Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This is a little gift fic for the lovely uglychui who has recently given me a boost of support in a much-needed time.

Ill Moon

"He silences the quake of her lips with his own needful mouth. They kiss, and they kiss, and they drown." - When the end comes, it is not without grace. Thane and Shepard swear to meet in the after.

Shepard loves a dying man.

It is not an altogether surprising realization. She has watched many good things in her life come to an end. He is just another.

And yet, he is not just another. He is the stretch of time between her lids closing and opening, the sound her smile makes in the dark, the distance between her lips when her mouth forms his name. He is in her every stitch of skin and hollow of bone.

She could not be free of him should she even wish it. His presence casts a pale shadow over her life like an ill moon.

She has already settled her heart in the tender curve of his palm.

He will take it with him when he goes.

Shepard plants her hands on her hips. "Fifty credits says it's a thresher maw."

Thane blinks beneath the shadow of his hand as the Tuchanka sun beats down on them. His gaze rakes across the barren land. "Most probable."

Shepard glances back to Grunt conversing with the krogan shaman by the truck. Dust swirls, enticing and deadly, across their forms. She looks back along the horizon. It is all heat and sun and dust in their wake.

Thane's hand falls back to his side. He nudges a booted toe into the sand and watches the dry earth crest and fall before him. "This is a dead planet," he muses, not really expecting any kind of answer.

Shepard blinks sweat from her eyes. Breathes in. Exhales. Her lungs tingle with the possibility. "It's dry here, though."

He glances to her.

She shrugs, an invisible weight breaking along her shoulders like the blaring sun on their backs. "Might help," she murmurs, face blanking out.

Thane looks across the vast dunes. Cracks and fissures of desolate clay. A golden tomb.

His hand braces against his chest instinctively as he breathes in.

Shepard watches with riveted eyes. The lushness of his green skin is beautiful against the Tuchanka backdrop.

And then he is smirking, a rueful laugh falling from his dry lips. "It cannot undo what has already been done."

She purses her lips and stares. Sand scrapes along her cheek in the wind. She rubs at it. "Maybe we could stay awhile." Her voice lowers, until she is sure it has broken against the earth at her feet.

Thane offers her a grateful gaze. He reaches for her hand and threads his fingers through her own gloved ones. Like the first breath of rain over the desert mountains. "I promised I would not be a burden to this mission. To you. I keep my promises." His thumb edges along her knuckles. "We go on, siha."

The sun is insultingly hot. She must blink the dust from her eyes. He stays in her sight.

Even still, she knows he has only ever been a slow mirage. Here for now, but then – inexplicably, inevitably – gone.

Sunlight on the wind.

"We always do," she whispers back, her fingers tightening on his. She will be his 'siha', his warrior angel, for just a while longer. Her back straightens.

Thane watches her a moment, and then he is stepping toward her, tugging her lightly into him until her face is pressed to his shoulder. His free hand winds into her hair and holds her there. His lips press to the crown of her head.

Shepard's hand curls into a fist at her side. Motes of dust break upon her skin.

"I thank you anyway, siha. You are too kind." His soft breath against her hair unbalances her far more than the blusterous Tuchanka wind. Their hands stay twined between them.

She only breathes against him.

"We should return." His voice is shadow in the blaring light. He pulls from her.

She nods.

Her words fester in her throat until, unspoken and needless, they split away and die.

"I have not been…the father he needs." Thane stands outside a darkened C-Sec interrogation room. Kolyat remains within. There are worse things than walls between them. Heated, bitter words still ricochet around the room, clattering to the floor in a tired, pointless heap when their brittle screams are unheard. There is exhaustion in his son's shoulders that is older than he.

Thane's shoulders are taut, his hands held firmly at his back, his gaze following the silhouetted lines of his son's form through the tinted glass.

Shepard waits in silence beside him.

"I do not even know if such a thing is still possible," he sighs. The world goes with him.

Shepard licks her lips. "It can be."

"How can you be certain?" His words are terser than he intends. His gaze falls softly to her in apology, but his body is still rigid. Still tight. Always – still.

Still as the grave.

Shepard swallows. "Because you're here." The Citadel shifts around them in color and light and motion. But before them is only this darkened room. Only this darkened heart.

Shepard thinks she sees Kolyat's shuddering shoulders through the shadowy glass.

Dusk on her tongue.

Thane's eyes drift to the floor. "It is not enough," he breathes.

"No," she agrees, hand sliding over his shoulder hesitantly. "It won't be. But it's a start." She pulls his shoulder back, just slightly, just enough to make him cut his gaze back to hers. "You can't expect his acceptance this soon. It's not going to be that easy. It shouldn't be that easy. But that's because it's worth it. All things worth having take time. Take effort. But in the end," she pauses, eyes drifting to the broken form of a lonely son, "In the end, all you have is each other." Her throat tightens. Her hand slips from his shoulder.

Her heart thuds once against her ribs, harsh and needful. And then it lulls into a dull ache.

She yearns for the bleakness of stars.

