#Reaper (Sleeping Citadel)
Text
The Sleeping Citadel (Gray Magic)
This original series is posted on my main Irhaboggle account (AO3, Fictionpress, Wattpad) and stars 2 Necromages (Sonorhc the Resurrectionist and Reaper the Destructionist) and 1 Umbramage (Nevermore the Shadow-Teleporter).
They're in a queerplatonic polycule. Sonorhc is ace, Reaper is aro, and Nevermore is genderfluid, alternating between a woman and an agender person.
Credit to Harvey Picrew Maker P1 & 2 and Makowka Character Maker II
Bonus:
Sonorhc, Reaper: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/1990109
Sonorhc, Reaper: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/1887308
#The Sleeping Citadel#Sonorhc#Reaper Sleeping Citadel#Nevermore Sleeping Citadel#queer#lgbt#lgbtq#lgbtq+#oc#original character#original characters#picrew
0 notes
Text
#Sleeping Citadel#Sonorhc#Reaper (Sleeping Citadel)#Nevermore (Sleeping Citadel)#koikatsu#picrew#aromantic#asexual#agender#genderfluid#woman#aroace#polycule#queerplatonic#queer#lgbt#lgbtq#bestfriends#love#squad#fantasy#magic#necromancer
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Penguins
A sort of sequel to Overflow (or takes place in the same universe in my mind)
Saren x GN!reader, 962 words. Fluff, mentioned past trauma, working through it, mentioned medication and therapy, this is some very fluffy winter nonsense
-
“What kind of creature is on your pants?”
You glance down at your pajama bottoms - bright green fabric with little white and black birds decorating all over the legs of it. Some have hats on, and others have scarves. “It’s called a penguin.”
Saren grunts in the doorway, and you only flick your gaze over to see if he needs help first, before glancing back to the extranet news report you had on. It takes a couple of minutes for him to remove his outerwear, and then he moves. Reaching you in moments, he only carefully lifts your ankles in his talons so he can slide his body beneath your legs. Letting your feet rest in his lap, while he rolls his head back against the couch.
“Rough day?” You offer, and he pats your calf.
“Nothing more than usual.” He pauses, his talons moving slowly along your leg. Then there’s a tilt of his head, and he traces one of the penguins. You hide your smile behind your datapad, as you watch him try to come up with something to say about them. His mandibles twitch when he thinks. “They’re very cute.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
He glances at you then. Metallic, cybernetic eyes gaze into your own. The fake irises shift, twitching almost like real eyes while he scans over your face. “I am trying.”
You reach for him then, placing your hand over the top of his talons. Everything was still hard, but you were patient. This was all very new to him still, since the indoctrination - and even more so since his discovery of his attraction to a species he had openly despised beforehand. It had been rough, and things were still quite awkward. “You’re doing well.”
The former spectre’s mandibles flare. “Am I?”
You hum and tug him forward until you’re both lying on the couch. “Quite well.” You pause, to press a kiss to his mouthplates and he applies pressure in return. It’s the closest to a peck you’ll get, but you don’t mind. “Do you want to watch a documentary about them?” When he tenses, you smile. “You can say no.”
“I wouldn’t mind it.” He says softly after a few moments of thought, moving to tuck his cybernetic arm over your waist. “Is it alright if we watch a documentary for the colony wars afterward?”
You give another peck, enjoying the way his mandibles twitch against your face. “I’ll order us some dinner so we can watch both.”
Today is an easy day. You listen to his comments on how turian fauna would easily rip apart penguins, and let him thrum with pride during the colony wars. You hold his hand when he has to take his medications and help tune up his arm before he has a shower. Falling into bed afterward is easy, with slow and thoughtful love-making before you both go to sleep.
The next few days are harder. There are so many people on the citadel now, and he starts to get overwhelmed, fidgeting. You fight when he says he wants a gun because he isn’t allowed one - even if he can sneak one into your home. He roars and spits because he needs to protect you and himself. But you both know how he gets with guns now. It’s why they took away his biotic amps too. Not just out of fear of how strong he could be, but how he got when he had those tools.
It was more of a fear that he’d hurt himself instead of just anyone. He had tried that a few times, shortly after the end of the Reapers and his indoctrination began to subside. It still hurt, to find him waking because you’d hear him. Sometimes mumbling and other times whispering. One time you heard him, repeating to himself after a nightmare: “Sovereign took my eyes. I can’t see anymore. None of the colors are real.”
You manage to stop arguing each night before bed, so you never fall asleep angry at one another. The thought of phoning his therapist still lingers in your brain, but on the fourth day, you wake to find your bed has a much smaller, different figure lying beside you.
It’s a penguin, you realize, reaching out to touch it. A toy penguin with a scarf that was far too big had been tied carefully around it. Your fingers run along the scarf, and a soft sound leaves your throat.
When you go downstairs, he’s making breakfast for you both. You make sure your footsteps are loud, that he knows that it’s you before you move to wrap your arms around his small waist from behind.
“I love you.” You whisper.
“I know.” One hand comes down to rest upon your own. Talons gliding over your fingers. “I’m not good at this, I wasn’t even before - everything, but I… I want to try. I want to be better again.”
He would never be the spectre he once was. But he could be better, be the hero that the citadel had once seen him to be. Charismatic, powerful; a leader. At the same time, if he didn’t want to be, you’d be fine with him like this. Just being your Saren, your partner, and trying to be happy.
You think being happy would be a good ending for both of you. “I know.”
Saren usually pauses now, before he speaks. As though reassuring himself that his thoughts are his own, to explain his own reasoning in his head before he lets it out. But this he says quickly, as though he feared when he had forgotten to say it. “I love you too.”
Talons and fingers hold together, as the smells of two different meals fill the house.
#I'm still working on how to format these lil ficlets#mass effect#saren arterius#saren arterius x reader#saren x reader#mass effect x reader#daily december
75 notes
·
View notes
Text
A Spectre's Proposal
Chapter 1
Pairing: f!Shepard/Kaidan Alenko
Rating: T
Chapter Length: 3.1K
Summary:
More than a year has passed since the Reaper War ended, and Kaidan and Jane have settled right into domestic life while they contribute to the rebuilding efforts on Earth. As normalcy begins to set in, so do old problems. News hits of piracy out in the Traverse when the Council calls on them for a secret mission only the two of them can fulfil. The nature of the mission leads them to think about what they want from their relationship.
Read the full chapter on AO3
Sample:
Jane woke up to her alarm in protest. She forced her eyes open despite wishing she could go back to sleep. It was a Tuesday. The worst day of the week. No longer rested from the weekend, and still with the majority of the week left to go.
This was never a problem she had on active duty. There was always so much to do that the days blurred together and the concept of regular sleeping hours was a fabrication. There was no such thing as a weekend, and they were lucky to get shore leave whenever it was granted. To have to wake up for a morning shift still felt so foreign, but here she was, still working the desk job that was assigned to her by Admiral Hackett almost exactly a year ago upon her return to Vancouver after the war. The only difference is that now it was a choice she made to stay here, rather than her only option.
When she was initially assigned the role, it was because her injuries from the war prevented her active status, but since then, she’d gone through rigorous physical therapy on top of her endurance and strength training. She ensured her certifications were up to date. She was fit for duty if she wanted it, but she and Kaidan decided they didn’t mind taking some time for themselves before getting back into it. It gave them a chance to reconnect without being pulled away on different assignments, desperate for some shore leave together. Being tied to a desk may not have been her first choice, but it granted them real and genuine time together, which was a gift she’d take a thousand times over.
As it was, there was no war to speak of, making the decision to stay at a desk a little more palatable, and this way, they got to carpool to work together. They ate lunch together most days and came home to each other every night. They went hiking up Grouse Mountain and went swimming in English Bay. And they even got to spend holidays with Kaidan’s family in the Interior. In fact, they’d be going back there soon for his sister’s one-year anniversary. Kaidan showed her Vancouver, and they took their time to appreciate life while still being able to contribute to the rebuilding efforts, of which there weren’t many left to speak of. Things were almost back to normal at this point. The relays were mostly repaired. The Citadel was back up and functioning in its new location over London. Things were better than she ever could have dreamed of, even if her job was a little monotonous and she hated waking to an alarm.
Jane was starting to feel sleep pull her under again when she finally fought against it. She’d spent enough time procrastinating in bed. Sun was already lighting up their room, and work beckoned. She turned over to see Kaidan’s side of the bed was already empty and tucked in as much as possible with her still sleeping on the other side. Jane smiled at the thought and how ingrained the habit was for him to do it even while she still occupied half the space. She stood up and tucked in her own side of the bed, not wanting to get a reputation for being the sloppy one, even though, of the two of them, she was definitely the one with that reputation already. When she was done, she went to take what was supposed to be a quick shower, and as with most mornings, she lost track of time. She got dressed in a hurry and ran to the kitchen. Her hair was still wet from the rush.
#f!shenko#f!shepard#kaidan alenko#mass effect fanfiction#fanfiction#mass effect#romance#fluff#fake engagement#my writing
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
Mass Effect's overall plot is a lot of fun, but any fan will tell you straight up that it isn't the tightest run ship. Major sections of the trilogy's overall plot are moved forward by contrivance, and established lore has a reputation for being tossed out the airlock because the dev team thought of something cool. That said, one (1) of the things that irks me the most is something I don't often see talked about--the Citadel Relay.
So here's the reaper's plan, in paraphrase:
Leave one (1) guy behind and fuck off to dark space to get that good sleep.
Oneguy turns on power saver mode and keeps an eye on the meatbags.
Fleshies find mass relays and citadel; use them.
Open murder hole to let the squad through.
Make meatbag soup
Return to step one
Now if something were to go wrong with step four, you'd have quite the pain in the ass in your future if you're a reaper.
Thought experiment: You're leaving your house for the day. You don't want anyone to just wander in, but you obviously need to get back inside later. Do you…
A. Lock the door and take the key with you?
B. Have someone house sit?
C. Leave one of the back windows unlocked and hope no one notices?
D. Train your cat to unlock the door when it hears you whistle?
Admittedly that last option would be cool, albeit contrived and prone to failure. For some reason though, the reapers went with that one. And surprisingly enough, someone eventually broke in and retrained their cats. The reapers don't have a single dialogue exchange in the entire series that doesn't include a small diatribe about their intellectual superiority, yet they have no contingency in place for this.
