Grave to cradle, Arc 3 of "Gone with the Sun"

- follows Arc 2, "Queen's Gambit" (under s/11382885/1/)

Chapter 19 Briefing for a descent

Dreamtime

That night pain relented, and the usual dream did not come. Instead, he found himself back on the Citadel, after Udina's coup, vexed, hurting, and frankly pissed with himself for letting that bastard with the tricked-out sword go. This was not necessarily an improvement. Better when he didn't know he was dreaming. He had to relive too many close calls, especially that quasi-invisible phantom he'd detected at the last second, and that damned Atlas. Why had there been no expression on the Phantom's face when she died?

Bailey had said to see a dying Thane. Hands were shaking, but before he could recover on the Normandy, he had to check on Thane. Actually what he wanted to do was hit someone responsible, wring the impurities from life. Udina didn't count, not least because he wasn't quite certain Udina was in his right mind. Besides, if he hadn't popped him, Ashley surely would have, it was heading that way after she worked it out.

Down again to a choice between stopping Udina and stopping Kai Leng. No choice at all really, if he was going to live with himself afterwards. If afterwards existed.

At least Thane had left Kolyat to carry on. Unexpectedly there welled up a profound longing for… something. Peace? Comfort, shelter?

Something else.

Putting Leng down would have been ideal, but that catharsis had been denied him. Even there he hadn't done his job right. What they really needed was Udina alive. Such a defection was incomprehensible. He might have been indoctrinated, but where could such indoctrination have come from? Udina hadn't spent significant time near any kind of Reaper artifact.

Shepard skated around Udina's betrayal, viewing it from every angle. It seemed less like indoctrination and more an act of desperation by a man who thought that he, and only he, knew how to proceed in the face of the threat. That struck too close to home. Did this have to be yet another catalog of failures to keep the peace? Thane had been doing for psychopaths like Leng, error-free, since before Shepard was born.

That's disturbing. It should be satisfying, but: Leng reminded the Illusive Man of me. He, Shepard, was maximum boss. Leng did for Thane, and Shepard did for Leng. Yet, in truth, despite his best efforts, in the end Shepard brought not peace but another sword.

Live by the sword, die by electro-optical spike. Shepard supposed he was lucky. He'd managed to kill himself, frustrating the pattern. If this was hell, suicide might be why he was in it. Even if the point was not to die but to save his world. Maybe everyone had to spend a season in hell? Stuff that for a game of soldiers. Better when he was sure he was dreaming.

In that way dreams have, Shepard sègued into the moment where he closed Thane's eyes. Another friend gone. And again, he hadn't been able to properly say goodbye.

Thane, he recalled, had managed to say goodbye to him.

Ka mate

Kolyat's reading. It was indistinct, like hearing with cotton wool. Pumped full of medication? Is that why I can't wake up? Dream, something in Shepard reflected, if you're dreaming at least you can't be dead. But this dream didn't follow the script. As a night mist froze all around them, Thane slipped off the gurney, stood before him.

"Commander. Do not trouble yourself with Leng. Had you not ministered to him, the Illusive Man would have. That one turns on all his servants, in the end."

"That's all very well Thane," (The wall of mist behind Thane began to glow.)
"– but I get the impression the way of Leng's going will be a problem down the line for me." (There was day behind Thane. A boat, a river, down to a sunlit sea. He could see through the boat, and the female Drell, but not the river.)

"No. You're not looking at this from the right side of time's wall. You will solve his problem. You have solved his problem. This cycle will end and you have ended it."

"And it ended me. Again. Or am I sleeping? Last time there was nothing like this."

"My time came, Shepard. You still have your people, believing you watch over them. They've had a bad time, want you back, would share your fate if they could, if they knew where you are. Their world still tugs at their Shepard. Yours is a reset, a rest, a form of sleep… one with no dreams is coming. We will watch for Miranda, close to the evil that took Leng. Ashley too, after she walks your path. A girl who thinks she failed you. Even Liara."

"Reset? Rest? Death?" The world was pixelating, losing definition.

"You still have things to do. Look to them. Look to your friends, all of them."

"Not my enemies?"

"Leng is no longer your concern, or mine." Thane turned slowly. Left for the boat, holding the hand of the other. Better say it while I still can:

"Goodbye Thane." Thane turned, waved; then he, the boat, the river all disappeared within a granular mist.

The Abyss

Shepard turned, but the hospital door wasn't there, he was in the docks. Orbit nightside. Strange. You're losing it even in your dreams, old man. What's left here?

The walls were shattered, the roof mostly gone, you could see the stars. Yet there were people walking around the debris, or through it. Couldn't spare the energy to ponder the anomaly. His head was still stuffed with cotton wool dream stuff. He stopped, recalling he was to meet someone else. Who is here?

Then the sundering dark took the sky, the stars, the planet, the docks, and himself.

– Next chapter will be #20, "Run silent, run deep…" –

Friday, July 17, 2015