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Shepard stood alone in her quarters for a long time after Kaidan had left. She felt terrible about the position she had put him in. No commander—no friend—no person should take advantage of someone the way she had taken advantage of Kaidan. And she could tell herself all she wanted to that she hadn't known how he felt … but she should have, and if she hadn't been so blinded by her own needs, she would have.
And under her guilt, she felt strangely bereft. It had been good to be with Kaidan again. It had felt … right. Comfortable.
She stopped herself. What was she thinking? It had been—well, she had lost count of how long it had been since Thane's death, but surely, for all that it felt like an event of the distant past, it couldn't have been long. Of course, it had been significantly longer than that since she and Thane had been able to be together as a regular thing.
Not that that mattered, Shepard told herself. What mattered was that when she had been weak, she had leaned on Kaidan without regard to what that would do to his feelings.
How could she face him again after this? For that matter, how could she work with him, having seen the depth of his feeling for her in his eyes?
What they needed was some time apart, she decided. Her eyes fell on the model of Omega in her display case, and she remembered Aria T'Loak's request that Shepard join her in the assault to take back the station. Aria had specified Shepard and only Shepard, no crew members or other support. She could leave the Normandy in the capable hands of Garrus, Kaidan, and Joker, let them finish off the planet surveys and hunt down the artifacts they'd been tasked with retrieving, and then meet them on the Citadel when she and Aria had taken back Omega.
As soon as the decision was made, she started putting her plans in place, and almost before she knew it she was on Aria's ship arguing with the asari about the best way to handle the assault.
Eventually they decided they would work best together if Shepard let Aria make the overall plans and Aria ceded tactical command to Shepard in combat. Cerberus troops were everywhere on the station, as well as a new construct called a rampart mech that seemed to form itself from strange force fields that Cerberus had erected all over the station.
Aria's people were assisted by a gang called the Talons, led by a turian named Nyreen Kandros. There was a lot of history between Aria and Nyreen—much of it pain and anger, but there was still love underneath. Shepard could hear it in both their voices and seee it in the way they looked at each other.
In addition to the rampart mechs and the force fields, Cerberus's innovations on Omega included a creature Nyreen called an adjutant, a grotesquely deformed being that had once been—well, the race was impossible to determine, but clearly it had come from something sentient. And where that sentient being had been now stood a mindless monster, one that Cerberus was experimenting on, trying to learn how to control.
It made Shepard wonder what the Illusive Man was planning. If he wanted to control these things, did that mean he was studying how the Reapers made their forces? Was he trying to control the Reaper forces, ultimately? A worthy goal, although not worth the lives lost in the process, Shepard decided.
Nyreen and Aria clashed over and over again about a similar topic—whether to use the civilians on the station to help in the fight against Cerberus. Aria believed that her people could rise up and take down their oppressors. Nyreen wanted them protected. Wherever possible, Shepard mediated, believing that both women were right. Nyreen's heart, her concern for the people, balanced Aria's strength and her ambition for them. She wondered if there would be a way to bring the two of them back together.
But it wasn't to be. Nyreen sacrificed herself against four of the adjutants to help Aria retake AfterLife, the club at the heart of the station. Aria, in her rage and grief, nearly got herself killed before Shepard could catch up to her, and together they finished the fight, killing the remaining adjutants and taking prisoner the leader of the occupying forces, a General Petrovsky, who offered himself up as a resource against Cerberus.
When he had been led off by some of Aria's people to await transport to Admiral Hackett, Shepard turned to Aria, wanted to ask her if she was okay with what had happened to Nyreen. But the life of Omega went on, and Aria was already back to leading her people, organizing them to eradicate the remnants of Cerberus forces and start putting things right on the station again.
Shepard quietly left, letting Aria's lieutenant, Bray, return her to the Citadel. But she couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. Was she like Aria, pushing her emotions aside and burying them under a mountain of work, under a pretence that she couldn't risk slowing down? Thane would call that a battle sleep, and she knew as surely as she knew that he had loved her that he would not want her to succumb to that. Just as Thane had been able to love herself and Irikah, she could love Thane and still have room in her heart to be with Kaidan.
And she wanted that. She hadn't known until he left her room just how much she wanted that.
Even as she entered the elevator, ready to get back to the list of things she always needed to accomplish on a visit to the Citadel, Shepard sent a message to Kaidan, asking him to meet her for dinner that night. She'd start with steak and conversation, and see where that went.