And to Dust You Shall Return
One could grow used to pain.
It had become an inconvenience at worst; at best, a reminder of Kalahira's waiting shores. It was his penance and his escape, emotional wounds torn open afresh when the physical ones became too much to bear. It promised an end to itself, promised peace and the forgiveness of sins.
But there was one sin for which Thane Krios didn't want to be forgiven, and another for which he feared he never would.
And so it was with an unsettled heart and a profoundly troubled soul that he lingered outside Shepard's door. His hand hovered over the holographic controls, which glowed a welcoming green. Unexpected, but not uninvited. Yet still he hesitated.
This night could well be their last. The Normandy would reach the Omega-4 relay in a few hours, with no guarantee they would return. He'd been sanguine about the odds early on, had thought he'd come to terms with his body's imminent death. But now that the time was upon him, his heart pounded, his stomach churned, and even his famously steady hands shook. The façade of peace he'd maintained thus far—for that's what he now realized it was, a façade born more of denial than of any real acceptance—was breaking down, shredded like smoke in the wind, and left him feeling helplessly exposed.
It had taken him some time to recognize the feeling, so long had he buried it: fear. Not the everyday concern for someone's safety, not commonplace battlefield nerves, but true, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping terror. All that he'd done to atone for his sins, all the dark things he'd removed from this galaxy, suddenly seemed insignificant. Now that he could feel the sea lapping insistently at his feet, the waters suddenly felt cold and forbidding.
Your body is dust. The phrase echoed in his mind, the mantra he so often used to focus his biotic Warp. It took on new meaning now, nagging at him, worrying at the edges of his soul like a rabid varren.
But who was he to burden Shepard with all this? Surely she had her own affairs to put in order, her own feelings to deal with, as she prepared the lead what remained of her crew on this final, desperate charge. The last thing she needed was for him to come crying to her because he was afraid.
He turned back toward the elevator.
Though perhaps she was afraid, too. Thane had been preparing to die since receiving his terminal diagnosis over ten years ago. Vividly, he recalled the emotions that had swept over him at the time: disbelief, rage, and black despair. He had begged Arashu on his knees to spare him this fate, but if She had heard, She had denied him. Shepard, on the other hand, had signed on for this suicide mission only few short months hence. There hadn't been enough time for the finality to truly sink in. Perhaps she was suffering as he had.
For as much time as they'd spent together down in Life Support, it was a topic they'd never discussed.
The narrow space between the elevator and Shepard's cabin seemed to close in on him as he wavered. Before joining this crew, he'd had nothing left, had sought only escape from an empty world. With Irikah given to the deep, her killers dispatched, and Kolyat long estranged, he'd been rudderless, adrift. Empty and hollow. The better memories into which he might have escaped were overwhelmed by images of blood and pain, of tears and broken souls. Of unspeakable acts of brutality committed by his own hands in vengeance. Of the bleak realization that such vengeance changed nothing—not for Irikah, and not for himself. (a coin flashes as it tumbles toward the water) (the sea swallows its light) These things were forever seared into his mind and heart. He had almost welcomed death, and had accepted this suicide mission as a fitting end.
Bu then he'd been visited by an angel, and had begun to wonder if perhaps Arashu had taken pity on him after all. Shepard had reached out to him in his self-imposed isolation, had unflinchingly taken his blood-drenched hands and led him back to the light of hope. Tentatively, he had allowed himself to grow close to her, hardly daring to believe one such as he could be worthy of someone like her. And slowly, without intending to, without even knowing he still could, he had fallen in love.
Fallen? He'd been knocked off his feet and swept away by it, jarred out of his consuming battle-sleep by the sheer dizzying force and vitality and aliveness of it. Suddenly, what remained of his life had purpose, direction, meaning. In these, his final days, he had found a reason to go on living.
The irony of that shrieked maniacally in his ear, shattering whatever illusion of peace he might otherwise have been able to maintain. It drowned out his prayers and disrupted his meditations. The mocking laughter of the Gods as They toyed with him.
He shook off the blasphemous thought.
What had he come up here seeking? Comfort? Absolution? Or was it simply to not have to spend this final night alone? If he were truly honest with himself, the answer was none of these. What he wanted was the impossible: to forget. To forget for a brief while that he was naught but dust, crumbling slowly away. To forget the evils he'd done and how they weighed on his soul. To close his mind's eye for one blissful moment on the terrible memories that would never fade.
Of course, that could not be. Thane took a deep, shuddering breath as his right hand balled into a trembling fist. He relaxed it consciously and stabbed at the door controls before he could stop himself. Perhaps just speaking with her would ease his mind.
If he was to return to dust, if he could not forget, then he could at least confess.