Thane brushes a finger tenderly along her cheek and then retracts his hand. The touch is so soft, so instant, she thinks she might have dreamed it.

She dreams of his touch too often to tell now.

But his voice tells her it is real. And his words tell her it is true. "He is not all that I have, siha."

She looks at him.

He looks at her.

When he leans in to brush his lips against hers, her heart begins its painful dance once more. A thunderous thud. A slow soreness. And then suddenly, it seems to break from her. He moves his mouth against hers and suddenly, without reason or thought, she is no longer anchored to that harsh and immovable shore.

Her heart has sunk itself into the deep, the cool, the sinfully embracing sea. She drifts beneath the imperceptible moon's reflection, waves taking her down. Dragging her under.

She drowns in him over and over and over again.

The surface is a far and fragile thing.

She doesn't reach for it.

She wakes to find him at her bedside in the Med-bay. His arms are propped along the bed, his head resting against them, his face turned to her. He is asleep. When she has regained enough consciousness to move she reaches for him, her mouth open in a silent call.

He wakes instantly at her fingers upon his cheek. He pulls back sharply.

They stare at each other for long moments, every blistering, raw emotion passing between them. Her chest aches. Her limbs ache. Her whole body hurts.

She had dreamed of the sea. She had dreamed of a dark night and darker eyes and the warmth of his breath along her lips before they sank beneath the waves. And she had been happy.

Tears pool in her eyes.

Black tears for the setting sun.

She watches the break as it happens, the sharp crumble of his features as he moves to her, face burying in her neck, a sharp exhale of disbelieving breath against her skin.

"Thane," she croaks.

He shudders against her, one hand grasping tightly to her own limp one, the other winding into her hair and anchoring there. His cry breaks against her throat and she is alight with a sudden, painful awareness.

"Too close," he whispers brokenly against her.

She tries to twist her hand around to hold his, but his grip is too tight, too severe.

They each drift, lost and fearful. Too far in love to know how to let go. Too far in love to understand that death is but a night storm.

There is a dawn waiting for them, ready to break along the surf in everlasting brilliance.

Shepard hears Thane cry for the first time. It sounds like the crash of waves upon the shore.

She wonders if he knows the weight of her heart now.

"We make a promise," Thane asserts, hands gripped tightly atop the table.

Shepard shifts in her seat before him, the hum of Life Support collecting in the balls of her feet. She keeps her boots steady, always. Land-bound. "A promise?"

Thane nods. "Death cannot part me from you."

Her face shifts into tenderness. Her heart breaks beneath her skin. She reaches for him.

He clasps her hand across the table.

"But Thane…" She trails off. Because there is too much to say and too much not to. Too much to feel and too much she ought to. She is bursting with it. A sliver of moon that yearns for an eclipse. Her crescent-shaped heart, pale and waxing.

He darkens the air between them. "We make a promise," he repeats, this time harsher.

Need is like a hooked fish between them, strangled and gasping.

She blinks in wait before him.

He sighs. It takes his whole body. "We will meet again. By the goddess Kalahira, I swear it. This I promise you." His hand tightens over hers.

Her eyes drift across his face. His cool, green skin. His black, arresting eyes. His supple lips and graceful chin. This is the face of the man she loves.

He stares at her, unblinking. Undaunted. Ready.

She opens her mouth. Maybe words come. Maybe just a halting breath. Maybe the vastness of space and time and unquenchable love.

Maybe just her voice. Shaken and tear-lodged. "I'll look for you."

He smiles.

A singular, delicate luminescence in the sky. Its beams fall soft like kisses.

"And I, you," he answers.

Her own hesitant smile slips across her features like the birth of ancient stars. "It's a promise."

They hold it fast to their bones. Repeating over and over. A promise.

Until their souls are seared with it.

"I never believed in an afterlife, you know?" Shepard's voice dips across the plane of his chest, her lips brushing along his cool skin. Thane's hand down the naked length of her waist is soft as moonlight. His fingers flex against her skin and she presses closer. She feels his light breath along the top of her head.

"Never?" His voice is always just a touch above simmering. Her flesh hums at the sound of it.

"Not even when I died," she sighs into his skin. Warm pink pressed to cool green.

His fingers in her hair.

The bloom of memory beneath her skin. How he feels like a long lost star to her body.

"I believe the afterlife is what you make it, siha. It is where you choose to go, not where you are destined to. I believe we each receive that which we seek in the end." His thumb edges along her cheekbone. "I have always yearned for the waves." His breath rolls in like the tide.

She rises up so that she can lay both arms along his chest and fold her hands over his heart. Her chin rests along her knuckles. He is only a pulse away. "Do you think I could…go to yours?" She taps a slender finger along his sternum and watches the swirl of her fingertip in the dim light of her cabin. There are galaxies in her palms and yet he is still a slow corpse. "Do you think I could follow you to your afterlife?"

His hand reaches for her cheek, his eyes unfathomably dark. Her words pain him, she knows. "The sea embraces all, siha," he assures. He pauses, hesitant. He licks his lips and pulls her toward him.

