Work Text:
Things you said too quietly /
/ you said while holding my hand.
sound | On the nature of daylight - Max Richter - listen on spotify
Air. Gasping for air. With every breath, his organs were failing. Acid in his lungs.
On his knees, he was going to die. There was no turning back; no variations to this equation. His vision was blurred and lost.
Yet he fought. Prolonged the pain a bit longer, trying to understand why…
Her hand was still in his and he wouldn’t let go. On his last stand, he’ll hold onto her for every second in his life where he had been a fool not to.
It was getting impossible to see but he focused on her face, hidden under his helmet. Protected. Burdened.
She’ll make it. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t hearing him; wasn’t seeing him. But she was going to make it.
His knees gave in. There was fire and acid in his mouth.
Choked from his will, his body gave in forward, to the force of gravity. He refused to believe he had failed them. Not now. He always had a plan. That was all he was ever good at; calculating risks and finding a way.
He knew what he was doing. ‘When your back is against the wall...’
“I am sorry.”
As everything darkened, he thought of Ellen. He would never get to see her, but he was going to make sure she would get to hold their children again. ‘…if you can't run from it…’
The twitching in his chest was just muscle memory. He was going to die a hypocrite and it would be fitting … he was never going to make sure of anything anymore.
She was.
‘Use it.’
He was a fraud; turned himself into a wreck, drowned in guilt, trying to make up for his own mistakes with more mistakes. Playing with the lives of many… just so he could save one person. And now he was going to cease to exist on a troubled planet, at the feet of discovery. He had been obsessing for so long with looking inwards he had forgotten what the stars looked like...
But her?
A sharp pain.
He forced his damaged eyes open one. last. time. To look. at her. Only to see his own reflection in the Pathfinder helmet.
He knew she was there, past his own image; and she was much more than he could dare be.
Because she never stopped looking at the stars. The things she saw out there… the things she’s yet to see…
He just wished she would have known it too.
He wished he could have told her…
…about that feeling gripping at his heart. It wasn’t guilt - he had lived in it for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t shame - refuted by obsession. It wasn’t regret, nor hope - both clawing at each other…
Something else, distant, something he had forgotten along the way…
SAM… if only he could remember. If only he could have taught SAM about this one feeling… tearing him at the seams.
Please
Before he’d succumb... if he could just …go back to it...
SAM, if you hear me….
***
He sat by the cryo pod. Verified the numbers. Once. Twice. Three times. The last one he had to check before his slumber. The one that made him pause. His hand on the glass, looking at the unaware shape, fast asleep; the affection in his smile only to be known to him alone and destined to be lost to the buzzing of the machines.
“See you on the other side, cosmic child.”
***
“Ryder, you can’t shelter her forever! She has so much potential.”
“She is not ready.”
“What are you talking about? She is more than ready! She’s always been above and beyond her training. She has a spotless record on her missions with the excavation teams – ”
He got up from his chair, hands slammed on the desk, staring down at the turian commander.
“She is still young. And I would appreciate it if you’d stop putting ideas in her head.”
A deafening silence followed.
“At least as her direct superior I am listening to the ideas in her head!” He pressed on. “For crying out loud, since you got discharged and locked yourself here, she’s been handling your unfinished business at the Citadel, accounting for your lack of presence, answering to accusations YOU should have been answering to. She’s been facing the people in the Alliance that you've refused to take responsibility for. Alec, she stopped being a child a long time ago and it’s because of you.”
He remembered the defeat in the turian’s voce.
“Does she even know you registered her for Andromeda?”
Vaguely, in the dying cells of his memories, he remembered the concern in his old friend’s eyes.
“She has a future here. Unlike you, old man.” He wished he could have told him there was no future for anyone anymore. But the envy he suddenly felt rising towards the turian who had been nothing but right by him, swallowed everything.
“Our conversation is done. The shuttle will take you back to Luna.”
***
Thoughts flashed one by one, flaring up, and dying in darkness.
***
The cold table between them felt like a stirring void.
The sterile emptiness of the Alliance interrogation room rang back to him, heavily, as he refused to look away from her frail frame.
The heavy silence that had settled between them nailed him to that spot; in the damned chair he was seated.
His child, covered in recently patched wounds, bruises, and frostbites was sitting across from him, and he blamed himself for it. If only the man he was then had understood it was all for the wrong reasons.
Still, the strongest memory was of his own pain at the lost, groggy expression in her eyes.
“I don’t understand.” He hadn’t noticed then, but now it was his focal point – the short spasm in her fingers, the air stuck in her throat as she whispered; her confused and broken mind.
He hated the man that chose to tap on the dossier laying between the two of them.
“What is there not to understand? You disobeyed a direct order that told you to pull back and now an entire research facility is lost. All of it because you wanted to prove something.” A pause. It stung. That’s not what he wanted to say. You did the unthinkable. I am so proud of you. But those were not the words that followed. “I had to pull rank to minimize the consequences, Eyon.”
