Everything was humming. Everything was persistently trickling into her ears and resonating in the recesses of her mind. Shepard folded herself into a clenched ball of bed sheets and feverish skin, trying to keep all of her parts from fracturing and sliding onto the floor. Her hands were clamped around her ears so rigidly, trying fruitlessly to block out the incessant noise, that they were trembling with the skin taut and white around the knuckles. Shallow gasps untangled themselves from her knotted chest like all the countless dead fish in her aquarium.

The humming was filled with voices. The soft droning of the Normandy beneath her, the whispering of artificial air blanketing the monochrome floor, but most of all… there was sharp screaming that swarmed angrily through her head. All the innocent people that had fallen. All the people that would fall, some by her own hand. Shepard was responsible for everyone, for a whole galaxy filled with fragile lives.

She bolted upright, gasping heightened, as her wild tousled midnight locks cascaded down her shoulders and stormy blue eyes flickered with panic. She felt cornered, a desperate wild animal in crazed search for escape.

She moved automatically, pushing herself from the bed and launching towards the exit. Pressing on unseeingly in a blood tinted haze, Shepard eventually found herself grasping both sides of an open door frame on dangerously unsteady legs.

There was a slight pause in all of the internal chaos, and her eyes snapped over to discover the soulful chocolate gaze of Kaidan, concern settling in it, locked onto her. He was sitting in bed, illuminated by the yellowish glare of a nightstand lamp, an open book in his lap. And a sickeningly honeyed thickness crept into the room as she stared at him, the slumbering Normandy paying them no heed.
Her legs ignored the stagnant atmosphere, or perhaps reacted to it, and collapsed beneath her. She fell to her knees with a reluctant sob tearing throughout, face burrowing in her hands. There was no reason for her to have gone to him. He was no longer hers, no longer wanted her.

So it was a surprise when she felt two gently hands on her shoulders. They brought her to her feet and guided her to sit on the edge of the bed.
Shepard looked up at him, surprised, and he joined her resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands in the center.

"I'm… sorry," she said mundanely, "I shouldn't be here."

He smiled sadly, "But here you are."

She turned away, ashamed.

"Shepard this… it isn't like you." she flinched back when he reached over and tucked a few tangled locks that hid her face behind her ear, "But you have to realize you're human."

She was taken aback slightly by his immediate comprehension of her state, "I'm not-"

"You are. Just like I am." he leaned closer to her, "Flawed, selfish, but something roughly beautiful… Humans I mean… Ma'am."

Despite herself, she barked a choked laugh.

"Sometimes you need a shoulder," he added, "Or so an extremely admirable woman once told me."

She found herself cornered again. Guilty beneath the limelight. She felt desperation claw back up her throat. Here, sitting right beside her, was another casualty of her actions that continually came to haunt her like no one dead ever could.

He recognized her despair immediately. What he did next she would never have anticipated.

Kaidan wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up as he would a small child. She was flooded with the spicy, crisp smell of his shampoo, lulling her violent panic to silent shaking. He stretched out on his side on the bed and pulled her tightly to his chest, encircling her with his soothing presence. Numbing the world.

"You're only human Shepard," he repeated in a whisper kissing the top of her head reassuringly, "That and you're a hell of a woman."

"How did you realize?" she said into his worn T-shirt, "How could you understand without me saying…"

"Shh." he stroked her hair comfortingly and tightened his embrace, "Try to get some sleep and do more thinking tomorrow."

She knew come morning they would return to awkward glances and strained silence. But somewhere, someone's gods had granted her this time with the wall between them virtually she finally relaxed into the familiar lullaby of his rhythmic breathing.

"Kaid-"

"Horizon."

"What?"

"Horizon. I was wrong… I'm sorry."

"It doesn't change where we stand now… It doesn't… fix anything."

"I know… I just thought it would help."

She didn't realize it, but it did help. Just a little.

"Thank you."

"Sleep well Shepard."