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When Shepard didn't respond to his buzz from the lobby, Kaidan took the eleveator up to the apartment to let himself in with the personal code she had set up for him. If she was out, he'd take pleasure in preparing the bed and setting some mood music, making it nice for her to come home to.
He felt a little strange coming by without checking first—she hadn't invited him to stay with her, and they hadn't talked about moving in together. But on the Normandy, it was taken for granted that they would end the night together in her quarters by now, so he was used to seeing Shepard at the end of the night, and would have missed it if he couldn't. And he got the impression she didn't know what to do with herself, alone in that big apartment with no work and no pressing disasters calling on her, so he went there partially to make sure she wasn't driving herself crazy waiting for the Normandy's refit to be complete so she could get back to the normal routines.
As the door opened, he was surprised to hear laughter—clearly drunken laughter, clearly more than one person—coming from the kitchen. He smiled to himself, wondering which of their crewmates had come over with a bottle.
In the kitchen, he found Shepard seated on the floor, leaning against a cabinet, with an empty bottle of Serrice Ice Brandy and the last person he had expected to find drunk in Shepard's apartment—Dr. Chakwas.
"Kaidan!" Shepard's face lit up when she saw him in a way that made his heart leap. To think how long he had gone thinking he would never see that particular smile again.
Dr. Chakwas reached for the edge of a counter to try to pull herself up. Kaidan took her free hand and gave her a tug. She regained her feet, somewhat unsteadily, and straightened her uniform jacket. Only she would be falling-down drunk on Serrice Ice Brandy and still be in full uniform, Kaidan thought fondly.
"Well," she said, only a trace of a slur in her speech, "I should be taking my leave."
"I can see you home if you'd prefer, Doctor," Kaidan offered.
"No, no. I'm … fine. Just fine."
"At least let me call you a cab and walk you down to the lobby."
"That may be a good idea," the doctor admitted. "Shepard."
"Karin." They both laughed, at a joke Kaidan had apparently entirely missed.
"Shepard, I'll be back in a few minutes. You'll be okay here?"
"Sure. Comfy floor." She closed her eyes, leaning her head against the cabinet. "I'll be right here."
He escorted Dr. Chakwas to the lobby, saw her safely into the cab, and made sure the cab driver knew where to take her. He even paid for the trip in advance on his own credit chit.
And sure enough, when he returned to the apartment, Shepard was all but asleep still sitting on the floor of the kitchen.
"All right," he murmured gently, reaching for her hands. "Let's get you to bed."
"Mm. Mm-hm." She nuzzled his neck as he lifted her in his arms. "You smell good."
"Thanks." Kaidan shivered as she licked his neck and tugged on his earlobe with her teeth. "You keep doing that, I might drop you."
"Wouldn't. I trust you."
Warmth filled him. After everything they had been through, he had won her trust again. He wasn't entirely sure how, but he thanked his lucky stars that he had found his way back to her.
In the bedroom, he laid her gently down on the bed and started removing her boots. "You and Dr. Chakwas have a good night?"
"Uh-huh." She nodded, sighing as he tugged her second boot off, massaging her foot. "Nice."
"Glad you think so." He pulled the covers up over her and turned away to get the lights, stopping only at the sharpness of her tone as she called his name. "What is it?"
"Don't go. Don't leave!" She clung to his arm.
"I won't. Just turning off the lights and I'll be right back. I promise. Just …" Letting her hold his hand, he stretched as far as he could, his fingers just barely reaching the light plate to turn it off. "Okay. Okay." He eased back into the bed, kicking off his own boots in the process of wriggling under the covers next to her. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
Shepard buried her face in his chest. He could feel her shaking as she wept. Concerned, he held her tighter, stroking her hair, gently removing the pins so he could take down her bun.
"So sorry," she was saying over and over again. "So sorry."
"You didn't do anything."
"No, I did." She pulled back so he could see her tear-stained face. "I died. I'm so sorry. I never—never knew what it was like."
