A/N: Jacob gets no love, so now he's my Shepard's bro. No worries, though; there's lots of Thane later on in the fic. There aren't enough stories that explore how Shepard feels about dying or how it's affected her, so I decided to try and give it a go. Read and review! :}
Disclaimer: Bioware is not mine. :{
Click, click, click.
Shepard's ears were rushing and the textured metal beneath her felt cold, freezing, bitter. It was almost a stabilizing force, a sharp counterpoint to the fire that had erupted in her body; just enough to keep her grounded, but not enough to prevent her from drifting. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn't asleep, and the scent of tobacco was ripe, cloying her taste buds as well as drying her throat. It was a feeling she realized she'd missed.
Floating.
That's what it felt like, or at least, that's what she thought floating might feel like, though she'd felt it before. She couldn't trust that feeling, that memory, though. Shepard wouldn't trust it. She felt spacey, thoughts abuzz, muscles flexing and relaxing at random. Her mind tingled with nostalgia, alive, pictures and words popping in and dying off; each one made her tense and question, an uncomfortable air of uncertainty cocooning around her. Were these memories still hers? Or had they never been hers?
"Come on, take one."
A darkly tanned hand pressed against hers, dropping a small, cylindrical stick onto her pink hued palm. The boy's dirty face was round with youth, honey eyes both earnest and insistent, and a tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth to moisten chapped lips. The girl licked her own in response, finding that the action was as contagious as a yawn.
"But, your dad said—"
"Just take the fucking cigarette, Scar. Please."
Scarlett kept walking, feet trudging through snow that made her boots soaked to her socks. She rolled the cigarette between two fingers guiltily, a sense of fear as well as utter sadness clenching in her gut.
"I didn't mean to bring him up, I—"
"Scarlett," the boy stopped walking and the girl did as well, facing him with a cold-reddened hand pulled to her chest and wrapped around the soft, white stick, its presence there menacing. He reached out and tucked a red strand of painfully box dyed hair behind her ear, the action futile as it was once again displaced by the chilly winter wind. "I don't give a damn anymore. You shouldn't either."
Without another word, the girl pressed the cigarette between ruby red lips, cheeks hollowing, her middle and index fingers stiff in an attempt to replicate a pose she'd seen in vids.
"You're doing it wrong," the boy laughed and plucked it from her mouth, flipping it so that she had the right end, then held the lighter for her. His hand was a reassuring weight on her shoulder. "Like that. Now, when I spark it, you're gonna breathe in. Got it?"
She nodded delicately, a fast learner, and when fire lit, she took a quick puff. It was perhaps a little bigger than she'd intended, but she held it all in anyway, lungs igniting, never one to do things halfway; her eyes widened and when she couldn't take it anymore, she let out smoke with a great cough, chest heaving in a startled effort to rid herself of the sudden onslaught of toxins. She felt like she was going to puke, she was going to—
"Is there a reason you're here, Commander?"
Smoke burned in her lungs and poured from her mouth in steady puffs, the cigarette she had lit moments ago already burnt down to the filter. She held in her last hit, eyes watering with the effort it took before slowly releasing it, a wave of coughs wracking through her body and shaking her. This was her third one in ten minutes. Shepard looked over at Jacob, his back turned to her, and flicked the remainder of the cigarette in his direction, one last cough erupting from pouty pink lips before finally acknowledging him.
"Just wanted to talk, Mr. Taylor. Do you have a problem with talking?"
The incessant clicking at his access terminal ended abruptly and the man turned around to face her, steps landing heavily on the floor's tinny surface. Shepard sparked her lighter intermittently, the jittery nicotine high working its way through her body; from her position, the man appeared upside down, the absurdity of it almost making her laugh.
He stopped in front of her, arms crossing, suddenly appearing upright once again. "No, Commander. But I do have a problem with you chain smoking on my gun table."
Shepard shrugged, the metal beneath her shoulders chilly and sticking slightly to her clammy, pale skin. Her legs were spread out before her, bent at the knee, and a hand cushioned the back of her head against the table. The other worked at the lighter, forearm flexing against her stomach, and she bit her lip in thought.
