-Jane-
…Shepard-Commander… it's the only way…
She opens her eyes and slowly sits up with stiff limbs, ashes falling from where they collected on her back to flutter down into the thick fog licking at her hands and knees. Around her are the crackling creaks of long since dead branches on twisted trees as she stumbles to her feet to start the 'game' that she has been playing for over a month now.
Not that this place knows anything but the frozen nothingness of repeating buildings and roads that disappear into the fog, only to return her back to the start.
They say hell is fire and brimstone, but she knows it's really ice cold and full of white nothingness that hides the true evil.
…I just couldn't leave… I wish I had…
She knows what she has to do, so she goes quiet and listens, listens past the far-off and muffled footfalls of the giants whose steps are truly Earth shattering in times she is awake. The sources of those and the sounds of voices mean nothing to her, have no sway over her actions in this place. Only the fog has that power, the strength to control her without her ever knowing better.
Putting aside all those feelings of dread and regret that come with those sounds, no longer allowing them to pull at her ears, she focuses only on searching for that source of fleeting happiness and hope. At first, there is nothing but the deafening quiet, the sensation of thick cotton in her ears, but soon she hears what she knows will guide her, what she is searching for.
The sound of laughter.
…only way… Someone might have gotten in wrong…
Moving towards the sounds as fast as she can manage in the thick, strangling fog, she hunts for the two figures that those laughs belong to, the only ones that can find peace and joy in this hellish nightmare world. She dives deeper into the trees, dead branches breaking underfoot, until the laughter becomes like a thunder in her ears, the only thing she hears.
Stepping into the clearing she sees them, the two children that haunt her in her sleep, that steal away into the fog every time she draws close. They twirl and jump in some game she can't comprehend, laughing and smiling, their mandibles spread wide, but she can't share in their joy. Not when she knows what must be coming, who must be coming.
… I was able to say my goodbyes… you gave me that…
Yet, he doesn't come. Not yet.
Instead, she is allowed to step closer to them, close enough to hear their soft voices and see their blue eyes as they stop and turn to her, smiling.
"Hi, mommy," her daughter says with a soft purr.
"We missed you," her brother adds with a tilt of his head in obvious confusion. "Why haven't you come to play with us?"
"Don't you love us?"
She recoils, as if hit, and gapes, stunned stupid as she just blinks at them. It takes time, but she eventually manages to close her mouth before the fog chokes her and swallows thickly to answer.
"I will always love you. I just… I…"
…Leave us, then… We embrace the silence…
"Your mother has had a hard time navigating this place we call home," his voice explains from behind her, making her blood run colder than it's been since waking in this nightmare. "She has never stopped loving you."
She doesn't want to look to him, can't, for fear of what she may see, for the image he will take today, but she cannot ignore that burning in her back of his stare. That burn is the best feeling considering the alternative, the cold steel in her heart of seeing her love broken and shattered into a million pieces, only to be brought back together as nothing more than a false image of his true self.
What would the harm in staying like this do?
...I was never a soldier, remember?...
"Jane, look at me" he seems to demand without any real force, but more as plea to be noticed, to receive the same desperate attention as their children.
Can she really look at him, at the monster of him, with the same love and need as the two children before her? Can her sanity take the accusing voices around her telling her of how she failed to protect him, even if in only her dreams?
Swallowing her fear, listening all she can truly do in this reality that gives her no real choice, she turns to him and gasps in shock at what lies before her.
Clad in a beautiful suit, much like the very one he wore on their wedding, her untouched mate smiles at her with warm she's never had in this place and reaches a hand out to her.
…I will assist the Professor… distract the enemy…
As she takes a step to him, reaching back, she watches horror unfold before her eyes.
Where there was light in his eyes, there is nothing but grey filled with the dead glow of cybernetics. His smile is a slack mandibled, choked groan as coils fall from his mouth plates and drape over his chest and shoulders, digging into his body through his now bloodstained clothes. His outstretched hand cracks and curls, metal tearing through hide and slicing plates as his fingers elongate and stretching into jagged claws.
"Daddy!" Both children run past her and to the thing, taking each of its twitching hands as it turns from her immobile body to lead the twins away.
It's only as they fade into the fog and she collapses in agony at being able to do nothing but watch them go that she realizes the screams in her ears are from her own lips, her sobs washing away the ash on her icy cheeks.
…Was… Pleasure… beautiful… babies…
She wakes with a gasp and jerks up in bed. It takes only a second before she realizes with a groan where she is, hands rubbing at the pounding headache behind her temples.
