#jaal x female ryder | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pathofcomets · 3 years

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i learned my lesson

fandom: mass effect andromeda

pairing: jaal ama darav / female ryder

summary: “Do you remember? All these trials and errors?” she asks him, because she knows he sees what she does, he feels it too. “Or am I actually insane?” OR the time loop AU that no one has asked for, but that I deliver nonetheless. (AO3 alternative link)

The Archon’s interference: with SAM’s node, with her own brain – is enough to send Sara’s entire body into override. Now that the AI is entirely connected to her brother, it’s embarrassing how easy she dies. One moment she’s standing, hoping to interact with a console for the last time, hoping it’ll take down the enemy for good, and the next she is dropping to the floor, her legs giving under her, darkness enveloping her vision. She can hear people screaming her name, but the sound grows fainter and fainter, until there’s nothing but silence and darkness all around.

Ah, Sara Ryder thinks. Finally.

It’s familiar, the same embrace as that of the cryo-pad. They only call it that because being clinically dead does not sound appealing enough to further space travel. But that’s what they were, for six hundred years, and that’s why she finds so welcoming the return of death.

She has one regret though. And it is his voice that she hears last.

***

When the Scourge hits humanity’s ark, 600 years away from home, Sara Ryder’s pod malfunctions, sending her into a coma that she never wakes up from. She never gets to see the promised land she embarked onto this journey for.

***

Habitat-7, their promised land, is nothing as Jien Garson has made it seem, in her vision boards, in her speeches. It is nothing as her father has hoped either, in his dreams and fights for the future. When they get blown over that cliff, she is far enough that her father does not notice her suit’s malfunction. A Ryder dies on that planet, but it is not Alec.

When she wakes again, from that deep slumber in space, she can still feel the phantom burn of her lungs, the tears stinging in her eyes. No matter how fast she runs though, no matter how many times she drags her dad with her, no matter how many times she makes him promise not to die any time soon, Alec Ryder will continue to sacrifice himself on that planet. It will always require a sacrifice of some sorts from them: sometimes they both die, the help too far away, a cut in her suit, shattered glass on both of their helmets. Sometimes, it is Cora that they lose, Liam even: something that her father will not be able to forgive, making him withdraw more and more into himself until his secrets swallow him whole, until missions that she once fulfilled with a whole team will be attempted by himself. She’ll lose him, time and time again: on the asari ark, on Kadara, during negotiations with the angara. She’ll die, because she won’t have months of training backing up her new title, or his decisions will be so impactful that none of her words will be believed, none of her attempts at fixing it will succeed. They won’t have Drack on their team, neither Peebee: old, sullen men instead, mostly human soldiers. They will fight in too many battles, not enough recovery time.

She’ll die: in the midst of a battle, once poisoned by their political enemies, once killed by Spender. When at last, everything goes as it did that first time, she’s almost relieved to lose her dad.

***

Cora challenges her to a duel. And because Cora’s the martial-trained biotic, Cora wins. Sara ends up in hospital, and eventually dead. Cora forcefully transfers SAM, rendering Alec’s daughter mentally ill, and turning the AI rogue. The next time, Sara apologizes before her crewmate gets a hold of her, and tries to remember the days when this other woman grew into her friend.

It’s getting harder, to recall that first trial in this galaxy, the time when she almost got it right, even when so many things did go wrong. She died so many times in-between, tried so many other variants of the story, but the only one that pushes her forward, is the one that she remembers. There must be, at some point, the fork in her path that made all the difference, that got her stuck in this loop.

She spends an evening writing down every detail that she remembers, in an old style notebook. She hides it in-between her father’s books on the Tempest. Then, thinking it over, she hands an electronic copy to SAM as well.

“Do you remember? All these trials and errors?” she asks him, because she knows he sees what she does, he feels it too. “Or am I actually insane?”

“I remember only the times when we were connected, Sara,” SAM’s voice is almost kind.

She sobs, covering her mouth with her palm, trying to stifle it down. She thought she was actually crazy, now to know that this is a shared experience. It must also mean that this is how things should be, her the unlucky inheritor of this galaxy’s only AI. They devise plans, following the choices that are good, that move time forward, knowing that it’ll wait next time she will inevitably die and awake again.

She dies when the kett ships chase them, the next time.

***

When she disembarks the Tempest, on Aya, her most favourite planet in the Andromeda galaxy, she is shot on spot. That’s when, fresh off her cryo-sleep, the smell of the coffee offered to her makes her throw up, forcing her to give up her favourite beverage for good. Out of all the times she could die, this was the one she did not see coming.

She manages to make it several steps on Aya. The next time she goes, it’s because Jaal’s been ordered by the Resistance leader to take out the crashing alien. She dies with his name on her lips, the recognition stark and fresh, and her emotions too overwhelming. She dies three more times before she is allowed to see him again, which feels like a punishment for how eager she’s been to meet him again, hear his voice.

“Jaal,” she whispers, his name like a prayer, her eyes blazing with love that the angara cannot comprehend.

“How do you know my name?” he asks, suspicious and unimpressed by the human.

She shrugs. Her hands are tied together at her front, a precaution that is new.

“Paaran Shie mentioned you by name as one of the Resistance’s brightest fighters.”

“You’re lying,” he says, embarrassed and unbelieving.

In reality, she did not. But Sara, a Sara from so long before, had had the governor say it to her, once, as she was giving her blessing to their relationship. She cannot tell him any of that, even as SAM asks her, immediately, Why not?

Because this is not her Jaal. This is a simple angaran fighter who has to deal with a nuisance that crashed, burning and strange, upon his world. She is a suspicious enemy, and it took them a year to grow into something more that first time. She is not sure she has this much time here.

