Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: I tried to whittle this down, I swear I did. But everything here was necessary and character-imperative. I apologize for the length.
Rocks and Shoals
Part Two: To the Seabed
Chapter Seven: Of All Things
"It was easier to admit to making a mistake than it was to admit it mattered what she thought. What she thought of him, most of all." - In a post-war galaxy, Kolyat and Oriana found each other when they went looking for themselves.
Kolyat was beginning to regret ever agreeing to a ceasefire. Not because it hadn't made things peaceful since (it had) or because he wasn't getting work done in a timely manner (he was), but rather, because all that calm and quiet and general niceness (entirely on her part, really) had just given him so much fucking time to start noticing all the little things he never wanted to notice in the first place.
Mostly about Oriana Lawson.
For instance, she had a bad habit of leaving half-eaten food in the conference room. He remembered many a time when he came back after break to find a cold plate of creamy pasta – creamy because it had sat for just that long – stinking up the room like the toasty inside of a gas-riddled volus' suit. He had stopped in the doorway, face scrunched painfully from the smell, and then stalked right back out. Dragging her from Bailey's office for the sole purpose of forcing her to confront the slow-growing pasta monster in their work space had become an almost ritual. At first she was fiercely apologetic. Then she was only mildly ashamed. And eventually her humility had dulled into an unabashed disinterest framed by the words 'I'm working' and a dismissive wave of her hand.
Kolyat's frown dipped so low she had actually voiced her soft surprise at his face not cracking from the sheer force of it.
That night he decided to stuff the container of rotting half-sentient food into his bag and feign innocence the entire ride back to the barracks, inwardly guffawing at the way she tried to claw her way out through the sealed shuttlecar window. It was almost worth the sudden bout of nausea that overtook him at the tail-end of the trip.
Almost.
Heightened olfactory senses had never been one of his favorite aspects about being drell, and this experience certainly reaffirmed that. But she never left another open container of food lying around to cement in the conference room after that. In fact, it had even smelled…fresh…as of late.
He wondered if she secretly started spritzing something throughout the room when he wasn't there, and he couldn't figure out whether it was from some newborn sense of shame or because she had finally come to realize that it was easier to placate him when the place smelled like 'summer pine' or 'mountain fresh' or something equally trite and common, yet grudgingly pleasant. Either way, he decided not to argue with it.
She was also the most organized mess of a person he'd ever met. She never cleared her inbox, not entirely anyway. She had well over a hundred messages daily, and though she read them all, she never bothered to delete any of them, simply let them pile up in her inbox with no end destination. And yet, she could find any one she needed at any given time, and could recall what all of the subjects were about simply by the sender and the date. The first time she had given him her login and password to help her sort and respond, it being a work email and in no way a comment on how much she trusted him (because he wasn't stupid enough to think she'd grant him access to anything not work related, and frankly, he wasn't interested enough to want such a thing anyway), he had opened up the inbox and sat staring at the sheer number for close to a full minute before he closed the screen and leaned around the terminal to glare at her across the table.
"You're a fucking mess, you know that, right?"
It should have registered that she didn't even bother responding, only sighed, her chin in her palm, elbow on the table. And then they moved on.
It should have registered that things were changing. But it didn't.
Oriana could also tell you exactly where on the terminal's desktop she had saved whatever file was input last, even though her idea of a file system meant having one folder labeled 'Done' and the other labeled 'Not Done Yet, What Are You Doing, Get On It'. He had yet to understand how she managed to find anything, or why the woman couldn't come up with anything more descriptive or particular, especially considering half the precinct had to also use the same shared files when logging onto VicTrace's open terminal. Hell, most of the time his days consisted of fielding calls from the other officers asking where the hell their census spreadsheets were. The rub was that Oriana knew he remembered all that shit just as well as she did (daily he cursed the inquisitive side of her that had done enough research on drell to cite his eidetic memory), and he never could feign ignorance. She had officially roped him into her mess of a life.
If not for his own rather remarkable memory, he might have been impressed with her ability to recall tiny details in a sea of chaos. Instead, he was irritated with her clutter, largely because she also forced him to wade through it with her. It was how he stumbled upon her violin compositions. Amid the spread of datapads along the conference room table, Kolyat had grabbed one in his search for the latest crew manifests from the docked and registered elcor ships. He leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on the table, and scrolled through the files. Nothing looked familiar. And then he saw it. The file titled 'Miranda'.
If he was honest with himself, he'd have to say that it was more than curiosity that made him open it. It was some kind of intrinsic need to understand exactly what she meant when she said 'sister' or 'family' or 'love'. She had always been sure of the words. Never faltered. And he didn't know what that felt like. He didn't know how to talk about family with anything less than resentment.
And yeah, some part of him hated that he still smarted at the thought, hated that whenever she mentioned Miranda, her smile small and cautious, eyes downcast (though in remembrance, not shame), he felt something sharp and branding in his chest that felt dangerously like envy.
Envy in the kind of way that also simultaneously reminded you that your own chance has come and gone.
It wasn't so much the 'not having' as it was the 'had once and wasted it'. The idea that he had cast aside that which he now envied.
