A/N: Welcome to chapter 16 everyone. Sorry it's a smidgen late. I've got three jobs at present, all academic, and they're doing murders to my free time. On the plus side, I hit a fic-first! Thinking up a scene from a much later chapter the other day - the details of which I can't share but that concerns Kolyat and Scalia - I actually made myself tear up. Not just a little bit either. Got myself right in the feels. I blame the soundtrack to The Last of Us completely. Well played Santaolalla.
Well played.
Seriously.
UNF.
I'd also like to give another shout out to the epic and wonderful coldwetn0se, who, with numerous others, is working on a fix for Thane's romance in ME3. Check it out if you haven't already. It's all kinds of awesome.
Enjoy.
Yours faithfully,
L.G.
A Matter of Communication
In which Kolyat misconstrues a social cue, then learns something important about his father
Apollo's Café was always busy of an early afternoon. Be it passing tourists, dignitaries looking for some light fare on their break, or the scattering of regulars who propped up the counter and kept Matriarch Aethyta in turns amused and exasperated, empty was never something the place seemed to be and today was no exception. A gaggle of Human women, newly arrived, settled at a large table for a late lunch. Three Turians, one female, two male, approached the bar to order. And within the establishment's wide forecourt, their table the farthest from the numerous and varied clusters of seated patrons and situated so that one of those sitting at it had nothing but a high wall at his back, sat a pair of Drell; Thane and Kolyat Krios.
They were silent presently and had been for minutes..a half-hour's worth of stilted dialogue that had not, much as they'd traded points and counterpoints, been actual conversation having taken them from issue..
- 'Joining the war effort is a matter of duty, son' he says.
'I know' I reply, the words flat; throwaway. -
..to issue..
- 'When're you leaving exactly?' he asks, his chest silent; breaths coming sharp to keep it that way.
'The day after next' I reply, noting how he dips his chin a degree to mask the faint flush of discontent that darkens his throat.
'..Oh' he says, his eyes likewise lowering. -
..to issue..
- 'Can I trust the Commander when she says you won't be on the front lines?' he asks.
I smother the urge to chuff at the question. 'I trust her with my life' I say, earnest and, remembering our discussion regarding how we should introduce our relationship to Kolyat, necessarily professional as I convey my regard for her. 'You can trust her word.' -
..until they had covered everything they each could think to bring up about Thane's leaving the Citadel. In the technical sense of the word, their meeting was complete. Concluded. Finished. Over. And yet..neither man had it in him to leave. There was a sense between them of things left unsaid. Of words lingering on the tips of their respective tongues that they wanted to share but found, when they tried to, that they suddenly lacked the fast-moving breath to do so. Apprehension, years old, had its claws in them both; in Thane for he feared that he was on the cusp of losing his son, and in Kolyat because..beneath everything else..he feared losing his father.
Sitting across from him now, the young Drell felt vaguely ill. He was choked and tight-throated, and so filled with adrenaline that he had, for the past five minutes, been tapping his heel against the leg of his chair to quell the need to get up and pace. The mug of tea before him sat untended despite how dry his mouth was. The effort he was putting into keeping his chest silent was beginning to make him lightheaded, and to cap all that..to make keeping a veneer of something like detached calm almost impossible..the man had appeared stoic since he'd first sat down. And not just a little bit either. Not just po-faced. Po-faced was pretty much situation-normal for a Drell partaking in a serious discussion.
No. He was po-faced and tonally fuck-ing silent.
Purposefully, autonomously silent and Kolyat knew it because he'd heard his father, on numerous, disparate occasions, communicate tonally with him. Always very softly, very slightly, but it'd been there - that connection. Now though he was being denied it, and that not only left him unable to hear what Thane was feeling in this of all moments, it also implied that he was making a point, as Drell do with intentional tonal silence, of showing that he was unmoved by their discussion.
Unmoved, while Kolyat was on the brink of crawling out of his scales.
Faced with that unruffled calm, the young Drell's temper prickled, and he knew he couldn't remain where he was any longer. He took a readying breath, gathering himself to put an end to the moment; to leave with a terse goodbye and head home where he knew, deep down, he'd spend the rest of the day and most of the night pacing back and forth, talking at the memory of his father's seemingly impassive regard.
Saying what he'd wanted to in person but couldn't.