And she is correct. She freezes to death on Veold, after a kett grazes her costume. It’s Jaal’s hands, covering the ripped material, begging her to come back to him, that does not make any sense.

***

She dies, in the middle of that kett facility, trying to save the Moshae. Jaal does not accept her comfort, because she’s been focusing so much on finding the right answers to a question she doesn’t even know, that she didn’t take the time to get to know him. She apologizes to him, in that faint moment before blacking out, and his tone is sharp when he simply says don’t.

One time, Sloane Kelly gets her. The other, Morda. After Knight’s successful attempt at powering SAM off, Sara wakes up to an AI that does not remember any of the time loops they experienced before.

Maybe what she needs to do is to… simply live her life. Maybe, since she is destined to die at the end of that battle, she is given all these re-dos just so that she can live an entire life in the span of a year. So she spends hours with Cora in the bio lab, her hands in dirt. She learns how Kallo takes his coffee, and surprises him often with a cup. She learns how to knit, a present for Kesh’s future babies. She tries to ignore the silence inside her head, the lack of support from the one person who is supposed to have known everything. She plays so much poker with Peebee and Gil that she starts winning without having to cheat. She tells Evfra an incredible tale of death and rebirth, having happened tens of times before, and the angara simply hears her out, eyes focused and bright, not daring to interrupt her, lost in memories as she is. She visits Jaal, every single day, talking literature and arts and history, and family and love. She talks to Scott, through that connection, for a long time.

She flirts. This person is not her Jaal; she moves faster, bolder and he replies in kind. They’re kissing in the tech lab, her back pressed to the wall, before they even reach Kadara. The night before the salarian ark mission, she tells him everything. How many times she dies, how many time she came back: how she think the next critical moment will be tomorrow, so she has nothing to lose if she allows the truth out now.

“Am I crazy?” she asks.

She has no one else to back up her memories now.

“In how many other versions have you loved me?” Jaal asks, his heart so open, his heart too much, always.

Sara closes her eyes, hurt and pained, needing him but knowing it’s not this him that she wants.

“All,” she says and he knows it’s the truth. “Had you love me back? One.”

She doesn’t say that it’s the first one, because whatever happens now, it won’t really matter, because it’s a Jaal that knows a version of herself that is uglier, wearier, not bright enough. And angara love bright things, and just half pieces of her soul will never do.

SAM doesn’t resurrect her in time, the next day.

***

“Sara,” Jaal says, his hand around her elbow, and it’s the first word he’s said to her, and it is her name and she drops, right then and there, guns pointed at her back, to the ground, sobbing and shrieking, gasping for air.

“Why do you know who I am?”

“Because you know who I am too.”

“Jaal.”

“I’ve waited 46 lives to meet you again.”

“Me too.”

He falls next to her, his forehead glued to hers, tears streaking down his cheek, silently. She can vaguely feel his electric field, a tickling sensation around her arm, and she imagines that whatever his currents translate to, it’s the only thing that’s keeping his people from killing them on the spot.

“How will you explain this?” she asks, a whisper just for him.

“Angara believe in past lives. How will you explain this?” he asks back, the tiniest hint of humour and stars, she has missed him so much.

“Xenophilia?”

Jaal bursts out into laughter, the throaty, real, full sound. Her hands are already patting at him, making sure he is truly actually here, truly actually just like she remembers him. The angara are giving them the proper time to get through whatever this is, and she’s never been more grateful for their way of being. But eventually, even though she doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of staring at him, and having him look back with the same amount of love she knows is in her eyes as well, they have to go through the familiar motions: human alien trying to prove their trust-worthy goals.

Jaal is almost forbidden to get on the Tempest, because of that early display. Sara has to play the surprised, taken aback idiot – knowing nothing of past lives or angaran beliefs, even as she recalls, while tuning Evfra out, the night she spent curled against Jaal’s side, listening to him talk about his religion.

There’s no tour of the Tempest this time around. They lock themselves in the tech lab, and when Jaal tries to gather her in his arms, she quickly evades, sitting herself primly on his still not existent bed.

“I need you to tell me about those other times, Jaal.”

His expression crumbles, eyes darkening.

“I really would rather not, darling.”

She sighs, because she is right there with him.

“I need to know why this is happening. Where we went wrong the first time.”

He’s on her so fast, the room charged with his bioelectricity, his fingers digging painfully in her thigh, as he gathers her close into his arms.

“What went wrong is that you died, my love. And I had to see the entire galaxy celebrating survival, like I have not lost the source of my life’s happiness.”

“Jaal – ” she starts, but he interrupts her, shaking his head.

“I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go on without all the promises for the future that you made me.”

Her eyes narrow, trying to search his, but Jaal’s head turns, hiding his face in his shoulder as he speaks, hiding from her. She can feel her heartbeat speeding up, an incoming panic attack, the pieces slowly falling together.

“What have you done?” she asks, horrified.

“Do you remember the Gloryseekers?” he asks, tenderly, his fingers brushing her hair, his most favourite past time when tangled together.

But she’s now shoving against his chest, and he reluctantly lets her go. Her anger is like a storm gathering, as she stands in front of him, her hands fisted, her chest heaving.

“You killed yourself?” she breathes, her voice trembling and Jaal accepts it, looks her straight in the eyes, because he has been preparing for this moment of truth for so long now.

“I hoped I’d be hurrying to a future life, hoped to meet you there,” he extends out an arm towards her, a peace offering that she does not accept. “I didn’t realize we’d be stuck in a loop.”

