The wind that bears my love away may diminish our mediocre flames as it snuffs out candles. But it will only increase our great passions, as it fans a forest fire into a towering blaze.

- Larana Nirine, Last Poet of Rakhana

Kaidan didn't believe in survivor's guilt.

His was the kind of mind that appreciated logic over blind sentiment. It was arrogant to hold yourself accountable for certain things, as though all it would take to make the universe right was your direct intervention. Anyone should appreciate the limits of their own abilities, but it was particularly important for soldiers. Soldiers couldn't get bogged down in shit like that. If they did, they got people killed.

But sometimes... sometimes even he couldn't help it. After Ash for example. Ash... well... Ash had been a unique situation. She was funny and brave, and he'd liked her far more than what was required between professional soldiers, or even friends. The three of them together, Ash, Shepard and him, had been a dream on and off the battlefield. He'd never had friends like that before. Despite the violence and terror that had permeated their time together he had been happy, confident, focused like never before.

Until Virmire that is. Until he hadn't been good enough to get that Salarian team out of the AA tower for their rendezvous. Then Shepard had been forced to make the call, and Ash had died because of it. It had felt like it was his fault.

He understood, objectively, that there was nothing he could have done differently but it didn't make it easier to accept. What had made it easier was Shepard. Just his presence, his support and confidence, had convinced him it wasn't responsible for what had happened. And Kaidan couldn't be sure, but he thought that maybe he had done the same thing for him.

There hadn't been anyone there to do it for him after Shepard died. He had been standing right there, looking at him, and he had left. Yes, he had been ordered. Yes, it was his job to follow orders. But Shepard wasn't just his commander, he was his friend. His best friend, and the greatest man he'd ever known. He should never have left him there. Maybe... if he'd been there...

Maybe they both would have died. There was a time he thought that would have been better if he had died with Shepard. Losing both of them, Ash and Shepard, had been inhuman, crushing. He used work to hide it, to jam it all down inside himself and forget. It had been so much easier to let himself be numb that it had been to try and deal with it directly.

It had served him well, this tactic. Until Shepard came back.

It was funny the way the mind worked. He had been walking around like a dead man for two years, but he was angry when Shepard showed up. Anger had brought him back to life, and then poisoned everything that was left of him. Not at first, at first he'd been all ready to listen, to try to understand why Shepard would disappear for two years without so much as a hint that he was still alive. But seeing him on Horizon like that... there was no way to react to that without anger. There was no way to think about it without a red haze invading his mind, making him crazy.

Shepard had disappeared and come back dark and brutal, nothing like the man he knew. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to bring him back and put him right in front of him like that, only to jerk away all the hope that had been secretly growing inside of him when he heard all the rumours about him being alive. Anger and despair were sickly partners, and they made him feel like he was rotting from the inside out.

He had been furious, and sick, and sad, and tragic.

And then Mars had happened.

It was really funny the way the mind worked. If anyone in the world recognized his face it was because of Saren and the Reapers, this huge event that had shaken the galaxy and changed his life forever. It would seem that when his life flashed before his eyes at the moment of death he should remember that moment, and what had led up to it, that it should be vital to the rapid-fire visions unfolding before his eyes. Instead what seemed important was the childhood smell of summer sunshine in his mother's hair, or the feel of his father's hard, callused hand holding his small one as they crossed the street, or the sound of the ocean moving against the beach, or the smell of the kitchen at Christmas. Saren and the Geth were footnotes compared to these things.

And to the sound of Shepard laughing.

It was bizarre to think that it had been so long since he'd heard that laugh, really heard it, outside of his memories. Not the laughter that had rung up and down the beach after Shepard had pushed him off the dock in Cuba, that had been hard and angry, a sound that had never been intended to express joy. He had a lot of memories of Shepard laughing, in between flashes of neon strobe in Chora's den or as he drank straight from the bottle under the violet light of the Wards. The way he snorted through his nose when he got a little too drunk and found something a little too funny. The wild clarity of his outbursts in the middle of battle, the softness of his companionable chuckle, there was a reason he'd loved serving with the man. No one he'd ever known laughed as frequently or expansively as Shepard.

All these things were so much more important than medals and commendations, than ranks and posts, the things he'd thought were the most vital part of his life. That was all just framework, what mattered were his parents, his friends, and Shepard.

He had a lot of memories of those things, and it wasn't nearly enough. It was a sad realization for a thirty four year old to make, Kaidan decided as CAT scan beams combed his face. He should have figured all this out a long time ago. He'd wasted so much time.

With Shepard, more than anyone, he had wasted so much time.

