Yet all things must die.

The stream will cease to flow;

The wind will cease to blow;

The clouds will cease to fleet;

The heart will cease to beat;

For all things must die.

All things must die.

Spring will come never more.

O, vanity!

Death waits at the door.

- Tennyson

She hadn't known what would happen on Virmire.

Afterwards Shepard ran the de-briefing and silenced Kaidan's questions with a look and curt dismissal, "We'll discuss this later."

It was not the time or place to bring it up in front of the others. Shepard made offers of counselling for her team and the rest of the crew. Tali couldn't stop crying. Even Joker was terribly subdued, his eyes red. They all avoided looking at Ash's empty seat.

Shepard left them then, walked into the shared showers, flipped the sign to 'female' and stripped her clothes roughly. There was a strange buzzing in her head, and she felt like her insides were empty. There was just a big gaping hole where her spine should have been. She felt like a meat puppet held up only by an instinctive need to survive and sheer, bloody-minded determination to make Saren and Sovereign pay.

The shower was hot, scalding her skin a bright pink. Shepard slid to the hard floor, the shower pounding her hair down to slick on her cheeks and hugged her knees to her chest.

Great heaving sobs broke from her mouth. Tears streamed down her face stinging her red cheeks. Her throat was raw from where Saren had strangled her and it pulled and burnt as she tried to muffle herself with her palms. Her voice in the briefing had been hoarse with unshed tears and Saren's damage.

She failed. And it killed her best friend. Ash was now dust in the wind.

Shepard gripped her hair, her face twisted in an ugly, miserable grimace and cried and cried and cried. She felt like she could never stop.

Ash would never hug her mother and sisters again. She would never read Tennyson to her father's grave, instead her tombstone would join his. She would never hold a gun, make a joke, get married, laugh or cry. She would never see her family name cleared. Ash was only twenty-five years old and dead.

"Shepard?"

There was a tentative voice from the door. Shepard knew who it would be; she had almost been expecting it. Kaidan couldn't leave it alone.

Shepard strived to stifle her sobs with a great effort, sniffing and hiccupping. She pressed her palms into her eyes so hard she saw stars.

"Didn't you see the sign on the door?" She said. Shepard could hear how nasally and congested she was, the tears in her voice. "This is the women's shower room for the next twenty minutes. Go away, Lieutenant."

"I can't. You're crying."

Shepard desperately tried to stop her voice from wavering. Commanders didn't cry.

"I know. Ash is dead, Kaidan. She's dead." Her attempt at evenness didn't work, she sounded just as ragged as before. She didn't want Kaidan to know she'd been crying in the shower.

"And it's my fault." Kaidan's voice was heavy. She thought she might have heard unshed tears in it as well.

Shepard didn't care. 'You bastard.'

"Yours?! Your fault?!" Shepard stepped out of the shower, not caring about her nakedness. He was standing at the door, just half his head peeking in, in some sense of puritan chivalry. His shocked eyes meet hers for a moment as he took in her dripping wet, naked body. Water sluiced over her skin and her hair dripped into her eyes. Shepard roughly grabbed a towel, wrapped it around herself and yanked his arm. He stumbled fully into the room and she shut the door, locking it. He was startled, his eyes wide.

"You listen to me." Shepard said, poking a finger into his chest. She canted her head up to glare him furiously in the eyes and vehemently wished he was shorter. It was hard yelling at someone when they towered over you. "The crap you pulled before in the briefing room? Not ok. You do that to me again and I don't care how I feel for you. You're off my ship."

Kaidan swallowed harshly. Something that she couldn't define flicked through his eyes.

Shepard knew she was yelling and couldn't stop. Her heart ached. "How dare you take responsibility for what happened down there?! The only reason Ash died is because of me. That's on my head and I-I'm disgusted you would have the gall to claim it for yourself."

Kaidan seemed to rouse himself from whatever silence she'd struck him with. "I'm not claiming anything! If I hadn't armed the bomb..."

"Saren might have stopped it. You had no way to-"

"It made you choose! And you should have chosen her." He was angry now. Good, she could work with angry.

"I'm not ok with this, Shepard." He took a step closer to her but she held her ground and got into his face, angrier.

"You think I am?!"

"She was young! She was only twenty-five for god's sake." Kaidan's voice broke on the last word.

"And you're only thirty-two! Shall I save people by age now?! Make a handy flowchart?!"

The ridiculousness of having a screaming match with a subordinate while in her towel was lost on Shepard. She wasn't seeing a subordinate anymore, it was just Kaidan and he was pissing her off. Deep down she perversely liked it, anger was such a potent anaesthesia for hurt. She couldn't be angry at herself while angry with him.

"And you know what? Fuck you." Shepard hissed in his face, they were so close their chests were almost bumping together. "Fuck you, you self-righteous prick! I couldn't just leave you behind."

"Why?!"

Shepard knew she wasn't just imagining the sheen of tears in his eyes now, but his brow was still furrowed in frustration at her.