And so he took some small comfort in knowing her wounds, in learning her pain. In a way, it made him feel less alone. It made him feel like there was someone out there looking for him, too. He would never tell her that sometimes at night, when he was sleepless and memory-laden, he wished for Miranda as well.
Maybe it was selfish. Maybe it was wrong to quietly share in that yearning of hers. Maybe she would recoil in disgust at the thought that he had invaded that small hope of hers, tainted it with his own desperate need for reassurance.
But more than anything he figured she of all people would understand what it meant to look for something outside yourself.
So he opened the folder. Selected the first file listed. '3:13am on a Tuesday' it read. And suddenly, he was struck with the thought of an insomniac Oriana Lawson writing violin compositions about her probably-dead sister in the darkened, barren space of her barracks living room.
Just before the sound played, Oriana glanced up from her seat across the table. Eyes wide, arm reaching toward him as she shot up from her chair, she choked on her own yelp of surprise. "No! That one's –"
But then the file played and they both fell silent and she slumped back in her chair, hand still outstretched, as they stared dumbly at each other.
" – personal," she finished on a whisper.
It was the first time he'd ever heard a violin, and though markedly relaxed as the recording indicated, there was a reverence to the song that played. The sound was strangely grounding, even when the recording of her slight mutterings and awkward breaks punctured the notes as she played. An uninhibited expression of her frustration and her longing and her tenderness. Even the occasional curse when she hit a wrong note seemed perfectly placed. It was like comfort. Like the worn leather of his father's prayer book – it felt right in his hands even when it was wrong.
That was what Oriana's music sounded like.
Her music for her sister.
Distantly, Kolyat wondered what kind of music he sounded like to her.
Oriana opened her palm toward him across the table, expectant. "That one's off limits," she said stiffly.
Kolyat hit pause on the file instantly. Something about her voice then was unfathomably eerie, and he found himself handing over the datapad without objection.
She eyed him cautiously, before taking it, and they spent the rest of the day in silence, though the music played for each of them in their own minds. He hadn't reached for one of her many arrayed datapads quite so confidently since.
Kolyat was finally becoming accustomed to her untidy workspace when he first entered her barracks and realized it was a terminal affliction of hers. And yes, he'd been in her barracks. Practically every morning now it seemed. And that was the other little thing he'd stumbled upon in his discovery of Oriana Lawson. She was always, exactly, seven minutes late for anything. After several days of waiting outside her barracks door for her to come out so they could ride the shuttlecar to work, she had actually peeked out of her door one day and beckoned him inside.
"What?" he asked, genuinely at a loss, leaning back on the railing of the outside hallway with his arms crossed.
"Just come in. I'm almost done," she offered in explanation, retreating back into the apartment and leaving the door wide open for him. "I hate when you hang around outside waiting for me."
"Well then, maybe don't be late all the time," he shot back, hesitantly stepping into the living room of her barracks. Considering there wasn't much furniture, he found it to be rather an impressive feat that she could still cover every inch with some kind of shirt or datapad or inanely human and thus unexplainable object. Most days he sat on the arm of her couch and watched her hurry back and forth from the kitchen and her bedroom down the hall, tossing back swigs of coffee and looking for her earrings.
It was uncanny. Seven minutes to the dot. Every damn morning.
Sometime during the first month of his loitering in her living room, he caught sight of her violin laid out on the coffee table. He'd learned enough about the instrument in the time he'd known her to recognize it. Kolyat found himself reaching for it without realizing. And then the smooth wood was in his hands, and his scaled fingers were running along the neck of the instrument.
"Do you enjoy touching other people's things?"
The question made him glance up to find Oriana adjusting the buttons on her blouse as she looked down at him in the threshold of her small kitchen, a single raised brow aimed at him in irritation.
He didn't put the instrument down, turning it over in his hands instead. It was surprisingly light for such steady sound, but the smoothness of the wood was anchoring in ways he hadn't really expected. "This is a violin." He said it more to himself than anything, but he suspected the mild inquisitiveness in his voice was what made her squat down beside him with a look of hesitant consideration. She propped her chin in her palm, her elbow along her knee as she watched him.
"It's called a hobby. You do know what that is, don't you?"
It would have been easy to snap something equally acerbic back but he found he actually…didn't want to.
Oriana's brows raised when he didn't answer, choosing instead to stare at the wooden instrument in his hands. She hesitated, her fingers thrumming along her cheek. And then, "Do you have anything like that?"
"Like what?" He set the piece back down on the cluttered coffee table.
She cocked her head at him. "A hobby. Something in the downtime. Something that makes you happy."
"It's not like we have much downtime in the first place." And then he pushed from his squat to stand straight. Oriana mirrored the motion.
He shrugged noncommittally, his hands shoving into his uniform pockets as he headed toward the door.
"I suppose," she sighed.
When he looked back at her, his hand on the doorknob, she was staring down at the violin. Her brows were scrunched together. There was a look of uncertainty to her features, her lip caught between her teeth.
