A heartbeat.

Beating in time with pacing feet. A tap at the door.

"It's gonna be...what it is."

The heart constricts, and lungs freeze in an aching chest.

The sheepish smile that brings bright light.

Not all is unknown.

Kaidan stretched, reaching an arm out across the bed - and found nothing.

He wasn't sure whether it was that confusion, or the light but persistent knock on the door that woke him.

Traynor jumped as the door slid open, though she had been standing there waiting for that very thing to happen. Her fingers picked at the frame of a datapad, but rather than offering it to Kaidan, she hugged it to herself.

"Sir, I'm sorry to wake you, but... you'll want to hear this."

Kaidan rubbed a palm against his forehead and willed his voice to come out clear of the slurring of sleep.

"What is it?"

"Sir I... have someone waiting on vidcom for you. The signal's not great, but" she paused, and rolled from the balls of her feet to stand steady on the soles that let a soft creak loose in the room, "I think it's Admiral Hackett."

Now he could understand why she looked so pleased with herself. This would be the first communication those on the ship would have had in months with anyone outside the Normandy's walls. Uncertainty didn't exactly broker trust, and a blasted signal seeking survivors could have meant a certain few less in the final count.

A half-cocked smile lit his face, and he pushed off the wall and turned to finish getting dressed. "I'll be right there. Don't lose the signal!"

The walk to the QEC had never seemed longer. Even though Traynor had delivered the message personally, and quietly, after so long together the lines of communication and gossip on the Normandy had reached unutterable perfection. So every eye followed Kaidan's every step down every corridor of the ship. He suspected that they would have each and all followed him through the war room and into the small cubbyhole if he let them. As it was, he could hear a few shuffles and steps at the doorway and the susurrus of a small mass of low-spoken voices behind him as he entered the communications room.

At the moment of his entrance, the platform beyond the console was empty, but something was already different about the room that had been abandoned for over a year - a green light blinked at the lower corner of the interface.

After a brief hesitation, he tapped the indicator and waited as the space above the blue disk pulsed and shuddered until the wavy outline of Admiral Hackett came into view. He wasn't looking into the room, but off to the side, speaking to someone and gesturing as they scrambled on either side to make sound travel as well as sight.

Silence grew into static. More gesturing occurred until, finally, static broke into sound.

"-et it working then -"

"Admiral!"

Hackett turned, straightened and returned the salute. "Major, it's good to see you alive and well."

He nodded. "You too, sir. Don't look too much the worse for wear."

Even though they'd worked to so hard to get the sound working, silence fell. But this wasn't hardware failure. It wasn't the planets and stars that spanned the distance between them causing interference. It was a questioning silence. An uncomfortable, itching, waiting silence. Answers were wished for, news was wanted for both sides, but the possibilities once again rushed in and were too hard to grasp.

So they each of them delayed until Hackett glanced in another direction, cleared his throat, and broke the spell.

"Ah, Major, before anything else, I have someone I think you'll want to see."

As his image vanished, it was replaced inch by inch by a pointed boot, a flip of long hair, an arm clad in skin-tight armor.

Kaidan did his best not to look disappointed when he recognized Miranda on the platform. While he had come to some kind of peace with Shepard's work with Cerberus, and he had seen Miranda's work to bring the Commander back to life and her subsequent work against her former employers, she was still an enigma. What he didn't need right now was more conflict and more questions, both of which she seemed to offer in abundance.
From her gaze offscreen, Miranda's eyes shifted to met Kaidan's, and her smirk made him wince.

"Oh, don't worry," she scoffed, "it's not me he's talking about."

As she came fully into view, those watching found that she was not alone, but was supporting a familiar arm, shoulder, and finally a very familiar face.
Leaning heavily on Miranda, and certainly much the worse for wear, stood Commander Shepard.

Shock froze Kaidan's mouth, and the shout that would have come out was silent.

He stood agape for a moment before remembering to breathe. Once he did, he remembered his posture, his manners, and that who-knew-else was watching, and snapped a smart salute.

But his greeting was an exhale, a release afforded by great relief, and he focused on Shepard's face to keep the balance that eluded him as countless sleepless nights caught up with him all at once.

"Commander."

The response was worth it, the grin that had always been so rare carried across lightyears. Even if it dimmed slightly with the effort Shepard put into his salute, it didn't disappear.

"Major. At ease."

Kaidan's ears were on overdrive, working in tandem with his imagination to filter out the static. To replicate the voice that he had never forgotten, that he had listened to on countless recordings in this span of time. Everything was there. Everything was clear. Everything was perfect.

"I knew you were alive, Shepard. It takes more than a big fight to take you down."

