Summary: She cannot pray for the fallen, for she has no god.
Warning: Spoilers for the Arrival DLC in Mass Effect II.
Pairing: Thane/Fem!Shep
Note: Title comes from a Jason Molina song called "Pyramic & co." Based on the events of the Arrival DLC and Shepard's feelings afterward.
A Heart Not Yet Separated From Death
"I don't need to read the report to know that you did the right thing, Shepard."
She lets the sentence swirl around her brain as the doors to the medical bay close, obscuring Hackett's retreating back. She lets the words whirl through her as she walks to her cabin, greeting everyone on auto-pilot. Smile, smile, wave, punch Garrus lightly on the shoulder, nod, smile. It's easy in a way that makes it meaningless, that makes it so heavy on her shoulders she feels like the ship might crash underneath the weight of her, of her heavy heart, her burdened mind. Her presence too heavy a burden for anyone or anything to carry it.
She passes by Zaeed first to collect as much scrap metal they have, which is a ridiculous amount. Some days, Shepard smiles at Tali's inability to leave trash alone, some days she feels a restriction in her throat, wondering if it means that Tali doesn't feel like she has a place, like everyone moment she can be kicked out again. Today, she feels nothing, just echoes where her heart should be. The cold is harsh on her skin as Zaeed looks at her from his usual spot.
"D'you wanna hear a story? Ya might learn somethin'," he asks, and she knows it's what he does when he's ... concerned. He believes there's wisdom there, or maybe he's just that ruthlessly pragmatic. Maybe it's the only way for people like her and him to survive.
They can't escape it, so they might as well own it. Mould it, mend it, airbrush it, shape it around the sharp edges of their hearts to protect it. Turn that time where she screamed and screamed for hours, thinking the darkness was going to swallow her whole again into a lesson. Into something better, something useful. She shakes her head. "No, thanks."
"Had your share of lectures today, hm?"
"Yeah," She says light-heartedly, as if it's only a joke. "Yeah, you could say that."
It isn't fair, but she can't explain it. She can't explain that Hackett was nothing but reasonable with her, trusted her, how kind he was, how he looked at her as if it was going to be okay. She can't tell him what she did, what she would do again, how it feels to have the galaxy in your hands only to destroy it. They would say they understood, that it was the right decision to make and Shepard hating knowing what she didn't feel. Shepard hated that it was always her having to make it on her own in the end.
She reaches her cabin with hands full of metal, asking Edi to open the door for her. She walks in to see Thane sitting on her bed, reading a datapad. He only recently started believing that she didn't mind, that it was all right, that she liked opening the door to see him. That they didn't have to be alone anymore.
Today she considers asking him to leave. He wouldn't ask why, but Shepard has long since learnt that it doesn't mean he doesn't worry. He worries, like a father, like a protector, like a lover, eternally and easily. He worries with his whole heart, his whole soul. He waits for her, always, to come to him and speak of her troubles, doesn't judge her when it takes her hours, days or weeks. Forever trusting that when she's ready, she'll be there. That it is only a matter of the patience he built inside ventilation shafts staring down the visor of a sniper gun. Always hopeful, always trusting in her abilities.
She hates him for that, sometimes. She hates all of them, for trusting her so much, for always believing she would do the right thing. The entire galaxy so casual in the way they hand her lives, strangers ready to give her their hearts, trusting her to keep it beating, to keep it safe, to fix it.
It only sets her up for failure. If everyone else is perfect, she is the only one who can mess it up. It's a battle she can never win but always keeps fighting until the very last second.
She does not feel as if she owes Cerberus her last breaths of effort. Anything she felt she might have owed them, she repaid by not blowing their facilities sky high after the Illusive Man sent her and her friends right into a reaper trap. It is more than that, as if it is in the air she breathes, laced in her bones, swirling through her blood. She must fight. She must always decide. She must never falter.
She drops the metal on the table, drowning out Thane's "Siha, are you feeling well today?" on purpose, the clattering of the metal on metal like claws through her head. She nods, flashing a brilliant smile over her shoulder. "No more visions."
They both know that it's not what he meant. That the question is so simple but the answer could take years to figure out. It's a small mercy of him, to formulate it so, to leave it open. He does not press the issue, as expected, but his dark eyes linger on her, as if he is afraid she will fall apart as soon as he looks away. It is as sweet as it is insulting, really, to believe he could have any role in breaking her. The war had enforced more than just her bones.
She rummages through the drawers to find her small blowtorch, hovering over the metal.
"Should I take my leave, Siha?" Thane asks from the bed. He knows what will happen by now. He knows it means people have died at her hands.
