[ Yeah, yeah Sam knows exactly what she means. That's been the story of his life from the moment Steve and Nat showed up on his doorstep and he let 'em in, no questions asked. He keeps the memory to himself, because this is about her and Thane right now and all he's gonna do is listen, but the understanding trickles around to curl around them.
Hell, that'd been Shepard herself, both in being hit with how damn beautiful she is and in I'm so fucking screwed.
He hums softly, the feeling of eyelashes brushing skin as he closes his eyes to try to picture it. ]
[Shepard balks, and it's kneejerk-- not because it's Sam, but because it's anyone. Shepard holds this part of herself so tightly because letting any part of it loose means that she can't be sure of protecting any of it.
But the moment passes
Drell memory is perfect. Human memory was never so infalliable, but Shepard's memory of the moment she first met Thane is tinged by later experience, later knowledge of the day brought from another perspective. Thane's rasping voice, deep and low in his throat, --But someone else was pushing to reach the target. Forcing me to move faster. Challenging me. I had to reach her first.
Sunset, on Illium. The light shining florid in golden-red and warm violets through chrome and glass and endless skycar traffic. Shepard remembered the weight of the Cerberus-issue armor, ill-fitting and over-strong, but still comforting in its undeniable realness. Garrus at her elbow, rifle loose and confident in his hands, with Miranda at the door, dark Serrice pistol and pale confidence in four-inch heels. Shepard barely remembered what Nassana had said, but she did remember this: two Human bodyguards and an Asari, eclipse armor. The sunlight shining full behind them, casting their bodies in silhouette.
Pride is the line between a professional and a thug.
Thane dropped behind them, silent as a shadow, in full view of the sun. No one saw, no one looked at him, except for Shepard. It happened too fast to more than follow. There was a flash of dark Drell eyes over the shoulder of one guard, and then-- in Shepard's mind she saw it as the dance it truly was. He whirled from partner to partner as each came to meet him, and stepped into Nassana's arms with a lover's tenderness. She died, choking on the shock while he looked down at her in a way that might have been comforting, if he hadn't just ended her life.
And Thane lay her down, gently, respectfully, and bent his folded hands, head bowed in prayer. Shepard lets that last moment linger. She hadn't known anything about him, then, only that... that she wanted him to come with her. To be her friend, for no other reason than because he was so damned beautiful.
Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift.]
(That was Thane. He'd be all practical streak and killer instinct one minute, then prayers for the wicked in the next. Did you know, he's the only person I ever met, who signed on with me for no better reason than because I was trying to save the galaxy?)
[...And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness.]
[ He waits. He'll understand if it's something she wants to keep to herself, something that's just hers - he has those, too, and he knows there's nothing personal about it - but when she lets go, he gives it his full attention.
Nothing else exists for the moment, just the memory tempered not by the moment, but by a dozen moments afterward, by everything that Thane means to Shepard.
She's right. He is beautiful. ]
(There is no better reason.)
[ It's fond and bittersweet, tinged with the love he can feel from Shepard - Sam doesn't know Thane Krios, but the depth of Shepard's feelings for him are enough that somewhere in him is a little bit in love with a man he'll never meet - and with his own experience in what it means to have someone who just trusts you.
Who just believes in you, no questions asked, who just sees what you're doing and knows it's worth fighting for. ]
[The answer is a scoff, half-bitter and half-resigned, and Shepard is something like grateful to be jigged off the rut of sorrowful nostalgia she finds herself in. She's always been more comfortable with sharper emotions, after all.]
(Fuck, Sam, I wish it was. People need reasons to do things-- Life's about give and take. Every now and then somebody comes along who's willing to risk everything for nothing, but you can't build on that foundation, not long-term.)
[Thane's voice, or the memory of it; turning towards her in a glance to acknowledge the courtesy of the information: I'm dying.
Would he have been so selfless if he hadn't been? If Thane had had many healthy decades ahead of him, time to heal, time to speak to Kolyat? Shepard thinks so. It was part of his exacting nature, the same thing that made him an exemplary assassin: you do the right things, because they are right, and because to do otherwise would put into disorder that which ought to be orderly.]
(People need a reason to put up with all the bullshit, even if the only real reason they have is settling a debt. A few thousand dead colonists is just statistics, if they don't have an excuse to let go of the path of least resistance, the whole thing falls apart.)
(I know. It's all one big cost benefit analysis to - well, to a hell of a lot of people, but especially to the people in charge. It's the way the world works.)
[ It's the way his own world had worked; he'd seen that time and time again. And he's seen nothing from anyone else's worlds here to say that isn't the way the way their world works, too.
Hell, it's the way this mission's been working.
