Chapter Twenty-Three: Silently for Me

As always, the Nos Astra Spaceport bustled with all manner of people coming and going. Mostly asari, some turians and salarians, a few krogan, and even the odd human or two milled about waiting for their flights, or pushed through the crowd toward their destinations. The mingled aromas of overpriced food, too many different perfumes, and too many people, underpinned by the sharp ozone smell of eezo exhaust, created an atmosphere that was always changing yet somehow remained uniquely Nos Astra. The babble of voices washed gently over Deena like waves lapping at the shoreline, and out of habit, she listened idly for any snatches of gossip that might prove useful in the future.

If nothing else, it kept her distracted from her own guilty thoughts.

"…never believe what my sister said about…"

"…got to be kidding me. Eighteen thousand credits for that piece of…"

"…negotiating a mating agreement with the dalatrass. He doesn't stand a…"

"…Fedorian's record speaks for itself, but primarch? I don't…"

"Deena."

A hand on her shoulder pulled her back to herself, and she turned to look at Thane. "Hmm?"

Withdrawing his hand, Thane tucked them both behind his back. "My transport will be here soon," he said. "But before I go… I want to thank you."

Deena blinked at him, momentarily stunned. After what she'd done to him, he was thanking her? "For what?" she all but squeaked before she could catch herself. He knew nothing of what she'd done, of course. She could only hope her question would come off as modesty rather than guilt.

"For everything." He held her gaze with wide, earnest eyes, and the genuine gratitude there made her chest ache. "For all that you've done for me in this past year. You have risked your career, your safety, your life. You have endured terrible loss. And still you have remained my steadfast ally. You are a wonderful friend, Deena." He lowered his eyes and added softly, "Far better than I deserve."

"I…" Deena swallowed hard, her stomach twisting into a sour knot. She had no idea how to respond to that, but she knew she had to say something. "I'm always here for you. You know that."

The words came out hoarse and trembling, as if they wanted to stick in her throat and hide there.

"Nevertheless, I am deeply in your debt," he replied. "Were it not for me… you have suffered greatly, and I must atone for that. Somehow."

What? His words took Deena by surprise, and her jaw dropped open with a huff of mirthless, incredulous laughter. "You can't be serious."

His brow ridge furrowed indignantly. "Of course I am."

Maybe it was her guilt talking. Maybe she was so angry with herself, and so desperate to hide it, that she needed another target. But something in what he'd just said struck her as very wrong. "Now, Thane? Now you're worried about me?" she demanded. "After everything you've done, now that you're on your way back home, back to your family, now you want to 'atone'?" She shook her head, folding her arms over the empty space in her heart where Cecilia should have been. "Spare me the false piety, you hypocrite," she spat. "Own your goddess-damned selfishness and go home. Don't worry your pretty head about me."

Thane looked stricken. He took a half step back, stumbling into a well-dressed salarian who sneered and cursed. A dizzying array of emotions flashed across his face in rapid succession: surprise, anger, indignation, and… was that sadness? Then he simply shut down, his features arranged into a carefully expressionless mask as he pulled his dignity around him like a tattered cloak.

"Very well," he said, his voice flat and betraying nothing. "Goodbye, Deena. May your Goddess grant you peace."

Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Deena regretted her words instantly. "Thane, wait!" she called out, but he was gone.

The perpetual cloud cover of Kahje swallowed every drop of starlight, blanketing half the planet in inky darkness. Smothering and heavy, that darkness pressed down with implacable weight until Thane thought it might crush the air from his lungs. It crawled down his throat, seeped under his scales, wrapped its thick, ropy tentacles around his heart and squeezed.

Merciful sleep eluded him entirely.

Irikah lay curled into his side, her head on his shoulder, her arm cinched tightly around his waist, fast asleep. Normally, he would have felt comforted by this. It was the memories of these times more than any lovemaking, the quiet, intimate moments spent simply being together, that often sustained him through the cold and lonely nights he spent away from her. But tonight, it only made him more restless. Her embrace was constricting, her warmth suffocating. The waft of her breath over his chest was maddening.

