies of introducing him and Shepard to her mother.
Shepard does not give them an answer, but they both give Udina theirs. After Ashley gets discharged from the hospital, they become the second and third human Spectres in an unusually big induction ceremony (Jondum Bau, a salarian Spectre, theorizes that they're recruiting more Spectres for the war effort) and accept assignments on the Citadel, Ashley reluctantly staying for her continued outpatient physiotherapy, Kaidan quietly staying for her in a tech role she doesn't really understand.
Cerberus contacts her again, and she sends the e-mail upwards, but this time she's not ordered to accept their (surprisingly generous, for someone who by all appearances, quit with the entire Normandy) offer; both the Alliance and the Council merely say not to reply, as they've assigned someone to look into it.
"I wasn't planning to," she tells Kaidan, sitting too close to him as they watch an old Blasto vid ("they did not get a lot right about being one of the first Spectres of your species"). "Except maybe with, 'Go fuck yourselves, working for you ruined my relationships.' But it's nice to know they're both backing me up on no more undercover work."
"I like out of cover Ash," he says, and leans his head on her shoulder as he texts Shepard, Ash and I are watching Blasto. Wish you were here.
With Shepard off to Tuchanka with a cure for the genophage (their opinions on this vary), they don't expect an immediate reply.