Chapter Text
Their first meeting is strange to put it mildly. Meeting an employer on a job isn’t the strangest, but the fact that Shepard doesn’t want him for a single target feels strange at first. And there’s something about her gaze that reminds him of Irikah, the way she looked at him, brave and defiant and sharp.
He later learns that Shepard is not as sharp as she seemed. Not that she isn’t clever, she is incredibly bright and thoughtful, but her tone is softer than he expected, her demeanor friendlier, jokes and compliments and laughter falling from her lips easily. She comes to sit with him in life support regularly, talks with him about this, that and the other. About mundane things like hobbies and the mission ahead, about their pasts, and eventually about deeper things.
There’s something strangely poetic about a dying man and a woman who’s already died discussing mortality and the beyond, debating each other’s viewpoints and yet managing to part on good terms. It’s almost shocking when he learns that yes, she did actually die and was dead for two years, and yet she still does not believe in an afterlife. She claims it was like sleeping, and their debate drifts to whether it’s possible there is something, but it’s something the living mind cannot comprehend. They split from that discussion, both still firm in their own beliefs, but he does not feel that she looks down upon his faith in the land beyond the sea. They discuss whether souls exists (he believes that there must be something more to a being than just flesh and blood and bone and electric impulses and chemicals, she believes the concept of a soul is the sapient brain trying to differentiate itself from the non-sapient creatures around it and that there is nothing beyond the physical) and yet the worst disagreement they have that day still erupts from him telling her about the Compact. She leaves that discussion visibly angry, her last words practically spat out as she crosses the threshold, declaring that she doesn’t understand how he can justify his own slavery.
For several day cycles after that they don’t speak. During that time, Thane thinks on her words, runs over the memories of their discussion, trying to find how he misrepresented the Compact to believe it was slavery and not something he followed out of a deep sense of duty. He tries to figure out where exactly the misunderstanding happened, if another inflection would have translated his meaning correctly.
By the fourth day of not speaking, he seeks her out in her cabin, gently disconnecting from his body to avoid the rush of adrenaline that would cloud his thoughts. He knows she’s just come back from a mission, but waiting any longer feels like cowardice. So he knocks on the door and waits.
It takes a bit, but she does eventually let him in, the moisture in the air sticking in his lungs immediately and making him cough. The whirr of the climate control promises that relief is only a few minutes away though, and Shepard apologizes for it. There’s no need to explain it though, her hair is still dripping wet and dark auburn rather than copper red, and she’s dressed down in just a tanktop and pants, clearly fresh out of the shower. He apologizes for disturbing her and for a few moments they make smalltalk about the mission she just came back from, her fish, the model ship collection, little things to test the waters between them and ease the tension.
Finally he stops being a coward and asks to go over their last debate again, apologizes for upsetting her and is about to attempt to explain again when she stops him, places her hand on his which are clasped in his lap. It’s almost shocking how gentle her touch is as she touches him.
“You didn’t upset me. The people who made you believe that it was right to train a six year old to kill made me upset.”
After that he spends a lot of time thinking about her words, trying to find her perspective. A few days later he circles back to the topic and asks her to elaborate, is shocked when she expresses that she’s sad that he’s accepted it, and angry that his parents allowed it, angry that the hanar took a child, angry that he didn’t have the chance to have a normal life. It makes her perspective obvious, makes it easier to see and understand, and while he still does not feel the same as her, there are certain things he can understand and agree with her on. It makes going back to normal easier, their chats lighter again.
Eventually they move to different topics; politics, poetry, hopes and dreams, places they’d like to visit, families, a bit of everything. He mentions Kolyat in passing, and then explains further when he learns that his son has decided to become a hitman. The fact that she considers it worth helping with is a great surprise, and in some ways a great relief. The concern she expresses as they work to get to the bottom of what’s going on with Kolyat is strange, settles in him like a twisting coil of rope in his gut that he drowns in a prayer to Amonkira and then in the focus required to track Talid through the wards.
Talking to Kolyat hurts in a way he can’t and won’t hide from. Trying to explain is useless, his failures glaring and obvious in Kolyat’s words as he laid out his experiences. A father who’d never been there, a mother who’d been killed, being abandoned yet again with other family members, feeling unwanted and tossed aside, forgotten by everyone and abandoned. In the end he’d only been able to look Kolyat in the eye and swear that he would try to do better in the future, if Kolyat was willing to take the risk of letting him in. He wouldn’t insult his son by thinking that an apology would ever make up for the neglect he’d suffered over the years.