And he hates it.
He'd hated it when it'd been his CO telling him that Riley's death meant something, hated it when it'd been Rumlow talking about order and Pierce talking about for the good of the world, hated it when it'd been Ross talking about checks and measures.
Hated it sitting in a prison trying to save a world where it was so easy look the other way. ]
(But there's still no better reason. Might not be all that many of us who think you should do the right thing just because it's the right thing, but that just means we gotta stick together.)
[Shepard is silent for a long, strange moment. She doesn't know what to think, or what to say. It's almost like quiet, in her head, impossible as that seems; the thoughts are just standing around, looking. Like at a movie.
Shepard has a brief, mad wish that Sam could have seen her world as she knew it, firsthand. The skyscrapers of Illium and the inverse skyline on Omega, the beauty of nebulae and-- and the people.
Would Thane have liked Sam? Surely he would. She wishes she could introduce him to Garrus, to Steve Cortez, to the whole of clan Urdnot. But it's impossible, and all those people might as well be dead for all she feels likely to see them again in this lifetime. Grief rolls back in, like rising bile.]
(You are so lucky I'm drunk right now.) [She is not drunk right now. She's been drinking, sure, but keeping up with the overactive scrubbers Cerberus gave her bloodstream is not a gentle task, nor a cheap one.] (You're a softie, you know that, Sam Wilson? You better hope your idealistic crap isn't contagious.)
[ For a moment, Sam wishes that, too. He wishes he could have been there with her, been at her side as she tried desperately to save a galaxy that spurned her every movement, that scoffed that it didn't need saving until it was almost too late.
He wishes she could have been with them as an Avenger, could meet Nat and Wanda and Rhodes.
But he's at her side now, and it is what it is.
Sam huffs out a little chuckle, like speckles of sunlight through the leaves. Yeah, yeah, he knows he's a big damn softie. ]
(I don't know, I kind of hope it is.) [ He's teasing, playful, but - it's true. ] (I'm not an idealist because I don't know any better, Shep. It's because I do. I know what my country is, I know the way my world works. I'll always hope it could be better, and I'll always fight for change. For what we could be.)
(Try to put a little light in the world before you die?)
[There's the echo of a drell rasp in that phrase, the memory of Thane saying the same thing. Siha, he'd called her, and named her like a valkyrie, a warrior angel, a patron spirit. Shepard can't help but feel like Sam is, in his own way, doing the same. She takes a drink, to fortify herself against the sentiment.]
(You know... We've gotten to know each other pretty well, by now. You can use my name, if you want. My first name.)
[ He jokes about it, but - yeah, that's exactly what he means. Even if it's one person at a time, he'll change the world just a little bit before he goes.
Her next comment... isn't what he expected, and a faint hint of surprise sparks over the link. ]
(I didn't think you liked your first name all that much.)
(Ha. Next you'll be telling me that using my first name would be a breach of respect. You wanna hear a secret?)
[Of course you do. It's a secrets kind of day.]
(I made it up. Jane Doe, right there on my file. I am the proverbial undocumented child, no DNA profile on record, wasn't even registered as a biotic risk until I was seventeen, believe it or not.) [She laughs. She genuinely thinks that's funny-- all this oversight, right down to the biometrics, and they still miss whole people. Lots of people. fat lot of good all that careful math has been.] (But I've been Jane Shepard for more than half my life, Sam. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered filling out the damn name form, if nobody was ever gonna use it)
(Never have been all that great with authority figures. Sides, you should be glad I'm not calling you Tic-Tac.)
[ Of course he wants to know a secret - especially if it's about her. It's not quite one he was expecting, but at the same time, nah, he's not surprised at all. It fits her, all of it.
Even if half of that only makes sense because he's lived enough in her head to know a little of how her world functions. ]
(Bureaucracy at its finest, that's why.) [ They may not physically be any where near each other - but he's forgotten all about that, honestly, and there's the sensation of his hand curled around hers, absent. ] (Jane it is.)
(I keep telling you, you come work for me, it's all maverick moves and no red tape. Leave all that U-S-A crap behind.)
[Tic-Tac? Ew. But lucky or not, maybe the reason he'd refrained is because he knew, in some weird osmotic way, about the short life and ill fate of "Lola"]
(No pressure.) [Metaphorically, at least. Shepard doesn't know how to-- to press, hand in hand, like this. She's never been about a gentle grip. But just the feeling of it, the sentiment, is almost enough to quell her.] (It's just... You know. Right?)
[Where did Falcon end and Sam Wilson begin? Where did Jane exist in the shadow of Commander Shepard? You can't be on-duty all the time.]
