And then the hospital, where we don't know how much Kaidan heard subconsciously. Maybe he dreamed about Shepard, hearing his voice the first time Shepard checked on him. Maybe he didn't hear a thing and woke up to a quiet hospital room on the peaceful Citadel and had to convince himself it'd all really happened. Then he sends an email, Shepard shows up, and it's real, and they talk, and maybe it goes well or maybe it doesn't, but at least it's a conversation without them standing on opposite sides of an invisible line. Sure, Shepard leaves after, but Kaidan doesn't feel like all the air in the room went with him, so that's something. And he comes back, and they talk, and Kaidan's a Spectre, and he's being discharged, and everything's fine until it isn't, until something's wrong, the Citadel is in a panic, Cerberus is there, the Council is in danger, Kaidan has to do whatever he can, so he goes. Then, just when he thinks he's about to fight for his life and the lives of the Council with everything he has, it's Shepard again, standing between him and the elevator, but is it really?

Except it is, because that's Shepard's voice. And it's not just his voice in a way someone could replicate, like the actual sound of it, but in how it softens in a way nobody would know to mimic when he trusts Kaidan to trust him. So he turns on Udina, Udina draws a gun, someone shoots, it's over, but it's not, because Cerberus got away and the Council was nearly killed and the divide between Kaidan and Shepard is still there, a yawning chasm that makes Kaidan really, really wants to make a leap. So he does, and he goes to the Normandy, but he doesn't go aboard because it's not his ship or his home anymore, and this one technically never was anyway. Instead, he waits outside, standing there watching ships go by and bracing himself for a talk he doesn't know if he thinks he deserves to be given the chance to have.

It feels like an eternity, but then Shepard's there, telling him to let him have it, and Kaidan values honesty and communication and Shepard's orders so he does, and they talk about how it felt to point guns at each other and not know if the other was going to pull the trigger. They talk about Udina and what matters, and Kaidan thinks about how this matters too, him and Shepard, the Normandy, helping to stop the Reapers. He admits he'd come home in a second if he could, and he's not sure if there's a better thing in the galaxy than Shepard's voice saying, "welcome aboard, Major," except maybe how easily their hands fit together and the warm proof of Shepard being alive.

And suddenly, for the first time in three years, Shepard's voice is all around him again. He walks through the ship, maybe dodging some frosty looks here and there, maybe looking at everything with a bittersweet feeling in his chest because it's the same but it's so different, and he hears Shepard distantly chatting with this or that crewmate. He sits in the mess and Shepard comes out of the med-bay from meeting with Chakwas and it could be the SR-1 again with how familiar it is. They prep for a new mission and Shepard tells Kaidan to grab his gear and Kaidan grins in a way he never did when he got the same order from anyone else he worked with in the time Shepard was gone.

Not everything's perfect, though, and Kaidan can't get it all out of his mind, but this time, when he's sitting in the crew's cabin staring at the walls, Shepard shows up. He sits down and they banter like they did before the Collectors shredded their words apart, but this time the word "flirting" is said and it feels different, too, except that when Kaidan admits he's been thinking, Shepard listens, just like he always did. They talk, have a real conversation about the Illusive Man and Cerberus and everything that Kaidan hasn't been able to stop turning around and around in his head. It doesn't fix it, but it helps, and Shepard helps, and Kaidan knew he would, but knowing it hypothetically and actually feeling his chest begin to untangle as he listens to Shepard speak are two very different things.

Maybe that's what tips Kaidan over the edge to end up sitting in the Apollo cafe, jiggling his leg under the table and watching artificial clouds to distract himself from his nerves while he waits for Shepard, or maybe it isn't. Either way, he hears Shepard's footsteps and immediately knows them from anyone else's even with his back turned, and he knows Shepard's voice the second he inhales before going to speak, and it's easy to start chatting, making jokes about the menu and a sanity check. It's less easy to get himself to open up about the rest of it, about being restless or about what he really wants to talk about, but it's Shepard asking, all quiet and Shepard about it like the entire galaxy has shrunk down to just their table, so he does. Watching Shepard look away is like the moment the Mako would drive out of the ship in midair and gravity would catch her, pitching them down towards a planet, his stomach in his throat, but having Shepard smile and hearing him say the word love, it's like after a fight when the adrenaline's still pumping but all the emotions have been replaced with relief to still be alive.