So it's already pretty silly at this point, but it actually gets a little sillier when you realize what the game takes care to avoid explicitly stating--the reapers obviously have a mass relay with them in dark space. One that links to the hub of the relay network but is for some reason isolated from it. They don't even have a backup that just like… links to the Serpent Nebula relay.
I know what some of you are probably thinking. That the closed circuit with the Citadel relay is meant to ensure that the reapers aren't stumbled upon while they're schleepin™. As Vigil states, "In this state, they are vulnerable."
So turn it off. We've already established that relays can be deactivated, and that a capital ship like Sovereign can manually open them as it attempted to do with the Citadel. Link that bad boy to the whole network, turn it on when you get the signal, killallhumans.exe ggnore.
Now we turn our attention to Mass Effect 2, which establishes that there is an active relay beyond from which no one has ever returned. So the galactic community put their heads together and came up with a plan--stick some warning signs near it and let the problem take care of itself. Literally just throw hands up and move on. So if the reapers just killed everyone who came through their super secret clubhouse relay? Maybe put some of those weird Collector Laser Probes to take out the stragglers? They'd probably be fine.
Eventually we learn that the relay leads into the galactic core, and that it checks for a reaper IFF system to engage more accurate protocols to avoid throwing friendly vessels into a supermassive black hole or the hundreds of stars it's throwing around at nearly light speed. So now we've established that at least one relay has an Identify Friend Foe system. Mass Effect 3 further establishes that the IFF system is only usable by the Normandy because of EDI, who explains that the IFF is more of a thinking intelligence than a simple program. So if you aren't an AI, or don't have the help of one, you're kind of screwed.
Shame they couldn't use that technology for anything else. Barring access to certain relays, for example.
Recall the Arrival DLC. Commander Shepard vaporizes ~300,000 colonists because the Viper Nebula/Alpha relay is, and I quote, "their shortcut to the rest of the galaxy." If the reapers had even a single one of these contingencies in place, humanity would've likely arrived to an empty Citadel in a new cycle. They would've had their shortcut already, and there wouldn't be anything to be done about it.
Given that their plan is actually quite flawed, there are only a few explanations that I can think of:
The reapers are actually kind of stupid.
The Catalyst intentionally designed the "reaper solution" to be imperfect. To give the meatbags a chance, I guess?
The biomechanical nature of reaper construction has caused them to inherit more traits from the organics that facilitated their construction than any of them seem to freely admit. Namely arrogance, in this case. You'll notice that Harbinger does talk with the same aloof superiority that the Leviathan use when talking to Shepard in ME3, whereas Sovereign's dialogue reads as something more akin to disgust or hatred.
Development was rushed and somewhat troubled for every Mass Effect game to date, and many of the gaps we see are a result of content being cut to get the game out the door on time.
In all honesty, it's most likely some combination of 3 and 4, but it's kind of frustrating. It's not surprising that so many people write no reaper AUs and/or headcanon a Destroy ending that doesn't kill the geth and EDI simply to fit the framing as the Renegade option. Mass Effect, in the minds of most fans, is a character driven narrative. The reapers aren't really characters. There are only two of them that have names, and only three who actually speak. They're mostly just an excuse to make the plot happen.
If the intention was to imply that the reapers are literal mechanical mass graves haunted by the metaphorical ghosts of the civilizations harvested in their creation? I'm on board. The problem is that we're never told that, and we aren't given enough interaction with different reapers to come to that conclusion definitively ourselves. May as well just call 'em Harby and the Boys, cause it's clear from the outset that Harbinger is the only one that the narrative intends to give even the tiniest amount of weight after Sovereign is destroyed.
The reapers are a constant presence during the trilogy, and yet we only meaningfully interact with four, and that's if you're counting Sovereign's half brother Sluggard.
#mass effect#mass effect trilogy#mele#mass effect lore#reapers#sovereign#harbinger#half-brother sluggard#he's lookin for some payback#I mentioned Leviathan during this post and now I'm mad#spoilers#mass effect spoilers#op#text
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
ME Fic: The Messages In Between Ch.1
Summary: Shepard and Garrus messages to each other throughout the events of the Reaper War.
Link: Ao3
Notes: GST: Galatic Standard Time. Cycles are one-day cycle of the Citadel per the GST. One Orbit has 40 Cycles. There are ten Orbits in a GST year. 2686 GS is also 2186 for the Alliance.
Galactic Standard Time: Cycle 20, Orbit 9, 2686. Day 6 of the Reaper War.
Garrus breathed in the stale air of his cabin, trying to relax in his makeshift cot. He had been without sleep for almost two days.
Four days since the Reapers hit Palaven and six days since they hit Earth. Six days without contact with the Sol system. Six days not knowing if Shepard was still alive.
Garrus rubbed his brow plates, trying to push the thoughts of her out of his head. He needed to sleep. He had spent the last two hours stuck on top of a comm tower, sniping any reaper forces within scope of Vitcus' men—All while fixing the comm tower too. That was somehow just this morning. Garrus' mind whirled with fog without sleep, trying to keep track of the time. He needed to rest, but the adrenaline still kept him stirring in bed.
Just as he felt himself drifting to sleep, his omni-tool pinged dozens of times. Messages upon messages poured in. Almost all from the same source: Datapad Model OXIV, Alliance Addition. Garrus shot up out of the cot, trying to scan the messages. The words shifted and moved with his exhaustion, but there was no way he could sleep now.
***
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 30, Orbit 4, 2686]
Garrus, It’s Shepard. I'm sending this out. Hotwired a datapad they’re allowing me to have to prep evidence. I doubt the Alliance is reading. I'm pretty sure they won't notice when this datapad goes missing, either.
Give the Hierarchy hell, and hopefully, we’ll get somewhere with it.
Send back if you can. I think this is going out?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 35, Orbit 4, 2686]
House arrest, you got to be fucking kidding me. Is this on the news? Can you see this? I’m sure Khalisah is having a field day with this.
At least Joker can still get on the Normandy. I'm stuck. Maybe I'll take you up on that offer to break me out. You know, we can steal the Normandy again, too, just like old times.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 5, Orbit 5, 2686]
You’d hate this. It’s all pointless jabbering. Tribunal after tribunal. They won’t listen. Aratoht is all they care about. I’ve shown them the proof. They keep putting their heads in the sand.
Do you know that saying? Does it even translate? It just means that, as always, they’re ignoring the real problem. Why is that not a surprise?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 15, Orbit 5, 2686]
Did you know today is my birthday? On Earth its April 11th. I'm only a little disappointed you didn't get me a gift.
I think I’m 32 or 30. Does being dead count towards age? Do turians celebrate birthdays?
30 is a big one, a big milestone for humans. When I was a teenager, I never thought I would get to it running with the Reds. I guess, technically, I didn’t get to celebrate it. Humans don't generally celebrate it in a jail cell either.
I just wish you were here with me for it. We could have shared another glass of wine. Among other things…
Right now, I’m so bored that I’m trying to figure out how to make prison wine. Hopefully, I won’t go blind.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 23, Orbit 5, 2686]
If I could go without hearing about the Reds for one more day, I might not scream. They have spent a week dissecting my time with the Reds. Seriously? I left them when I joined the Alliance. I’m just some drugged-out teen junkie on Red Sand to them still.
When do we stop paying for the sins of youth?
I hope this is getting to you. I hope you’re getting further than I am. Good thing you left. Imagine both of us in an Alliance interrogation room?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 5, 2686]
Want to take any bets on how long until the Reapers are here? I'll give it two more months. that what like three orbits? You think the Councils cares?
What are you wagering? How about we wager like we did with Strip Skyllian-Five? This isn't a bet I want to win this time though. Even if I like seeing you in your skivs.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 29, Orbit 5, 2686]
Still no answer from you. You playing hard to get Vakarian?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 37, Orbit 5, 2686]
The prison wine is nasty, almost as bad as the stuff you brought last time. Still not blind, although I am having visions of you pinning me up against the aquarium. Did I get you blushing yet?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 1, Orbit 6, 2686]
I’d like to think you’re just playing hard to get, and I’m not just sending these off into the ether. It's hard doing one-sided sexting you know?
No one tells you how boring prison is, even with the datapad. I wish they’d give me a keyboard so I can practice. Also, to hotwire it to get a better signal to you.
Now I’m starting to know why they try to limit how much electronics I get. It’s the Alliance's fault, they trained me how to do this. Yeah, that’s the excuse I’m going for.
If you can, send a voice recording, I miss it. You I mean.
I miss you.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 35, Orbit 6, 2686]
God, it’s so annoying. They have these guards watching me constantly. What do they think I’m going to do? Fight someone? or someones gonna fight me? Ridiculous.
It'd be nice to have some privacy to take care of myself since you're not here. I guess I'll just have to think about you in the shower...
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 15, Orbit 7, 2686]
I got tarred and feathered today by the Brass. This is totally something humans do, not an expression like the sand one. Don’t look it up. Just believe me.
If I have to hear one more thing about the geth, I might blow a gasket. Okay, now that one is an expression, although, with the cybernetics, I think that might be possible for me.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
I got stabbed by a batarian. He cloaked into the base. Been in the med bay for a week now. Apparently, my heart stopped. I guess that’s twice now on me dying? Let’s hope we don’t get a third anytime soon.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
There was poison on the knife too. So what is that twice now toooo that a batarian poisoned me? Who'se conting
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
*cunting
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
*counting wow third times the charm
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
the morphine im getting is niceeee though
Who needs prison wine
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 25, Orbit 7, 2686]
I misssssss you
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 26, Orbit 7, 2686]
Sorry, morphine brain.
I did end up figuring out how to make more wine from some apples. You can’t have it, obviously.
But I wish we could share another glass of achiral wine. Maybe you can get something a bit more pricey this time? I’m sure you're not just on a vigilante salary still.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 27, Orbit 7, 2686]
Patia Semmark. Besine Kodsoh.
Those were the names of his family. He screamed them at me. The batarian I mean.
I think he wanted me to kill him. Now he’s in some cell on this base alongside me.
Did I do the right thing? What if I am crazy? What if the Reapers were all in my head?
Did they die for nothing?
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 7, Orbit 8, 2686]
Sorry, I haven't sent it in a while. The stress is getting to me. Maybe you're reading this? My face looks like it’s burning a hole through it. I hope you find scars attractive too.
I’m back on my home planet, but I can't sleep easily most nights. It was easier when you were with me in my cabin. I’m cuddling up on pillows right now, wanting them to be you.
