Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: So I'm a year late with this. Yeah, uh, I have no excuses. Please enjoy.

Rocks and Shoals

Part Two: To the Seabed

Chapter Eight: The Lonely Kind

"Some people have always given just a little too much than was wise. Looking at Kolyat now, Oriana figured he knew that, too. So yeah, anger like that was familiar. Anger like that reminded you how utterly, stupidly mortal it all was." - In a post-war galaxy, Kolyat and Oriana found each other when they went looking for themselves.

"Have you heard anything about your sister?"

Oriana stilled her scrolling through her datapad, glancing up at him. Kolyat was decidedly not looking at her, instead glancing almost disinterestedly through his own datapad, leaning against the edge of the table next to her. She watched him for a moment. Just… watched him.

He noticed her silence and looked down at her in irritation. "What?" he asked, exasperated. But it was a quiet sort of exasperation, almost gentle.

It wasn't that she hadn't expected such a question from him. After all, her search for her sister was hardly a secret anymore, especially after DT and Iranis made it their own personal mission to reunite the young Lawsons (Oriana discovered quite early on that they had too soft of hearts for this sort of work, but then, maybe that was why they were all here in the first place). In fact, they had all developed a vested interest in her search for her sister, she found, and Precinct 12 wasn't especially good at hiding its fondness. It was in the way Jetal brought her lunch some days, his knowledge of levo-based meals surprising and warming her, or the way Duskin never missed her calls, even when she rung him late into the night and she could hear the dregs of sleep in his voice, and the way Kaz asked her about her barracks, or her workspace, the way she offered to touch up any technical issues, the way the turian rolled her eyes when Iranis poked her side teasingly and muttered 'softy' into her lover's neck, smiling brilliantly at Oriana. It was in all these ways and more that Oriana began to understand the work she was doing, in a way she never had before - the intimacy of it.

She'd never been more terrified to let someone down in all her life.

Even Kolyat. Even this… excuse of a liaison (she tells herself this even as he connects her to the volus ambassador, his hand holding out the earpiece, his face expectant, features focused - she tells herself this even as he sighs in barely veiled relief when she ends the call and tells him of the thousand or so refugees they found among a derelict turian mining colony - she tells herself this even when she knows, when she knows - Kolyat is precisely the reason she is so terrified of failing.)

No, it isn't that she hadn't expected such a question from him. Rather, it's that she hadn't ever thought of how to answer it before. And maybe she was just overthinking this. Maybe a simple.'No, nothing yet' would suffice but somehow it just seemed so... impersonal. And when the fuck had that happened? When had being impersonal with Kolyat ever been a problem?

She was sure it happened around the time he started loitering in her living room every morning before work, or when he started waiting for her before taking his own lunch break, or when they finally broke ground on the first processing center in Keh'lani ward and he had reached out a hand, sure and meaningful, and she had taken it, shaken hands with him in a way that she had hoped would not be the last.

She didn't exactly want to keep such things from him anymore. Maybe because she was the kind of girl who liked to think she stuck to her guns. The kind of girl who gave honesty as much as she demanded it, and maybe that part was true, but also, maybe she was beginning to discover how freeing it was to not cover up with him, to not hide. It wasn't like he hadn't seen the ugliest parts of her already, anyway. So what did it matter now? What else could she possibly fear revealing to him?

Oriana slumped back in her chair, her datapad dropping to her lap. She rubbed a hand down her face and sighed. "I don't even know where to look anymore."

Kolyat nodded mutely, thankfully swallowing whatever reply he might have had ready on his tongue, because she didn't think she could take a scathing remark on her incompetence at this point, not from him (especially from him - and whoa, she did not want to think about what that meant).

"We still have cities checking in," he offered instead. "It's not like Earth would have been back up and running in just a few months. You already know this. It's ridiculous to think we've accounted for everyone at his point."

She liked to think he meant it in a reassuring way, and given how un-sarcastically he said it, she's sure he did. He was just so bad at this kind of thing, though.

