(Untitled)

[femshep]

CHARACTERS: femshep and of_kalahira (but if any of the other squadmates wanna join, just let me know and you're totally good.)
DATE: 11/16 (Day 19, before the mission text and directly after this.)
RATING: idek. Shepard's pissed.
SUMMARY: Shepard had no other choice but to agree to babysit the galaxy's almost-destroyer. Now she feels like breaking anything that

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[of_kalahira]

Thane frowned in concentration, reviewing his motivations despite the fact that he did so at least twice daily during his own meditation. He wanted her not to make a mistake. He wanted her not to succumb to emotion when her squad needed her, more than ever. Though Thane had his own consciously muted flashes of sympathy and empathy, he was, above all, a pragmatic and solitary person. He worked alone. It had been hard enough to learn to accept the word of another, and trust was not something he would surrender easily.

Two answers, and he was silent for a long moment while he weighed them. What did he want from her? The effective leader he'd met on Ilios, of course, the person he'd accompanied through the Omega-4 relay. But every being had their own limitations, and Thane was forced to admit his ignorance of human psychology. Did he want her to bury her anger deeper, to push it aside and make the calculating and clinical decisions he might expect of a well-programmed AI? Did he want her to permit herself to be furious, to let it run through her until she'd done whatever she had to do in order to focus clearly?

It was not his place.

"A leader," he said simply. "What is it you want from your team?"

[femshep]

He wanted her not to make a mistake. Every single person in this galaxy wanted her not to make a mistake, not a single goddamn mistake. So she hadn't. Nothing that would matter much to them, anyway. Only to her. The rest went off without a hitch, every single time, and still he could sit here and think he was standing between here and some big fucking mistake?

He wanted a leader.

"I am a leader," she shot back, skipping right over his question. It was a fair question, sure, but it involved stopping and thinking and Shepard was not fond of either of those right now. "I made the only call that made sense." Her voice wasn't as harsh this time. It wasn't by any means warm, but it was at least level. "But if you're going to stand here and tell me I'm supposed to like it, after everything that bastard did, everyone he-" Her jaw closed on her bottom lip, not from emotion but from refusal. She wasn't going to yell at Thane. He didn't deserve it.

When she spoke again, her voice was hushed. "You killed the man who killed your wife." She shook her head. "Never had a husband and I don't know if I ever will, so I guess I can't relate to that. But I've died for this galaxy and I'd do it again, and now I have to babysit the piece of shit who tried to kill it."

[of_kalahira]

Often, it was hard to identify Thane's flinching: a slight narrowing of double eyelids, a few millimeters of recoil. He was surprised that Shepard would bring that up, and for a moment, he remained silent. No change in affect, nothing easy to notice. Perhaps, the fingers of one hand tightened more around the others. Out of sight. He looked away.

"I'm not questioning your judgment," he said, a little more coolly than he meant to. For his race, it was nearly impossible to be reminded of an event and not relive every memory associated with it. This was in no way about him, though, and Thane's voice remained calm. "I'm sure you made the right decision. But he's trying to manipulate you, by appealing to your emotions. We both know that one doesn't have to regret something to feel guilt."

After moments of forced stillness Thane eventually gave into his impulses and began pacing slowly with calm, long breaths, nothing more than a desert creature's search for dryness in soggy island air.

"I wasn't there, Shepard. Nor were..." Hesitation. Almost in habit, Thane nodded briefly in acknowledgment of her conflict. He tried to force away the thought: there was a difference between being tasked with saving something and being the cause of its demise. It was not a fair comparison, but he wasn't here to compare histories. He let his fingers press deeper into his hands, tucked behind the small of his back, and he focused on the present with an almost unnatural calm. "I...I understand the desire for revenge, but Saren is trying to cloud your judgment with anger. His personal attacks are the only way he thinks he can affect you."

[femshep]

Any other time, she'd have definitely felt at least a little remorse for touching on such sensitive topics. Even now she didn't bring it up lightly, as shown by the way her voice dropped low so the conversation wouldn't be overheard. But she wasn't going to apologize. He needed to understand, if he was going to come after her like this. If he was going to tell her to be a leader--

Her frustration was stilled for a second by his tone. So she was managing to wound even Thane with her causticity. Something about that was amusing, in the dark and not-actually-funny-at-all sort of way. Something about the way she was shooting him down, and how perfectly that correlated with how she'd shot Saren down too, even though from what he remembered she'd turned it all around. She'd been a real goddamn hero.