"You know I got a real craving for a burger the other day, Jacob? A burger."
"Swell, Commander. What's this got to do with me?"
"When I was on Omega, I got a big fucking varren burger. I'd never tasted anything so good in my life." Shepard gestured animatedly, ignoring that Jacob had even spoken.
"That's cool, Commander. Still not seeing your point."
"I'm a vegetarian." Shepard sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the table, a pattern etched into the revealed portions of her back mirroring the surface top, rolling her shoulders and popping her neck. "Was. Am. Was. I don't fucking know anymore."
Jacob frowned, turning to lean against the side of the table. She looked over at him as if he had an answer, eyebrows furrowed in attribution to her confusion. Shepard's shoulders were slumped, change weighing heavily on her small frame though she often refused to show it. She picked at the bed of a fingernail, the silence an unwelcome presence as she awaited a response.
"Why you telling me this, Commander?"
Shepard ran a hand through chin length, shaggy hair, a sigh drawing out in impatience. "Who else am I supposed to tell? You got any recommendations?"
"Kelly." Obviously.
She rolled her eyes, feet now kicking obnoxiously, her heels biting sharply into the table leg. "She's weird. And I think she has scale itch."
"She's a professional."
"I don't need a professional."
"What do you need, Commander? Because what I'm seeing isn't making any sense." Jacob made no attempt at hiding his growing annoyance.
Shepard scooted back on the table, pulling her legs onto it and sitting Indian-style, once again slouching. She didn't know. She just knew she didn't feel right, she didn't feel like herself. Little things were different, things that bothered her; it was a shame she knew herself so well, because they were slight changes seemingly imperceptible to other people. Well, except for maybe Kaidan. He'd made it abundantly clear that he didn't think she was herself.
She looked down and traced circles into the surface top, bangs falling into her eyes and tickling her lashes. "I'm not really sure."
"You should go talk to the turian. You two seem pretty close."
Shepard snorted and blew air from her mouth up towards the ceiling, causing her bangs to puff out around her face, and contemplated lighting another cigarette. "He's probably in the middle of some calibrations. Besides that, he respects me too damn much to see me like this. I would never."
"I respect you." His response was immediate, unwavering, and he was unafraid to look Shepard in the eye. He was a real kiss ass. He was also really getting on her nerves.
"Well, you see, Jacob," she looked at him sardonically, her mouth curling into a scowl, "Your respect isn't something I care to keep." Whether or not it was true, he'd been sassing her the entire time she'd just been trying to talk to him.
It could've been the way she'd paraded on in, helping herself to a smoke without offering an explanation, but she didn't bother to entertain his perspective. She just knew that his unwillingness to let her speak was grating. He tensed, eyebrows rising, before he shook his head and walked back over to his terminal.
"Talk, then. Maybe I'll listen. Either way, you get it off your chest." He resumed typing before glancing at her from over his shoulder as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, though he'd been thinking about it the entire time. "Tell me something, though. What's the deal with you smoking? The Alliance is pretty strict on that."
"I'm not Alliance anymore, soldier," she said pointedly, eyeballing his Cerberus uniform. "So fuck it."
"That doesn't really answer the question, Commander."
Shepard pulled out the carton of cigarettes from her pocket, dropping it repetitively onto the table, the steady thudding of plastic against steel the only sound within the room. She thought very seriously about drawing out another, remembering the feel of smoke clouding in her lungs and wanting to relive it, but resisted the want for a while longer.
She'd been thinking for a long time about how to describe what she was experiencing to someone, but now that she finally had another person's attention, she found that she didn't know what to say. Minutes ticked by before she found her beginning and Jacob acted as if she wasn't even there, back turned to her, continuing on with whatever task she'd previously interrupted with her presence. Shepard preferred it that way.
"You were there for the Lazarus Project the whole time, weren't you?"
"Yeah, Commander, but you already know Miranda headed the project. She's the best woman to ask about whatever's bothering you."
She frowned and resumed sparking the lighter, eating away at most of the fluid without really caring. "I don't trust her. She'll run crying to the boss, telling him I've cracked."
"So you trust me?"
"That is…that's beside the point, Jacob. You're not up the Illusive Man's ass, so I'm going to talk to you. Will you just listen?"
