Shepard always looked after her people first, her gear second, with herself coming in a distant third. Kaidan had always admired that, but he decided to rearrange her priorities with a gentle but implacable hand, just this once. Having fifty-thousand-year-old Prothean memories invading her mind was not an everyday occurrence.

"Good job with those cannons, EDI, though it's a shame Cerberus destroyed them," Shepard was telling the AI, who took the compliment as her just due.

Kaidan wondered if EDI had anything in her programming similar to the positive feedback loop everyone else had, and if the AI felt pleasure or pride. If he could ever stand being in the same room with the platform without his fight-or-flight instinct firing, he'd ask. She shouldn't be offended if he talked shop with her over a terminal, right?

"Oh, and please make sure you, Garrus and Tali pass along what data you found on Cerberus's computers to Alliance Command." The commander snorted, an exasperated smile tugging at her lips. "Though I suppose Garrus was too busy taking care of his competition to do any hacking."

"Yes, Commander," EDI said as she returned her weapons to Cortez, and left for the elevator once Shepard had dismissed her. Unlike the rest of the team, the AI had no armor to remove.

Kaidan said nothing as they helped each other out of their hardsuits; he'd learned a few things from her silences, he thought as he caught James's eye and directed the other man's attention to the commander's armor and weapons. The hint didn't have to be hammered home, for once; the lieutenant took one look at Shepard's tired face and gave Kaidan a nod and a conspiratorial wink.

Moving quite fast for a man still wearing heavy, bulky armor, James took the pile of gear from the commander's arms while she was busy chatting with Cortez. "You can leave this to me, ma'am - you'd better take care of our guys before they start some kinda diplomatic incident."

Not a man slow on the uptake, Cortez took charge of Shepard's weapons before James could drop them. "Yeah, about that... They, uh, requisitioned rifles, ma'am," he said, looking chagrined. "I didn't want to give 'em out, but they did have both the authority and permission, so..."

Shepard's face twitched in what Kaidan thought might've been a suppressed wince, but she rallied, raising an eyebrow at the news. Her voice was remarkably even when she said, "Rifles, good God. It's all right, Cortez, I'll handle it."

She turned and clapped a hand on James's broad shoulder and said, "You did a good job leading Team Two out there today, Lieutenant."

James's armor creaked as he puffed up in pride - and maybe some relief. The lieutenant had told Kaidan a little of what had happened on Fehl Prime over drinks - maybe more than either of them should've had - and Kaidan knew the incident still haunted the younger man. The success of their mission would go a long way towards restoring the younger marine's confidence and self-esteem - just as Shepard had planned, no doubt.

"Thanks, Commander."

She nodded and ran a towel over her head as she watched the lieutenants haul her things away. When they both finished dressing, Kaidan escorted - towed - her with a firm hand on her elbow to the elevator, but when it arrived, she punched the button for the CIC deck instead of crew quarters.

At his frown, she said, "I need to report to Hackett, and then I have to resolve that situation with the Prothean before shots are fired."

Shit, he'd forgotten that the whole point of their mission was now sitting in the port cargo bay, which was an indication of just how tired he was. "Oh, yeah, I should've realized that when you put on your dress blues." He looked her up and down; she smirked when his gaze lingered. "Not that you don't look great in them, but I kinda doubt they'll impress the Prothean."

Shepard rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I get the feeling I'm gonna need every advantage."

"All right, but promise me you'll come to the med bay right after."

She took a breath to retort, then winced; it was a subtle thing, but he still saw it. At his raised brows, she muttered an irritable, "Yes, yes, fine."

"I can go calm the crew down while you're briefing Hackett, if you want," Kaidan offered. "Negotiations would be less tense if people weren't actually pointing guns. That kinda thing sorta negates the process."

Shepard brightened. "That's a brilliant idea. Better leave the Prothean to me, though."

He grimaced at the thought of those four strange eyes boring into him. "You can take him."

Kaidan stayed in the elevator while the commander disembarked on the CIC deck, his eyes glued to her ass until the doors closed, and rode back down to engineering. The sight of the nervous marines hovering at the door to the port cargo bay with assault rifles drawn made him rub his face. Liara was there, too, harried and harassed nearly to the point of gibbering. It was a good thing she didn't have any hair, because he was sure she'd be tearing it out by now.

