Most of the crew had hunkered down for the night. In the latter days of the war every hand on deck was beginning to value their every wink of sleep available to them, eagerly devouring it as though it were their last meal. It was an awkward and unnerving thing to realize that the war's end was near, that every soul could feel it even if they didn't dare to bring such thoughts to words, each tick of a clock expiring a finite number of seconds until the end. Carrie Shepard had struggled and argued with herself since the first time she had seen those stares of dead eyes, when had the fighting spirit been replaced by a soulless acceptance of oblivion?
It had been Thessia, she had decided, but even invoking the thought of the Asari homeworld was like a grip of ice around her heart. It had been a unique pain to watch the obsidian spires and ancient temples of Thessia collapse under the weight of its invaders, to hear the frantic screams of Asari commandos over the radio as they were confronted with inevitability. The sudden and rapid collapse of Earth had been a devastating blow to humanity, but it had been the banner upon which the forces of the galaxy rallied; Thessia, however, had been that banner. To watch as the last of the Reapers descended, ignoring the retreating transports for all of their irrelevance in the wake of their pre-ordained slaughter, was to see the death of hope.
Thessia had been a symbol and when it had been attacked a united front had formed: if they could have just held the line there, they could hold the line anywhere. They had to hold the line there.
But one could not hold the line against inevitability and Thessia's fall had been a dark promise to the rest of the galaxy that officers across its expanses had struggled to mitigate. Whatever the prospects for victory against the Reapers, Thessia had promised that this war would not drag on, the fuse had been lit and it showed in the eyes of every soldier. Even Hackett's normally cunning, calculating pose had become notably slouched, the hardness from his chiseled eyes purged and replaced with a softness that bordered on despair. It was devastating for Carrie to see him like that.
Even the news reports had become decidedly more morbid since the fall of the Asari homeworld. Countdowns to victory had been replaced by somber death tolls, the spirited tribute to the fighting soldiery had been blackened by cracked and miserable voices.
And it showed on the Normandy. A quiet hush had descended on the frigate, as though a mute cloud had sapped the mirth from every normally silver tongue. As Carrie rounded the corner to the crew's lounge she would normally be able to barely hear herself think over the clinging of glasses, the rustle of poker chips, and an endless stream of rowdy conversation. Instead all she could hear was a sigh that unmistakably came from Kaidan – the way he tried to bite down and clench a sigh between his teeth was unmistakably him. He tried to remain positive in every situation, did his best to keep any doubts he might have had kept internalized, knowing that to let it leak would sink the ship of morale, impose any of his own doubts upon those around him.
Carrie froze in her tracks, hoping that her footfalls had not betrayed her. She heard the quiet click of poker chips and slid forward just enough to catch a view of Kaidan sitting across from Garrus, both their eyes on the table, only casually flicking as they observed the deck that Kaidan was shuffling. They remained too wrapped in their own thoughts to even notice that their commander was there.
"It doesn't seem fair," Kaidan finally said at length without prompt from Garrus, whose eyes first dragged upward, before he finally acknowledged the man with a full stare. Kaidan did not return the gesture, sliding the cards through his hands and completing the shuffle, eyes down as he tossed out their respective hands. "Why now? You know?"
"Why not thirty years ago? Why not tomorrow?" Garrus mused, his tone less accusing and more philosophical. "It could have been any time. Now's as good a time as any for it to all end."
Kaidan pressed the deck of cards down next to him with a greater force than he had perhaps intended, causing the poker table to shake. With a rub of agitation against an itch that was forming in his forehead, the shake of the glass in front of him from the blow against the table seemed to remind him that he had a drink that he suddenly swallowed in a single gulp before pressing it back down. The man's body radiated a red aura of frustration, anger, unsurprising from anyone, but uncharacteristic of Kaidan.
The man shook his head and placed the glass back down on the table, then dealt out three cards between himself and Garrus. Carrie couldn't see what they were from her angle.
"No," Kaidan said when he finished, "why couldn't it have been thirty years ago?"
"What do you mean?" Garrus asked, casually glancing down at his hold cards.
