Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Mass Effect name or franchise, nor any of the ideas or characters represented therein. Nor am I in any way affiliated with any of the people and/or companies that do. I make no money from the writing of this story. It is intended only as a fan exploration of an issue that I feel wasn't sufficiently touched upon in-game. Any mistakes or reinterpretations are mine and mine alone, and constructive criticism is always welcome.
Despite the long shifts and persistent lack of privacy, Shepard had always loved serving in space. There was something so peaceful about it... something beautiful, in its austerity and silence. There were always other people on a ship, of course. But because of the tight quarters and irregular sleep/work schedules, even the off-duty chatter around the mess was rarely more than a familiar buzz in the background. Tonight... tonight it just seemed empty. No peace; just isolation.
She thought briefly about going down to the mess; there was always someone around down there, and while people rarely approached her for casual conversation anymore, at least it wouldn't be silent. But there was something appropriate, if not comforting, about the overwhelming silence of her quarters tonight, and she didn't think she could bear to watch everyone else going about their business as usual. They had every right to, of course – nothing had really changed for them, except perhaps for the objective short-term victory of saving the council yet again. Good news was in short supply these days, and the crew needed all the morale it could muster. In another few weeks she might even agree with them, provided they all made it that long. But right now... she wasn't in the mood to carry on, much less celebrate.
She rolled onto her side, glancing down at the tank that took up most of one wall of her cabin, and tried for the umpteenth time to find some comfort in the small, brightly coloured shapes darting about in unconscious almost-patterns. She'd never been a very sentimental person before... spending almost your entire life on a starship with little more than a footlocker's worth of anything to your name had a way of really narrowing your perception of what was 'important'. But somehow in the time since she'd died, she'd come to find herself with a room full of random paraphernalia. The fish. An expanding collection of model ships. A few scattered artifacts and remnants of her old life that she'd finally managed to dig out of the numerous half-packed containers still scattered around her partially refitted ship. It had become almost a compulsion of late... spending half of every trip she made to the Citadel wandering around the markets looking to see if they had anything new. In her more introspective moments she suspected that it was a form of compensation. The emptier her life became, the more things she gathered to fill it. It would never work, of course. But at least it gave her something to look at in the long hours she felt compelled to spend pretending to sleep for everyone else's sake.
She thought about taking a shower, but decided against it almost immediately because doing so would take her past her desk and the little green light flashing incessantly on her private terminal. She was stalling – sulking, really – and she knew it. There were a million more important things she should be doing than laying here in this damned bed feeling sorry for herself. But she couldn't bring herself to care. Some things... you were never really ready for, no matter how much you tried to prepare. Some decisions were just too damn hard to reconcile emotionally, no matter how necessary. You could make them – and for someone in her position, someone of her disposition, you would no matter what it cost you personally. But there was always a cost; always an adjustment period where the weight of what you felt or what you'd done (or failed to do) seemed just too much to bear. They were the moments that defined you. The moments that broke you, and shaped you, and remade you.
But how many times could you break someone before they couldn't be remade – before they just didn't have anything left to give? How much weight could one person bear? She wasn't sure, but she was absolutely certain that she'd had all she could take for the moment, at least. And really, what was the worst that could happen? The universe was theoretically ending anyway. The Reapers, the Crucible, and everything else could damn well wait another few hours.
She thought back to the day's events – that final confrontation on the Citadel. What would she have done if Kaidan hadn't finally decided to trust her? Would she have shot him? Thrown him aside on her way to Udina and damn the consequences? She didn't want to believe she could... but the more she thought about it, the less sure she was. And Udina... did she really have to shoot him? She'd told Kaidan she did. Told it to everyone – even herself; and Garrus, as always, had backed her. But was it true? She'd wanted to shoot him. Wanted desperately for someone to pay for the attack on the Citadel... for... Thane... for forcing her to carry on, chasing after some lunatic as the man she loved sat wounded, probably dying, all for the sake of a group of people who had done virtually nothing but ignore and deride her for the last three years. Just thinking about it made her gut clench and her eyes burn with the tears that even now, hours later, still refused to fall. She'd wanted Udina dead. Wanted, in some abstract way in the deepest reaches of her mind perhaps, them all dead. And at the time there hadn't seemed any other choice... but was that just because she wasn't looking?
