[Fic][ME] Two Choices (Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, SFW)

[wallwalker]

Title: Two Choices
Fandom: Mass Effect
Characters: Shepard, Ashley/Kaiden
Rating: SFW
Contents: Reference to that ME spoiler that pretty much everyone knows by now.
Summary: There's no third option this time. For fic_promptly.

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One of them is going to have to die.

You've managed to wriggle out of a lot of tough choices. Your mom always told you, always take the third option - don't ever let yourself get backed into a corner, and if you do, break the wall down. That was what you wanted to do - break down walls, improve relationships between humans and the rest of the galaxy and start some real cooperation between them, not just a truce.

But there's no time. There are no gunmen to talk down or walls to level, just two people who need saving, who are both willing to give their lives to make sure that your orders were carried out. You’re the only one who can save them, and there’s no way you can, no one to convince to give you more time.

The worst of it was, Ashley and Kaidan were good friends, if nothing else. They'd been spending their leave time together, and you'd noticed how well they worked as a team. And now they're both telling you to save the other, for the good of the mission... and so that they won't have to know that the other's death was on their head.

You can't make another choice. You have two options; you can't write a third onto the list, like you've always tried to do before. You have to make the choice.

So you make it, never knowing if it was the best call, or the right one.