He would have done this. Would have left right then had Thane not seemed to sense his decision and make one of his own. His eyes snapping up from the mug of tea in his hands, he caught Kolyat's gaze as the last of the memories he'd been glancing back at to help centre himself..
- 'I'm with you' Ami says, her voice gentle. Soothing. 'Whatever comes. Whatever he says, or does, or brings up, or doesn't.'
'And Kolyat?' I ask. 'What of him?'
She pauses, stroking my temple as she considers her answer. 'I think he wants to know you.. ..maybe, in time, come to love you.. ..and I think you have to let him know that it's safe to do those things..' -
..faded away. Remembered calm and encouragement bolstering him, he spoke with a mind to following her advice all he could.
"Son.. ..I..feel that we have spoken and yet not at once."
Kolyat went still, the tension in him releasing just fractionally now that the proverbial Elcor in the room had been set between them squarely. Not having to ignore it anymore was a relief. It'd grown so fucking big. Nictitating his inner eyelids, he nodded. "..I know."
"Then please" Thane prompted, relaxing as his son had..slightly, incrementally..at his affirmative. "Speak. I listen."
"Speak?" he parroted. "What do you want me to say?"
Thane's answer was quick. "Tell me your mind."
Kolyat's..wasn't.
At the almost amiable request, he closed his eyes and puffed out a sigh; catching a scathing 'You really don't want me to do that' before it could follow his breath past his lips. Being given carte blanche to talk as he wished was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he could get a bit of the mess in his head out and be shot of it. On the other..along with said mess came a tangle of emotions, and he'd never been very good with those. At least not where his father was concerned.
..
His seemingly implacable vacuum of a father who was still giving him the silent treatment.
A glottal thud of tonal aggravation clattered up from his chest and he swallowed hard, forcing himself to breathe through the few that followed it to quiet them. Three breaths were taken. Four. Five. And then..yes..then he had a handle on himself.
Then he could risk speaking.
Watching his fingertips trace a barely perceptible imperfection in the table's finish, he plucked out the most relevant of the cavalcade of grievances he had, arranged it into something like an intelligible form, and went for it. "..After Talid..I didn't want to know you. Didn't want anything to do with you. The messages you sent..They didn't sink in. Didn't connect. And then..suddenly..you were in the hospital, and I was at your bedside, and I wanted.." He chuffed softly, rubbed a hand across his mouth and then met his father's gaze. "I wanted not to feel anything, seeing you there. I wanted not to care. To do the whole 'Goodbye' thing and then leave and forget, as much as a Drell can forget anything, that you ever came back for me."
He paused a moment, clearing his throat and looking at the man sitting across from him in perfect, complete stillness. His back ramrod straight, he barely seemed to be breathing; the infinitesimal movement of his shoulders as he did the only nod to the fact that he wasn't, much as he seemed to want to be, merely a statue of a Drell at a café being talked at by a stranger.
..
Which is what it felt like to Kolyat at present, honestly.
Breathing through a minor resurgence of his tonal tell for aggravation, he pressed on. "But.. ..then I saw you. I stood by you. I listened to the doctors, to your Mordin, and I.." He shook his head, glancing away briefly before again meeting his father's eyes. In his own, his conflict was plain. In Thane's, to Kolyat, there was nothing but attentiveness. "..I felt..horror. I didn't understand it at the time..I still don't..I wanted to fucking hate you. But for all I didn't like you..And I still don't.."
Thane's nod was barely three degrees high, but that was enough to spur Kolyat on.
"For all I didn't like you..I realised that losing you would be worse than having you alive. And slowly..in spite of everything..I decided that feeling like that was ok. And that I was ok with it being ok. As the months passed, it got easier. You were there, and we spoke, and..it got easier. And now you're leaving and I know why." He said those last words quickly, stopping the attempt at cutting in he could tell his father was about to make. Sitting back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, he finished his thought. "It's your duty. I get it. The war. The Reapers."
Despite the fact that he spoke flippantly, Thane caught his every disappointed edge and disapproving inflection with trained quickness, and he pointed out, after a quick think-time-gathering sip from his mug, what said edges and inflections made obvious to him. "You are hurt by my decision to get involved."
