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Late one night, unable to sleep, Shepard went down to the crew deck and quietly made her way to the starboard lounge. She had been hoping it would be late enough that anyone not on duty would be asleep—but it appeared that she wasn't the only one lying awake thinking of loved ones tonight.
As the doors slid open, she could hear a man's voice on a recording. "I love you, but I know you. Don't make me an anchor. Promise me, Steve." Then it played again, and Shepard imagined the person listening to it being unable to keep from torturing himself with the message.
Shepard turned to leave the room, but stopped when she heard a voice calling her. "Commander." Steve Cortez was standing in front of the window, hastily swiping tears away from his face. "I'm sorry, I can go if you'd rather—"
"No, it's all right, I was just going to go—"
"You must have come down here at this hour for a reason. Please. Don't feel you need to leave on my account."
"All right." She came further into the room. "I don't want to intrude."
"No, I shouldn't—I should stop listening to this. It's a recording from Ferris Fields. Months ago."
Shepard nodded, understanding. "Collector strike. A lot of good people were lost that day."
"My husband was one of them."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, me, too." He shook his head. "I grieved, I said good-bye, I thought I made my peace, but … I just can't seem to let go."
"You were talking to him when the Collectors hit?"
Cortez nodded. "I was organizing construction at a remote station a few clicks south of the main colony. Robert managed to get outside of the field the Collectors put up, but instead of running, he called me."
"He cared about you—enough to buy your safety with his own."
"Yes."
"It's rare to find that kind of love," she said, thinking of Thane, who would have done the same for her without a second thought.
"I was so angry with him for not running, not saving himself. Instead, he worried about me, and about whether I'd be able to let go. And I tried—I moved on. At least, I thought I had. But here I am, still listening to his voice every night."
"I get that."
"Do you? Then maybe you can explain what the point is of moving on with your life when everything is going to hell?"
"What's the point of fighting to save things if people are going to give up and stop living?" Shepard asked, her tone more harsh than she'd intended. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped that way. I—" She reached for the chain around her neck and pulled out her wedding ring. "Most people don't know this about me, for what I imagine are obvious reasons, but I have a husband, too. Right now, he's … he's in the hospital. He'll never come out. I knew when I met him that he was dying, it was the first thing he told me, but … the reality is harder to live with."
"I'm sorry, Commander. I didn't know. As you say," he added.
"The thing is … Thane spends our time together trying to encourage me to keep living, not to let losing him, and losing what our life together could have been, end any possibility of my happiness—but I'm not sure how to imagine myself being happy without him."
"That's it. Robert and I had plans for our future, a life we wanted to share, and that's gone now, and even if I met someone else it would never be the same."
"I suppose when you meet someone else, you won't want it to be the same. You'll want—different dreams, dreams you and your new love can dream together." Shepard closed her hand around the ring.
"It sounds nice when you put it that way."
"It does, doesn't it?" She smiled ruefully. "I wish I believed my own hype."
"Do you ever feel just … completely alone?"
"Always, until I met Thane. Briefly once before that, but neither of us was ready to understand what it was to be truly with someone else." She reached out her free hand and squeezed Cortez's shoulder. "For what it's worth, you don't have to be alone now, Steve. I'm here, whenever you need me. And I mean that. Don't bottle things up because you think I won't have time. I'll make the time."
"Thank you, Commander. And … the same goes for you. Anytime you need to talk."
"I may need to take you up on that frequently."
"Please do."
"And … Steve. I see how hard you work. Take some down time. Go do—something fun. Anything. I don't want to see you burn out."
He hesitated.
"As a favor to me," Shepard told him.
"Well, if you put it that way, how can I say no?"
She smiled. "You can't."
"You, too, then, Commander."
Shepard was about to automatically protest that she didn't have time—but then she'd have been a terrible hypocrite. "You got me, Lieutenant. I'll try."