She crawls up his body, bracing her arms in the sheets on either side of his head. Her throat is as dry and aching as the morning she died over Alchera.

The air is parched between them. Their lips, always just a whisper away.

But then he smiles and Shepard wonders if the sun has not imploded.

"I would welcome you, gladly," he adds. "Though I should hope it will not be for many, many long years."

She swallows. Licks her lips. To kiss him would be world enough.

His hand winds around her bare hip and tugs her down. Until there is no air, no thought, no shadow between them.

Until they are braced, skin to skin, heart to heart.

"And you would wait for me?" she whispers to him, her voice brittle and cracked as dying embers.

He silences the quake of her lips with his own needful mouth.

They kiss, and they kiss, and they drown.

"Always, siha."

Thane lies on the hospital bed with a white sheet in his grip. Blood speckles his lips. She tastes it when she kisses him.

Shepard pulls back from him and nestles into his side as they lay together on the cot. Her hand finds its way to his chest, where his heart beats frantically and irregularly against her palm.

They have only moments.

They have only forever.

"I will find you again," she whispers against his sleeve. Her lids flutter closed.

"I have no doubt." His voice is a hoarse crack of air.

It burns her ears. Her fingers curl into his coat. She does not open her eyes. Behind her lids are stars and oceans and a low-hanging moon that does not taunt but calms. Its light is dim but sure. She counts his breaths and stares into the lunar light.

"Siha?" A cough. A violent shudder.

She chokes back her sob. "Yes?"

"I have a last request, if I may be so bold." The air leaves his lungs in one, long exhale. Quaking. Drowned.

"Name it." She will swallow the moon and its light, she will chart the course of his tides and bring them to shore, she will tie his string to her craft and bring him home to land if she only could.

But she can't.

She is adrift herself. And there is no going back now.

Thane reaches a shaking, weak hand to hers on his chest. At his touch, her eyes shift open. She already knows what he asks. "Linger in this life a while longer." He pulls in a rattling breath. "Do not hasten after me."

She doesn't answer. His fingers tighten on hers. She doesn't think she can stop the tears anymore.

"Siha." It is as much a reprimand as he can manage in his state.

She shifts up and leans just over him. His eyes fix to hers. She presses her warm, trembling mouth to his. Salt on his lips. Copper on her tongue. His fingers curl against hers on his chest and she knows he is trying to show her his heart. Trying to hold tight to her touch and bundle his soul in her unworthy hands.

She sobs against his lips.

When she pulls from him, her tears finally fall to his cheek. She braces a hand along his cheek and looks down on him. "Please don't make me," she chokes, mouth only a heartbeat away from his.

He is unmoved. His eyes harden. "Do not be afraid to look for happiness in places where I am not. It is not wrong. It is what I want for you." He draws another slow, agonizing breath.

Shepard is painfully away of every miraculous moment it is not his last.

And that's when she understands.

"This is what you ask of me?' Her eyes search his. Just one day more and she would be content. She would be ready. She would be able to release him to the sea.

Even as she says it she knows it's a lie.

"It is," he whispers against her mouth.

She shuts her eyes and leans her forehead against his. Presses her palm to his chest and feels the aching draw of his desolate lungs.

The moon is ripe and waiting.

The swell of the ocean beckons to its lost.

Shepard takes a slow, dragging breath in. She presses her lips to his. She kisses him in astral light, in churning water, in unrelenting, fearless love.

When she breaks from him she can already taste his death. And so she releases him. "Then I will do this last thing for you."

Thane's eyes close. His chest rises slow and unsteady. His fingers loosen around hers. "I am glad."

Shepard lowers herself back against his side, her face in his shoulder. Her thumb slides tenderly along his chest. The air is blood-drenched and constricted in his lungs. "And when the sea is ready for me…" she begins, unsure of how to end.

But he has always known. He has always been there to bear her up. He smiles, sure and small and quiet. They both know it will be his last. "I will be among the waves," he promises.

She floats. Light and untethered. Drifting across the water. Away. Far and away. She can barely see him in the distance anymore. Barely make out his form in the lunar light from above. That ill moon that paints their fates so.

But she is not afraid.

She knows the sight of him by moonlight.

"Until then," she whispers against him.

"Until then," he swears. One last breath. One last pledge of life and hope and together.

Shepard feels it draw from him in a slow, painful gasp. She feels the rake of air along his lungs. She feels the weight of their promise in the barren cavern of his chest. His hollow lungs. His empty corpse.

She finally cries. Finally lets herself shatter.

Shepard no longer loves a dying man.

She loves a dead one.

Tides like dark swirls of space. A languid burst of radiance, breaking over the water like the world's first dawn. A waning moon over a silken sea and every speck of dust and light that glints from beneath the water. The salt of oceans kissing her skin and she is ankles deep, then knees, then waist, then gone beneath.

His hand finds hers through the current and they break along the surface like newborn stars.

They live and die and live again.

It is a far, vast ocean.

And they have only just begun.