He shrugged his shoulders, fingers studiously clicking, and Shepard heaved an exaggerated sigh before spreading back out on the table, this time lying on her stomach. She rested her forehead on folded arms and welcomed the darkness that encompassed her vision before continuing, voice muffled but strong.
"I can remember how things feel…well, how they're supposed to feel, but when I experience them, it's not the same. It's like my perception is all fucked up from how it used to be; I can smell and hear and feel and taste and it's all different from how I remember, sometimes it's the total opposite.
My favorite food used to be avocado, but I had some the other day and it tasted so horrible it made me physically sick. I used to like vanilla scented stuff, but now all I like is this floral shit, the kinda stuff that used to make my nose burn. I used to hate coffee, the stench, the taste, but I smelled some the other day and now it's all I can think about. I really want a fucking cup of coffee."
She peaked over at Jacob, trying to gauge his reaction, but the man stood in the exact same position, steady and back straight. The silence was a little uncomfortable, at least for Shepard, and she could tell that he was trying his damndest to be an ass.
"Coffee's in the mess."
Shepard snorted, muttered a "fuck you," and after a long pause, decided to answer his question with the hopes that maybe he'd stop being so contrary; she buried her face back into the crook of her arm. Weighing her odds, she decided it wasn't likely.
"I tried smoking because I used to do it a lot as a kid. I just wanted to know how it felt, just to see. It's the only thing that still feels the same way it used to, the taste of tobacco in my mouth…it's just, good. I've started doing it when I need to feel like I'm the same person I was before I died."
She pulled her face back out of the crook of her arm and rested her chin on it, eyes prickling in their sockets. "I remember how all of this shit should make me feel, but it doesn't evoke the same...experience," she grabbed at the air, trying to explain something that seemed inexplicable.
"How can I even be sure that this is me? Maybe it's my memories, maybe those are the things that got fucked up. Maybe these things are how they always were and it's just my mind that's all confused. My orgasm doesn't even feel the same, for fuck's sake."
"Maybe you should keep it less personal, Commander."
"Maybe you should grow up and stop acting like a prissy bitch. I can't express to you how I'm feeling through a censor, Jacob."
"Sounds like maybe you should talk to Jack." He'd said this with the barest hint of sarcasm, which was lost on Shepard.
"Are you fucking crazy? She'd just tell me to stop being such a pussy, and she hates herself too much for me to feel okay showing her we've got similarities."
There was a lull in conversation in which Shepard started clicking her nails against the metallic table top, hoping to get on his nerves the way his keyboard clicking was getting on hers. She watched him lazily out of the corner of her eye, and after a few particularly obnoxious mocking clicks, he stiffened.
"Go talk to your assassin, then."
Well, that was strangely acidic.
Shepard pursed her lips, ribs beginning to ache from how she'd been laying. There it was. The obvious reason he must have been so unwilling to speak with her as of late. It explained the dirty looks, too. Everything kind of clicked into place and she felt a headache developing rather quickly. She got off the table and walked until she was behind him, her hands on her hips and voice coming out caustically.
"Bitter, Mr. Taylor?"
"Hardly, Commander. I'm just busy."
How dodgy. If he could drop it, she would. "Were you even listening? This is a problem, I—"
"I don't really get it, Shepard. Why'd you lead me on?"
She sputtered for a second, confusion a blockage in her throat. "I didn't."
He faced her again, frowning, his body now a little too close to hers. She backed up in response.
"You did, Commander. All that, 'Oh, you're still so fit,' and 'I'm just interested in talking,' and 'Who cares if Cerberus is watching,' and what the hell is it with you women?" His voice imitated hers where necessary and Shepard couldn't help the laugh that bubbled upward. "Seriously, Shepard. I don't get it."
"There's not much to get, alright? You're cute and all, but I was just being friendly," Shepard shrugged her shoulders, eyebrows rising expressively, "It's not my fault you interpreted it as what you wanted to hear."
"That's pretty presumptuous, Commander."
"More like pretty obvious. You wouldn't be acting like such a dick if you didn't want it to be true," and after a few seconds of silence, she tacked on a small, "I'm sorry."
