~SquigglySquid says: I'm home now and on the road to recovery from my surgery, so I am back to writing as it helps to keep me occupied while I heal up.~
~Jane~
The surroundings of Akuze fade into focus as Jane finds herself running to a distance rescue. She is no longer too afraid to realize her cause of these dreams, and she finds that a part of her is no longer as guilty for surviving.
This is a dream. I can change things, I'm not defenseless. She can never bring her squad back, but she can damn well teach her dreams that she has paid enough for living past this hell.
Her power becomes less a force of routine out of her control and she grits her teeth, her biotics flaring, as she fights herself for control. Her feet stutter to a stop and she hears the footsteps of Jameson come closer than they had ever been in reality, but she can't stop to think about it as she finds herself battling her dream's control.
Folded in on herself, she groans at the feeling of fighting a tide, the steps of Jameson nearly at her side and she knows what's coming soon, she has to gain the upper hand before the inevitable. She fists her hands, clinches her eyes shut, and she feels her biotics pulse as her body heats up with the building energy.
She starts to feel a strange sensation in her belly like a heavy gravity pulling her downward from inside and she fights to keep on her feet. Then, suddenly, the force releases her, though not by dissipating, but by shooting straight from her feet and up and out of her body, forcing her head to through back in a cry and her biotics to flood from her body and out in a spherical shockwave.
When she comes back to herself, she finds that she has complete control over her body as she examines her hands, rolling them over at a loss. She's never taking control of her dream self, she has always just felt like some helpless observer, meant to do more than feel the pain and relive the mistakes.
She is pulled quickly from her astonishment by a coughing from a bit to her left. She looks over in shock and sees Jameson working to pick himself up off the ground, seeming to have been in the blast of her biotics. He looks up to Jane confused, but she is proud to see that this version of him is like she remembered, young and full of life.
"Is everything okay, ma'am?" he asks, his eyes wide and searching the field before them as she offers her hand to help him to his feet. "Did you see it?" He readies his gun, nearly out of ammo to the area lying between their position and their only way off this planet.
"No, Jameson," he looks to her with a silent question in his eyes, but she knows him, the real him, to know that he would never openly question. "Change of plans," his brows shoot up and he takes in a quick gasp, but she continues as is he hadn't spoken, not knowing how much longer before their dreaded attack will happen. "You will take the lead. Don't bother with your gun," she takes it and tosses it to the ground along with her own, "put your damn helmet on, and run like hell to that extraction point. Don't you dare stop or slow down for anything, not to look back and, sure as hell, not to give me help." She grabs the front of his chest armor and drags his taller height down to meet her eyes, "And when I yell at you to drop to the ground to roll to the side," she bumps her own armor to his and growls, "you fucking drop or roll. Do I make myself clear, Ensign?"
He looks to her with shock, and a bit of fear. She wasn't this demanding during Akuze, but she can't complain of her N7 training rubbing off. "Yes ma'am," he shakily salutes and she has to bite her cheek to keep from smiling.
She can't dwell on how she misses him as she feels the subtle vibrations beneath her feet signaling the beginning of the true test of her new found courage. Jameson's eyes widen in true fear and she shoves him towards the shadowy shuttle in the distance, using a bit of biotics to move him further, and takes off at his six.
Her feet pound the ground as each step bringing Jameson before her and herself closer to their salvation. Her stomps seem to match so perfectly to the Maw's tunneling vibrations that each step sends shockwaves up her spine to rattle in her head. With each step closer, her anxiety rises, but instead of chilling her in fear, her blood runs hot with angered determination. I will get us on that God damn shuttle, even if it's a fucking dream I will safe at least one person, even if it kills me!
She charts the growing vibrations beneath her feet and counts the seconds, straining to listen for the trademark sounds of the ground breaking up from the beast surfacing with a loud screech and the sharp inhale of breath as it prepares for its attack. She has had this memory play in her dreams for so long that she knows the timing of the Thresher Maw's attacks almost as well as her own biotics and shotgun.
Jameson is just within reach of the shuttle when she hears it, the dreaded sounds that still haunt her after so many years, and she screams just as it inhales, "Now, drop and roll!" She has just a split second during her own body following her command to notice that Jameson has done as she ordered without hesitance, and the two both find themselves dodging the acid as it flies past their positions, just barely missing.
She has no time to stew in her achievement before her own instincts pull her body to her feet and quickly over to Jameson, all but flinging him in the air to get him to his feet. He takes off towards the shuttle as soon as his feet hit the dirt and within seconds he is in the shuttle, hand hanging out to haul her in.
She outstretches her hand, fingers just outside his grasp, before she stumbles on something at her feet, falling to the hard ground on hands and knees. "Fuck!" she curses and throws herself to her feet, but something draws her attention away from the safety of the shuttle and she turns to look at the thing she all but landed on, despite her every internal battle against it.
Her lungs constrict, forming a breathless gasp, and her blood drains completely from her face, down her body, and flows from her feet at the sight of a crumpled body before her. She knows this shape, but his presence is impossible, he isn't supposed to be here.
"Garrus!," she screams, her voice sounding weak and breaking half way through his name. She abandons Jameson's outstretched hand and the promise of ending this nightmare on her own terms, as she rushes to Garrus' motionless body.
Before she even reaches him, she can smell the one thing she never wanted to ever associate with the man she loves, the smell of melting plastic and flesh, with a newer scent that she only remembers from those marines who had been burned to the bone. She collapses at his side, her vision blurry with what she doesn't immediately recognize as tears that pour down her cheeks to flow off the angle of her chin. "Garrus, talk to me," she pleas as she takes his shoulder to roll him to his back so she can look at him, to see what horrors her mind has chosen to torture her with despite the voice in her head screaming not to.
The entire right side of his face doesn't even resemble his natural plates anymore. Instead, his plates look like they had liquefied and melted from his flesh, his mandible half dissolved and leaving dark blue, blistering flesh from above his eye socket and down his neck to bleed into his dissolving blue armor. She clutches at him with sobbing shrieks, her body jerking uncontrollably as she tries to will herself awake, to force herself from this nightmare that's worse than she can possibly imagine, while she begs and pleas unintelligibly for him to wake, to not let this happen.
With a violent jerk, he gasps from against her shoulder where she pulled his body in any attempt to bring him back. She quickly pulls back to look to him, to see if she really isn't hearing things. Please don't let this really be happening, please Garrus don't do this.
His eyes look to her, the one crystal blue, and still intact, behind the frantic display of his visor and the black pit that once held the matching eye that has now dissolved away into nothing. "Jane," he barely forms the words through the blood that splatters from his dissolving face. "You can't save us both. You have to let go." Her eyes widen in shocked confusion, shaking slightly as she frantically tries to piece together both his words and some miracle to use on him.
"Please, Garrus," she cries as his eye starts to lose focus, "help me, tell me what to do. Don't leave," she pulls him to her chest, his head coming to lie against her shoulder again, "I can't live without you, Garrus." She can't hear his breath at her ear anymore.
She screams, the pain worse than the memories of her burns, the acid as it ate at her, and she sobs into his growing cold flesh, repeating, "I love you. I love you. I love you."
She doesn't notice the vibrations that echo through the ground into her wracking body and she relishes the blissful release that will come as the Maw surfaces and throws its head back, aiming at her and Garrus' limp body in her arms.