Chapter 9: Love in Ruins
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines.
She ran.
Her mind did not see the world for what it was. Her sight was blinded by ravenous ghosts. Rebar upon a storm wrecked sky. The splinters of rotting boards. Paper in the rain. Looking into the lonely night, a wish upon a nameless star. The bedtime stories told to break her will, the dreams that saved it. Voltage; doctors. The release of nothingness. The void.
She exploded through her door, tearing into the bathroom. Falling to her knees, her gut's meager contents climbed up to the floor. Eyes, blue. She wretched, a terrible pain; a fury that gave to trembling. The curve of his posture as he took his aim, holding the rifle close, so careful, with such affection. She coughed and sputtered; burning tears. Every time he looked her way, the halt of time; the push of her heart to the floor. Her body to the bed. Blistering warmth, a beautiful burden, then weightless. Gravity defied. The brutal pleasure of trusted skin, of desire tasted but not swallowed.
She wept into the toilet that her mouth had missed; her body rejecting – trying to abort the thing she knew to be true. Although her gut lay steaming on the floor it did not cure her of her sickness, for she was not truly ill. In her body hid a fever with a cure she could not have, an ache from a splinter she could not pull. The word. The fated thing she dared not speak lest it notice her and grow stronger. The emotion always felt before understood.
Contagion; the demons clawing from the prison of her flesh in a game never played before. An infection. A disease. She could not give them to another, she could never show their terrible faces, hidden just beneath her own. She would take them to the grave with her, to hell; to die in the dark from where they came.
She saw her face in the calm water, and knew. She would have to break his heart to save it.
He had seen her true face, and now he could not look away.
The turian watched her standing there; her body eclipsed by the lost majesty of Illos, the empire of rust. She was turned from away from him, as always now. What had happened to them? He felt that he lost every time he approached her, yet he could not keep away. Her pain, so piercing, drew him closer each time. His hands hurt with the memory of her touch. He had made her forget, if only for an instant, that they had shared his dream and had forgotten the worlds that lay between them, will all their unknown territories. She had drawn him into her, and there he suffered. He could not eat, he could not sleep. His thoughts entranced, enslaved, his flesh addicted. Knowing but not stopping, he approached her even though he sensed, deep down, how it would end.
She did not acknowledge him as he stepped onto the stage besides her, gazing at the hologram that lit her face with its amber light. "Shepard. How long before the drop?"
"A few."
He nodded, not knowing what to say besides the pounding question. He looked around, wiped his plates, and shifted his feet. The CIC was mostly bare, quiet as everyone prepared downstairs, yet he felt as if every word he spoke was deafening.
"Look, I'm not good at small talk," he started, looking nervously off into the distance, the words slipping off his smooth voice into scarcely more than a whisper, "but I wanted to know if there is something between us."
There. He said it. Relief, for a fraction of a second. But she did not move. Her eyes lay fixed on the false image of the planet.
Silence. Terrible, terrible silence. His knees threatening weakness, he stole a glance at her. Nothing. Her face was as still as the quiet.
"I-I can't…" he saw her eyes fall, betraying her, but he pushed forward, he had to – to know, to finally see, to feed the question that was devouring him alive. Each word was a knife that lacerated his tongue, each breath a swallow of smoldering coals. But he pressed on; brave.
"…stop…thinking about…you know."
He forced his mandible into motion.
"That night."
The words finally spoken hung there, off the edge of that cliff, his thrashing heart threatening to push him off of it, his palms so wet they wouldn't save him. "Shepard..." he whispered searching her eyes for an absolution that was not there, "…what was that?"
She never looked at him. She couldn't. She felt the fractures on her heart begin to shake in violent tremors. But he couldn't know that. What he had seen, that angel of fire, was gone; in its place a standing corpse. In desperation, he reached out to her and grasped her small hand; it was as lifeless as a cold stone.
"Shepard, please. Please look at me."
Her hand slipped away like sand through his fingers. He felt the last ray of light die from a vault he watched close before his very eyes.
"Nothing."
His mouth parted, his heart folding into a supernova within his chest.
"It was nothing. A mistake."
It burst. A thousand suns, his memories, with all their planets and satellites, destroyed. Annihilated. His hand fell. She moved her finger and pressed it to the board, shutting off the illusion of the world. His retinas burned in the absence of its light. Never looking at him, she turned her back and descended the stairs, leaving him on the platform, alone.
"Saren's down there. Everyone volunteered to go. I drew straws; looks like you're getting your man after all."
"Oh…good."
"It's what you wanted. Bring your rifle."
She turned to walk away.
"Shepard."
His heart flatlined before it detonated.
"Why can't you just be honest with me. Just this once."
Her stride halted, paralyzed. She heard the turmoil in his voice, its silken stream mutilated and dissonant. Her eyes closed tightly shut, too spineless to look at what she had done.
"I brought you to Saren. I brought you to what you wanted."
He laughed, a strained, dark sound. For the first time ever, in the year she had known him, she heard something black in those once pleasant tones.
"Saren. So you think that's it. You think that will fix me. Ha."
Her lips began to shake, enlivened by the anger swelling in his voice, but she did not, she would not face him. She couldn't.
"He's medigel; a temporary fix to a permanent wound."
She could hear his heart breaking, sinking into a hole of inescapable pain, that dragged her into it, to hell.
"Look at me, damn you!" he demanded, his plates contorting in tortured rage. Her voice was so cold it sliced the air from his lungs.
"What you're feeling right now, it's nothing. You're confused. If you're pissed off, good. You should be. If you hate me, even better. Hate me. Go ahead. I'm doing you a favor. Take that wrath turn it into a bullet. At least that's something you can use."