And even as she was thinking this, Thane was talking about manipulation and appealing to her emotions and it made so much sense. Too much sense. She knew what Saren was doing, had known it from the start. She just... Ugh, she was so pissed that it almost didn't matter if Saren was appealing to her emotions, because all that appeal was doing was dragging him one step closer to an early grave. Or a hundred of them, if what's been said about death here was true.

But it would've been a death he decided on, by manipulating her to start with. Which meant the power in all of that would still fall on Saren.

And all of a sudden, with a slow exhale not unlike his own, she's calm too. Outwardly, anyway. Thane's good at reading the emotion behind the expression, so he might not have be fooled, but it was a damn good attempt.

"I'm not being manipulated." There was that collected cool the galaxy had come to expect from Shepard. It was as if she had a point to prove, whether to Thane or to herself. "Not by him, not by anyone else."

[of_kalahira]

Thane didn't fall for her change of voice, and a subtle narrowing of his eyes showed it. However, he also wouldn't patronize her with any further attempt to understand something she'd rather keep to herself, especially so soon before a mission. Although a near-obsessive attention to detail was one of Thane's talents, interpersonal communication was not.

There were a few options, from gagging Saren to cutting his vocal cords (not that Thane knew where a Turian's vocal cords were, but really, what was the worst that could happen?) He could think of twelve ways to soundlessly kill the man in less than twenty seconds. Considering that Saren seemed to have direct access to the part of Shepard that felt guilty for what had happened years before, Thane wanted him as silent as possible. Unfortunately, he doubted Shepard would see to the logic. She'd probably see it as some kind of admission of weakness.

"I see," Thane finally said. The coolness hadn't left his tone, and though something in his voice had pulled away, it was hard to tell if the shift owed more to formality or the recent discomfort of memory. "I meant no offense."

[femshep]

Just between you and me, if Thane wanted to cut Saren's throat, the only objection he'd hear from Shepard is that she didn't get to it first. But if he did it, she didn't want it to be because she couldn't handle having him around. Because she could, and she would. She'd have to, six hours per twenty-four. There was no other way.

Have I ever told you how much Shepard hates the phrase 'there's no other way'? It never ends well. Never.

Meanwhile, Shepard was only left to wonder what was going through his mind in that silence. In a way, it was almost a relief; it let her think about something besides Saren, which was more than she'd had since that son of a bitch had arrived. Aaaand there she was, thinking about Saren again.

Besides a momentary draw of her brow, she made no real show of it, though. She wasn't going to cave so easily. She wanted Thane to be wrong about this almost as much as she wanted Saren gone in the first place.

And then came the apology. Or what would've been an apology in a slightly different tone, though the chill had Shepard wondering if it were almost scolding. Like, 'why are you getting so worked up, I didn't even mean to offend you'. Either way, it was a perfect opportunity to end the tension here and now.

"I know you didn't." And that was as close to a conceding voice as he'd heard in this entire conversation. "You're right. You need a leader. As long as I'm going around breaking my hand on a concrete wall, you don't have that." It was killing her to say this, because she was still furious about Saren and peeved about having her suitability questioned even remotely, but sometimes this is what leadership takes: The ability to acquiesce when one of your men makes a valid point. "It won't happen again. You can count on that."

In theory, that was a good thing. But Thane was good with subtlety, and deep down at the root of that tone was a door closing. In order to handle this with Saren, it couldn't be Commander first, friend second. It had to be Commander first, Commander second, and third too if that came up. Congratulations, Mister Krios. You've taught her an incredibly valuable lesson.

[of_kalahira]

It wasn't the lesson he'd meant for her to take away, and Thane spent an inordinately long amount of time choosing words before deciding not to use any of them. One one hand, she'd calmed down and begun to see reason, but on the other, he was painfully familiar with that sense of a closing door, the sense of isolation and finality. It wasn't something he'd wish on anyone, certainly not someone he'd come to consider a friend. Unfortunately, this was nether the time nor place to address it, so Thane filed it away for future reference. The matter could be discussed after the evening's mission.