A/N: I seem to currently be on a bit of a role, so here's another chapter already. My free time is going to be a little reduced soon, but I'll keep working on this story when I can. As always, I hope you all enjoy it.

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AnarionRising27: As always, it's great to hear that you liked it. I'm really excited for the next few chapters, so hopefully they'll be good. Thanks for reviewing.

Chapter 19: Past Demons

He needed to get moving.

Another human, a middle-aged man, had appeared at the end of the alleyway in which he stood just seconds ago. The newcomer had stared in shock at Rassen, clearly recognising from his cloak that he was a Jedi. The man's eyes had then moved to the motionless body of Zaressh, which lay in shadow, before widening in fear. Before Rassen could even try to explain, he had fled back the way he had come. Given the look of blind panic in his eyes, the Jedi wasn't willing to risk the possibility the man had noticed the corpse was dressed in Sith robes. Local security forces could be converging on his position at this very moment. The longer he remained where he was, the more likely he was to be detained.

Oh, there was no doubt in his mind they would accept he was a Jedi and Zaressh a Sith eventually, but that would mean contacting the Jedi Council on Tython to prove he was who he claimed to be. Naturally, the Council would have questions of their own for him. Where had he been after presumably being declared dead? What had happened during that time? Eventually they would find out about Shaela.

Rassen had made his choice, and he didn't regret it in the slightest. In choosing to tell her how he felt, he had defied the Jedi code and so might well be exiled by the Council. There was no guarantee they would actually go that far, it was true, but he still wasn't willing to risk it. Not when he might need his status as a Jedi to help him find a way back to Shaela's galaxy. Before he could leave, though, some instinct deep inside him, perhaps the result of his connection to the Force, though it could have simply been his own curiosity, suddenly told him he needed investigate the corpse nearby.

Walking painfully over to Zaressh's body, Rassen knelt down, eyes moving over the black armour and robes that covered every part of it aside from the face. It took conscious effort not to stare at the Sith's features, but he managed to avoid doing so as he began to search the body thoroughly. Despite everything Zaressh had done, it still felt fundamentally wrong to pore over his corpse, but Rassen couldn't help himself. The feeling that he needed to do so had grown stronger as he had approached, now so powerful he wasn't sure it was even possible to stop.

At first he found nothing at all. Zaressh's lightsaber was nowhere to be seen, and he hadn't seen the Sith in possession of anything else aside from the holocron he had just destroyed. Still, Rassen continued to examine the body before him, frowning as he noticed a pocket on the inside of the Sith's robe. Reaching into it, his gloved hand closed around a small but surprisingly hard object. Removing his hand slowly, Rassen held up the item to the same height as his eyes, which widened in shock as he realised what it was.

By the Force.

"What was it?" Shaela asked, tilting her head in confusion. Rassen allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch in reply, chuckling as the quarian huffed in response.

"I will get to that later," he said. "For now, however, do not worry about it." He felt his mirth evaporate as his thoughts returned to what had occurred after he had searched Zaressh's body, something the cockpit's other occupant noticed.

"Okay, what happened next then?" Shaela asked in a whisper, her eyes staring intently into his own, curious but without being intruding. Rassen sighed gently, glancing around the room they were in as he formulated his reply.

"I left the area as fast as I could. From there I started to look for any signs of mysterious disappearances. I hit a lot of dead ends; people vanish without a trace all the time, but…" he trailed off and Shaela tightened her grip on him slightly, clearly sensing his hesitation. Rassen smiled gratefully before squeezing her gently in return.

"About a year later," he continued, "I found myself on a small farming world at the edge of Republic space." He paused for a moment, smile vanishing completely. "A possible lead had brought me to the planet, which was called Talsae. I had no idea what I was looking for exactly. All I knew was there had been several unexplained disappearances in a short span of time. Still, I decided to investigate all the same and so managed to book passage there."

Rassen could tell he was speaking more slowly now, his mouth unwilling to say the words he was ordering it to. "After a few days on Talsae, I left the settlement I arrived at and was passing by a homestead where a small family lived." It was almost impossible for him to speak now, only Shaela's constant look of reassurance making it possible. "A small boy came out from the main building, but he was old enough to tell right away I was a Jedi. He shouted for his parents, who ran out to join him."

He swallowed heavily as he remembered the three of them, the looks of awe on their faces as they stared at him in amazement like a knife in his gut. "The… the mother told me there were a small group of raiders nearby that had been bullying the more isolated homesteads for protection money. Of course, what the money actually protected the inhabitants from were the raiders themselves. This family, though, had started to run out of credits, and they also had no vehicle by which to head to the safety of one of Talsae's cities. I would have let them use my own if I had possessed one, but I had used a hire transport to get there from where I arrived on world and it had already begun to head back."