[ He loves country a little too much though - although honestly, it's not like he's planning to go back to his world, either. These days he's more and more skeptical that they'll get back any time soon, but that's... that's a conversation for another time.
Now he can feel her hand in his, and there's a soft exhale, a moment where things almost slip as his focus turns inward, as he lets the world narrow down to just their connection. Until their mental connection might as well be physical, until he can feel everything just as real, until they might as well be standing right next to each other - it's not something he's done all that much, but it's... it's Shepard.
It's Jane. It's the side of her that he wonders how many people get to see, more than the shared death experiences and the bleeding echoes of a long dead civilization, more than the vulnerability and grief and love and trust -
It's her. ]
(Yeah. Yeah, I know.) [ He's better able to balance the Falcon and Sam than some people he's known - but he knows just how damn important it is to be able to put down the mantle sometimes, to have someone who can just see you as the person you are.
He doesn't know how to say how much it means to him, that she trusts him with that. How badly he wants to be able to be that for her. So instead he pulls her in, a sensation like wings wrapping around them both, forehead resting against hers. ] (I don't mind a little pressure.)
[That's so like him. And that's the first thing she thinks, with nothing more than a roll of the eyes and an unwilling smile. For once, that lingering feeling of doubt, like a noose around her neck, doesn't exert itself. She opens her mouth, and the truth falls out.]
(Sam, I--)
[The truth almost falls out.
Instead, she hesitates, and the part of her that's always running calculations, always doing that brutal calculus snaps an inequity at her that is more than fair. She considers it, the whole of the two of them, with relationships spiraling out around them, momentarily visible like spider-web connections, linked by the Symbiote.
The Nest thinks it's trapped them.
But Shepard knows better; Sam would have become one of hers even without a chain to yank, not that she's been tempted. He was too dedicated, too skilled, too much like and unalike her in all the ways she's never been unable to recognize. Sometimes, you find your family, and sometimes it finds you. And with Thane, she had never been as honest as she should have. Caution and fear had made her waste what little time they had; a regret she'll never be able to kill, a wound that will never die. Never again.
Commander Shepard makes a decision. Jane is the one who carries it out.]
[ Sam was always hers. The symbiote may give them the tools to be closer, to have the kind of connection they have, to understand each other better than anything - but he chose to use it with her. He chose her, just as she chose him.
Just as he chose the Avengers, just as he chose every one of those relationships spiraling out from him, from them both. And they mean more to him than anything else in this place, than this whole mission - than damn near any mission.
The thing is that she doesn't have to say it. He knows, or at least a part of him knows, the part of him that's hers - the part of him that's her -
But she says it anyway, lets herself be honest, take the leap, and Sam pulls in a breath and lets it out, wings curling tighter.
There's no hesitation in his reply. ]
(I love you too.) [ He doesn't know what it means for them. He doesn't know what it means for the Nest, for their future, for if they go home or if they stay, for their broods and nestmates and the tangled web of relationships that have no definition, or at least not one that Sam had before he came here.
But he's loved her since their second or third meeting, and he's known since the day he saw her clone die. They're family, and he is hers the same way she is, and even if it changes nothing to admit it, it feels good.
To put words to the feeling that echoes through the Nest, to the love that'll be there long after both of them are gone. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sizeofyourbaggage) wrote2016-05-22 03:26 pm
no subject
Hell, that'd been Shepard herself, both in being hit with how damn beautiful she is and in I'm so fucking screwed.
He hums softly, the feeling of eyelashes brushing skin as he closes his eyes to try to picture it. ]
( Show me? )
no subject
But the moment passes
Drell memory is perfect. Human memory was never so infalliable, but Shepard's memory of the moment she first met Thane is tinged by later experience, later knowledge of the day brought from another perspective. Thane's rasping voice, deep and low in his throat, --But someone else was pushing to reach the target. Forcing me to move faster. Challenging me. I had to reach her first.
Sunset, on Illium. The light shining florid in golden-red and warm violets through chrome and glass and endless skycar traffic. Shepard remembered the weight of the Cerberus-issue armor, ill-fitting and over-strong, but still comforting in its undeniable realness. Garrus at her elbow, rifle loose and confident in his hands, with Miranda at the door, dark Serrice pistol and pale confidence in four-inch heels. Shepard barely remembered what Nassana had said, but she did remember this: two Human bodyguards and an Asari, eclipse armor. The sunlight shining full behind them, casting their bodies in silhouette.
Pride is the line between a professional and a thug.
