Chapter 4
Miraculously they survived the Collector base, all hands. Building up to it he had believed they would live, had hoped he would not. It would have been a clean, clear end with his affinity for the dramatic. Had he traded his life for hers at any point it would have been a wonderful symmetry. Unfortunately for poetic concerns she was omni-competent and the opportunity did not present itself.
The future was unknown, undecided and un-discussed. She kept him close at hand, insisting he move to her cabin, out of Life Support.
Without any knowledge of her plans, the only clue he had was that squad members were disappearing at drop points. He understood the more unsavory members of the team leaving. He of course was one of them. He understood the loss of such as Jack or Zaeed, those whose loyalties were limited and perhaps incendiary. He did not understand Garrus leaving.
With the crew disappearing precipitously he grew alarmed and suspicious. She was not cold or distant, in fact his suspicion grew as she became kinder and even solicitous. Fairly certain he would not be dumped unceremoniously on a destination such as Palaven, he was concerned as he was the last aboard and they were headed to the Citadel, EDI had told him.
When his Siha had the gall to bring him a cup of tea he took it from her hand carefully, set it down and then yanked her by the wrist into his lap, took her face by the chin and looked into her beautiful, treacherous eyes.
He said "Tell me what you are very carefully not telling me, Siha."
She raised a brow and said "I hate fucking Drell tea. I don't know how you can stand it. Have the decency to drink alcohol."
He laughed shortly and said "I haven't further time for patience, have I? Are you going to tell me voluntarily?"
She shook her head "Hell no. I thought you'd met me."
He smiled at her warmly and said "I have."
He kissed her and she relaxed, which was her second mistake. She kissed him back in relief believing the argument was over, and it was, just not the way she thought. If she enjoyed leaving him in the dark, he would do the same. Her wrath was to be avoided. Not at all costs, but certainly in this case, she deserved being bypassed as she had hoped to bypass him. Following her he would do without question. Being left behind was unacceptable.
He enjoyed for its own sake each stroke of her tongue, the brush of her lips, her ever-present hunger and need. Her muscles relaxed, her lips grew heated and her eyes drifted blissfully closed. He knew her, knew how long it would take for tiremit to warm and loosen her muscles, which she enjoyed, and her will, which she thought she understood.
Moving his mouth to her ear, her face cradled in his hands, he said "Tell me, Siha, what you have planned. Tell me what your duplicitous mind has imagined will happen." He had always been terribly careful with venom, his words as pruned and cultivated as a bonsai. She had always been prone to suggestion under its influence and he had given her no cause to fear he might be influencing her mind.
Once again foretold but not foreseen, her brows drew together in confusion, and she said distractedly "I don't want to tell you."
He nuzzled at her throat, licked at a scar there idly and said "You will tell me and then you will forget telling me." Realization hit her and she tried to struggle physically and mentally but was not able to and he was viciously pleased.
She said "You devious fucking Drell asshole."
He smiled and said "That is not a disputed or unknown fact, Siha. Tell me your plans."
The conflict was on her face as she said "I'm taking you to the Citadel. You need to go to Huerta. Kolyat is there and he needs you."
This was not what he expected. There must be more. His arms tightened on her and he kissed her again, loving, seeking and afraid. "And what will you do, my beloved? It will please you to tell me, and then it will please you to forget. You will remember only that you brought me a cup of tea because you thought of my needs, and I was grateful for your gesture of goodwill. So grateful that I pulled you by the wrist into my lap and kissed you, touched you until you were senseless in my arms." He added, because he was already here, it was already true and he simply wanted to say it and let it echo unseen through her mind "You have always enjoyed being senseless in my arms, Ruth. You will always enjoy it."
She closed her eyes, smiled a smile of expressively barbed pleasure that made him lean in and kiss her again. When he pulled back she said "You do have a way with your hands. And your mouth. And your voice. Everything you do feels so damned good it should be illegal, and I suspect it is. In this case I'm sure it is. I'm going to forget, and that's a shame." Her mouth tightened and she said "I'm going into custody for the decimation of a Batarian colony, 300,000 people. When I was gone for four days and I simply couldn't stay away from you although I was supposed to be in the Med Bay not bleeding to death…I had done a favor for Admiral Hackett. The Reapers would have come through a relay. I destroyed it. I have to go finish what I started or I will be a fugitive and there will be war with the Batarians. I only do one thing well, you know that."
