Blue Monday

Chapter One: Reunion on Intai'sei

A/N: So, I mentioned to someone that I was thinking about a Valentine's Day, 2022 posting. Well, I decided o do it. As the title suggests, I'll be posting some one-shots as chapters (One-shots for now anyway) that will center around some of my lovely blue ladies and their special someone. First up, F!Shep and Tevos. These scenarios are From Ashes compliant, so enjoy! Happy Valentine's Day, all! Let love lead the way today.

Shadows fell across the stretch of flooring separating the bed from where she sat on the couch that formed an arc againt the back wall. She had been sitting there for hours, watching the sole occupant sleeping, and it just wasn't enough.

She was there, right across the room, and every muscle in Shepard's body was raring to move; she wanted to cross the space between them and simply stand there. It was an almost primal urge to be within touching distance, because the sight of her wasn't real enough. Shepard, at any given time, could close her eyes and see this woman in perfect clarity. Unfortunately, seeing alone didn't bring them closer. Still, Shepard remained where she was. She had been there for a few hours now.

She had received a notification that someone had entered the apartment several hours earlier, and it had made her curious. How she had received the notification, she hadn't the slightest clue. Surely any asset she had owned would have been tied up in some sort of legal process or else otherwise been dealt with. The notification came through, however, and Shepard had immediately set course for the Phoenix system. They were still waiting on Mordin's countermeasure to protect against seeker swarms anyway. When she had entered the apartment, she had initially thought that the notification had been a glitch. She hadn't seen anyone there. Then again, she had been looking at eye-level. Only the slightest sound of rustling made her look down, and that was when she had seen the sleeping asari; lips slightly turned down in the beginnings of a frown and brow furrowed. That hadn't changed. Even now, she wore that same expression.

Shepard watched the other woman shift slightly in her sleep; hand moving to rest on the curve of the pillow next to her. It spurred another impulse to rise from where she sat. She had placed her hand there for a few long seconds upon realizing that someone, and not just anyone, was there. It had been the closest she had dared to get to the asari while she slept. It was the closest she had been in two years. Closing her eyes for a second, the shimmering pink and purple hues of the Serpent Nebula sailed evenly through a high patterned window. A phantom warmth, brought on by the memory of her lover's closeness hung in the air ahead of Shepard; just out of her reach… Words drifted through her ear; words that had haunted her dreams for the last month or more.

"Come back to me."

"Always."

She was torn from her thoughts by the sharp intake of breath that followed her spoken answer. Eyes flying open, she expected to see another pair looking back a her. This wasn't the case, however. No, instead, she was seeing the asari in an upright position, but she was facing the mounted display on the wall beside the bed. It was showing the time, temperature, and a small feed with galactic news headlines scrolling down it. The asari wasn't seeing its contents; head resting in her hand. Shepard didn't move. Words that she had barely begun to consider dissipated faster than she could say them; her eyes taking in every last revealed inch of her lover's body.

As slender as she remembered, the smoky silver silk of her dressing gown clung to the asari's medium blue skin in places and fell away from it in others. It was amazing how something so simple could be so elegant. The white markings along the side of her face glowed with the light of the sun coming through the glass windows. They paled in comparison to the eyes that were rapidly blinking, however. Normally varying between green and brown, they blazed amber with the right angle of that same sun. The hand that had shielded her face lowered, and for one piercing second, those eyes landed on Shepard. As soon as it had happened, they had returned to their previous object of interest.

From her place on the couch, Shepard could see tension creeping into the other woman's neck. It traveled along her veins and found its way to her jaw. The eyes that had burned only a few seconds ago were closed again; defiant.

"This cannot go on." Her voice was rough; coarse as thick grains of sand as the words struck the otherwise silent apartment. Even the ambient sounds of the terminal, display, and cooling system seemed to shrink away. "I cannot continue seeing your shadow behind me wherever I go…" She did not turn to face Shepard; instead, choosing to look right at the display ahead of her. "When I turn around, you will not be there, and it will be as it has been before: a stabbing reminder."

"No." Reservations be damned. Shepard felt the word surging through her throat as her muscles compelled her to move. She rose from the place where she had been silently observing and made her way across the apartment. Each step she took was slow and deliberate; each inch gained felt like a star system traversed. "It won't."

"Empty words…" She still refused to turn her head.

"Then give them form." Shepard had reached her, but she didn't cross that line. Instead, she waited. "They can only be empty if you allow them to stay that way."

"It Isn't That Easy." Each word, as it was spoken, was emphasized. Articulated so that they sounded razor sharp, they hit like a biotic punch to the gut with every syllable.

"I never said it was." Still, Shepard stood there. She didn't waver in her stance, nor did she try to simplify matters. "This is hard, I know."