"Right now, why right now?" Kaidan continued, his volume remaining constant but the intensity of his tempo increasing with each word. "We just got here. We just started figuring everything out. I mean there are people alive today that really thought we were alone in the universe. How can our beginning and our end be so close?"
The words seemed to have some effect on Garrus, one of his mandibles twitching in that empathetic way as he could feel Kaidan's words rolling through his mind. Perhaps absent for words, he reached for his pile of chips and called Kaidan's big blind. He took one more quick glance at his cards, then straightened himself in his seat.
"You're right," Garrus said somberly, "there is a certain, cruel twist for you guys to show up about the same time as the Reapers." He hissed a snort under his breath. "Kind of makes you wish you weren't so fast on the draw in finding those ruins huh?"
Kaidan sighed and looked down, shaking his head as he grabbed a fist full of chips and raised Garrus. "It just feels like...we didn't get our fair shot. As soon as we start getting our act together, as soon as we become somebody, it just...crashes down."
Garrus tapped the top of his hold cards that were laid flat on the table. "We don't control the hand that's dealt to us."
Carrie could feel her heart melting as she watched the exchange. Kaidan had always been an extra pillar of strength for her and although she could look into his eyes and see the same fears that existed in the rest of her crew to hear him put those thoughts to words was an entirely new sense of distraught for her, it was the realization of defeat, something she had never considered in the man before.
"That's why we're going to win," Kaidan said suddenly, looking up at Garrus, who was wearing a raised eyebrow. The Turian called Kaidan's raise. As the dealer, he placed another card on the turn. "You can't control the hand you're dealt, but sometimes, just sometimes, something just sneaks up behind you and nips you in the ass."
Kaidan reached down and shoved all of his chips across the table. Garrus, obviously caught off guard, took a moment to assess the sudden raise in the stakes, then matched the all in with his own call. As was customary, they both flipped their hands.
"That's a risky all in," Garrus said as he glanced down at Kaidan's hand. Her curiosity taking the best of her, Carrie finally pushed stepped forward from out of the shadows, eyes drawn immediately to the board. Kaidan had turned an Ace Five. Even as a merely casual player Carrie knew it was a weak hand, particularly against the pair of sevens that Garrus had. A casual glance at the board showed that Garrus was far ahead in the hand, his seven matched by another in the community cards, with a two and a three beside, and a hanging queen that just lingered, helping neither hand.
Kaidan spared Carrie only a single glance as he flipped the final card, a four on the river, hitting Kaidan's straight and destroying Garrus's three of a kind. A small smile of hope cracked the man's lips, a spark ignited in his eyes as though that were the quiet confirmation he needed to vindicate his point. Garrus frowned when he saw it, then looked up at his opponent.
Kaidan tapped that four on the river. "Sometimes the right card just...shows up, and it's a real pain in the ass."
Carrie felt a slight swell of pride. In Kaidan's poker hand she saw all the hopes of humanity, of the galaxy, and she had watched him build his own bridge to the future. Garrus may have held all the cards, up until the final moment, but when everything was on the line, the four was there.
She leaned down and kissed the man on top of his head before sliding a hand against him, rubbing at his back.
"That's all fine and good," Garrus said, a mock anger to his voice as he looked back at Kaidan, "but I'd have preferred if I still could have afforded a drink after you made your point."
It wasn't terribly funny, but all at once all three began to laugh, a long, guttural laugh. Carrie had started it with a slight chuckle, but when she was met with Kaidan's own crescendo of humor her chortle had turned into an uncontrollable laugh that was eventually joined by Garrus. Carrie did not know how long the three sat there, laughing at among the least funny things Garrus had ever tried to pass for a joke, knowing only that her face was turning red and she needed a breath when it was done.
"You better win your money back then," Carrie said, the doubts of Thessia suddenly disappearing from her mind as she looked down at the four on the river. "You're going to need it where we're going."
"Oh, don't tell me," Garrus said, crossing his arms, "you're signing us all up into a volus pyramid scheme for one last hurrah."
Carrie smiled. "Something like that," she said as she stood back up, only then realizing she had been leaning against Kaidan and that his arm had found its way around her waist. "Orders from Hackett, we're taking shore leave."
Garrus looked down at his side of the board, frowning at the noticeable absence of chips on his side. "The man has quite the timing."