His patience wearing thin, he said a few pungent words to the jittery marines that shocked them speechless because they knew he never said anything stronger than 'shit' if he could help it. While they were still stunned with indecision - and preoccupied with searching their souls for anything that could hold off Shepard's imminent wrath - Kaidan hustled them out of the cargo bay and off the engineering deck, leaving Liara with the Prothean. They were good men, really, just out of their depth; their misguided adherence to protocol had been their clumsy attempt at dealing with a situation way above their pay grade.

The Prothean said and did nothing while this had been going on; he - at least his gender had been determined and Kaidan knew which pronoun to use - knelt in a pose of meditation the whole time, all four eyes closed. So why did Kaidan have the disquieting impression the Prothean wasn't as calm as he looked? Kaidan was happy enough to leave the alien and the puzzle he presented to Liara and Shepard, and escaped to get a shower.

Still a little damp, Kaidan entered the med bay and plopped himself down on an examination table, narrowing his eyes against the bright lights. Dr. Chakwas came over to tsk and fuss over him in her usual quiet, professional way; it was quite soothing in its familiarity, a balm to his frazzled nerves.

If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was back on the SR-1, when the biggest complication in his life had been inappropriate feelings for his superior officer, and the most dangerous things he had to face were geth and Ashley's enthusiastic hand-to-hand combat training. Ashley had worked him - and the rest of the crew - over but good, he thought with a reminiscent smile. God, he missed her no-nonsense attitude, and Pressly's friendly bickering with Adams, and... There were too many names on that memorial wall.

Chakwas prodded him, scanned him, asked the same brisk questions she always did, shook her head at the bruises on his torso even as she took care of them, and reminded him of his next acupuncture session. He gave her his ritual grimace and grudging promise in return, because not even Chakwas expected him to be enthusiastic about being poked with not one but lots of needles.

The commander breezed in at that moment, collapsing more than sitting down next to him with a soft grunt, and admired his bared torso, or maybe just his fading bruises. To Chakwas's deep amusement, he flexed his muscles for Shepard, who gave him an appreciative smirk.

"What did you tell the marines?" Shepard asked as she shrugged off her jacket. Her voice was muffled as she pulled the black shirt over her head. "By the time they finally got to me, they were practically foaming at the mouth. I settled them, of course." This last was imparted with an air of sublime confidence.

Chakwas made a noise of annoyance when Kaidan shrugged and dislodged her scanner. He frowned at the bruises marring his commander's coffee-with-milk skin. Cerberus had really done a number on her; she looked like she'd been beaten with sticks. Big sticks.

"I dunno what they're so upset about. I just told them they'd answer to you if they screwed up what could be the most important alliance since the Citadel Council gave humanity an embassy by accidentally shooting the Prothean. By the way, did he ever tell you his name? It's kinda rude to keep calling him 'the Prothean'."

"Javik. His name's Javik." Shepard looked discomfited. "He can, um, apparently read people."

Chakwas cut in with a delicate cough. "There. Now, is there anything else, Major?" She fixed him with a stern maternal eye. "You're not hiding anything, are you?"

"I wouldn't dare, Doc," he said as he shrugged his shirt back on. Turning back to Shepard, he raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I'm guessing you don't mean he can read body language really well."

"No, I mean that he can literally read a place or person, just by touching them," she said, propping her elbows on her thighs so that Chakwas could examine her back.

"So that's how he can speak perfect English now. Huh." Kaidan wondered if it went both ways, remembering how the Prothean - Javik - had collapsed when Shepard had touched him. Was Javik also a security risk, too? Could he access classified information by touching someone with the password?

"Memories with the greatest emotional impact seem to come through the clearest." With an expression of intense absorption, the commander lay down on her back when Chakwas pressed her shoulder. "I saw the Protheans' last stand on Eden Prime. Javik isn't just the last of his people - he's their last hope."

"It must be a terrible burden." Maybe the Prothean's arrogance had been a mask for grief, despair, and utter loneliness. He felt hollow at the very thought of losing Shepard, much less being the only human left alive in the galaxy.

"He wasn't supposed to wake up alone." Shepard's lips curved in a humorless smile. "He was supposed to rebuild their empire with a core of a few thousand survivors after the Reapers went back to dark space, finish uplifting us primitives, take us over, and lead us against the Reapers when they came back fifty-thousand years later. Whether we liked it or not."

"Considering the alternative..." Kaidan blew out his breath, boggled by the thought of the known galaxy being ruled by Protheans. If Javik had succeeded, could Earth have been spared? "Liara's head must be spinning." God knew his was revolving at speed.

"Javik's definitely not what she expected," the commander agreed.

