Well that was fun :)
Seriously though - it's always struck me as weird that Shepard manages to get through the whole thing in one piece... well mentally anyway... But I guess that's the beauty of video-game-land right? Characters can do things that real people would find impossible. I just thought that with that much pressure, Shepard was bound to explode at some point.
As always, I own nothing.
17. Repairs.
The ship is quiet.
EDI is on duty while the rest of the crew gets some much-needed sleep on their way to whatever awaits them with the migrant fleet.
All except two.
When the Commander finally tracks him down, he's in the last of his usual haunts on the ship. The starboard viewing lounge is dark, the lights having been dimmed, and he's stretched out on one of the couches, his long legs dangling over the end, head propped up on his arms, staring out the window. There's a small smile on his face and his chocolate-coloured eyes are half closed in thought. Shepard can almost hear his brain considering everything carefully and thoroughly. This is why they work so well as a team, she thinks. While she operates at light-speed, leaping into situations without a second thought, he steps back and thinks, really thinks, before doing. It drives her completely crazy sometimes but his meticulous mapping of every option has definitely saved their butts more than once. He makes her question things, things she's accepted without a second thought.
She watches him stare out into the night sky, clearly absorbed in his thoughts as he hasn't given any sign he's heard her come in, and can't help but think how lucky she has been. This man doesn't push her into anything or hold her back when she's rushing headlong into another hair-brained scheme. He doesn't question her when they're in front of her crew unless he feels like he absolutely has to and even then it's in French so no one knows what he's saying. And he has every right to. No one on the ship would have anything to say if he wanted to take charge right then and there. He out-ranks them all and has earned their respect with his quiet manner, his wry sense of humour and his unthinking selflessness.
But damn could that man be stubborn.
Kaidan blinks and shifts his shoulders a little, rearranging his position on the couch to somewhere more comfortable, then stops as he spots her out of the corner of his eye. They stare at each other for a few seconds, then his face splits into a wide smile, somewhat tinged with uncertainty. She sighs inwardly thinking that her hopes that everything would go back to normal, before the Collectors, were a little optimistic.
"Hey." She says, returning the smile with the same amount of hesitation and shyness.
They stare at each other for a few seconds more, green on brown, before he seems to fold himself in half, levering upwards so he's sitting. He's made room on the couch.
"Want to join me?"
Shepard smiles and sits down beside him, their nearness practically filling the air with electricity and tension. This feels new; like they're teenagers who have just admitted they like each other, not a couple who have been married for nearly three years. Earlier, in the cargo bay, this had seemed so easy. Admittedly, she had tried to kill him, all of her pent up emotion directed towards this poor man whose only crime was being himself.
"This is weird." He notes, still staring out into the stars.
"Yep."
He lets out an almost explosive breath and throws a lop-sided grin at her, "Oh thank God that's not just me."
"Nope. Not just you."
There's a pause, "Nice though."
"Yeah."
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Shepard's hand is resting on the couch between them and she idly traces the pattern etched into the material. It's not that it's weird, she thinks to herself, it's just that they don't really know how to be together anymore.
"Kaidan…"
She smiles as he takes her hand away from the couch and squeezes it tightly, thumb circling her palm. "Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
The circling stops and he turns towards her, confused. "For last night? You already apologized for that."
They're switching backwards and forwards between the two languages like they used to almost without thinking, she notices with a funny feeling in her stomach. "No I'm sorry… you know… for everything."
He's silent for a minute, staring down at their hands, his brow creased in thought. "It's been pretty rough lately hasn't it?"
Shepard laughs, short and almost bitterly. "You could say that."
"I'm sorry too. And I think I may have a bit more to be sorry about."
His face is sad and Arianna knows he's beating himself up internally. She instantly regrets even bringing it all up again.
"Hey," she says softly, a hand reaching to cup the side of his face, "I shouldn't have said anything. Don't worry about it." She grins, lightly tracing the dark bruise on his jaw, "In any case, I did try to kill you earlier so I think we're even."
