Stars

The grass was cool under her back.  Shepard had shed the leather armor she'd been wearing in favor of a lighter, leather tunic and some twill pants.  Even though she'd bathed, she was still on the warm side from the day's training – the chilly temperature of the grass was a welcome relief.

Her arms folded behind her head, the commander studied the night sky, looking for anything that looked familiar – a constellation, a comet, or even her ship.  She sighed as she wondered if they would ever find her.  Were they even still looking or had they given her up for dead?  She'd been missing for months now and still had no way to contact anyone.

“Oh, here you are!  I wondered where you wandered off to!”

Shepard smiled at the familiar voice.  She and the templar had become rather good friends over the past few weeks – when an injury had prevented her from moving on with Alistair and the Warden, Shepard became the comfort the young man needed when the nightmares would wake him in the middle of the night and he was the company she needed when she began to miss her crew.

“Hey, Cullen,” she said quietly, never taking her eyes from the night sky.

Cullen stretched out on the grass beside her.  He, too, had changed from his armor into something more practical.  Shepard could see from the corner of her eye that his outfit was similar to hers.  She could also see he was staring at her.

“Is everything alright?” he finally asked softly.

Nodding her head toward the sky, she asked, “What do you see when you look up there?”

“Huh?”  Cullen turned his gaze to the myriad pinpoints of light that dotted the black sky.

“Up there.” Shepard pointed with her hand this time.  “I mean, when you were a kid, you must have been curious about what those lights were.  And even now, when you have that rare moment to yourself and you look up there, what do you see?”

Cullen inhaled deeply as he thought about how to answer her question.  “Well, when I was younger, my mother told me that the night sky was actually a quilt that separated our world from the Fade.  And the stars were tiny holes the Maker had put in that cover so he could look down upon us.”  He sat up, crossed his legs, and leaned over a bit closer to Shepard.  “Why?  What do you see?”

“Honestly?  I'm wondering which one of those stars might be someplace familiar.  I wonder if my ship is up there, orbiting one of those stars or a planet around the star, trying to find me.”

Cullen knew the truth about where Shepard had come from.  It wasn't something she'd really wanted to confess to anyone but she needed him to trust her.  He had seen her use her biotics and was convinced she was an apostate.  When he couldn't dispel her 'magic', she had to explain to him how she was able to do what she did.  She didn't tell him everything – he still didn't know about the Reapers or anything like that – but she told him enough so that he knew there was so much more out there than the ground under his feet.  He accepted what she'd told him – Maker knew he'd seen enough strange things to believe that there were other worlds out there with life forms just as fantastic and varied as what was on Thedas.  And her telling him the truth let him know that she trusted him to keep her secret and it served to strengthen their friendship.

She could feel Cullen's eyes on her as she wrinkled her nose, trying not to let a tear slip loose from her eyes.  “I miss them,” she whispered, still staring at the stars as they blinked and twinkled.

“I'm sure they miss you, too,” he finally said quietly.  “If things happened the way you said they did, they have a lot of ground to cover.  You've only been here a couple of months.  They probably just need more time.”

Cullen laid back down next to Shepard, but closer this time, their arms brushing against one another.  “And I don't think they've forgotten about you.  Or stopped looking.  I know I wouldn't.”

Shepard's stomach knotted when he said that.  She couldn't deny her growing fondness for the templar but she couldn't be more than a friend to him.  Not while she still believed Kaidan was still out there, looking for her.  “I know,” she said quietly.  She reached for his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.  “Thank you, Cullen.”

She turned her attention back to the night sky, resuming her search for something, anything, familiar.  Cullen was right.  They wouldn't stop looking for her.  She had to have faith that somewhere up there, the Normandy was jetting around, scanning planet after planet, looking for some sign of her.

“Anytime,” Cullen said.  He didn't like seeing her upset but he also knew there was little else he could do.  So, he simply stayed next to her, keeping vigil over the stars as they slowly moved across the sky, hoping that she might find a little bit of peace in his company.