Oriana chuckled ruefully, shaking her head. "Thanks for the pep talk."

Kolyat frowned, setting his pad on the table. "You know what I mean."

She raised a brow, but it wasn't challenging. Only tired. She was tired all the time it seemed.

"I just mean… be patient. Stop wallowing. Give it time."

"Oh yeah, that was much better," she scoffed, almost teasingly.

"I mean don't give up."

She blinked at him. He wasn't looking at her. Was decidedly looking anywhere but at her.

It was strange, how hearing him say those words could be simultaneously encouraging and terrifying. Encouraging, because she didn't think he had them in his vocabulary and wait a minute, who was this kid? And terrifying, because she didn't think he had them in his vocabulary and wait a minute, who was this kid?

Kolyat reached up and scratched the back of his neck, the slight frills around his throat flexing imperceptibly. It was… kind of endearing.

"I won't," she found herself whispering in response, without even realizing she had said it. It was an instinctual answer she found. To meet his demand with a determination of her own. It was how they worked anyway. It had just never been so… natural before.

"Anyway, look, I've been meaning to talk to you about that hanar ship that keeps - " He was cut off by his omni-tool's alert to an incoming call. Glancing down at the band, Kolyat grimaced, and Oriana immediately knew who was on the other end of the line.

"Gods, why is she so needy?" he groaned, grimacing.

"You should answer it."

Kolyat glared at her, and she couldn't help the smile that flit across her features at the look. Before he could say anything in return, Oriana reached up and tapped the 'receive' button, the faint orange light of his omni-tool flaring up into a screen image and his indiginat squak drowned by a very enthusiastic "Hey, Buttercup!" coming from the person on the other end.

"Shepard," Kolyat greeted with a growl, shooting a betrayed look at Oriana, who only leaned back in her chair, chuckling as she watched.

"Well, look at that, the little shit actually answered this time," Shepard said, smirking into the camera. Oriana hid a laugh behind her hand, but Shepard seemed to catch it, and from Oriana's perch next to Kolyat she could see Shepard lean comically close to the camera in search of the laugh's origin. "Is that Oriana I hear?" Her smile was wide and unnaturally warped by the closeness of her face to the screen.

Oriana scooted forward, trying to lean into the view of his screen but Kolyat didn't bother moving it to help her. "Yeah, it's me. We're just -"

"What did you want?" Kolyat interrupted.

Oriana swatted his leg as he perched against the table. "Don't be so rude."

"Don't be so nosy," he shot back, shooing her away. "Shepard called me, after all."

And there he was. The abhorrent man-child rearing its ugly head. He didn't even answer Shepard the first few times she called. And now he was suddenly jealous of the attention shown her way? Yeah. Yeah, that seemed exactly like him.

But to be fair - okay, so she was being nosy. She was dying to know why Shepard had been calling him all morning. Resigned, Oriana flopped back down into her chair, crossing her arms. "Fine."

"I've been docked all morning. I wanted to swing by." Shepard's voice drew both of their attentions back.

Kolyat looked at her suspiciously through the projected viewscreen. "Why?"

"I have something of yours I wanted to return."

Oriana could only think of one thing. The prayer book he'd lent her. And now he was suddenly quiet, because she's sure he realized it as well. And what the hell was with that thing, anyway? She wasn't entirely out of touch. She knew it was his father's. She knew he didn't have a great relationship with dear old dad. Ergo, not so great feelings about some familial relic. Sure. She could see that. But it didn't explain why he still kept it. If it drudged up so much unwanted past, then why would he bother keeping it in his life?

Oriana liked to think she knew a bit about letting go. About keeping the haunts away. But then she still wore her father's jacket, and no, she didn't have a horrible relationship with the man but he still died horribly and she still woke screaming some nights, and if she were a smarter girl, maybe she would recognize the connection. Maybe she would recognize that she holds tight to her haunts as well.