A reflexive, petulant "No" escaped Kolyat before he could catch it, and he almost cursed at the slight raise of the brows he earned from his father for the slip. Almost being the operative word there. He didn't, and forced himself into order before speaking on. Temper or no temper, he was unwilling to let himself come off as some bratty no-account; even less so a bratty no-account who was hurting. "I..think it's a stupid choice. Impulsive. Wrong.. .. ..But I'm not hurt by it. And it's not like it'd matter if I was."
That last assertion made his father frown. "What makes you say that?"
And his response, a flat, matter-of-fact, "You'll leave anyway", stopped him cold.
It was all Thane could do to stare a moment, the wind knocked from his sails by the awful prescience of his son's words. There was no rebuttal he could give without lying to him. No comfort that involved promises of unending physical presence. All he had to offer was the truth, and he did so in as soothing a manner as he was able.
"I do not wish to leave you."
Kolyat snorted disbelievingly. "Ok."
"I do not" Thane repeated, setting down his cup and leaning forward a hint. "For the war, I must depart this place, but I do not wish to leave you."
All he got for his effort were raised brows and a slight nod, and he spoke on in the hope of making his intention to always be present should Kolyat need him to be absolutely clear. "If you needed me-"
He got not a syllable further.
Kolyat's demeanour changed on a credit, his restraint evaporating at the attempted placation. Suddenly wide-eyed and flushed from the very bottom of the pleats on his throat to those that marked his ears, he gave a hiss of rage so sharp and low that it made the tea in their mugs ripple. The sound was maintained for a full breath, his lips open in a snarl as two and one-half words..
"DON'T YOU FU-"
..cut through the ambient chatter around them like a laser through smoke. There were more that followed them.. ..more that came as the people around him stared and then went back to talking in spite of how he stood, so tense he trembled, half way out of his chair.. ..but they, thanks to Thane's quick application of Omni-tool to translator, sounded like little more than rumbling and rolling sibilance to all those within hearing distance. He wouldn't allow the clearest memory the public had of his son to include the slurry he spat in that moment, and waited, taking everything he said squarely on the chin, until he sat stiffly across from him again before quietly reactivating the device.
Kolyat, breathing through slightly opened lips as he willed the colour in his throat and the racket in his chest to subside, barely blinked at the soft static burst that signalled its return. The fact that his vitriolic turn had burned itself out quickly, white hot as it had been, was the only reason he hadn't bolted on reflex, and as he began to settle in increments now he allowed himself to be glad that he'd managed not to. There was more he had to say. More he wanted to know. And he knew that scarpering now, much as a break from this Gods awful stress would be welcome, wouldn't help his situation as a whole.
That didn't mean though that he couldn't vent a little.
"Don't you tell me what I need and what I don't" he growled, appending his Drellish cursing fit to make himself doubly clear. "Don't you fucking dare. You know shit about what I need."
The man's response - a disapproving glance for the people milling nearby (particularly Matriarch Aethyta who, thanks to long experience, judged the outburst to be worthy of no more scathing a rebuke than a purposefully loud, 'Think Tealy over there has the quad to try and deck the green one in the leather?'), a tonally soundless though cultured, "Forgive me. I meant no offence" and a dip of the chin to convey reserve and contrition - did nothing to ease him. If anything it riled him anew for it brought to the fore, yet again, his infinite silence.
His grasp upon his temper weakening, the young Drell could ignore it no longer.
"Goddess, what is that!?" he snapped, gesturing vaguely towards his father. "What is it? How can you be like that? Jus-..just there! There and not there at once!" He gestured again. "What the hell do you need to be to just sit there while I'm bright from neck to frill?"
Thane tilted his head a fraction at the volley of questions, the muted gesture earning a renewed sneer from his son that he elected, along with all but the last of his questions, to pay no mind to for the time being. The last was that which had the greatest potential to cause a scene if not properly, carefully dealt with, and fractious expressions, while vexing to him, were something he was long used to. "What I am?" he repeated, adding after a pause and with pointed finality, "Son, you already know."
The baldness of the words made Kolyat newly tense. He coughed out a chuff, the staccato tone that still echoed up from his chest as he did marking his disdain. For the topic at hand, despite its relevance. For how easily his father seemed to bring it up. And most especially for the fact that it was, for them, a fact of life.
"Yeah, I do.." he grumbled, glancing out into the middle distance for a beat before returning his glare front and centre. "But what does that even mean? It doesn't tell me anything. Where's the rest of you?"
