[The insomnia isn't new. Getting sleep before running through the Omega-4 Relay had been like pulling teeth; after coming back through, it had somehow been worse (there had been personnel drops to make, reports to write - if she was going back to the Alliance, she'd be as ready as she could for the questions that would inevitably come). Before that, after Horizon - not for any reason except for the imagined hum of internal hardware courtesy The Illusive Man and Miranda Lawson (is what Shepard's sure of; that she'd swear by); Saren and Illos, patrolling geth space knowing they weren't doing what needed to be done; after Akuze. Shepard can remember bouts of it at NSchool after running field exercises for 48 hours, when sleep should have been her body's first priority. At this point, she assumes it's hard wired. The loss of Thessia is just the newest iteration in a longstanding pattern.
Luckily it's an easy thing to keep quiet on the Normandy where the only thing dividing rack time from work time is a watch change. She spends nearly an hour down in the shuttle bay going over requisitions when she should be asleep without anyone seeming to be the wiser. In fact it's only when she makes her way up to the crew deck, intending to get herself a cup of burned coffee (Alliance, standard issue), that she starts to think it might've been better to just go crawl into the stack of paperwork she has waiting for her in her quarters.]
[ kaidan sleeps, but that isn't exactly good news; on good nights, he dreams of beer and sunshine in vancouver, on bad nights... well. on bad nights, there's the sound of static in his ears, of ashley's last words, the loud crack of bone and the grip of an ai, but most of all, of shepard getting spaced. when he starts out of bed, adrenaline ripping its way through his veins as it looks for an outlet, he heads for somewhere he can let it out. sometimes it's with vega, other times he comes up empty handed.
the normandy is a relatively quiet ship, it's true, and that's something that always surprises kaidan. with everything that's happened — everything that's going to happen — he half expects more people to go without sleep. but maybe they have better survival instincts. he knows the doc would throw a fit if he ever admitted to actively avoiding sleep sometimes.
this time, it's exhaustion pricking at kaidan's nerves. coffee shouldn't be his go-to beverage (nag, nag, nag, he can hear the doctor already), but it is. sometimes a cup of something warm does just the trick. or, well, it does when frayed nerves are the symptom.
too bad he rounds the corner with that remedy in mind and nearly smacks straight into shepard. timing, alenko. ]
Commander. [ his tone matches his expression; something akin to a deer in headlights that gets quickly smoothed away. ] Can't sleep?
[ well, that's sort of obvious. a sheepish sort of look crosses his features the moment the question leaves his mouth. maybe he can blame it on being tired, if he's lucky. ]
WOW A THOUSAND YEARS LATER. But I am now less swamped and will be less slow!
[To be fair, it's not like running into one another would've been a one sided failure. She presumably has ears capable of paying attention to the sound of footsteps around a corner just like the rest. Shepard abruptly shortens her stride, turning her shoulders in an effort to avoid a collision that Kaidan's already pretty much averted without her help.]
Major. [The 'figure that out by yourself?' goes unspoken, though maybe it's visible in the slight eyebrow quirk. Instead she goes with:] Just up for a coffee run.
[So no, she can't sleep - but like hell she's going to say as much. Not that avoiding the topic of her own sleeping habits keeps her from commenting on his own.] Isn't eight hours of rack time supposed to be part of your outpatient recovery plan?
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Luckily it's an easy thing to keep quiet on the Normandy where the only thing dividing rack time from work time is a watch change. She spends nearly an hour down in the shuttle bay going over requisitions when she should be asleep without anyone seeming to be the wiser. In fact it's only when she makes her way up to the crew deck, intending to get herself a cup of burned coffee (Alliance, standard issue), that she starts to think it might've been better to just go crawl into the stack of paperwork she has waiting for her in her quarters.]
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the normandy is a relatively quiet ship, it's true, and that's something that always surprises kaidan. with everything that's happened — everything that's going to happen — he half expects more people to go without sleep. but maybe they have better survival instincts. he knows the doc would throw a fit if he ever admitted to actively avoiding sleep sometimes.
this time, it's exhaustion pricking at kaidan's nerves. coffee shouldn't be his go-to beverage (nag, nag, nag, he can hear the doctor already), but it is. sometimes a cup of something warm does just the trick. or, well, it does when frayed nerves are the symptom.
too bad he rounds the corner with that remedy in mind and nearly smacks straight into shepard. timing, alenko. ]
Commander. [ his tone matches his expression; something akin to a deer in headlights that gets quickly smoothed away. ] Can't sleep?
[ well, that's sort of obvious. a sheepish sort of look crosses his features the moment the question leaves his mouth. maybe he can blame it on being tired, if he's lucky. ]
WOW A THOUSAND YEARS LATER. But I am now less swamped and will be less slow!
Major. [The 'figure that out by yourself?' goes unspoken, though maybe it's visible in the slight eyebrow quirk. Instead she goes with:] Just up for a coffee run.
[So no, she can't sleep - but like hell she's going to say as much. Not that avoiding the topic of her own sleeping habits keeps her from commenting on his own.] Isn't eight hours of rack time supposed to be part of your outpatient recovery plan?