"Was it bravery or desperation that made them get into those stasis pods?" Kaidan wondered. "Having to start from scratch after a few millennia, after their civilization's been wiped out, knowing they lost the long war." Living with the shame of their failure until the day they died sounded a lot like hell to him.

Shepard raised her brows. "Who says it wasn't both?"

Done with Shepard's back, Chakwas gestured for her to take off her trousers. Without a shred of self-consciousness, the commander kicked off her shoes and shimmied out of the curve-hugging garment, revealing more black-and-blue blotches on her legs.

"Well, I'm gonna go get something to eat." Instead of sitting here with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, while the doctor laughed at him with her eyes.

Kaidan stuffed his face and watched as the commander, trim and neat again, sauntered out of the med bay and made her rounds with her crew, visiting Liara, then Garrus, exchanging smiles each time their eyes met. On her way to the elevator, she left the faint scents of sweat and medi-gel in the wake of her passage.

Knowing it would take Shepard some time to chat with the rest of the crew, he ensconced himself in his mancave - er, starboard observation - and wrote up his reports, adding his observations of Eden Prime's resistance and recommendations on how to aid it. If they could, a part of him could not help thinking.

But what Eden Prime's colonists needed wasn't manpower - they needed training, organization, and supplies they couldn't manufacture locally, like medicine, armor and weapons. Before humanity discovered the mass relays, countless wars had proved that any local population, with proper motivation, intelligence, leadership, and grasp of logistics, could become a soldier's worst nightmare, even against a superior force. The colonists didn't even have the food problem those rebels on Earth must've had - practically every square centimeter of the planet was given over to food production.

Unless, of course, Cerberus bombarded them from orbit, if the Illusive Man sanctioned a scorched earth policy of that scale. Surely that was beyond even Cerberus's resources.

They brought back Shepard from the dead. Who am I to place limits on Cerberus's ingenuity?

No, Cerberus had more resources than anyone had suspected, even the Spectres or the STG, but they were finite. The loss of the Normandy SR-2 had been a grievous blow, but the loss of Shepard and her team was incalculable. And that was before he took into account the mass defections of ex-Cerberus scientists on Gellix, their failure on Eden Prime, and the commander's raids on their labs, facilities, and military installations. They had to be feeling it.

Kaidan shook off the entrancing vision of the Illusive Man's probable reaction to his underlings' various failures. Resistance movements, he had to think about resistance movements. Sergeant Petrov's actions showed that the elements that had shaped successful rebellions on Earth held true on Eden Prime. He just hoped that was enough to convince Hackett. Remembering the expressions of bone-deep weariness on the faces of Petrov's team, he prayed that their trust would not be betrayed by expediency.

When he'd finished his reports, he made some more sandwiches in the mess and took them up to her cabin, because he'd seen how the communion with the Prothean archives and the Prothean himself had taken something out of her, even if she hadn't said anything. The biotics she'd used during the battle at the dig site had to be taking their toll on her, too. When he arrived, he found her clothes scattered on the floor in a ruler-straight line to her bathroom. He congratulated himself on his timing.

Shepard looked up from her terminal at his entrance, the motion slow and jerky, as if just the effort of raising her head tired her. Dressed now in just a black shirt and shorts, he could see her skin and hair were damp from her shower, but her eyes looked puffy and bruised, her complexion so drained as to seem gray. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself," Kaidan replied as he stepped down and put the plate on the coffee table. The fact that she didn't follow and immediately fall on the food like a starving varren told him a lot: it meant she'd gone past her limits. Again.

Stepping back up to her side, he couldn't resist trailing a finger across her forehead, tucking a strand of wet hair out of her face as he reached for the teapot on the shelf behind her. She didn't let just anyone see her en deshabille; aware of the responsibility that went with her rank, she always presented a professional front to everyone - even more so now that they had a reporter on the ship - so it was gratifying that she'd let him see her with her hair down, so to speak.

The contented little purr in the back of her throat, and the way she leaned into the caress, made something inside him melt. Then he shut her display off.

"Hey!" Shepard protested, but he caught her hand before she could turn it back on.

"Come on," Kaidan said, coaxing her out of her chair and ignoring her lukewarm complaints about all the paperwork she had to do. "You've been staring at the same page since I came in, and staring at it for another ten minutes won't get it done. Now go sit on the couch while I make some tea."

She made a noise that sounded like something between a grunt and a wordless murmur of protest, but she didn't try to stop him and take over herself, like she usually did. Either she finally trusted him to do it right - pretty damned unlikely - or she really was too tired to give a damn.