He stayed watching her longer than he was willing to admit. "I carve rocks," he finally said, so decidedly off-handed that it produced a vacant 'Huh?' from the distracted woman in the middle of the living room.
His aunt had tried to instill in him the teachings of the old drell, the many gods. He never had much taste for it. When he was especially petty, he liked to swear at Kalahira, goddess of oceans and afterlife, because he'd had enough of both of those at a young, young age. And watching his mother drift away – the only time he could remember his father's palm in his – it wasn't something he liked to linger on.
She was gone, just like the waves. There was no following.
But Thane. Thane had been calmness and silence and a gaze only for the watery horizon. Only for the sea.
"All things must end. All rivers run to the sea. This life is inevitable."
Well, fuck that, Kolyat thought. Too much sentimental bullshit for him, too much spiritual escapism and easy existential answers for questions that should never be easy. Too many outs for an absent father to take.
Not his fault. He wasn't 'whole'. His soul had been torn from him.
Out to sea and never to return.
Fuck that, he thought. Fuck that, and fuck your excuses, your oceanic bullshit, your stupid 'souls apart' and 'the waves take each of us' and every moronic, selfish, uselessly poetic throw-out of a reason for never coming back.
And fuck you.
Stone was better. Stone was steady, sure. It stayed with you. It was firm in your hands, and heavy, and anchoring, and everything that reminded you why the sea was never yours.
Because stones sink.
Because he was not his father's son.
If there was a way to explain this, he might have tried to. Not because Oriana needed it, but maybe because he did. Maybe because belief was still an elusive creature and Kolyat had learned many years ago that faith was only ever a trap. There was no reason to believe that anything was there to catch you when you fell.
He had the bruises to prove it.
"I like the feel of it in my hands," he offered in explanation to her silence. He nodded to the violin. "Like wood."
Like certainty.
Every morning after, he found the instrument in her living room, and she never questioned when he sat on her couch and held the thing in his lap. He didn't have the nerve to tell her how thankful he was for her silence. So she just continued being perpetually late and he continued waiting in her living room every morning with a violin in his lap.
It wasn't the weirdest thing to develop between them, that was for sure.
There was her thing with windows. Oh, not your usual windows. She was fine in the shuttlecar, and no problems with the window of her barracks' living room, or any issues with the windows along the back end of the bullpen of Precinct 12. It was those floor to ceiling windows, those full-length windows that stood for walls. Like the one in DT's office. It was on the second floor of the precinct, with the glass wall on the side that overlooked the bullpen, giving him a view of every officer's desk on the floor below.
At first he thought it had to do with the height. But then, she never had a problem in the shuttlecar, or the second floor balcony of their barracks building, or any of the times they met with Bailey in his own office. And then Kolyat began to notice it again that one time they visited Laytis Memorial Hospital when Agent Jetal was checked in for the night after his patrol was attacked by one of the many rising gangs along the Commons. Oriana had stepped into the room, smile faltering slightly at the sight of the back window-wall, and edged slowly to the left, planting herself stiffly in the corner, her back never to the window, eyes flitting to it occasionally.
Sometimes it made him chuckle. They had monthly meetings in DT's office, and trying to get her up to the damn second floor was like wrestling a yahg. She always had some excuse. Some datapad to wave in his face. Some fake call to put through her omni-tool. But he wasn't above grabbing her by the back of her jacket collar and tugging her toward the stairs. That first and only time he tried it had earned him a fairly painful kick to the back of the knee.
"The fuck, Lawson?" he had growled as he stumbled, hand catching on the rail to steady himself. He looked back at her with only slightly less than murderous intent.
"Stop manhandling me," she spat, brushing her hands down the front of her bomber to smooth it out.
He straightened, frowning down at her. "Then stop always putting this off. You know I get marks off for shit like this? I have my review to think about."
Oriana pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "Oh, you poor soul. How thoughtless of me."
"I'll say."
She huffed. "Look, you can just report to DT for me."
"Except you need to be there, too. The whole point is to show I'm cooperating."
"Well, physically dragging me there isn't exactly what I'd call 'cooperating'."
Kolyat groaned and rubbed a hand down his face. Okay. Okay, she was…right. And oh, how he hated to admit that.
Which is why he never said it aloud.
"Look, I just…can you please just come with me to these meetings?" He motioned up the stairs, expression imploring.
Oriana opened her mouth, and then slumped back further, closing it.
Kolyat sighed, dropping his hands. "I don't get why this is such a big deal."
She looked to the wall, one finger scratching at the leather of her jacket. "It's not. I'm just…busy."
"No, you're not," he said accusingly.
She raised a brow his way.
"I'm with you all the fucking time, Lawson. You've made all your scheduled calls for today and you already had your meeting with the dalatrass. You've got nothing left but database building, and that's never been time-sensitive. I know what you do all day because I'm always fucking there."
She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. Because he knew she couldn't refute it. Instead, she was staring adamantly over his shoulder, not meeting his eyes. She rocked from one foot to the other, the nail of that one annoyingly twitching finger still scratching at her jacket sleeve. She craned her neck once, licking her lips. She was…she was fidgeting.
Kolyat narrowed his eyes at her.