Thane dropped behind them, silent as a shadow, in full view of the sun. No one saw, no one looked at him, except for Shepard. It happened too fast to more than follow. There was a flash of dark Drell eyes over the shoulder of one guard, and then-- in Shepard's mind she saw it as the dance it truly was. He whirled from partner to partner as each came to meet him, and stepped into Nassana's arms with a lover's tenderness. She died, choking on the shock while he looked down at her in a way that might have been comforting, if he hadn't just ended her life.
And Thane lay her down, gently, respectfully, and bent his folded hands, head bowed in prayer. Shepard lets that last moment linger. She hadn't known anything about him, then, only that... that she wanted him to come with her. To be her friend, for no other reason than because he was so damned beautiful.
Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift.]
( That was Thane. He'd be all practical streak and killer instinct one minute, then prayers for the wicked in the next. Did you know, he's the only person I ever met, who signed on with me for no better reason than because I was trying to save the galaxy? )
[...And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness.]
no subject
Nothing else exists for the moment, just the memory tempered not by the moment, but by a dozen moments afterward, by everything that Thane means to Shepard.
She's right. He is beautiful. ]
( There is no better reason. )
[ It's fond and bittersweet, tinged with the love he can feel from Shepard - Sam doesn't know Thane Krios, but the depth of Shepard's feelings for him are enough that somewhere in him is a little bit in love with a man he'll never meet - and with his own experience in what it means to have someone who just trusts you.
Who just believes in you, no questions asked, who just sees what you're doing and knows it's worth fighting for. ]
no subject
( Fuck, Sam, I wish it was. People need reasons to do things-- Life's about give and take. Every now and then somebody comes along who's willing to risk everything for nothing, but you can't build on that foundation, not long-term. )
[Thane's voice, or the memory of it; turning towards her in a glance to acknowledge the courtesy of the information: I'm dying.
Would he have been so selfless if he hadn't been? If Thane had had many healthy decades ahead of him, time to heal, time to speak to Kolyat? Shepard thinks so. It was part of his exacting nature, the same thing that made him an exemplary assassin: you do the right things, because they are right, and because to do otherwise would put into disorder that which ought to be orderly.]
( People need a reason to put up with all the bullshit, even if the only real reason they have is settling a debt. A few thousand dead colonists is just statistics, if they don't have an excuse to let go of the path of least resistance, the whole thing falls apart. )
no subject
[ It's the way his own world had worked; he'd seen that time and time again. And he's seen nothing from anyone else's worlds here to say that isn't the way the way their world works, too.
Hell, it's the way this mission's been working.
And he hates it.
He'd hated it when it'd been his CO telling him that Riley's death meant something, hated it when it'd been Rumlow talking about order and Pierce talking about for the good of the world, hated it when it'd been Ross talking about checks and measures.
Hated it sitting in a prison trying to save a world where it was so easy look the other way. ]
( But there's still no better reason. Might not be all that many of us who think you should do the right thing just because it's the right thing, but that just means we gotta stick together. )
no subject
Shepard has a brief, mad wish that Sam could have seen her world as she knew it, firsthand. The skyscrapers of Illium and the inverse skyline on Omega, the beauty of nebulae and-- and the people.
Would Thane have liked Sam? Surely he would. She wishes she could introduce him to Garrus, to Steve Cortez, to the whole of clan Urdnot. But it's impossible, and all those people might as well be dead for all she feels likely to see them again in this lifetime. Grief rolls back in, like rising bile.]
( You are so lucky I'm drunk right now. ) [She is not drunk right now. She's been drinking, sure, but keeping up with the overactive scrubbers Cerberus gave her bloodstream is not a gentle task, nor a cheap one.] ( You're a softie, you know that, Sam Wilson? You better hope your idealistic crap isn't contagious. )
[She's already infected.]
no subject
He wishes she could have been with them as an Avenger, could meet Nat and Wanda and Rhodes.
But he's at her side now, and it is what it is.
Sam huffs out a little chuckle, like speckles of sunlight through the leaves. Yeah, yeah, he knows he's a big damn softie. ]
( I don't know, I kind of hope it is. ) [ He's teasing, playful, but - it's true. ] ( I'm not an idealist because I don't know any better, Shep. It's because I do. I know what my country is, I know the way my world works. I'll always hope it could be better, and I'll always fight for change. For what we could be. )
no subject
[There's the echo of a drell rasp in that phrase, the memory of Thane saying the same thing. Siha, he'd called her, and named her like a valkyrie, a warrior angel, a patron spirit. Shepard can't help but feel like Sam is, in his own way, doing the same. She takes a drink, to fortify herself against the sentiment.]
( You know... We've gotten to know each other pretty well, by now. You can use my name, if you want. My first name. )
no subject
[ He jokes about it, but - yeah, that's exactly what he means. Even if it's one person at a time, he'll change the world just a little bit before he goes.