He pulled back and searched her face for truth even though he knew it was true. He was stunned. He said with focus "You will be certain that there are two things you do very well, Ruth. I adore you and you must never doubt that you are good at being loved." He watched her face ripple from cold reality to subjective adoration, and he knew she had her doubts. He could pull them up from the root. He caressed her skin and said "Do you monitor this room yourself? Have you any recordings of what goes on here? Is your Omni Tool activated?"
She answered no to these questions and then said "Wish I'd thought of it though…"
He smiled and then said "Have you told anyone of these plans, Siha, does anybody know your intentions? EDI or Joker perhaps? Or have you told them only the destination?"
He face shuttered "Nobody. You can't go into custody. If you're on the ship when I turn the Normandy over, you will be taken and you will spend your final agonizing days having your mind flayed by black ops Asari Matriarchs who will peel your brain back layer by layer. That's the best case scenario because if your name is known and you are behind locked doors you can't escape, you could be taken, passed around as a prize, bid on for the right to torture you to death. I can't risk that. If I warned you, you'd object. Forcefully. Kinda like now, huh?" She laughed. "Ah, fuck. Underestimated you again. I'm sorry, Thane, you deserve better. I've fucked it up. Should have known not to bring you tea. I blame your stupid fucking volcano story. It was a foolish indulgence. That's what I get when I allow a motherfucking Drell asshole access to my head. Thought maybe you'd just stick to my body, but nooooo."
She was trying to protect him. He closed his eyes and tried to think and she said "Hah. Now you feel bad about it. Good. Bad enough to take off the whammy and let me go like a decent person?"
He laughed "No, I am not that foolish."
She shrugged "Had to try."
Thane said "EDI, you have been monitoring this conversation."
EDI's voice chimed "Yes."
Thane said "Having been unshackled, congratulations on your swift assimilation into the world of ambiguity, I must ask two favors. Are you able to pilot the Normandy's shuttle remotely?"
EDI said "Yes."
Thane said "Excellent. When we reach the Citadel I shall be leaving, but with your assistance the Normandy's shuttle may come under my control. I have not been paid for my services, but as it is a Cerberus shuttle, I will claim that as my fee. The Alliance will be able to replace it. I would be able to pilot it to Earth close to the Normandy's signal undetected, in the company of my son under an assumed name. I would be able to alter the shuttle's registry and identification systems, provide those systems to you for your potential future use. If found after the fact, to authorities I would be a verifiably ill Drell seeking the desert for my health. For Shepard I would be an escape route if she changes her unreasonably stubborn mind. She has abandoned all other courses of action. She has no one else who would know or think to help her. Although I might otherwise applaud her attempt at nobility, in this case it is foolhardy."
Shepard said "Hey!" Then she shrugged and said amiably "Well, foolhardy is kinda what I do."
Thane continued "I do not trust the Alliance or their care of her. Is that acceptable to you?"
EDI replied "That is acceptable."
He continued "You understand the delicacy of what I have just exposed and how that could be used against Commander Shepard if discovered? Please for her protection remove all record of this conversation. It would put the ship, you and Commander Shepard at risk and she is at risk due to trying to protect me. I wish to protect her. I will attempt to do so if given the opportunity despite the appearance of my current methods. I am otherwise out of strategic options. It is possible she will murder me, not undeserved, if this conversation is revealed. She does not wish to murder me and I shall die soon anyway, she needn't hasten my demise. She has other priorities. To avoid detection, please loop in surveillance of my meditations, it should raise no suspicion. I have created hours of timed and predictable footage for your use at your discretion in this or other compromising conversations that may be wrested from your control when the Normandy is handed over to Alliance protocols. It would be best if you create records of the shuttle being destroyed before I take ownership. Alter the biometric logs to correspond to the occupancy of your surveillance. For your own safety I would also suggest removing any monitoring that reveals you as an AI rather than a VI. Please assist me in this endeavor. You know I mean her no harm and only wish to prevent self-inflicted damage as the result of neglect of detail."
EDI replied "I understand. I see the necessity for this and the corresponding surveillance has been either destroyed or altered, biometric logs matching. Is there anything else you require?"