(But that would mean admitting she's haunted still and Oriana isn't that smart of a girl, apparently.)

Even so.

It's unhealthy, she thought (and then promptly ignored the part of her mind that called herself a hypocrite, because yeah, nobody needed that kind of voice in their head).

"Kolyat?" Shepard's voice wasn't soft on the other end of the line, as Oriana half-expected it to be. But perhaps that was the point.

"You can drop it off at Iranis' desk. I'm busy today." His teal-scaled brows angled down as he watched the screen, eyes never flicking to Oriana.

"You're always busy," Shepard mused.

Kolyat rolled his eyes, and then there. That. That was familiar at least. She hadn't lost him there. "It's called a job, you know. You should try it sometime."

"Nah, retirement's been treating me pretty good, actually."

Oriana smiled at that. If anyone in this world deserved some peace, she was sure it was Shepard.

"You don't do well sitting around. Even I know that." Kolyat pursed his lips in thought, and then he looked at Oriana, and she suddenly realized she had been quietly, unobtrusively just... sitting there. Waiting for him. Not interrupting. Not being nosy. He seemed to realize it at the same time as well, because then he cleared his throat and looked back to his open omni-tool. "Well, some of us don't live off a government check so -"

"Except you do," Shepard poked, smirking.

Kolyat rubbed at his temples. "Anyway, some of us are working here so if you could just -"

He never got to finish, because then Iranis burst through the sliding door of the conference room, panting like she had been running, catching herself with a hand on the threshold.

"Bailey's in the hospital," she said, eyes dead on Kolyat.

Oriana sucked in a breath, and Kolyat stood staring at the asari for many moments.

"Who's in the what now?" Shepard asked over the line, and it seemed to jar Kolyat into motion. He glanced back at the screen, his face pinched tight.

"I'll call you back, Shepard," he said, about to close the line.

"Wait, Kolyat, wait! What… what did she say?"

Oriana had never heard her voice like that before. In a way, it made the news suddenly far more terrifying.

"Please," he said, and Oriana was struck dumb by the pained look in his eye. "I promise I'll call you back later. I have to go."

Oriana watched him staring into the screen, and she could see the somber face of Shepard reflecting back at him, nodding slowly. "Okay," she said. "I'll find you. Don't worry."

Kolyat nodded, swallowing thickly, and Oriana realized he couldn't really get anything else out at that moment. It was in the soft grumble at the back of his throat where the words caught. It was in the way he pressed his lips tight.

"I'll find you."

Oriana believed it. But more than that, it looked like Kolyat did as well.

He closed the line, looking back up at Iranis. "What happened?" He was already moving for the door to follow her, and Oriana had to scramble to collect her jacket from the back of her chair and grab the nearest datapad she could, stuffing it into her pocket. She trailed the two out of the conference room as they headed toward the double doors leading out of Precinct 12.

"He had a heart attack."

Kolyat nearly stumbled to a halt, and then Oriana literally did stumble to a halt, right into him, her face bouncing between his shoulder blades. He didn't even glance back at her, and somehow that hurt more than anything, and not because she expected his attention at a time like this but because any other time he would take the chance to deride her. Any other time he would cock an incredulous brow her way and scoff something petty at her. But right now, he was all coiled muscle, all tight shoulders and clenched fists.

Right now he was a Kolyat she had never seen before.

Right now he was scared.

And she didn't quite understand how that was what hurt the most.

"What?" He very nearly spat the word.

Iranis sighed, her hands rising in a calming motion. "He's okay, though. He's stabilized."

Kolyat swore beneath his breath, pressing his fingers to his brow plates, closing his eyes and then exhaling - very slowly. "Of all the - the old man never fucking listens." And then he was angry. Angry in a way Oriana was completely familiar with.

