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The door slid shut behind him, and Kaidan leaned back against it, sighing. It had been a good date, up until the end, and Natalia was beautiful and smart and funny. But she wanted more from him than he was capable of offering. He was still a member of the Alliance navy, his work with Councilor Anderson too important to be distracted. And he couldn't tell Natalia. She tried to be sensitive to his feelings, knowing he had been a member of Shepard's team fighting the geth, but she believed the prevailing story and viewed Shepard as having been fooled by Saren into believing in the existence of Reapers. It was as much as Kaidan could do to keep from arguing with her about it, and not being able to talk to her about what he had experienced kept him from being able to open up to her as much as she seemed to want him to.

Tonight had been the last straw. In the midst of a makeout session, Natalia had pushed him away, telling him she felt too much distance between them to truly relax and be comfortable. Kaidan had stammered an apology, but Natalia had sighed and said she thought it was too late.

Kaidan had been forced to agree. He had kissed her good night, a peck on the cheek and a final goodbye. Now he was back in his small, sterile flat, alone. Again.

He opened his computer, idly reading the extranet for a few minutes, but he couldn't settle. He was lonely. After life on the Normandy, with friends at hand at all times, living without a team had taken some getting used to, and continued to feel very solitary and isolated.

Clicking open his email program, he gave some thought to sending one to Joker. Or Garrus. He missed Garrus. But it was an entirely different name his fingers typed.

"Dear Juniper …" He stopped, erasing the first name. They weren't on that basis any longer. "Dear Shepard," he wrote instead.

But he wasn't sure how to continue. Once they'd had so much to say to one another, and now …

"I worry about you," he wrote at last. "You can't trust Cerberus. You must know that. But wherever you are, I know you're pushing yourself to the limit to accomplish an impossible task. I know Garrus is with you. I hope you have a team around you as devoted as he is, as we all were."

He thought of her on the Normandy, all of them, sitting around the briefing room and talking. What was her team like now? Were they strong enough? Were they secretly or not so secretly working for Cerberus? Would they have her back the way he had?

"Life here on the Citadel is surprisingly solitary given how many people there are around here. Working for Anderson keeps me pretty …"

No. He wouldn't send that. He wouldn't make her feel sorry for him. He should tell her more pleasant things, try to be friends. He missed her, he couldn't deny it. He still had feelings for her, still loved her, he couldn't deny it.

Instead, he would tell her something good.

"I saw your friend Emily Wong the other day, she told me to say hello. She was dying to ask questions, I could see it, but she didn't." He erased the last sentence and just left the first. "So, 'hello'. How are you? I won't ask for details; I know you couldn't share them. Instead, tell me about the food. Do you have a decent cook on the new Normandy? How's Joker? Cranky as ever?"

He hesitated, not sure how to end it. At last he typed, "Just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. – Kaidan" And he clicked "send".

Shepard was reading a Cerberus report updating her on the search for the Omega 4 IFF, a closely written overly scientific document that had her squinting at the screen, a headache forming between her eyes, when the computer beeped, letting her know new mail was in. She wondered, with a mixture of amusement and annoyance, if Chambers knew these notifications came to her terminal, or if any minute now Chambers would be calling in to let her know that she had new mail. Was that Chambers being oblivious? Was irritating her part of the way Chambers studied her psychological profile? Was it Cerberus and the Illusive Man reminding her that on this Normandy nothing was her own?

But something was, she reminded herself, a smile easing the tension across her forehead. Thane was hers; if it ever came down to it, she would trust him absolutely to back her against Cerberus. Jack, too, and Grunt, and Garrus, and Dr. Chakwas, and Joker. She had people she could trust around her, and that made her feel confident about the mission going forward.

She clicked over to her email, startled to find that the incoming message was from Kaidan. Her eyes moved to the picture of him that still stood next to her terminal, and she tried to remember how it had felt to be with him. But it wasn't the same anymore, because now she knew what it was to feel so comfortable with someone, to trust them so deeply that you felt free to be whoever you were in front of them. She never had to pretend to be Commander Shepard when she wasn't feeling it in front of Thane, and she imagined that someday she would feel free to be Commander Shepard in a moment when she might otherwise be Juniper, although they weren't quite there yet.

Kaidan's email was sweet, though. He was trying to get past the Cerberus thing, but couldn't quite, because that was who he was, like a dog with a bone. But the overall tone was light and friendly, and it made her smile. She hit reply and typed rapidly and without pausing to worry about the flow.

"Kaidan – good to hear from you! I appreciate your concern. It's good to know that somewhere out in the galaxy someone's thinking of us and hoping our mission will be a success. Garrus is well, same as always, so is Joker. There's an AI on board, and she and Joker spend all their time fighting over who's really running the ship. I think it's good for him, gives him something to do.

"Next time you see Emily tell her hello back for me. Dr. Chakwas asked the other day if I'd heard from you; I'll have to tell her now that I have and you're well. I hope you're well, at least. You don't say much about yourself. Of course, I can't ask what you're up to, either—Anderson's made it very clear that I may be a Spectre, but I'm not in his confidence. Can't really blame him for that.

"The food's pretty good. Gardner, the cook, is a gruff type but once I promised him a supply of decent ingredients, he's managed to turn out some good meals.

"Glad to hear from you. Take care of yourself! Maybe sometime we'll be on the Citadel at the same time and we can have lunch. – Shepard"

Lunch was good, she thought. Less casual than coffee, less formal than dinner. She clicked send before she could rethink it any further. Then she sat back in her chair, looking at Kaidan's picture. Reaching out, she turned it down on its face. She wasn't putting it away, not now—he had meant so much to her once, but it was a distant emotion, a fondness in her memory. For the moment, she was glad not to have Thane's vivid recall.

Closing her computer, she got out of her chair and went down to the bridge. As soon as the elevator doors slid open, Chambers chirped, "You have a new email on your private server, Commander." Shepard grinned, for once more amused than irritated.