His Siha muttered "You fucking guys are unbelievable."
Thane said "Thank you, EDI. It has been an unexpected pleasure to serve with you. Please stay in touch with me and if you have further questions regarding strategy, human behavior or questions of Drell origin, please contact me through means that make you most comfortable. I am at your service. Please analyze the configuration of my Omni Tool and assure yourself contacting me through that method is acceptable."
EDI said "Thank you, Mr. Krios, I would be delighted to do so."
Thane said "Please, call me Thane."
EDI said "Thank you. Thane."
Shepard said quietly "Don't come to Earth. You'll get caught. You'll die."
Thane said solemnly "Siha, do not fear me being tortured. That is a command. Were I unable to escape capture there are means of suicide that cannot be detected or taken from me. My death is imminent and not a concern. Otherwise those would be excellent reasons for any other man."
Shepard said "Why didn't I fall for those guys?"
Thane said "A question to consider for another time."
She shook her head "No, I know the answer. Thane, I'm sorry I couldn't find another way."
He bowed his head to hers and said "And I am sorry I do not have time left for patience."
She said "How many people have you killed after seducing them?"
His smile was suited to his words "Forty seven."
She whistled lightly "Impressive. I believe it."
He inclined his head and said "It is more work keeping you alive than it was killing those individuals combined."
She laughed "Yeah. I believe that too."
He tilted her chin and said "Ruth, thank you for trying to protect me, caring for my health and for the life I might have with my son."
She said "You're welcome. But you're going to ignore it."
He said "I have made note of your intentions. They humble and surprise me. I am going to ignore what you want for me and provide what I want for you."
She smiled and said "I should be really mad, but this is the best damned hijacking ever. I'm sorry I'm not going to remember. I like it when you drive."
He laughed despite himself "That is the venom talking, Siha."
She leaned in and kissed him, took her face in her hands and said "Don't. Come. To. Earth."
He rubbed his cheek against hers and said "Don't go to Earth."
She said "I have to."
He nodded solemnly and said "Then I must."
She sighed and said "Can we move on to you being grateful for my goodwill now?"
He said "How long until we reach the Citadel?"
She said "Three days."
He nodded and said "You will find me extraordinarily grateful for the next three days, Ruth."
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Ruth with her betrayals experienced and her mission completed was a revelation. He spent his time coaxing each whim of pleasure from her mouth, from her body, not only unrepentant for violating her privacy but actively grateful for having done it. He attended to her mind, her body and her heart with all the care at his disposal. In the emptying, echoing ship she was laughter and stories and lingering hands.
He ensured that his death would be the trigger to restore her memories. He would only borrow her will, and only to stay with her as much as he could. He would return it to her, whole, and she was right. It would be a shame if she did not remember. It was her mind, and his, and he would gift it back to her freely when she was no longer able to kill him herself.
She understood him. Watching her freed from fear of his torture, if not death, freed from inhibition of desire and freed for a few brief days of the weight of her mission, she was a person to him. He was a person to her.
He moved delicately through her thoughts and tore her doubts up from the root, fanned her understanding of how much he loved her into flame and banked deep embers. He gave her tools and permissions to protect her from the inevitable pain of losing him. He planted careful seeds in the barren places in the hope that she would live beyond him and find the peace she had granted him while he was alive.
She would go to custody, and the Reapers would continue their attack, and most people had the same amount of time to live that they did. He and his Siha were forearmed and fierce, and those who would die were neither. She was still his burning gift, the memory of her flames seared, branded into him where no one else would see but her. He would live out his shortened days remembering her face and the fall of her hair and the deep, slick pleasure of her tightening around him, her voice in his ears and down his spine, her ever-present clasping hand in his. Each part of his body was tied to hers, a memory, a thought, a devotion.
This was love, this was cherishing between two unpracticed people, stumbling and stuttering, but not failing.
He was not at peace, he did not meditate, the roiling and longing and piercingly sweet pain of knowing these were likely his last days with her despite his intentions hastened his hands to her and in a falling rush he had no time for regret, only the greedy gathering of each moment.
At the end of the three days she did not, as he had assumed, have him drugged or escorted from the ship.