Rassen tried to keep his breathing as normal as possible, but it didn't stop the floor beneath the two of them from trembling as the memories continued to flow. A small hand softly ran along his arm, the vibrations calming in response, though they did not cease completely.

"I promised I would try to protect them," he whispered, fighting past the lump in his throat. "They were good people, Shaela. Innocent people. I knew it was a bad idea, but I still—"

Rassen cut himself off, shaking his head as he tried to regain control of himself and continue. "I… There was another reported disappearance only a few hours after I met them. The begged me not to leave, but I promised I would not be long. I just wanted to find out whether it could be the result of something that would allow me to return here. I knew it almost certainly had nothing to do with that, but I… but I still left."

Shaela was watching him silently, eyes wider than he had ever seen them as she listened. "When I arrived at where the disappearance had been reported, it quickly became apparent the person in question had been abducted. Soon after, I found out they had been kidnapped by the same raiders I had heard about earlier, and an eyewitness said they were heading in the direction of the family's homestead. So I ran."

Tears were starting to blur his vision now, but Rassen forced himself to continue. He had to finish, had to tell someone else what had happened. "By the time I got there, it was too late. Their home was burning. Both the mother and father were dead, but their son was not."

The quarian next to him began to make quiet shushing noises, her grip on him tightening so much it was almost painful as her eyes continued to gently coax more out of him, no judgement there yet as she listened. "I-I…" Rassen trailed off before taking a deep, shuddering breath and continuing. "I managed to get him out, but I was still too slow. I held him as he… as he died, Shaela. His last words were when he asked me where I… where I had been."

"Rassen…" Shaela whispered, reaching out to gently run a finger along his face, the digit coming away wet as she gently brushed away the tears that had begun to fall. "You didn't know for sure if or when they would be attacked when you left them. It could have been days after you first met. Months, years, perhaps never."

Rassen stared into the quarian's eyes. "I know," he managed, "but I still failed them. And then, what happened next…" he trailed off, only the quarian's presence giving him the strength to try and go on. "I… I could have done it to stop them from killing other innocent people. That is what I told myself afterwards. The truth is, though…" he trailed off, unable to keep looking the woman he loved in the eyes until she gently took hold of his chin and turned his head back to face her.

"The truth is…" Shaela prompted gently.

Rassen swallowed. "They split up after burning the homestead. I have no idea why, but I did not let it stop me. One by one, I hunted them down. Some of them chose to fight, so I killed them. Some of them tried to run, but I still killed them. Some of them… some of them begged for mercy. I still killed them."

The look of shock in Shaela's eyes made it a herculean task, but Rassen made himself go on. "I could feel myself slipping, Shaela. I could feel the darkness building. It had been a year since I had last seen you, and I had no idea if I ever would again. Each day after I killed the last of them was worse than the one before it. Then just when I was about to give in… you happened."

"Me?"

"You," Rassen smiled, albeit weakly. "Just when I found myself starting to listen to… to it, starting to slip beyond the point of no return, I had a vision. I was meditating, trying to clear my mind, and you were suddenly opposite me. I..." he shook his head before continuing. "I don't know if it was the Force or just my own mind, but you told me to stay strong. To keep trying to find a way back to you. I… I told you I might never manage it, but you told me I would. After that, I managed to make peace with some of the darkness within me, but not all of it. It was enough, though, and eventually I learned of the disappearances of a number of Mandalorians, all of which were under the same circumstances. Following the trail they left led me to a device that brought me back here… back to you."

He could almost see the gears turning in Shaela's head as she tried to process everything he had just told her. "When you say you were starting to listen to it, what do you mean?" she asked.

"Almost as soon as I left the alleyway where I ended up after Querra, I heard a voice in my head," Rassen whispered. "But not just any voice. It started small, so small I could barely hear anything at first. Over time it grew louder. Soon I could make out individual words. Then I began to realise I had heard it before, that the voice belonged to someone I knew."

"Who?" Shaela breathed.

"Who do you think?" Rassen laughed mirthlessly. "Zaressh. Ignoring him proved… difficult… and I very nearly stopped completely on Talsae. Ever since I got back here, though, the voice has been much clearer than before. Much louder. Sometimes I do not hear it for hours at a time, but whenever I am at a low point, it is there." The look of horror in Shaela's eyes caused him to shake her hand off his chin so he could look away, but those silver orbs were so magnetic he soon found himself staring back into them without any prompting from the quarian.