At least the pillows are softer than you, Vakarian.
But still, I need you here with me.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 36, Orbit 8, 2686]
It’s been almost a month since I’ve sent anything. Sorry, I haven't written. It was starting to feel more like a diary.
Sorry as well I don't think I even asked how are you doing?
How is your family? Did your mom ever get that treatment on Sur'Kesh? How is Solana and your dad? Did you ever get those paintings back from Vlyrica? I'm sure you're doing great things out there.
I hope you're doing well. I'm thinking about you a lot.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 39, Orbit 8, 2686]
I’m pretty sure I'm not getting past certain encryptions set up by the Alliance.
This is why I could use you. You were always better at this kind of stuff than me. While you know I am the better shot and better looking, I’m pretty sure I am a better dancer, too.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right. I miss you. I hope you've missed me. I'm still waiting for you to break me out.
[Datapad Model OXIV - Draft date GST: Cycle 6, Orbit 9, 2686]
I guess I lost the wager. That a good thing right?
What is the news saying out there? They forgot about me and the Reapers?
Not that it matters. Nothings changed. We're getting nowhere. Six months and nothing to show for it. Almost two and half years of my life gone. First dead, now jailed. At least we made the most of it when I had a few free months together.
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 14, Orbit 9, 2686]
They're here. Left Earth, on Normandy. Got Joker, and even Kaidan is back. We're getting possible plans for a weapon on Mars.
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 15, Orbit 9, 2686]
Kaidan is badly hurt. Cerberus attacked us. We’re going to the Citadel if you're there. Meet me at the Embassy if you are.
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 16, Orbit 9, 2686]
In the old docking bay. Kaidan's not of the wood yet, but stable. Just got all your messages you've been sending. I guess you never got mine either? Hopefully, we can talk now. Where are you?
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 17, Orbit 9, 2686]
Please Garrus, I need you.
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 18, Orbit 9, 2686]
We're coming to Menae. It might take time to get there. Are you on Palaven?
[Shepard - Draft date GST: Cycle 19, Orbit 9, 2686]
Come back alive, you promised
***
Garrus' mandibles held tight to his jaw as he poured through the messages. Cycles upon cycles, he kept sending out a message to her only to be met with silence. He even set a damn voice recording and vids, hoping those would slip by Alliance encryption. He guessed once she landed on the Citadel she got his message. Now, maybe, hopefully, with the comm tower back on, she was somewhere on Menae? Why else would the messages finally come in? To taunt him?
Another ping rang out from his omni-tool, bringing Garrus out of his thoughts. General Corinthus needed him. The comms were back down. Garrus cursed under his breath. He hadn't even sent Shepard a message back. Hopefully, she was still out there on the battlefield. Garrus would make damn sure he was right behind her.
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
Or, Thane and Steve rebuild their lives in the chaos after the war.
[Read on AO3] - Rated E for EXTREMELY SPICY TIMES
Pairing: Thane/Cortez | Rating: 18+ | Words: ~3600
Made for @messydiabolical!!! Merry Christmas!!
Peace, while difficult in its own way, promised them a beautiful future. The memories would be enough until then.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The days after the war passed in a dreamlike trance.
No sooner had they released Steve from the field hospital, he was back to work - despite Thane's protests. Even Thane couldn't deny that ‘light duty' meant very little to either of them when so much needed doing. Today’s task was setting up more temporary shelters.
“You should rest,” he said softly to the man leaning against him, breathing heavily after staking a tent with his one good arm. The other hung in a sling made of little more than torn fabric. “Your arm will trouble you further if you continue to strain it.”
“I'm not letting these guys sleep in the rain because of a bad arm.” Steve's smile, although tired, brought him some measure of comfort.
After the reapers had fallen, one thing was clear: things could not be as they were. Not for a long time; perhaps not even in his lifetime. Surrounded by humans and a smattering of other species, Thane hadn't felt this alien in a long time. Illium, despite its myriad travelers and their questioning eyes, had felt more like home than Earth. There were humans here who had never even heard of drell before, much less seen one. Visiting travelers and refugees regarded him with blatant, uncomfortable stares.
But stranded though he may be, Steve Cortez was still by his side; the man who had brought color back to his life after ten long years.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
News of his son reached him early. Kolyat had helped organize an emergency evacuation from the Citadel, together with his partner Feron, and the pair were busy attempting everything they could to restore communications with the Shadow Broker and the wayward Normandy. Steve's arm healed before long, and Shepard, although grievously injured, was expected to make a full recovery.
The Alliance swiftly inducted any alien volunteers into their ranks. The designation was as official as a verbal agreement could be, but it allowed him a sense of belonging amid London's decimated infrastructure. So much of their life was focused on the necessities of survival. ‘Home’ became little more than whatever ground they could find to sleep on.
In the early days, it had been a creaky chair beside Steve's hospital bed, and then a cot in an Alliance field tent. One night it would be a threadbare bedroll, and another it would be a dusty floor beneath a creaky roof. But as he had for years, Thane began each morning with prayer and meditation. Precious minutes were spared to thank the gods - to beseech and implore his patrons to protect, nourish, and calm the minds of himself and his beloved, his son, and all of the unusual but remarkable people who now surrounded him. In this way, he slowly found peace.
Steve sat before him amid the many other Alliance soldiers sharing their current encampment, hands warm on his palms. Together, they spoke their morning ritual on hushed breaths, finding space to shut out the noise of tens of soldiers beginning the day's work.
“May Arashu protect and hold my beloved in the days to come, and may Kalahira watch over the lovers who have gone where we can not yet follow.”
Thane stood in silence, helping Steve to his feet in turn. They held one another for a brief moment - long enough for Thane to breathe a single word against his partner’s cheek.
“Melithas.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Many had asked him to define the word, but Steve was the only person to whom he had granted such a meaning.
“A shooting star,” he said one autumn evening, tracing his fingertips through Steve's hair, now grown out just slightly longer, as more important things needed doing. “A brilliant streak across the night’s darkness, fast and fleeting. My mother used to say that such stars choose who may witness them.”
“That’s beautiful. Anyone ever tell you you’re a hopeless romantic?”
Despite his words, the smile that lit Steve's eyes may as well have had the power to cure the afflictions of every person in their barracks.
“Only for you,” Thane whispered, kissing his palm. He allowed him to touch the sensitive ruby frills on his cheek, a desirous sound leaving him. “It suits you. You belong to the sky.”
“Now you're just buttering me up. Keep going like that and I'll follow you forever.”
“I think it may be too late,” he chuckled. “It's certainly too late for me.”
Steve tucked his head against Thane's shoulder, leaving a single, soft kiss against his throat. The warmth that spread through him ached in a distinct melancholic way.
“I want you,” Steve whispered.
“And I, you, Melithas.”
They sat in silence, desire glowing like coals in a dying fire. Outside, the rain poured over cold, muddy ground. Surrounded by dozens of displaced alliance soldiers with not even a curtain to separate them, there would be no sating their need tonight.
Thane pulled the blanket around them.
“Sleep now,” he whispered. “May we find each other in the world of dreams.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Space was cold, but London's winters felt colder. Though they had managed to find work under a sturdy roof, helping Steve repair shuttles for service, his scales ached in ambient temperatures his body was not made to endure.
“I found some new gloves for you to try,” Steve said one evening as he returned from a supply run, handing him a scrunched-up bundle of yellow material.
Thane frowned. Human gloves were, in the simplest terms, not made for drell hands. But closer inspection revealed that these were different. Thick fibers encased the outside of a hand-shaped object that had space for one thumb and what appeared to be four fingers inside one space.
“They're called mittens. The requisitions officer made them special for you. Not my favorite color, but she said it's what they had.”
Thane turned the object over in his hand, examining its construction. Already, he could tell that the loose weave would catch on his scales, but as he turned the cuff over he was surprised to find a tightly woven, pale-colored lining within. The material moved effortlessly against his fingertips. As he slipped his hand inside, it felt positively luxurious compared to every other garment he’d worn since arriving on Earth.
“She said if you like them, she'll try to knit you something with individual fingers.”
Never mind the implied lack of dexterity - the mittens were warm. So blessedly warm. At a loss for words, he wound his arms around his lover and pulled him tight.
“Thank you. Thank you, Melithas.”
“Don't thank me yet - I have one more surprise for you.”
Thane met Steve's eyes with curiosity.
“I got your flight assessment results. You're cleared for training,” Steve grinned.
Thane’s face split into a wide smile. He hadn't thought he would qualify.
“When will we start?”
“Tomorrow, 6am sharp. Don't be late, cadet. If you’re lucky, I’ll take you to the mile-high club.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Steve was strict about the Alliance SOP for flight training. As strict as he could be, at least.
As an entry-level trainee, Thane's primary task should have been to observe, learn his instruments, and assist his pilot. The difficulty was that he should have been doing it in a flight simulator - something they simply didn’t have access to.
“This is a little unorthodox, but we live in strange times,” Steve began. “Going up is easier than getting back down, so you'll pilot takeoff, I'll pilot landing. Shuttles like the Kodiak are typically only flown by one pilot, but assuming we fixed everything up right, I should be able to take control if something goes wrong.”
He clapped the back of Thane's seat, leaning over his shoulder as he settled in. It wasn’t his first tour of this particular shuttle’s cockpit, but he listened attentively as Steve recapped what they had gone over in the weeks before.
"Keep your eye on your instrument panel. This is your altimeter, here's your speed, artificial horizon and all that. Vertical stabilizers are to your left, horizontal to your right.” He indicated a set of controls adjacent to each armrest. “And here, this is your thrust lever.” The dual-handled lever was situated between them, well within reach.
Thane settled into the seat, touching each control and instrument one by one to commit the tour to memory.
"When this is green, we're on autopilot. For routine stuff like this, she’ll mostly fly herself. Things can be a little overwhelming initially, so focus on getting used to your instruments. We can move on to more advanced flying once you’ve mastered this."
Thane nodded, buckling himself into the seat as Steve did the same beside him.
Thane tapped the inputs as directed, felt the feedback in the haptic implants he’d gotten many years before. The shuttle hummed as they lifted off the ground, rumbling steady and even beneath them.
Steve opened his comm to their local traffic controller.
“Alliance Command, this is Steve Cortez with FRT requesting escape trajectory for UT-47 Kodiak test flight in vacuum.”
