7.
formal
"It's been three months already," Brielle complained. "I'm so tired of this damn room."
"Well," Kaidan chuckled, "Get those legs to work again and you can just walk out of here."
"Very funny, Alenko," she said, staring down at her paralyzed legs unhappily.
It had to be killing her, Kaidan mused, to not be able to contribute to the rebuilding effort. Brielle Shepard was a woman of action, always had been. Being confined to the same room for the better part of three months was not befitting of a war hero. Not that she wanted that title, of course; if there was one benefit of the slow nature of her recuperation, it was the fact that she wasn't being required to pose for adverts or appear in news vids.
But three months was a lot of time to spend just watching the aftermath. The destruction of the Reapers had left the galaxy scrambling to rebuild technology, which meant that any number of medical advances that would ordinarily have had the Commander back on her feet within a couple of months at most were presently out of reach.
"Just out of curiosity," Kaidan said, "where would you plan on going? If you could leave here, that is."
"Anywhere but here," Brielle replied. "Just take the Normandy, tell Joker to-"
She stopped. Brielle very much doubted that Joker would be inclined to set foot on the Normandy anytime soon. Last she heard, he was still looking for any news about his father and sister and hardly making much contact with Alliance command.
"I don't know," Brielle admitted. "I never had much of a home to speak of."
They were silent for a long while after that.
"You know," Kaidan said finally. "Well... remember when I told you about my parents' place in Vancouver?"
"Yeah."
"I, uh... didn't mention that they own a second house nearby." He fidgeted nervously, looking down at his hands instead of Brielle's face.
"They used to rent out a bunch of properties as vacation homes until the Reapers killed the view. The one I'm talking about is their only other beachfront. I thought it might have been razed when Vancouver got hit, but I checked it out a couple of days ago and it's still standing. Hardly scratched, actually."
"Kaidan," Brielle whispered, "you aren't asking me to move in with you, are you?"
"Well," he stammered, the color rising steadily in his cheeks, "I wanted to do this all a bit more formally. You know, wait for 'perfect moment' and all that. But hell, the two of us have never been much good with patience...or ceremony."
He looked over Brielle, who was trying, with difficulty, to straighten up, and took both her hands in his own.
"You know you're the only woman for me," he said. "And I've been waiting for what seems like an eternity for the chance to say this. Will you marry me?"
"Kaidan," Brielle murmured, smiling more radiantly than ever before in her life, "was there ever any doubt?"
