There are no words.
No words as she lay across the hospital bed, aching—screaming, like her skin was on fire. Crying out, begging them to put out the flames that scorched her very soul…to put her out of her misery.
No words as the strongest woman they knew lay helpless, haunted by nightmares…calling out the names of fallen comrades, preaching what could have been…
No words.
"I'm proud of you."
Her eyes tear away from him and she glances down at her bloodied, broken hand…drinking it all in. Her other hand clamps tightly around her abdomen as warmth spreads through her. It's uncomfortable, and she understands what it means for her body because she has felt it once before…clutching her throat, suffocating in the silent bowels of space.
He wants to reach out. To hold her quivering hand, and smooth over her exposed wounds and flesh—but he can't. It's a distant memory of the past, and he has to be there for her now if anything else. But as he sees that vulnerable look wash over his lover's face his heart breaks in two.
After a moment, her hand flops to her side and she sighs shakily, directing her gaze out towards the galaxy. Sadness overwhelms her, seeing a planet she once called her home –suffocating in the silent bowels of space. It hits too close to home—and her heart breaks in two.
"There…Earth. I wish you could see it like I do, Shepard. It's so…perfect…"
It is, perhaps, the only thing they have ever agreed on. She briefly wonders if it's at all even fair for her to have such feelings. She, who had been racing about the galaxy all this time…only to appear now, when people like him have been desperately trying to save their homes every second of every day…
She who was now more synthetic than organic…
Was it fair for her to look upon her home planet, and feel as though she were there with the buildings crumbling around her?
Was she even human?
"….does this unit have a soul?"
"Do I?"
"You're real enough to me."
And for the first time in her long, arduous service—she weeps. She bows her head, and begins a soft chant a friend had once taught to her only a few weeks ago,
"Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention. Guide this one to where the traveler never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve. Guide this one, Kalahira, and he will be a companion to you as he was to me."
"Kaidan."
It's Kaidan's turn to weep. He sits, slumped—frail and battered in his chair as he recedes back into the here and now, clutching his lover's broken hand.
"Kaidan," Liara insists, placing a hand upon his shoulder, pulling him from their beloved leader's mind. He hisses, startling as if awoken from a deep sleep by something as familiar as an alien ship blowing through his beloved Normandy like butter.
He can almost hardly believe it as he comes to, idly scratching at the back of his neck for a tube that wasn't there—feeling as though he were choking. It had all felt so real, so tangible…so…
He looks down at Shepard.
Had she been hiding these feelings the whole time? And now, how could he have been so blind?
"God, Shepard," he moans tiredly, ignoring Liara's pestering questions—mind melding was often taxing, especially for humans. But he had no intention of ripping himself away, now that he knew—now that he had seen what she had seen, "Jane…"
He presses a sad, longing kiss to the inside of her wrist, and then places it against his forehead as he leans forward in his chair.
"Just come back to me," he whispered, mind full of visions and nightmares, "…you promised."