“FRT Cortez, you’re cleared for escape trajectory on heading two-four-zero to orbital station Triton. Fly safe out there.”
“Acknowledged.” Steve tapped the screen and met Thane’s eyes. "Set your heading here. And go easy on the gas,” he said with a lopsided grin.
The heading dial ticked up as they pivoted toward their given takeoff direction. Thane’s hand settled around the cold steel of the thrust lever.
“Take us up, babe.”
He breathed deep, set his shoulders, and pushed forward.
That first burst of speed was electric. They sailed forward, and he watched their altimeter tick up - slowly at first, and then faster and faster until their backs were glued to their seats at escape velocity. The engines roared beneath them like twin dragons, freed after months of confinement.
The ride was exhilarating. The shuttle shot through the clouds, the sun bursting into view like a fireball. And higher still they went, up and up and up. The digital windscreen cleaned up the distortion from the heat of their climb, but Thane could feel it - a corona of fire wreathed around them as they rocketed through the atmosphere until darkness overtook them at the final barrier between sky and stars.
And gods, the stars. He could never forget, as was his nature, but the stars were even more numerous than his memory. Their majesty commanded his reverence.
“Never gets old,” Steve said under a hushed breath.
Just how long had it been since he'd left the atmosphere? Thane counted back the months, long since accustomed to Earth's standard timescale - nearly one Solar year. Thane had never really considered himself a sailor, in a spacefaring sense, but perhaps he'd missed this more than he realized.
"Goddess of Oceans,” he whispered.
His teachers had said the cosmos was just an ocean by another name. An endless sea of stars, each created by Kalahira to guide the lost across her abyssal depths. He gazed upon them now, hand in hand with the wayward human he had come to cherish, and thanked the gods for smiling upon them. Steve's hand brushed his own, fingers slipping into his grip. The expanse of stars filled him with a warm, vibrant sensation, brighter than the rare sun of Kahje. He dared to call it hope.
"You're a natural, babe. You sure you've never flown before?" Steve kissed the back of his hand and gave it a tender squeeze. Thane’s cheek frills darkened.
"I suppose this means I’ve made it to the Mile High Club?”
Steve let loose a real, genuine belly laugh.
"Not quite," he said with a smile. Steve rose from his seat, twined his arms around Thane’s neck and brought his mouth to his aural ridge. “You're not in the mile-high club till you've made love at 5280 feet above sea level.”
There was a sultry edge to his voice that Thane hadn't expected, and he raised a brow (both brows, actually). He didn't dare hope for truth among those tempting words, but despite himself, they slithered with decadent heat beneath his skin.
“My altimeter says we're much higher than 5280 feet,” he said evenly.
“Your discipline never fails to amaze, but I’m putting this baby in standby.” Thane couldn't parse what ‘standby’ had to do with the situation at hand, but Steve quickly undid his safety belts and spun his chair around. “C’mere.”
The look in Steve’s eyes was telling.
“Do not tease me, Melithas.”
Warm breath washed over his throat, and Thane arched his neck on impulse. “Never, kitten.” And then Steve was on his knees before him, pulling their bodies tight, hands warm on his back.
The realization touched his mind as they drew close. Drifting among the stars, they were finally, blessedly alone. And in moments, their lips met as effortlessly as sea meets sand.
The kiss was everything they yearned for since the invasion began. Steve’s hunger for him parted the clouds of his mind, burned away the death and destruction of the war, and seeded life within his heart anew. Months. It had been months. The kiss flowed between them like a virile wine that slaked their long-buried thirst for one another that only the war could have put on hold.
With one hand on the back of his neck, Steve worked his other hand against the fasteners of his flight suit.
"Christ, Thane. If I have to go another night without you, I'm liable to fuck you silly in front of the entire barracks."
Thane hummed against his lips. "At this point, I don't believe I'd have the willpower to stop you.”
"I'll share a lot of things, babe. But you? Those sounds you make? Those are just for me. Only me."
Steve's mouth moved against his neck, licking a hot line along the most sensitive part of his throat. The cockpit, small as it was, quickly became their temple as they stripped each other bare by the low light of the haptic console.
"You're lucky," Steve said. "You have all those memories to fall back on." He dug his fingertips into Thane's pectoral frills, flooding him with need.
"Memories are far from sufficient," Thane groaned, wresting Steve's flight suit open, "Imagine yourself roused from a dream with naught more than your hand to satisfy you.”
"You poor thing," Steve whispered, gripping his chin as he drew their lips together. “Why don't you let me take care of you?"
"Please, Melithas," Thane whispered, his voice breaking on the knife edge of his need. "Whatever you wish of me is yours."
Steve’s answering murmur was low and laced with wanting. "I love it when you call me that."
Moments later, Thane found himself extricated from his suit, a warm hand sliding down along his shaft to his opening below, weeping with desire. Seeking fingers pushed inside him, collecting his wetness, massaging his walls. They emerged coated, smearing along the length of his cock, helping Steve's warm palm glide effortlessly along the length of him. Thane swore under his breath as he squeezed. Thank the gods for the well-placed perks of interspecies contrasts - he was beyond ready, aching and eager to be filled.
As quickly as he’d started, Steve suddenly pulled back. Thane met his gaze with concern.
"Hey,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry I haven't been as attentive as I should be."
There was a genuine apology in his eyes, reflecting the orange lights of the console. Thane scooched forward, thumb running along Steve’s jaw.
"You needn't apologize,” he said softly. “People are depending on us. We hardly have time for such indulgences."
"Yeah, but I just want you to know how special you are to me. I love you so god damn much. Some nights I want you so bad I can't sleep." To illustrate his point, Steve drew their bodies flush, making evident his own hardness beneath his shorts.
"I never doubted you,” Thane smiled, kissing him gently.
Steve’s answer was another kiss. On his lips, Thane could taste everything. All the love, the heartache, the frustration and desire and feeling that they’d been forced to set aside for the sake of rebuilding the basic pillars of survival. Steve’s hand gripped his waist, pulled him forward until they were both clumsily standing and stepping out of their clothes, neither of them willing to break this kiss they’d pined for all these months. The hard line of Steve’s cock pressed against his thigh as the man leaned against him, driving him backward one step at a time. Before long, he bumped the console and swore, reaching blind behind himself to lock the controls.
"Up," Steve ordered, and Thane was quick to comply. The instrument panel bit into his backside, but it didn’t matter as Steve reached between them, closing a fist around both of their cocks and stroking long and slow. “Let me make love to you,” he whispered.
“Please,” he said. “Gods above, please.”
He felt the way Steve’s lips curled into a smile against his mouth.
"Never done this in the cockpit before. But we'll make it work," he said as he lined himself up. He didn't hesitate, didn't tease - Steve's cock slid home, stretching him with the fullness he’d been denied for far too long. Warmth bloomed along his spine, crawling through his limbs and soul.
“Gods,” he panted. With some effort, he managed to raise one leg and splay his knee, altering the angle to an exquisite depth that made his dual eyelids flutter as Steve began to rock into him.
“That feel good, babe? You're so damn wet for me.”
There weren’t words for how fucking good it felt. Thane groaned incoherently, nipping Steve’s jaw, breath fleeing his lungs as another plunging thrust sent a wave of fire surging through him.
"You'll be good for me and wait to come till I’m ready, won't you?"
Steve’s fingers wrapped tight around his cock, pumping him in time with each deep, slow thrust. Thane's fingernails dug into the console, and he nodded.
"I know you can do it. Controlled guy like yourself, I gotta make it good for you. Make it worth the wait."
You were always worth the wait, Thane thought, unable to form the words. One hand gripped him by the hip, Steve's thumb slotting perfectly into his pelvic frill.
In the dim lighting, Steve's eyes reflected the myriad points of light from the windscreen and dashboard, twinkling as he moved with barely restrained purpose. His brows came together as he panted and leaned in, setting a pace that Thane felt would set them both aflame - long, plunging thrusts that hilted on every stroke, taking him to the stars and back as the seconds divided and multiplied into fathomless ecstasy.
“God, you are so damn beautiful,” Steve said, teeth scraping his lower lip. “I’d have you like this every day if I could.”
Thane returned the gesture, cradling Steve’s jaw as they kissed. "You'll just have to find more excuses to take the shuttle into orbit, then."
"I think I could swing that,” Steve panted. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of fucking you in front of a field of stars.”
A strangled, nearly pained gasp escaped him as Steve abruptly squeezed along his cock in a gesture he knew was meant to take him to the brink.
"Not yet," Steve leaned down to whisper. "Just a little longer, babe. You get so hot inside when you're close. Feels so damn good.”
"Melithas-"
He gasped when he pulled out, readjusted, and drove back home again, gaining speed until he was being well and truly railed into the dashboard. His ruined cries of desperation were lost to the frantic kiss they shared as Thane held on with what remained of his fraying control, wanting what they both needed - the visceral ecstasy of mutual release. And between them, the sweetest torture - Steve’s fist pumping him raggedly as his body was taken, filled again and again in the throes of bottled-up lust.
He couldn’t take it a moment longer. He never wanted it to end.
"Come for me, Thane."
His vision went white. Steve hilted one final time, swollen cock lodged deep inside his slick channel, dousing him from the inside out with thick, pulsing spend that warmed him within and without. Thane crested with him, gasping as his release poured into his lover's hand, rolling down over Steve's fingers and further still to the scorching heat of their joining. Steve pulled their bodies flush as they came, grinding out their mutual climax until they were both sated, panting, and spent.
Lucidity returned to him with the crawling chill of space and the silence of idle engines as they drifted in orbit. In contrast with the warmth of Steve’s body, he felt the instrument panel digging into his backside and began to stretch his limbs. Neither man wanted to separate.
“Melithas,” he murmured, palms pressed flat against Steve’s back, face tucked against his neck. “From the depths of my soul, I love you.”
Thane could hear the smile on Steve’s face as he held him tight and whispered back, “I love you, too, Thane.”
They dressed each other slowly, taking care to clean up as they went. Steve’s pupils were wide in the low light, his mind no doubt swimming with drell venom. Thane winced. In his haste, he hadn’t considered the logistics of returning to Earth in such a state.
“Plot a course for the Triton waypoint,” Steve said as they settled back into their seats. “We need their controllers to give us groundside status before re-entry.” He tossed Thane a wink. “I’ll be fine by then.”
