Memories
"You and I have met before," he says.
She looks up for less than a second before returning her gaze to where it usually rests during her all too infrequent moments of contemplation: her gun.
"Don't think so, Kermit," she replies. "Never seen you before in my life; don't particularly want to see you now."
"You would not have seen me," he answers as he begins moving toward her, punctuating each word with a quiet, deliberate step. "I, however, saw you..."
He blinks one set of eyelids and his pupils expand, as if taking in more than the present reality. His voice begins to trail away but immediately resurfaces accompanied by a faint echo.
"…I see you. Tattooed body. Art on a superb canvas. Eyes filled with endless rage—passion—rage—passion. Hands emitting soft blue glow. Biotic barrier exploding around you, repelling bullet. Then running. Running. Running."
The cold, steel touch of a Predator Heavy Pistol pressed against his temple shakes Thane Krios out of his reverie. Jack, now standing inches from him, spits out her reply in between sneers of wrath and condescension.
"You know, that's the problem with you drell," she begins, edging even closer to him as if to assert her dominance and emphasize his current predicament. "You get so lost in those photographic memories that you don't even see what's right in front of you."
Unconcerned, Thane steps into her barely-clothed body. His trance of reminiscence did not prevent him from reacting to her movements and, as she stares into his eyes with thoughts of revenge, he has already stealthily wrapped his right arm around her in what would seem like a loving embrace, if not for the Shuriken Machine Pistol pointed squarely at the small of her back.
"And you get so lost in your anger that you only see what is right in front of you," he says, finally allowing her to become aware of his own weapon. "That is the problem with you psychopaths."
Jack tries to hide her surprise but, even as her expression hardens, he can tell that her resolve is shaken. Her next words are colored with the bravado of a woman who will follow through on a threat if she must, but hopes she really doesn't have to.
"I escaped you once, assassin. You better believe I can do it again."
"I do not like your chances," he responds.
A tense silence fills the room for what seems like minutes but, in truth, it lasts only the few seconds it takes Jack to utter the word that rises above every other thought.
"Fuck."
Eventually, she adds: "Are you going to kill me?"
His response rings clear and true in a voice that inspires confidence: "No."
She slowly moves her pistol away from Thane's head; he unwraps his arm from around her waist and holsters his weapon. They linger for a moment, their bodies still pressed together, the apprehension not quite yet gone from each of their faces.
"Thank you," he replies. "Truth is, I did not much like my chances either."
Thane and Jack finally back away from each other. They are still wary, still poised to strike, but they stand facing each other with the innate feeling that they will not have to.
"Why?" she asks.
"Well, you did have me at what we in the assassin business like to call 'point-blank range," he answers.
"No," she quickly corrects him. "I meant: why aren't you going to kill me?
Thane takes a seat and Jack takes it as a cue to do the same. He feels her gaze upon him, and is suddenly accosted by the sensation that it is now she who has him in her sights—and at her mercy. And, as he begins to answer her question, he realizes that he is not just explaining it to her, but to himself.
"You are the only mark I have ever missed; the only contract I have ever failed. You stopped a bullet aimed for the bridge of your nose after it had already left my rifle. You outran me across an entire city and parried every shot I took at you. What you did that day was… extraordinary."
Jack is taken aback; she is not used to compliments. But she certainly isn't going to let him know it.
"Big fucking deal," she says with a shrug. "It's all instinct."
"No." Thane's reply comes quickly, with a forceful voice that almost makes it sound like a rebuke. He gathers his thoughts and continues: "I do not always have the luxury to kill unseen and from afar. Often, my targets will find themselves staring at the barrel of my gun a second before it ends their lives. Do you know what most of them do? They cower and put up their arms, as if that could shield them from certain death. Or they panic, turn, and run like the proverbial headless chicken. Those are their instincts. But you…"
Thane pauses. He reaches into his memories yet again, reliving the glorious chase. Meanwhile, Jack finds it harder and harder to hide behind that expression of contempt.
"You displayed so much more than instinct that day," he resumes. "There was finesse and grace, yes—but there was more, as well, for if it had been a test of our respective skill alone, we may have been evenly matched. But I see now that I never had a chance. I was hired to kill you, but I did not want you dead any more than I cared if you were alive. But your will to survive permeated every fiber of your being. Every step you took was bathed in determination and purpose. Every biotic blaze you hurled back at me sprung from a desire to take just another breath. You just wanted to live… so you did."
The barrier of Jack's crude, mordant persona, usually stronger than the one that repelled Thane's bullet, flickers as it threatens to completely fade away. So that, even though she means to answer him with a scoff, her voice takes on the flat tone of a woman who's hiding something from herself.
"What a bunch of crap. Everybody wants to live. What, I just want it more?"
"Precisely," replies Thane without missing a beat. "And that is a rare and magnificent thing," he adds with a tinge of admiration and even affection. "It is why I could not kill you then, and it is why I doubt I could kill you now."
The silence lasts longer now, but is not a tense one. It is one in which glances speak a thousand words, as Jack begins to realize that an assassin admitting she is a mark he cannot kill is practically a declaration of love, and Thane slowly grasps that the fact that a vengeful murderess has not taken advantage of such an admission to end his life essentially amounts to the same.
For two cold-blooded killers, this is foreplay.
"If you could…," begins Jack, staring into the incalculable depth of Thane's eyes. "…would you?"
She has betrayed herself now; her speech no longer has the same rough timbre of a woman who is at war with the universe and with herself. Now it carries the shy hesitance, and the innocent hopefulness of a girl who has passed a note to a boy in her class asking if he will accompany her to a dance.
Such a question – not because of what it asks, but because of what it means – cannot be answered with words. Thane moves closer now, all-too-aware that he is still approaching a lioness that seems to have accepted his presence but could, at any time, change her mind and strike. But Jack merely blinks as Thane's lips touch hers, and though he could blink as well and, through kissing her, once again feel and taste the mouth of every other woman whose kiss he has known, he forces his eyes to stay open and his mind to stay in the moment—with her. And while he can remember—more than remember— the very last time that he felt tenderness such as he is experiencing now as they embrace, Jack can recall no such moment in her past, perhaps because one has never existed.
As the contact between them breaks, as Jack feels a pang at the sudden end of what may be the finest fifteen seconds she has ever known, she understands that nothing more need be done or said. All that remains is for her to thank him in the best way she knows how: with a confession that may help keep him alive so that, perhaps, they may meet again.
"I did see you, you know. Well, not you: I saw a glint of sunlight reflected off your scope."
Thane sinks back into the memory just long enough to see it for himself. There it is: the faintest flash; an unusual flaw that he can now not help but wonder whether it was subconsciously intentional.
"Thank you…" he replies, "…for reminding me to stay in the shadows."
Thane blinks one set of eyelids and his pupils narrow. The memory, itself so full of remembrances, fades from his mind as the present slowly comes into focus around him.
"You and I have met before," he says.
Jack's response is barely audible; perhaps due to the incessant hum of the Normandy's engines, but perhaps because the words are spoken in a whisper that betrays just the slightest hint of emotion.
"I know. Don't tell Shepard."