Worry
Leaves crunched underfoot, the darkness of the underbrush licking up her calves. Shepard knew the way, always knew the way. Through the fog she trudged, the leaves turning to ash in her palms. Air thick it was almost suffocating, trees lined her path, bodies swaying myriad ghosts that watched her and whispered.
Regret settled into her belly. Despair, worry and fear falling in catastrophic piles on her shoulders. Suddenly heavy Shepard pushed harder through the wall of smog. Darker, overbearingly power. She could hear laughter, a child, running, chasing something away. Shepard, on instinct followed, curiosity fuelling the protector that loathed her conscious.
Soil buried beneath her feet, legs moving faster in earnest to reach her target. Whispering became beckoning calls beside her ears. Temper, anger, slaughter. Reapers.
Fire, a smouldering inferno sang through the trees, crackling and burning until Shepard tasted only ash in her mouth. She saw it then, a child, looking up at her with hopeful azure eyes. Shepard swore, reaching out, if only to help save a life before the fire vanquished it all.
But it was her, a raging fire that torched the land. The trees were ash, the soil drying up beneath her toes, blackened by her touch. Scaled hands swept along her shoulders and Thane's voice found her, whispering to her. A cloud of smoke evaporated from her lips, no sound, nothing but the fading drone.
Shepard gasped, tossing the sheets off her in a fit to feel the cool air. The blue light from the fish tank fringed along the bed, folding over the empty space next to her. Eye flitting in a desperate haze she caught him staring, watching her from the table with a quizzical look.
"Something wrong Siha?" He asked, the thrum of his voice numbing the painful ache in her chest. Shepard steadied her breathing, and collapsed back onto the bed with a sigh.
He looked naively relaxed, adorning a cotton shirt open at the chest to ease the symptoms of Kepral's. Thane instantly closed the book he had been reading, placing it on the coffee table and giving Shepard all of his attention.
"Nothing," She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, unsettled with the thought of trying to go back to sleep, "It was…nothing." She curled herself up in the sheets once more, resting against the Normandy's wall.
"What was it about?" Shepard watched his shadow as he rose from the chair, the bed dipping as he slipped in next to her.
"It was nothing," She feigned a small smile, finger curving over the apex of his abdomen.
"Siha." He caught her hand in it's pace, knotting their fingers together in a harsh embrace that had Shepard shaking her head. His tone changed, demanding her to answer him. She had known he lacked patience with her. The cool, mysterious, disciplined assassin was a magnitude of things he had previously forgotten in his battle sleep. He had forgotten what it felt like to love, to fear death, to protect someone with all you had to give. The world had been black and white, but around Shepard it was so very grey.
"Thane." She pouted, mimicking his tone of voice, pushing out her chest as she playfully mocked him.
"I worry about you Siha," The knotting of his eyebrows and the forlorn depths of dark abysses solely reminded Shepard of the moment before the suicide mission. The moment Thane had come to her, seeking retribution for the things he had done. She had known how scared he was, and she wondered whether he still was, or whether he thought she was too.
She hadn't admitted it then and wouldn't do so now. What was life if you feared for the next step ahead of you? It had never been Shepard's philosophy to become susceptible to such a fear, from the very beginning she had to be a soldier. Act like one, talk like one and be immune to things that would break you down. It all amounted to the end, her will, she knew, was tearing at the seams and only for a while longer would she have to grasp at those tendrils and hold it together. The Normandy needed a Commander, her crew needed a leader, a friend, and not someone who was utterly broken.
A lump formed in Shepard's throat and she tore her gaze away from him to stare at the rippling tide of the water against the floor. He worried about her? Why? She was a capable soldier, the best the Alliance ever had. She was the saviour of the galaxy, really, why did he need to worry at all?
"You don't have to," She assured him, tucking her body up to his and stealing his warmth. Shepard listened to the hum of his throat, the slight annoyance she had caused him. "I'm fine, I promise."
It was, of course, a lie.
