Thank you all for reading!

Shepard closed the computer with a decisive snap and crossed the room to her bed. The covers were a tangle already from the last time she'd tried to sleep, but she didn't want to bother untangling them, so she shoved them aside and lay down just on the sheet, closing her eyes and willing darkness and silence in her mind.

It didn't work. She thought of Kaidan and the cold finality in his voice when he denied her, denied everything they had had together, because of Cerberus. She flopped over onto her back, fuming. How dare he assume she was a traitor? After what Cerberus had done for her? Wasn't he even grateful she wasn't dead? He hadn't even wanted to hear her side; he'd just made his judgement and walked away.

She got up and went back to the computer, opening it and clicking open her email program.

"Kaidan – I can't believe you intend to leave things like this! Do you have any idea how damaged my body was? Cerberus spent years rebuilding me, bringing me back to life and health, and you have the nerve to tell me that I'm a traitor because I feel enough gratitude to give their motivations the benefit of the doubt?"

Shepard stopped and looked at what she had written. What was the point, really? She had said something like it already on Horizon, and it hadn't moved him. He hadn't cared. His hatred of Cerberus was clearly greater than his love for her. Well, the hell with him, then. Like she needed him.

Reaching out, she knocked the picture of him she kept near the computer over so that she didn't have to look at his face.

She got up again, closing the computer again, intending to go back to bed and try to sleep again.

But she was still angry, too angry to sleep, so she stopped for a moment watching the fish, hoping to find some peace in their placid swimming. It had surprised her that Cerberus had thought to include an aquarium in her quarters—she'd never had fish, or any kind of pet, before, and it had seemed like a waste, just another thing to take care of, another thing to think about when she already had so much on her mind. But on a whim, she'd bought a few fish at the Citadel, and she found she liked to watch them. So busy, swimming back and forth. What did they think of her? Was she an annoyance to them, or did they simply not know she existed?

In her darker moments, she wondered if that was what the Reapers thought about organic life in general, that their busy lives were just pointless circuits of the tank they were kept in.

Tonight, though, she watched the fish and was calmed by them, by the blue light from the aquarium, by the faint hushed sounds of the air filters in the tank. What would it be like if Kaidan were here, his body lit by those lights? Closing her eyes, she remembered his touch, his voice, low and tender. She missed him, she had to admit it to herself. And it hurt that however much he had missed her, it wasn't enough to keep him from turning on her. All because of Cerberus.

Back in front of the computer again, she stared at the blinking cursor on the screen.

"Dear Kaidan – I'm sorry for how things went on Horizon. That wasn't how I thought our first meeting would go. I tried to reach you. As soon as I was awake, I tried, but the Alliance wouldn't tell me how to get in touch with you. The last thing I wanted was for you to hear about me by rumor."

Argh! She pounded her fist on the desk in frustration. The written word had never been her strong point—she was a woman of action, most comfortable talking people around to her point of view, or when necessary letting her fists do her persuading for her. This only being able to reach him by email was maddening, because she wanted to say so many things and she didn't know which should come first or how to make him understand how very much she missed him, how much she still loved him. Among so many other things she wished she could fix she regretted that they had never said those words to each other in their brief time together, that the first time she got to hear him say he loved her was when he was berating her for breaking his heart while she'd been in a coma.

It wasn't that she didn't understand his anger—she did. She would have been angry, too, in his place. But she liked to hope that she would at least have given him the benefit of the doubt, rather than refusing to listen at all, the way he had done. Did he really think she and Garrus both were such simpletons that they would be coerced into doing the wrong thing out of gratitude? He knew them better than that. She'd made it clear with Miranda and the Illusive Man from the beginning that she would walk without a backward glance if she thought Cerberus was working to the detriment of the galaxy, and she meant it. But had Kaidan given her the chance to tell him how things were? He most certainly had not!

Her anger was rising again, and it was abundantly clear that any chance she'd had of getting some sleep tonight was long past, if there had ever been any in the first place.

She snapped the computer closed once more, turned the picture back up with an apologetic pat on the top of the frame, knowing she would want to see him again in the morning, and got dressed. Surely somewhere on this ship she would find something useful to do. Anything had to be better than sitting here having conversations in her head with someone so lost to her he might as well be the ghost he had accused her of being.

Jacob would be asleep—he liked his full eight hours and then some. Mordin was likely as not working; he seemed to need very little sleep. But he disliked being disturbed in the small hours of the night. He said they were his most productive, but required privacy.

Miranda had probably just gone off to sleep. She liked to stay up late, and sleep late. In the hold, Jack would be pacing back and forth, brooding. Shepard wasn't certain she ever slept. And Grunt would be relaxing in his tank, asleep but alert to the faintest sound. Disturbing him in his rest was not recommended.

She thought of waking Garrus, but he was too close to the situation, Kaidan's friend as well as hers, and he had been rejected by Kaidan just as much as she had. The same went for Dr. Chakwas. She hadn't been on Horizon with them, but Kaidan having turned his back on Shepard and Garrus for their involvement with Cerberus had been communicated to her. Shepard hadn't had the heart to tell her in person; Dr. Chakwas had always had a soft spot for Kaidan because of his migraines—his rejection would hurt her, too.

In the end, Shepard headed for the cockpit. Joker swiveled around in his chair when he heard her coming. "Thought I'd see you up here tonight." His blue eyes studied her, his face softer and more sympathetic than usual. "Crazy the people you end up running into around the galaxy, huh?"

"Crazy," Shepard agreed.

"Seems like a bit of a set-up, but it must have been good to see Kaidan, right?"

"We talked." She hesitated, then went for the lie. "It was nice … but things have changed."

He frowned. "That's good, because I was not looking forward to your mood if things went bad."

"I can't blame him for moving on; two years is a long time."

"Right. A mutual thing. I got you." Joker hesitated. "You know, if you ever want to talk sometime …" He quirked an eyebrow. "I hear Chambers is very good."

Shepard glanced over her shoulder. Chambers was an enigma. Almost relentlessly happy, overly personal, intrusive … and what was her obsession with Shepard's unread private email? Shepard was perfectly capable of determining when she had new emails. "Yeah. I'll … give that one some thought." She rolled her eyes at Joker. "You're a real pal, you know that?"

"Hey, I'm here for you," he protested.

"So I can tell." She sighed, leaning her shoulder against the wall and looking out at the stars going by. "Just what I needed, another reminder of how I lost more than just two years of my life."

"Give him time, Commander. It's got to have been a lot to adjust to, on top of nearly having been abducted by the Collectors. Not to mention seeing the colonists taken and not able to stop it. He knew them, remember."

"Good point. I suppose it had been a long day for both of us, to say the least." Shepard pushed herself off the wall, nodding at him. "Thanks, Joker."

"Anytime … I think." He swiveled his chair back around, remarking as he did so, "There's a reason I don't date crew."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "Oh? And just who do you date?"

He jerked his head in the direction of EDI. "Please, Commander, not in front of the thing."

EDI's voice came from her console. "I am everywhere on the ship, Mr. Moreau."

"Yeah, and apparently some people think that's not creepy. Well, I'm not one of them," he snapped.

Shepard chuckled. "I'll leave you two to it. Try not to take the ship apart."

"That is not part of my system parameters, Commander," EDI informed her.

"Glad to hear it." With a brief greeting to Chambers, who, much like Joker, seemed never to leave her post, Shepard flipped open her computer terminal and got down to business. There was still work to do—her personal life had waited this long, it could keep waiting indefinitely.