"I have no idea how it happened. It might be a result of the Force bond between us, some small part of him surviving in me. Or I could be going mad. I honestly have no idea." He took a deep breath as he continued to stare into those two silver eyes that shone through the light blue of the material that covered them. "That is the truth of what happened while we were apart, Shaela," he whispered. "The whole truth."

Rassen honestly didn't know how she would react as she stayed in position, unmoving. Would it be with anger? Disgust? Fear? Those possibilities and so many others ran through his mind as he continued to stare into the two silver pools that never blinked as they stared back at him, the only movement their owner made the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. He felt what little confidence he had plummeting as she continued to give him the same unreadable expression, but he resisted the urge to try and defend what he had done on Talsae or claim he had over exaggerated the extent of the voice in his head. He had given her the truth. It was down to her how she felt about it.

Slowly Shaela eventually began to untangle herself from him, her arms slipping away as the quarian shrugged off his own from around her shoulders. Swallowing heavily, Rassen allowed her to pull herself free, offering no resistance as she stood up before turning away from him. Watching in silence, he frowned in confusion as she walked over to the pilot's chair before reaching past it to pick up an object from the console he couldn't remember being there earlier.

His worry only grew as Shaela slowly made her way back over before sitting opposite him. At first she said nothing. A minute of agonising silence crept by. Then a second. A third had almost passed before the quarian's mouthpiece blinked to life as she spoke, so many different emotions in her voice Rassen couldn't identify all of them.

"I told you I helped people during the war with the Reapers, right?"

The Jedi stared in disbelief. Of all the responses she could have given, he hadn't expected that one. "I… Yes, you did," he managed.

Shaela didn't seem to pay any attention to his confusion as she spoke. "I spent the last part of the war helping out in a hospital on Rannoch. I volunteered but didn't have any experience, so I did what I could. It wasn't much, mainly applying medi-gel and trying to keep patients calm, but over time I started to learn more and more about treating the injured."

The quarian took a deep breath before continuing. "When the war ended, there were still a lot of injured people out there. There still are, even months later. Anyway, a few days after the fighting was over, I met an asari matriarch called Wessa. Over the following weeks, she helped me learn much faster than before, and I started taking the medical exams necessary to become a doctor."

"Like you always wanted." In spite of the situation, Rassen couldn't help smiling proudly. Despite how long they had been separated, despite everything that had happened to her in that period, Shaela had focused on helping people. Focused on trying to make a difference.

"Yes," the shape of the quarian's eyes gave away the fact she was smiling, which caused a small amount of the tension in the room to evaporate, "but I might have been able to help more people if…"

"If?" Rassen asked gently.

Shaela's smile seemed to fade. "When you… when you disappeared, I couldn't feel the Force anymore. No matter how hard I tried, it always seemed to be just out of reach, like it was still there but there was some kind of barrier between me and it."

Rassen nodded thoughtfully. "That would make sense. I do not believe Zaressh was lying when he said you feel the Force through me. With us being so far apart, it stands to reason you would be unable to use it on your own."

Shaela nodded herself now. "I felt it when you got back," she explained. "We were in completely different parts of the galaxy, but I still felt it."

"Which is when you set off."

Shaela shook her head. "Not right away, although I wanted to. My family were split on whether I should go on a potentially dangerous trip based just on a feeling. My sister and mother thought I should, but my father disagreed. Eventually, though, it came down to whether I could find a ship or not."

The quarian's voice caught in her throat, causing Rassen to reach out towards her, only for Shaela to push his hands away. The rejection hurt, but he did his best not to let it show. She had listened to him, now it was his turn to do the same. After a moment, Shaela found her voice again.

"Wessa let me borrow a ship. It… it was the last thing she had left of her bondmate, who passed away a long time ago. I promised to bring it back." A choked sob followed, and this time she allowed Rassen to pull her into an embrace. "I c-couldn't. I-I… couldn't keep my—"

"Shaela," he interrupted, voice gentle but firm. "What happened was not your fault. We were attacked. The Mandalorians and batarians are to blame for what happened, not you."

"But I—"

"No," he interrupted again, pulling away slightly so he could look her in the eyes. "It was their fault, not yours. She will not blame you for its destruction. You were in no way careless with the ship before that either, were you?"

"No," Shaela sniffled. "I just… just…"

"It was not your fault," he repeated.