Their hands met as the thrusters kicked on and they sailed forward. In the vacuum of space, they couldn’t feel their acceleration. If he closed his eyes, it felt like being aboard the Normandy again. Like home.
In the silence, Thane quietly wondered when he’d next have the opportunity to hold him, love him, worship him as they had in the months before the war. But peace, while difficult in its own way, promised them a beautiful future.
The memories would be enough until then.
#zet writes things#kriortez#thane krios#steve cortez#thane krios x steve cortez#priority: discord#secret santa#mass effect fanfiction
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hoping and wishing
"Garrus is a sniper. He knows about waiting."
Shepard makes a choice in the Crucible that should’ve cost her life. But also should have suffocating in the depths of her spacesuit and falling off from a planet’s atmosphere like a falling star.
Or: In which Commander “I don’t die easily cause I’m pretty much immortal at this point” Shepard refuses to leave and Garrus hopes that’s enough for them.
Hi! Haven't been posting here in a while, but life has been a bit difficult lately and my creativity is suffering consequences. However, last saturday my friends and I went to a thematic Mass Effect party (surpirse! I'm a Mass Effect fan, too) and I had the urge to post this very short oneshot that has been on my laptop for like...two years, I think? Nevermind. I'm Shakarian trash and still in denial about the ending of Mass Effect 3, so, enjoy!
"I'm falling
In all the good times I find myself
Longing for a change
And in the bad times I fear myself
I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now
In the shallow, shallow”
She’d been told she would die. He said she’d die.
Death and she were old friends. Close enough to know how the other behaved, smelled, felt.
But she was Commander Shepard. Cheating death, escaping from its claws, was something she’d became pretty good at.
She had to admit that, for a second, she thought she would.
And then, collapse came. Her body’s, that just couldn’t support the burden of her devastated system; the platform’s, that was swallowed by the weight of her decision.
She felt everything. The burning in her skin, her cells ripping apart, the shocking wave. And the fire. The problem had been the fire. It licked the shattered pieces of her torn, ripped armour, burying her in an indistinguishable mass of ravished flesh, metal shards and broken pieces.
So no. Not this time.
While the rumbling started, the Citadel exploded and the Crucible fell apart around her, Shepard found herself remembering Garrus. His jokes and his warm voice, the purring of his subvocals, the ones he thought she couldn’t hear, the soft stroking of his talons in her back during late hours of the night, when sleep was too stubborn to arrive, or the feeling of his words whispered under breaths in her hair when he thought she was too asleep to notice.
She thought of everything she was going to miss.
Before everything went black, Shepard thought that maybe, this was really it.
It isn’t.
She’s pretty sure she’s dead.
She can’t see anything.
She can’t hear anything.
She can’t feel anything.
Until the pain hits, so sudden she can’t help but gasp.
She’s breathing.
—I’m sorry. We…we haven’t found her.
Admiral Hackett’s words feel deaf, hollow in his brain.
—She has to be somewhere!
Joker’s reply is a bit louder, like a voice suffocating under dark waters.
Garrus can’t force himself to worry. Or care.
Was that what she had felt? That first time, after the Collector’s attack, with her damaged suit, suffocating, trying to breath but not finding air, wandering around with nowhere to go. That second time, when the Crucible crumbled over her while the Reapers suddenly stopped in their trays and fell to the ground like lifeless puppets whose strings are suddenly cut.
—The ruins are still there.
—Doctor T’Soni…
—If the remains of the Crucible are there, that means Shepard may be, too. We’ll dig her out. Give me a shovel, I’ll do it myself.
Of course she would.
—Even if she’s…still there…there’s no way she could have survived.
That’s obvious.
Even if the explosion that had ended with the Reapers had not killed her, the fall of the Crucible should have.
But she’s Shepard.
She’s been dead before.
And not even Death has been able to stop her.
—She’s not dead.
His voice sounds strange to him. Hoarser. Fiercer.
—Vakarian. I understand-
No, he doesn’t. No one else does.
—She’s not dead.
Commander Shepard made him a promise. And she has never failed him.
So, Garrus hopes.
Why? He doesn’t know.
It’s only during the long scanning of the battlefield, over the battered ground covered in ashes, blood and broken dreams, searching for her in the place he saw her for the last time, that he realizes it’s because he knows that their first can’t be their last “I love you”.
EDI finds her first.
Her radar catches the soft, minimal thumbing of her heart, so mild that other sensors would have missed it.
She races towards the spot, transmitting her position to Tali, Liara and Garrus, falls to her knees, and starts digging. By the time she finds her arm, three more pair of hands, one with five fingers, two with three, have joined her.
Tali radios Joker, tells him to get Doctor Chawkas ready for them and set a course to the nearest medical centre. Liara stabilizes her vitals with such an amount of medi-gel she may had gotten high on it wasn’t she so outside her body, and EDI connects herself to the implants that have kept her alive despite death to make sure they don’t stop working.
And Garrus picks her up, prepares her for transport, keeping her torn and exhausted body (or what’s left of it) together.
Shepard breathes.
And Garrus breathes with her.
Miranda works with the doctors. She pushes them, screams at them, sometimes, when they don’t do as she commands, when they say that’s simply not possible.
Bullshit.
She brought Shepard back from the dead once.
They don’t get to tell her what’s possible from what’s not.
There’s nothing impossible to her.
Kaidan, Hackett and Vega are fighting with the Council for resources to keep Shepard alive.
They say she’s not going to make it.
But the Alliance is not giving in this time.
Because they did once, and Shepard paid the consequences. Because she’s in an operating room fighting for her life as they speak because they did not support her. Because she’s dying cause the Council refused to listen, refused to believe.
Because Shepard is a hero.
The discussion ends when Urdnot Bakara arrives to the Normandy’s communications room and menaces with unlashing a horde of angry krogan if they don’t pay. By her side, Urdnot Wrex growls in a signal of support.
And then, the Council decides to pay.
Grunt is a bit disappointed, but, well, he can handle it.
Because Shepard is going to survive.
They’ve done everything they could, they said to him.
Now, all that’s left is waiting.
Garrus is a sniper.
He knows about waiting.
He’s good at it.
So he sits down near her bed, counting her breathings and taking note of all her heartbeats, eyes fixed in the bandages that cover her body.
He’s made a mental list of her wounds. Knows is not healthy, but he just couldn’t help it. Burns, cuts, bruises, broken bones, destroyed tissue. A lot repaired, but also a lot permanently scarred.
She needs time.
He sits and listens, in the quietness, the fear that creeps in his chest, but also the blind hope. He asks the spirits for a chance, the last chance, because they’ve come too far to end this way.
Doctors says she’s a fighter. She refuses to leave.
And Garrus hopes. He just hopes. He chuckles a bit, too, because of course Shepard is a fighter.
Of course she’s stubborn. Of course she’s not leaving.
She promised.
So, the afternoon he feels her hand moving in his talon, her eyes fluttering lazily awake and the light smile she gives him in the haze of pain-killers, analgesics, skin grafts, needles and gauzes, he thinks he should’ve known better from the beginning.
Her voice is low, barely a whisper, but Garrus hears her as she had screamed in victory.
—So…a human-turian baby, was it?
He smiles.
Shepard and Garrus deserved better. Hope you liked it!
A/N: Team effort to save Shepard? Sign me the fuck in.
I kinda invented my own ending for this because I'll never get over the three ones we are given in the game. Also, are you really telling me that Cerberus tech could bring Shepard back to life in ME2 but not after ME3? Not buying it, Bioware.
#shakarian#garrus vakarian#femshep#commander shepard#female shepard#shepard x garrus#mass effect#mass effect fic
68 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hydroponics (Male!Reader x Kaidan Alenko)
Can you do a fic about Kaidan and Chubby botanist having an adorable at home date while he helps Kaidan recover from a battle injury. With a mix of sfw and nsfw
With the Recovery missions underway after the end of the Reaper War, it seemed to be only now that Kaidan got an injury that wasn't life-threatening, but took him out of commission.
And despite there being a scramble of activity to try and reestablish communications between all the known systems, to get the Relays back online, to get the Geth operational once more - at least the Citadel has still got plenty of food.
The hydroponics facility you worked so hard to fill to capacity has been a lifesaver now that all supplies have suddenly become scarce due to the shutdown of interplanetary travel when Shepard destroyed the Reapers.
And thankfully, you've been granted some leave to rest. And with Huerta Memorial and all the other hospitals booked to capacity with inpatient treatment, Kaidan was cleared to spend his convalescence with you.
War had sparked some more-rapid-than-normal decision making, so Kaidan and you had gotten an apartment on the Citadel together, which you had been living in for a while.
But now, there is the prospect of near-endless time together in it, and it's a thrilling idea.
But for now, it's time to just... have a date. Nothing to do but spend time with each other at home.
Kaidan's injury isn't too bad, just incapacitating. With medi-gel in a shortage, triage has meant that sprains and the less-serious broken bones are left to heal on their own, so Kaidan's ankle is in a splint surrounded by a specialized boot, and he has crutches to move around, but he can quite easily stand on one foot for a while.
He still tries to do everything, though.
You've nearly got to tie him to a chair to prevent him from trying to make breakfast on his own, so it can be more of a struggle than adorable, but finally you wrangle him down so you can finish his work.
He flirts with you, getting you to sit on his lap as you both eat breakfast.
And then, of course, he tries to get frisky, but you chuckle and instead put on Fleet and Flotilla for some extranet and chill.
You're definitely going to have to rewatch that episode, because Kaidan's hands are all over you from the opening credits and you're making out with him.
But afterwards, there's not so much else to do except show Kaidan some of the stuff you've been working on
He loves to know what goes on with you, especially if it has nothing to do with the war effort or your job. Particularly because he's trying to discover what he wants to with his life after the Reapers and Spectre service.
You spend a couple of hours just hanging out, talking and chilling together, before Kaidan actually realizes you have board games.
He talks about how at the biotic training facility he lived in as a young teen, someone smuggled in a board game and the biotic kids all kept trying to cheat the dice with their powers.
Kaidan seems to be surprisingly good at rolling dice, even without using his biotics.
Definitely cheating.
The giggling and playful pushing to throw him off his rhythm after his eight consecutive high roll, finally takes his toll, and he actually has to rest.
You offer to make lunch while he sleeps, but he'd rather you be close by, and you agree to just cuddle, promising to have a nice late lunch/early dinner.
And just enjoying a snuggle with your fiance, knowing that the morning won't bring another separation of yet another mission.