While he was busy following Shepard's exacting ritual of making tea - for the first time ever - she observed him from the couch with a tired but watchful eye. Did she know the familiar activity relaxed him, too?

As they waited for the water to boil, he frowned at her, then at the untouched plate. "You need to eat something, Shepard."

She mumbled something that sounded like assent, but still didn't move. Kaidan resorted to pressing a sandwich into her limp hand, but she just stared at it like she'd never seen one before. It was obvious the crash was really bad this time. Maybe she'd get the idea if he gave it some time, so he started picking up her discarded clothes.

"I can pick up after myself, Kaidan. You don't have to do that." She made to stand, but he was already finished.

"Sit your ass back down and eat, dammit." He shooked out her dress blues and folded them over her chair so they wouldn't get wrinkled. It was a task well within his abilities, even if he didn't usually encounter things like her sports bra - he took it off her and then forgot about it - and he sat down next to her when he was done.

Shepard finally seemed to recognize the sandwich still in her hand was food, and bit into it with an expression of mild trepidation. Kaidan wasn't sure whether to be amused or insulted at this perceived slight to his food preparation skills. Not that it mattered; once her first mouthful was on its way down, he could rely on her empty stomach to do the rest, no matter how little appetite she thought she had.

Since talking and eating at the same time was bad for digestion, something frowned upon by medical professionals across the galaxy, they didn't speak. He just watched as she raked her free hand through her hair in an attempt to dry it, content to sit next to her in silence, not feeling any urge to break it just yet. Not until the water boiled, sending the soothing scent of the leaves drifting out along with the steam, and was poured into tiny porcelain cups so delicate, light shone through them.

Besides, revealing their most fraught and profound secrets over tea was part of the whole ritual.

As he lingered over his second cup, waiting for her to finish the last sandwich, Kaidan said in his most blandest tone, "You endangered the mission to save those colonists."

She gave him a searching look, her gaze intense as she read him for... what? Anger? Fear? Not, dear God, ambition, surely. Shepard bore a load on her shoulders that would flatten him. If she expected to find censure, she was going to be disappointed, he thought as he returned her scrutiny.

"Yes," Shepard said, not bothering to deny it or pretending to misunderstand. It was one of the things he loved about her, but from her neutral voice and her remote expression - he wondered if this was how she reported to Hackett - she was braced for an unpleasant reaction. Did she think he'd rat her out?

The commander's behavior would have to be much more erratic for him to even contemplate doing that; the very thought made him feel sick to his stomach. So far she had only used their primary mission objective to exceed orders, even if she'd stretched it to the breaking point. She hadn't tried to rescue the captured colonists Cerberus had mentioned, though he was sure she'd very much wanted to.

But Shepard's canny interpretation of orders wasn't what he objected to - at least if the ratio of risk versus reward was sufficient and didn't quite bend their mission parameters into a pretzel - what he objected to was the way she'd put herself in danger to accomplish her goals. Maybe he could reach her that way, since demanding a direct accounting of her actions would just put her back up.

"We need you, Shepard. I - I... need you." Stop throwing yourself into the line of fire when it's not even necessary, dammit, Kaidan didn't say, even if he was tempted.

She gave him a wry, lopsided smile over her cup, the steam wreathing her face lending her an aura of mystery. "I need you, too, you know."

He thought about their midnight conferences, the endless hours of strategizing over cups of tea, the quiet doubts she told no one else, the fears she didn't dare reveal to the others. "You need someone who can tell you 'no'."

Shepard said nothing, but her lips quirked. He was starting to understand her silences now, and not just the angry, sullen ones. They couldn't be broken with words, but were like puzzles to be deciphered. Encountering - and countering - enemy electronic warfare in all its myriad forms as he did on an almost daily basis, he thought he wasn't too shabby at solving mysteries.

"You know you're losing your objectivity, don't you?" Kaidan said as realization dawned.

Refilling her cup instead of looking him in the eye, she said, "Yes, I am. When it comes to things I have a certain personal stake in, anyway."

"Trying to expiate your sins?" he said, his voice heavy with irony.

The two fingers she pressed against her chest and a wry smile acknowledged the hit. "I try. Every day, I try. I guess part of me keeps thinking, if I just save enough people, somehow it'll make up for all the ones I couldn't." She stared at a spot in the air.

Kaidan didn't know what Shepard was looking at, but he thought he could hazard a guess. She shook her head, that faraway look in her eyes fading as she focused back on him with a rueful twist to her lips. "I know it sounds stupid. It's not a kind of mathematics that'd work in any universe, much less ours."

"Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's stupid. Or that I don't understand. My students... they're my, my redemption, but they're, they're so much more than that. Yanno?"

Shepard shot him a shrewd glance. "You're teaching them because you care about them, not for yourself."

"Yeah. Exactly." He set his cup aside. "I'm willing to help, yanno."

She blinked at him in genuine bafflement. Because she didn't believe him, or because she'd been going on alone for so long, she couldn't imagine an alternative? Either one made his heart twinge.

"Help...?" she repeated, as if it were an unfamiliar word she'd never thought to apply to herself.

"Yeah, help you do whatever it takes to rescue colonists. So you don't have to do it all alone."

Her mouth opened and shut, cup paused halfway to her lips; he had only seen her rendered speechless a handful of times. "And why would you risk, not only your life, but your career to help me?" she finally said, and remembered to sip her tea.

Taking a deep breath of the aromatic air, Kaidan said, "Well, first, it's worth doing in its own right. Second, you need backup. Third, I can diddle the reports if I knew in advance what was going on. I think that's enough to go on."

"'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?'" Shepard murmured.

He refilled his cup and topped up hers, letting the heat of the porcelain warm his fingers. "I'm on your side. Always."

Black irony lent a humorless curve to her lips. "Except when you think I'm working with terrorists, anyway."

It was his turn to touch his heart with two fingers, and made a conceding gesture with the cup in his other hand. "Touche."

Shepard raised her brows in mild surprise when he rose no further to her bait; he declined to inform her that he was too tired to bite. "You're being optimistic if you think we'll have the chance to do it again. We were just lucky that our primary objective happened to put us on Eden Prime in the right place, at the right time. If Cerberus hadn't so carelessly left their logs lying around, we might not have encountered Petrov and the colonists at all. Though I'm glad we did."

Kaidan gave her a thoughtful look over his cup as he sipped the hot brew. "If there's one thing that you've taught me, it's that you make your own luck." It wasn't, exactly, an accusation. It also wasn't, exactly, just an offhand remark.

The enigmatic smile gracing her lips was not quite an answer. "I'm flattered, but you're seriously overestimating me if you think I did anything more than just seize the tactical moment."

"Hm," was all he said in reply.

The part of his mind that never stopped analyzing everything was still working through all the implications. The moment she had discovered those logs, Shepard had involved the colonists with cold-blooded efficiency, then Petrov through them, and folded them all into her plans for Team Two's distraction. Since she came from the same background herself, she had to have some sense of how her fellow colonists would act. Thanks to their unsanctioned and unexpected support - though he'd bet it hadn't been all that unexpected to Shepard - she'd brought them and the general plight of Eden Prime to Hackett's attention, practically gift wrapped.

The resistance itself would become even more effective now, with morale high from its part, however small, in the victory over Cerberus's forces, and the hope the commander had given them with her presence. And speeches, probably, which he'd missed because he'd been dealing with the casualties. More tangible help could be distributed through Liara's Shadow Broker contacts, piping valuable intel and maybe even materiel to where it would be most needed.

After all that, if the admiral didn't act in favor of aiding the resistance, Kaidan would eat his own omni-tool without sauce.

"I want in," he found himself saying.

Anyone who could improvise all of that on the spur of the moment, and give it the best possible spin to push all of the buttons Hackett's ruthlessly practical soul had, was worthy of not only his admiration, but his help. The sheer audacity of it took his breath away.

It was also too pat to have been her first effort. No, she'd done this before.

Shepard hesitated. "It's one thing for me to risk myself and my career, but you -"

He brushed that aside with an impatient wave of his hand. "We're all gonna come out of this covered with glory, or we're not coming out at all. That's really the least of my concerns."

Taking a deep breath, Kaidan looked her in the eye and spoke with all the seriousness he could muster, "This is a part of you, and that's not gonna change. I don't want it to change - I don't want you to change. But I want to be a part of it. A part of you."

Lifting a hand to brush her fingers across his cheek, she said, "Is that why you want me to teach biotic students, too? To be a part of your redemption, like you want to be part of mine?"

"Actually, I was thinking that there aren't that many biotics with as much combat experience as you in the service," he said as he leaned into the caress. "But, yeah, I'd like that."

She brushed her hand against his when she lowered it; without really thinking about it, he linked his fingers with hers.

"I think I'd like seeing you do something that has nothing to do with the military. Well, not much, anyway." Shepard looked a little uncertain of her information; it was clear the evacuation of Jack and her students had been only the second time Grissom Academy had ever impinged on her awareness, other than sending David Archer to the school.