Oriana Lawson didn't fidget. If anything, she was overbearingly present in everything she did, always up in your face. She was fiercely unapologetic. He'd always seen her straight-backed and unblinking. Watching her now was oddly unnerving. He couldn't quite understand why. Blinking at her, hands coming to rest on his hips, he opened his mouth with hesitant curiosity. "Is it…DT?"
He didn't think it could possibly be Townsend. The man was sunshine with skin for fuck's sake. Always that ever-present smile. Always an optimistic view to any conversation. Always a clap on the shoulder or a playful nudge of the elbow and somehow, even through all that, always an admirable sternness when on the job and no fear of getting down and dirty in the field with the rest of them. Hell, DT was the first person Oriana had warmed to at the precinct. But then, she hadn't ever gotten past that stoic professionalism with him like she easily had with Iranis and Kaz. He always attributed it to her work ethic, her respect to her superiors. That, and she had a 'little sister' complex. Wasn't hard to figure that one out. She looked at Iranis and Kaz with that same adoring wonderment and enthusiasm she always had when talking about Miranda, her still-lost sister.
And then there was Marina De Soria, her Research and Development lead that recently transferred to the Citadel from Earth. She was clearly a decade or two older than the Lawson girl, but when in work-mode, spoke to Oriana with a deference and respect that had surprised him.
Oriana Lawson was barely two years younger than him, and yet, he couldn't help that nagging sensation in the back of his mind that kept questioning how the fuck a twenty-one year old became the head of such a company. And yeah, he'd figured that shit out pretty quickly. She came as a 'representative', sure, but she didn't act much like one. He never witnessed her reporting to any superior, and the amount of calls she took from Earth, most of which he'd listened in on (it wasn't a very big conference room, and it wasn't like she tried too hard to hide it anyway) only added to his suspicion. Add to that how flippantly she signed off on cost-heavy projects, well, he wasn't that out of touch.
"So you're like, the boss, huh?" he had asked her once, mulling around his food as they sat in the cafeteria.
She glanced up at him. "Huh?"
"Of Safe Homes. You're it. The big dog." He dropped his fork beside his tray and looked at her, eye to eye. "It's your company, isn't it?"
She had hunched her shoulders down slightly, glancing around the room. As if that made her any less conspicuous. Kolyat inwardly scoffed. It wasn't like it was anything incriminating. No need to blast it to the barracks or anything like that.
She tapped one finger thoughtfully on the tabletop. "What makes you think that?"
He had only to raise one incredulous brow.
She looked back to her food, her fork spearing a limp bean. Dry freeze was all the rage these days. Cheers to field rations and MREs.
Kolyat was so done with C-Sec sometimes.
"Does it matter?" she asked, sighing, and then swallowing her forkful.
"That you're rich and have a kink for playing house? Not really, I guess." He returned to his food just as she flung her spoon at him.
He hadn't brought it up again since. Not because he feared her utensil wielding prowess, but rather, because she was right.
Does it matter?
Not in the grander scheme of things, no. But it did give him some pretty good perspective on a few things. Like Marina De Soria. The technician was somewhere in her thirties, with rich, brown skin, a lopsided smile that tended to warn you of her forgetfulness, and height near that of your average turian. She always wore her tight, short curls natural, and as many rings as she could fit on her ten fingers, and then some. Clearly older than Oriana, and yes, she did fit the occasional arm around the younger girl's shoulders, and glance tenderly down at her in that adoring 'older sister' manner that seemed to be Oriana's weakness, but on the whole, she always listened with rapt attention. She always heeded her direction, and beyond not even challenging her, there was the feeling that she never felt she even needed to challenge Oriana. As though she genuinely accepted and respected the younger woman's authority and decisions.
Someone just barely his junior. With authority over her whole company, said Research and Development lead included.
Kolyat had been so used to being treated like a child that he wasn't ready to admit he might have been jealous. Of course, it helped if he didn't throw fits. Not that that was the word he ever used to describe them. 'Disagreements'. That was more accurate. That was more…adult.
He suddenly felt utterly ridiculous. And more than a little ashamed.
That was, until Duskin entered the room and De Soria turned into complete mush at his presence.
Kolyat had to chuckle. Their initial greeting was over anyway, and Townsend had called Duskin in to show De Soria around the precinct, and then to her barracks. She agreed readily, linking her arm through Duskin's, a radiating smile for his own apprehensive one.
"Marina," Oriana chided good-naturedly, her own smile hidden behind a hand. "Let's not scare the poor man off, shall we?"
Marina waved a dismissive hand, but nodded obediently. "Oh, he has nothing to fear from me, dear. Quite the contrary actually."
And then they were out the door, Marina leading the way rather than the officer she was attached to. DT laughed at Duskin's look of unbridled horror just as the door slid closed before them. Oriana looked back at it longingly.
Yeah. Definitely a 'little sister' complex.
But she had never shown apprehension around DT. Or Bailey, for that matter. Which was why her avoidance of their monthly meetings was just bizarre.
"What?" she asked, genuinely perplexed by his question. And then she blinked. Furrowed her brows. Exhaled a choked laugh. "No. No, that's – not it. It's not DT."