At some point, Oriana had figured out that Miranda was the selfless hero sort. Not the dumb kind though. Just...the lonely kind. Because that level of self-sacrificing bravado that she had come to know from her sister inevitably also came with a certain level of isolation. (You don't put others before yourself without first rationalizing their value over yours, and while all the books and all the scholars will praise you for it, in the end you're still left alone - because either you sacrifice too much or you sacrifice too little and that means you'll still never be whole enough to live beside them.)

Oriana discovered early on exactly what kind of hero her sister was. Miranda was a smart one, that was without doubt. But she was also very, very lonely.

Some people have always given just a little too much than was wise.

Looking at Kolyat now, Oriana figured he knew that, too. So yeah, anger like that was familiar. Anger like that reminded you how utterly, stupidly mortal it all was.

"Kolyat," Iranis said lowly, a hand coming up to rest on his shoulder. And the crazy thing was that he let it stay there.

Oriana almost widened her eyes at the motion, but then, she had to remind herself that this was his family. This was the norm for him. This was the kind of affection he was comfortable with, the only kind of affection she was sure he'd ever known, and it shouldn't surprise her that he lets someone touch him like that. It shouldn't surprise her, but it did. Or maybe it was wounded pride she felt, and that was just pointless.

Kolyat sighed, something that took his whole body and suddenly - he hadn't ever looked quite so tired before. Oriana blinked in realization. She could see the slight discoloration on his neck, and the way his double lids blinked furiously, and the slight curve of his back that spoke of exhaustion that didn't leave when his head hit the pillow. The kind of exhaustion that lingered when you woke, the kind that harrowed you with its permanence. The kind she knew intimately.

"Come on, Kolyat," Iranis said, hand sliding down to his elbow and pulling him along. "Let's get you to the hospital. You can berate him all you want then."

Kolyat closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, released it just as slowly. And then he was following after her, no biting remark, no disgusted scoff. He didn't even bother with an eye roll. It was all very… uncomfortable.

It was like he didn't even notice Oriana was still there, still trailing after them.

He was off somewhere else, silent and compliant. Two things she never would have associated him with before. She kept quiet as they boarded the shuttlecar, and kept quiet all throughout the ride, and kept quiet as they made their way through the hospital entryway. She hadn't even questioned it. And she also hadn't questioned why she was there. She'd been working with him for so long, was accompanied by him every time they left the precinct, took lunches with him, returned to the barracks with him, did absolutely everything in his presence these days. It was second nature to be with him at this point. It was natural.

And yet, she'd never felt so isolated from him as she did now. He hadn't looked at her at any point throughout their ride to the hospital, or when they made it to the front desk, or when they walked the long hallways of agonizingly sterile white walls. They stopped just outside Bailey's door and before she could steel herself in preparation of offering some comfort, some words of compassion, some heartfelt condolence, before she could even draw a full breath, he tapped the console beside the entrance to open it and walked inside, the doors sliding shut behind him. She was mid-reach for him when he left her, her hand still hovering in the air where his elbow used to be, and something inside her clenched tightly at the absence, her fingers curling in on themselves before she let her hand fall uselessly back to her side.

It wasn't her place, anyway. She knew this. She knew this better than anyone, because hell, dying father figures? Yeah, she had a little experience with that one. Except she didn't get to say her goodbyes. She didn't get to hold his hand, or touch his cheek, or whisper her affection with her lips pressed to his forehead.

No, she didn't get any of that.

What she got was his muffled pleading in the room across from hers just a moment before the gun went off, and then the image of his crumpled body, slumped bloody-face-first into the cold tile, as Henry Lawson dragged her by the arm down the hallway behind him.

No. What she got was screams.

And she didn't wish that on anybody. Least of all, Kolyat.

(It was the 'least of all' that threw her more than anything.)

Shepard found her within the hour. Looking up from her seat on one of the benches lining the hallway, Oriana caught sight of the woman making her way from the elevator, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets. She stopped just at the edge of the bench and sighed down at her. Giving a half-hearted shrug, hands never leaving her pockets, Shepard attempted what seemed a hesitant quirk of the lips to Oriana.