She declared shore leave, walked through the Citadel with her hand in his, went out to an elaborate dinner. She wore a magnificent dress he tore from her, stayed in a sumptuous hotel room.
She said no goodbye, gone by the second morning. The Normandy was scheduled to leave, and EDI alerted him. Kolyat was ready and met him at the port.
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He and Kolyat had time to become accustomed to living near to each other for the first time since Kolyat's youth. Although Thane had no true right to be, he was intensely proud of his son's respectful demeanor, internal strength and acceptance of the bizarre requests of his father.
They settled in the desert as an ill Drell and his son, true enough as that was. Thane grew aware that he was failing. He had had no time to take stock recently. His breath came harsher, the loss of the burning light of his Siha rather like the rough failure of adrenaline, sending his body and the lengths to which he could push himself down a jagged incline. His 7% loss of function over time had devolved after taking stock into a 24% of loss of capacity.
The desert was bleak, stark, eerily beautiful and a comfort to his lungs, to his heart and to his son.
It took weeks to determine where his Siha was held, it took months to infiltrate the facility, loop surveillance, discover patterns, bribe and disable and misdirect.
It appeared 76% of his capacity was still sufficient.
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The hours of 1:45 am to 4:15 am were the most viable, and after a few practice observations of the patterns at that time in the morning to ensure escape route as well as entry, he was able to reach her by 2:07 am in the second month, first week, fifth day of her incarceration.
She was not in a maximum security facility. She was under voluntary house arrest, therefore security was lacking in sophistication. This was not a prison, but it was a military building. A prison would not have been impossible either, but it would have involved more bribes.
She was under surveillance, but it was easily bypassed as the loop of her sleeping would be replaced by the live feed of her still there in the morning check in. No cause for alarm. She was not at risk for breaking out, she was here voluntarily. He understood. She was after her command, her identity, her legacy.
She was asleep and he indulged in long minutes watching her breath rise, her hair shift, the hood of her eyelids. Having been driven here, knowing she would not leave, knowing she would not want to risk him, he was aware this was obsession, his inability to accept reality as it stood.
If anybody would understand that, it was her.
He needed her, and it was that simple.
He reached out a finger to smooth the hair back behind her ear.
Within 2.7 seconds, that finger was broken.
She grabbed his hand, yanked him forward and had the finger bent back to snapping in that time frame. He should have known better, he truly should.
Within 5.4 seconds, she knew him.
With her hand ready to slam into his throat, she faltered, her eyes wide and her mouth snarling.
She took his breath. She had always taken his breath.
He was speechless, the sharp pain in his hand no match for the reality of seeing her, being in a room again that bore her scent, her eyes the source of the only light he wanted.
Her face flashed through surprise, shock, joy and then settled on fury. She aimed for his face but he was not there when her fist arrived. Further fury.
She said "Damn it, hold still."
He said "I am no longer under your command, Siha, I owe you no allegiance."
Having only a few moments to recover, the betraying emotions faded from her face. She asked neutrally "Why are you here, Thane?"
He said simply "I wished to see you."
She started to laugh and said "You wished…" She sighed heavily and said "You're supposed to be spending time with Kolyat, quietly and tastefully being angry at me."
He considered and said "Kolyat is near. What I feel for you is not anger."
She laughed again and said "Is he well? Are you well? Other than your finger."
He said gently "Kolyat is well. I am pleased to see you."
Her head tilted and her brows drew together in distress "You are not well."
He conceded "I am not well."
Anguish, helplessness and pain crowded in on her face and she sat with her face in her hands "You're an asshole, Krios."
He smiled. He sat down next to her, took her hand in his uninjured one. She leaned on his shoulder and he kissed her hair. Peace and the rightness of place, at her side, flooded him. This, more than anything was what he sought. It was where he belonged, and that fulfilled, he was content. He said gently "I know you wish for me to be safe, but you cannot provide that. I cannot give that to you either."
She said softly "Say what you would want to say if you could."