Her next comment... isn't what he expected, and a faint hint of surprise sparks over the link. ]
( I didn't think you liked your first name all that much. )
no subject
[Of course you do. It's a secrets kind of day.]
( I made it up. Jane Doe, right there on my file. I am the proverbial undocumented child, no DNA profile on record, wasn't even registered as a biotic risk until I was seventeen, believe it or not. ) [She laughs. She genuinely thinks that's funny-- all this oversight, right down to the biometrics, and they still miss whole people. Lots of people. fat lot of good all that careful math has been.] ( But I've been Jane Shepard for more than half my life, Sam. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered filling out the damn name form, if nobody was ever gonna use it )
no subject
[ Of course he wants to know a secret - especially if it's about her. It's not quite one he was expecting, but at the same time, nah, he's not surprised at all. It fits her, all of it.
Even if half of that only makes sense because he's lived enough in her head to know a little of how her world functions. ]
( Bureaucracy at its finest, that's why. ) [ They may not physically be any where near each other - but he's forgotten all about that, honestly, and there's the sensation of his hand curled around hers, absent. ] ( Jane it is. )
no subject
[Tic-Tac? Ew. But lucky or not, maybe the reason he'd refrained is because he knew, in some weird osmotic way, about the short life and ill fate of "Lola"]
( No pressure. ) [Metaphorically, at least. Shepard doesn't know how to-- to press, hand in hand, like this. She's never been about a gentle grip. But just the feeling of it, the sentiment, is almost enough to quell her.] ( It's just... You know. Right? )
[Where did Falcon end and Sam Wilson begin? Where did Jane exist in the shadow of Commander Shepard? You can't be on-duty all the time.]
i may have made this icon just for this tag
[ He loves country a little too much though - although honestly, it's not like he's planning to go back to his world, either. These days he's more and more skeptical that they'll get back any time soon, but that's... that's a conversation for another time.
Now he can feel her hand in his, and there's a soft exhale, a moment where things almost slip as his focus turns inward, as he lets the world narrow down to just their connection. Until their mental connection might as well be physical, until he can feel everything just as real, until they might as well be standing right next to each other - it's not something he's done all that much, but it's... it's Shepard.
It's Jane. It's the side of her that he wonders how many people get to see, more than the shared death experiences and the bleeding echoes of a long dead civilization, more than the vulnerability and grief and love and trust -
It's her. ]
( Yeah. Yeah, I know. ) [ He's better able to balance the Falcon and Sam than some people he's known - but he knows just how damn important it is to be able to put down the mantle sometimes, to have someone who can just see you as the person you are.
He doesn't know how to say how much it means to him, that she trusts him with that. How badly he wants to be able to be that for her. So instead he pulls her in, a sensation like wings wrapping around them both, forehead resting against hers. ] ( I don't mind a little pressure. )
no subject
( Sam, I-- )
[The truth almost falls out.
Instead, she hesitates, and the part of her that's always running calculations, always doing that brutal calculus snaps an inequity at her that is more than fair. She considers it, the whole of the two of them, with relationships spiraling out around them, momentarily visible like spider-web connections, linked by the Symbiote.
The Nest thinks it's trapped them.
But Shepard knows better; Sam would have become one of hers even without a chain to yank, not that she's been tempted. He was too dedicated, too skilled, too much like and unalike her in all the ways she's never been unable to recognize. Sometimes, you find your family, and sometimes it finds you. And with Thane, she had never been as honest as she should have. Caution and fear had made her waste what little time they had; a regret she'll never be able to kill, a wound that will never die. Never again.
Commander Shepard makes a decision. Jane is the one who carries it out.]
( I love you. )
no subject
Just as he chose the Avengers, just as he chose every one of those relationships spiraling out from him, from them both. And they mean more to him than anything else in this place, than this whole mission - than damn near any mission.
The thing is that she doesn't have to say it. He knows, or at least a part of him knows, the part of him that's hers - the part of him that's her -
But she says it anyway, lets herself be honest, take the leap, and Sam pulls in a breath and lets it out, wings curling tighter.
There's no hesitation in his reply. ]
( I love you too. ) [ He doesn't know what it means for them. He doesn't know what it means for the Nest, for their future, for if they go home or if they stay, for their broods and nestmates and the tangled web of relationships that have no definition, or at least not one that Sam had before he came here.
But he's loved her since their second or third meeting, and he's known since the day he saw her clone die. They're family, and he is hers the same way she is, and even if it changes nothing to admit it, it feels good.
To put words to the feeling that echoes through the Nest, to the love that'll be there long after both of them are gone. ]