Chapter Text
After so many years, so many trials and too many tribulation, she was confused, hurt and she felt betrayed.
She was a good wife; a caring wife. She had done everything, and more, much more than she had any right to, that he had ever asked for. She’d loved him; very much, so very much that she'd rather die, relive the war, than see him hurt at all.
She’d just come back from a mission and the words had fallen from his lips like ash, soulless and empty, on a dying city. She’d braced herself against the side of the couch, the breath leaving her lungs, her body going numb, tears pricking the back of her eyes as she tried to catch her breath and calm her rapidly beating heart. Always so assured until now, her words tumbled from her lips clumsily, “Are you-are you serious?” She hoped it was a bad dream; a nightmare that she could wake herself from.
The look on his face, as he sat on the sofa with nonchalance, was heartbreaking. “Yes. I want a divorce.” He paused, his eyes sliding to her face, narrowing and sparking with anger. Anger that she didn’t understand; anger that burned her and scorched the very fiber of her being. The eyes that she’d once fallen in love with pierced her like a sword, slicing through every nerve ending. “Is the great Commander Shepard at a loss for words? What do you expect? You’re gone all the time,” he started, ticking off all the things that weren’t under control on his fingers one by one. “We hardly have sex, you’re too busy with the Alliance and the Council, we never see each other and you’d rather spend time on the Normandy than with me. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t.”
She shook her head, her chocolate hair slapping against the sides of her face, as she blinked back the tears and tightened her grip on the couch. “Kaidan,” she murmured, but he laughed, a deep, angry sound like a bark.
“Don’t “Kaidan” me. I told you I didn’t want you to take the job.”
Her mind was reeling. Her mind was flitting through the past, to find some sort of hint that something had been wrong but she couldn’t find anything. She pressed her free hand against the side of her face, to her brow and then to her mouth to hide the shuddering breath. Her hand curled into a fist against her lips as she tried to reign in her control. “Is there someone else?”
He scoffed. “Or course there is. Didn’t you hear me? You’re gone all the time. A man has needs.”
The thought of him entwined with another, holding, caressing, kissing and sharing his body turned her stomach. She excused herself, running towards the bathroom, and emptied her stomach. She clutched the porcelain bowl, pressing her feverish skin against it and shed silent sobs for the man she loved, the man who once was and the man he never would be again.
It was over and it was her own damn fault. She pushed him away, made him feel unloved and unwanted. She sank away from the toilet, curling into herself and sobbed. How could she have been so blind? She should have seen it coming.
All the signs were there, now that she thought about it. The secret whispering when she was in another room, the quick end to a call or the suspicious behavior when she was home for an extended amount of time.
She only blamed herself.
Love was blind and she was the jester of the court.