Finally, he could stand it no longer. Moving slowly and gently so as not to wake her, he slipped out of bed and went out onto the balcony.

The breeze blew salty spray in off the ocean, bitter on his tongue and cold on his skin. Shivering, he stared out toward where the horizon should have been, indiscernible in the blackness. The rush and hiss of the sea seemed disembodied in the void, the chirps and cries of nocturnal creatures dreamlike and surreal.

His mind spun restlessly. He could not shake the feeling of having missed something important. The holes in his memory loomed large and deep, blacker than the water, darker than the sky. They taunted him with their emptiness, their impenetrable obscurity, their all-consuming nothingness.

What bothered him most was the question that now could never be answered: why? What could Ceris have been hiding that she'd felt the need to wipe his memory a second time? The first had been little more than a ploy to buy time, a deliberate attempt to drive him mad while she hid away and set her twisted plans in motion. The second… the last he remembered, he'd had her. Had cornered her, stunned her, and aimed his pistol at her head. All he'd needed to do was pull the trigger. Why hadn't he just pulled the trigger?

One finger-twitch, she dies. The smallest movement, and all of this will be over. I can go home.

Caia stirs in my arms, listless. Cold. Too weak to cry. It angers me. I tighten my finger on the trigger and—

And what? Thane pounded his fist on the railing, a growl of frustration rumbling in his throat. Everything after that was a blank, until he'd awakened in a hospital once again.

"Thane?"

He turned to find Irikah standing beside him, pulling a robe tightly around herself against the chill of the strengthening wind, her sunset eyes filled with worry. He had been distracted, indeed, not to notice her approach. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've woken you again."

"It's all right," she said softy. "What's wrong? Is it that contract again?"

Thane bowed his head, embarrassed. "What happened on Illium continues to haunt me," he confessed. "Mysteries remain that I cannot solve. That I may never solve. The mission became…"

He hesitated. He wanted to say personal, but it didn't feel like the right word. It was too petty, too small a word to capture how Ceris's vendetta had shaken the very foundations of his being. And Irikah would ask questions he did not yet know how to answer. So he settled on "Complicated."

Irikah snorted quietly. "Indeed. You came back with pieces of your memory missing. Again. I would certainly call that complicated."

Something in the tone of her voice sent a chill shivering down his spine to settle heavily in his stomach. He looked up at her, wide-eyed. "That's not… no. Siha, please, I—"

But she stopped him with a gentle finger on his lips. "I know, Thane," she said. "I can see that asari drail has hurt you terribly. My anger is for her." She stepped into him, allowed him to fold her into his arms, and tucked her head under his chin. "I'm worried about you."

Thane closed his eyes and pressed a grateful kiss to the top of her head. "I'll be all right," he murmured, though he wasn't entirely certain he believed it.

But this was a start. He was home, his wife safe in his arms, their son sleeping in the next room. The storm that brewed in the night sky would spend its fury on the shore, but it would not touch them. Tomorrow would dawn clear and clean and bright.

They stood in silence for a while, shielding each other from the wind, content merely to be together. A brittle, cautious peace settled over him, promising an eventual return to normalcy. Gradually, he allowed himself to relax, to breathe, to simply be in this moment. He let himself be comforted by her warmth, by the smell of spice that always clung to her, by the soft sigh of her breath. The world around him faded away, and there was only her. They could be anywhere in the galaxy and be home. Home was where she was.

Too soon, she pulled away again. Just a little, just enough to gaze up into his eyes. He shivered as the wind filled the space between their bodies, all the colder for what it replaced. Irikah hesitated a bit longer, then said, "Thane, I must ask you a question. Who is Caia?"

Merciful Kalahira, the sound of that name on her lips plunged like a knife into his gut. Thane swallowed hard and looked away. "My apologies," he said stiffly. "I didn't realize I'd spoken that memory aloud."