"No, you don't." Those eyes that had been purposefully avoiding her flashed as the councilor finally turned toward Shepard. They were narrowed, and her jaw was set. "With each and every day that has passed, something has been there to remind me." She began. "A whisper through the trees, scent on the air, or a familiar eye in a sea of unknown faces…"

"Tevos," Even the name, as it left her lips, left Shepard with a lingering bitter taste. She hadn't spoken it since…

"No." There was no time to finish that thought. Shepard watched the other woman rise and come to stand just a few inches away; almost daring her to come closer.

"You think I don't know what you're going through, but I do." Shepard surprised herself at how even her tone was. There was no desperation, no rush to get the words out.

"How can you?" The words cut worse than a batarian's blade armor. Swift and sharp, they nearly made Shepard step back. Nearly.

"In ways you can only imagine."

"Damn you, Seryna!" The shout rang through the open space. This time, Shepard did step back slightly, but it was more out of shock rather than fear. Tevos gave her no ground; whisps of ultraviolet revealed a pulsing biotic aura around her. She stepped forward and seized the commander's shoulders, pressing her back against a cool stretch of blank wall. Faced away from the sun, and with the soft blue hues of the wall-mounted display for light, the councilor's eyes were now deep green in colour. While less intense, they still bore into Shepard's. "Two years! Two years of feigning normalcy: of answering questions with a calm and neutral expression when I'd have rather run reporters through with a sharp blade. Two years of constant reminders that you were gone. Two years with your parting words…" Her voice, rich with emotion, lost most of the power that was behind her words then. "…Tearing open a barely healed wound each and every time I heard them-"

Up 'til then, Shepard hadn't moved. She recognized the emotions that was practically coursing through her lover's veins. She didn't need a joining to know what raw grief felt like. She had let that anger and hurt manifest and come out. Her arms had remained at her sides; unwilling to defend against something that needed an outlet. After those words had given way to silence the hold on her shoulders had changed. There was no strength behind the pressure; on the contrary, it had gone from force to a means of support. As that registered, Shepard's arms moved to envelop the asari, whose emotional energy had left her off-center in its wake. Hands pressing into her lover's back, she said nothing: her solid form and presence seemingly enough. She didn't know how long they stood there like that, nor did she care. The feel of that too-familiar body against hers was enough to make time itself stop.

The weight against her slowly shifted. The hands that had gripped her shoulders so tightly slackened and moved to the place where her neck joined her spine. The face that had been three inches or less from her own found a resting place in the curve between Shepard's neck and shoulder. She could feel a hesitant breath, trapped and guarded, finally release. They weren't on solid ground yet, but it was better than where they had been just moments ago. Shepard had to admit that, while they had been in the same room, they may as well have been a galaxy apart. She had been telling the truth when she had said she understood some of what Tevos had gone through, but she also knew that their pain was distinctly different. The councilor had faced two years of coping, grieving, and who knew what else. Shepard had only been awake and active for a few months at most. In that time, she had barely had room to breathe, much less process what she was feeling. Only when she would sleep did things like his hit her the hardest.

"Where were you?" At first, the question barely registered. Shepard had heard it many times before, in dreams where they had confronted one another, but it was too close, too loud to be from one of those instances.

"What?" She asked quietly; being sure she had heard right.

"Where were you?" She had heard correctly. While Tevos didn't pull away, her words came across clearly. "There were rumours of you being on Omega and aboard the prison ship, Purgatory…" A pause, and then: "And even aboard the Citadel." Shepard's chest tightened slightly. While she herself hadn't been aboard the Citadel, the Normandy had been there while Garrus had spoken with Kasumi Goto outside the C-Sec checkpoint on Zakera ward. Shepard had been tempted to leave for the presidium then, but the Council was aboard the Destiny Ascension, taking part in its victory cruise. Tevos' next words drew her back out of her thoughts.

"No, the only rumour I was inclined to believe was that you had been seen on Korlus."

"I take it that Rana Thanoptis' report reached you."

"It did, but that still doesn't answer my question:" Tevos pulled back so that she was looking Shepard in the eye. "Where were you?"

"All of those places you mentioned, but only in the last two months." Shepard answered quietly. "While I wasn't aboard the Citadel, I was in the docking bay on Zakera Ward." Though there was no need for clarification, she offered it anyway. "I wanted to see you then. When I looked, you were with the others aboard the Ascension."

"A victory cruise spurred only by constituents." The remark was bitter. "Most of us never felt right about it." Tevos closed her eyes briefly, but when they opened again, the question was still in their green depths. "You said for the last two months. Where were you before?"

"In a lab." Shepard answered flatly. She had combed this particular part of her memory before; hoping to see something that could be used as a landmark. There had been nothing. "It was where I woke up after…" Her voice trailed off for a long moment; black shadows, angry yellow particle beams, and searing red words flashing through her mind's eye.

