... 1.

16. Breaking Point

The ship is quiet.

This time the quiet is the calm before the storm and it's like everyone can feel it coming like a freight train. Kaidan is in his customary location, alone in the frigid cargo bay, his face a mask of concentration. A biotic amp lies in pieces on the table in front of him and there's a screwdriver in his hand, a small tangle of unrecognizable machinery in the other. He taps the screwdriver thoughtfully against his chin, staring at the schematics on the holoscreen above the workbench.

"Kaidan?"

Liara appears so suddenly that blue flame surges down his arm as he jumps in surprise. He drops the piece of amp he's holding with a yelp and it sparks dramatically.

There is a moment of silence.

"Sorry."

"Geez Liara!" Kaidan says with wide eyes and a hand over his chest. "I thought I told you to stop doing that!"

"I said I was sorry."

"Every time! Where did you even come from?"

Liara tries to look contrite but fails spectacularly and Kaidan can't help but think she does it on purpose. He picks up the amp, turns it over and sighs at the frayed wires. He tosses it onto the table in disgust and runs a hand through his curly black hair.

"Did you need something Li?"

The Asari's smile evaporates. She turns so she's resting against the table, facing him, a worried frown creasing her flawless blue forehead in concern.

"I'm worried about Arianna."

Kaidan closes his eyes and sighs. He's been expecting this conversation since he re-joined the Normandy about a month earlier.

"I know."

"She's not the same Kaidan."

"You're just telling me things I know right now Liara."

It is true. The Commander has been there, sure; she just wasn't really there. Like she's holding herself back from something. Truth be told, they are all barely keeping things together. The looming threat of the Reapers is something that keeps him awake at night. But the commander seems to be faring the worst of all of them, her green eyes dimming and becoming distant when she thinks no one is watching. There's lines beginning to form at the corner of her eyes and she walks with stooped shoulders like she's literally carrying the weight of the world. Well, Kaidan supposes in a way she really is. The problem is, she's not talking; she's keeping it locked away.

He's been through crap like this before with her and he's never seen her crumple like she is. Her wry sense of humour, her quick grin that lets him know she's about to try something hair-brained and suicidal, her light-speed speech, her astounding ability to recall every detail about her entire crew, her… But she's not Arianna at the moment. It's like she's somewhere buried under unbelievably difficult, no-win decisions and pressure.

Kaidan realizes Liara's looking up at him expectantly and he runs a hand across his tired eyes. "What do you want me to say Liara? She's… I don't know."

"She's trying to carry everything herself and it's killing her."

"Well what can we do? She's not letting us…"

Liara's eyes flash dangerously and she takes a step towards him. "Kaidan," her voice is low, "you need to do something. Now. Talk to her, hit her over the head, kiss her; I don't care. Ever since you all left Earth she's been walking around like a zombie. She's about to explode or, Goddess forbid, do something idiotic that's going to get a lot of people killed." She closes her eyes and rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I know it's hard for you two since Horizon but you've always been the only one who knows what to say. She's had to make one too many crap decisions, she's practically lost her entire planet not to mention more than a few friends, and the Reapers are after her; specifically her. She's about to explode. She's not talking to anyone, Kaidan. She's keeping it all locked up inside her." Liara's face softens and she lays a hand on his arm. "She needs you, even if she refuses to admit it."

Kaidan is silent, processing and is about to reply when the elevator doors hiss open and the temperature of the room seems to drop even further. Liara's head turns towards the sound and her eyes widen in alarm. Kaidan barely has time to blink before the Asari ducks and he is suddenly flying across the room, slamming dazedly into a row of boxes on the far side of the cargo bay.

"YOU!"

Commander Arianna Shepard is standing just outside the elevator, her body wreathed in green fire and her hair flying wildly around her face. Her eyes are glowing dangerously, dazzlingly, with a fury that is wholly and utterly directed at him. Kaidan struggles to his feet, his brain automatically firing off a barrier, the familiar tingle of his biotic field flaring to life. This expression is something he has never seen before and it is quite frankly terrifying.

"YOU!" She shouts again and Kaidan has to strain to deflect the biotic missiles she fires at him.

Perhaps it's the fact that she seems to be shooting to maim and/or kill, or maybe he's just feeling particularly reckless, but he shouts back, "WHAT?"

Under any other circumstance, Kaidan would have been extremely proud of the creative string of curses that reach his ears across the cargo bay; a mixture of French and English that could have curdled water. A new missile he's forced to deflect punctuates each shout and he grits his teeth against the strength of her field. She's always been miles more powerful than she thinks, a strangely detached part of his brain muses.

Liara, taking cover under a biotic shield, catches a few errant and important boxes with her mind, setting them down out of harms way. She settles in to watch and, Kaidan thinks wryly, make sure they don't kill each other.

"YOU!" her voice is shaking now, not just with rage, "you should have trusted me Kaidan!"

"What?!"

"HORIZON! THE COLLECTORS! CERBERUS! UDINA! TAKE YOUR PICK!" She screams at him.