He reaches up and takes her hand away with a small smile, "Yeah, ow. You really were going for it weren't you?"
"I don't really know what I was thinking."
He looks at her for another long stretch, and then frowns slightly, his eyes resting on her neck.
"What?" She asks, a bemused smile crossing her face, embarrassed at his scrutiny.
He reaches forward and touches the side of her neck and she shivers at the odd sensation of her necklace being pulled out of her shirt. And then he's staring, with an unreadable expression at the rings she has kept there, since Miranda gave them back to her over a year ago.
"Kaidan?"
"You still have them?" His voice is soft, low and stunned.
"Yeah."
"How? I mean you…?"
"Died?" She finishes the sentence and he winces unconsciously, thinking back to the Lazarus files. "Miranda found them for me."
Still staring at the rings in his palm, he reaches into the top left pocket of his Alliance shirt. Shepard has to smile as he produces his larger, thicker wedding band. Fighting the voice in her head screaming at her to shut up and enjoy the moment, she asks a question she's been puzzling over since she woke up in the Cerberus base.
"Kaidan… are we still… do you think we're still…?"
"Married?" He finishes with a small smile. "You know I've been wondering the same thing." His face creases into the familiar lines that tells her he's deep in thought. "I'm not sure if legally it's still legit considering…" he swallows and a shadow of old pain crosses his features, "you know. But in here?" he taps the side of his head. "Yeah."
"You nearly went out with someone else." She says pointedly, a smile on her face to let him know she's not accusing him of anything.
"True. But that was before I heard the rumours."
"Fair enough."
"Ari," He says, his expression more serious than she's ever seen it before, "I made a promise to you back on Paradiso, and I intend to keep it."
She studies his face for a moment, as if memorising it. "Me too."
And suddenly he's kissing her, his hand behind her head, buried in her hair in its achingly familiar way. This is not like last night, a small gesture filled with apology, and it's not like before Ilos either when everything was new and wonderfully unfamiliar. This is intense, fiery, passionate and contains all of their desire, need and love for each other that's spent the last three years hidden deep within them.
"Commander?" The pilot's impeccable timing strikes again.
She doesn't want him to stop but with a small cry pulls away, breathless.
"Ignore him." Kaidan whispers, his breath hot against her neck.
"Shhhhhh," she says, closing her eyes, "you're making it very hard to think."
"Three years Arianna. Not trying to make it easy." He murmurs, continuing to trail kisses along her jaw.
She playfully bats him away, her hand slowly mock-slapping his unbruised cheek and he grins. "What is it Joker?"She asks into her comm.
"There's a N7 wreck up ahead, no life signs, but might have something we can salvage."
"Can it wait?"
"EDI says she's picked something odd up on the scanners. You might want to take a look Ma'am."
She sighs, closes her eyes and screws up her face and Kaidan laughs at the war she's fighting within herself, her curiosity clearly getting the better of her.
"Gah!" She exclaims before clicking her comm button in once more, "I'll be there in a second Joker." There's a small pause, then her eyes light up suddenly, greener than he's ever seen them before, her corkscrew curly hair flying in all directions.
She's back to her old self, before Ilos, before the Collectors, before everything.
"Right, here's the plan." She springs off the couch, "I'll go and deal with whatever's happening in the cockpit, who knows, there may be something in there that can shoot Reapers out of the sky from a million light years away; it could happen. You get up to my room, (remember the service vent? Brilliant.), and I'll meet you there in ten minutes. Plan?"
He high fives her out-stretched hand and grins, her rapid-fire enthusiasm catching, "Plan."
She kisses him on the cheek before running out of the room. He shakes his head to himself, chuckling at her retreating back then heads out, down to the cargo bay and towards the emergency vent.
Sometime later, Shepard stirs sleepily, and then freezes in momentary alarm at her apparent inability to move, before she remembers.