Jacob shifted on his feet and Shepard took out another cigarette, twirling it between her fingers to give her something to do, waiting impatiently for him to say something. His eyes were downcast, and if he felt in any way embarrassed or ashamed of himself, she couldn't tell. It didn't seem in him to feel either of those things, though, so she was going to assume that he wasn't.
"Let's just drop it." His voice was hard, guarded, and Shepard nodded her agreement.
"Can we be friends, though? I like you, Taylor." She put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it, getting in her last one before leaving.
"Sure, whatever. I'm down with that. I'm serious about the assassin, though. He seems like he probably knows that kinda shit."
"Noted," Shepard headed for the door, suddenly feeling a little fidgety. She'd known she'd eventually go to the drell for help, but that didn't make her feel any better about it; she didn't want to be obnoxious or needy or interrupt anything. She definitely wasn't going to mention the whole smoking business. "'Til next time, Mr. Taylor."
She shot-gunned the last of her cigarette, spots dancing before her eyes, and then flicked it, not caring where it landed as long as it didn't follow her out of there. Jacob just looked at her, unimpressed.
"Don't tell Thane I was smoking. Don't tell anyone," then, jokingly and with a smile, hands in her pockets, "And don't tell anyone we're friends, either. Or that I apologized to you."
He laughed, shaking his head, and turned back to whatever it was he was doing. "Later, Commander."
The door closed behind her with a hiss and she scratched the back of her neck, suddenly feeling like it was a mistake to be so open with anyone. Jacob probably thought she was crazy, and he was likely feeling even more sour now that she'd officially friend-zoned him. What a waste of time that had been. She stopped in front of the elevator and pressed the button spastically, wanting to kick the thing in for taking so long.
"If it helps, I don't think that will make the elevator arrive any faster, Commander."
Shepard grumbled and the door dinged open and she took the opportunity to disappear inside, not specifically acknowledging Kelly with a real response. She had a headache and she felt woozy. She really should have taken it easy on the cigarettes, and the feel of butterflies fluttering about in her tummy wasn't really remedying the situation. She really fucking hated elevators.
She stood outside of life support with her arms crossed, chewing on her bottom lip, bouncing on the balls of her feet with nervous energy. She was debating whether or not to go in, the problems weighing down on her shoulders more than probably beyond fixing, not to mention beyond even being able to be explained in a way that might make sense. Shepard was at a real loss.
On one hand, it was fairly likely that he wasn't busy, something she could conclude based on the green pad lit up and staring her in the face. On the other, she'd not really talked to him in a while, once again returning to her habit of avoiding him in order to prevent any potentially awkward situations from arising. They hadn't discussed…certain actions, and it wasn't exactly fair of her to come to him with a problem after basically ignoring him for the past week.
Shepard needed help, though. She felt like she was cracking, like she couldn't go it alone in silence for much longer. She was terrified, the vividness of memories long passed sneaking up at her when least expected, nightmares in the dead of the night occurring with increasing intensity; she needed someone. She hated feeling so helpless.
"Ah, Siha, did you need something?"
The commander startled at the rumble behind her, hand flying over her heart and her breath gasping, looking back at the drell with widened eyes; she tapped the pad and the door opened, and as she walked, her voice came out in exasperation. "Shit, Thane, you scared the hell out of me."
"My apologies. You'd been standing there for so long that I thought I should say something," he took his usual place at the desk facing the ship's core and Shepard followed suit, mildly mortified at having been caught staring blindly at a damn door. "You seem troubled."
"You could say that," she said as she glimpsed the mug he'd carried into the room with him, a rich aroma smacking her straight in the face. "Is that coffee?"
"Yes, would you like some?" Thane slid the cup towards her with the barest hint of a smile, translucent lids flicking vertically and with ease.
"Yeah, thanks. It smells so good, I've gotta know if I really like this shit." She raised the mug to her lips, sipping gently, mindful of the liquid's hotness. Steam wafted out and warmed her face, and when her tongue was met with the black coffee's bitter flavor, she practically convulsed. "Oh my god."
"It's odd you have never had something so human as coffee."