"I…" the quarian sniffled again. "Thank you, Rassen." She pulled away, and this time it was even more difficult than before to disguise how he felt, but Rassen somehow managed it, succeeding in giving the cockpit's other occupant a look that gently prompted for more information, much like the one she had given him.

Shaela took a shuddering breath before continuing. "Before I set off," she said, "Wessa gave me some supplies. Medi-gel, kinetic barriers, and antibiotics in the case of a suit breach."

"Antibiotics?" Rassen asked, tilting his head slightly. "I'm not sure I understand. Is medi-gel insufficient if you get hurt?"

The quarian was shaking her head before he had even finished. "In the case of something that doesn't damage my suit or a minor breach, medi-gel on its own should be enough. It's mainly for repairing serious damage to someone's body rather than treating illness, so its antibacterial properties aren't as strong as I wish they were. If one of my people were faced with substantial damage to their suit, they would need something more specialised and faster acting."

Rassen nodded slowly. "I remember not long after we first met you told me about your people's immune systems. I did not realise medi-gel alone would not have been enough if your suit had been damaged while we were together."

Shaela now held up the object she had retrieved so he could see it, revealing it to be a syringe. "I accidentally knocked my bag while you and Kasumi were gone," she explained. "I hadn't checked its contents too closely before then, but as I replaced the things that fell out of it, I noticed what was written on the side of this wasn't what I expected."

Gently taking the object from her, Rassen rotated it until he could see the lettering in question. "Temrathaylene," he read. "I'm still not sure I understand. Is this not an antibiotic? Is it dangerous or illegal?"

"N-No," Shaela stuttered. "It's just that the antibiotics quarians normally use when there's a suit breach are very powerful but only for a short length of time. Our suits can normally seal themselves on their own to protect us, so that's all we need. Temrathaylene is much more expensive than those kinds of antibiotics because it's both strong and long-lasting."

"So this is used when a quarian requires surgery?" Rassen asked, frowning at the syringe.

Something about Shaela's tone caused his gaze to return to meet hers almost immediately. "Normally yes," she whispered, voice suddenly almost inaudible, causing him to lean closer. "But it's also sometimes used by quarians when they want to," she took a deep breath, "when they want to see each other."

It took a few seconds for what she had just said to sink in. Swallowing as he noticed the room suddenly seemed much smaller than it had a moment before, Rassen looked back at the syringe, freezing as it caught the light. "Shaela," he whispered, his voice now as quiet as hers, "this is empty."

"I know."

He turned back to face her as the quarian's hands rose to the front of her helmet, fingers slowly moving to the sides of her visor. "Even with something like temrathaylene this is risky," she murmured. "I might be almost unaffected, or this might make me so sick I won't even be able to walk tomorrow."

"Then stop," Rassen's voice sounded hollow, even to him.

"We could die in the next few days," Shaela whispered, the look in her silver eyes seeming to paralyse him as he continued to watch her. "I need you to see me, Rassen. To be able to look at me the way I can look at you, just this once." Her fingers finally reached the edges of her visor as she waited for what he would say next. As he stared back at her, Rassen noticed they were shaking almost uncontrollably. Shaela was terrified. Terrified she might die. Terrified he might not find her attractive. Terrified this was a bad idea. It could well be.

But he could see how much it meant to her.

His throat was so dry all he could do was nod. The quarian's fingers suddenly bent slightly, unclasping the barrier between them before lifting it away from the rest of her helmet by less than a millimetre. The faint smell of an antiseptic reached him, but he couldn't have cared less. Swallowing, Rassen placed his hands on the Shaela's arms, gently prompting her to lower the object she held. Her grip on it slackened, causing it to clatter to the metal floor next to her. A split-second later the syringe he still held joined it.

Shaela's face was both surprisingly human and also very much alien. Her silver eyes, he could now see, had irises and pupils like his own, but they were much closer in colour to the rest of each eye, the irises being slightly darker in tone and the pupils only a little darker than that. With the visor that had covered them gone, Rassen could see her eyes did indeed glow, though not quite as brightly as he had expected.

The quarian's nose, the tip of which he had been able to see before if at just the right angle when they were close, was the same size as a smaller human one, and was the most similar feature between them. Her mouth was almost as human-like, but Shaela's lips were thinner than those most of his own species had as they switched between two different expressions, their owner both exhilarated and terrified. Her teeth, as far as he could see, were again similar to his own, though perhaps each one was a little smaller than its human equivalent.