"Major Alenko," the pretty Asari nurse they'd assigned him called out as the orderlies wheeled him back toward his room after the scans, "your handsome friend stopped by again. I told him he could wait in your room for you."

Kaidan's stomach tightened up like a vice. He still wasn't sure how to talk to Shepard. The other man had assured him they were good, had seemed almost relieved at the time, but it was hard to imagine he wasn't angry. If it had been him in Shepard's shoes, he didn't know how he'd ever be able to stop being angry.

He expected Shepard to be standing at the window or something, a portrait, dramatic against the blushing beauty of the Presidium, strong and assertive like he always was. Instead, they found him sitting in the chair beside his bed, head pillowed in his folded arms resting against the bed. He was dead asleep, the orderly had to shake him hard to rouse him and he sat up, rumpled and drowsy with his hair sticking out in all directions. He wiped drool from the corner of his lips with the back of his hand and blinked owlishly in the sudden onslaught of consciousness.

Nurse Abiderah was right. He was very handsome, now more than ever really, when he looked like a real person instead of a legend. It also helped that he looked much more than two years older. Despite the fact that his lean face was just as unmarked by time, unwrinkled and smooth, there was something around his eyes and in the lean lines of his face that made him look older. He looked older and somehow bigger, greater, like there was something in him that just hadn't been there before. And he was very handsome.

"Another scan to confirm nothing got rattled too hard," Kaidan explained, shrugging off the helping hands of the orderlies and heaving himself into the narrow hospital bed. He was pretty sure he was imagining the way Shepard's eyes flickered toward his bare chest.

"You can't blame them," Shepard yawned and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, "they don't know you well enough to know this is how you always are."

"Clever," Kaidan drawled as he pulled the sheets up to his chest and sent the orderlies away. "Everything seems to be healing clean, in case you were interested."

He'd meant it as a joke, but things were still too raw between them. Shepard clearly didn't know how to react to it.

"Sorry," he said. He looked bashfully down at his boots and Kaidan wanted to kick himself. "You know me, the only way I can deal with stuff like this is by cracking stupid jokes. It's-"

"It's fine," Kaidan assured him, "I'm just not as funny as you are, Shepard. I meant it as a joke."

"Yeah, of course," he rubbed at his lean-featured face with one hand, running his fingers across the faint scars still clinging to the edge of his jaw. "Stress, you know. It messes with me. Why else would I pass out on your bed like that?"

"I don't mind," Kaidan shrugged, "you've got to catch your winks somewhere, right? Might as well be here."

Shepard made a noise in his chest that was not quite a laugh and leaned back in his seat.

"Yeah," he drawled with a half-smile, "we can't all be as lucky as you, couple hits from a chick and you get to lounge around in luxury."

Kaidan laughed, and winced at it pulled at something tender in his chest.

"Yeah, I'm really living the dream," he rolled his eyes. "Stuck in the hospital while the rest of the galaxy fights a war I've been thinking about for three years."

Shepard sighed, his face twisting into a mask of disgust. Kaidan could read the tension springing up through his shoulders and back in an instant, the way he hunched forward and laced his fingers together was familiar. Shepard was too smart for his own good sometimes, when it came to a problem he just couldn't fix he didn't have the same tolerance for frustration that normal people did. Any problem he couldn't fix was a personal insult that he just couldn't abide.

"I wish the rest of the galaxy was fighting a war. Instead they're just dragging their feet and squabbling over table scraps," he rolled his eyes. "I felt like taking the Salarian Dalatrass over my knee and spanking her until she played nice with the other kids. Or, you know, spitting in her mouth."

Kaidan grinned. "Because that worked out for you so well the first time you tried to resolve a conflict that way. You had two black eyes for almost a week. Not that it's not a good look..." He gestured to his own battered face.

"Hey, Garrus and I won the fight, that's what's important," Shepard pointed out. "In fact, if everyone would just hit each other a bunch and then do whatever the tough guy says it would be a lot easier."

"You really think so?" Kaidan asked dubiously.

"Well yeah, because I would be the toughest guy," Shepard replied with a grin.

"Right," Kaidan nodded, "of course."

"Hey, if any reporters happen to ask you about my chances, try to sound a little more enthusiastic okay?" Shepard asked, arching one sleek black eyebrow.

It was a joke, Kaidan was sure of it, and he overcame the writhing, awkward sensation in the pit of his stomach and forced himself to laugh about it. Shepard grinned, and he felt a wave of relief sweep over him. This was the way things were supposed to be between them, and he'd missed it sorely over the last two and a half years.

"Look, Kaidan..." Shepard rubbed at his eyes and swapped his grin out for a more serious face, his eyes focusing on him with obvious difficulty. "About what I said in Cuba, and on the Normandy before Mars-"

"You don't have to say anything," Kaidan assured him quickly.

