five.
She's always worked best with a team at her back.
She'd never have been able to hold the power station on Elysium if the militia hadn't been picking off pirates from the doorway, no matter what the brass said, and the Collector base...well, her team had saved her life in more ways than one. Alone, she has nothing to concentrate on but the enemy and the mission, and inevitably she forgets herself; with a team, watching their six even as they're watching hers, she has something to live for, circles upon circles as they trade positions and responsibilities and targets and cheap shots, all in the same breath.
That's her specialty, breathing for others when she can't breathe for herself. But in the spaces between she finds others supporting her in turn, Garrus and Liara and Joker and EDI and even the ones she hasn't met, everyone who sends encouraging messages or brief notes of thanks. And her mother and Catie are tucked away working on the Crucible and haranguing her inbox at every turn; trust the Shepards to need a galactic fight against organic extermination to bring them together, but family's family and she's glad to have them. For what feels like the first time in her life—her adult life, almost certainly—she's surrounded by care, capable of anything, and it's enough.
(He's unconscious in a Citadel hospital. He's conscious but confined to a bed, safe, and it's enough.)
(He's a SPECTRE, and heading for parts unknown, and it—is.)
And beyond her personal sphere planets swing around suns and the galaxy keeps spinning circles around all of them while the Reapers cut a swath across the floor and she keeps just a step out of reach, and another, and another, dragging everyone with her—
but Mordin lets go of her hand and steps into the fire and she watches him burn. One more loss; one less at her six. She tightens her grip on the others and steps away again only to find herself in a fire of Cerberus's making and Thane throws himself into the middle of it and she can't—
it's their sacrifice to make; for them, it is enough, but she's supposed to—
she can't—
and they're chasing a Council with a particular SPECTRE at their head and—
A shuttle platform on the Presidium, bright and airy and exposed, the subtle tang of ozone and the whiff of grass and a thousand other soothing scents wafting through the air, an oasis from the faraway smoke and screams and sirens, the gunfire echoing in the elevator shaft as it clangs shut behind them. And Garrus and James at her four and her eight, and Udina in her sights at her twelve and the chance to end this now, with a single shot, and her finger on the trigger and the breath before she pulls and—
Kaidan, in her sights, at her twelve.
Her breath stops and her blood rushes through her ears and only years, no, a lifetime of preparation keeps her hands steady and her gun trained on him. She is the picture of professionalism and he's on the wrong side of her gun and she feels exposed at her back, like there's a huge gap in her coverage and somehow she's missed it until this moment—somehow she's managed to pretend it's not there. And his gun is on her, but where she's a weapon he's a man, and the man he is has never been a killer. And she sees his muzzle waver as their eyes meet and in the midst of the shouting and pounding chaos her heart fills to bursting even as her aim stays true, as if she thinks he won't step aside, as if she'd shoot him if he doesn't.
She explains, her finger still on the trigger and her eyes locked with his in a mirror of desperate hope and a moment of trust me, and then he says, as if preparing himself for disappointment, as if disappointed in himself, "I hope I don't regret this."
In another moment he turns and just like that they're on the same side again, and he lets her take the shot.
She loses him after that, as he completes his mission for the Council and she joins Bailey in organizing cleanup efforts; as Bailey relays Kolyat's message and she reaches the hospital to find Thane confined to a bed, and safe across the ocean now; as she wanders the Wards and wonders how long they can last, living like this. She's so lost she doesn't realize she's found her way back to the Normandy until she looks up to find him standing in front of the airlock, arms crossed, looking out across the sky lanes.
She takes a moment to just look at him, in part because she still likes looking at him after all this time (though time is such a muddled thing for her, even now, but if she considers it another way to measure distance in space it all starts to make a kind of sense), in part because her full-to-bursting heart resurfaces and leaves her speechless. He's going grey, and the lines at the corners of his eyes are becoming permanent which means he must still smile from time to time, and the thought pleases her. She is pleased. She is glad to see him even as she realizes that this is the first time they've stood together in something like friendship without any regs between them—well. Technically, they're both Alliance. Technically, he now outranks her, and if him standing here means what she thinks it means then probably they're still in some sort of chain of command together. And the galaxy is definitely burning down around their ears, and—
He wants to come back aboard.
She could sing, but she doesn't, because as Catie has pointed out on multiple occasions (usually when singing the Academy fight song after a loss to the turians) that no one really enjoys it when she does. She—isn't really sure what she wants to do; she can't remember a time when she's been so absolutely, unequivocally happy. Strange, that it would take the galaxy burning down around their ears for her to feel this way, but then again maybe it has nothing to do with the galaxy and everything to do, quite simply, with having the man she loves within arm's reach again.
"Shepard," he says, after she's managed to articulate a welcome, and as they shake on it what he says next is the only thing she'll remember through the fog of happiness that threatens to turn into a big stupid grin plastered across her face. "I need you to know I'll never doubt you again."
He's holding her hand and her eyes and her heart and the look on his face tells her he knows it, tells her he won't let go, and her grip on his hand tightens in an answering promise. And an answering big stupid grin tugs at the corner of his mouth, and he says, "I've got your back."
"Good to know," she says, and now they really are both dangerously close to stupid grins and the cameras are watching and the press will have a field day if she makes a fool out of herself here and she almost doesn't care. But there are better places to be a fool, later, and so she simply says, "Welcome aboard, Major."
He salutes her and falls in at her six, circles upon circles, and there's a click in the underpinnings of the universe and it is—
enough.