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Cam Shepard stares.
She zeroes in on a single light emitting from the terminal at her desk, glinting off a framed medal. Her eyes feel as though they’re wilting.
She'd worn a stoic expression as she’d turned away from David. From Archer. Footsteps echoed and machines hummed. The doors in each corridor finally slid open without issue, and behind one of them stood Thane and Legion.
Both her companions’ expressions were a challenge to read, but something flitted across Thane's face. A strange trace of concern pulling at his brow that made Cam suddenly aware of tears running down her cheeks.
“Commander,” he said softly, voice warming the cold of the corridor.
“ You are in distress .” Legion noted.
There was a storm inside her. Anger towards mankind. Selfishness, as she wished she hadn’t witnessed the project. Disgust twisting into guilt, as she recognised herself in Gavin’s words. It was a battle with every emotion at once, and a million instincts to numb and silence each one. Inside was a storm, with David’s desperate eyes in the centre.
Outside, her cold shell was burning from within.
Cam inhaled sharply, her face hot. She placed a gloved hand to her cheek in an attempt to cool down. “Yeah.”
“Is there more to amend here?” Thane stepped closer. “Or shall we take our leave?”
Legion’s light gleamed and blurred in her vision. “ The lockdown is lifted, Shepard-Commander .”
Cam looked at Thane, whose eyes flickered and flitted like an insect’s, but watched her with a care and a closeness she couldn’t quite place. After weeks of operations and conversations, she’d grown accustomed to the dark distance in him. Right now, that distance was gone.
She tried to nod, her breath shuddering. “There's more,” she sniffed.
He glanced around, as small lights lining the floor continued to come to life as power was routed to the room. As his gentle gaze returned to her, she stood still, leading them nowhere, giving them no orders.
“Take a minute, Shepard,” Thane said, taking one more step. His shoulders obscured Legion’s light and shielded her from the rest of the cold hall.
In this moment of rage and sorrow, her mind wrestled for what she was supposed to do. As it were, Thane’s patience and quiet were welcome, and all she ended up doing was closing the distance. Unbidden, she drifted forward into Thane.
His movements were slow and cautious. She couldn't quite feel his arms. She wasn’t sure if she could feel anything beyond the storm, but she was being hugged for the first time in a long, long time.
Cam cried, let go of the death grip control she'd had on her emotions, allowed Thane to hold her, and it was as if resting against a wall.
In her room, the orange glow from her omni-tool blares in the dark, and her eyes feel hot and angry as she holds it up to her face. She checks the report Legion transferred to EDI, the correspondence from the Normandy to Grissom Academy, and Joker's estimated travel time from Aite to somewhere David Archer can be safe from harm.
She checks it all over and over. She thinks of pipes, wires, and eyes pried open. Her chest grows heavy, and her breath shakes. She narrows her eyes and closes the increasing heart rate monitor in the corner of the display.
A circular icon on the side changes from orange to white with a small click , which means there's a message from someone on the ship.
Cam slowly opens it and blinks.
4:33 am - Thane Krios: You aren't sleeping.
Cam pauses. She would steel herself, only there’s no energy left to muster to do so. The urge to remain untouchable and unseen is still so strong, even through two decks and a text display.
4:34 am - Shepard: How did you know
4:34 am - Because neither am I.
Cam's brain is plastered with images of David and the horrifying machine he was forced into. Most of the crew had seen him after he was removed from it. In time, she might forget some details. She wasn't sure if Thane had witnessed that horror, but due to his drell memory, he would never forget it if he had.
4:36 am - I don't know what to do.
4:38 am - I have something that might help with sleeping.
4:39 am - I purchased it on Omega.
4:40 am - You didn't smuggle drugs onto my ship did you?
4:40 am - Not quite, Shepard.
Cam wraps the covers around her like a shield, staring at the words.
4:41 am - Shall I bring it to you?
4:41 am - Yes
The light from the omni tool vanishes, and Cam squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, strained from the light and sore from the crying.
She keeps meaning to get up. To quickly make herself or the room presentable, but she doesn't. She switches on the light by her head and watches the door. The ship is almost silent, and for a moment, she loses herself in the distant hums and shudders before she hears the elevator approaching. Her eyes are still half closed when the door slides open, Thane's shape silhouetted by the dim light.
Cam sits up as he walks towards the bed, silent as the shadows surrounding him.
“Did you sleep?” She asks.
