Prompt: “Can you feel this?”
Fandom: Mass Effect
Kaidan gets no response, not that he really expects one.
Shepard's chest rises and falls with steady precision, prompted by the humming machines stacked at the head of the bed. Sunlight slants through the blinds on the window, casting golden stripes over the starkness of her pale skin and making the red in her hair gleam.
For so many months, as the Normandy slugged back toward Earth without aid of the relays, Kaidan had wished to see her again. He'd not given up on her, not this time. Once before he'd taken her death as fact based on educated assumptions and it'd nearly broken him: both the losing and the finding again. So, even stranded far from home, he'd clung to her survival, however impossible the odds.
He strokes a thumb over her hand, frowning at the stark blue-green veins that show so prominently through the soft skin. Though the visible signs of cuts, bruises, and broken bones have long since healed, she's thin now, more skin-and-bones than the steely muscle she'd had on that final push through London. Seeing her like this makes it hard to pretend she could wake at any moment.
Still, he comes every day. The nurses are familiar with him, never objecting to his presence so long as he stays quiet and out of their way when needed. He sits at Shepard's bedside, holding her hand and filling her in on where their friends are now. He doesn't mention the war, or the efforts to rebuild and recover from what was lost. She's done her part and earned her rest. When she wakes up (because he still refuses to give up hope), she can ask if she wants to know.
On the day her vitals spike, Kaidan is there. Nurses and doctors flood the room and her fingers slip from his as he's pushed further back until he can't see her at all. The flurry of movements and sound blend together, obscuring his whispered pleas for her to fight. A nurse, one of the regulars, gives him a sad smile and leads him outside. His blood pounds in his ears and he doesn't hear her words but knows that he's not welcome. He takes up vigil at one of the windows and leans against it, lets the cold from outside seep through his bones as he stares into nothing.
A palm in the middle of his shoulder blades sometime later—maybe hours judging by the stiffness of his muscles—startles him out of his stupor.
“Is she...” He chokes as he turns to face the raven-haired specialist who'd forced her way on to Shepard's medical team.
“Stable,” Miranda squeezes his arm with a tired smile, “but still unresponsive.”
His temper flares and his fingers curl into fists. “Can't you do something? You brought her back once before. Do it again!”
“You know I can't,” she sighs and slumps into a chair. The resources she'd had when she brought Shepard back—Cerberus's resources—were long gone, even if she'd still had access to the organization. “We’re doing all we can, with what we have. She’s just not ready.”
Anger bleeds away as Kaidan takes in Miranda’s utter exhaustion. He wants to comfort her, pull her into a hug maybe, let her grieve too. After all, she wasn’t just Shepard’s doctor but her friend as well. Rather than grieving, she’s been pushing herself to the limit to accomplish what some doctors believed hopeless. The knowledge of what she’s capable of, if only she had even a portion of what she’d once had, can’t be easy to face. Despite his frustration, Kaidan doesn’t doubt that if those resources still existed, she’d find some way to get her hands on them.
Miranda waves him away with an exasperated huff. “Go, sit with her.”
Back in Shepard's room, he pulls the chair close to her bed and closes his fingers around hers. Leaning down, he places a kiss on the back of her hand and squeezes his eyes shut, ignoring the tears that streak down his cheeks and slip between her knuckles to puddle on the knit blanket that keeps the chill of the hospital at bay. She’d always enjoyed the way his biotics warmed his skin so he doesn’t straighten when his tears dry, instead pressing her hand to his cheek.
"I know you're in there. I know you can hear me. And I just want you to know…” His throat closes around the words and a fresh wave of tears threatens to spill. “I love you, we all love you, but most of all, we want you to be happy. I’ll never give up on you but…if you’re tired, if you…if you don’t…want to fight anymore, none of us would blame you.”
He’d thought about it a lot in that waiting room. Thought about how selfish it must be to want her to fight this, when she’d spent so damn longing fighting against so many other impossible odds. Was it fair to ask her to keep fighting now?
No answer comes, nor do her vitals change and he falls asleep in the chair, clutching her hand to his face as his head brushes against her thigh, the steady beep of the monitors assuring him she’s not going anywhere yet.