"Well, I mean, I have. Um…it's hard to explain," she laughed weakly and sat the cup down, rubbing her forehead as if strained. "It kind of involves what I wanted to talk to you about, actually," Shepard paused, glancing up to look him in the eye. "But first, I think I need to apologize. So…I'm sorry."
She rubbed the back of her neck, teeth worrying her lip. Damn, but she'd been doing a lot of apologizing lately.
"Whatever for, Siha?" His face showed nothing more than curiosity, clearly not understanding what she was talking about. She felt even more embarrassed.
"Really? I mean, I've been avoiding you again, and now it seems like I'm only here because I need something. I've been kind of rude…I…don't you think?"
He blinked at her, arms folded in front of him. This was so awkward.
Finally, "From what I've read of your species, I was under the impression that it is customary, particularly for human males though not unheard of in females, to become distant for a short time after having a sexual encounter with another. I was not concerned."
So she was acting like a dick guy after a one night stand and they hadn't even gone all the way. She had issues. Shepard rubbed her eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh, slouching in her seat. "No, Thane, my behavior's been…I've been unfair to you. I'm just, I'm not sure what to…do. Or think."
His brow lifted and he sat back in his chair. "About what, Shepard?"
That was a sure sign he'd just taken that the wrong way. "It's not about us, don't worry, it's me," she brushed hair out of her face, rubbing her forehead. " I don't…feel right."
Thane's expression remained unchanged, smooth. "Elaborate, Siha."
She sat for a second, and as she looked at him, his eyes warm and accepting, she felt miserable. Shepard knew that if she opened her mouth, she wouldn't stop. She was going to lay it all on him, unfair certainly to him, but also something she felt like was a betrayal to herself and to her status as a commander. She needed a cigarette. She wanted to drink.
She wasn't supposed to have problems, and if she did, she was supposed to deal with them herself. She sure as fuck wasn't supposed to be spilling them out to her crew. She popped her knuckles, a nervous tick, and Shepard knew she was going to lay herself bare. As she began to speak, her cheeks flushed in panicked frustration.
"I'm not me. Everything is just different, and I mean beyond the upgrades and obvious changes that were made. I…I woke up in a body that isn't mine, this isn't me," her hand was splayed out on her chest and she was almost frantic, breathing abnormally, but she carried on, wanting desperately for someone not herself to understand.
"The things I eat, they don't taste the same, the way things smell, the way color attracts my eyes…these eyes in my head, they aren't even mine. I'm only alive because Cerberus needs to use me. This body that you like, even this person, I don't even know if it's me, Thane. I can't even trust my own memories.
It's all fabricated, every part of me, strung together in a lab, made to look like who I used to be, made to talk the way I would have, but it's not…it's…"
She flinched at the feel of wetness dripping down her cheeks and when a roughened thumb rubbed gently underneath her lashes in order to prevent the tears that were beginning to rapidly collect in the corner of her eye from falling, she wanted to leave. Shepard jerked away from the table, her chair clattering behind her, and if Thane was startled, she didn't notice.
Shepard all but ran for the door; if she didn't get the hell out of there, she was going to have a panic attack. Her head was fogged and she felt like she was swimming, suddenly hot and sweating, feverish. She felt foolish for speaking of it, for not ignoring it like she did everything else; it all seemed so melodramatic, the bringing it up and then storming out, and she wished she'd never done it.
Hands were around her, petting at her hair, turning her around, pulling her into a warm chest; the dull scent of leather was obscenely comforting and when she tried to twist away the first time, lashing out almost violently, she rapidly found that she didn't want to. Shepard allowed Thane to comfort her, to hold her more tightly against him, and before long, her arms were clinging to his back and her eyes were squeezed tightly closed.
He whispered into her ear things she didn't understand but felt soothed by anyway, and she focused on syncing her rapid breathing with his heart's steady thudding beneath her.
A hushed voice, chest rumbling against her, "Would you like to take a seat?"
She nodded, angry at herself, and forcefully wiped tears from her eyes. She wanted to flee but was unable to go back to avoiding Thane as she had been. She was a mess.