“Briefly,” he says.
He's wearing a black robe tied at the waist. It's the first time she'd seen him not wearing his gear. It's also the first time anyone had seen her sleep-deprived, nested in bed with a headache from crying.
She leans back against the pillows and crosses her arms, staring into nothing. “I keep thinking about it,” she murmurs.
“As do I, but we will wear ourselves out running it through our minds.” He sits on the edge of the bed, but doesn’t cross into her personal space. “It's best we concentrate on the fact that we helped him.”
Cam shifts her leg to give him more room to sit and stares towards the blue glimmer of the fish tank.
“What brings you peace, siha?” He asks.
“I…” Cam thinks for a moment. “I did try this -”
She reaches towards the side table and adjusts a setting on the omni-tool. Above them, the cover over the skylight slides away, revealing endless clusters of stars. Aite, named after the goddess of delusion and folly, looms far in the darkness, almost vanished. Somewhere in the havoc, Cam had forgotten that Aite had rings.
“- but it wasn't helping.”
“Hm.” Thane watches the infinite expanse. Aite and its moons are so far away now, hardly any light is cast into the cabin.
They share the silence, as they often do. Thane’s presence is calm and kind, and even with a beautiful view of space above her, she finds herself watching.
Cam makes out the flicker of his eyelids, the shadows around his scales, the curves and corners of his face. Not because these things feel alien or strange, but because they’re nice, in his quiet reverence for everything.
It’s only when he sighs gently and reaches into a pocket of his robe, that Cam realises she must have stared for several minutes.
“This is what I brought you,” he says. He opens his hand to reveal a small glass bottle and holds it towards her. “It’s an oil. I thought it was a rather pleasant smell. Unfortunately, it irritates drell skin. It was made to replicate the scent of lavender. I'm not sure if it's accurate.”
Cam pushes off the pillows, leans closer, and takes the bottle. Stars glitter in the reflection of the glass. She tentatively removes the lid and carefully sniffs. It came from Omega, after all.
It is almost perfect . It's a bit more musty and ever-so-slightly artificial, but it's undoubtedly lavender. It's also saturated enough to permeate the entire room, but there's still a tranquillity to it.
“This is nice,” she says. She's reminded of lavender growing in the odd flowerbed outside shopfronts in Atlanta, and wreaths hung on apartment doors. Cute, soft things in a scattered mess of a world she was never certain she belonged in.
“I remember lavender. I like it.”
Thane sits with his hands in his lap, his expression soft and pleased.
“If I could bring a garden of it to you, Shepard, I would.”
A smile tugs at her lips, rare and fleeting. She has no sweet words to trade, so she looks down at the bottle and replaces the lid.
“This'll do,” she says, voice tired and quiet. “Thank you.”
Thane’s quiet company puts her at ease, as it so often does.
“This has changed you,” he says with a soft finality.
Cam looks up. “I’ll be fine, Thane. I won’t let it change me. I can still do what I have to. I’ve seen worse.”
“Have you? I have never seen you waver before today, Shepard. Indeed, you’ve had to do terrible things for the greater good, but did you ever have a moment to look their consequences in the eye?”
Her exhausted eyes narrow, and her hand tenses on the bottle. “I live with the consequences every single day, Thane.”
“I don't believe that’s true. You live with your memories.”
Thane gets to his feet, the starlight drifting over the fabric of his robe. He looks down with kind eyes upon his commander, who granted him a glimpse of vulnerability she hadn’t allowed herself since she was nineteen. Which, in the long years of travel and change, in this dark, sinister part of the universe, feels very, very long ago.
“It’s a painful and terrible memory,” he says softly, “but if it drives you towards peace, I say, let it change you.”
In the silence, he gives her a nod, almost a bow, and begins his walk back to the elevator. Cam's breath shudders slightly. Before he leaves…
“You do,” she says.
Thane pauses, almost to the door. He turns towards her again, the light from the window just catching the curious and patient look in his eye.
“ You bring me peace.” Cam is smiling, and she feels no need to hide it.
Thane's eyes flutter as he blinks. Somewhere in the shadows is the calming smile that quiets the storm. His kind frame retreats from the light, and he is a shadow once more.
The door closes behind him, and Cam lies back into the bedding, head pressing into the pillow. She loses herself to the sound of the ship and the sight of the stars.
The scent of lavender lingers, and her eyes drift closed.