Thane frowned, confused. "Pardon?"
"I don't understand you" he clipped, a tinge of something akin to regret marring his once purely derisive, frustrated tone as his ire began to cool after so long on the boil.
Even he couldn't maintain a fit of temper at so high a pitch for long.
As surprise widened his father's eyes a fraction and drew from him a single nictitation of the inner eyelids, he explained himself further. "I know things about you. Your favourite type of tea. How you like it made. That you once tricked Commander Shepard with a Rubik's Cube and enjoy looking at holos of the Citadel. I know that when you were just starting to recover, seeing me was the best part of your day."
"It was" Thane said, his voice gentle.
A mirthless huff jogged itself lose from Kolyat's chest. "I know that" he repeated, "because every time I came in I heard you smiling. It was like you hadn't seen me in years." His attention was fixed firmly upon the tabletop as he spoke, though he did glance up when his father replied..
"I hold those memories dear. You were, and are, a sight for weary eyes"
..and bit back the urge to bring up the fact that he was leaving said sight in favour of war and the endless blackness of space. Instead, he pressed on with his observation.
"I know all these things about you. I spent months trying to learn you, and I used to think..as I picked things up, or as you told me them..that I was getting to know you. To understand you." He shifted in place, his expression pinching in a scowl and words becoming faintly accusatory. "But I wasn't really, was I."
Concerned, Thane drew breath to probe.
Kolyat though was faster. "It's like the difference between the face-name and the soul-name" he said. "I know your surface, your face-name, really well. But the rest?" Again he shook his head, forcing himself to meet his father's eyes. It was..difficult. The weight of his regard was such that he felt it on his very scales, and it remained thus for a long moment of what was, for Kolyat, acute, almost paralysing discomfort. This time however, oddly, it was Thane who looked away first; giving the forecourt a fleeting glance as he collected his response.
"This..rest..you seek" he finally mustered, "is bound up in things that I am deeply reticent to share with you"
Kolyat fenced. "Why? I know what you are. You said so yourself."
"Because I do not want anything of my professional life to be close to you. It has stained enough of both our lives without you seeking it out. And you're right. You do know, I did say, and what you seek, I think, is in those facts."
That garnered a deep, confused frown. "What?"
"What I was trained to be.." Thane explained, "..and the rest of me are not distinct."
Kolyat's frown grew all the deeper. "So..what does that mean? That you, as an extension of your profession, don't want to be close to m-"
"No" Thane cut in, giving a sharp, single shake of his head.
"..That I know what you are, so I know you as a person?" Kolyat guessed then, glad of the rebuttal in some deep place inside himself. "Or that there's nothing else to you?"
"There was.. ..very little else for a long time" Thane replied after a beat of pointed silence. The words were almost penitent, and he was readying himself to expand upon them when a memory he had not actively sought out..
- 'I don't know why he would accept the task' I say, watching Shepard's expression closely.
'To be closer to you maybe?' she offers, her tone bordering on compassionate. I smother a wince, tension bringing my back newly straight.
'That thought haunts me more than any other.' -
..drew him to a conclusion so pressing that he couldn't not give it voice. He did not do so blindly however. He saw an opportunity, in this moment, to both give his son what he seemed to want - a chance to better know him - and to steer him away from talk of his profession-proper, and he spoke, in measured tones, with a view to doing those things in a way that would not appear to his still volatile, still judgemental progeny to be forced or jarring.
With a little verbal sleight of hand.
"I do not presume to know your mind" he began. "But if you are looking for something redeeming in me..something perhaps to make my profession..my life..a more palatable thing for you to be associated with through me..you will be disappointed. There is nothing positive you might learn from my past. Outside of my most formative years, I was not raised so much as trained." He let out a slow breath, pausing on that point before finishing with something of a warning. "To you, my life should be a cautionary tale. Nothing more."
For seconds Kolyat sat unfocussed, replaying his father's words in memory. Most he simply sniffed at, sounding as they did to him more like a disinclination to allow him to know him better than anything else, but the comment about his early years..
That stuck.
That was new information.
He found that he couldn't let it go.
"What'd you mean, formative years?"
Thane straightened the barest hint, the movement his only outward acknowledgement of his relief that his attempt at steering their conversation gently had worked; that the detail he'd planted for Kolyat to find had been found and responded to as he hoped it would be.