#male reader#kaidan alenko x male reader#mass effect x male reader#mass effect headcanons#headcanons#kaidan alenko x reader
84 notes
·
View notes
Note
if you're still doing the wip thing... The last mile? your mass effect au makes me feral
I just tried to answer this and tumblr fucking ATE my response but yeah i'm working on it, it's set half at the beginning and half at the end of the Reaper War with the Hawkins assigned to Project Crucible (part 1) and the London assault (part 2). tonally it's very me3 so im gonna be kinda nervous about posting it, especially as it may require a MCD tag lmaoooooo (not them though. never them)
i have no idea when it's going to be completed, though, so here's a sizeable chunk of the opening, complete with epistolary-ish framing device to match DTA:
EDDIE 1
Fig. 1: Perspectives on Tayseri Ward, an award-winning photograph of the Citadel by acclaimed asari photographer Lidilya Ranis, ca. 2182. Note the near-atmospheric effect of the gas and dust of the Serpent Nebula creating depth of field between the camera’s lens and the Presidium Ring.
*
The Citadel is different than he remembers, but it’s also the same.
He and Steve see it differently. Steve thanks air traffic control in person on their way through security and comments on the Sur’Kesh native trees freshly planted in the commercial district. Eddie marks the C-Sec man tailing them while they eat tacos from a super gimmicky Thessia-Earth fusion restaurant and spots a pickpocket watching them from an alley. It’s a human girl, maybe thirteen. No visible tattoos or marks, but that doesn’t mean much when the kid is wearing a beanie and a scarf and a bulky jacket that’ll hide plenty of take. Eddie angles himself so the cop can’t see his face, makes eye contact with the girl, and shakes his head.
They’re in the Mid-Ward, a part of Zakera that Eddie should know intimately. It feels strange not to recognize the large majority of the storefronts, replaced as so many were in the aftermath of the geth attack in ‘83, but the longer he looks, the clearer it becomes that the bones are the same. Eddie rebuilds the map in his head from the position of keeper ports, maintenance panels, walkways—and vents.
He falls behind Steve just staring at a vent tucked between an Armax vendor and a pop-up shop selling the elcor equivalent of beer. Steve walks another dozen feet, maybe, before he notices Eddie’s not beside him and doubles back.
“You okay?” Steve says, fingertips brushing Eddie’s elbow.
Eddie shakes himself off and nods. “Yeah, sorry,” he says. “Um. I used to sleep in there, I think. I’m pretty sure that’s the one.”
Steve frowns, his eyes moving from storefront to storefront, gliding over the vent like it isn’t there until he remembers. “Oh,” he says. His hand slides down Eddie’s forearm, and he laces their fingers together.
Eddie feels oddly disconnected from his own body. He doesn’t think he would fit in that vent, now, but that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? That’s what a duct rat is. You stop being a duct rat when you can’t fit anymore. Or when the wrong fan powers up and chews you to pieces.
Eddie unfocuses his eyes and doesn’t quite look at the C-Sec man still pretending not to follow them. It’s a turian, hanging around some fifty paces behind them, and he’s obvious in a way that’s kind of aggravating, because turians make up something like half a percent of the Mid-Ward’s population, and the real residents don’t dress business casual. There’s a tension welling up, raw from the vents and the cops and the collision between memory and immediate reality. He bounces on the balls of his feet, indecisive. Then he squeezes Steve’s hand, locks eyes with the turian, and crooks his finger at the guy, beckoning.
There’s a strange hanging moment where the cop looks like he’s gonna try to disappear into the crowd, but then he accepts that he’s been made and approaches. Steve looks surprised to see him; his posture gets a little guarded, so Eddie squeezes his hand again.
“That’s close enough,” Eddie says at a distance of ten or so paces. He’s not in the mood for this, doesn’t feel like playing a game, so he just says: “Why?”
Steve stays quiet, apparently satisfied to let Eddie handle this.
The turian’s mandibles twitch. “I’m,” he says. “I don’t…”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “Why’d they send you?” he says.
“They didn’t say,” says the cop. Eddie’s not sure he believes him, but at least he’s not playing completely dumb.
“Get out of here,” Eddie says. “Tell them you were made. Also tell them the Alliance doesn’t appreciate C-Sec harassing its N7s on shore leave.”
The mandibles twitch again. Turian hearts aren’t quite like human hearts, but the rhythm of this one changes enough to confirm Eddie’s suspicions that the guy at least didn’t know who Steve was. “Right,” he says. Leaving is an awkward thing, but he manages it, walking off in a straight line.
Eddie sighs when he’s gone.
“How long’s he been there?” Steve asks.
“Since security,” Eddie replies. “Fuckin’ amateur hour, sending a turian. Especially since there’s a ton of human cops now.”
Steve hums thoughtfully. “You ready?” he says.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and it’s the truth. He wasn’t sure it would be, when Hop offered to call in a favor, when the message hit his inbox, or even when he stepped out of the Hawkins airlock and onto an Alliance dock this morning. He just kept saying yes and moving forward because he knew he’d regret it if he didn’t.
He keeps holding onto Steve’s hand as they move through and past the crowds toward Oji Way Warehouses, a row of storage units guarded by sectional doors and the occasional krogan hired gun. One such krogan, a scarred old brute with a cracked green frontal plate, approaches to grunt at them about what they’re doing down here, to move along if they don’t have business.
“We do,” says Steve. “We’re looking for somebody.”
“That so, soldier boy?” says the krogan. Eddie ducks his chin to hide a smile, because yeah, even in civvies, Steve sticks out like a sore thumb.
“Munson,” says Steve. “That’s the name.”
The krogan turns his head to get a better look at them out of a single eye. “What d’you want with Wayne?”
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
mass effect fic recs
i decided to start this series of mass effect fic recs. many of my favorite fics are very unknown and those writers deserve to have their amazing fics read.
i’m starting with shrios fics!
arashu’s gift by silly_literature
this story takes place in me2 and it’s my favorite shrios fic. the romance is the type of low key slow burn romance where there’s some hint towards romance at the beginning. it’s evident they’re attracted to each other from the start but it still builds up upon mutual trust and friendship.
the romantic tension between them really kept me binging this fic just waiting for the next gesture of affection between the two.
i was so happy when the smut came i’m not going to lie. it was wonderfully written. realistic, with attention paid to the differences in their anatomy being different species. mordin’s advice was glorious as well.
there’s a sweet amount of well written hurt/comfort too. what i love most about this fic is how well the author decipted the tragic beauty of thane and shepard’s romance having just blossomed when they were facing death on a suicidal mission.
and then there’s those little things that make a fic awesome. shepard explaining thane english words/earth terms. thane cooking. awesome action side missions. crew banter. mordin being hilarious asf. and it’s a binge worthy fic.
enough rambling here’s a summary.
fic summary
“Thane Krios is the best elite assassin in the galaxy. And he has less than a year to live. He decides to perform one last altruistic act by killing an asari mobster and just as he is about to embrace Kalahira's calling, Commander Shepard of the Alliance shows up with a suicide mission for which she needs him.
Jane Shepard has returned from the dead. Her last memory is the Normandy SR-1 shattered in space by a Collector ship's beam. She has awakened on a Cerberus space station. Two years have passed since the attack and her former comrades, the Alliance and the Citadel Council do not take kindly to her supposed resurrection or her association with the Illusive Man's organization. Meanwhile, Collectors abduct human colonists in the Terminus Systems and no one seems to care.
For Thane, death was his ten years of battle sleep driven only by his thirst for vengeance, while for Shepard, the two years unconscious while strangers did and undid with her body without her consent. Together they will find their way back to life and with their comrades venture into the bowels of the galaxy from where no ship has ever returned.”
a second chance by silly_literature
my second favorite shrios fic, also written by silly_literature. it’s a sequel to arashu’s gift and i think the writer did a better job than the me3 writers, who did thane dirty.
this fic actually does thane justice. and there is SO much cool action adventure. lots of drell and kahje content. liara is being a badass shadow broker and wrex made my heart melt once again in this fic. 10/10 i binged this in a little over 24 hours. the worldbuilding and plot in this fic was so beautiful.
fic summary
The galaxy is at war. As Commander Jane Shepard has been announcing for more than two years, the Reapers are a reality and their unstoppable advance has led them to devastate countless systems until they reach Earth. With civilization on the verge of collapse, and in a last act of desperation, the Alliance has decided to annul the sentence that weighed on Commander Shepard after the incident with the batarian colony of Aratoht, and entrust her with the mission of signing alliances with the rest of the races of the galaxy that will allow them to face the Reapers with greater guarantees.
As if the Reaper threat wasn't enough, Cerberus seems to have a special interest in the planet Kahje, the homeworld of the hanar and adopted home of the drell. With the loyal support of her personal squad and the unwavering love of Thane, Shepard must face the challenge of defeating a millenary race, something that no one has been able to achieve in previous cycles. A deployment of forces and resources that will not go unnoticed and will make Shepard's team investigate, without suspecting the consequences that could have for the future of the galaxy.
#fic recs#mass effect fic recs#mass effect fic rec series#shrios fics#shrios#shrios fic#arashu’s gift#a second chance#thane krios#femshep#thanexfemshep
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sleeping Citadel Fanart
Fandom Wiki:
Picrew: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/94097
And original edits: Sonorhc, Reaper, and Nevermore's crests/symbols
#picrew#the sleeping citadel#sonorhc#fanart#lgbt#reaper (sleeping citadel)#nevermore (sleeping citadel)#original art#edit#lgbtq#lgbtqia#lgbtq+#lgbtq community#lgbt pride#queer
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
N7 Month, 2023 - Day 9: Holiday
A soft little scene between Liara and Shepard. Friends being good friends.
++
It was late, and Shepard—unable to sleep—had gone to the CIC to check up on the graveyard shift. On a whim he rode the lift down to the crew deck. It was largely deserted except for one exhausted looking ensign who was reading a data-pad with heavy eyes and guzzling coffee. He thought of exchanging pleasantries, but honestly the ensign hadn’t noticed him and he didn’t want to make the guy pop out of his chair and salute or something.
He noticed, then, that the holo-lock on Liara’s door was still green. She’d been burning the midnight oil every night she’d been aboard, but this was truly late even by her own standards. Shepard found himself ringing the door chime, and a moment later, the door slid open.
“Happy Pasharat, Commander.” Glyph floated just inside the door, ‘dressed’ in his holographic bowtie.