He led her by the elbow to his cot, sitting her down and running a hand through her hair before taking a seat next to her. She pulled her legs onto the small bed and crossed them, resting her elbows on her thighs, and stayed silently with her face in her hands. Her entire frame shook.
"I don't cry. I don't know what this is, I don't cr—"
"Siha, stop." He uncovered her face and shifted bodily towards her, one leg curled underneath him and the other dangling off of the cot, foot resting on the floor. "You needn't feel shame in crying, in finding release."
She shivered as he cupped her cheeks, stroking underneath her eyes with his thumbs. "Yes, I should. I'm not this weak, sniveling fucking person, I'm not."
He continued stroking her cheeks, frowning, unmoving; the calm person he always was. He seemed to think quietly before addressing her. "Have you ever been caught in the pouring rain without cover and happened to get a droplet of water in your eye?"
"Yeah, I guess." She didn't have a clue where he was going with this.
"Our way of seeing is very different, Siha, but I'm certain you noticed that just before you blinked that droplet away, your vision was for a moment magnified." He paused, awaiting her confirmation and chasing away another tear with the brushing of his fingertips before continuing. "It is sometimes weeping that helps one to see things more clearly."
She shook her head, his hands pulling away from her face slightly, and she tried desperately to keep the tears from continuing. "Please, Thane, stop.I can't fall apart like this."
A moment lingered between them and neither dropped their eyes.
Her breathing was harsh and she felt a blockage in her throat; her nose burned, her eyes stung, and she was deeply and utterly confused. "I'm so scared."
He grasped her shoulders, squeezing comfortingly, searching the depths of clear, blue eyes. "It will always be safe to mourn here, Siha. You needn't be afraid of letting go."
She couldn't handle being told that it was okay to cry; no one had ever let her, no one had ever told her that it was okay. Shepard's bottom lip quivered and her face crumpled, tears now streaming freely. She hadn't cried since she was thirteen, and she'd spent a lot of time afterwards telling herself that she never would again.
He pulled her to him and stroked her hair, Shepard burying her face deeply into his chest, and her first sob wracked through her body, gut wrenching and soul deep.
With her face hidden and her arms wrapped around him, she allowed her tears to escape freely. Staying in control, what had been easy for her before, became all but impossible with Thane offering her his shoulder to lean on. It was too much, just knowing that there was someone other than herself who both knew the weight she carried and cared about it. All of the tight control she'd wrapped around herself, the restraint, was broken, and she let it all out.
"That's it, my siha." He kissed the crown of her head, rubbing her shaking back and embracing her impossibly tighter. "I will assist you in carrying your burdens for as long as I am able."
Shepard shuddered against him, sobbing audibly, and clenched her hands into fists around the leather of his jacket in order to prevent herself from popping apart at the seams; not many people had offered Shepard empathy in her lifetime and loneliness struck her, wrenching sobs from her with renewed vigor, her lungs beginning to ache from her desperate attempts at containing the wails.
Shepard had always been a silent crier, the type whose tears would fall but no sound would be elicited, but she was now outright weeping. She'd never cried like this, not even as a child, and it at first embarrassed her. She'd never heard such noises being torn from her, the sound of them both sad and pathetic, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep them from coming.
She was shocked at the mess she had become.
Thane sat with Shepard patiently, petting her, whispering, holding her; when she realized that she'd not been met with snide comments about what a blubbering idiot she was, she stopped caring, stopped struggling to keep it from happening. In the circle of Thane's arms, she felt at peace with herself falling apart. She wept for a long time, clinging to Thane like a lifeline, and she felt like she was never going to be able to stop.
Even after her tears eventually evaporated, she clung to him, unwilling to remove herself from his sheltering embrace, still one moment and shivering the next. She felt hollow, carved out and emptied, and her head pounded at the amount of tears she had shed. Shepard's entire face was flushed pink, her eyes rimmed red, but for once, she didn't care. Because he didn't care, either.
Their ears rang in the quiet aftermath.
"Are you better?"
"Yeah."
He continued to stroke her hair, fingers running through it, and he rubbed her back in gentle, circular movements. The silence stretched on before either of them spoke again.
"Thane?" She sniffled, her voice muffled.
"Yes, Siha?"
"I'm not really sure what to do after such a dramatic display of emotion."