"I have been training in pursuance of my role for much of my life" he reiterated, "but for my very youngest years. I knew almost nothing else before I met your mother."
Kolyat blinked, his confusion obvious. "But how can-..When did-.." he spluttered, then chuffed at how suddenly scattered his thoughts were and set his focus on the most pressing of his questions. "How long were you in training for exactly?"
"Before my first job, I was trained for six years" Thane said, cupping his mug in his palms and savouring its warmth as he conveyed his answer. Decided as he was about sharing such things, he was still cautious, and that showed in how carefully he spoke. "But..given that one's training does not actually stop at all..given that life itself is an exercise..a learning experience..I have been training for thirty-four."
"Thir-" The young Drell gapped, his eyes going wide. Whatever he'd thought to expect as an answer to his question..that..wasn't it. "..Father.." he finally managed, the word soft and laced with a mixture of disbelief and bewilderment, "you're barely forty.."
Thane nodded.
Kolyat forced out a huff. "..You've..You must be..You're not serious.." he breathed, trying as he did to read his father's expression..his body language..the damnable silence he sat across from him in. All he got for his trouble was the picture of reserved honesty. And that made not one Gods damned bit of sense in his mind. Not when..
"..Six.." he rasped. "You were..six..when you.."
"Began" Thane said, supplying a harmless word to save him struggling. "I was, yes."
"And you trained for six years before..so.." He swallowed thickly. "..Twelve?"
Thane paused fractionally..took a breath..then answered with another slow nod.
And with that, Kolyat's stomach dropped so far so fast he almost gagged.
Sitting back in his chair sharply, he stared more through than at his father, fighting to process what he'd just learned; to swallow back the disgust he felt at the very thought of it and have it fit into what he already knew of the man in a way that didn't blow every one of the preconceptions he had about him out of the water. He fought hard..but in the end..one by one..
He chose his profession..
He must have liked it..
It was more important to him than his family..
..they began to turn from what he'd assumed to be the truth into something akin to conjecture, and suddenly a part of his world that had been settled wasn't so settled any more.
Suddenly, the issue of blame became..tricky.
Not at its most basic, enduring level. It was his father's fault that his mother had been killed. If he hadn't been what he was, she never would have died, and nothing about him starting to be that at..fucking SIX..was going to make that less true. Case closed. End of story. Forgiveness isn't coming, so don't even ask. You arsehole.
..
..
Otherwise though?
He wasn't at all sure anymore.
Could he really blame the man for simply being now?
For each part of his character that he didn't understand and that therefore drove him round the twist?
He remembered what it was to be six. To be twelve. To have absolute faith that the adults around him were teaching him what was right and wrong and safe and unsafe. To follow on without thinking, and to carry the lessons he learned then into later life. He knew what that was like, and couldn't..fathom..that his father, at so young an age, had been taught so very differently than he.
..
But he had.
The proof was sitting right across from him, watching him with great intensity, and Kolyat couldn't but watch him back; this Drell who had been trained from boyhood to be a killer. To watch and see and know what he must have done, what he must be capableof.. ..and to wonder on how fucking odd it felt to be sitting with him in a café like this, pretending he was normal.
As that thought came and went, a word fell out without him meaning it to. "Goddess.."
The way his father tensed you'd think he'd bellowed it, but he hadn't. His voice was soft, stunned, and as he watched the man take another slow sip of tea, it came again; some of his confusion put to voice in the form of a question.
"How?"
Thane's brows twitched up a hint. "How?"
"..Did they..did y-.." Kolyat fumbled, his mind moving faster than his mouth rightly could. Huffing sharply, he changed tack. "You were just a.."
"A child" Thane said blandly, the fact one that had no real emotional import to him. It was what it was, and long-past at that. "Yes."
His son was not similarly unmoved. "And they made you k-"
"Kolyat." There was a wealth of warning in the word.
Catching the glance his father gave the forecourt, he self-corrected. "..Work.. .. ..How?"
Thane was quiet for a beat, considering the question. Always had he been guarded when speaking of his training. The only people, bar Kolyat and his colleagues on Kahje, he had broached the topic with were his mate and his wife, and with them things had been and were entirely different than they were now.
Never had he or did he fear with them that he might be rejected if he misspoke.