Irikah said nothing.

"Caia…" His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. Oh, how he wanted to tell her everything. To share the burden. Caia may not have been her child, but surely she would understand.

But shame knew no reason, and the words died on his lips. "Caia was… an innocent child," he said instead. "An infant. Ceris was holding her hostage, and I… I failed to save her."

"Oh, Thane." Irikah's magnificent eyes shimmered with sympathetic tears, and she reached up with one hand to caress the back of his head. "You're a man of so many contradictions. An assassin with a conscience. A hardened killer with a soft heart. Slayer of the wicked, protector of the innocent." She pulled him down into a gentle kiss. "You can't save them all, my love."

She didn't know. She didn't know. But a searing anger flared white-hot behind his eyes anyway, and he tore himself away from her with a hiss, turning his back and putting a few long strides' distance between them. He gritted his teeth, raking both hands over his crest and staring up at the ink-black sky. She didn't know.

The void above seemed to stare back at him, forcing up memories of Ceris's eyes, black and empty and swallowing him whole. Caught between terror and fury as the icy wind whipped around him, he squeezed his own eyes shut as his entire body trembled.

She didn't know. She never would have said that, had it been Kolyat. (His stomach heaved at the thought.) She never would have said that had she known. He had brought this upon himself with his cowardice.

She didn't deserve his anger. She was only trying to comfort him.

"Thane?" Irikah's voice, soft and laden with worry, was nearly swallowed by the wind. "Thane, talk to me. Please."

He turned back to face her, and the vision that greeted him struck him momentarily speechless. Low light spilling out from the bedroom fell gently on her golden scales, giving them a soft, warm glow. Her red robe and white nightgown billowed in the wind as she slowly approached him. Her sunset-colored eyes shone with love and compassion and concern. For a moment, and far from the first time, he thought he gazed upon Arashu Herself.

She took his hands in hers, and he stared down at them, seizing on the warmth of that small contact like a lifeline. Overwhelming shame washed over him again—but not, this time, because of anything that had happened to him in the last year. No, he finally understood that Father Nori had been right about at least one thing: he should have come clean with her long ago.

"Siha," he murmured, still unable to meet her gaze, "I have a confession to make."

"A confession?" He could hear the frown in her voice.

"About Caia." Thane drew a deep breath, and plunged ahead. "She was not merely a hostage, siha. She was…" Look her in the eyes, you coward. "She was my daughter."

Irikah gasped, her eyes widening. "Your daughter?" she demanded, her voice barely more than a whisper. "What… how?"

"Ceris," he said simply. "The first time she attacked me, she… she conceived. And she hid it from me until I confronted her again. When I thought she was dead, I assumed it was over."

"Merciful Kalahira." Irikah released his hands and took a step back, her eyes hardening. "You knew? All this time, you knew?"

Thane hung his head. "I did."

"I don't understand… Why didn't you just tell me?" Irikah pleaded. "Why the secrecy? The lies? Thane, I thought I was losing you. I could have helped you!"

The tears in her voice and on her face were more than he could bear. "I meant only to protect you," he said quietly. "But I have betrayed you instead. I beg your forgiveness, siha. I was—I am—ashamed."

For a moment that seemed an eternity, she did not respond, but only stared at him as if she were suddenly confronted by a stranger. As if she didn't know him anymore. Shivering, pulling her robe tight, she studied him with narrowed eyes, her face inscrutable.

Perhaps Father Nori had been wrong, after all. Perhaps Thane had been right to fear her judgement.

He desperately wanted to say something, anything, to break the silence. To explain himself. But anything he might say rang hollow in his mind: nothing but excuses, self-serving and manipulative. Own your selfishness, Deena had said, and she'd had a point. He'd let himself become so wrapped up in his own problems that he'd been oblivious to the pain he'd caused the people around him. The people he loved and who, perhaps inexplicably, loved him. He had betrayed them all.