“No...” her confusion grew but her eyes would not meet his.
He hated the man that was blaming her state on the drugs because it was easier than to put it on himself.
He hated that man that was lying through his teeth … to protect her.
“No what?”
“That’s not what happened…”
*
Flashes darted and memories collided, shattering one into the other.
*
His hurried grip on the station door. Noises. Alarms. People talking to him - over him.
“You’re here!”
“Specialist Ryder.”
“She made it out.”
“She pulled the ship to the surface.”
“Alec, it’s my fault. I should have told her no.”
*
“Then what is it that happened?” his heart; stuck in his throat.
*
Her unconscious body in his arms. The rhythmic beeping of the machines hooked around them. His trembling fingers in her damp, raven hair.
*
“I… I don’t remember.” Her palms sheltered one in another on the surface of the table.
“Maybe it’s for the better.”
*
Her peaceful face, as he caressed her temple and the corner of her closed eyes, gently, past her wounds. He wiped a string of blood coming from her nose and kissed her forehead.
“I got you, darling.”
*
She breathed in her every word.
“You weren’t there.”
“I arrived here as soon as possible. I had to deal with what’s written on these files first.”
Why wouldn’t he just tell her? How strange it was that he had flown across the cluster as soon as she had gone dark but he found himself petrified at the thought of admitting anything to his own daughter.
*
Sweat and water were running down his chin. That had to be it.
“Your mother’s going to kill us both if something happens to you. So we better find a way out of this one, alright? Like we used to.”
She twitched in his arms and a distant smile tugged at his lips.
*
“No…”
“Eyon, no what?”
“You weren’t there, you wouldn’t know. This is not what happened!”
Her jaw clenched and a moment of lucidity allowed a glint into her usual determined eyes.
Fear... he felt fear. That she wouldn’t let go.
*
The medic on the other side of the bed stayed quiet.
“I know this a heavy favor and I promise I will pay in full. Erase the data. I am not asking as a Citadel attaché. I am asking as a father.”
*
“Then what is it that happened? I am asking you one last time.”
“I don’t remember! But not THIS!” Her voice broke as her arms flew to the data pad, pushing it across the table into his chest. It had cracked under the pressure of her biotics.
He hated the man that stood across from her in silence as she suffocated in his lies. To protect her.
He hated the man that arranged his shirt, picked the broken pad and walked out of the room.
“Get over yourself Eyon. Scream, yell, throw any tantrums that you want, destroy what you feel like destroying and reopen your wounds as much as you want – I’ll pay for the damage. But make sure the moment you step out of this room you never speak of this incident again.”
***
Somewhere, along their lives, he had started to see himself so much in her it had become unbearable to look her in the eyes. If he’d have a second chance, where would he even start to take it all back?
***
The look on her face, standing tall, chin up as the Alliance Officer decorated her. He thought he’d never have enough of that. He knew she was mean for the stars…
But he couldn’t remember why.
***
He searched for their faces. Their pale skin, framed by black hair. Staring at him, growing further and further apart. Watching him, with disappointment in their wide, gray eyes.
Aeon and Eyon Ryder. Conjoined twins at birth, excelling against all odds. Prodigies. To be expected, from parents like them… they said. They must be under so much pressure… they said. Aeon’s picking after his mother, isn’t he? She must be so happy… so many voices, all knowing better, scrutinizing, waiting for misfortunes to happen.
What about Eyon?
What about her?
She is too much like you, Alec.
She looks up to you, Alec.
Don’t fail her.
***
They were fighting. It used to happen often, especially during the last year spent in the Milky Way. This time though... this room and moment were different from the many other times they’d thrown hurtful words at each other.
Her whole body jolted and her long hair fell over the blue military pauldrons. She was yelling at him from across the room and he was struggling to stay calm.
He could almost hear the echoes of their raised voices, muffled; loud; as if coming from behind a closed door, as if he was looking through a narrow peephole; and it was getting darker and darker.
Colder.
He could not make the words but he knew... it meant something.
He remembered the static feeling in the air before the tips of her hair started to raise up. Before the room started to get filled with energy.
She was yelling at him. With anger in her voice, she was begging him for something. To notice. To listen.
Now he knew why he couldn’t make a single word from what they were saying. Because no matter how much she tried, no matter how deeply she hurt, he could only hear the sound of his own grief.
Her shaking fists, nails digging into her skin.
His hand up, pointing accusingly at her.
The space around her shimmered in blue as objects were slowly lifted.
He needed to stop. He should have stopped. But he knew the truth. He knew how much he had wanted that to happen. Just to proven to himself what a failure of a father he was.
So he went on. Just a bit too far. Just enough. And the biotic blast took the breath out of his lungs. The wall reverberated in his entire chest on impact.
And he picked himself up.
And walked away.
From her. From what he wanted to be for her.
***
“Talk to her, Alec. She is your daughter.”