"Hey. That wasn't your fault."
"Why—why do people have to die? Why couldn't I stop it? I tried to stop it, I did, I tried. What good is it to be Commander Shepard if you can't stop people from dying?"
She dissolved into tears again, clinging to him, her words no longer coherent, but Kaidan thought he understood—this was to do with the drell, and her grief for him. He felt a distinctly unworthy pang of jealousy that she was here with him mourning another man, and he fought against it.
After all, he knew very well what it was like to lose someone you loved to death, to lie in bed at night going over and over it in your mind to find a way that you could have saved them, to feel like a failure because you couldn't, to be totally adrift and at sea because they were gone. And how much harder must it have been for Juniper, to watch the man she loved die slowly, by inches, and to for once be utterly powerless to stop the terrible thing from happening. She was Commander Shepard—they had all come to see her as someone who could do anything. The entire galaxy was counting on her being able to do anything, to stop a race of sentient machines who had destroyed organic life over and over again and had never been stopped before. And yet, tonight in bed she was just a woman who had lost someone she loved.
And this was what he offered her, the chance to be that woman. When they had started, a long time ago, he had been as much overawed by her persona as he had been in love with who she was. Now, having seen that she sometimes made compromises for the greater good, that she made decisions he couldn't agree with and still remained a person worth admiring, he thought he had come to love her for who she was, more than what she stood for.
Shepard had fallen asleep now, her hands still fisted in the front of his shirt. Gently he drew her closer, smoothing her hair back, wiping the traces of tears from her face with a corner of the sheet. He felt like the luckiest man alive that she trusted him, that he could be here with her like this when she needed someone, that he could provide the kind of comfort she so rarely asked for.
At some point, Kaidan fell asleep as well. He woke to find her showering, her face turned up to the hot water. "Coffee?"
"Please," she answered, without opening her eyes, letting the water rain down on her.
When he returned with two cups and a pair of croissants on a tray, with some butter and jelly, she was just getting dressed, her damp hair falling around her shoulders. "How are you feeling this morning?"
"Like a few more nights of Dr. Chakwas's brandy might be more dangerous than the Reapers." She took the coffee cup, inhaling the aroma gratefully. "I'm sorry, I must have been a mess last night, judging from the way I felt—and looked—when I got up."
"You were fine. It's good to unwind occasionally."
"I think I unraveled."
Kaidan smiled. "That's good, too. You done in the shower?"
"I am. Mind if I watch?"
He could feel himself blushing. "If you want."
"That's probably all I'm up for this morning."
"No surprise there. I'm not sure there's any aspirin around."
"It's okay. The coffee'll be enough." She sank down on the edge of the bed, watching as he shrugged out of his shirt, having fallen asleep last night fully dressed. "Kaidan?"
"Hm?" He stopped in the act of unfastening his belt and looked at her, arrested by the seriousness in her voice.
"About the clone …"
"No." He shook his head. "We don't have a problem, Shepard."
"But—she was me, and Cerberus … I mean, I would understand if you—"
"Hey." He went down on his knees on the carpet in front of her, looking up into her eyes. "That's done with. Over. For good. You're you—Juniper Shepard, who sometimes makes deals with people who are unsavory for the good of the galaxy, whose decisions I don't always agree with, but who I follow and trust because I know those decisions come from the right place. When I saw you on Horizon … well, I was shocked, and hurt that you hadn't reached out, but mostly—a lot of my love was hero worship. I couldn't stand that you had done something I couldn't admire."
"And now?"
"Now I'm older, hopefully a little wiser, and I'm trying to learn to accept that I don't have to like everything about someone to be hopelessly and completely and blissfully in love with them."
Shepard smiled, her eyes lighting. "I hope that's me."
"It isn't Wrex."
"He'll be crushed."
Kaidan chuckled, kissing her on the forehead as he got to his feet. "He'll get over it."
"Good. Because you're mine now, and I'm not giving you up for every krogan on Tuchanka."
"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that."