He pulled her away gently, chuckling, and tilted her chin up; Shepard's eyes were immediately drawn to his, Thane's irises showing emerald green in the room's stark lighting.
"I would like to kiss you, Siha, but I'm afraid I'll frighten you away." He smiled, tone teasing, and she smirked in response.
"Kiss me."
"Do you promise you'll come back to me if I do?"
"Always."
Thane leaned down, his lips meeting hers in tender contact, and they kissed sweetly; neither of them deepened it, both wanting it to be lingering and chaste. Shepard pulled away slowly, eyes still closed, lips parted, and she felt remarkably better though her cheeks were still damp.
"Now, this problem you've spoken of…" He shifted, scooting up onto the cot and leaning against the wall. "You are feeling different in body?"
She licked her lips and pressed them together, looking down at her hands. "Yeah. A lot different. It's just, everything. Everything is all messed up from how I remember."
He nodded, appearing to consider what she'd said and maintaining eye contact, watching the way she anxiously brushed the palm of her hand against her sweat-dampened forehead.
"It is understandable that you're so upset at not being able to experience the same…sensations. I imagine it must be quite jarring." He paused, reaching out to stroke her fingers. "However, I am puzzled as to why you feel that you are not the same individual as you were before."
"I've told you, Thane, everything just feels fucking weird." She shifted her weight on the firm cot, enjoying the way Thane was playing with her middle and ring fingers as if amazed that the two weren't fused as his were. Her voice softened, still altered from her sobbing, and she briefly bit her lower lip, cheeks heating. "Like the other night, um…I've never felt anything like that before. It was like I was a fucking virgin or something."
"Surely you flatter me, Siha."
She ducked her head and laughed openly, cheeks dimpling. "Yeah, maybe that part's a coincidence and you're just that good."
He smiled at her and leaned forward to kiss her dampened cheek, nuzzling her affectionately. "Enough. Perhaps you can give me a little more detail on your predicament. How long have you been feeling like this?"
"Since I 'woke up.' I mean, it's obvious they weren't able to recreate my body in exactly the same way it had been. It's weird to be able to look at your own hands and realize your fingers aren't as long as they used to be. Jacob told me I was basically a pile of congealed scraps when they found me."
Thane's grasp tightened around her fingers and she looked back up at him. His brow was furrowed, and he met her gaze with an intensity she'd never be able to muster. She smiled. "Finally someone who feels as uncomfortable about that as I do."
"Continue, Siha." His voice betrayed no emotion.
"Okay," she nodded. "So I realize that this body is different, but I don't understand how this can be the same person inside with that being the case."
"Explain to me why."
"Because no matter how hard I try, I can't make this self go back to being how I was before. I can't make this self not like meat or the color pink or lavender, of all things. I can remember the delicious taste of avocado on my tongue, but these taste buds, they reject that memory. How can I be the same? I'm not."
"I see. So you subscribe to the idea that it is the way you sense things that cultivates who you are?"
She scratched her head, mouth scrunching as she bit the inside of her cheek as well. It sounded strange when he put it that way. "Well, let's say I go on a date with a guy I've only just met. In order to get to know me, he's most likely going to ask me about my favorite things and interests." She shrugged, lips pursing together in thought. "If I had gone on a date with said guy two years ago and then done so again in the present, he would think those dates had been with two different people. I'm different. This just, it isn't me and it disturbs me. I don't know how else to say it."
"That example is immaterial, Siha. I wouldn't be able to decipher your personality through the trading of a few inane facts about your preferences. It is the equivalent of saying that if you and I were to have the same favorite color, we'd be the same people. How you perceive outside stimuli has everything to do with the body and nothing to do with the soul. The soul is what makes you who you are."
Shepard felt…stupid, suddenly. She was placated by that answer, almost awed, but needed more, mostly playing devil's advocate in order to assuage the pessimist in her. "It still changes you. You make decisions based on how you perceive the world."
"Simple ones, Siha. It is the difference between choosing lavender over vanilla because you believe one smells nicer than the other and deciding whether to protect an innocent or to murder them. One is a determination of the body and the other is of the soul." He paused, seeming to switch points. "Do you believe that I stopped being who I am when I opted to have surgery to alter the way I perceive Hanar speech patterns?"
