When the dreams find her, all he wants to do is hold her. Pin her flailing limbs and press his face to her neck so she knows he's there. Night after night, he watches as she convulses on her narrow bed. He wants so very much to wipe the sweat from her brow and murmur comforting lies. To make it so she never has to shed another tear.
The shine of her victory wore off around the seventh year. Others still spoke of her and told the old, fond stories, but no one came to see her. No one could look at her scarred, disfigured face, her torn-to-hell body and not flinch. They ran; the cowards. They'd rather remember her as the titan she used to be and not the half-crazed, gibbering thing she is now. So, she lay in this sepulchre wrought of their misguided 'benevolence'; all but forgotten.
If the spirits knew mercy, they'd let her die. If they had an ounce of compassion, they'd have let the falling Citadel crush her into oblivion.
How they could turn from one so worthy, he never knew and never forgave.
He longs to tell her how beautiful she still is; aches with the unbearable need to. Show her how she had been a gift a lonely failure of a turian like him never dreamt of deserving. He'd say how that night, that one glorious night, the stars reflected in her eyes had dazzled him as they shot by. Teased him with a glimmer of a future in her smile, her laugh. She gave him happiness, and he would have loved to give it back.
But he can't, and how his hands clench in anger and agony as he watches her contort into back-breaking shapes. Soon enough, he knew, the screams would start. The cold and aloof people paid to take care of her would come and sedate her with clinical detachment. They couldn't see how she needed contact; how, blind and deaf, she reached out to feel something other than endless torment. They wouldn't even offer her such small solace when they owed her so very much.
But then, neither can he. After the needles did their work, he looks down into her drug-addled face and tries to brush her greying hair, once a brilliant crimson, out of her vacant eyes. To no avail, because while he'd been in her company all these long years, close enough to hear every whispered prayer and desperate sob, they might as well be worlds apart. For all that he stayed when the time came to part, he could never make her feel less alone.
Because the Collector Base had been so very long ago. Because her last glimpse of him had been just as he'd tumbled into the abyss, all reaching fingers and bleak despair. Her horrified scream still rang in his ears.
He can only cling to a hopeless dream and cover his face with his hands, whispering, "Someday . . .." We'll find each other again and this time, I won't ever let you go.