She only let him stay once before, because she couldn't take how he would tell her everything about his life in such detail, how she once made him remember how Irikah had looked when he found her, how he stayed so very still and he had pulled away from her touch instinctively, Irikah too fresh and too real in his head to allow another's woman's touch. She couldn't stand his honesty, as if Drell were incapable of lying, or worse, as if he didn't see the need of it regarding her, while she couldn't tell him anything. How the words got stuck somewhere inside her, how she would start feeling like she needed the words to leave her alone, then felt they were safer with her. She knows how to live with them, but it took her decades, she had to die to survive with them. How could she give them away so easily?
Her burdens were the only things still truly hers. Her skin was pasted on her like a ragdoll, held barely together by scars, her bones custom made metal bars. Her every move scrutinised, her blood-stained journey broadcast over and over again, until it didn't even hurt her anymore. Garrus and Tali would never know how much their little comments that implies everything had stayed the same about she had stayed the same meant to her. It was all she could hold on to. She would doubt herself, but never Tali. Never Garrus.
How could she start to explain? How did one say "the galaxy is slipping through my fingers" and not make it sound like a carefully rehearsed dramatic speech.
He doesn't move at all, just looks at her with his big black eyes that reflect everything and show nothing. Black eyes like the darkness that swallowed her whole, like the peace between the stars, like the shadow hiding her scars.
"I don't mind either way," she says, because she knows he hates that and a fight is easier than thinking. Thane is used to people telling him what to do and when to do it, to having the specifics about everything, to know what is expected of him. It still makes him nervous, making his own choices. He once whispered to her, as the shadows wrapped around her, that the only choices he truly made himself were to torture and kill dozens and to leave Kolyat for years. He had also made the choice to return to him, but even that had seemed like the universe orchestrated it more than he did. He had told her that he had become so used to being a weapon, a tool, that it became impossible for him to look at the universe and decide what to do with it. Shepard understands in a way that frightens her. It's always too big, it's always too much, there's always too much at stakes. It's the waiting, the silence that becomes alive and tries to break them apart molecule by molecule.
Thane doesn't raise to the bait, simply nods and continues reading. He never gets angry when she wants him to, knows too well when her anger is not aimed at him. It washes over him like a wave.
She starts working. It's the only way she can show him, how the world affects her, how her stoic demeanour isn't as much a façade as a cage. She hits an air bubble and hot metal hits her in the face, like a warning, a reminder. She focuses on the dog tags again. It's the only thing that must have her attention now. The pain is hot and sharp, but it doesn't matter. Or was this one of the things that did?
She forgets. What matters and what doesn't. Sometimes things matter too much to her, when Mordin won't eat, looking over the genophage data, or when Jack flinches as Shepard hands her a cup of coffee, as if she was about to get hit in the face. She cares too much when Tali pretends she didn't hear someone call her a thief, a lowlife.
She cares too much that she woke up a few nights ago, clawing at the back of her neck until it bled, pulling at her hair, screaming, screaming get it out, get it out, it's in my head, get it out, make it leave, I want to breathe, I want to live, don't let it drown me and Thane woke up in a jolt of panic beside her, holding her as she tried to wrestle herself free, whispering all night it was going to be okay. He didn't tell her it she was safe, instead held her and told her not to be afraid. She cared too much about the scratches on his arms the day after.
Cares too much knowing he will forever remember her like that, but knowing that forever will not be that long for her and him, she can't care that much at all. She breathes that fact just as he does and it doesn't faze her. It seems natural, the only path that they could take.
He is perfect and he loves her and he doesn't demand anything of her. Of course he'll die. Of course the universe will take him from her. It is not self-pity, it is realism. She was the soldier, he was the brave one, and their hearts and lungs and minds would give out long before the Reapers had once again become a legend, before people would wonder about war, what it must've been like. She hopes they get it all wrong.
She cannot pray for the fallen, because she has no god. She has seen the darkness after life and it is nothing but slumber. No shores of white, no blinding lights or winged warriors descending. She supposes that is what true peace feels like. Stillness in the hollow of her bones, her weary body cradled in the perfect black.
Instead she lets Hackett's words become her mantra. You did the right thing. You did the right thing. You did the right thing. She hopes it will seep into her bones, until they stop aching so. Hopies it will clear the burning in her eyes. Instead she creates reminders, memories burnt in hot metal. She will not forgot. She will not forgive.
At least you tried. At least she had tried warning them. She always tries. She tries and tries and there is never anyone on the other end, the universe never answers, just takes. She doesn't understand why Samara calls it 'the great void', when it is so full of life, so full of families, hopes and dreams. It's so full, so much inside it, so much life in her hands.