"Actually, it almost did," Miranda interjected matter-of-factly. "He was there for the first explosions on the Citadel and," she squinted slightly at Shepard's forehead, where even in the unstable image he could now see a thin, glowing line, "the implants malfunctioned. He's lucky to be alive."

"I promised to meet you after this was over, Kaidan," he laughed, but quickly doubled over.

"Alright," Miranda wasted no time, but hoisted Shepard's arm back over her shoulders and turned him toward some unseen destination. She glanced behind before stepping out of view - "Sorry to break up the reunion, Major, but the Hero of the Galaxy needs to get back into bed."

"I got it - we'll talk later," he finally got out. "And Miranda - thanks."

Arched brows rose almost imperceptibly. "You're welcome."

And they were gone. It was too quick a transition for the full effect of their lives, his life, to hit Kaidan, which was probably for the best.

"We were lucky she was here," Hackett acknowledged as he stepped back into view, "once we were able to locate him and send a rescue team, she was able to use what experience and intel she had on Project Lazarus to get his implants running again." He looked off into the middle distance, then back to Kaidan. "It's been a rough year, but we've come out on top."

Too many questions now raced through his mind, and most were too trivial, fleeting, or personal for this first contact in so long. So he asked the important one.

"What's the status of the war, sir? Did the Crucible work?"

The nod was all he needed. "It did, and even if the Reapers did some damage with their deaths and many of the Relays took a hit, we don't have to worry about them any more. What reports we've received from active contacts suggest that the blast took out Reapers in all systems."

Eavesdropping was confirmed as whooping erupted in the war room, and Kaidan had to step closer to the console to hear their commanding officer over the new joyful noise.

"I'll expect a full report, Major, now that communications are back online. Do you have an ETA?"

Kaidan shook his head. "We passed the last relay for this system a few months ago, it was definitely offline."

Hackett looked thoughtful for a minute. "Well, we know that there are a few still working, and you must be close enough for communications to be online. Though without a relay, you may still be a couple of years out."

EDI's voice sounded through the comm. "We are two years, four months, twenty-seven days, nine hours, and thirty-three minutes from the Sol relay assuming a logical and safe speed of travel." A pause. "Give or take."

'Right, so, uh - we've still got some time to kill."

"Well, get here as fast as you can, but keep your eyes open. I'll send you the bulletins for active Cerberus cell activity and any other concerns soon." He shifted, and set himself straight, clasping his hands behind his back.

"We'll make sure to prepare for your homecoming, Major. It's late to say it, and little for what the crew of the Normandy has done, but good work."

"Thank you, sir."

"Hackett out."

Kaidan turned, mind lost in a haze, and walked away from the now-empty vidcom room. If anyone spoke to him, touched him, or if the ship crashed right now, he would not have felt it. He would not even have noticed it - save for the light breeze of sudden atmospheric pressure.

Through well-traveled paths and with steady steps, Major Alenko strode with great purpose first to the hangar, then up to the crew deck.

Whatever the rest of the ship was doing, they could certainly have heard the clang of metal on metal that directly followed his exit from the lift.
It didn't take long, and it was soon silent again, at least in his head. But at the end of it, they found him sitting on the floor of the observation deck, staring out at the passing stars, tracing lightly the letters beneath his fingertips.

In his hand lay the metal name plate that they had made for the Commander just before leaving the planet, and though the edges of the plate where it had attached to the wall were utterly savaged, Shepard's name gleamed in the starlight, untouched.

Kaidan studied the fuzzy outline of his hand against the flat gray of the Loft's ceiling. The vision - or maybe the hand - swayed a little, back and forth, before he gave up and let his arm drop with a soft thump to his side on the sheet. The fish tank bubbled vaguely at him.

He laughed, and even the sound was blurry. Bleary? His sound and movement and existence were as a gleeful slurring of words. He thought that he could hear the stars whirring past outside - imagined that he could hear the party still raging in the mess hall, and cackled at the remembered image of Garrus dancing.

As he calmed, Kaidan became emphatically aware of the softness of the pillow behind his head. He closed his eyes and let his body relax with the sudden, certain, and somehow-hilarious notion that Shepard had been completely lying about the bed.

As he drifted to sleep, he finally felt a sense of space, of place again.

This was their home. This weapon. This secret ship that flitted around the galaxy like a ghost. They were the tip of the spear, bringing death and danger to the enemy that had threatened their existence. But they were gone now. And even though there were sure to be more dangers out there, for now he lay still, dazed and bleary-eyed, mind aimlessly wandering through happy memories and creative fantasies of what was to come, while his head was pointed unerringly towards home.

His voice was a sigh that teetered from the edge of slumber, and a long-awaited exhale that filled the room with the sound of a life.

"Thank you."