"No, I do," Shepard sighed, "I really do. I was a total shit-head to you."

Kaidan blinked. He wasn't really sure what he had been expecting Shepard to say, but it wasn't that.

"I don't know what I expected from you. I mean, it's a crazy fucking story. I had enough trouble dealing with it, and I'm the one that..." He hesitated. "Lived it." He finished.

Silence hung between them for a moment as both of them considered what they wanted to say next. Despite his many epiphanies over the last week of his recovery, Kaidan still had difficulty wrapping his mind around what Shepard claimed had happened to him. People didn't come back from the dead in the real world, that was something for legends and the Easter sermon at church. And rogue terrorist cells didn't pump billions of credits into men like Shepard. Men who had convictions, morals, limits to what they would do to accomplish their goals. It was... it was just so hard to believe.

"You really died?" Kaidan asked finally, to break the silence as much as anything else. "I mean..."

"I know what you mean," Shepard sighed. "And I tried... I tried to tell myself I was imagining things, or that Cerberus was lying to me and it was insane to think that I would believe them. But I remember it. I remember dying." He looked away. "I remember being dead. And if I start second guessing my memories and worrying about brainwashing and implanted thoughts and all that spooky shit... I'm never going to stop. I've had scans done, taken all the tests, I understand the tech they put in me, and besides," he shrugged as though casting off a weight, "I told the Illusive Man to fuck himself and blew up his precious Collector Base. I'm pretty sure that if he had intended me to play puppet I wouldn't have been able to do that."

He paused and looked up, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Sorry. It sounds like I'm trying to convince you, and I didn't come here to do that."

"It sounds a little more like you're trying to convince yourself," Kaidan observed.

"Maybe a bit," Shepard shook his head, looking at his knees as though there were something very interesting down there. "Maybe I'll never be sure that I'm really me, and that's why it pisses me off so much that you aren't sure either."

Kaidan felt his stomach twist again, harder than ever.

"You're still angry?" He asked quietly.

"Yeah," Shepard admitted. "But not like I was before. The Reapers stole my life, Kaidan. You're not the only one who doesn't believe me, some of my oldest friends think I'm blowing smoke out of my ass just as much as you do, or did, or..." He sighed. "I don't know. One moment I was a man with my whole life and career ahead of me, friends that felt close as family, a reasonably well-adjusted temperament... and now I'm this."

He motioned up and down the length of him, his lips curling back over his teeth in an unpleasant grimace.

"And I don't know what this is. A cyborg figurehead for a war almost no one really thinks we can win. The Reapers did this to me. So yeah... I'm still angry. But not at you," he smiled faintly, hopefully, as he looked up again.

"I don't think you're blowing smoke," Kaidan said softly. "I meant what I said. I was wrong, Shepard. And... I think that if anyone can win this war for us, it's you."

Shepard looked at him in silence for a moment. It was a look that Kaidan knew well, sharp and appraising. His fingers were laced together, the knuckles showing white against the sheets where his hands rested lightly. Kaidan might never have noticed, and then never noticed the tight muscles standing out in his jaw, the way he held himself uncomfortably straight in the seat, and never known exactly how tense he was at that moment. There was a time when Shepard had been like an open book to him, his moods written boldly across his face and body language.

He wanted that again. That closeness, camaraderie and... that spark. That unique feeling that hung between the two of them and that he'd never in his life had the guts to actually act on.

"Thanks, Kaidan," Shepard had apparently decided he was being genuine, and he smiled now, "that... really means a lot. Coming from you."

There it was, just a flash of it, slipping through the guards that time and distance and suspicion had put between them. Kaidan felt something inside him stir like it only ever had with Shepard. He'd felt things for people before, unrequited things that turned his head around and made him feel crazy, but never this. Never anything this exhilarating, or terrifying. It was just a moment, but it was enough to confirm that it was still there, and that more than anything else gave him hope. If that feeling could survive everything that had happened between them, then there was still hope for the galaxy pulling itself together.

"No problem," Kaidan said, and put his hand lightly over Shepard's balled fists, "I had to pull my head out of my ass eventually, right?"

Shepard had tensed at his touch, but he laughed now. Really laughed, his eyes closing and his head tipping back as bursts of mirth escaped his lips. Kaidan couldn't help it, he grinned like an idiot at the sound. He really had missed it. More than anything over the last two years, he had missed that laugh. After a moment he joined in. Everything wasn't fixed between them, it would take time and effort not one conversation to do that. But it was a start, and that was enough to make him ignore his aching chest for a moment and enjoy himself.