She hears a soothing, sleepy rumble and shuffle of the sheets as her bed-partner shifts and sits up. Large, three fingered hands run over her back and shoulders before gently replacing her own on her head, warmth seeping into her cold and clammy skin. He doesn't ask if she's dreamt of death and horrors, doesn't need to this long into the sleepless nights, but he does pull her closer to his chest and that's more comforting than any words that could echo with his beautiful voice.
"I'm sorry I can't help you," he whispers as he shifts his hands to run talons lightly through her hair.
"Do you ever have nightmares?"
He hums and lays his head to hers as he just moves to holding her, his vibrating chest against her back. "I don't think Turians sleep like humans do… Anytime I had something close to what you describe as a nightmare, I was awake."
She frowns, remembering some of the talks they had of the time she was gone, of why he had acting so desperate when they were reunited on Omega. "You mean hallucinations?"
"Yeah," he answers with a slight nod. "I saw you everywhere… I've heard hallucinations for Turians only happens after great loss," he huffs a derisive laugh, "I guess there'll be enough of that to go around after this war."
"The war to end all wars… Did you know humans once named an Earth-wide war that once?" She snorts and finds his hand on her belly, linking their fingers. "That was before we had another only twenty or so years after that. All that seems so…"
She doesn't know the word she's looking for, her lack of vocabulary that isn't something vulgar truly showing in these deep conversations, but he saves her when, after knowing her so long, understands and offers, "Inconsequential?"
"Show off," she says softly as she lays her head back against his chest, delighting in that soft chuckle in his throat. "But yeah…"
"Jane," he whispers with a caress of the backs of his talons over her cheek, her skin finally starting to warm. "I hold no illusions about what will become of us, what may happen, but I can make the most of what time we have and spent it where is counts. Here, in this small Captain's Quarters, it is just you, me, Damocles, and Cassia, nothing and no one else."
She considers his words and sighs, closing her eyes as she breathes to try and throw off the stress and weight of the galaxy. With each breath out, she releases her fears of Earth, of Palaven and Tuchanka, of the inevitable conflict reaching the Citadel where so many thought they'd be finally safe. Each breath in remembers someone she is fighting for or has lost, setting them aside or saying goodbye.
There is silence in the room, nothing but her breathing and its companion within her mate's and their sleeping children. Yet, it is not the chilling silence that makes her skin in, but the warm, comfortable peace that doesn't need to be filled with words.
It is a silence that helps her make the finally step out of the current of rushing waters from the panic and fear and onto the shore of the calm they have created in this small Loft they call home. When she opens her eyes, she feels better than she has in months, free, and she looks up to her husband to see his soft smile.
"Thank you."
"For?"
"Just being you."
He chuckles and smirks. "I am pretty impressive." She snorts and elbows back into him before smiling and laying against his chest. "I've been thinking… It might not be the exact solar date on the Citadel, but I'd like to do something to celebrate our marriage."
An anniversary? It's been years since they've ever had the chance to relax and pretend to be a couple, let alone actually celebrate their marriage – hell, they only ever had one in all these years, though her whole stint of pushing up daisies is mostly to blame for that.
It was one of the best ideas she's ever heard, she'll admit.
"Fuck yes," she says as she sits up and turns to him, cupping his face and kissing him deeply, hearing him thrum in sexual interest at her force. Getting an idea, she stands and heads to the small closet they share with their meager sets of casual and non-uniform clothes. She finds something close to what she wants and smirks. "Where's your combat knife?"
"Combat knives should stay far from any bed activities, Jane," he deadpans and she chuckles, deciding to just search his armor for it anyways.
With a wordless gasp of victory, she climbs up in bed and wraps the belt she found around his neck to measure it. That gets her a brow raise and curious rumble of vocals, but she ignores him as she removes the belt, cuts a hole for the buckle and removes the extensive access. Not the best, but good enough to suit my tastes for now.
"Alright, I give up," he says as she starts to wrap the 'collar' back around his neck, loose enough not to choke, but enough to add a bit of teasing pressure. She knows it works when, with a gentle tug, his eyes half lid at the sensation around his neck. "What…"
"-Am I doing?" she finishes for him and he nods. "I made you a collar."
"I'm a varren now?" He smirks. "Jane, Jane, Jane…"
She snorts and tugs on the collar again, actually making him moan. "No varren, but a pet all the same," she says as she smirks and runs her tongue over his mandible, making his purr and press into her tongue. "I think it's time I finally get you back for that slave and master play."
Chuckling, he smirks. "By having me as a pet?"
She smirks back and she yanks hard on his fringe, pulling his head back and making his chest heave for a second of surprised breath before he calms. "Good boys don't talk unless spoken to," she whispers in his ear and delights in the way his pupil dilates, a perfect sing of his agreement and enjoyment.