She remembered a conversation she'd had once with Thane, about the body becoming disconnected – doing what instinct or passion demanded of it without control and no regard for its worth or rightness. Was this something like what he'd meant? She couldn't remember feeling anything at the time; not even the usual rush of battle. Just an overwhelming emptiness, a sort of static or white noise in the depths of her soul. Her body took her through the motions – told her mouth what to say and her hands what to do as she acted without thought, without premeditation. Maybe humans didn't have a soul. Maybe they couldn't become disconnected as Drell did. But... coming out the other side, she thought she at least finally had some inkling what he'd meant. She still wasn't sure it absolved her of any sort of responsibility... but she could at least understand the concept. She wished she could ask him. But that was silly, of course. She knew very well that if he were here to ask, that would be the last thing she thought about. She wished... so many things. Not the least of which was that she'd had the chance to say goodbye properly.
She didn't resent Kolyat's presence; she couldn't, particularly not after trying so hard to bring the two of them back together again. But... she also didn't know what to say in front of him. What to do. How much had he known of their relationship? What did he think? Would he be offended by it? Hurt? She'd said... almost nothing apart from the prayer. Done almost nothing as her lover faded out of her life forever, leaving only a deep and echoing emptiness in his wake. She'd known he would die eventually – sooner rather than later, even. She'd known it even before she loved him, and yet she loved him anyway. Accepted it. And... it had been a good death. The kind of death he'd wanted; the kind he deserved. But... to loose him so suddenly when she'd only just found him again hurt more than she thought she would ever be able to properly express. To spend six months apart over pointless bureaucratic trivialities, unable to even communicate with him... finding him a shadow of what he'd been and then loosing even that...
She shut her eyes tightly, not sure anymore if she were trying to force tears or stem them, and rolled over onto her back. She'd thought she was prepared; thought she could handle anything. Looking down at him, watching him struggle to breathe, and more worried for her and for the fate of the councilors than himself, she'd tried to remind herself that only the form of his death was remarkable – the event itself had been a forgone conclusion for longer than she'd known him, and he needed her to be as at peace with that as he was. But here, in the silence of her own room, suddenly looking up through the window in the roof of her cabin and watching the pulse and flow of the ship's kinetic barriers surging across the transparent surface like waves on the shore, she wondered if she'd ever truly been at peace, and if she ever would be again. It was something she'd always admired about him. One of the many things that initially drew her to him. Perhaps precisely because it so often eluded her.
She thought back to his prayer and the letter he'd sent her. About his promise to wait for her across the sea. She wondered, briefly, if he'd sent it from the hospital before he died, or simply set it up to send automatically upon confirmation of his death. Or if, perhaps, Kolyat had sent it after his father's death, just as he'd prayed with her when Thane himself could not. Or Liara. She never ceased to be amazed (and perhaps just a little bit appalled) by all the things the girl could turn up, or her willingness to use them when she felt it was necessary. It didn't really matter... she was happy to have it, however it had come to her, even if it hurt as much as it healed. She wanted to be angry that he'd written it all out rather than telling her himself. Angry at herself because she wasn't sure now, looking back, if she'd ever told him how much she loved him. How much he meant to her. How he'd been her shelter not just against the storm of Cerberus and their mission against the collectors, but against Kaidan and all his anger and mistrust; her bulwark against the death of the one thing that had been pushing her forward ever since she first found out about her resurrection, and her anchor in a life that felt suddenly cut adrift. But she couldn't be angry with him. He'd done the best he could for her, and she wouldn't waste her memories of him on what could or should or might have been.
Her eyes were dry, sore and nearly as tired as she was by the time the tears finally came, the only sound in the room the quiet hum of the VI-controlled fish tank and the occasional creak of the bulkheads. She curled up in the middle of the bed – their bed, once – great heaving sobs wracking her frame until her stomach hurt and she almost couldn't breathe. She always hated crying – hated the way it made her feel, and the way it never really solved anything or made it better no matter what anyone else said. And afterwards, as she lay silently, grief finally momentarily spent, she was reminded again of his promise... and wondered if she could ever find her way to him across the sea when she felt, at this moment, as if she already carried it inside her... a vast, Stygian emptiness where her soul should be. And for only the second time in her life, she prayed. Silently, sincerely... to gods she'd never known until she met him... that she might find her way; not just back to him once it was finally her time to rest, but back to the path he'd believed she had the strength to walk in the mean-time, even though in her heart, she already felt lost to the sea.