A/N: Me, digging through my documents folder: "I have Mass Effect fic? I have complete Mass Effect fic? In Thane's POV? With shipping? Am I—did I—what?"
It's not actually a shipping fic, though; it's really more of a character study for Thane as perceived by someone who played FemShep and got close enough to trigger the siha conversation without romancing him, which in this case necessitates the examination of certain ships. Those ships being (in order of prominence): one-sided Thane/Shepard, past Thane/Irikah, Shepard/Garrus, and hinted one-sided Liara/Shepard but that might be Thane projecting, who knows. There's a lot of Thane projecting on other people in this; I imagine it's a side-effect of literally reliving your past every time something trips your memory. For similar reasons, I couldn't keep Shepard totally nondescript, Thane having always struck me as a detail-oriented fellow; I normally try not to describe characters with no set appearance so as not to disrupt others' headcanons, but keepin' it vague just didn't work here.
If it's still relevant in a fandom as established as this one, there's actually no spoilers until the very last bit that edges into ME3 territory and reminds us that Kai Leng Is An Asshole, just in case we forgot—unless you count brief discussion of the Paragon resolution to Garrus's Loyalty Mission, because ~*parallels*~.
Reviews are both welcomed and appreciated, should you be so inclined. Regardless—enjoy.
The galaxy is built on cycles—so have archaeologists long theorised, and so have the Reapers confirmed. The same patterns endlessly repeating on scales orders of magnitude above planetary. But neither Reapers nor the intellectuals of their would-be crop notice the smaller cycles, the ways that a handful of lives can be set in circles.
Thane notices.
He doesn't need to close his eyes to see hers clearly through the scope he isn't looking through, atop the rifle he isn't holding anymore.
Irikah.
Her eyes are green-on-brown; irises the bright peridot of the last flash of light as the sun sinks beneath the Encompassing, surrounded by the same tawny shade as the twilit sky. A Kahje sunset in miniature in her eyes, fathomless microcosms of what lay beyond the domed cities, beyond his Compact, beyond—
Ah. It is well he is alone, Thane reflects as he starts free of his memory-trance, unsure of what he must have betrayed to the empty room. Not quite empty, of course; nowhere is aboard this ship, but EDI has learned when not to listen. He is grateful for at least the attempt at granting him solitude. There is no shame in his love for Irikah, even so long after her passing. But his grief is a private thing, shared only with his son…and with Shepard. That is only natural.
Shepard's grey-on-white eyes are not the sunset nor even the sky; they are the sea at rest, only lightly tinged with the blue most commonly found in garden worlds' skies. The white, he knows, means nothing. Humans factor only the iris into their reckoning of eye colour, just as the asari do. How unnerving his eyes must look to her, Thane realises; black-on-black, considered an attractive combination in a culture as philosophically inclined as the drell have become since their integration into hanar society. In the old days, when Rakhana was home, black-on-black eyes marked one as blessed by Kalahira. Marked by Death.
He finds no irony in this. That he will die has always been truth. That he will die soon has become one of his truths, much like his love for Irikah, and his love for Shepard—though the last of these is, he feels, best kept close.
The fact of his second love is a simple thing to recognise, and having recognised it, to accept it and proceed. There is no need to muddy the waters with a dying man's confession. And she is—
Laser dot trembles on his skull. One finger-twitch, he dies.
—she is another man's Irikah.
Shepard's hair is red, a dark and vibrant shade it takes Thane longer than it should to realise is unnatural among humans. He simply cannot imagine her any other way; she may not have been born with it, but it is natural to her, to who she is, all the same. Shepard herself has many names for the colour. Fire-truck red, she calls it most commonly, with a laugh; it takes a surprisingly long time searching the extranet to find the vehicles she is referring to, centuries out of date. He does not think the colours are especially comparable, but reds have looked strange to him since the operation. Perhaps he is wrong.
Perhaps he is wrong, he thinks again, when a separate search entirely gives Thane his irony, providing him with a breathtaking view of Earth's sky just on the cusp of evening. But this time, he knows he is not. He understands, now. Shepard's hair is the red of a Terran sunset.
Her sunset-red hair was likely all Sidonis could see when she stepped in front of him and spread her arms, shielding him.
Sunset-coloured eyes defiant in the scope.
"How dare you?" Irikah's lips form the words. You must go through me first, her stance declares.
Thane doesn't know what Shepard said; he was not there, and her words were not for him. But he pictures her ocean-eyes glaring, her jaw set; whatever words came from that silver tongue, he knows what her actions had said.
The laser dances away.
Shepard does not seem to approve of vengeance. Garrus is not the only one frustrated by this, but unlike Zaeed, the idea of putting a bullet through her is beyond him; unlike Miranda, no mercenaries wait in the wings to render the argument moot seconds later. Thane wonders if she could have stopped his rampage years ago, had he known her then. He likes to think so. But perhaps he would not have been willing to listen. Perhaps he would have simply snapped her neck for the high crime of getting in his way. The thought is chilling.
Shepard and Garrus do not speak for several days following their abortive assassination plot, but it is long enough for an abridged account of events to have trickled through the command crew and fire squad. The tale gives Thane pause. And the next time Shepard stops by his quarters, tension slipping from her in the wake of reconciliation with her stubborn but loyal weapons officer, Thane tells her of Irikah.