"The Ascension Project does borrow heavily from Alliance military hierarchy to give some structure and order to the students' lives, but it's hardly as rigid as it used to be at Brain Camp," Kaidan assured her.

Opening her hand, she said, "Well, you'd know. From what I saw, life there seemed... sedate. Protected, but not stifled. Pretty far removed from - this." She gestured at her cabin, encompassing it and the Normandy, and their daily battles against Reapers and Cerberus by extension. "Without those pressures hemming us in... what would we become?" she mused aloud.

"I don't know," he said with maybe more candor than tact. "But I think I'd like to find out."

Neither of them spoke of how unlikely that was, but then neither of them were in the habit of looking to the future with despair.

"All right," Shepard said after a moment of contemplation. Had she been boggling at the thought of being in an occupation where she wouldn't get shot at? "You're in."

He eyed her. "I am?"

Shepard grimaced. "It's a pretty unequal trade: an honorable, meaningful job for a court-martial if the consequences for excessive initiative ever get bad enough that a scapegoat's needed. And it won't always be as neat as Eden Prime. Or as clear cut."

We, she'd just said. The prospect of getting cashiered seemed unimportant compared to that.

"We'll just have to make sure that never happens, then," Kaidan said. He set down his cup and shook an admonishing finger at her. "Now I meant what I said about helping you, but no more of this 'throwing yourself into the line of fire for no reason' crap. We're gonna do it sensibly."

"Hmph, already trying to boss me around, huh." The fondness in her lopsided smile took the sting out of the complaint. "I have to admit, it does feel... comforting to know you've got my back on this."

He tried to picture her, sitting in a tiny cabin somewhere, in the dark, sweating over the reports, wondering if this time, she'd gone too far. Well, there would be no more of that. They could both sit in the dark, sweating over the reports, wondering if this time, they had gone too far.

There should be records of all the reports she'd ever filed, which he should be able to dig out of the system. Maybe he could even wheedle EDI into giving him a little help on the sly. He could see now that he'd have to do his homework if he wanted Shepard to take his offer seriously. The sound of her hastily smothered yawn broke into his thoughts.

"S'ry," she mumbled. "'S not the comp'ny..."

She'd eaten all the food and they'd finished the pot of tea together. Mission accomplished, he thought with satisfaction. Time to wrap things up.

"It's okay. C'mon, let's put you to bed. I'll clean up." With reluctance, he got to his feet, plucking the empty cup from her loose grip, and pulled her up with him, since he hadn't let go of her hand.

Too tired to argue much, Shepard allowed him to hustle her to the bed, muttering faint protests he ignored when he tucked her in. He pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek, even as he felt some regret for another missed opportunity; missions often left them too wrung and exhausted to do anything more than just crawl under the covers and hold each other. Thanks to the Prothean data she'd had to absorb, Shepard had crashed much earlier than he had, for once. He watched as her face relaxed in sleep, then went to gather up the tea things.

Damn, her yawns were contagious; Kaidan found his jaw cracking as he rinsed out the teapot and the cups. His energy seemed to run out like the water he'd used to wash the delicate porcelain, and it took an incredible effort to do something as simple as pull his boots off. He wouldn't have bothered to take off the rest of his clothes, except that the useful pockets on his trousers were a bitch to sleep on, and the straps on his shirt were liable to cut off circulation. After stripping down to his shorts, he waved his hand to lower the lights.

Shepard snuggled up against his side when he slid in next to her, and he fell asleep with her clean scent in his nose, her warm body in his arms, her breath feathering his neck.

There was a sound way off in the distance, something Kaidan was doing his best to ignore, but it was persistent and annoying and was getting on his nerves in the worst way. Suppressing a whimper as he dragged himself out of Shepard's warm embrace, he disentangled himself from the sheets and shivered in the cool air of her cabin when he realized the noise was coming from her computer.

There was a dull throbbing at his temples, and what felt like a steel band was tightening around his skull, signs of an impending migraine, just waiting to ambush him. Sometimes they took him like a guerilla attack, hours after the action, just when he thought he'd escaped unscathed. It did nothing to improve his mood, which was going from bad to foul in record time when the numbers on the chrono on the bedside table wavered in his vision. They'd only gotten two hours of rest.

It was a sign of how tired she was that she didn't wake up at once with a true soldier's instant alertness like she usually did. He kept his angry cursing to a pure mental space. Even here, in her own sanctuary, no one would leave her in peace for a lousy eight-hour stretch. Telling Hackett or whoever it was to go to hell was looking better all the time.