Leaving with his son's contact information felt like a burden off of his heart, but a new one on his shoulders. A new purpose, maybe, a reason to fight to make sure the mission past the Omega 4 Relay wasn’t going to be his last. He wasn’t going to let himself disappoint Kolyat again, no more. That promise he was going to hold close to his heart and carry with him in his soul.
Back on the Normandy he sends Shepard a message, thanking her for her time, for helping him find his son and guide his soul from the darkness. She does not respond to his message.
The next time she drops by Life Support he’s halfway through a message to Kolyat, telling about their latest mission, something easily put on hold in favor of getting up to greet her, thank her in person for her help. Except he doesn’t really get the chance; the second she’s in reach she puts her arms around his shoulders and pulls him into a hug.
Somehow all he can think of in the moment is that nobody has touched him in such a manner since Irikah died.
And still, he returns her hold, feels her breath against his shoulder as she whisper that he doesn’t need to thank her for that, just do better. No more excuses, no more running from his responsibility, no more thinking of his body as a weapon and his soul as just a passenger. Kolyat needs a Whole dad, and she needs her friend to be Whole as well. He promises to do his best and when she lets go it’s surprisingly easy to think that in spite of everything, maybe the road ahead is not as dark as he thought it was. He has a son waiting for him, friends, something to live for in his last months instead of simply wasting away and waiting for the sickness to claim him.
It gets a little bit easier after that. Talking to the rest of the crew, stepping out of his isolation, discussing this, that and the other with whoever’s around when he emerges. Bonding feels easier, he even lets Tali’Zorah talk him into playing cards with her, the mechanics, Garrus and Jack at one point. A strange experience, but one that nonetheless ends up enjoyable. (Tali’Zorah and Garrus share so many stories from the days on the first Normandy, all of which are highly amusing.) When he suggests that they should invite Shepard to their next game, Tali tells him to get fucked, Donnelly groans, Daniels gets a far off look in her eyes, and both Garrus and Jack openly laugh. Apparently the commander is disturbingly good at just about any card game and has fleeced all of them more than once. They make him swear to never play cards with Shepard unless he wants to leave with not a single credit on him and no pants. (The story of how Shepard once gambled Garrus right out of his armor is great and amusing, if nothing else then because it makes the turian fluster and buzz with shame and annoyance.)
The talks with Shepard get easier too and stop happening exclusively in Life Support. Sometimes they meet in the galley, sometimes they chat in her cabin, sometimes on the bridge, sometimes just when out and about.
He finally tells her about Irikah. About meeting her, getting to know her, loving her. Eventually he talks about losing her. In return, Shepard tells him about her childhood, about uncertainty, fear, of never being able to settle, feeling tense in what was supposed to be home, joining a gang as a means of escape, learning to kill before she was grown because what else was she supposed to do? In response he asks how she changed and she tells him that she decided to stop blaming others for her actions. The gangs ordered her actions, but she pulled the trigger, so to speak.
Her words and the look on her face brings the scent of spice on the spring wind, for a second her eyes are sunset colored and he’s not looking at her from across the mess table but down the scope of a rifle. Just for a second. Then her eyes are ocean blue again, the air smells of coffee and burnt toast and she’s still looking at him, waiting for a response. It’s early morning, much too early, it’s just the two of them, and he reaches across the table to hold her hand, asks her to remind him from time to time to be whole. The squeeze she gives his hand is enough of a promise.
A month or so later they’re in her cabin, reading separate books, (his is a translation of the dialogues of some ancient human philosopher, her’s is an introduction to ancient Drell religion,) when she asks him a strange question. It starts off strange, with a reassurance that she cares about him, that she loves him even, but she has something important to ask.
She asks if it’s a dealbreaker for him if she has romantic feelings towards other people as well, and immediately she tries to reassure him that nothing is wrong with what they have, she does not want something else, does not want to lose what they have and if it makes him uncomfortable then she will never mention those feelings again or ever act on them. Her explanation of polyamory is confusing, and a little difficult to wrap his head around. The metaphor that their relationship is a forest and sometimes she would like to visit the ocean too helps a little. It helps more when she reassures him that it’ll be on his terms, that he gets the final say, that she does not want to leave the forest forever, only for a moment to visit the beach and if it’s too much he can always ask her to come back and stay.
In the end he agrees to give it a shot.