"Hey shortstack," she said, and then Oriana felt it.

Her lungs clenched, her mouth parted, and the breath she sucked in tasted like salt and antiseptic. She curled her hands into fists along her knees. "Hey," she croaked out.

Shepard's brows furrowed and she knelt down before Oriana, one hand moving over the younger girl's own atop her knee. "He still in there?"

Oriana nodded dumbly.

Pursing her lips in understanding, Shepard stood and then sat next to Oriana. She glanced around at the other officers lining the hall, nodding her greeting to Iranis and Kaz, shaking hands with Townsend when he came by briefly. In the silence that eventually followed, Oriana took to playing with the zipper on her jacket. She could feel Shepard watching her.

"How'd he take it?"

And of course she was asking about Kolyat. Not that she expected anything less. He was a fucking ticking time bomb after all, just one wrong twist, just one unexpected drop and -

Boom.

Catastrophic assholery.

He wasn't exactly the poster boy for rational or healthy living in the first place, let's be honest. Everyone knew how volatile the drell was. Everyone knew how very close to the edge he pretended not to be. It wasn't like you could miss it.

"Angry, of course," she answered.

Shepard blew a breath between her lips. "Of course," she repeated.

"The nurse said…"

"I know." Shepard nodded mutely, shoving her hands back into her pockets. She sighed again, and Oriana was beginning to wonder if any of them knew how to do anything else but sigh. It was becoming just so common and annoyingly trite and she didn't understand how to break out of that. How to escape this cramped, desolately white hallway, this tunnel of anxiety.

"He'll be fine. With some time and treatment, but…"

"But he needs to cut back on the work," Shepard finished knowingly. And then she scratched at her brow, shaking her head. "People like Bailey… they don't know how to 'cut back'."

People like us, Oriana thought she meant, because it was true. But Shepard wouldn't be the one to say it, so Oriana wouldn't either.

"I imagine Kolyat's right pissed at him then." Shepard crossed her arms and leaned back along the bench. "Kind of always figured Bailey was the type to work himself into a heart attack. But still."

But still.

It didn't hurt any less, Oriana thought, eyes drifting back down to her hands.

They were silent for a few more minutes, and then Shepard leaned her elbows over her knees, clasping her hands in the space between them. She kept staring at the door. "I don't think the kid's even been to a hospital since his father died," she said softly, as though to herself.

And maybe it was to herself, because Oriana felt horribly out of place to hear it, like it wasn't meant for her, like none of this was meant for her.

It didn't make sense that seven months after the end of the Reaper War she'd be sitting next to Shepard outside Commander Bailey's hospital room while Kolyat Krios exercised his demons on the other side of the door.

It didn't make sense that she'd be waiting for him.

But then, a lot of what happened since the war didn't make sense (and maybe that made the most sense of anything).

"I think I need some coffee," Shepard said, hands slapping her knees softly, and then she was up, stretching her arms over her head. "You want some?"

Oriana felt the faintest hint of a smile touch her lips. "I'd love some."

Nodding, Shepard looked back down the hall once, and then to the closed room across from them, and then back down the way she came. She huffed, stuffing her hands back into her pockets, and made her way in search of a coffee vending machine.

Oriana wasn't sure whether the silence was welcomed or not, and just when she was beginning to think 'not', Iranis slid onto the bench next to her.

"Hey Ori."

Something in her fluttered at the name.

"We've got to get back soon. The shuttlecars stop running in thirty minutes and DT's been handling the precinct calls all by himself since he left."

Oriana glanced out of the window just a bit past their bench. The Citadel's simulated night cycle had started quite a while ago it seemed, and she knew the shuttlecars were only running limited time for C-Sec personnel. At 22:00 they shut off except for emergency or otherwise previously authorized by Bailey.

"Did you want to hitch a ride back with us?" Iranis inclined her head toward where Kaz and Jetal stood waiting a bit further down the hall.