“Jaal,” she says, just repeating his name like she cannot believe him, like she has finally broken down. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

“Some,” he nods. “We shared three lifetimes, so far,” and at her shocked expression, he continues. “Twice you died on Habitat-7 before I got to meet you, just your father. Once you died on me on Voeld.”

“I remember that,” she says weakly.

He moves his fingers in the air, and this time she accepts, grasping his hand in hers. He cradles her close to his chest, kissing at her forehead, temple, murmuring sweet nothings, a comfort that feels unsatisfactory when compared to the pain of death.

“But I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive you for this, Jaal. It’s selfish to drag me back.”

“It’s selfish to make promises you can’t keep. So I think we matched each other very well.”

She closes her eyes, and despite her words, clings to him tighter, breathes in the familiar smell of him. She’s been without him for so long, she feels the need to recharge. Especially considering that when she lets go, it’ll be for a while. She is hurt and betrayed and so, so extremely tired. Even the first time around, she died twice before she got to celebrate her next birthday. This time loop, or whatever it is, maybe a punishment for reaching this galaxy at all, had her dying over and over again. She’s tired of being hyper-aware of when her next doomsday will arrive, she’s tired of doubting people that she has called her friends, lifetimes ago, because they might put a bullet through her head this time around. And she’s so tired of dying.

She wants the small, silent house that Jaal promised, a family of their own making. She wants the wedding band that Liam slipped and told her Jaal has been carrying for weeks before Meridian. She wants her brother, someone who can share the weight of this life with her. She wants her mother, someone whom she didn’t get to have at all.

How many times does she have to die to get her eventual happy ending? Is she allowed that, now, after the person she loves the most has made time itself crumble to his will, just because he lost her? She untangles herself, slowly, from his embrace, and cries when he calls out her name, Sara, with as much pain that she has suffered.

***

Jaal is relentless, but she is stubborn. Peebee’s flirting comes, but falls on deaf ears. He calls her darling in front of everyone, remains tight-lipped if Liam asks him about it. Drack is the only one who doesn’t seem to care, so the old man ends up on their mission more often than not. Sometimes, she can pretend everything is a bad dream, and she is just in her usual world.

They save the Moshae, and Jaal does not have to ask her to do anything anymore: she does it because she knows it to be the decision she can live with. Literally. She does not apologize to the woman for it, either, too tired and burned out to stand through all that again, and Jaal has to be the one to smooth things over. He finds her in the room, and she wants to swear at him, because he still remembers her passcode; she wants to swear at herself, because she never changed it.

“It’s supposed to go like that first time,” he says, sounding so much older than he is.

In her anger, she purposefully ignores that he has lived and died as many times as she did. That just because he dragged her through these timelines, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t right there next to her, as he’s always been since the first day she met him, all those times ago.

“How can it?” she asks, and something in her caves with the words, something that has remained unspoken of finally out in the open.

“Then I request your cooperation in talking to the Moshae about this,” he says, and she frowns at him.

It makes sense, she is the most learned of his people. If someone can figure out what the fuck is going on, what went wrong, then it’s most likely her. She lost SAM’s assistance a few lifetimes ago, and there’s no one else – besides her twin, who has not yet woken up in any of her versions – she can truly rely on. The fact that she has to put everything of her life and heart in Jaal’s hearts and choices, again, feels like a betrayal of herself. Feels like coming back home.

“I wish I were dead,” she sobs, and the embarrassment burns hot and bright; she used to never cry, before all this.

“Darling one, please don’t say that,” he begs, but he does not step closer, maintaining her wishes to have him far and away from her, forgiveness, if ever even possible, not yet won. “Dying is a terrible thing.”

“I know that. Why didn’t you?”

He shakes, as if she stroked him.

“You think me too strong. If the roles were reversed, would you have been able to simply accept my end?” he asks, his eyes rising to hers, a burning challenge in them.

She closes her eyes, trying to imagine herself as she used to be, trying to recall the strength of her feelings for him, trying to remember how happy they have been together, once. Then, because he’s the one asking, she imagines how it would have been to have Jaal taken away from her.

She opens her eyes, finds him patiently waiting, the same old Jaal, her Jaal, standing in front of her now.

“No,” she answers, and his shoulders relax. “Okay then. We’ll talk to the Moshae, but… after the vault.”

She looks towards the general direction of the medbay, where she knows the older woman is barely hanging on. Jaal nods, touched and pleased.

“Thank you, Sara.” It’s the way he says her name, like it’s still worth something, like it’s still his favourite word. “I love you.”

And he’s gone before he can wait for a reply, too afraid it won’t come, too afraid she might not still feel the same. Sara remains in her room, ignoring the worried warnings from SAM concerning her mental condition, simply staring at the space Jaal occupied.

***

Jaal has tried talking to his siblings about the Roekaar danger, about the pleasures of working on alien ships, working alongside aliens – the kind that can be trusted. He has simply found deaf ears and exasperated sighs, and Sahuna has scolded him, avalanche of questions trying to gauge the meaning of his behaviour. He cannot lie in the middle of his people, and in the Resistance headquarters, he knows the rumours about him and Sara are abundant, with no doubt reaching his true mother. His bioelectricity thrums, a steady current of determination and affection, and Sahuna’s expression crumbles, looking at her favourite son, knowing him already lost to the stars and the mysteries they brought upon her people.

“But to claim her through past lives,” she shakes her head, disappointment burning at the edge of Jaal’s thoughts, just a touch, and he knows it must be only what she cannot hide, and Sahuna’s an expert at hiding. “I thought you respected us better than this.”

He leans over her, his arm around her body. He never realized how tiny his mother is, how fragile she feels in his hold, how much older than he remembers her she is. He’s sorry to have caused her distress, sorrier still that he cannot smooth it over with a white lie, as humans do all the time. His forehead touches hers, their electricity currents meeting and mingling, at least a bit of comfort in that.

