A/N: So, I'm about an hour into ME3, and something about the first couple scenes of the opening sequence (same as in the demo, for those who are worried about spoliers) made me want to revisit this piece from Ash's perspective. Depending on how ME3 goes, it's something that I might pick up again - maybe a longer braided story than the one-shot I originally thought it would be. Just tossing the idea around at this point, but if it's something that anyone would be interested in seeing more of, let me know. I also haven't ever written about something as I'm experiencing it for the first time and not all the way through, so I'm curious to see where ME3 takes me in terms of my Shepley POV as I play more (i.e. so if you leave a review, which I'd really appreciate, no spoilers please! :) )

Thanks for reading, as always. -E

My grandfather could tell when it would rain, long before the first cloud would darken the sky.

He took a concussive shot straight to the knee at Shanxi – and after that battle, well, he avoided Alliance medical care for as long as he could. It sounds weird with all the technology we have available to us, but he developed arthritis when he got old – in his bad knee, in his knuckles and wrists. By the time he died, his fingers were so gnarled he could barely open his hand. It's funny what we take for granted sometimes, isn't it? When I was a kid, someone at school told me his hands were cut off as punishment for being a coward and he had to get a hand transplant from an alien. You know, I actually believed it until I got up the courage to ask him why they looked so different from mine. That's when he explained about the arthritis, that it was common, that it used to be normal for humans.

We used to ask why he didn't just go get it fixed, my sisters and I. He told us that by getting it fixed, he'd lose something special: he had magic – he could predict the weather. It was the arthritis, he said. He would feel the dampness trickling through his joints, feel the coldness freezing him from within. He always knew when it was going to rain.

I used to think it was a story he made up to make us feel better about his hands, but today...Well, I think I understand now what he meant.
I feel thunder in my temples, and the wind is pricking at me, sending shivers to my bones. I feel the dampness, Shepard. I can smell a storm in the air.

I don't know what it is, but I think we're all going to die today.

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

I'm a soldier, and, since I've met you, I've seen my share of scrapes – maybe more than my fair share. There have been countless times where I looked at a situation and saw no way out for us: Ilos, Virmire, Eden Prime, the attack on the Citadel, when I had to jump into that escape pod on the SR-1. But this is the first time I feel it, Shepard. We're rushing headlong into a wall that I don't think we can climb. The air is charged and sits on my skin like a sheet of static, and the fire fizzling in my belly makes me wonder if I've turned biotic overnight.

Yes, I can feel it, Shepard.
Today, it is going to rain.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light

I've never been the kind of person to sigh over weddings or name imaginary children, but I'll confess that I've spent a lot of time thinking about you, about us, about what could've been. It seems so unfair now, and so clichéd, but I really always thought we'd have more time. After Horizon, I'd find myself lingering over my hair as I twisted it into the regulation bun, imagining your fingers carting through it, knotting the waves. In retrospect, I think that might've been one of the reasons I cut it – well, that and the fact that it got hot in those helmets. That's me, always practical.

Still, I spent a lot of time thinking about you. I wondered how we'd meet again, what we'd say, how it would be. I don't think anyone expected you to come barreling into Alliance HQ in a stolen Cerberus warship with a multispecies band of misfits. And if I were a gambler, I certainly wouldn't have bet our big reunion would be two or three sentences about my haircut and the theory of fluid time – that one I still can't explain – before the brass grounded you and took you away and your people began to scatter once again.

But, knowing all that I know about what's in store for the galaxy, I still always pictured us together one day. I imagined us on fighting side-by-side again, being bossed around by you again, bunking together aboard the Normandy again. Hell, I even made room in my daydreams for Miranda…but, not in that way – don't get too excited.

I guess when I put all the cards on the figurative table, you're the one unanswered question in my life. I love my family, they love me, and I'm at peace with that. But you? I don't know. What we had was so new and so wonderful…and then it was just washed away.

So, as I stare into the flood, that's what I wish I had, Shepard: an answer.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Do you remember that "word of the day" calendar you got me as a gag gift last time we were at the Citadel together? You came back to the ship all battered and bruised and with that damn calendar as some peace offering for asking me to stay behind. It's funny, but after you were gone, it was one of the only things I had left of you. I think I memorized that thing. I used to sit up at night and trace my fingertips along the words on the screen, knowing that you had touched it once, that your fingers had trailed the same paths. You included just a small note, and it probably would've been too new or too strange for more. Some words for my 'not a word person' – S. Not much. But it made me feel like I was, like I could've been yours once.

Myopic.
That was one of the words.

Is it myopic of me to be staring down the gathering clouds, into a darkening sky, and think of you? The lightning is back and sizzling in my stomach, and I wish…I wish for so many things…

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

Well, the Council wants to see me. I guess they feel it too.

Shepard, if I'm right – if today is the day the rain comes…I pray.
I pray for those that have gone before us. I pray for those that we hold dear to us now.
I pray for you, for us, for what could've been and might yet be.

And when the rain comes, Skipper, I pray that it will bring us peace.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Poems, in order:

Darkness, Lord Byron
Rendezvous with Death, Alan Seeger
Crossing the Bar, Tennyson
Hollow Man, T.S. Eliot (x2)