Her eyebrows furrowed and she licked her lips, clasping her hand around his. She ignored the first part because she didn't know what to say, but she was very deeply mollified by it. "No, but that's not the same thing. You're just seeing extra things, not completely changing how you feel about stuff you could already see."
"I'm incapable of seeing dark reds now, Siha. I promise you my soul is the same."
"I fully trust that. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm not just worried about feeling things differently…it just, it makes me wonder what else has been changed about me. It makes me worry that maybe some things were done intentionally, that Cerberus purposefully tweaked me so I'd act the way they want me to."
She looked back down at her hands, now wringing them rather than entwining them with his, feeling frustrated at being incapable of possessing Thane's eloquence. "If they could bring me back to life, who says they couldn't have tampered with my soul?"
"Cerberus may have been able to recreate your body, Siha, but they would be wholly incapable of fabricating your soul. You are just as you were, put into another body in order to sustain your ties to this galaxy."
Shepard conceded, once again pacified by his use of reason; that didn't stop her from needing him to resolve her other worries. "Miranda once mentioned that if she'd been in full control of the Lazarus Project, she'd have ensured that there'd been some type of control chip implanted inside of me, but the Illusive Man prevented it from happening. I…sometimes I wonder if I fully believe that."
"Because," she heaved a sigh and Thane passively listened, seeming to take in everything she said like a dried sponge to water. "I ran into one of my former crewmates during our first real confrontation with the Collectors. Um…remind me to tell you about him later. Anyway, he assured me that the old me would never work for Cerberus and that I was a traitor for defecting from the Alliance.
I took out an assload of Cerberus operatives before I died and I fully loathe the organization, so it makes me question why I'm doing this rather than branching out independently. I don't fucking question myself about this shit, Thane. I never have, but now, here I am, sitting here doubting myself as a commander. It's not like I don't have my own reasons, because I do, it just makes me wonder about the validity behind them."
She shivered, a chill permeating through her, before continuing on with her point. "When I think control chip, I think something obtrusive, like an electric device that administers shocks when I do shit they don't want me to do or something equally as irritating and/or debilitating. What if it's something more subtle, though, and it's slowly whittling away at my resolve without my knowing it?"
This next silence was heavy, a deadweight on the both of them, and Shepard rested her arms on her knees. Thane reached out to touch her, his hand settling against the back of her neck, and the commander closed her suddenly heavy lids.
"Only time will tell, Siha. And for that, I am here."
"I…" She was overwhelmed, her sense of relief as crushing as it was crippling. He didn't have a real answer for it, not this time, but the fact that he offered to stay with her despite the fact that she could be totally fucked moved her. "Thank you, Thane."
"Siha, you needn't thank me. But you're welcome."
Shepard shouldn't have been comforted by that, but she was. And he was right. Time would tell. She crawled the small distance between them on the sturdy cot and pushed at him until he was lying flat so that she could curl up on top of him. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply as his arms wrapped around her.
"I'm sorry I've been afraid of you. Of us."
"There are many things to fear, Siha." Thane stroked her cheek and then inclined his head. "Being loved is not one of them. Allow me to love you."
Shepard almost got up and left, but thought better of it. It was too much, the amount he was offering her; she couldn't deal with it. Kaidan had provided something she could feel was casual, he'd made it easier for denial, for her to believe that it wasn't a solid relationship. She couldn't love again, had made it a point to tell Thane in the beginning that it wasn't love, and it was slow to settle in that he wasn't asking for her to love him; he just wanted to love her, even if she couldn't return the feeling.
Shepard placed her forehead against Thane's and closed her eyes, absently sliding her fingertips along the sensitive skin of his cheek. He dragged a finger up her spine and she arched, then cuddled more deeply into him, feeling warmed and wanted.
"Okay, Thane. I'm done running."
She would never tell him the truth of it, of what she'd realized it actually was. Shepard would never tell him that her bouts of distances with him were because she was terrified of loving a dying man. He was wrong, because loving, that was something to fear.
But Shepard had learned not to be afraid of anything.