The quarian's skin was a light shade of grey, which meant it stood in contrast to the markings that ran across parts of her face. Presumably starting beneath her hair, which was a dark shade of blue—so dark in fact as to be almost black—a black line ran down each side of her face on the outside of each eye and across each cheek before meeting the nearest corner of the quarian's mouth. As her expression changed from joy to worry and back to joy again, the lines moved accordingly.

Rassen would have been perfectly happy if it had never been possible for him to see her face. He had known how he felt about her years ago and those feelings had only grown stronger over time. Knowing what the quarian looked like had never been a requirement for him.

But now he loved her even more than before.

As the seconds passed, Shaela's expression stopped flitting between excitement and fear, settling on just the latter. The quarian began to blink back tears and slowly looked away. "I… I th-thought this might happen," she managed. "I knew that just because I liked how you… how you looked, that didn't m-mean it worked both ways. We should just… just pretend this never happened." She began to reach for her mask, causing Rassen to lean forwards and push it gently out of her reach. The quarian froze, still not looking at him, breathing at a fever pitch.

"Shaela," he whispered. "Look at me."

Letting out a quiet whimper, the quarian slowly turned her head back to face him, tears beginning to run down her face as she trembled all over. Smiling gently at her, Rassen reached out, cupping her face in his hands.

"There you are," he said simply.

Then he leaned in and kissed her.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting. They had kissed before with her mask separating them, of course, but this was something very different.

Despite their comparative thinness, Shaela's lips were soft and warm, massaging his own as they parted, a gasp escaping her mouth as she realised what was happening. Rassen's eyes widened as the quarian suddenly grabbed onto him, a hand on one of his shoulders and its twin on his back as she pulled him forwards with surprising strength considering her slender form. He was unable to keep them open as she began kissing him back, their lips awkwardly pressing together, neither of them familiar with what they were doing.

Slowly though, they settled into a slow tempo, Rassen releasing Shaela's face in order to cup the back of her head with one hand and the back of her waist with the other. He pulled them even closer together, the smell of antiseptic stronger than before, not that he cared. In that one perfect moment, all he could concentrate on was Shaela. The sensation of her lips on his, the warmth of her body despite her enviro-suit, the muffled moans of satisfaction that managed to escape her mouth which he knew mirrored his own.

It could have been only a minute or so. It could have been hours. All Rassen knew was eventually the urge to breathe became all-consuming, and he broke off the kiss, gasping and inhaling deep lungfuls of air. Shaela was no better, the quarian heaving precious oxygen into her lungs with the same desperation he did. As he managed to get a handle on his breathing, Rassen saw the glint in her eyes, only to realise he'd noticed it too late to do anything about it.

Now it was Shaela's turn to take him off-guard, the quarian smashing her lips back into his as though trying to make up for the brief moment they had been separated. Rassen grunted as he again suddenly found himself being pulled forwards, Shaela having grabbed onto both of his shoulders this time before leaning back without warning, pulling him on top of her as she lay down on the floor. He moved his hands to the ground on either side of her head, balancing himself as best he could, his attention focused completely on the woman beneath him.

They eventually broke apart to breathe again, Shaela once more moving to rectify the situation a few seconds later, only for him to beat her to it this time. Grinning against her lips as she gasped, Rassen rolled the two of them over, pulling the quarian on top of him as they continued to kiss. His lips now hurt from both the increasing intensity of what they were doing and the length of time they had spent in use, but he couldn't have cared less as he ran his hands down Shaela's back, the small noises of pleasure she made in response all he could focus on.

Everything else had long faded away by this point. Zaressh, the Mandalorians and batarians, even Shepard and Kasumi, who were still asleep in the ship's bunkroom. As far as Rassen was concerned, it was just the two of them in a small bubble completely separate from the rest of the universe.

Shaela suddenly drew back slightly, the quarian's pupils dilated in a way that clearly had nothing to do with the lighting of the room. "I don't care what happened between Querra and you coming back," she breathed. "You're a good man, Rassen, and all of that is in the past."

He couldn't reply for a moment as he stared in awe at the conviction in the silver orbs that seemed to look directly into his soul. "But the voice—"

"I don't care," Shaela repeated. "Whatever it is, if it's some part of you or some part of Zaressh, it doesn't matter. We've been there for each other ever since we met, aside from after Querra, but that's never going to change again. Whatever that voice is, it's not having you. You're my human."

Rassen didn't respond with words at first, instead reaching up to bring her face back down to his own, kissing her gently before separating their lips again. "And you are my quarian," he said firmly. "You always will be."