A shockwave catches him off guard and sends him spinning towards the ground once more.

"Where the HELL were you?!"

He ducks for cover as a box explodes near his head.

"I DIED Kaidan! They brought me back! WHERE WERE YOU?"

He dives behind the Shuttle as missiles thunk into the wall behind him.

"I HAD to use Cerberus. They were the ONLY ones who believed me!"

The emphasis on "only ones" cuts through him like a knife, like the rest of her words. This is what he's been fearing since she came to see him in the hospital. This is what's been building since Cerberus woke her up. The truth of Liara's words hits home. Arianna lost everyone she ever cared about on Mindoir and he's been the first person she's opened up to. Hers is a finely honed shield built up through years of bottling and projecting a certain persona. He was the first to see through it.

There's a loud thud above his head and a section of the shuttle topples over. He rolls to one side.

"And THEN I go on a SUICIDE mission and you don't even OFFER to COME WITH ME?"

That one was unfair, he thinks. He hadn't got her email until after she'd shot through the Omega 4 relay. As another section of shuttle crashes to the floor, he decides it's probably better not to remind her of that.

"KAIDAN ALEXANDER ALENKO! WHERE WERE YOU?!"

It strikes him suddenly, as she continues in her bilingual ranting, that she's only really half angry with him. Ok, perhaps more than half angry with him, but he's just acting as a vent for all of it. Everything. All of her guilt and grief, the weight of the pressure the entire Galaxy has placed on her tiny shoulders. He left her to deal with it alone.

This is it, he thinks, his mind racing to catch up. It's now or never. She needs him right here and right now. He's damned if he's going to let this opportunity to fix things pass him by because if he's completely honest, he needs her just as much; needs her to be relatively ok in the midst of this. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, feeling for the core of his field strength, pulling everything together, and fortifies his barrier.

The moment he steps, determination etched onto his face, from the safety of the shuttle, he is assaulted by her biotics. The strength of them is literally staggering and he finds he has to grit his teeth as he places one foot slowly in front of the other. She is just pelting missiles at him now, punctuated by screams of some mixture of animal emotion, raw and unimaginably painful. It cuts him to the bone to see how much she has been bottling away inside of her. Not letting anyone see how vulnerable she's becoming. So much is expected of this tiny woman.

Kaidan, fighting against the steady stream of words and power, sets his teeth against the clashing of their biotic fields, an oddly disconcerting feeling at the best of times. Today it feels as though he's swimming through butter, his hands painfully slow as they reach for her flailing wrists. His callused fingers close around her slender arms and he holds her in a vice like grip, pulling her towards him.

Liara watches, stunned as the green around her evaporates, winking out like a lightbulb, and the commander sags like a ragdoll into Kaidan's arms, her shoulders shaking with great, heartbreakingly wracking sobs. Everything she's been holding in for god-only-knows how long, pouring out at once. Kaidan slowly sinks to the floor, clearly exhausted, one knee bent and the other out-stretched, his back resting against some errant debris. He cradles Shepard's head to his chest and lets her cry, his cheek resting on the top of her head, eyes heavy with barely suppressed emotions.

The elevator softly hisses shut as Liara tactfully leaves the cargo bay and Kaidan closes his eyes, just holding her, afraid to do anything else.

"Where were you?" Her voice is muffled into his chest and scratchy from yelling.

"Shhhhh, I know. I'm so sorry." She takes a deep breath, about to say more but he cuts her off, pulling back to look at her directly. "Hey, don't you dare." His voice is more gravelly somehow and she shivers, "If you think for even one second that there's not a chance I don't regret what I said on Horizon or not being here for you or everything… Don't you dare."

There are no words left, so she doesn't say anything. She stares at him for a moment then, almost without thinking, leans in to press her lips against his. His hand automatically curls around the back of her head, fingers twisting through her hair and it's like he's never been gone, like she never died, like none of the life-shatteringly weird and horrifying things ever happened. She rests one hand on his cheek, noting with some surprise that it feels damp and she realizes she hasn't been the only one bottling things up in a corner. All this time since Earth he's been putting on a brave face, a calm façade because he knows she needs him to be unmovable, unbreakable.

"My Dad's MIA, Mom's all alone down there."

"It's frustrating to think that there are all those people out there that need us but we're stuck floating in space…"

She's treated him horribly, tried to kill him not even five minutes ago, and all he's done is… She pulls away and rests her forehead against his, closing her eyes. Their breath mingles in the cold air of the cargo bay.

"I'm sorry." She whispers. "For everything."

"I know."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

She just looks at him and smiles before laying her head back against his chest, revelling in the feeling of his strong arms encircling her. Lips press gently against the top of her head and she is feeling less and less like the fearless, unbreakable commander and more like the person she truly is. Vulnerable, fragile and faced with unbearable decisions that should have driven her completely mad. Perhaps she didn't have to deal with it alone. Not this time.

The ship is quiet.