“Shepard,” Liara was slumped into an arm chair next to a stack of data-pads. She was holding what looked like some kind of zither she’d been idly plucking. She yawned and drew herself up, but Shepard held up a hand when she made to rise.
“Surprised to see you up this late, Liara.” Shepard sat down: Liara’s office honestly one of the only places he felt comfortable just sitting for a few minutes.
“It’s the first day of Pasharat,” Liara smiled. “I’m waiting till midnight, Thessia-time, to welcome in the holiday.” She gestured to the low table that sat between them, where there was a candle steadily burning through a spectrum of colors that couldn’t exactly have been said to be a rainbow, but likely looked that way if your eyes had evolved on Thessia.
“Pasharat?” Shepard quirked an eyebrow.
“Mhm,” Liara nodded, yawning again. “It’s the maiden festival on Thessia, the parts of it who follow the Athame doctrine, anyway. Six days of parades, food,” she held up the zither half-heartedly, “And music.”
“I didn’t know you played a…?”
“Trahamial, training young asari how to play it used to be one of the four cardinal studies for a young maiden. I’m afraid I never got the traditional education.” She plucked the trahamial a few times. “Because of my mother, I never celebrated Pasharat when I was younger. Said she had celebrated enough of them in her lifetime, and wasn’t going to bring all of the holiday detritus into our home.”
“That sounds… like she didn’t have a very festive spirit.”
“Oh no, she did,” Liara shook her head, eyelids still heavy. “She’d just lived a long time, she was a new mother at 850 years old, there were so many compromises she made in her life so I could grow up well, but there are certain compromises she wouldn’t make.” She gestured to the candle. “Pasharat was one of them.”
“When did you start celebrating? When you went out on your own?”
Liara laughed, “This is the first time I ever have. I found a trahamial for sale on the Citadel. I couldn’t believe the shops were still putting out holiday decorations with the war so close. Felt like if everyone else could be celebrating…” She sighed. “Pasharat celebrates the younger years of an asari’s life. It’s meant to be a time to rejoice in and reflect on what has shaped you as a person, and all the opportunities life has to bring. But this year…”
“The Reapers.”
“Yes,” she nodded gravely. “…I’m young for my people. This holiday is for me. It should be a time of celebration, but… I may not live to see another Pasharat. None of us might.”
“People need to celebrate, Liara,” Shepard said softly. “I have to believe that as bad as things get, people need to recognize the things that matter.”
“You’re right,” Liara yawned, but didn’t seem too convinced. She looked like she was about to say more when Glyph chimed in.
“It is midnight on Thessia, Dr. T’Soni. Happy Pasharat.”
Liara smiled sadly, and leaned forward to blow out her candle.
“I can finally go to bed. But now I feel like I don’t want to,” She smiled, eased back into her chair.
“Can you play me any songs on that thing?” Shepard pointed to the instrument. Liara laughed.
“No!” The two shared the chuckle. Liara plucked the strings a few times experimentally anyhow. “Thank you, Shepard. For spending my first Pasharat with me.”
“Here’s to many more to come!” He beamed.
“To many more to come,” Liara finally conceded.
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
Honey, I’m Home (But You’re Not) (Mshenko)
Pairing: Kaidan Alenko x Male Shepard (trans-friendly)
Rating: General Audiences
Words: 758
POV: Third
Summary: Soon after the Reaper War, Kaidan returns to the rubble that is his dead boyfriend’s apartment. It is his home now.
Note: Obsessed with this song. Had to do something with it.
Tags: song fic, angst, hurt no comfort, N7 hoodie, responsible alcohol comsumption and this is just sadness but Kaidan is dealing with it like the emotionally mature man he is
The door stuttered open. Kaidan had to push it, when it got stuck halfway. The apartment was in shambles after everything the Citadel went through. Most of it used to still look like it was owned by Anderson. That was a good thing now. A sigh left the major as he walked through the rubble to the kitchen and went to see if there was any beer that survived the Reaper invasion.
When he opened the fridge, broken bottles and beer poured out of it. He sighed again, more frustrated this time. There was only a piece of cheese that looked salvageable. He took it and stepped over the mess to the stairs. The bedroom was full of memories, but also clothes that had escaped the closet. He took a bite of cheese and looked at the mess. “He is not coming back anymore,” a voice in his head sang over and over again, until he finished the cheese and gave in.
Kaidan took a trash bag from the kitchen and went back to start shoving Shepard’s clothes in it. He had removed all of Shepard’s clothes from the closet, except that N7 hoodie that had been through hell and back. Kaidan reached for it, but he could not bring himself to put that one also in the trash bag. “I’ll throw it out later,” he told himself out loud.
It was getting late, so he started cleaning the bedroom. The whole apartment needed a good clean, but for now, he just needed a place to sleep. The sheets were already replaced, but when he got to the pillows, he found himself holding Shepard’s. He stared at it, slowly lifting it to his nose. A quick sniff reintroduced him to the smell of Shepard. Before he realised he was doing it, Kaidan was pressing his face into the soft pillow, a few tears escaping him.
He stayed like that, until he realised he could not sleep like this. Wearing Shepard’s N7 hoodie, he found himself making a trip to the nearest place that was selling booze again. Everything was still mostly rubble on the Citadel, but there was one place that had set up shop already and had something containing alcohol. Kaidan was not picky right now. ‘Just one glass of something strong’, he told himself.
The glass was a little bigger than he initially planned, but it helped him keep the tears in as he looked at the pictures of Shepard and him on his omni-tool. They did not have that many. His glass was not even finished, when he ran out of pictures to look at. He counted them. 42 pictures of them as a couple existed. There was never going to be more than that. There was never going to be more pictures of him and Shepard, never more pictures of Shepard.
The tears ended up coming anyway and the alcohol didn’t lull him to sleep. Instead of looking for sleep at the bottom of another glass of whatever he just drank, Kaidan went out for a walk. He kept walking and walking, holding his head down to hide his face. When he finally lifted his head, he found himself at Shepard’s memorial. It was a wall full of pictures of him, mostly Alliance propaganda posters that people had salvaged for this temporary memorial.
Kaidan stayed there, watching people come by and pay their respects. He heard a mother talk about Shepard to her child. He did not correct the inaccuracies. The flowers on the floor were all damaged or wilted, but he knew it was the best that was available at the moment. Shepard’s eyes on one of the posters seemed to look right into his soul and he wanted to say something, but there were no words left. He had cried when he received the news. He had said his bit at the funeral. He had yelled in therapy, before returning to the apartment they had called home for only a few weeks. Every word he had for the loss of his love had already been cried, screamed, sobbed or whispered. There was nothing left to say and there was nothing left to stay for.
His feet carried him back to the apartment. When he got back, nothing had changed. It was still a mess. It still had no beer in the fridge. It still had no Shepard waiting for him. One last sigh for that night. A few words, so he could close his eyes and pretend a little. “Honey, I’m home.”
#Kaidan Alenko#Mass Effect#mshenko#drabble#kaidan alenko x shepard#male shepard#mshep#shenko#this is what happens when I am writing at like 3am#mass effect trilogy
69 notes
·
View notes
Text
"You're Not Alone"
Heres my Holiday Harbinger gift for @metallinemenace I hope you enjoy it. It was fun writing about these more minor characters from the game :)
.
The familiar creak of the metal greeted him as he opened the locker.
He let out a hushed groan as he felt his body adjusting to the weight of his C-sec emblazoned armour. The dull pain of the old wound near his shoulder made itself felt as usual, but he did his best to ignore it, to forget it as he tried to do with all things that reminded him of the war. A war that, even though its guns had been silent for 3 decades, still raged within him.
He donned his gear in the silence of the empty locker room, the others were rarely on duty at this early hour.
Arriving at his outpost in the Augtaus district in the Wards, he placed his hand in the scanner and closed his eyes as the rays of light of the VI scanner fell on him.
"Welcome, officer Quinctilius Varus" the automated voice said as the doors hissed open.
Sitting in his chair, he began eyeing the security monitors as he connected his omnitool to the external extranet so that he could watch the newest chapter of the Pax Turiana, the famous series about historical battles in turian history that was made to directly compete with the version being broadcasted by the Alliance news network. Making sure everything was in order, he leaned back into the chair, letting the background noise soothe him into sleep.
"Connection lost"
The sound of the synthetized voice made him snap awake. His omnitool came alive, flashing in red the words the VI just said. He tried to connect to other channels, but the whole Palaven network had suddenly become unreachable.
Then, a message appeared.
"Citizens of the Turian Hierarchy! This is an emergency broadcast from the office of Primarch Valerian. Be ready to receive the message!"
He knew what this meant, and he remembered the last time this happened, almost 34 years ago to the day.
The pain in his old wound flared up as he felt a shiver going up and down his spine, his hands denting the metal of the chair as he tightly gripped them, one thought, one single word crossing his mind.
"War"
.
Turamus, Erunerla system
The deafening horns were getting closer.
The crowds at the spaceport screamed as the cacophony of war enveloped them. The explosions, the gunfire, the fighter jets roaring overhead, the grotesque shrieking of the monstrosities the Reapers had unleashed.
And in front of the crowds, 3 Alliance ships were fueling and getting ready to depart.
The last ships that would leave the planet.
"There is no more room!" The soldier shouted into the man's face.
"Then just take our daughter. Please!" The woman beside him screamed.
The soldier remained silent for a moment seemingly lost in thought, before nodding and moving aside to let the young girl inside.
"Mom, dad, what's happening?"
"Get on the shuttle, love. We'll be on the one that leaves right after"
"But…"
"It'll be alright. We promise. We will arrive soon. Wait for us on the Citadel"
The girl's screams were silenced as the soldier dragged her inside and closed the door.
The ship trembled and fired into outer space, leaving the dying world and its people behind.
.
Handling refugees was not what he had been trained for. Nonstop waves of people coming from all corners of the galaxy looking for safety and comfort, and he was part of the undermanned post making sure they were all registered and processed.
"Move on, Quintus. My turn" Lysaia, one of his few friends in the force said as she tapped his shoulder.
"Took your time"
"Yes, yes. 2 minutes late. The horror of it. The tragedy" the asari said as she took his place at the desk "Why don't you go get some sleep? Come back in a few hours. You could use the rest"
Quintus flashed her a half smile as he stood. He thought about getting some rest, but seeing the masses of people in the docks made him decide to go patrol, to make sure everything was in order.