He growls, definitely smelling her own enjoyment between her legs as she rolls onto the bed, pulling him with her by a finger hooked into his 'collar'. He follows like the good pet he is and struggles a bit when she pushes him down, which gets him a rough squeeze of his centermost crest. "Do it. Lick me."
Moaning, Garrus drops down between her legs and runs his tongue from bottom to top, swirling around her clit. The feeling is like electricity thanks to that roughness of his long, slender tongue and it only gets better when he slides that warm muscle into her. She moans and bucks at that, pulling his head tighter to her with his crests and legs around his neck as he starts to undulate and move within her.
Tip lapping at her cervix, he thrusts that rough surface against her upper wall and she arches, cursing into the air. When he starts to thrum and growl, moaning and growling shamelessly at her taste, she jerks as the air gets knocked from her lungs in surprise. Every time, it's always the same, that vibrating sensation always surprising her no matter how many time they do it.
Eyes fluttering and head thrown back into the pillows, she almost doesn't notice his hand – a challenge, she's sure – slide along his hip and under his belly, reaching for the massive and angry blue between his legs. She smirks at his need and taps her heel on his back. "Oh no… bad boy. You don't want me to punish you, do you?"
He growls and smirks against her and she can see his arm flex as he strokes himself once, twice-
She kicks him off with a scowl, breathing heavy at not being able to finish, and the sight of his blue tongue licking his glistening mouthplates is torture. Jerking his collar to bring them eye to eye, she runs her tongue along his scars and smirks at his growl, shiver, and clenched hands.
Oh, she'll make him pay for ruining her high, for making her fall back down the hill before cresting.
Pushing him to his back, she kisses down his scarred neck with tongue and nips, gripping his vivid length with a firm grip. That has him gasping a shaking breath as he moans, toes curling against the sheets. How she loves seeing the large Turian writhe, whine with vocals, and plead for more.
But 'more' is not something he will get, not when she was so close to her own orgasm.
Instead of straddling him to take him in, she starts to rub her folds against the underside ridges of his cock, moaning as they each rub against her aching sex. She hears his frustrated groan as he grips her hips and bucks in attempt to get in her, but it only gets him a smirk and his hands forced to the bed.
"Be a good boy and stop struggling," she whispers breathlessly into his ear. "You won't have to be punished if you listen."
Moaning, she more leans against him than holds him as she bucks and clenches her eyes, the coil in her belly tightening until it feels like a weight pushing down, needing release or it'll destroy her. He doesn't seem to mind her lapse as he leans up and licks along her pulse and nibbles her ear roughly, pushing her over with a groaned whine, hips bucking out of sync.
Her orgasm ends too quickly, leaves her wanting as so many without truly cumming with him seem to do, and she pants as she smirks down to him. "See what being a bad boy gets you? You missed out on a very good orgasm… you could have been in me then."
Garrus moans at that and bucks. "Let me regain your favor, Mistress. I beg you."
Having Archangel at her mercy – should definitely remember that for an evening we have to ourselves – and begging forgiveness was enough to sway her, to help remind her they are on a time limit with the twins sleeping only meters away. That in mind, she lifts to her knees and takes him in hand, lining him up.
His eyes, previously staring intently into hers, clench as he arches with talons gripping the sheets and mandibles flaring in pleasure. She loves that sight, always has and always will, and doesn't make him weight as she starts to ride him, lifting to his tip before dropping down with a slap of her ass to his plates.
Never one to be still for long, he sits up once he's going over the initial shock and, one hand on the bed behind his back and the other holding her, starts to buck, fucking up into her. It feels incredible, their bodies moving together as his hips hammer into her despite whatever speed she chooses, and she starts to ascend faster than she'd have thought, than their play was supposed to allow.
Wrapping her fingers around the collar, she pulls his growling mouth to hers and slams her lips to his plates with bruising force as she screams into his mouth. His tongue shoves it to swirl and swallow her pleasure as he groans and closes his eyes, pulsing and flexing within her as he floods her with his hot seed.
They come down slowly, panting and kissing to his rumbling purrs and her soft whimpers. How they didn't wake the babies, she'll never know, but she's happy that they had this moment, this bit of piece after her chilling nightmare of not only losing him, but of seeing him become nothing but a Reaperized horror of himself.
"I love you, Jane," he whispers after some time of being in his arms, her own hands splayed over his back. "And I want to show you how much when we arrive at the Citadel. Just the two of us."
She smiles at that, at a chance to be 'normal' for a time. "I love you too, Garrus," is her answer and she knows he reads between the lines, under the words, because she hears his soft purr and feels his arms tighten around her.