They stood looking at each other at the bottom of the stairwell, with Sergeant Townsend patiently waiting up in his office. Kolyat crossed his arms and cocked his head. "Then, what's the issue?"
Oriana raised her brows in question. "Issue?"
He huffed, impatient. "You said you wanted honesty."
And he knew that was sure to get her. Because if there was anything Oriana Lawson hated, it was getting called out on her own shit. Inwardly, Kolyat smirked to himself. He was learning.
Oriana scowled up at him. "That's low."
"That's just the way it is, baby." He spread his arms wide with the words. "You asked for this."
Silence, but only for a moment. "I did." She pursed her lips in annoyance.
Kolyat waited patiently.
Sighing loudly, and a bit dramatically if you asked him, Oriana shook her arms out and dropped them at her sides. "It's the windows."
Kolyat was so taken aback by the answer that he didn't even have time to question why the sudden ceasing of her fidgeting was comforting, or why he felt so much more at ease when she was looking him in the eye.
It didn't make any sense, really, and why would it matter that she spoke to him confidently? Why did it matter that she not hesitate in his presence? And why had he –
Kolyat blinked. "The what?"
Oriana rolled her eyes.
He hadn't realized how long it had been since she'd done that and something tightened in his gut at the sight. He told himself it was annoyance.
"I don't like…windows like that. You know, the whole floor to ceiling shibang." She motioned up and down the wall with one hand, her other braced along her hip as she leaned her weight to one foot. She looked up at him as though that explained everything.
He suddenly found himself laughing.
She narrowed her eyes so quick she could have cut the air with her gaze.
"You what?" Another laugh, a hand to his ribs. "All this bullshit tiptoeing around the meetings for that?"
"It's a legitimate fear, you know," she snapped.
He hadn't known she could make him laugh this much. "What, did you fall through one or something?"
She stayed suspiciously quiet.
That made him stop. Looking up at her as he held his sides, Kolyat's mouth dropped open. "You didn't."
"No," she answered quickly. "I wasn't the one who fell through it."
His brows arched up, the closest thing to a grin he'd probably ever shown her plastered to his face. She stared at him, perplexed by his response, and he didn't have the mind to think about what her looking at him like that felt like. "So who did?"
And then she looked back to the wall, and everything was suddenly dimmer. She crossed her arms again, her fingers curling in her jacket.
He didn't like it.
"Henry Lawson," she answered. It was more a whisper than anything. And then she blew an angry breath from her lips and snatched her gaze back to his. Unblinking. Sharp.
Yes, this was the Oriana he knew.
"He had a gun to my ribs," she explained hotly, one hand moving to imitate the motion at her side. "Shepard and Miranda had cornered him and I was his hostage. Shepard shot me in the leg, and when I went down, they took him out. He crashed backwards through the window, and I nearly fell through with him when he grabbed for me." She blinked back a startling wetness as she stared up at him, her hand falling back to her side. "But Miranda was there. She didn't let me fall."
Shepard shot me in the leg.
That was what he latched onto the most. A choked, disbelieving laugh escaped him before he could help it.
Oriana's eyes widened with incredulity, and even a bit of fury.
Kolyat waved his hands in the air, face falling with the sudden realization that he had actually laughed at her, at what she just freely admitted to him, and he rushed into back-treading like his life depended on it.
Considering who he just laughed at, it probably was.
"No no no, wait. That's not – I'm not laughing at you. That's not what this is, okay?" He took an unconscious step back from her, hands out with his palms to the ground. "Just…calm down, huh?" And then he proceeded to push air
Oriana scoffed, her disbelief catching any words in her throat. She threw her head back with the noise, planting her hands on her hips and then glaring at him. "If all you intend to do is mock me whenever I open my mouth then I –"
"No, I promise, that's not it." Kolyat kept pushing air down in a supposedly calming motion.
Oriana eyed his hands, annoyed, and then slapped them away. "Stop that."
'Supposedly calming'.
She huffed, her hand returning to her hip. "Then what is it?"
Kolyat opened his mouth, and then closed it. He straightened, thoughtful. Scratching at one cheek, Kolyat suddenly found his mouth dry. It was so bizarrely funny, and yet, strangely terrifying if he thought too long about it. "Because she shot me in the leg, too," he said.
"What?" Oriana's shoulders slumped with the word.
"When I first met her. Back when…" Back when he nearly killed someone, and for such a shitty reason. So full of resentment and pretention and spite. Back when he used to think killing was the easiest thing in the world. Had to be.
Because his father had left him for it.
"Back when I was in deep with some pretty serious shit," he finally answered.
Joram Talid had knelt before him faster than he expected, but then, he was a politician, after all. And Kolyat did have a gun to his head. He'd be lying if he said he didn't get some jolt of power, some flush of exhilarating control when the pleading turian dropped to his knees that day. He didn't have long to think about it though, because a moment later his father – his father (after so many years and so many unanswered messages and more prayers than Kolyat was ever willing to admit aloud) – and some human woman he'd never seen before, came rushing into the room, weapons raised.