“Mother,” he breathes, trying to ready himself for what comes next. “I have shared lives with this woman, and I want this to be one spent at her side.”

She chases the lie in his body, in his words, in his bioelectricity. She finds none. Her eyes go wide, looking at Jaal, and she sees nothing but her baby, her sweet child, having grown into a wonderful, worthy man.

“The stars are not worthy of you, Jaal.”

“Neither of her, mother.”

And yet that’s where they met, that’s where they keep meeting, that’s where their lives call them out to.

***

Despite his attempts, his siblings still end up in Akksul’s ranks. He wonders, sometimes, if others are as linked as he is to Sara; if his sister will always end up here, weapon drawn at her siblings, because she loves a man who does not know a middle ground. He begs, this time around as well, for his lover not to raise a gun at anyone.

She snarls at him, like if asking him if he thinks she cares about becoming this galaxy’s villain anymore. He imagines she doesn’t: she knows everyone’s dirty secrets, everyone’s weaknesses, and she has used them, over and over again, this timeline so far, to hurry up bureaucratic processes, to get what she needs, to stop stupid battles, to avoid catastrophic mistakes. Jaal is not as good at this as she is, because at the end of everything, he remains still, with Akksul’s gun pointing at his face.

He simply twitches a hand at Sara, stopping her in the spot. All scars heal, and he’s not afraid to have his skin grazed again, by Akksul’s poor shot. He says all the right things, as he remembers them. Drack swears, but does not move. Sara simply stares at him, like he is a ghostly ghastly apparition.

When the trigger is pulled, he’s almost grateful for it, the release of tension. He wonders why, then, is Sara’s scream so loud, ripping at his heart, why he goes down, legs giving up underneath him, why his sister is sobbing and crying, why his vision blurs.

“You fucking idiot,” Sara shrieks, ripping at some bandages, pressing one harder against his face.

He hisses, the pain blinding, and he sighs when her other hand comes to cradle his other cheek, tender fingers rubbing calming circles in his skin. The rest of the Roekaar have disbanded, just as they were supposed to, but something is wrong. Sara looks sick, on the verge of throwing up, and Drack’s chorus of he’s fine, he’ll be fine feels so out of place, coming from the old krogan. Jaal cannot understand why all the panic, why none of his siblings dare approach him.

“It’s just a graze,” he struggles to say, and it doesn’t register exactly why it is so hard to get the words out.

Then Sara moves, accepting another clean bandage from Drack, and through the blurriness of his vision, he notices that her hands are blue, the colour of his blood. Besides her hurried, concentrated movement, there’s no sound around them.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she says, desperate but not angry and he wants to smile, but smiling hurts.

It feels like forever until their shuttle arrives. Sara steps back, and her absence hurts more than his wound, but just so that Drack can take her spot, gathering Jaal in his arms. He grunts, the pain returning now tenfold that he’s moved, and Drack is kind in shushing him, sounds almost similar to a lullaby. His sister is crying, again, and he’d like to tell her it’s okay, because he has come after her knowing exactly what was supposed to happen to him.

But this is not what was supposed to happen to him, is it?

Once placed on one of the benches, Sara returns to his side. She is still too pale, her hands somewhat trembling, her mouth pressed in a harsh line. He knows for sure the others are huddled together, to accommodate his sprawled body, but nobody complains. She’s meticulous in taking off her gloves, disinfecting her hands, before she starts applying medi-gel to his wound. He hisses in pain, his hands fisting together, body trashing, and her hands shoot in the air, her expression pained as if she is the hurt one.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her eyes glowing with unshed tears.

She shakes her head, steeling herself, before resuming her task. He hisses in pain, still – on the other side of the shuttle, his siblings shuffle on the spot, uncomfortable, because he cannot hide his bioelectricity and his pain pulses with it.

There’s nothing else she can do on the spot, now. Half of Jaal’s face is raw, open wound and even with the medi-gel, it is not healing nearly fast enough for her liking. Her tears fall for real, now, and blindly, Jaal’s hand finds hers, squeezing as hard as he can.

“You’re not allowed to leave me here alone, you hear me?” she says, and she does not let go.

Jaal’s head is swimming, too many shared pasts mingling together, and he cannot recall a time when he has been the first one to go. It’s always her that hurries towards death, that death claims away from him. He almost wishes he would go now, if only to make her understand his suffering. But then she squeezes back his hand, and he is back on the shuttle, back next to this woman breaking down next to him because he’s been shot. And maybe she hasn’t said it, but he knows, in that moment, that she still loves him, cares for him.

“Never,” he murmurs, and he falls asleep to his name, repeated over and over, more and more desperate.

***

She has not slept in 50 hours, SAM kindly announces her. She blinks, her eyes burning with her exhaustion, and that’s the only sign that she acknowledged his words. Back on Havarl, the angaran medics has simply taken him away, complicated surgeries underway, and she has simply stood on the spot, in their hallways, feeling the tug of bioelectricity all around her, unable to decipher it. After two hours, someone has kindly taken her to a chair; too big, too unfamiliar to her alien body. After four more, another angara came with a glass of water. Later one, she received a blanket, and while she put it on, like a cloak, the evening cold settling around her, alongside the adrenaline crash, making her body shiver, she did not sleep.

Sahuna dropped by, wearing a battered armour, talking in Havarl’s Shelesh dialect with the first medic she could grasp. Sara understood, partially, and pretended not to. Jaal has not yet finished his treatment, he could not accept visitors. Sahuna sat next to her for a while, brushing her hair with her fingers, and eventually had to leave, when too many messages started coming her way.