She took a moment to consider it. She knew it meant a pretty long walk back to the barracks in the dead of night if she missed the shuttlecar. But she also knew that Kolyat would be making that walk alone if she left now.

Glancing at the closed door across the hall, Oriana wrung her hands together over her lap. "I think...I think I'm going to stay. I'm going to wait for him."

Iranis pursed her lips in thought, nodding slightly. "You sure?"

"Yeah," She sighed, and it was suddenly so easy. "Yeah, I'll be fine. You go ahead."

"Ping me when you make it back?"

Oriana smiled. "Will do."

"Okay, then." She patted the girl's hands. "Okay." And then she smiled sadly, cocking her head to look at the other woman.

Oriana raised her brows in question. "What?"

Iranis shook her head. "Nothing."

She didn't think it was quite nothing, but she didn't say anything about it, all the same. Shepard arrived with coffee moments later and they all said their goodbyes, the rest of Precinct 12 making their way out of the hospital.

And so she waited, cradling her steaming cup of coffee between her hands until it grew cold. Until it surprised her when she took a tepid sip, and she blinked down at the cup, suddenly realizing how long she'd been sitting there. Shepard's voice drew her attention back before she could linger on it for too long.

"I haven't asked you how you've been."

Oriana looked up at her and found Shepard leaning back with one arm stretched out over the back of the bench, her other resting along her lap, coffee cup in hand.

Shrugging, Oriana took another sip. "Not much to tell."

"Your project's been going well?"

"As well as it can. There are good days and bad." She scratched a nail along the rim of her cup, staring at the motion.

Shepard hummed her acknowledgement next to her. "Sounds familiar."

Oriana looked at Shepard's bionic arm out of the corner of her eye, catching a glint of the prosthesis from under her rolled-up sleeve.

Yeah. Oriana figured the commander knew a bit about that.

"I'm sorry, Ori," she said suddenly, not looking at her. "About Miranda."

She swallowed thickly, hands clenching over the cup in her grasp. "There's nothing...nothing definitive yet."

And then Shepard looked at her, and oh, how she wished she hadn't.

They all thought she was dead. They were sure of it. Oriana seemed to be the only one still holding out, because even when Precinct 12 inquired about her search or offered a hand on the shoulder or sent a reassuring smile her way, she suddenly realized how all of it was tempered with the same resignation - the same crease at the edge of their smiles, the same heavy lilt in their voice, the same lingering look they all thought she somehow missed in her narrow, desperate focus -

That knowledge that some things you lose, cannot be found where you last left them.

(In the empty docking port, her sister's ship already light years away, the cold tile on her knees when she slumped to the ground - this - this was how she left her.)

"I mean don't give up".

Oriana pulled her lip between her teeth, her eyes suddenly wet. She blew a heavy breath through her lips and looked back at Bailey's door. That closed, silent door.

"I won't", she had promised. And Oriana Lawson kept her promises.

"I just," Shepard said, and then paused, brows furrowed, eyes unblinking on hers (this was the start of it all, Oriana would later realize, or maybe the end - she wasn't entirely sure - she only knew that something shifted inside her then, something that never really ever shifted back), "I just hate seeing you alone. You deserve… fuck, I don't know. More, I guess. You've just always been this light for Miranda, this meaningful thing in her life, maybe even the only meaningful thing in her life, and I know this because she fucking told me, because even if she didn't, you could tell. If anyone paid even the slightest attention to Miranda Lawson they would see that you were the only thing that mattered to her. It was why she joined Cerberus, and why she fought with me against the Collectors, and why she tracked you down all the way to Sanctuary." She stopped, seemed to suck in a breath, seemed to realize exactly where this was going, but there was no stopping now. Oriana had already discovered that there was never any stopping this. "She just… never believed in a world that didn't have you in it, and so to be living in one where it's the other way around now, to be here - when she isn't - I just… I just -" Shepard ran a hand through her hair, a growl of frustration escaping, and then she sunk back along the bench, the fight leaving her (or as close to leaving Commander Shepard as the fight ever could). "Sometimes I wonder if the war ever left us."