How odd, he thinks to himself weeks later, as Shepard's gaze lingers ever longer on her closest friend with deepening fondness, as Garrus slowly comes to look hopelessly and wondrously lost just as Thane aches to remember once being-how odd it is to feel envy and happiness at once.
Just once, mere hours before they pass through the Omega-4 relay, Thane calls her siha. He promises that if they survive, he'll explain what it means. Then he sits at his desk and stares at his clasped hands, trying not to think about what is going on in Shepard's cabin because of course he knows, everyone knows; he had merely been the first to see. And when the Normandy dips back into the Sahrabarik system untold hours later with nearly her full complement of crew intact—more than can be said for the physical ship proper—said crew is treated to the first known human-turian kiss. Thane does not look away. Someone wolf-whistles. He does not laugh as most do, as even Shepard and Garrus do, surprised out of their impromptu moment of intimacy. A hint of a blush shows beneath the dark-honey skin of Shepard's cheeks. No, Thane is not quite able to laugh. But he smiles. He cannot help but smile.
He calls her siha again, when next they speak, and again, and again. Again he promises to explain what it means—someday.
When the information broker from Illium—T'Soni, he remembers, Liara, Shepard calls her—comes aboard and the helm points towards Hagalaz, Thane recognises a kindred spirit. He is sympathetic. But it is regard for Shepard, and not sympathy for T'Soni, which tempers the hostility that flares anew each time the rather-more-than-platonic edge to the asari's affection for her old commander makes itself known. No one else seems to notice, not even Tali or Garrus, and certainly not Shepard herself. Arashu help her, and Kalahira forgive him, if this old friend of the old guard decides to take her puppy love more seriously. Shepard's sunset-hair and ocean-eyes are not for either of them, and he will do what he must to safeguard her happiness. But T'Soni leaves soon enough, and if her smile is a little wistful as she says her goodbyes—well, Thane can understand that, whether it be the Normandy or her skipper the departure from which she finds so bittersweet.
After the disaster in the Bahak system, he finds himself clasping Shepard's hand—a restrained farewell, but it is in line with the tone of their friendship, sincere yet reserved. He is one of the last she says goodbye to, out of all the non-humans and known criminals amongst her inner circle (which is all of them, given the galaxy's particularly dim view of high-ranking Cerberus personnel). None of them are happy to be standing here on the Citadel dock rather than at their stations aboard Normandy. Grunt and, unsurprisingly, Garrus have been especially displeased from the moment Shepard had made her plans known, and there is even now a mulish misery about the way Tali holds herself.
But Shepard had insisted. She intends to turn herself in, and she does not wish them to suffer alongside her. The main crew has an excuse, 'just following orders'; Thane wonders if the words will taste as ashen in their mouths as they would in his, for his actions in Shepard's service are ones he is happy to claim as his in body, mind, and soul alike. To turn his back on that burns in his heart worse than the physical pains in his chest. These are cruel kindnesses that Shepard offers. Her ocean-eyes are dark and still, frozen-over. Her sunset-hair is growing out black as pitch. Her lips are chapped and pale and raw.
The wheels of justice are slow to turn, and Thane is already past the point at which he should have been dead. Considering he will likely never see her again, he calls her siha one last time, and one last time, he promises to tell her what it means someday.
Six months later, against all odds, they meet again, but still—he never does.
When she needs him to fight again, he fights; no armour, no weapons of his own, just his omnitool, biotics, and a stolen Phalanx. He does not wait to be asked, ignores the worry in Shepard's voice over the comms. He knows when he is needed. He is suffocating in open air, but the Cerberus swordsman is hopelessly outmatched—angry, arrogant, and not nearly so skilled as he seems to think. But it seems Shepard isn't the only human blessed with incredible luck: the masked assassin misses his target, but his blade finds its own in Thane, slicing effortlessly through fabric and scales alike.
It's almost a relief, and if it didn't hurt so damn much he feels as though he could laugh. Whatever else can be said now of Thane Krios, he has served his commander to the very end. He hasn't failed her. And he will never again have the chance to fail her.
Drell do not weep when they are distressed, for something so dear as water on Rakhana was not to be so lightly shed, and the years on Kahje have not been time enough for evolution to catch up—Thane is living proof of that. But there is a brittle edge to Kolyat's voice, a catching and a breaking that lends a terrible tragedy to a prayer meant to bring peace to the dying, a prayer he speaks in such an earnest yet stately fashion that Thane feels one of the great priests of old has come to see him off on his final journey. Shepard's voice twines with that of Thane's son, low and measured, melodic. She does not know the wish is for her, only that the words are for him.
Thane turns his gaze to the window, or tries to, but the world in his vision has been replaced by a curious reddish mist. It's vaguely unsettling, so he closes his eyes and lets the words of his vigil-keepers wash over him. How pleasantly their voices mingle, he muses dreamily.
Kolyat and Shepard, alive and safe and here. What more could an old assassin ask for than to be with kin in his final moments? Has he earned such a thing, at long last? Perhaps the gods have granted him mercy in this, if in nothing else. And this is enough. This is everything he could ever have wished. Thane lets the air leave his laboured lungs in a long, contented sigh, and leaves half his heart behind to cross the sea.
The other half has waited long enough.