He said into her hair "These walls waste your time and your life, Ruth. Time and life that could be spent together. Time and life that could be spent in true preparation for what is to come. We could leave, now, through these walls, unseen and unmarked. We could leave Earth and spend what time is left to us somewhere knowing otherwise you would be alone, within these four walls, wasted. War will return and you will be needed and wherever you are at that time, you would rise to leadership. Leaving here will not cost you any future victory. You would be a freed creature, no longer bound by her own will, as I am no longer bound by your will. When the world tires of my presence, find Garrus and fight from Palaven. You will find the people who will fight with you. I will fail, and you will succeed, and your life will not be wasted within this voluntary box that your mind has constructed to hold you. Nothing and nobody can hold you if you do not choose for it to be so." It was cruel, and true, and would make no difference, but saying it was freedom. Saying it at her request was service of the same sort he had always provided. They both knew she could die in this room during a Reaper invasion. He had no hope attached to this truth, but it would stand as a gesture that someone else was in this room with her voluntarily.
Hearing it would not break her.
She should know he believed in her, that she would end this, that whatever her path, that was certain.
She sighed, shook her head slightly against his shoulder, squeezed his hand and said "I tried to do something good, Thane. I tried to keep you out of danger. Why did you have to go and fuck that up?"
He said "Perhaps being good does not suit you. Perhaps it does not suit me. You have made your choices, and I have made mine."
She said "You have to leave."
He said "I shall, and soon. There is little time."
She sighed heavily and said "I can't go with you."
He kissed her hair again "I know that, Siha. I wished to see you. I wished for you to be seen."
She squeezed his hand and said "You can't come back."
He smiled and answered "That is beyond your control. You wish to keep me safe and the only way you can prevent my return is to turn me in yourself. That would be counterproductive. Perhaps I should simply watch over you as you sleep. If you prefer to not know that I was here, I can arrange that."
She breathed in deeply and said ruefully "I'm usually good at threats."
He asked "Are you well?"
She considered and said "I am bored and angry. This is a nice change of pace. I'm sorry about your finger."
He said "I have missed you, Ruth."
She moved suddenly, swarmed into his lap and wrapped her legs around him, kissing him. Her lips traveled over his face, his jaw, his nose, his brows, his temples. She pressed his head back against the wall with the force of her kiss and his hands found their home in her hair, unmindful of the pain in his finger. The invigoration of life in her presence affected him as much as tiremit affected her.
He was dressed as a maintenance crew worker, a generated face shield would make him look familiar, human to others, and his voice could be altered to match the man he was impersonating. He was wearing a simple button-down blue shirt and she began unbuttoning it, her fingers brushing over the dog tags that were on his chest. She pulled back, looked at the tags, looked at his face, and leaned in for a lancing sweet kiss.
She drew back, pulled a strand of hair from her head and then tied it around the tags, binding them together. She tapped at them and said "To keep them from rattling. They shouldn't give you away."
His arms moved to fold around her but she pushed his shoulders back against the wall and said "Hold the fuck still. You may 'owe me no allegiance,' but -"
He said "That is a terrible impression of me."
She shoved again and said "Shut up. Hold still. I swear I'll break another finger."
He said "As you wish, Siha."
She laughed and said "Definitely heard bitch that time."
He held still and kept quiet under her teasing, revealing hands. She rolled her hips in brushing circles, exposed his skin and licked at him, kissed at him, bit at him, stroking her fingers over the lines of color defining him. He was hard, straining and fighting off the instinct to tear into her, restrain her, set the frenzy and need and drive that had brought him into this room loose on her body until she was screaming, to cover her mouth with his own so the screams would not be heard, but felt.
Her voice was warm, soft and muffled as she spoke between kissing him. "There's nothing to do here, Thane. Absolutely nothing to do, and I spend my time thinking of you." Her hands moved fluidly, removing her shirt but unwilling to move far to remove her pants or his, so she wriggled her way leg by leg from her loose shorts and freed his cock but left his pants otherwise on. She lifted her hips and leaned forward, guiding the tip of his cock to tease at her clit. She slid her body and arched her hips and pressed her hand to guide him along the crease of her body, but not inside.
She said "I should feel terrible about that. You're sick. Helpless even. You're a dying man, Thane, and I want to use your body mercilessly. I want to exhaust you. I miss your mouth, I can't tell you how much. I miss your voice. I miss the way your cock would twitch against my ass when you were asleep, and how that led to not sleeping anymore. Hell, Thane, if you want to die, if you're going out of your way to do it and you don't care, I volunteer to be the cause."
