Chapter Text
Shepard says “I love you” to Kaidan like she is stitching up a wound.
The two of them have been sitting outside Liara’s quarters for hours after the fall of Thessia, when she says it, despite EDI’s frequent requests for them to sleep and her assurances that she can keep an eye on Doctor T’Soni.
They are both tired, but they talk of lost soldiers and lost homeworlds and stop when they reach the subjects that are still sore for both of them. That is when Shepard applies those three words like bandages on the cuts of Virmire and Mars and the Citadel that have never fully healed.
Quietly, Kaidan says them back and slowly, steadily, the scars begin to fade.