"Is it true that we're heading to the Citadel next?" he asks and she nods against his chest, but before he can explain, Cassia begins to huff in the preparation of crying, her brother trilling at being woken and, thus, about to join. "Guess it wasn't going to last all morning," her mate says with a chuckle as she groans half-heartedly. "Better get up to feed them."
"But I like it here. I like you all hard inside me," she whines pathetically and squeezes her walls around him, making his chuckle turn into a gasp.
"You too?" He regains himself enough to chuckle. "I thought that was only a Turian thing to enjoy that."
"Who wouldn't? Hell, if we could be stuck together, that'd be awesome. Like the slutty smut on the extranet."
"What?"
"What?" she deflects, not sure she really wants him to know the things she did when she was on Earth and really, really, horny. "You mean you don't know Turian smut?" He gives her a look, like she's grown another head. "Knotting?"
"Oh," he drawls and smirks at her. "You know that's more our ancestors, right? I haven't known of a Turian that could knot except a couple centuries ago. It's just something we evolved not to need, I guess."
"So… what would… 'knot'?"
He hums and gently guides her off, the two trying to hurry before the babies begin to turn their slight trills and keens into all out wails. "See here?" Watching him point to the wider base of his length, she nods. "This used to fill with blood and swell just around the sheath, locking a male and female together."
"Cool." He gives her an amused look, but she pointedly ignores it as she stands and starts to dress. Looking over to him heading to the crib, she asks, "Can you watch the babies while I head down to grab their food?"
"Of course… though, I'd appreciate it if you get back before they decide daddy no longer needs his hearing."
Snorting, she pats his shoulder and heads downstairs in an undershirt, pants, and shoes without socks, figuring there's not a beauty contest being held in the middle of the night cycle. When she arrives, she's surprised to find Tali awake and sitting at the Mess with her mask in a datapad.
"Tali," she greets as she heads to the fridge to grab some food paste to heat up. "Didn't expect you up."
"Why not? Quarians don't sleep like humans," she responds with a confused, slight tilt to her head. "Our cycles are closer to Turian, though I guess Garrus has grown accustomed to human sleep cycles."
"Yes and no." Jane chuckles as she starts the heating unit. "He still gets up in the middle of the night, but knows better than to do his damn calibrations." While the babies' food heats, she heads to the table and leans against it. "I'm curious, before we left, there wasn't too much talk about Gerrel and that shit he tried to pull…"
"You mean almost getting our entire people killed?"
"Pretty much."
The young Quarian sighs and shakes her helmeted head. "The Bosh'tet isn't welcome with my people… ever. But nearly all the Captains in his fleet have returned to the Flotilla and pardoned after agreeing to help honor the Quarian's promise to help you."
"And the Geth?"
"Keelah, the Geth." Jane almost worries about something going horribly wrong before Tali hands her a the datapad with an image of a Quarian's suit, the limbs lit up and showing health diagnostics of some kind. "The Geth are working with us, building settlements, but even more impressive? They're integrating into our suits." She points at something that might as well be written in Quarian than Standard and explains, "They're mimicking bacteria and foreign bodies so our bodies adapt without the actual fear of infection or serious injury. Shepard, in years, we could find ourselves outside of our suits on our own homeworld."
"Wow, that's impressive, Tali. I'm happy for you," she says, not sure, exactly, how the science works, but happy for her friend all the same.
"And it's because of you, Shepard. If you hadn't pushed to allow Legion to upgrade all Geth… we'd be no better off. Keelah, we'd be dead." She sniffles a bit and ducks her head, her hands wringing in her lap.
"I never wanted to have a war with the Geth," Tali finally says after a long time. "I liked Legion and, even though I wanted peace, I didn't think it'd come at the cost of a friend."
"Hey," Jane says softly and lays a hand on her shoulder. "Legion gave his people something that we, as organics, can sometimes take for granted. Don't feel guilty for something he did willingly, a sacrifice he made to bring complete freedom to his people."
"You're… you're right." She sniffs and looks up with a smile. "And some of the Geth are still interested in Haestrom like Legion was."
"Interested? How so? Because of the heretics and Reapers?" Tali nods and goes to elaborate when they are interrupted by Joker over the intercom.
"Hey, Shepard. Traynor is looking for you. Says something about Hackett? Want me to hang up on him? You know, for all the shit we did for him on the SR1?"
Jane chuckle and cracks a smile. "Let Traynor know I'll be up in a bit. Babies come first."
"Aye, aye, Commander."
SquigglySquid says: I swear, this was meant to be a purposeful chapter, but the characters and my cold thought otherwise.