It wasn't really peace they'd achieved, Oriana finally realized. It was the absence of war - as though they were the same thing.

Here's a hint: they aren't.

Because for people like Shepard -

But no, she corrected - for people period - war doesn't end when the violence stops. It's just a different kind of violence that takes over. It's the quiet kind. The desperate kind. The lonesome, dying kind.

It's violence of the heart.

So peace from that? No, it doesn't exactly come easy.

Oriana knew from the beginning that her own peace would be hard-won. Her own peace no longer included her parents, or her home. And she didn't want to find out what peace without Miranda felt like (if such a thing could be felt in the first place).

But she did know one thing. Her peace would not be felt alone. This she could promise Shepard.

She knew this - instinctively and without doubt - in the way that Iranis had held her hands in hers merely an hour ago, the way she brushed the hair behind Oriana's cheek in farewell, the way she glanced back just one more time, Kaz's arm slinking comfortingly around her waist. It was in the way Townsend had stood in front of her shortly after they arrived, hand scratching the back of his neck, eyes on his boots when he told her "Thank you, you know, for being with him". It was in the way Shepard handed her the coffee cup, eyes lingering on her form, as though gauging something - really looking at her, and not just passing the time as she waited for Kolyat - the way she voiced her sudden and unexpected concern for Oriana's state of mind, the way she recounted her sister's unfailingly narrow dedication in some attempt at making sense of this whole shitty mess, this… this aftermath that none of them asked for.

Least of all Shepard.

(And it startled her, the realization that sometimes Shepard didn't just think of Kolyat, she thought of her as well, and how many other souls that she shouldn't feel responsible for but always, invariably, was - simply by way of out-surviving the rest of them.)

She knew she wasn't alone because Kolyat reminded her otherwise, every day, even when she wished he didn't. Even when she tired of the irritated look he sent her when she was rushing out of the barracks in the morning, a slice of toast stuffed in her mouth, her jacket hanging off one arm while she slung her shoes on haphazardly. Even when he sent her angry, all-caps messages in response to including him in her Safe Homes forwarded email chains that blew up his omni-tool with that annoyingly shrill message ping every time someone so much as sent an 'okay'. Even when he woke her by flicking her forehead when she accidently fell asleep against his shoulder on the shuttlecar ride home that one time.

Even when he frowned at her, even when he tsked at her, even when he rolled his eyes her way.

She knew she wasn't alone because Kolyat made it impossible to be, and somehow -

Somehow that changed everything.

Oriana set her coffee cup down along the bench, her hands smoothing over her thighs and then gripping her knees. She took a deep breath, held it, felt the release in her lungs like the first breath after drowning. She smiled at Shepard, soft and knowing. "The thing is, Shepard, I'm not alone."

The commander blinked at her, throat constricting, and Oriana could see it from where she sat across from her.

"You make me not alone." She nodded, because she thought maybe Shepard needed to see it. "They make me not alone," she continued, motioning to Bailey's door beside them, a general inclusion of the whole of Precinct 12.

He makes me not alone, she didn't say, because it didn't need saying. (And the whole part about nothing making sense after the war? Yeah, that still held true, apparently.)

She understood now, finally, how to live with grief.

"I mean don't give up."

You share it.

"I'm going to be okay," she said, and both of them knew she meant it.

But before she could say anything else, the doors to Bailey's room slid open and Kolyat walked through, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. He stopped abruptly in the hallway when he caught sight of them, dark eyes blinking furiously. And then he groaned, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling. "Why are you guys still here?"

Oriana smiled, a tired, languid huff leaving her. "Didn't want to leave you alone." It was the most honest she's ever been.

She could hear Shepard's knowing chuckle beside her, and when she turned and locked gazes with the other woman, she knew she hadn't been the only one thinking it.

A hard-won peace, for sure.

But not a lonely one, Oriana promised.