Yes, he had done wrong. He had much to atone for. And he could begin by accepting the consequences of his actions. So he bowed his head and waited, his chest tight, his heart pounding, while she weighed his soul and took his measure.

"I think… I think I do understand," Irikah said finally. She spoke slowly and softly, as if testing each word for truth. "I am angry that you hid this from me, yes. And it will take me some time to process… everything. But I think I understand why you did it, and I certainly understand now why you have behaved the way you have this past year. When I try to imagine how I would feel if, Arashu forbid it, something were to happen to Kolyat… I cannot even bring myself to entertain the thought. And to have to endure that without you to lean on—it is beyond my comprehension." She shook her head. "There is little for me to forgive, Thane. And the Gods know, after what you've been through, you don't need me to punish you more."

Thane froze, hardly daring to believe what he'd heard. But when he looked up at her again, there she was, sadness and compassion in her eyes, reaching toward him with her palms up in a gesture of conciliation.

Hesitantly, he placed his hands in hers, an offering to his angel. "I have said this before," he whispered, the words catching in his throat, "but never have I meant it as fully as I do now: I do not deserve you."

She smiled in return. "You may be right. But you're stuck with me, anyway." Backing up a step toward the still-open door, she tugged gently on his hands. "Come back to bed, my love. We'll talk more in the morning."

It took time, but slowly, life returned to something approaching normal. Irikah's shock and anger faded little by little until she was able to push the incident from her mind—most of the time. Kolyat grew gradually less sullen and defiant until Irikah finally recognized her ebullient child again. And Thane…

Well, he tried. After returning from Illium, he spent the next several weeks at home, and he made it a priority to repair his relationship with Kolyat. He seemed to make a real effort to connect with him, taking a genuine interest in his schoolwork, spending more time with him. He even took Kolyat to the firing range he practiced at and taught him how to shoot a pistol. Irikah wasn't so sure she liked that, but she trusted Thane to keep him safe.

Now, Irikah smiled to herself as she heard them laughing together in Thane's study, a decades-old song blaring from the computer terminal, no doubt "dancing crazy," as Kolyat would say. "Spin me!" Kolyat squealed, dissolving into gales of giggles, a sweet obligato floating over Thane's bass chuckles. That was more music to her ears than any melody.

But it didn't last.

The music cut off with a discordant beep, and the laughter died away. Kolyat whined for a moment, and Thane said something to him quietly, that Irikah couldn't hear. A moment later, Kolyat emerged, pouting, and disappeared into his bedroom.

Irikah's heart sank. Not yet.

She knocked softly on the closed door of the study. "Thane?" she called out. "Is everything all right?"

What did it say about her, that she almost hoped he'd received some terrible news? Something dire enough to excuse his sudden dismissal of Kolyat, but not something that would call him away. Not yet.

When the door opened, however, her husband was gone. In his place was the assassin, the cold-blooded, hard-eyed killer, going about his too-familiar preparations with ruthless efficiency. As she watched, he snapped shut the gun case containing his sniper rifle, then slid his dagger into a sheath under his jacket. He was leaving very soon, then.

It had been inevitable. But she wasn't ready.

But there was nothing she could do, and she gave a resigned sigh. "You've taken another contract."

"Yes." He did not look up from his packing.

"When do you leave?"

"Immediately." Now he did stop what he was doing, and when he turned to face her, she saw a little of her Thane still in his eyes. "I know it is sudden, siha, but time is of the essence."

Irikah folded her arms, disappointment and irritation creeping into her voice as she replied, "Time is always 'of the essence.'"

"The nature of my work—"

"I know." Her shoulders sagged, and she swallowed back the lump that rose in her throat. "Just… come back to me, Thane. Promise me you'll come back."

He gathered her into his arms, and she melted into his embrace. Wondering, as always, if this would be the last time.

"I swear it." He slipped his finger under her chin and tilted her face up to kiss her lips. "I swear it, siha," he whispered.

Irikah squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears that threatened to fall. "Arashu preserve you, my love."