Shepard doesn't want to be here.

The paramedics weren't kidding when they'd said Huerta Memorial was the best hospital on the Citadel. She's been in hospitals that make you think guiltily of death the second you walk in: sterile corridors, antiseptic smell, all the hallmarks that this is a place marked by wrongness. Huerta Memorial is different. They're cycling the air relentlessly; they've lined every wall with glass windows that afford breathtaking views of the Presidium below. The lobby could almost be a hotel reception desk, if it weren't for the growing numbers of patients overflowing from the rooms, clogging the sides of the entryway with pallets on the floor and pained, traumatized voices. They weren't there last time Shepard visited.

But that's not what bothers her either; she's seen worse in the field, listened to her comrades while she applied the medigel and tried to hold whatever was on the inside of their gunshot wounds in. Selfishly, today it's not the war that has Commander Shepard half-ready to turn tail and run. Today it's personal.

Shepard doesn't want to be here. But she feels obligated to come, for more reasons than one, and that propels her forward.

She's sort of pictured him lying with his hands folded, face turned toward the door, expectantly waiting for her arrival ever since he sent her the e-mail, so she's taken aback when she opens the door and almost runs smack into Udina coming out. It rankles a little without her being sure why. Maybe just because so much happens in her orbit that even though she understands intellectually that other people's lives go on when she's not there, it secretly still throws her when she gets proof.

Kaidan's head still looks more like a bunch of bruises with a face on them than the other way around (the memory comes back at her like a high-caliber round), but he's conscious and able to hoist himself up to a 30-degree angle when she walks in. They still haven't seen fit to give him a shirt. (Supply shortage? Some medical reason? Are the doctors just screwing with her?) She's very deliberate about keeping her eyes on his, not letting her gaze flicker. His chest is still in the periphery of her vision, though. Shepard doesn't even let herself think about whether he's wearing pants.

They make small talk—about Udina's efforts to recruit Kaidan as a Spectre, about the hospital food. Shepard doesn't say too much about life on the Normandy (brokering interspecies alliances, engaging in large-scale violence) and she doesn't ask for too many details about life in Huerta Memorial (for example, the fact that she hasn't seen a single bathroom in this wing). Her mouth is on autopilot for a lot of it; she's just keeping her vision trained and thinking her own thoughts. She keeps wondering how long she's been here and how much time that leaves before she can say goodbye without it looking like a retreat. In some ways, talking to Kaidan is as easy as it ever was. In others, it's hard as hell.

Finally he asks if they're good after what happened on Horizon and Mars, and she makes some affirmative noises. There's no point in picking a fight with a guy in a hospital bed. It doesn't matter now anyway, Shepard reminds herself; when he gets out of here they'll probably be Spectre-ing in two different places and he won't be back on the Normandy again. This seems like the home stretch of the conversation.

But he's silent after that topic comes to a close, and something in her compels her to ask, "What's going on? Is there something else?"

"Yeah, maybe." He sighs, and then comes out with it: "Was there something between you and Garrus?"

She wasn't expecting that. Like the involuntary gasp after a punch to the gut, it forces the answer out of her before she can think to stop it: "Our fight on Horizon really threw me. You just shut me down."

Who the hell told him that, Shepard has the presence of mind to wonder only after she's answered. Not Thane; Thane is discreet. But Vega might have visited and let something slip, or Liara might have put her foot in her mouth before she realized it. Joker? She'd like to break both his kneecaps if he was the one who forced this topic to rear its ugly head, but that would be exactly why he'd do it: he'd know she wouldn't come to it on her own, and maybe that had needed to be said.

"I know. I just couldn't believe my eyes. There you were—alive. Can we, um—can we just put this behind us? Please."

She nods yes so hard she might be risking whiplash. Kaidan sounds as uncomfortable as she feels, although technically she hasn't acknowledged anything. Well, Shepard thinks, that wasn't as bad as it could have been. At least he didn't cry. Her either. "Feel like we've cleared the air?" she asks, relief probably evident in her voice.

"Yeah, you know, I'm—I'm not sure that I've been wrong about Cerberus, but I've been wrong about you."

Shepard doesn't know what the hell that's supposed to mean. His tone sounds encouraging, but the memory of all her previous efforts to dissect his words is still raw, and she's done with it. She says her goodbyes and slips out.

Halfway through the lobby, she stops dead and feels like an idiot. She bought him a bottle of whiskey last time she was here, she's got it now, and she was so eager to get out she forgot to give it to him. Shepard turns back and ducks inside the room again.

"Hey, I forgot to mention I brought you some—"

He sits up, his brown eyes serious. Cuts her off. The door slides shut behind her. "Shepard. I'm glad you came back." That doesn't sound good.

"Any particular reason?"

"Yeah." He struggles to sit partway up again. "I wasn't going to ask this, but as soon as you left, I started kicking myself, so—I just have to get it off my chest." Her gaze jumps down that way and guiltily back. Damn her. "Why Garrus?"