He shook his head. “She is your daughter too.”
Ellen.
Her smile.
“She won’t listen to me??? You know she has eyes and ears only for you.”
He wouldn’t admit to the person he was then … but those words meant everything to him.
There.
In that moment… That feeling… the one he’d been looking for. He was almost there. Almost…
SAM… can you hear? Can you feel this?
Was her hand still in his?
***
Her laughter rang through the Presidium. But it echoed from a different time. She had long since stopped talking to him.
***
His hand pushed the numbers on the screen. He would often lose himself in his work, stuck between the quiet buzzing of the gadgets around his office and the night-lights coming through from the Citadel.
But he wasn’t alone.
Peace…
He reached out for the flying datapad above his head. Pulled it down. Checked the numbers.
Let it go back into the free float, lost again into the equations on his screen.
Moments… minutes? … hours? … later a tiny screen hit his nose, colorful animations reflecting into his glasses.
With a single breath, he relaxed. It was all it took to remind him of the world around him; his shoulders dropped and his back found the comfort of his chair.
He smiled and looked down, to the side of his station.
There she was, on the floor, by his desk, seated with her legs crossed and her hair floating up like a dense, dark crown. One of his old navigators was being taken apart in her tiny hands, gears, springs, and chips floating around her frowning face.
“Your mother won’t be happy that we’re working this late again.”
She was too distracted to hear him. A trait they shared, he thought in that moment… with pride. Lost in the intricate paths of her mind, in her own world, tense and unfocused, taking everything around her up, in the manifesting field.
A chuckle left his throat, the tingling sensation of the biotic energy on his skin, as he pushed the tiny screen with his finger to float back her way.
Proud.
Proud.
Proud.
He had always felt so proud of her.
***
“Jien, if there’s something you want to say, say it.”
The kind insinuation at the corner of her eye.
“Why are you actually doing all of this Alec?”
“I told you. I am not a selfless person. I have my personal reasons.”
His eyes lingered past the glass wall and Jien was smart enough to follow his gaze to the other side, settled on the young woman donned in brand new Initiative armor. They both stayed in silence and watched her standing tall in front of the Pathfinder helmet put on display.
The last day in the Milky Way.
“All of it… your wife’s work, your earliest research on SAM, the implants….”
He remembered now… why it all mattered…
“She wanted the stars….”
***
The feeling that anchored him; the moment where the entire universe centered on him.
The feeling he’d been chasing.
To remember.
To feel,
One
Last
Time.
All he wanted …
In that darkness… slipping away…
Not when he was this close.
It was time to go.
Eyon... I want to see the stars again….
One
Last
Time.
SAM…
anyone…
If you hear me…
Take me to the stars.
***
The hangar was cold.
Just a handful of people were around, preparing ships and moving cargo.
Arcturus Station.
He walked alongside the asari captain hearing her reports. But there was only one thing the proud man was listening to. The soft set of steps following them: tempered, attentive, yet slightly faster, just enough for her short legs to keep up with their pace.
The massive jaws of the hangar were opening up, leaving in their place a massive force field. Such a mundane, mechanical thing - being at the mouth of the endless void and not an inch of fear or wonder in his mind.
And yet…
The voice of the asari became just a noise. The blood in his veins froze and everything around him fell silent until her tiny steps, rapidly departing his side, became the only sound reverberating in his head.
“Eyon!”
His arm extended but she was long out of reach.
“Eyon!”
She wouldn’t stop. Her legs carried her across the hangar, small as she was, slipping through the people in her path and under the shuttles.
“Eyon!”
His voice… was... so distant… caught in his throat.
He was gaining ground on her but … he would not reach her in time.
Powerless, he watched her run towards the hungry void. He was afraid. Afraid he would lose her to the coldest calling.
But she stopped. Just in front of the force field, her steps came to a halt. He watched her tiny silhouette, arms by her body, head up, framed by that endless void and the stars glittering from the other side.
Slowly, silently he approached her and stepped by her side. He didn’t talk; didn’t scold her as her mother would have; didn’t check on her, overprotective as he was. Instead, he looked up, trying to see what she was seeing.
That moment of silence… was everything. The world became a buzz around them and it was just him, his daughter, and the universe – dark and vast; challenging and full of wonders.
A soft tug followed as her palm found its way around his fingers.
She gripped onto his hand.
The stars were awfully bright.
“One day…. I will travel to the furthest star! And I will go, and go, and go… and never stop.”
A chuckle escaped his lips. The imagination of a child he told himself. But in spite of that… something else moved; something else took root and never stopped growing from that day on.
He squeezed her hand back.
“Promise?” the man asked.
Their eyes, gazing upon the same stars. The laws of the universe now more terrifying and beautiful than ever. Like seeing the stars … truly… for the first time.
“Promise.”
***
All he had wanted, all he had searched for … was for her to feel proud of him.
His eyes never closed.