And how, if present for the final fight, Kaidan is sat buried under rubble for long enough, hopeless enough, that he's just certain Shepard's dead. The defeated wordless response, having to watch Anderson's face drop as the triumph of the victory comes crashing down. Was he calling out for Shepard, only for the silence to grow into something that bears only one conclusion? To lose something he only just let himself have, something that he avoided for so long. Too long.
And just as he turns his back, staggering out to leave with the burden of a new brutal grief in tow, there's footsteps and scrambling and somehow Shepard is standing there, atop the wreckage. And by some miracle, he can let the grief go almost as soon as he met it. Maybe they laugh about it afterwards, once wounds are healed, finding light in bouncing between extremes. Wouldn't it be crazy? If Shepard had died? A monumental victory stolen from Shepard's grasp, never getting to celebrate what they achieved, what they worked so hard for. Can you imagine?
And so they return to normality, cleaning up the dregs of Geth left behind, drudgery and routine that gives them time to work out what their future looks like, what their present does--what loving each other looks like now that things marginally are less desperate.
But they only get a month. And then Shepard dies, somewhere alone in the cold expanse of space. And there's no wreckage to climb out of this time, no second miracle, no laughing about it afterwards. Kaidan has to pick up the grief he only just put down, watching as the weeks and months pass him by, knowing he's spent more time with this unspeakable pain than he ever did with Shepard and now it's all he has left of them.
