#izcanon

There are thousands of refugees sleeping on chairs and in corners in the docking bays because they have nowhere else to go, and yet here people are debating about what kind of leather seats are the best for convertible skycars. She walked past twelve starving children to get to the rapid transit station by the docks, gave them each a credit chit that would last them a week, and the sushi place has a line out the door and the bakery has a dumpster full of yesterday’s perfectly good rolls.

The orphanage she grew up in was smaller than this apartment.

And it turns out that Anderson wants to give it to her.

“It’s too much,” she says, and she means it quite literally. Her belongings have always fit into a footlocker with room to spare, her address hasn’t been a stationary location since basic. She wouldn’t know what to do with this much space. She wouldn’t know what to do with any place she could permanently call hers.

“Don’t make me beg, Shepard.”

She wants to, but she can’t argue with his logic: the longer I’m on Earth, the less I want to leave. It’s killing her to be out here on the Citadel, or the Normandy, or even in the middle of a pile of brutes and banshees, while her home becomes less and less recognizable. She’s pointedly not looking at the rubble behind Anderson. She grew up in London, too.

She bites her lip and looks out the window at the flashing lights of the noodle place. “David,” she uses his first name, like he told her all those years ago in the hospital, and tries to swallow the waver in her voice. “You’re coming back.”

“Bella.”

He’s the only one allowed to call her Bella, and he rarely does. She bites the inside of her cheek and looks back at the screen. Fifteen years he’s been the sole constant in her life, the longest anyone’s bothered to stick around, and now he’s trying to offload his possessions like someone who knows they won’t need them anymore.

“Okay,” she finally says, with more conviction than she feels, and forces a smile. There’s no version of this conversation that doesn’t end with her owning an atrociously large apartment, but she doesn’t want to fight with him. Not when she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to talk to him again. Or if. “But the minute you and Kahlee want it back…”

He laughs. “We’ll let you know.”

“Please stay safe,” she asks him for a promise he can’t possibly make.

“You too, Shepard.”

She waits until Kaidan’s sound asleep next to her, and then carefully slides out of bed. She grabs a blanket from the back of the armchair and wraps it around her shoulders as she walks downstairs. Even with blackout curtains on the upstairs windows, the Strip filters in; she doesn’t need lights to make sure she doesn’t fall.

The kettle turns off without a sound, water heated to the proper temperature for chamomile, and she carefully carries her mug over to the couch and curls up in the corner. The Strip’s quieter at three in the morning, but still alive with the low murmur of a neighborhood too bright to ever really sleep. She looks upward and squints in the dark at the ceilings, reminded of the cathedrals and churches she found shelter in as a kid when she got caught in the rain and cold. The pews were a lot less comfortable than the couch, but no less welcome.

Few people know what Shepard’s been through. I like to think I come pretty close.

She rests her cheek on her knees and closes her eyes, hoping Anderson has a roof over his head tonight, a real one.

“Hey,” Kaidan’s voice is husky with sleep as he pads barefoot down the stairs.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” She blows softly across her tea before taking a sip.

He shakes his head. “You didn’t. Want some company?”

She nods, and leans into him when he slides his arm around her. Kaidan’s warm and solid and familiar, but she still feels out of place here. The paperwork’s gone through and the apartment’s officially hers, but she’s waiting for the police to come and kick her out for squatting. Or for the owners to come home and find her stealing jewelry, or rifling through medicine cabinets, because her lookout spooked and ran.

“You okay?” He kisses her temple.

“Thinking about Earth,” she doesn’t answer the question. “Anderson,” she offers, because he’ll pry it out of her sooner or later.

Kaidan sighs. “He’s a tough one.”

She knows that tone, knows the unspoken I want to tell you he’ll be fine but you’ll yell at me for making promises I have no business making, but accepts it. “Saw him throw his pistol at a guy once. He’d run out of ammo in the firefight. Hit the guy right on his head, knocked him out cold.”

“I wondered where you learned that trick.”

She smiles, remembering how she knocked out a stray husk last week after emptying her entire stockpile of clips into a banshee. James and Kaidan had both looked at her like she’d gone completely mad, but the husk had given one last attempt at a groan and then collapsed.

They fall into silence as she finishes her tea, and she feels Kaidan drift off to sleep again with his chin resting on her head.

And I worry sometimes, she forgets: there’s a whole bunch of people who lose sleep over her getting back home.

Before she goes to meet Joker, she calls Kaidan over.

And when she says “this is too much, I don’t want it” in a way that’s both angry and wistful, he slides an arm around her and whispers about what this place could be. A space for friends, for parties and gatherings, for friends who need a place to stay. A space for them, where they can be alone and actually have space and a bed and a kitchen and a couch. And, eventually, maybe, a space for a family. He doesn’t go into detail on that one, just leaves it there and ends it with a hug because she’s overwhelmed enough by the apartment. She rests her head on his shoulder.