He said with a hoarse edge to his voice and pressured breath "That is perhaps not as much of a disincentive as you might hope."
She laughed, an easy sound with the flavors of lust and she said "Oh yeah. That's what I'm looking for. Say disincentive again."
The reckless joy her words and body brought him was amplified by her sliding her hips until he was inside her. She was panting and she found his hands with her own, pressing his hands to the wall bent-elbowed over his head, both careless of the broken finger, a sharp squeeze of pain in against the relief, release and torture of being with her, inside her, needed and clouding her thoughts as she clouded his.
She leaned forward, put more of her weight on her hands and pressed her breast to his mouth. He closed his eyes and the taste and scent of her sharpened, his tongue and teeth playing at her nipple as it hardened. She rode him slow, her head tipped forward to his, her hair a curtain down his face, over her breast, caught in his mouth and on his tongue. Her body and mind, so familiar and sought after brought him the fugue of recalling in short, bright bursts, other times and moments of touching her, talking to her, admiring her steel-lined thoughts that did not bend under his hands, only under her choosing to taste his skin. He no longer had concern for their souls, whatever they were either adamant and beyond his reach or fully used up as fuel in their bright burn of living and gone by their deaths, not an ounce remaining or wasted. She would not live long, he would not live long, but while he was here, he would defy every willful demand she made to stay away. Here, in this unique self-imposed prison, he met her without need to follow her orders unless they aligned with his own will.
As always sex ant tiremit made her physically weaker, her thoughts softer. She came with harsh groans in his ear and he deferred his own orgasm, refused to come at her command because he could, enjoying the squeeze and slide of her body but staying hard for her until she was exhausted, sweat binding her hair to her face.
He smiled against her breast when she came a second time, but her muscles were weak and her will fading and drained, ravaged by her body's need to succumb to her labor and reward. She licked at his frill and said "You are such an asshole."
He removed his mouth from her breast and kissed her, then murmured against her mouth "Release my hands, Siha."
She almost did immediately, reflexively, unaccustomed to following commands under tiremit because he never gave them, he had always used his body instead to direct her. He needed no such caution now, she was his, and she would serve his every whim and enjoy being senseless in his arms. She still resisted, contrary as was her nature and he enjoyed that as well, knowing her straining grip would give way to surrender. She said "Why would I want to do that?" Her hands were already looser, caressing in a slide away from his palms, from the nail marks she'd left.
He said "Because you miss my mouth, Ruth."
He did not have much time remaining, but he lavished her with the caresses he'd spent months imagining, traced the hollows and swells of her flesh with his hands and his mouth, committing her to indelible memory. He held her hand and gripped her hair and bent her throat back. He drove into her and felt her screams vibrate into his mouth. She was a different woman inside these walls, and he was a different man, better able to reach each other, touch each other, speak to each other of the currents rushing through their blood. She was not Shepard or Siha, simply his Ruth. My Ruth. My love. Words came easier here, where they were already forbidden but taking each according to their own needs and giving back with both hands.
When his time had passed he reluctantly moved her body to exactly where she had been when he arrived, to better loop the film, morphing and mapping her usual sleep patterns, which he had watched, mesmerized, for hours.
He kissed her temple and told her he must go.
She sighed and told him not to come back, her final utterance a sleepy, sated "I don't need this, Thane."
He smiled and stroked his fingers through her hair and said "Of course, Ruth. I understand."
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He returned to her, stolen hours, not every day, but he would manage to match his required conditions of entry every three days, perhaps. He spent a great deal of time with Kolyat, telling stories of the Normandy and their mission, asking about Kolyat's life, spending time as careful family.
Kolyat had checked in on him in the evenings, and although he had not been alarmed, he had noted when Thane was gone. Travel time was brief with a shuttle, but it was still a night's rest missed.
Thane tried a simple, new tactic. Telling the truth. He could lie and say he spent his time meditating in the desert, but instead he said "I visit Shepard in the evenings."
Kolyat had likely considered much worse, Thane realized, his imaginations positing assassinations every three days. Kolyat had said "When you speak of her…do you love her?"
Thane had inclined his head "I do."
Kolyat had smiled and said "I wish you all the blessings of the Gods, father. That is good. Does she love you?"
Thane had smiled and said "She does."