A/N: Here's the first part of my little domestic-y group of drabbles, inspired by a prompt on tumblr.

As a side note, these don't fit with my personal canon for Kira, so there probably won't be any more like this. They're all post-war, and go together. I apologize for the first one - it's more of a headcanon info-dump.

"Well, here we are."

"Here we are." Leaning heavily on Traynor, Shepard took the first step into her new apartment. Technically, it was the same apartment that Anderson had given her during the war, just rebuilt after the damage to the Citadel. And for the most part, it looked exactly the same, with one major exception—the master bedroom was now on the ground floor. Everything had already been furnished—Traynor's doing, Shepard suspected—with sleek black and white furniture and a warm, honey-toned kitchen. "Food?" she asked, tilting her head towards the kitchen.

Traynor nodded. "It's all fully stocked. All your belongings were brought here, too, and there's a new set of armor and guns in the back room, courtesy of the Alliance."

"Good. Help me over to the couch?" Shepard began to move slowly towards the front room; even after months of therapy, she was still shaky on her feet. The blast that had destroyed the Reapers had done a fair amount of damage to her own body, breaking almost everything on her right side. That hadn't been the worst of it, though—she'd lost her left eye and right leg, and her right arm was now more machine than human.

They'd been able to fix her vision, giving Shepard a permanent visual implant that would account for things such as depth perception, and she'd recieved a permanent prosthetic leg below the knee. Her arm had been different; Shepard hadn't realized how bad the injury even was until they told her, since all the synthetic replacements were internal.

In fact, if there was anything the doctors hadn't been able to fix, it was the scars from her Cerberus implants. Everything else was almost as good as new; even the nightmares were beginning to fade with the therapy.

And she hated it.

Not that she was getting better, that she was healing, but the whole process she was having to go through, relying on others and always needing someone there at her side.

Kira Shepard wasn't the kind to leave her fate in the hands of others; she took risks and made choices and she alone took responsibility for them. More than once, she'd messed up and had to clean up her mess; sometimes it was bargaining for her life, and sometimes it was shooting a friend, but she always took responsibility.

So when Hackett told her about the widespread damage to the galaxy and the messy political scene that were a direct result of her actions, Shepard would've liked to march over to the Council and make a few demands before taking the galaxy into her own hands—again. But she'd been stuck in a hospital bed then, and by the time she was even able to walk with assistance, most of the problems had been worked out, and Hackett was insisting Shepard spend a few more months recuperating.
She'd argued, of course, not because she had any desire to remain with the Alliance, but out of a feeling of responsibility. She had to do something to help.

Something more than sit awkwardly on a stiff couch, one leg splayed out to the side to keep her hip from protesting and the other beginning to ache where flesh joined with metal, while Traynor shuffled through the kitchen looking for food.

"Don't bother," Shepard finally called out to her. "We'll order out. Chinese, or something."

Traynor shut the door to the cabinet she'd been rummaging through and turned to Shepard with a tired smile. "You spent months complaining about that hospital food, and the first thing you want when you get out is order out Chinese?" she teased.

"Just—shut up." After a pause, she added, "And get over here."

"So I'm guessing the food can wait?"

"For now."

When Traynor sat next to Shepard, it was gentle, careful; something Shepard had noticed had become common. Everyone—Traynor included—was treating her like she was fragile. That didn't bother her; it was the fact that it was true, that she was relatively fragile for the moment, that bothered her the most.

All it took was one glance at Traynor—at the way her brow furrowed and her lips pressed into a tight line—for Shepard to realize that her frustration was showing. Determind not to add to Traynor's own worries, Shepard took one of her hands and gave it a gentle a little, Traynor returned the gesture; it had been the most affection that Shepard had been physically capable of giving while she was in the hospital, and since then it had transformed into a simple, silent declaration that she was fine, and that everything would turn out okay.

"Well," Traynor sighed, settling into a more comfortable position and letting her eyes wander around the apartment, "it isn't the white picket fence I had in mind, but it'll do."