“You care for my son this much?” she asks, instead of goodbye.

Sara is not looking at her when she replies, but at the door behind which she knows Jaal is fighting to stay alive, whole.

“He’s the only thing in this galaxy that makes any sense.”

Sahuna seems satisfied with the answer, and a few hours later, another relative takes her place in this waiting game. Sara remains the only constant.

And yet when he’s stable, awake, she’s the last one allowed to enter his room. One by one, she sees siblings and mothers and cousins visit the man whose side she didn’t want to leave, and she’s sorry enough to recognize this lack of rights is a direct result of her actions. If she simply claimed him back, as he claimed her since that first day, then maybe she would have been in there, too.

She can recognize it must be the start of angara’s sleeping cycle, because lamps are turned brighter in the hallways, when someone calls out her name. She startles, focusing back to the world around her, and she stumbles over the blanket in her haste to get back on her feet. She pretends she does not hear the amused snickers.

“I’m allowing you in because he asked for you,” the doctor clarifies, and she smiles in gratefulness.

She waits until the door closes behind her to look up at him. Half of his face is crossed by an ugly scar, skin and flesh sewed together, an angrier purple all around it, a strong contrast with his skin colour, and Jaal still struggles to smile at her, his hand extended out to her already. She goes, his bidding call never possible to ignore – and she’s careful when sitting close to him on the bed.

“How bad is it?” he asks, his voice light. “They’ve refused me any mirror.”

“You’re beautiful,” she breathes, a truth no matter what. “And you’re alive.”

“It will heal.”

“All scars do,” she answers, the continuation of his words, exactly what he once told her.

But back then, it truly was nothing but a slight scar. Like this, half of his face got blown apart, pulled together during arduous hours of surgery, she has been so close to losing him for good. It’s that what undoes her: not the sight of him, his wound raw and fresh, but the recognition of how close they’ve been to being torn apart again. And she has spent all their time together so far being angry at him, and she now regrets it all. She starts crying, her shoulders shaking as she tries to remain silent – but she should have known better, she cannot hide from Jaal; from anyone but him.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs, and Jaal’s hands come to cup her cheeks, to catch her tears, to comfort how he can.

Her arms hover in the air, unsure where to touch him.

“What are you apologizing for, you silly human?” he asks, all softness and love. “You’ve done simply what I asked of you.”

She shakes her head, but Jaal’s hold does not give. So Sara leans into his touch, turning her head so she can press her lips against his palm, kiss his hand.

“I am sorry I was angry at you when I love you.”

He smiles, unsurprised.

“Can’t say I did not deserve it, my sun.”

“I love you,” she says with a sigh, and it’s like finally arriving home, after too long of a journey.

Jaal shifts, enough so he can drag her close. Her hands fall on either side of his waist, careful to hold her weight, not quite touching him. He looks at her, simply waiting, simply trusting and Jaal has never looked at her in any other way. She’s the one that betrayed their connection, their love with her anger and selfishness. She closes her eyes, leaning closer, placing her lips, gently, against the side of his face that is not wounded: his cheek, his temple. He lets out a sound, deep from his chest, not unlike a cat’s purr, and she smiles against his skin, recognizing it.

“It took you long enough,” he says, a complaint that does not sound like one.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, one last kiss on his cheek.

Then she moves, careful of his wounds yet again, occupying the chair at his bedside. His eyes are already fluttering close, exhaustion clocking in, and she simply stares as he falls asleep. It doesn’t take her much longer to follow suit, though not before taking hold of his hand.

No doctor interrupts them, even though she long overstayed her visit.

***

Peebee stops flirting with him, not because Jaal has moved his things to the Pathfinder’s room, but because his most recent wound turned him into someone less desirable. She acknowledges, though, Sara’s preferences for battle-marked men, and winks at her each time she finds her staring at Jaal for too long. Once, she might have felt relieved. Now, she mostly feels angry on his behalf.

She was there when Jaal has looked at himself for the first time, afterwards. She saw how his expression changed into something almost tormented, almost disgusted – and she has simply held him in her arms, kissed his face, wound and all, and called him the man that she loves, in the past, now and in the futures that they’ll get.

“You cannot possibly love this,” Jaal has said, and she has felt herself seething, remembering how his face has been used as a poster for the Resistance, how he has an actual fan club back on Aya, how his handsomeness has been a strength of his, alongside his war fighting.

“Why?” she asks, and Jaal avoids her gaze.

“You know why.”

“I don’t. Tell me. Why?”

“I am ugly, hideous,” he finally settles, with a dry chuckle. “And just as I got you back.”

He buries his face in his hands, defeated.

“You think me so weak in my love that this would matter?” Jaal raises his head, looking at her, already shaking his head to deny it. “Then trust me when I tell you this changes nothing, Jaal. We’re alive and in love.”

“Alive and in love,” he mumbles back, and she smiles at him.

Slowly, making sure he is still looking at her, she pulls the hem of her shirt over her head. Jaal’s breath hitches, the large expanse of her skin now naked in front of him. She walks in his waiting arms like someone who knows she’ll be welcomed and loved no matter what, none of their initial fumbling and doubts, from once upon a time. This is a statement as well, no words needed: the trust she offers him is a result of his trust in him. He simply has to believe her, more than he believes his own doubts, others’ meddling words.

And with whom has he shared universes and lives? Only Sara, only her.

His head dips, kissing against her collarbones, as her hands travel to undress him, and Jaal never again doubts himself, doubts her.

***

“You can’t go out there alone,” Jaal begs.

“I’m not alone,” she counters, and even as they’re arguing over this, he still helps her zip up her suit.