She doesn't want to talk about this. She snaps, "He's a hell of a shot and he's good at calibrations. I like guys with scars. Those bruises on your face are going to fade like a cheap dancer at dawn, by the way, so don't try to tell me you qualify."

"Damn it, be serious for one minute. Are you just more interested in aliens than humans these days?"

That was a cheap shot. She'll be lying if she says yes.

Years ago, Shepard had a lover with a mole on the side of his face—large and raised, ten shades off from the rest of his skin, with a tendril of hair curling out if he missed it shaving. It repulsed her on a visceral level, no matter how often she told herself she was being shallow. When she'd been able to see him as a whole without really seeing him, as you do with intimately familiar things, she could almost forget it. But then she'd touch his cheek and feel it, or glance at him and really look for some reason, she would have to stop her body from recoiling.

There's something similar about the back of Garrus's neck—the leathery predator skin, the raised bumps, the momentary shock of her fingers hitting on his cowl or fringe when her eyes are closed. She'll be lying if she denies that she doesn't wish sometimes she could pull a lover's head down to hers and just feel skin and hair. She'll be lying if she pretends she doesn't miss human fingers in particular: the softness, the flexibility, the ability to get into sensitive places without raising any concerns about puncture wounds. She misses not having to keep the adrenaline shots and painkillers close at hand. She misses the days when she could discreetly invite a crew member into her cabin without enduring the snickers the next morning because her neck is marked up like a vampire victim's. She does, yes, she misses so much about what Kaidan has to offer, and it would be so easy just to cop to it and go back to—how did Garrus put it?—"something closer to home."

But what Shepard doesn't miss is the way she felt after Horizon. Like the ground had opened up under her, and her fingers were scrabbling for purchase and hitting nothing but air.

"It has nothing to do with that," she answers, very carefully.

"Then what is it? I just need to know, then I'll get off your back."

Shepard doesn't have time for a postmortem right now; she has Reapers to shoot. Doesn't he know there's a war going on? She's not big on public introspection at the best of times, which this isn't.

But if she sucks it up and thinks about it like a grown-up, maybe she owes him this. As convinced as she is that what happened between them—and with Garrus—is his fault, he doesn't deserve to wonder.

"Kaidan, when you found out I was working with Cerberus to take down the Collectors, you turned your back on me. Garrus joined up."

She thought that would settle it, but he crosses his arms and fires back. "Oh, I see. So what you want is a yes man."

"That isn't—" God, he can be infuriating. This is Mars all over again. "I don't want a yes man. I want someone who will be honest with me, even when he thinks I'm wrong. But even when he doesn't agree with me, I need someone who will at least understand that I'm not crazy, or a traitor, or brainwashed—who will believe that my goals are the right ones and I'm doing my damndest to achieve them the best way I can, and so who's willing to take a few things on faith."

There were some days back there when she wished she could scream that at him, when her attempts to get it down in an e-mail ended in an angry caps-locked mess. Now she can say it calmly, with very little regret left in her tone. The show of wistfulness is all on his side—that damn handsome battered face just crumples. She left Ashley Williams to die because she couldn't imagine not seeing that face on her ship. But Shepard's not the same woman she was then.

"I could be that guy. It's just—look, Shepard, so much has happened. I just need time."

"I don't have time. When I leave, I'm getting back on the Normandy and going –I don't even know where yet, but people will be shooting at me, and sooner or later one might actually hit. I don't have time to beg you to listen to me. Could you honestly say that whatever crazy thing I did tomorrow, you'd trust me?"

He hesitates. She reads the expression in his eyes and knows his answer before he says it. "No. No, I couldn't."

"Then that's your answer." Shepard sets the bottle of whiskey down, out of his reach so he can't get moody and self-pitying and chug it like she's tempted to do. But he'll have to look at it. "Enjoy the gift, Kaidan. Feel better."

She doesn't promise to check in on him again the next time she makes it back to the Citadel, and they both hear that silence. She honestly doesn't know where they'll go from here, whether he'll send her another e-mail in a few weeks and she'll come back and they'll pretend they're just old war buddies, or whether they won't hear from each other again until duty shoves them in each other's way. Right now, Shepard doesn't care, as long as she gets out.

When she gets back to the Normandy, she gives the orders for their course, splashes some cold water on her face and goes straight down to the main battery. Garrus is there (of course), calibrating the main gun (of course). A loose cannon he might be, at least as far as C-Sec and the turians are concerned, but in Shepard's chaotic world he's a damn paragon of stability. She always knows where he'll be.

"How was your visit to the Citadel?" Garrus asks cautiously, turning to look at her as she enters. She didn't tell him where she was going, but he's not stupid.

"Fine. Glad to be back, though." Shepard gives him a reassuring smile as she closes the distance between them and moves to kiss him. As she reaches up to pull his head down to hers, she's very careful about how she touches his neck.