Fifty dog tags later and her heart and her head are still screaming entirely different things, as Thane continues reading through the night. Waiting for her, it's all for her and maybe it's not worth it, maybe the price of everything is too much, maybe love can only live through suffering and life only means a thing if death is ever present, and maybe she needs to stop thinking, because it won't help her, it won't change anything. Maybe Miranda should have left her to rot. She had fought so hard, she deserved the rest. She deserved the nothingness.
She needs to remind herself that these are the things that don't matter. They can't matter. Thousands died at her hands, as she stood and lived. She did what she had to do, she knows that, but Thane was right when he said that she, more than most, understands that they must take responsibilities of their own actions. She might not have a drell's perfect recollection, but she would never allow herself to forget.
She had pushed the button. She had saved the galaxy. She had murdered thousands. Her choice, her responsibility, her victims.
The dog tags for the fallen in her hands, no names, for she never knew them and they never knew her. It wouldn't be until they would put her in front of thousands to tell her story that people knew why this had been necessary, why entire systems must be eliminated like that. She had stood in the orange flashing light, a warrior angel, a scarred girl. It had only taken a button. It only takes such a small push. She knows what she has become, people who thrive in war are never the beautiful ones, the pure-hearted ones.
She opens the closet she hides all her skeletons, all her failures mingling with her blood-stained victories. She wears the most precious ones as constant reminders. The others she keeps here, safe and sound.
She feels Thane watching her, eyes that see through her, and she wonders what he sees. What he sees inside of her, her eyes, her scarred skin barely containing her whirling mind. She wonders why he's so convinced her ragdoll skin and metal bones hold beauty.
She looks upon the death and breathes the smell of metal, the way it smells like old blood. Carefully, silently, reverently, she starts adding the new ones she made.
She does not ask forgiveness. No prayers for this wicked one.
She feels the weight of them in her hands. The weight of them. Too heavy, too much. So many, how was she supposed to carry them alone?
His warm hands hover underneath hers, barely touching. She feels the warmth of him, always almost there, always as a suggestion of things she can take, a reminder of what is hers. For a moment she ignores him, hanging another dog tag in her shrine, the metal bar holding her deaths for her.
"Siha," he speaks softly in her ear. She shivers. "I needn't know what troubles your mind if the wounds are still to raw, but know this: every sacrifice the universe has demanded of you, you have the power to make it so that another must never be asked the same."
She breathes. The metal is cold in her hands, the death burning behind her eyes. Four thousand gone.
No more. No one else.
She is his warrior angel, a tenacious protector, fierce in wrath. The Reapers should fear her. The universe itself should shake on its foundations, for all they do is make her stronger with every skeleton added to the long list. Every soul she fails to protect, will fuel her wrath towards those who have made it so. She will burn them to the ground, she will make them suffer tenfold for each innocent lost.
"It will all be well in the end," he says when she doesn't move. Kisses the place on her neck where the oyxgen cables broke. "Come to bed. Tomorrow will be kinder, siha."
She leans back, drops her hands as he catches them, the cords spilling over their hands. She feels the slow rising of his chest, like a glacier, like a river, like life.
She thinks of the orphans made by blood spilled by her hands. She thinks of the parents of the unborn child, safe on the Citadel, looking up at a beautiful, Reaper-free sky. She thinks of the fathers grieving over their lost sons, the mothers who fall asleep without guns by their side as peace remains. She thinks of the despair, she thinks of hope. She thinks of the sound of bullets, the sound of laughter.
She thinks of Garrus and Tali, commenting on missions during breakfast. She thinks of Jack, slowly trying to shape her mouth around a smile, of Miranda and her sister, Jacob and his potential for a normal life, Mordin's voice over the sound of typing, Grunt who gave up a rightful place on Tuchanka for her, Samara and her calm, sad eyes, the way she lights up when she is not alone, Zaeed hiding his smile at Kasumi's gossip. Legion holding on the her broken armour.
She thinks of Donnely and Daniels, of Kelly, Gardner, Chakwas. Of Joker and EDI.
She thinks of Thane, how he is standing through the decades, the warmth of him.
"It's going to be all right", she says to nameless dog tags in front of her. "We're going to make it worth it."
It does not matter if she falls. There are a dozen just as capable as her. A dozen more willing to catch her, to patch up her mistakes.
She does not go to bed for the longest time, but listens to Thane pray for the lost souls of the universe, the warmth of him seeping through her bones, nestling in the hollows of her body.
. . .
. . .
. . .
Story based of my headcanon that Shepard keeps all the dog tags of the soldiers that died in her name. (Well, she returns them to the families and keeps a copy.) She makes new ones for civillians and the batarian system she had to destroy in the Arrival DLC.
First Mass Effect story. Please comment, I tried really hard.
Hope you enjoyed!