Nightmares had been a natural occurrence. In Alliance Training Shepard had been plagued with them, even before joining when she lived back on Earth, she had been terrified of those dreams. And yes, they were startling but now, Shepard was so damn used to them that she brushed them off. Shepard didn't have time to worry about how her dreams made her feel, because the ache in her chest would dissipate, but the galaxy, well that couldn't wait. The Reapers, they would never leave. Not without her intervention. Dreams, well she couldn't prevent those, but the destruction of the galaxy she could.
Shepard curled her body around him, head lying languidly along his chest. Scales scratched her cheek as she felt him breathing, the laboured ripple of his lungs felt beneath layers of emerald green. Fingers toyed with her hair, lips pressing against her forehead.
"I don't believe you," He said with a determined voice, "You have told me those words before and yet what I see with my eyes is something very different." Shepard let out a small huff, fingers crawling along the taut muscles of his abdomen, following the cambers of each black speckle that dotted his chartreuse skin.
"Uh-huh," Shepard avoided eye-contact, what she would see in those eyes would be pain, pain that she couldn't bare to see. Teeth nipped at the ridges of his neck, tasting him with playful licks and kisses that made her own body shiver.
"Siha please," The determination of his voice was lost to an irrevocable moan. Two sets of eyelids flickered and with a heavy sigh his body gave an involuntary shudder. "I worry-"
"And I told you, you don't need to," A deliberate smile tore along her lips. Shepard rolled on top of him, pinning her beneath him. She settled herself there, kissing from his neck, down his chest. Thane gave out another whimper, followed by an barely audible groan.
"But-"
"No buts," She flashed him a devil's stare and continued on her path to all damnation. Hands tugged at the hem of his trousers, pulling them over his waist and down to his knees.
Thane watched with slight concern, torn between the moment and what was really going on. She dipped her head and reaching out her tongue and flicked the tip of his aching manhood. Shepard caught his gaze, a sudden savage need filled obsidian and heat erupted all over her.
With a smirk Shepard wrapped her soft lips around him, her head bobbing as she brought him to the edges of oblivion. She sucked him harder, faster until he was careening over the edge, the room filling with hasty breathing and low growls from his throat. She took everything he gave her, pleasuring him until he groaned her name in a throaty mantra. His hands once agile were now sluggish in his haze pining through her hair.
He crushed his lips against hers, taking the life she had to give. He rolled her beneath him and each connection of their lips made the worry cease. Shepard was fine, right now she was fine. But-
Thane stopped abruptly, hovering over her. Pale cheeks were blemished pink, cerulean eyes were darker than the ocean depths. There would be a time when Shepard wouldn't be fine, and he wouldn't be there to make things better.
"What's wrong?" She asked, voice dry.
"I worry Siha that you-" Green ridges knotted again, almost in anger. He used a tone she hadn't heard before, heavy with unbidden feelings, "That you won't be fine after I'm gone." The colour left her cheeks and Shepard's light-heartedness receded back into the tide.
The tightness in her throat returned and Shepard found it hard to breathe. She pressed her hands against the bare flesh of his chest, feeling the strong thud of his heart beat against his ribcage. One look at him and you would never have thought he was a dying man. Shepard shook her head in dismissal. He was just sick, ill, from a disease that didn't have a cure... yet.
There was no need to worry, never to worry about her. She was a soldier and whatever that was thrown at her she would have to move on, get over it and brush it off. That was her philosophy, and yet for the first time, it didn't seem right. Shades of grey, it was always shades of grey with him.
"For an assassin I didn't think you were this stupid," Shepard shook her head, wisps of dark hair fanning out on the bed spread beneath her. "You aren't going anywhere."
Thane had been lost in her nightmares before, she didn't want to live it. She wasn't going to accept Thane's fate, hell, Shepard was going to try and save him from it. There was never any need for him to worry, about her, not ever.
Shepard shifted her hips and wrapped her legs around his waist bringing him in closer. She peppered him with kisses, fingers soothing out the stressed muscles in his shoulders as she encouraged him to let go.
"No more worrying," She breathed, running the edge of her nose along his cheek before kissing the crimson ridges of his neck, "Just be alive, with me."
In the back of her mind, no matter what, her decisions, every outcome that could possibly happen would always lead her back to him. Shepard took a small amount of comfort in that. No matter what, she would see him again.