A/N Bioware owns all, I just like to play in the sandbox. Beta-d by my best friend Em who forgave me for ruining her life with ME/DA and is therefore deserving of all praise.
The File
There's a file on his omni-tool marked 'Shepard'.
Half the things in it wouldn't make any sense to anyone else but him.
Like that old old stupidly cheesy pop song.
You'd have to really know her to know that it's there because her dad used to play it all time and sometimes, when she's happy, she'll sing it in the shower without thinking.
And the cupcake recipe.
For the record she's not actually that fond of cupcakes, but she likes to make a mess of the kitchen and lick the mixture off the spoon.
He'd caught her doing that once on shore leave, and he can't recall whether she'd ever gotten around to actually making any cakes, but the sex on the kitchen floor had been pretty good.
Some of it makes complete sense.
A list of her preferred equipment, guns and weapon mods.
Aboard the SR1 he'd programmed his omni-tool to alert him when a new line came out, just so he could place an order for the Normandy and have it waiting for her before she knew it existed.
When he'd first done it he'd told himself that he was just being a conscientious lieutenant.
He'd known that wasn't true even then.
Some of it is things he'd never let anyone else see.
Like the picture of her he'd taken while she wasn't looking. She stands before the stars on some random planet that he'd forgotten the name of as soon as they'd landed. Her arms are crossed, her hip cocked to one side, her eyes staring heavenward into the endless black ocean.
He likes to think that, if you look closely, you can actually see the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders, and also how she bears that weight with the characteristic strength and resolve that shines out of her eyes.
There's another one of her, bikini-clad on a beach
The thing he likes about that one is the smile.
She's not beaming or grinning or smirking but just simply smiling for no other reason than that she's happy.
He likes that you can't see the weight on her shoulders in that one.
On November 14th 2184 he took one last look and closed the file.
He told himself he'd never open it again.
But he didn't delete it.
A week later, he gets an update from one of the weapons stores and he can't resist opening the whole file.
He pulls up the picture of her looking into the stars and the grief overwhelms him.
So he sits on the sofa and cries until it feels like there's no moisture left in his body. Then he falls asleep where he sits, exhausted and spent and with the beginnings of a migraine throbbing in his temples.
When he wakes the picture is still there and through the haze of migraine pain it almost looks like she's real.
"Shepard?" he croaks, throat raw from sobbing.
But no.
She's never coming back to him again.
He slams his eyes shut as soon as he wakes up enough to realise that and closes the file without looking.
He tells himself he's never opening it again.
But he does.
Sometimes he misses her so much that he'd give anything, anything,to see her again.
Those times he sits there, finger hovering over the key that will bring up the file, knowing that pressing that button will result in a surge of the pain that never quite stops clawing at his heart.
But wanting to see her again regardless.
Every time he gives in and opens the file, and every time he wishes that he hadn't.
When he feels lonely the file is up before he consciously realises his fingers have moved.
Those times he just feels the aching depths of his loss and falls into melancholy for as long as three days at a time. He spends each of those days hearing her voice in the back of his head telling him to pick himself up. Haul his ass out of there. Carry on the fight. Move on. Delete the file.
But he can't.
That file is the only piece of her he has left.
And it hurts him to look.
And it hurts him not to look.
And he doesn't know what to do about that.