Chapter Text
There’s a chime at the door and Kaidan calls for whoever is there to enter, without looking up from the datapad he’s reviewing on the state of repairs of the Normandy.
“Major,” Liara says softly, but there’s a gravitas to her voice that makes Kaidan look up immediately. “I was combing through the information Shepard picked up from the Illusive Man’s base and I found something.”
She hesitates, something so uncharacteristic of her these days that Kaidan looks up from where he sits on Shepard’s couch. Their couch. The couch. He tries not to add pronouns to things these days; articles are so much easier to deal with.
“Considering the state of things, I thought...” she trails off, uncharacteristically again. Kaidan rises to feet and goes to her, guiding her to take a seat.
“Liara, are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she says, but there’s the slightest shimmer to her eyes before she draws herself up and looks directly at him. “I found a series of vids in the Cerberus database, something the Illusive Man was no doubt adding to dossier somewhere,” she says with a sneer, before the expression fades to sadness again. “They’re from Shepard. To you.”
Kaidan can’t speak, can’t move, can’t think for a moment, before it feels like his heart restarts with a painful wrench and then it’s all too much.
“He never sent them, for whatever reason, but he never deleted them either,” Liara continues, her hand coming to rest gently on his arm. Kaidan wants to pull away, wants to find somewhere dark to hide for a while, but her hand is the only thing that grounds him. “I only looked at the beginning of the first entry, before I realised what it was I was looking at.” Kaidan doesn’t know if he believes her, doesn’t know much of anything about her these days.
“They’re yours,” she tells him, handing him a datapad. Then she’s gone.