That he might lose something he could not replace if he erred or said too much.
Even then though, even with those he trusted most, those with whom he shared his heart, he had not been entirely candid. For the betterment of all involved, he had kept back what he felt was inappropriate for sharing, and he would still. He knew that much. But he also knew that his son was seeking answers, and that the appropriate response to him doing so was not the imposition of a blanket ban on providing them. Doing that would only antagonise him, and he had no want to irk him any more than he already had.
Thus, tentatively, he came out in favour of partial disclosure.
So partial in fact that he prefaced said disclosure with a caveat.
"Speaking of such things.." he said, "..it is not done. But..of myself..and in answer to your earlier questions..there are small things I can tell you." He set down his mug and steepled his fingers before his chin. "May I?"
At Kolyat's fractional nod, he began with a correction.
"You used the word 'made' in your question. That is inaccurate. I was not compelled against my will; not made to work in that sense. That I was selected was an honour for my family, and I was trained into my role with great care. Moulded gently, over a protracted period, into what I was needed to be."
Unsatisfied with so sparse an explanation, Kolyat pressed, "But h-", but halted at his father's sharply raised palm and the clipped, final..
"No"
..that came with it.
He bristled, his throat flushing indignantly. "No? You didn't even let me finish!"
"But how did they do that?" Thane offered, the glare he received in response affirming the correctness of his guess. "Son..I have had variations of this part of our conversation on a number of occasions. None were more important to me than this one is, but..I can push my reluctance to speak of such things only so far. Now." He took a breath and moved on with his explanation before the young Drell could argue further. "I told you earlier that there was little else of me but my role, my training, for a long time. That was not hyperbole. Everything of me is touched by it. Every part. It is in the way I think. The way I move. The way I speak. In my silence. I am an iteration of it, and its practice was an expression of myself."
Though frustrated at having his curiosity brushed off, Kolyat listened intently as his father spoke. "You keep saying 'was'.." he noted, "and you aren't always silent. I've heard you before."
"You have, yes" Thane said, taking his second point first. "I am.. ..a Drell backwards, I think."
At his son's fuddled, "What?" he elaborated, the very beginnings of a smile on his lips.
"The typical Drell is rarely silent, particularly when stressed. I am." He tilted his head slightly, impressing his point. "Particularly when stressed."
"I.." Kolyat tried, then spluttered and shook his head. He'd guessed that he stressed him. Much as he'd thought he'd never seen it, he'd guessed it was there. It was the nature of their relationship; each stressing the other because of their shared history as they tried, haltingly, to find some kind of workable medium between them. But as to silence being how he expressed that stress? As to it being a result of that and therefore not, as he'd assumed it was, his being unmoved by their talk?
He hadn't known that.
Shit how he hadn't known that.
So much for another of his preconceptions.
"Ok" he managed, the realisation that he'd been taking their interaction in completely the wrong way knocking 'combative' right out of his social repertoire. "Go on."
With a nod, Thane did as he bade; turning to his first point now. "And as to speaking in the past tense about that early portion of my life.. ..After I met your mother..after we had you..there became more to me than what my role entailed. I discovered love..attachment..friendship. I woke to a life outside of my work, despite the fact that said life was still shaped by it."
"Hence the silence" Kolyat muttered.
"Hence the silence" he agreed. "And since I feel now as I did then..awake to the world..to life..the past tense only grows more appropriate."
Caught by a word's repetition, the young Drell asked then, "What do you mean awake?"
"Ah." Thane blinked, thinking quickly of the clearest way to put across his meaning. "It is a metaphor I favour for the effect your mother had on my life. To say she woke me from the disconnected slumber I was in prior to our acquaintance."
A more cautious question followed."..You were disconnected the whole time?"
His father nodded. "Always when I worked" he said, "yes. I was trained to be so. To see my body as a tool so that the work it was assigned could be done without troubling my soul."
Shifting in place as he listened, Kolyat again did his best to process what he was learning; to weigh it and fit it into what he already knew. The effort left him in more of a mess than he had been previously, and he used the frustration that came along with that mess to give his retort..
"Is that why it's always been so easy for you to leave?"
..a frankly caustic edge. What tumbled out after it though wasn't nearly so deliberate.
"Because I..can't.. ..keep..dealing with that.."
And no matter how he tried to stop them..
