I'm thinking about Mshenko again but it's just Shepard's voice. ME2 Kaidan thinking Shepard's gone and that the last conversation they ever had was hurried and rushed with their ship crumbling around them, Shepard sending him away, then going two years either not hearing Shepard's voice at all or only in recordings. Then Horizon happens, and Kaidan comes out of the Collector's paralysis and heads towards the commotion, and it's Shepard, and Shepard's voice, the one he's been playing on repeat in his mind for 2 years, and he sounds the same (or close enough, maybe a little different, reconstructing vocal cords probably isn't perfect.) But it's also Cerberus' Shepard, so Kaidan chooses integrity and what he thinks is the right thing, while Shepard does the same on the opposite side, and then Shepard's gone again, his voice still ringing in Kaidan's ears even though this time, Kaidan was the one who chose to go.
And then Vancouver, where Kaidan stands there for a second, watching Shepard before calling him, and Shepard turns around so quickly like maybe he's missed Kaidan's voice too, and they're talking, but it's strained, even though he smiles and Shepard smiles back, and Kaidan doesn't really know that man anymore, but he used to. And then it's Mars, where it's not just Shepard's voice, but the Commander's, and Kaidan feels like he's where he belongs again for the first time in years and it's confusing because he's still hurt and wary but it's Commander Shepard, so he can't help but be glad to hear him giving orders like it's 2183 again. And this time, when they find their target, he puts himself between it and Shepard and the others instead of arriving too late to help, and the last thing he hears before his head gets bashed in is Shepard shouting for him.
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.
And at some point throughout the next few weeks, Kaidan winds up laying in Shepard's arms, one of their heads on the other's chest, feeling Shepard's half-asleep murmurs reverberate through him, and there's a war on, people are dying, the Reapers have turned their home into hell, but for a second, tucked away from it all with Shepard right there, Kaidan can close his eyes and listen, and it feels like peace.
A tidbit about Krogen that is known, but doesn't come up directly a lot is how they were not designed as a predator species. They are a PREY species. The apex predator of Tuchanka is the Thresher Maw.
Let that sink in for a sec.
If you have seen some of the making of videos about Mass Effect you might already know this, but you can tell by their eye placement. Look how wide it is. You do not see that on predators, like humans and turians. A predator's eyes are faced forward, so we can focus on the pray in front of us to take it down and eat. A prey species priority is to have as much vision or other awareness of their surroundings as possible, at all times, so they can be ready if something comes to eat them.
Add on to that they have humps to store nutrients for extended periods, and they bred like rabbits before the genophage. All of that points to a species that is hunted, not the hunters.
The reason they are arguably the most dangerous sapient thing in the galaxy that is allowed off its planet, short of Commander Shepard, is because they come from Milky Way Australia.
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