“You can’t go out there without me,” he rectifies, and she turns to face him, kissing him briefly on the lips.

“You heard Lexi: you’re not yet fit for combat,” her fingers travel to gently trace his scar. “You’re leaving yourself open on your left side.”

“That’s bullshit,” he says, a flash of anger in his eyes.

Yes, it is. Because even like this, he’s still the most capable of their close quarters fighters. But she won’t risk it, and he knows it too. He sighs, defeated.

“Very well. Come back to me.”

She nods, her forehead against his. “Understood.”

But when she’s caught in that stasis field, death the only solution, she’s not so sure it is an order that she can follow. She can remember now, every single time death has happened, how much it hurt, how badly she wanted to continue living. She can remember now, how much blinding trust she used to have in SAM, how little she knows this version of her favourite AI. She can remember now, how it felt to be severed from this connection, the first time she died and she did not come back in under three minutes. As SAM counts down the seconds to stopping her heart beating, she begs, in the chamber of her mind that she shares with this artificial – but so real – being, not to fail her.

On the Tempest, Jaal waits, helpless, for the seconds to pass, each supposedly closer to the moment when she’ll wake, alive and well. He knows exactly how long she’s been dead for, that first successful time, and when that threshold passes, Sara still laid on the floor, dead and turning cold, he slams his fist against the Tempest’s console.

“SAM!” he shouts, and from his side, Liam looks worriedly between him and the screen where the mission stats are flickering, always the same.

“I am trying, Jaal Ama Darav,” he replies, voice polite, and it grates on his nerves, that the AI used his full name.

“Try harder,” he almost growls.

SAM does not reply anymore, knowing it is Jaal’s own frustration that he cannot stand. The seconds trickle by, and Jaal can hear nothing else but his own heartbeat, louder and louder. He recognizes the beginning of a panic attack, the same suffocating pressure that eventually had him succumb to his own pain, and his breathing turns erratic. And then –

“Missed me, everyone?” Sara’s voice comes through the coms, tired and strained, and the world returns back on its axis.

Jaal falls to the floor, his head against the cool surface of the console’s metal. He takes big gulps of air, trying to calm himself down. Cora has to support Sara, in the beginning, her mind too muddled to properly catch up to walking, but they don’t have time for this. She barely manages to save the other Pathfinder in time.

He waits for her at the Tempest entrance, and she falls against him immediately, her entire weight on him.

“I’m so tired of dying,” she mumbles in his shoulder, his hand smoothing out her hair.

“I am sorry, my darling one.”

“S’okay,” she slurs her words, already half asleep.

He gathers her in his arms, refuses to acknowledge Drack’s killer gaze, and simply allows her to rest, for a bit.

***

The Moshae listens to them, and does not interrupt. When Sara falters, Jaal picks up the story, not a moment’s break to recount tales, everything seamlessly sewn together, a past life that mirrors this one, both of them still fully themselves. The human Pathfinder looks slightly sick, deep dark marking under her eyes, wrists so tiny and thin; a detail that is obvious to Jaal as well, as he never leaves her side, as he guesses at her needs before they even exist.

When at last, she ends her own story with her death, she looks up at Jaal. This time, this is a tale that she herself has not heard: what the world looked like without her.

“I lasted three weeks. I have not realized how much celebration mourning ensues,” he shakes his head. “Scott woke up after ten days, titled the next Pathfinder. Evfra wanted me on the clean-up missions on Veold. They had this… monument built in your memory, on Meridian. I couldn’t leave it – you – behind. I couldn’t celebrate this supposed victory, because what joy was there to be had without you?”

He looks at her, swallows hard before continuing, having to remind himself that Sara is here now, alive. In love.

“We were promised to each other, my love,” he says, tracing one of his fingers, on which she placed a metal band, asking him to make her an Ama Darav. “But suddenly there was no wedding to be had, no retirement house, no research plans, no family.”

He closes his eyes, overcome by pain.

“So I simply followed you.”

“Jaal,” the Moshae says, soft chiding as she comes close, embracing him. He sobs in her shoulder, and Sara watches, transfixed, a pain that she cannot understand. She has yet to lose someone like this.

“How do we end this cycle?” Sara asks, tired.

The Moshae turns towards her student, as he shifts towards his lover’s side. He wants her, but she knows if Sara were to ask for her final rest, he’d finally allow her that: Jaal has grown too, in all these times.

“Simple. You have to survive past that point.”

Sara sways on her feet, Jaal her support.

“Easier said than done,” she whimpers, haunted by all the points through which she did not survive.

***

Scott looks at the thick, actual paper notebook in his lap, and then turns to look at his sister.

“What is this?”

“A story you’ll have to decide if you want to believe or not.”

He opens the first page, recognizing her handwriting, noticing the first person narrative, understanding this is a journal.

“I believe it,” he answers, without even having to read further than that.

Sara smiles at him, the best thing the Milky Way has offered her, and she sits by his side, head on his shoulder, as he goes through the pages, comfortable silence around them. She has updated it every lifetime, most recently a couple of days ago, when she knew he’d wake. She talked with Jaal, letting him know she’ll tell him everything. Her brother has never been good at liking stories and fairy tales, and it’s a gamble that she’s taking without being able to guess at its results.

Scott looks at his twin, the worries etched in her skin, but also the slight lovely blooming of her emotions.

“I believe you,” he repeats again, and she smiles at him, like she used to do when they were kids.

***

“He will hate me,” Jaal says, nervously stopping before the door to the med wing.

“Most likely,” Sara replies, tugging at his hand.

He follows, like he’s always done. His family has not been more welcoming either, as they all more or less blamed her for his terrible face scarring. Maybe this was a price they had to pay, if they wanted each other: giving up their families. And still, Jaal has tried: wearing his best clothes, bearing gifts.