"..Since you started getting better, I've been trying to talk myself out of getting invested in you. I kept telling myself that it wasn't worth it. That you'd either die or leave.."
..words just kept coming..in halting, bitter chunks..
"You didn't die.. ..but you're leaving. And I understand why. There's a war on. Shepard needs you on her team, and that's ok. It's fucking stupid. And it's ok.. .. ..but if you leave like you did wh-.."
..until he had to stop because he knew he couldn't say, 'when you left to hunt the men who killed my mother' without triggering memories that'd make keeping civil with his father impossible. So he stared instead. Stared until Thane nodded, then hid how his hands shook by balling them into fists and told him what he'd had coming since he'd decided to return to the Normandy.
"If you cut yourself out of my life, I won't let you back in."
And then it was said. It was said, and Kolyat waited with baited breath for his father's response. The lull felt like an hour, but it was in truth fleeting for Thane, hearing his son's resolve and his irritated dejection, quickly spoke to soothe..to reassure..and to introduce into their conversation the possibility of maintaining steady contact after he left the Citadel.
"That is not my intention at all" he said, the gentleness of his voice and the earnestness he spoke with catching Kolyat as much as his words did. Tonally flat as they still were, he couldn't miss the care in them. It made him ache in ways he felt his father didn't deserve, and he put on his best glare to compensate.
Thane though went on undeterred.
"It is my fondest wish, outside of having the war end, for you to be as much a part of my life as you want to be. And to that end.." He activated his Omni-tool, pulling up a file labelled 'AICS' on the main interface. Angling himself slightly in his chair then, he showed it to the still scowling Kolyat. "I have something here that will help us keep in touch despite the distance. Shall I explain how it works?"
It took the young Drell a moment..a long..long moment of suspicion and massive indecision..but he drew himself up and leant forward for a better look.
Over an hour after their talk, Kolyat stood upon a bridge that spanned one of the Presidium's massive lakes, staring out across the water. Behind his blank expression, his mind was racing. Memories jockeyed for place..
- 'The Alliance Instant Communication Service allows soldiers to keep in contact with their families while out on active duty' he explains, the soft resonance of a smile colouring his words. 'The Commander has kindly allowed us to use her personal copy, should you wish to, in order to communicate while I am away. It allows for both text-based and real-time vidlink communication, and is quite secure. I have used it to speak with her myself.' -
- 'The Commander told me' he says, 'and I quote, "You tell him from me, he can use it any time he wants. Any time of the day or night. If he needs you, all he'll need to do is send an alert and you're there." She is empathic to your concerns, son, and very much wants for us to remain in contact.' -
- I stare after him as he disappears into the crowd, numb and not, frustrated and not, confused and sure of nothing but the fact that I need to get away from this place. -
..until he took in a sharp breath and jolted himself back into the present. Around him, blessedly, there was stillness now - the spot he'd found after departing Apollo's off the usual pedestrian routes of the Presidium's shopping precinct - and into it he breathed a depthful sigh. He needed to review. To let himself settle enough that he could order his thoughts, stop his recollections fr-
- 'Will you use it?' he asks as the program is transferred and saved to my Omni-tool.
'..Maybe..' I reply, my uncertainty caused by a whirling mind, not a lack of clarity. -
-om leaping out at him from next to nowhere, and hopefully, through doing so, come to accept the way forward his father had set before them as workable.
..
His father, the child-assa-
- '..Six..' I rasp. 'You were..six..when you..'
'Began' he says, sounding ungodly at ease. 'I was, yes.'
'And you trained for six years before..so..' I swallow back bile, my heart in my throat. '..Twelve?'
He nods.
I can barely breathe. -
-ssin.
He shuddered, barking out a short, utterly frustrated exclamation as he scrubbed a hand across his face. This wasn't going to work. Not here at least. Not here on the Presidium where all of the stressful memories of the day were just waiting to be triggered by some sight, smell or circumstance. He had to get away. Had to get somewhere familiar; somewhere where the memories were gentler, less fresh and would form, instead of strident blasts of recalled input, the usual background noise he was so used to as a Drell.
Turning on his heel, he double-timed it to the nearest rapid transit terminal.
It was Zakera Ward or bust.
And now!
Coming in the next instalment!
Thane shares with his Siha what he couldn't with Kolyat.