"It's a pretty amazing view you have".
Shepard glanced up. It took a moment for her to focus, her eyes blurry from focusing on the data pads that covered the desk before her, and the added oddness of looking across at him through glass and around the model ships that hung suspended between them. She had never yet figured out how he could get any work done sprawled on the sofa in her cabin, if Shepard sat down on anything that comfortable the motivation to file any reports seemed to slip away in favour of resting her exhausted muscles and maybe taking a nap. Then again, if she had joined him on the sofa, neither would have gotten any work done as yet another distraction would have reared its head.
"Hmm?" she questioned, the sound escaping her before she actually registered what he had said and what he was doing – lifting her head at the sound of his voice seemed like second nature. His hazel gaze was turned upward and she followed it with her own grey eyes to the skylight fitted in her cabin, a vast square revealing the sky above, currently (as it nearly always was) an endless blackness dotted with stars.
"Oh. Yeah, I guess" she said before turning back to the data pads. Her comment was intended to be casual, she had attempted to school her voice to sound…well, normal, but lying had never come easy to her – Shepard had always been honest, and spoken her mind, it wasn't in her nature to be deceitful and the lack of practice would have been clear to anyone who knew her. And Kaidan knew her so well, and remembered as well, how much more enthralled she had been by the night sky – and by the beauty of the universe full stop – before the destruction of the Normandy (she always thought of it as the fight that blew apart her ship, rather than remembering the affect it had had on her) that he was concerned at once.
"You guess?" he repeated, slightly incredulously as he stood up, and Shepard pushed back a few loose strands of hair awkwardly as she prepared herself for his questioning, inhaling slowly as he walked around and perched on the edge of her desk. His brow was furrowed slightly as he looked down at her, his arms loosely folded across his chest. "Since when do you look at the stars and answer 'yeah I guess'?" Kaidan questioned her, and Shepard shrugged.
It wasn't a secret she supposed but it was…raw. And vulnerable and revealing and even with Alenko, she found it hard to show that side of herself. Since she was sixteen she'd taken care of herself and done everything within her power to take care of those around her as well. Nobody could accuse her of being distant, she cared for all her team, and always made the effort to get to know them and understand them which inevitably turned into friendships, but she didn't open up as much about her own life.
"I remember when you found the stars beautiful. And when you told me you looked up at the stars and thought of all the people out there, all the worlds and all the people, and all the colonies that needed the Alliance – when the stars were a reason for you to fight". An involuntary lump rose in her throat, not especially because of his words but how closely he could quote back something she'd told him three years ago. "What changed Shepard?" he asked her, and despite everything that they had gotten past, she couldn't help but wonder if his old suspicion was hiding behind that question – the suspicion that she wasn't the woman he had met, that she wasn't the same person, that Cerberus had changed her. Perhaps that, more than anything else, helped her to be honest with her emotions and confess her…not fear, but misgivings about the star filled sky.
"I don't remember…anything of those two years. The last thing I remember is the destruction of the Normandy" she began slowly, her gaze shifting away from Kaidan to fix on the patch of the window she could see from her desk, through the gap between a model of her first ship and the Citadel. "I remember sending you away and going after Joker, and dragging him from his seat, having to all but throw him into the escape shuttle…and then…there was an explosion". She shook her head very slightly, frowning as she tried to remember the details but it had all happened so fast.
"I was holding the ship, and there was another explosion, and I was thrown backward. I saw the Collector beam and the blast tore apart the ship and there was fire and then all I saw was the stars. I couldn't breathe, suit malfunction and…that is the last thing I remember. Panic and my lung tightening and the sight of stars".
Eloquent it was not, but honest it was and she turned back to Kaidan she saw sympathy in his gaze and the blonde shrugged rapidly. "The view reminds me" she explained, turning away.
One hand stroked through her fair hair and down the back of her neck, Kaiden leant forward and kissed the top of her head, a gesture oddly affectionate and protective.
"Shepard…I..." he hesitated for a moment, his hand moving to her chin to tip it up slightly. "I'm sorry".
Forcing a smile she stood up. "It just makes it difficult to see them in the same light".
Strong arms looped around her waist and pulled her closer, there was the warm smell of musk that was infinitely familiar and the solidness of his chest against her stomach as she tilted her head up to meet his gaze.
"I guess I better find you a new reason to fight" he suggested softly and Shepard laughed, a very brief exhale of amusement.
"You already gave me one" she assured him, coiling her arms around his neck and pulling his mouth down against hers. They didn't break the kiss as he awkwardly manoeuvred her across the room, turning her to drop her on the bed, his hands moving beneath her clothing as he leaned over her, and she focused on him and not the starlight background that surrounded him.