"I don't understand." The words had barely registered when a dull rhythmic beeping entered Shepard's eardrums. Quiet at first, it grew louder and clearer; finally registering as a harsh and sudden metronome. Those red words that had been burned onto her corneas during her dreams gave way to white light. As it faded to a tolerable level, she could see square tiles on the ceiling above her; tiles that didn't belong to the prefab apartment on Intai'sei. She wasn't standing anymore, and her arms were weighted as they lay on her either side. The beeping she had started hearing before was still loudly pulsing through her ears like an impatient alarm clock, but its frequency was increasing. She was seeing shadows moving just beyond the range of her vision, and here were voices…

"-Brain activity already. It's too soon."

"Damn it, I told you, run the numbers again."

"Pupils are responding to stimuli-"

"Put the torch down! I just told yu to check the numbers again. I don't want signs of cognitive function yet! We've barely got her body stitched together-"

"Miranda, look!"

A hand, scabbed, discoloured, and heavily bandaged was just in her line of sight, and she could feel every fibre of her skin feeling as if it were about to shred with the effort it took to raise her arm. Sound, incoherent and alien to her own ears came from her throat; tearing its way out of her mouth.

"Put her down, Wilson, I've come too far to lose her because of your fuck up!"

"Miranda-"

"Fine, if you won't admit to fouling this up, I'll do it." The voice above her had to be that of Miranda Lawson. When a face leaned over her, she saw the familiar stern expression and piercing eyes. The other voice, she could clearly remember belonging to Wilson, the tech that Miranda had killed before they had departed the Cerberus station. Operator Lawson's lips moved, but something was wrong. At first, they matched what she was saying, but…

"Shepard, Shepard, try not to move… Shepard…" Then the words didn't match. "Seryna? Seryna, look at me…" It struck her as odd: Miranda had never used her first name, only her rank, or her surname if she was feeling generous. The more she thought about it, the more Shepard noticed the voice changing. It wasn't Miranda,; it couldn't be.

"Seryna, can you hear me?"

"What?" The light, tiled ceiling, Miranda, and the horrible looking hand disappeared instantly. She found herself standing again, in her apartment, faced with a very concerned, if not thoroughly confused Tevos. Shaking her head slightly, Shepard raised her left arm and examined her hand. It was well-healed, but she could see scars that matched some of the scabbed flesh she had just seen.

"What just happened…?" It was a hesitant question. After a few seconds of looking over her hand, Shepard returned it to where it had been previously. "You just started speaking," Tevos went on to explain what she had just seen. "Almost having a conversation with yourself… I have heard of such behavior before, but never in a human…"

"I was talking to myself?" That was slow to register, and Shepard struggled to imagine it. "How?"

"At first, it was a description of what I would assume was the lab you mentioned." Tevos was watching her carefully now. "Then, it changed. You mentioned two people: Wilson and someone else… Miranda."

"That was what I heard, but…" Shepard's head was slowly wrapping around what she had apparently just done. "I described what I was hearing and seeing; actually spoke the words I was hearing."

"What I just heard," Tevos' eyes searched Shepard's for an answer. "Was that…"

"The first time I woke up after what happened above Alchera." Shepard nodded slowly. "Yes."

"How is this possible?" The question was more to herself than to Shepard. "How did…" Shepard managed a loose shrug, while still holding her close. Tevos shook her head then. "Never mind." She paused for a second. "I had my doubts before, but with what I've just heard, they are gone. There is only one possible answer."

"On a quiet day in a shining tower, a soldier left a piece of herself behind," Shepard began softly; words that had echoed throughout her dreams passing from her lips. "With the promise of her eventual return." She felt the hands that now rested loosely on her shoulders tighten slightly. "For she had found her missing half in the arms of a familiar stranger. On that day, a bond was forged: one that could not be dissolved by space nor time."

"Shadows of a life against a grey horizon danced in her over's eyes, and for a moment, she knew nothing else."

"I swore I would always find my way back to you." The tightness in Shepard's chest, while not constricting had become more noticeable, but it dissipated with Tevos' next words.

"And you have."

"A request made," Shepard began.

"A promise kept." Tevos finished softly.

"You still think what I said before are just empty words?" Shepard, while knowing this was a very serious moment, had to ask the question. She was answered by the distance between them, small though it was, being closed. A pair of lips that had been her anchor and driving force toward a life she wanted to reclaim, made contact with hers. The cold that was her memory of the endless void was burned away instantly. A kiss that pushed the boundaries of one minute bridged the chasm that had been the past two years. They separated just long enough for Tevos to answer before coming together again.

"Not anymore."