She has warned Scott, and yet the idiot still stares. Jaal looks out of place in the human space: too big, too colourful, and his scarring is the place where everyone’s eyes falls first. He doesn’t seem to notice, as he’s simply hovering by Sara’s side, waiting for the introduction.

“This is Jaal, my lover. Jaal, my brother, Scott.”

“Thank you for taking care of my sister,” he says, and although clumsy, he greets Jaal via the traditional angaran way.

Something in his chest breaks, his heart bent in two. These Ryders sure know how to turn his world upside down.

“She’s the one taking care of me,” he says, and Sara smiles at the two of them, and no, Scott does not hate Jaal, not even a little bit.

***

“Are you sure he’ll be alright?” she asks, fretting, knowing the ending is closing in on them.

“He’s your twin,” Jaal says, like that makes it obvious that he can handle everything the Archon will do to him.

He has survived it the first time around. Sara braces herself, for that moment of separation, and this time around, letting go of SAM hurts less than it used to. She still bleeds, this time Jaal the one noticing it, and he’s relentless, having her back when fighting against the Remnant structure, pushing medi-gel in her hands each time she takes cover, forcing it, hurryingly, over her wounds. This is the extent of the ways in which he can help, and it still feels like too little, too late.

“You can do it, sis!” Scott says, his breath laboured, and she pushes harder against the console.

This is it, the moment of truth. She looks towards her twin, towards Jaal and when her vision blurs, she starts praying. She doesn’t believe in any gods, but she’s desperate enough to accept any help she can get, to try any things she hasn’t tried before.

She doesn’t want to die. How long will it take them to recognize each other again, if she goes crumbling down to the floor this time around? They made it so far this time, so close –

“Sara,” SAM’s voice echoes in her head, and her body stops trembling, her mind clears, her life source back online, and connected to her; there’s recognition in the AI’s voice, and relief as well. “You’re alive.”

“Welcome back home, SAM.”

“I apologize for taking so long.”

She shakes her head, just relieved. Now, at last, their connection feels as it used to: larger than her life. She shrieks when Jaal gathers her in his arms, spinning her around in his joy, and she laughs, relieved.

He kisses her before her feet touch the ground, a deep and passionate one that lingers, that turns into a swallowed moan when he pulls her closer to his body.

“You’re alive,” he whispers, just for her to hear.

“You too,” she answers.

Scott slams into both of them, an arm around one of each of their shoulders.

“You fucking made it!”

She can hear Vetra laughing, as Scott’s hold tightens, squeezing harder, closer. Jaal kisses his forehead, Sara his cheek.

“Welcome to the rest of our lives,” she says, and Jaal hums, pleased.

Scott, the only biotic in the family, leans close to her, whispering to her ear that Jaal’s bioelectricity says only one thing, and only one thing only: that he loves her, with the force of a thousand suns.

She catches his eyes, as Scott disentangles from them two, allowing them their moment alone.

“I love you too,” she tells him, and because she has learnt to recognize it, she knows he’s blushing, at having been caught.

She kisses him.

#mass effect andromeda #me: andromeda #jaal ama darav #sara ryder #m #mass effect #jaal romance #jaal/ryder #jaal x ryder #jaal x female ryder #jaal/female ryder #writing

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pathofcomets · 3 years

Text

i am the only lonely casualty

fandom: mass effect andromeda (AO3)

pairing: jaal/female ryder

summary: The Drift is a terrible, beautiful thing. She falls into it, joyously, anxiously: her memories mingle with Jaal’s, flashing by in an instant, understanding everything regardless. She is flushed with exhaustion, knowing him now in a way that no other person does. He is warm with exhaustion, knowing her now in a way that only one other person does. [OR: the Pacific Rim AU that no one asked for]

AO3 alternative link

Alec Ryder is just a young man, promising military career ahead, when the first Kaiju comes out of the breach. It takes an entire week to take the beast down, and nothing of known technology works at slowing down its path of destruction. By the time the tanks and aircrafts manage to bring it down, three cities lay decimated, hundreds of kilometres inland. The second monster arrives six months later. And then the next one – until he is personally invited to create and lead the new line of defence that not only humanity, but all alien species desperately need.

He meets Ellen Harlow in Rio de Jainero. He flirts, she ignores him. She flirts, he falls for it. Story as old as time in their ranks: him the scruffy fighter, and her the brilliant scientist. They put on its feet the Jaeger Program, and a family on their own. To fight monsters, they create monsters of their own. Too powerful and dangerous to be fuelled by one single pilot, the giant robots known as Jaegers require a two-pilot system, right hemisphere, left hemisphere, a neural pathway between two individuals. Ellen gives birth to twins, when they’re stationed in Japan. Six months later, Alec Ryder becomes a Jaeger pilot, first generation. Sara and Scott Ryder are born eleven minutes apart, into a world that their parents help keep alive every single day. The Jaeger Program is hope made into reality, success kneaded out of nothing.

It’s a heavy legacy – but an interesting childhood. For the first years of their lives, the twins are commuting with their mother from one military basis to another, sometimes, but rarely, encountering their father as well. All around them, the sound of metal being brought to life, the talk of science unlike no other, the sight of partnership beyond what their mind can comprehend an overwhelming success.

Kaiju keep appearing. Alec Ryder and every other Jaeger pilot keep taking them down.

