|100|
"How are you feeling, Shepard?"
"Like I just came in from shore leave…." Braith roused from sleep and sat up in bed…"Doc."
She rubbed the skin of her arm, feeling cold and alone….Thane breathed beside her and rose from their pillow..…"Siha, you're awake….Time?"
"0110," came E.D.I.'s gentle voice from the speakers…."Shepard," the A.I. supplied, "….your sleep pattern has been irregular….Shall I report this to Doctor Chakwas?"
"Go ahead, E.D.I." Braith lifted her feet over the side of the bed and sat hunched forward in her tank and underpants….She closed her eyes and sighed in and out through her nose.
"Siha, come back to bed."
"I'm going to get up, Thane," she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, "…I'm starting to get visions again….I'd rather stop them before they come back…..The last one took me through Eden Prime….to the first Normandy."
"Would you like to talk about it?"
"No."
Thane watched her stand, the twin globes of flesh peeking under the cut of her briefs before she pulled these down to be more comfortable…He leaned back on his arm to see her rise up the stairs of the loft to the upper office and cross in front of the aquarium to head for the bathroom. "Siha?"
She stopped with her hand on the door's controls and looked back. Thane adjusted himself on the bed and sat up, "….Do you still hear voices as you did on the Collector vessel?"
"No," her voice barely made him, "….Not since."
"Do you try to—" he was uncomfortable raising the issue, but the others expected it of him, "….try to speak to him again?"
"I don't….," she bit her lip and held it between her teeth, "…I don't do it too often."
"Siha…" He got out of the bed and walked the steps to her, his onyx eyes seeking Braith, his hands swaying gently by his sides….He wore his pants and shirt cupping his biceps…"Siha?…I need to tell you that the others—and I—are concerned about your health….Miranda has offered to implant a chip in your head for monitoring for this….activity…." He didn't know what else to call it…"The Collector vessel was very risky….We made it out, yes, all but those last colonists—"
"He said he would get me all of them…" Braith's face contorted with the betrayal—her anger, "…He said he would get all of them for me and then he said they would only save me, Thane….They would save me so I could die later—not then…" She turned towards the shower…."He told me, Thane….I believe them."
He stopped behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, Braith hanging her head forward…."I don't want to die, Thane….I don't want to die because someone tells me to and when…." and she thought of the flower from the hypotonic gardens on the Citadel…The flower she had given Thane, that he had given back to her in the hilt of his knife, which she had used to kill Morinth to stop her from raping Braith…."Why is my life not mine?"
Thane understood, or thought he did…He slid his arms around her collar and held her, his nose pressed to the back of her head…."We're all afraid of dying, Siha…Especially when we have those we love to hold onto us….and we to hold onto them."
"That's not what I'm talking about…" She drew away from him…"Ever since Eden Prime, my life has had to follow the Reapers….Saren, Sovereign, now Collectors and Harbinger….I always wondered why—Why it had to be me…" She turned her face partly to show her profile to him, "…Now I know something's out there manipulating the course of my life…What is it though?"
"Siha," Thane asked this time, "…please consider Miranda's chip….It would help us monitor what is happening to you….to intervene."
"I don't want the chip…He didn't take over me like that….like with that Collector."
"Siha, we saw whatever it was destroy the console and take you with it—you fell three stories down and only lived because you managed to land on it and use the body to soften the blow….You're lucky to be alive….But if what you say is some sort of mind-controlling-communication-shielding entity that ghosts inside your armor, and possesses the minds of Collectors and their bodies like Harbinger does—What's to say it, or he, or even they, won't try to take over you—and throw you off a building or worse…use you against us?"
"He said they would never hurt me."
"Whatever it was, you said it needed you to die someplace else, sometime else, Siha."
"I don't know what to tell you, Thane….I believe he wouldn't hurt me…They came through with the colonists, and then Harbinger screwed everything up—he promised he'd get us out of there….I think he destroyed the console to prevent me from dooming us all, Thane…There….I said it….I think he knew I wouldn't leave until all the colonists were freed and Harbinger—Harbinger would have turned him against me, then killed you all." That was worse, she realized.
"Do you think you might be lending credibility to this theory of yours because you feel guilty for having lost those last hundred colonists…or lost this entity as a result of your reluctance to heed whatever it was telling you to do?"
"No….maybe…I don't know, Thane."
"I think you must be very careful about what you tell yourself to believe, Siha…" Thane grasped her head gently in his palms…."The things we tell ourselves can become very convincing when we choose to ignore the real signs that frighten us…Are you safe, Siha?"
"Yes….Yes, I'm safe….aren't I?"
Braith looked back and forth between his eyes….She moved into him and let Thane hold her in his arms again, his face behind her head an expression blanketed in calm—though inside he was silently praying….Praying his Siha was safe from herself…as well as the rest of them.