Oh boy does she remember.
She fights to keep the smile off her face for a second, and then gives in, flashes of the night before flickering across her mind. "Well," she thinks, "that fixes things a bit."
Kaidan's warm breath is tickling at her shoulder, his right arm curled loosely around her waist. He's lying almost on top of her with one leg wrapped around one of her own. The unconsciously protective gesture is not lost on her. This is how he is, she realizes, this is what he does. She's noted his caring nature before, but it goes deeper than that; he protects the people he loves, without thinking, without being asked. He's always just… there.
Well… mostly. But if she's honest, she's come to terms with his absence during their fight against the Collectors. In fact now that she thinks more carefully about it, she probably forgave him for that months ago. Their fighting had become a habit, she realises. They had forgotten how to relate to each other.
"Kaidan?" She murmurs softly, running her fingers lightly across the arm that's resting on her stomach.
"Mmmm?" Her body tingles pleasantly at the warmth of his breath against her neck.
"You awake?"
There's a pause as he lightly kisses the side of her jaw and she can feel his small smile. "Nope."
"Sure."
There's a low chuckle near her ear and she grins, laughing as he somehow manages to flip the two of them over. Strong arms wrap tightly around her waist, pinning her to his chest as he kisses her soundly.
"I thought you were asleep." She says, her voice muffled by his lips.
"I'm dreaming, clearly." He grins, "Keep up." He kisses her again before rolling them both onto one side, curling his body around hers, once more unconsciously protective.
There's a comfortable silence for a few minutes and Shepard is unsure if she drifts off to sleep. "I could get used to this." She murmurs contentedly, and for a second she can forget; forget where they are, what they're fighting against, what they've lost.
Instead of the Captain's cabin on board an Alliance Military starship, they're lying in the house back on Paradiso, snuggled under thick blankets with the fire crackling in the corner. She wonders idly if it's still there, just as they left it.
"Hmmm." Kaidan agrees, the sound muffled with sleep. "Although I have a face full of hair right now."
Arianna laughs, her body shaking with it. "Oh god I'm sorry," she gasps, spinning around and pushing it to one side, "I told you, it's idiotic."
Kaidan smiles, his eyes lidded and bleary as they always are after he's woken up. "I love it." He says, twirling a curl around one finger and watching it almost blankly as it springs away, "it's beautiful."
Arianna studies his face as his eyes close again; very likely he's drifting back to sleep. "You should move in here Kaidan."
She can feel him tense, his arm tightening his grip on her waist under the light covers, and his eyes fly open, startled.
"Seriously?" He's surprised.
"Seriously." She replies, firmly.
"But… the crew… what about…?"
She sighs, thinking that perhaps she's sprung this on him at a bad time, especially given his predisposition and need to think things through. The lack of caffeine is probably not helping much either.
"Sorry, I… shouldn't have said anything now. I just… This war could go either way right now. It could go bad. Really bad and… I…"
"I know." He reaches up to brush a small flame-red curl out of her eyes.
"You're my husband Kaidan. We're right in the middle of this epic shit-storm and if this is the last few months we have then… you... you belong here."
He's silent for a while and Shepard can practically hear his brain ticking over, piecing scenarios together and plotting out possibilities. She bites her lip apprehensively. This is potentially too fast.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Her face splits into a huge grin, her green eyes sparkling and he grins back, pushing himself so he's sitting up, looking back over his shoulder at her.
"Yeah, I'll just go and get my things." He pauses, making a comical show of counting the various items of clothing that are strewn around the room, "Oh wait, I'm done."
In spite of the tragedy behind their utter lack of worldly possessions, Shepard laughs at the absurdity of the situation, pulling him back towards her. "Oh wow, I love you."
"I love you too." And then he's kissing her and once more she's forgetting.
The ship is quiet.
Oh good grief - I do love the fluffiness.