Through the strobing, pulsing spots of pain in his head, a beguiling thought slid into consideration like a shy private, one that stopped him in his tracks, and his eyes widened: what was stopping him from taking the call himself? Nothing. Well, besides Shepard's anger at his interference, and the disappointment of whoever was on the other end if they got him instead of the commander. Shepard wouldn't appreciate it if he caused a diplomatic incident just because he wanted her to sleep in. No matter how much she needed her rest.

He came to the conclusion that he'd wake her if it turned out to be Hackett; if it was a follow-up to the Eden Prime situation, Shepard would want to be roused out of a sound sleep to hear it.

Even though the lights were dim, Kaidan had had enough practice navigating Shepard's cabin by now that he didn't bark his shins on anything. He climbed the shallow steps to the office section in nothing but his underwear, but he didn't plan to turn on the visual feed.

A press of a holographic button silenced the chime that'd been drilling through his skull, and opened the connection. Specialist Traynor was on the other end, and said, "Commander Shepard, there's a call for you on vid-comm."

"Yes? Who's on vid-comm?" he answered as he quickly turned down the outgoing volume, unable to keep the irritation out of his whisper. He didn't want to wake Shepard, and his head felt delicate enough that he didn't want to speak any louder.

"Oh! Major Alenko," Traynor stuttered, "I, I, I didn't expect you to answer Shepard's comm." From her cabin was left unsaid.

To be fair, he never had; he and Shepard had always tried to conduct themselves with discretion on board the ship.

Kaidan waited in silence, holding his head to keep it from pounding itself to pieces, as he gave Traynor a moment to pull herself back together, then repeated, "Who's on vid-comm?"

"It's Admiral Anderson, sir."

Well, that meant it couldn't be critical. Anderson was probably just hoping for news that could raise morale for the troops trapped on Earth - and check on Shepard at the same time. Sometimes it felt like he, Garrus, and Anderson were the only ones who paid attention to Shepard the woman, not Shepard the commander, and they were the only ones who worried for her. He suspected Hackett did, too, but was constrained by expedience and the needs of the war.

He sighed. "Did he happen to mention what he wanted to talk about?"

"No - well, not to me, anyway."

A vicious spike lanced through his temples, and he winced. The sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could burrow back into bed and Shepard's arms. "I'll take the call."

There was an uncertain silence on the other end.

Kaidan sympathized with the young woman as much as the pain let him; Traynor must feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. "It'll be okay." He hoped.

"Well, er, all right," was her dubious reply.

"It's okay, Traynor, the admiral will know this is above your pay grade."

Traynor snorted. "That's true. What should I tell him?"

"The truth, of course. Tell him you've alerted the commander, and put him on hold."

"Er, okay," she said. It's your funeral hung in the air. "Traynor out."

Fireworks burst in his skull and left their ghostly images smeared in the corners of Kaidan's eyes as he dressed, always disappearing when he kept turning to catch them. It wasn't that much brighter outside, but the light still stabbed into his eyes when the doors opened and he groped for the elevator button. The odd metallic scent of recycled air entered his nose when he took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled through his mouth as he went through the exercises his doctor had recommended.

The exercises didn't always work, but this time they got him through the CIC and into the war room without looking like a spastic Hallex addict on a week-long binge. And if he did, the war room guards were too polite to say anything. Sparks and static were still popping and fading in his peripheral vision when he accepted the call; he took a prudent grip of the railing and leaned as casually on it as he could as the image of Admiral Anderson appeared in the projector.

"Kaidan!" The image was sharp enough to show surprise and then worry. "I wasn't expecting - is everything all right?"

Kaidan narrowed his eyes against the brightness of the hologram, and answered the question the admiral hadn't asked. "Shepard's fine - she had a bad crash and I didn't want to wake her."

"You look like shit."

Rubbing his face, Kaidan said with a rueful grimace, "I... won't disagree with your assessment."

Anderson gave him a sympathetic look. "The usual?"

Kaidan stopped himself from nodding just in time. "Yeah."

"Let's keep it brief, then. What's this about Shepard's bad crash?"

Keeping his explanation as succinct as he could, Kaidan told him about the Eden Prime mission. At the deepening concern he saw on Anderson's face, he added, "Shepard's in no danger, but I think deciphering all that data and then communicating with the Prothean took a lot out of her, much more than usual. At least she didn't fall unconscious, this time."

He exchanged a squinty-eyed but meaningful glance with the admiral; they both remembered Shepard falling into a fifteen-hours-long coma after the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime exploded, if for different reasons.