"Please tell me it's not because of us, Shepard." He pleaded quietly.

"What if it was, huh? Can you look at me the same way again?! Do you really wanna know, Alenko? Because I'll fucking tell you why!" Shepard was not swayed by the way he looked at her. She most definitely did not falter at the lines on his face, the darkness in his eyes. She felt nothing for him.

So she told herself too desperately anyway.

"I chose you because you were the superior officer with a higher rank. I chose you because you have unique skills. I chose you because I was afraid the bomb wouldn't go off. I chose you because I can't imagine-"

She broke off. Somewhere in her tirade, tears had started slipping down her face again.

"What?" Kaidan whispered, his exhale brushing her face.

"B-because I-I can't imagine my life without you in it anymore." Shepard was sobbing again, her mouth twisted in a frown so deep she knew that years from now she'd have sorrow lines.

"I chose you because...I don't know why. I-it was all those reasons and none of them. M-maybe I didn't think and maybe I thought too hard."

"Shepard…" Kaidan reached a hand up to remove a wet strand of hair stuck to her cheek. He gently tucked it behind her ear and his hand lingered on her cheek, cupping it. Shepard rest her head, burrowing into it, and shut her eyes. She didn't want to see him looking at her like that, like the reason Ash was dead was found in her eyes.

In his eyes.

"Please don't. You're too close." She was breathless. They both knew she wasn't just referring to his physical proximity.

They'd kissed once before. It couldn't happen again.

But Ash wasn't supposed to die. The colonists on Eden Prime weren't supposed to die. They couldn't happen either but they did.

Sometimes things happened out of Shepard's control.

They could all die any day now.

The silence was heavy and even with her eyes closed she could feel his gaze tracing her face. The shower was still running, hot water being wasted. She tried to focus on the sound of it and not the ache in her chest, the butterflies in her stomach.

Suddenly his mouth was on hers and she was pressing back against him. Her arms twined against the back of his neck, her feet rising on tiptoes to meet his mouth fully. Kaidan's arms came around her back, slipping the towel down her front a little. She pressed her breasts against his chest to stop it slipping all the way, unwilling to remove her hands from the soft hair at the back of his neck. It was apparently a bad idea, he groaned a little into her mouth.

He tasted just like she remembered, soft and sure, insistent but gentle. His hands wandered the planes of her back and she shivered when he reached bare skin. She cared for him, she wanted him to be safe. She wanted to be with him, always.

Along with the miserly sick feeling of grief and guilt in her stomach there was a slow burn building. A small fire that was just for him. It screamed at her to take him right now in this locker room, to let him have her against a wall under that hot spray. They could lose themselves in the grief with each other; find a small measure of comfort.

She cared about him, so much that she was terrified of what that really meant. Shepard didn't know just how far he'd sunk beneath her skin.

Maybe if she screwed him, she would know. She'd know whether to shut this whole thing down, tell him it was just battlefield flirting. Or if she'd fallen for him so hard, there was no way back.

A tiny voice whispered traitorously that she already knew the answer but this rationalization had her shimmying and sliding the towel down to pool at her feet. A cool breeze ghosted over her, puckering her skin with tiny goose bumps.

Shepard opened her eyes and pulled away from his kiss at the same time he did. His eyes feasted on her hungrily, his lips were swollen from her attention and she could feel him hard against her upper thigh.

"Shepard, I-"

"P-please help me forget what I did and remind me why I did it." Shepard knew her expression was vulnerable and hopelessly pleading but she wasn't ashamed in front of Kaidan.

Kaidan swallowed again, and met her eyes. She could see the decision there and leaned in. His mouth opened under hers again, plundering hers this time, hot and insistent and less gentle. Kaidan's hands roamed her bare skin; the curve of her ass, lightly traced the side of her breasts where they pressed against his shirt and kissed her jawline, trailing softly down her neck.

Shepard's heart was pounding, she was sure he'd feel it against his own chest. She reached for his shirt and was just lifting it up when-

BAM.

The door burst open. Shepard hadn't locked it securely in her distracted fury.

It was Liara looking as shocked and embarrassed as Shepard felt. Shepard scrambled for her towel but Kaidan already had it, draping it around her.

"Um. I-I'm sorry. I…uh d-did not realize the room was occupied. U-Uh, I'll just leave now." Liara stammered and turned abruptly. She didn't even remember to close the door again. Kaidan crossed to it and locked it but it was too late. Shepard could barely stand to look at him.

"I think you should go, Kaidan." She wouldn't meet his eyes as he moved to stand in front of her again.

"Shepard…" He breathed; his hand stroked her cheek again. Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard saw him nod, almost to himself. Then he removed his hand, turned and left the room, shutting the door with a click behind himself.

Shepard padded back over to the shower, shucked her towel and crawled under the now lukewarm spray.

Her tears returned then. It would be all she would allow herself, when they reached the Citadel again there would be no trace of weakness.

She would rip Saren apart.