At him. Weapons raised at him.
He didn't know which was worse: that he might have pulled the trigger, or that he would never know for sure.
If he was a better son he might have crumbled away in shame. But he wasn't a better son. And Thane was not a better father. And so he only felt a white hot wrath upon their entrance, a scalding incredulity. His fingers flexed along the grip of the gun, his wrist trembling (not enough for them to see but enough – enough for him to know he would always be small in his father's shadow).
Shepard had taken the opportunity to wound and disarm him before any real damage could be done – at least, the outward kind. He shot accusing eyes up at her, his palm cupped over his bleeding thigh. And then it was a dim C-Sec interrogation room and the stiffness of his father's back when he had walked from him.
Again.
Sometimes Kolyat thought Shepard's abnormal attachment to him manifested solely from her guilt over their introduction.
"I'm sorry, kid, you know, for shooting you," she had said once, uncharacteristically somber. Across the room, his father's memorial plaque sat serenely on the table as strangers came and went from the service.
He didn't even know why he was still there. Sometimes it hurt more to stay.
He figured he and his father shared that, at least.
"That's not how Thane wanted to see you," she whispered, eyes downcast.
He wasn't sure if she meant that as an apology on Thane's part, or a reprimand for his actions at the time. Either way, it didn't change anything.
Any love between them had been lost well before either of them ever met Shepard.
"Then maybe he shouldn't have come back for me at all."
Shepard stared silently at him when he said it, face expressionless, her glass of sparkling wine held tight between her calloused fingers. And then she licked her lips and looked off to the wall.
He'd told her time and again that she wasn't responsible for any of it. He didn't blame her. She wasn't even peripherally connected to any of that shit, really. Just a witness. Just a bystander to the fallout.
But he also never tried to stop her when she insinuated herself into his life after that. He never told her that it meant something – means something still – to have someone in his life that saw him at his worst and didn't leave. Because after Thane died, she could have. She could have, and she didn't.
First Shepard, and then Bailey. Then Townsend and Iranis and Kaz, then Duskin and Jetal. A whole precinct even.
He never told her that her staying meant something in him must have been worth staying for. And that thought terrified him more than he could put to words.
Which was why he had yet to forgive his father.
"She…shot you?" Oriana cocked one hesitant brow, a single finger languidly pointing at him. And then her eyes were shifting between his, thoughts racing, a steady bloom of realization coloring her face.
Ah yes, because of course the girl's done her research.
Kolyat cursed between his grit teeth and rolled his eyes. "Yeah. The incident that got me started in C-Sec. I'm sure you're aware."
Oriana pulled her finger back from the air between them and clasped her hands behind her with the slightest sense of embarrassment. "Yes. Yes, I…heard that."
"Uh huh."
She cleared her throat. "So I guess she does that, huh?" She managed a sham of a chuckle in her discomfort.
Kolyat smacked his lips, heaving a dramatic sigh. "Look, I know you did some research on me. It's not like we both don't know it."
"I just like knowing what I'm getting into."
"What a girl scout."
She scowled at him. "I didn't mean to invade your privacy or anything."
Kolyat shook his head, crossing his arms as he leaned his weight back on one foot. "We're well past that now, don't you think, Lawson?"
She looked at him, words seeming to quell themselves on her lips, her gaze thoughtful.
It made him uncomfortable. So he reached a hand back to the nape of his neck and rubbed the soreness out, eyes closing with a sigh. "Alright, Lawson, just…meet me outside the precinct when you're ready to head out."
"What are you…?"
He opened his eyes back up, turning to walk up the stairs as he waved her off. "Will you just meet me? Gods, always questioning me," he ended on a mumble as he stalked up the stairs.
Oriana was left to watch him go.
When DT asked him why he was alone, Kolyat was sure he could have come up with some metaphorical bullshit for the question. Some kind of existential crap that the crew had already grown familiar with. It wouldn't have been hard.
'That's just the way of the world, DT.'
'Why are any of us?'
'Are you ready for that conversation?'
'I ask myself this every morning.'
On and on and on. When pressed, Kolyat could bullshit and whine and sigh his way out of anything in that department. Sometimes he wondered if it was simply because they'd just gotten so tired of him already that it was easier to wave him off and be rid of the problem, or if it was because they were too abhorrently fond of him (he faulted Bailey for that one – made him soft to the world, or at least, to Precinct 12). He couldn't understand why, though he's sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that too many of them lost their own children in the war and he was a poor but easy substitute (he never had the heart to correct them, but maybe that was because it felt more wrong to play the orphan than to play the precinct adoption case and really, there were worse things in the world than to stagnate in grief – though not many).
They made allowances for him they never would have made otherwise, but for grief and guilt. And he took advantage of that, even when he didn't know it.
Kolyat was Precinct 12's second chance. But he had been the 'lost son' for too long to account for anything more than a disappointment.
Even to himself.
So instead, he only shrugged at DT. Pocketed his hands. Blinked both lids at the far wall and thought about the striking reality check a gunshot to the thigh makes.
"She was busy," he told him, and nothing more.