He didn't see her eyes shut. The tears that bled from them.
"I idolized you. I destroyed my career for you – I abandoned everything! My life, my family. For what? For you to tease me, to torture me, and then not even have the humility to look me in the face when you crush my heart in your hand? Where is your honor!"
"Your career," she hissed acidly, "Was destroyed before we ever met."
The knife twisted like fire. His mouth parted as his eyes cut into her, as tears welled within them.
"When I first saw you, I thought you were an angel. But now I finally see, after all this time."
His words tore her flesh to the bone.
"You're a monster."
Her lips, once beautiful, curled into a demonic snarl and she swooped her shoulders back and blazed into his face, contorted with rage.
"You think you're so wise. You're not. You're impatient, impulsive, and arrogant! If I let you have your way, you'd be just like Saren!"
He stepped to her and put his face right in hers, leaning down the six inches he had on her; the winter in his eyes unblinking, their bodies rounding each other in contention – neither budging, neither flinching - fire and ice, storm and steel in fury as they destroyed each other, match for match, word for word like gods at war.
"Listen to your sanctimony – if I'm Saren then you're Benezia; blinded by your own good intentions – too proud to admit to denial! Do you ever even hear yourself!"
"Lines exist for a reason, and you crossed them!"
"-Me? I crossed the line? Unbelievable – so now you drag out rules and regulations! –"
"Get your fucking finger out of my face!"
"I hate to destroy your virginal little fantasy but I wasn't alone when I crossed your precious lines! Remember? Which lines now – the one between me and your shower – how about the one between our private terminals? Not enough? All those wasted hours of productivity – interrupting me constantly while I was trying to work -!"
"SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!"
"NO! You can't even stand to hear it because you know it's true and yet you just keep lying!"
"YOU LOST CONTROL!" she screamed and pushed him hard in the chest. Sent back, he growled, teeth gnashing and pushed her back – arcing over her, their faces aflame – like animals – her clenched fists shaking,
"- SO DID YOU! You like to sit there and pretend that everything is so grey – so neutral! IT'S NOT! You know the truth! I saw you, the real you, for a second and you're terrified! PICK A SIDE!-"
"-I JUST DID!-"
"YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH YOU MEAN TO ME! YOU CAME INTO MY LIFE AND EVERYTHING CHANGED! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY MENTOR – BUT YOU ACT LIKE I'M YOUR LEADER! BEGGING FOR MY HELP! YOU LET ME PICK YOU UP JUST TO BITE ME IN THE HAND! A LAMB TO SLAUGHTER!"
She thrashed. Her elbow collided with his gut. He fell down the stairs, crumbling into ruin. He looked up at her, the wounds in his eyes tearing a hole in her mass through which nothing escaped. Shaking, her chest heaving as she sucked in air – somehow no amount being enough to stop the suffocation, but his voice, strangled from the fall, was a bitter sword:
"You think you're the only one running. You're not. You think you're problems are the only ones in the universe that matter? They're not. You're a coward. A barefaced coward."
Her eyes blackened with disintegrated mascara, as he tore her soul from her body and saw it for what it really was. She breathed, chest heaving, snarling, the final blow:
"You better enjoy this mission, turian, because when we're done, pack your shit. We're through."
"What."
They stared at each other across the dark space between them.
"You fucking heard me. It's over."
"Sh…Shepard."
They snapped their heads to the side in unison; standing, in abject shock, was the crew. Tali was shaking in streaming from Liara's eyes. There was something indecipherable in Wrex's expression, and for once, Williams looked as though she might cry. A half dozen support staff cowered behind them.
"What, Tali?"
"…we're here."
"JOKER." she barked,
"…"
"Touch-down in fifteen."
"…aye ma'am…"
She descended the stage, stepping over Garrus as he lay broken on the floor, barreling past them and smashing a locker to ruin with a single blow as she stormed from the room. It was Kaidan's.
As the door slid shut behind her, he picked himself off the floor, still bitter with her dust, and he heard the whispers of the audience in his ears in an unwanted cacophony.
"-the fuck was that."
"What happened? Did you see what happened?"
"I always thought he was so nice."
He snapped."
"No she did."
"I can't believe it."
"I guess everyone has a dark side."
He pushed past them, their eyes staring and lips moving, as he breathed, somehow, without a heart.
When she reached her quarters, she ripped off her clothes and smashed them onto her untouched bed, still creased in the memory from of their forms. She panted, staring down, before her arms began to move, of their own volition.. She tore the sheets to pieces with her bare hands until blood flowed from her cuticles. She threw her armor on top of the mutilation, and put the pieces on, one by one, her heart beating a low drum as her soft flesh disappeared behind impenetrable scales. Slipping the last glove on, her visor flicking down, her guns in place, she snatched the husks of cotton, the broken pieces of a path not taken, crossed the room, and threw them into the incinerator. Her finger a missile, she pushed the button. She watched the memories smolder and die, curling into black snakes, the ashes floating, the inferno reflected across the dark glass of her helm.
She watched the flames, the cremation of her soul.
It burned.
It burned just like the orphanage.
The two youths finally stopped running, heaving from exhaustion. They looked back, down upon the city from a high overpass. The flames licked the sky, lighting it and igniting it in a terrible blaze, the scent of concrete burning, carnage scalding the very air.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" the boy asked the girl.
"It is. Red is my favorite color, you know."
"How fitting. I think I'll call you Seraph."
"Seraph." She tested the word on her lips, its meaning seducing her tongue. "I like it. And what do I call you, dark-eyes?"
He brushed his long hair black hair out of his brow and smiled at her, the flames glancing across his face.
"Kai. Kai Leng. But you can call me Ghost."