The admiral looked bemused. "A living, breathing, fifty-thousand-year-old Prothean! Sounds like something out of a trashy tabloid. Now I've heard everything."

"So, what's the word from Earth? Have any of my students managed to get in touch with you?"

Anderson gave him an equally brief precis; the news that the admiral had made contact with the kids in Chicago was one of the few bright spots in a grim litany of cities fallen, populations wiped out, and resistance strongholds decimated, the words punctuated by the pulsing of Kaidan's temples.

Kaidan didn't press for word about his parents; the admiral didn't offer any.

"How is Shepard, really?" Anderson asked in a transparent attempt to change the subject. "You know she'd never tell me herself."

"I, uh..." Kaidan hesitated, because you just didn't rat out your fellow soldiers, much less your commanding officer. The fact that his migraine was sending what felt like red-hot knives slicing into his skull had nothing to do with anything.

"I'm not asking as your superior officer, dammit, I'm asking as a friend!"

Kaidan found himself bracing automatically at the sharp tone, but it was the pain he heard underneath it that decided him. "She's tired - we all are - but she's driving herself into the ground trying to fix things. I'm doing my best to get her to take it easy between missions, but I'm not having a whole lotta luck."

"I suspected as much. She's always had trouble delegating when bad shit's going down." The admiral frowned. "Drag her out for some shore leave."

"With everything that's going on with the war, she feels guilty about taking any shore leave at all. Our friends take turns inviting her out for drinks or whatever, and she plays along, but you can tell her heart's not in it." Kaidan shrugged. "To tell the truth, I feel that way, too."

They both contemplated this glum state of affairs, though Kaidan was sure he was the only one trying to do so through a blinding headache.

Anderson's face cleared, looking thoughtful instead of depressed. "You know, I have an apartment on the Citadel, which I'm obviously not using right now."

Kaidan was confused by the apparent non sequitur. "Huh? Oh, yeah, I remember. What about it?"

"I'm going to give it to Shepard. It can be a place for her to unwind without making her feel too guilty about it."

Kaidan's jaw dropped. "That's... that's very generous of you."

"It's more making a virtue out of necessity than any real generosity on my part." Anderson grinned. "Pretty nice digs, if I say so myself. When they first presented it to me, I suspected bribery, but it turns out all Citadel Councilors get the same accommodations."

"They never took it back when you stepped down?" Kaidan found that hard to believe, considering how closely his Spectre division expense reports were scrutinized and got bounced back to him for corrections.

"Nope, and I could never have afforded it on my pay, even after I got promoted." The admiral nodded satisfaction at having come up with a plan. "I'll call back in a day or so, after we've got our new base up and running. Keep this under your hat - if I tell her myself, she can't refuse. Now go on, get your ass to the med bay before you fall over. Anderson out."

Since Kaidan was only staying upright at this point through sheer willpower, he saluted, and sagged when the hologram faded. The trip back out to the elevator went by in a blur of bright lights, glowing colored streaks that burned themselves across his retinas, until he reached the blessed darkness of Shepard's cabin. Even there, his own personal light show continued to plague him, endless starbursts exploding and pinwheeling behind his eyelids to the jagged rhythm of the hammers bludgeoning his brain.

On automatic pilot, he undressed again; violent shivers wracked him as his bare skin encountered the cool air. With shaking hands, he lifted up the covers and crawled in next to Shepard, fully intending to stay on one side of the bed so that he wouldn't disturb her - he wasn't so far gone that he'd forgotten she needed her rest. Despite his best intentions, she mumbled, rolled over, and threw her arm over him, and he clutched her hard. The warmth eased his chills; he could feel her relaxing back into sleep at once, but the migraine wouldn't let him escape so easily.

Maybe he should've done as ordered and gone to the med bay, but it wasn't like Chakwas could do anything but give him painkillers that would mix badly with the drugs already in his system, an empty pallet, and a dose of friendly sympathy. He just had to endure, like he always did, and it was easier, or maybe more comfortable, to do it here in the shelter of Shepard's embrace. They had so little time to themselves, he was loathe to give up any of it, even for his own needs.

Well, dammit, it was high time he did something for her, as soon as his head stopped hurting long enough for higher brain processes to function. If he couldn't find a way to get his commander some down time with all the possibilities an apartment on the Citadel presented, he might as well resign his commission right now.

Kaidan finally fell asleep with various scenarios spinning through his mind, blissfully unaware of the consequences that would unfold from Shepard taking possession of that apartment.