Later, when he shut the door to their shared shuttlecar, Oriana had stared at him long enough to annoy him into speaking again.
"What?" he snapped, gaze cutting to hers.
Her precious leather jacket was folded in her hands, resting on her lap. Her face was cast in shadow from the passing buildings. If he looked hard enough, he would see the sheen of wetness along her eyes.
And shit, he was not equipped to deal with this.
"You can send in all your reports through the server from now on," he said in lieu of a proper response. He crossed his arms and looked out the window. "I'll be the one making DT's meetings, so long as you show up for Bailey's." He glanced back at her for confirmation.
She nodded emphatically.
"Then, that's it. You can let me handle the updates to Precinct 12."
"Hey." She said it so soft he almost thought about pretending not to hear it.
Instead, he raised a single scaled brow her way.
Her face softened, her arms gripping her jacket tighter to her chest. "Than–"
"Don't."
She stopped, eyes blinking furiously. "I only want t –"
"Let's just…not do this, okay?" His fingers curled into his arms as they stayed crossed over his chest.
She opened her mouth as though to speak, but then seemed to think better of it.
Yes. That's it. Don't look too much into this. Don't give this more meaning than it deserves.
Kolyat looked back out the window.
If she thanked him, then he'd take it all back. He'd take back that treacherous heart of his that made him care. Because it was easier to admit to making a mistake than it was to admit it mattered what she thought.
What she thought of him, most of all.
He discovered this the same time he learned that Oriana Lawson had nightmares.
It wasn't the first time she'd fallen asleep in the conference room. There were no 'off hours'. Oriana had made it clear from the get-go that this was not a 9 to 5 and Kolyat didn't really have a problem with that. Oftentimes, when she began to nod off late into the evening, he would start their nightly ritual of him shaking her awake and practically hauling her to the shuttlecar, with her half-conscious denials of exhaustion as she pushed him off the whole way. Eventually, he always got her out the door and back to the barracks, though some days were harder than others.
But that night something stopped him from waking her. She never got deep enough into sleep to dream. He was sure part of that was the fact that he always woke her before that, but the other part was surely because she never trusted herself (or him, for that matter) enough to fall into such a deep sleep in the conference room, work all around and the precinct's resident asshole just across the table. There was a certain unspoken vulnerability to the act, even though she never admitted to it, and he also never called her on it. But that day she dreamt.
At first it was a whimper, her hands spasming over the smooth tabletop, her cheek plastered to the wood. It jolted Kolyat into awareness, his attention abruptly torn from the terminal in front of him. He blinked at her in the near dark, the orange light of their open terminal screens casting strange shadows over their forms. Nearly everyone else had gone for the day, save the skeleton crew that manned nights. It was deadly silent. Everything was cut off from their little room of quiet shadow.
"Don't," she moaned into the table's surface, a tremble to her voice that stilled him, and then, urgently, "Please." Her nails curled along the tabletop in her sleep-panic.
Kolyat sat up. He reached a hand toward her and then stopped.
She was crying.
He could hear the sniffles and the soft gurgle in her throat when she choked back a sentence he couldn't make out. His hand hovered in the hair over her head, her dark hair just inches away.
It would take only a moment to lay his hand down, to press his hesitant palm to her smooth hair, to see if she would calm beneath his touch.
He pulled back.
What a stupid thought. To think she would ever find anything from him comforting or calming. He looked down at the hand he retracted and watched the dim light glint off his teal scales, curling his fingers into a fist.
This hand. This hand that had pushed his mother off into the sea, a young and ignorant boy. This hand that had reached for his father's coat as he left, wanting the warmth of that familiar leather, his cheeks wet with tears. This hand that had held a dirty gun to a dirty politician, finger ready on the trigger. This hand that had pulled his father's grip from his wrist and laid it stiffly back along the white sheets.
This hand that had gripped Oriana's shoulders, pushing her to the wall. This hand that had held her there, angry and dejected.
This hand that had brought her to needless, regretful tears.
People like him didn't touch without hurting.
How could he forget that?
Oriana shot up with a choked yelp, eyes wide and frantic, sweat beading across her brow. She took a moment of breathless desperation to gauge her surroundings, eyes flitting about the dark room, before landing on the drell before her. She took a deep, steadying breath in. And then another. She moved her palms over the table to rest shakily in front of her.
They stared at each other while she gathered herself, Kolyat blinking both lids in seeming disinterest, and Oriana reaching a hand up to her collar, fingers trembling.
"You should have woke me," she whispered, gaze fluttering to the table.
"You were…dreaming," he offered in explanation, his voice inexplicably soft. There was something about this girl in the shadows of their shared workroom – her breath still raking through her lungs, his hand still fisted in his lap – that made him quiet as glass.
Oriana glanced up at him, sucking her lip between her teeth, her breath stalled. Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked in hesitance. But then a look of unease passed her features and there wasn't the usual scowl or glare that he had come to recognize as her immediate guard when she let such a thing slip. Instead, she stared blankly at the table.
"You mean, I was having nightmares." She seemed to say it in resignation.
He didn't think he needed to answer.