Varus first saw the girl sitting alone near one of the checkpoints. She was one of the few humans on this portion of the docks.
Her eyes drifted back and forth from the entrance to the docks to her omnitool. It was as if she was waiting for someone to come from one of the many ships outside.
The turian paid her no further attention as he kept doing his round in the rest of the docks.
He returned a few hours later. The lights had already been dimmed to help the refugees get some sleep.
And the girl was still there. She was yawning, eyes barely open, but she still kept looking at the entrance.
Varus had gotten familiar with those desperate looks by now.
The look of waiting for someone that would not show up.
He took a deep breath, and walked towards her.
"Hello there"
The girl looked towards him quickly, clearly startled as her concentration had been broken.
"Uhm, hello, Officer"
"Are you well? You seem concerned" Varus reprimanded himself in his mind after saying that. Concern was a feeling that had become all too common in the last few days.
"I'm alright. I'm just waiting for my parents"
"Your parents? When do you think they will get here?'
"They told me they would take the shuttle after mine. I thought they'd arrive today, but no luck. Maybe they'll get here tomorrow"
Varus lowered his sight towards the floor for a moment. He didn't need to know more of the girl's story for his mind to come to the realisation about what had most likely happened to her parents.
"I'm sure they'll be here in a few days. Where did you come from?"
"Turamus, on the Erunerla system. Its a pretty big place"
Quintus frowned. The Erunerla system had gone dark in the first few days of the Reaper attack, and the Alliance had lost several ships in a foiled evacuation effort. Still, he would keep that information to himself.
"I understand. Were you given a place to stay?"
"Yes, I'm with a group of humans in the containers in section 2C. Most of them are from Earth. I've never been"
"I went once. Part of a training mission with the Alliance"
"How was it? Earth, I mean"
"We were in a region called Atacama. It was a massive desert. It's surprising how many deserts there are. The planet looks almost entirely made of water when seen from space"
"I've never seen a desert; Eramus is a garden world, lots of plants and water there."
"Those are usually the ones the Alliance goes for. It's easier for development. By the way, do you have a sleeping bag, water, food, or a change of clothes?"
The girl nodded enthusiastically "I am ready and stocked. I prepared all these things with my mom and dad. There's also a lot of dehydrated food where I'm staying. Not too tasty, but it's energising"
A ping from his omnitool caught Varus' attention. It wasn’t his shift yet, but his colleagues needed assistance.
“Look, I have to go, but if you need anything, I’ll be around, ok? Come find me if you need anything"
"Sure thing" the girl answered with a smile. Quintus smiled back and disappeared amidst the wave of crowds that filled the docks.
.
The artificial daylight cycle was just starting as Varus reached his post. A familiar face greeted him with a smile as he approached.
"Good day"
"Good day, officer" the girl answered "You're here early"
"It's a habit that's ingrained into us in the military. It stays with you all your life"
"Oh. I understand"
"Waking up early gives you more time to do things. You can have a more productive day" Varus answered as he started browsing the logs from the checkpoint's Avina server. "Also, I don't think you told me your name"
"Alana Ríos. Nice to formally meet you, officer Varus"
The turian smiled back as he gave her a slight nod.
"How are things near where you're staying? Sleeping well?"
"Not really. Too many people, too much noise. Plus, I need to be awake to check if my parents have arrived, or to see if they've tried to contact me through the extranet"
"Ah, I see" Varus replied "What are your parents called?"
"Jorge and Lucy Ríos"
"How about this? I'll keep alert in case your parents arrive or I hear from them, and you get some proper sleep. Getting enough sleep is important"
"You promise to tell me as soon as you hear something?"
"I promise"
The girl's face seemed to glow as a smile showed up on her face.
"Thank you, officer"
"Please, call me Quintus. And you're welcome"
"Alright. But only if you call me Alana"
"I can do that"
.
Quintus walked up to the containers which had been turned into makeshift rooms by the refugees. The waves of people had only grown as the Reapers continued their relentless advance across the galaxy, and now these containers were housing up to four people each.
"Alana!" Quintus shouted to make himself heard over all the noise in the area "It's me, Quintus"
Shortly after, he saw her jumping down from the container and walk towards him. The expression on her face made his stomach sink.
"Hello, Quintus"
"Alana, are you alright? Are you feeling sick? Has someone been bothering you?"
"No, it's fine. Everything is fine. It's just… It's been 2 months, and…"
The girl started sobbing. Quintus stretched out his arm and placed it on her shoulder.
"Alana…"
"If you're going to say what I think you are, then just don't"
He sighed "I have to. About your parents…"
"I already know they're not coming. I’m not stupid. I know that…"
Quintus placed his hand on his shoulder “Listen to me. Loss is never easy. You'll feel as if the world is emptier, as if there's no reason to keep going. Trust me, I know loss"
“I don't”
“But you have to resist. It's what your parents would have wanted. Honour your parents by not giving up. You are safe, you have food, water, shelter. They would be happy knowing that you are safe.”
The girl sobbed. Quintus stretched out his other hand, and covered her with his.
"Your parents made sure you got this chance. You can honour them by living the best life you possibly can. It's what they would have wanted"
The girl just cried in silence.
"Here" Quintus said as he reached for the back of his armour, and pulled out a medium sized metallic square.
"What is it?" Alana asked, staring at the square as she wiped the tears from her face.
"This is a blank VI. A virtual intelligence like the ones you probably had at school or at your home back on Enura"
Tapping one of the buttons in the square, two small human figures without features were projected in a white and blue light.
"If you connect your omnitool to the VI, you can ask it to find pictures and recordings of your parents, and you could set up the VI based on their personalities. Its a bit old. I had it at home gathering dust. But I thought that you would like it too… you know, with your parents and everything"
Alana smiled, her face beaming with a joy that seemed to have replaced the sadness, even if for just a moment "Thank you so much, Quinths. I'll go set it up right away"
"You're welcome. I have to return to the checkpoint now, but I will be back later. Let me know if you could get it working.
"Will do" Alana replied as she climbed back up towards her container.
Quintus smiled before turning and walking amongst the crowds to reach his post.
.
”Everything will be alright, Alana. We love you”
Alana smiled as she turned off the VI. Things had gotten slightly better at the camp over the last few weeks. More… manageable.
A message appeared in her omnitool.*"I hear Commander Shepard and some crewmembers of the Normandy shall be arriving today to talk to the refugees, Alana. Would you like to go see them?"*
Alana giggled as she made her way down the container and started walking towards the checkpoint. Today was going to be a good day.
25 notes
·
View notes
Text
What's it like being with the most amazing woman in the universe?
Garrus had never in his life even dreamed he would get to be the person who can answer that question.
And yet here he is, with her by his side for some inexplicable reason he still doesn't understand. It's really a wonder. He's not an immortal Spectre revered by the galaxy for his winning the war against the Reapers. He's not the symbol of victory who'd rallied the entire galaxy to fight. When compared to her, he's painfully insignificant. Hell, he can't even compare. She's everything — and it's not just something he thinks because he loves her. It's a fact of life. She's worth everything, she deserves everything.
And yet she chose him. Of everyone out there, she chose to be with him. And, in a way, doesn't that make perfect sense? He's stood by her through everything she's been through and they've grown closer than Garrus had ever been with anyone. Never before had he felt so connected to another person. They are best friends, they are lovers, they are soulmates.
Because as incredible as it is to be with her, he's had time to accept it as true. She loves him. She wants to be with him. It will likely never cease to amaze him, but he no longer disbelieves it.
So what's it like being with the most wonderful woman in the universe?
It's a blessing. He wakes up every day to see her beside him and every day it still feels unbelievable. This is Shepard, his mentor, his CO, his role model, the hero of the Skyllian Blitz and the Citadel, the saviour of the galaxy, and his best friend, who's lying in bed with him. He's under no illusion about her status. He knows that there are thousands of others who would give anything for one night with her. And yet every single one of those nights is spent with him. She wants nobody else, only him. How can he even begin to explain how amazing that feels?
He always wakes up first. He always watches her sleep, always enamoured by her when she's at her most vulnerable. She's perfect. And he thinks that he's the luckiest damn turian in the galaxy, that he gets to see her like this almost every morning.
She wakes up and greets him with one of those amazingly soft human kisses that make him completely melt inside.
"I love you."
It's not always the first thing he says to her in the morning, but it's always one of the first. He can't even begin to put his feelings into words, but that's a start.
So what's it like being with the most incredible woman in the universe?
It's getting to see her in the tiniest, most mundane moments, completely comfortable around him as if he's a permanent fixture in her life. He supposes that's exactly what he is. It's a nice thought.
She moves around him, toothbrush in her mouth, as he buffs his plates in the morning, each of them doing their morning ablutions separately but existing in the same space, by each other's side.
He makes the coffee while she walks around the kitchen, making breakfast, humming something to herself or holding a half-awake conversation with him.
She sits between his legs when he reads the news, scrolling through something on her own datapad or omnitool. They're forever circling around each other, even if they're doing different things.
So what's it like being with the most important woman in the universe?
It's a thousand casual touches betraying the love they have for each other, a plethora of tiny brushes of their arms as they pass or taps on the shoulder, or just brushing her hair off her face.
It's a million of seemingly insignificant little looks cast to each other both at home and in the company of other people. They can understand each other without words if they need to. And if they don't need to, the silent glances still betray an amount of affection that words can't always express.
It's a hundred of soft, hushed I love yous whispered to her every day, every night, whenever he can get it in. He knows that she knows it, but it doesn't stop him from reminding her every time he gets an occasion to. He loves her. He always will. It's a reminder, it's a declaration, it's a promise. He will always be there for her. She will always have his heart, his body and his soul. All he has belongs to her. No words can ever wrap themselves around that feeling, so he settles for I love you. It's not enough, but it will have to do.
"I love you."
So what's it like being with the most perfect woman in the universe?
Well. More than anything, it's getting to hear her say it back to him.
#shakarian#mass effect fanfiction#fanfiction#fanfic#is this how people post fanfic on tumblr?#i've never posted fic on tumblr before#but it just occurred to me that some people have just. not seen this one.#so i'm rectifying that#wild spams with their fanfics again
36 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
mfred
mfred loves to read
leaxlyss
leaxlyss
thomasmusic
Thomäs
aintnothingbutaheartache
wanna lez out?
moijhoan
J.