Silence returned. Kolyat tapped the fingers of one hand along the table. "What about?" he dared.
She looked up at him, seeming to search for something.
He didn't realize how much he wanted to know until he'd asked it.
She took a deep breath, pulling her hands from the table to link in her lap instead. And then she chuckled ruefully, her lips dipping into a harsh frown. "It's always the same thing. Always…him."
Kolyat swallowed. It wasn't worth asking who 'he' was. They both knew.
Oriana shrugged, but the motion was stilted. "I always recall that day – that day my parents died and how he was the one who took them from me."
Kolyat couldn't see the way her hands clenched beneath the table.
"I always recall his voice in my ear and his hand at my throat."
Anything he could think to say sounded petty or ignorant or uncaring. So he said nothing. Because what could be said to that anyway?
'Sorry he was such a shithead'. Yeah. Because that one encapsulates every fucked up thing and fucked up emotion she'd ever experienced. No. It didn't even begin to cover it. It wasn't even in the vicinity of adequate.
There wasn't anything he could say that would have been 'adequate'.
It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling.
"What about you?"
He finally looked back up at her. "Huh?" He hated the strangle of air in his throat with the word.
Oriana shifted in her seat a little, her hands still held firmly in her lap. She seemed so small in the dim light. "Do you…have nightmares?"
His brows angled down, his hand withdrawing from the table to join the fist in his lap. His throat tightened reflexively.
Something in his face must have answered her, because then she asked him, "What are they about?"
If this had been the first day they met he might have sneered at her and snapped something horribly offensive in his own desperate instinct to hide away, to cover the wounds. He might have dodged the question with an equally intrusive one that was sure to ruffle her feathers. He might have even walked from the room right then. He might have done a lot of things he wasn't particularly proud of, and he couldn't rightly say when the initial reflex to lash out at her had suddenly dulled.
Because now, instead of seeing some self-righteous, nosy, naïve little girl, he saw fear. It was in her wide, unblinking eyes, the way her shoulders slumped forward as if to cradle herself, the way he was sure her hands were wringing themselves out of view beneath the table (he was sure because his were, too).
Of the many things he'd discovered about Oriana Lawson in his time working with her, fear was the most surprising, and the most uncomfortable thing he'd learned to recognize in her.
Fear, because it felt all too familiar. Because it reminded him what his own terror tasted like.
He never told anyone that in those first few days after the Crucible fired, when the Reapers were slowly coming to an eerie halt in the space outside the Citadel, or careening into the ward arms in an explosive end, when it was chaos and desperation and mind-numbing grief on the Citadel, when he was huddled in the C-Sec locker room with a broken arm and a busted lip from fighting over scraps of food – when he sat shivering, alone and bloody, debris littered all around him, hunger stabbing at his stomach and exhaustion dripping from his bones – it wasn't Bailey or Shepard he called for in his fevered sleep.
It was his father.
He'd never been more terrified in his entire life. Not even when his mother died, or when his father left, or when he had a gun pointed to Talid's head and his father had witnessed his ruin, his pathetic downfall – or even when he had walked from the hospital room and tried to smother his father's dragging breaths from his mind, that stupid, useless prayer book clutched between his trembling fingers.
Never before had he felt fear like that – like the world was crashing down around him and the one person he instinctively called for would never, ever answer.
Because that door was shut long ago.
And he was tired of clawing at it uselessly. Tired of unanswered pleas. There was no coming back from that.
Some things never come back.
He figured Oriana knew a little something about that. Which was why he couldn't forget. Wouldn't forget.
Fear had been holding him back for so long now. And yet, he watched as it pushed her on, as her fear motivated her to heights he didn't think possible.
Fear was a tool, not a cage.
He hadn't known how easy it was to open the door until she showed him.
"In your nightmares," he began, voice rough and low, like the tide his father always talked about. Like the sea that took him and never gave him back. "In your nightmares, you remember."
Oriana stilled, watching him. Something in her face gave way and he watched as her mouth dipped open, ready for words she couldn't form. So she sucked her lip back and halted the breath in her chest, stiff and silent.
Kolyat sighed, his hands coming up to the table to rest, palms open, before him. He couldn't stop looking at those hands. Those smooth, sure hands – so like his father's.
"But in mine, I forget."
He looked at her then, and the air seemed to rush from him in one breath, one aching, tremulous release. "In my nightmares, I forget," he breathed, his voice cracking in the end there, and oh, how he thought it was right.
The first crack in his mask, the first glimpse of sun in a dark, quiet room. The first he might have been honest and open and thankful before her.
The first he might have breathed that sweet, free air of admission.
He thought it would have been embarrassing, or belittling, to bear such a thing to her. He didn't think it'd feel so liberating. He didn't think it'd feel right.
She reached across the table before he could react and clasped his hand in hers. She stared determinedly at him, her grip fierce.
He found he didn't want her to let go.
And she didn't.
For long, silent moments, she simply held his trembling hand in hers, watching him with knowing eyes.
For long, silent moments, Kolyat let her.
Of all the things he learned about Oriana Lawson, his favorite was the warmth and sureness of her hand in his.