Sara and Scott are sixteen when they join the military, too. It is comical how easy it is, to build upon that afterwards, when their last name is ingrained in the success of humanity’s survival. They get into the Program, almost pushed by inertia to have ended up in the same setting they grew up in. They pass every single test; they train with the enthusiasm of children whose parents’ career is written in battles. They check if they’re Drift compatible, if they can master what their parents have built. It comes as no surprise when they’re perfect. As twins, they have always already orbited around one another, a link that existed before they even took their first breath. The closer the connection, the stronger the Drift. Such a rule just had to come and bite Ellen Ryder in the ass, asking her children as offering on the altar of her work.

Both Ellen and Alec are present when they’re introduced to their own Jaeger, a shiny, all titanium beauty dubbed The Tempest.

“Let’s go and be heroes,” Scott says, and Sara just laughs, taking his hand in hers.

***

Being Drift compatible with someone means trusting them to know you wholly and completely: to understand your worst fears, to see your most embarrassing moments, to understand the language of your insides that even you yourself cannot translate. Being Drift compatible with someone means breathing the same air, every muscle spasming in complete union, not comprehending where one body ends and the other begins, because in mind you make one perfect, strong and entire whole.

If the connection is particularly strong, or longer than usual, fight strenuous on the muscles, brain turning tired and foggy, the ghost of the Drift remains long after the pilots leave their Jaegers. Sitting with their hands clasped together, they can speak in half-finished sentences, the missing words continued in their heads, understood regardless – maybe a look that evokes an entire story. The medical team calls it side effects, since they dull with time, but the memory of it never truly goes away. So when the pilots are asked, during TV interviews, to describe what the Drift really feels like, opening one’s mind to the infinite possibilities of another’s, nothing can quite express it in full, accurate terms.

The Ryder twins become well-known in the Program for these side effects: Scott can guess what Sara needs before she even makes up her mind, Sara is there to catch him fall even before he misstep. It’s usually in the small things, creepy and eerie only to those that have no experience of it themselves; and on military bases filled with Jaeger pilots, it’s not out of the ordinary. But these side effects rarely go away, when it comes to the two of them, a faint sliver of connection even when it should not be possible at all. But many things deemed impossible have been achieved and accepted, and so this one is too.

***

But no one talks about the side effects of saving humanity. Alec Ryder loses his first co-pilot, a turian, to neural complications. Ellen discovers her sickness only a year after her kids celebrate their first kill. For months, the three Ryders shift around, making sure she’s not left on her own for too long, all in vain, because she shrinks and shrinks before their eyes, until eventually she is gone.

Sara and Scott do not know how their father mourns. They fall into the Drift simulator, feeling a pain doubled by their shared love for their mother, but finding just as much comfort in it. Even after having gone through it dozens of times before, they’re still eager, willing, almost glad for the connection – craving it. An embrace that goes beyond the physical, a warmth that speaks of love that cannot be put into words. Their memories mingle, creating a sharper and more alive outline of Ellen Ryder than they have known in life; they chase each other throughout moments with their mother, and say nothing afterwards because all has been shared before.

“Sometimes I wish I could drift with dad,” Scott says, sighing.

They’re lying in Sara’s bottom bunk bed, late into the night – or rather, early in the morning. While they haven’t been chosen for this particular mission, the alarms rang loud and clear across the entire dome, and they’re scrambling to discover their sleep back again.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” she replies, mumbling her words in his sweater, the bed a tight fit.

Scott laughs, his chest jostling her with the force of his amusement. She scrunches her nose, even if in the dark, he cannot see it.

“I think that’s the point, sis.”

But she still doesn’t think she’d like to have anyone else in her head. With Scott it is easy, there has been no surrender at all, because she knew he’d be there to welcome every bit of her, and continue to love her regardless of how crooked and dark the image of her life turned. But she doesn’t have that certainty with anyone else, not even her father – so she’d like to keep the comfort of this, of now.

She fists her hand in the material of his shirt, and Scott says nothing for a second, just a sigh that blows her hair out of her face. Then, with a groan, he shifts and rolls a bit, arm coming around her body, a half hug that is awkward and half uncomfortable, but the tiredness is starting to make itself felt, and he doesn’t want to chase another, more leisured position.

“You’ll always be my fav, okay?” she murmurs, suddenly scared by his admission.

After all, Scott has always been daddy’s boy way more than her. She has known there’s no way to live up to Alec Ryder’s fame, but Scott has tried anyway – is still trying, with every Kaiju kill, to do exactly that.

“And you, mine,” he agrees, and she sighs with relief, a feeling so blinding that Scott can feel it behind his eyelids. “Not shut up, your mouth stinks.”

She kicks his leg under the blanket. “Yours too, asshole.”

***

Sara wakes to a slap to her face, and she groans. Her leg kicks in the air, and barely misses Scott’s knee.

“Wake up, we got a Kaiju.”

She rolls around her bed, and Scott laughs at her when she almost falls, his arm already shoving her back up against the mattress.

“What time it is?” she mumbles, catching the sweater that her twin throws at her, her head throbbing in rhythm with the alarm blaring all around them.

“Saving the universe o’clock,” Scott says, with a shit-eating grin – he is fully awake and she is getting annoyed at his devastatingly high level of energy; when she frowns at him, he relents. “Three fifteen a.m.”

“Fuck,” she says, the world swallowed by a yawn.

There’s a hard knock at their door – probably more of a kick, seeing how the door is made out of metal and the sound is loud.

“Come on, kiddos, come on,” Drack’s voice rumbles, and never mind, it’s just a krogan.

When they show up, all suited up, their eyes go wide in surprise to see their father in a similar get-up. Last they heard of his whereabouts, he was on Mars.

“It’s a double event,” his new co-pilot, a blonde woman that has the air of someone much older than she looks, explains.

“There’s a first for anything,” Scott mumbles, and Sara steps closer, squeezes his hand in hers – because he does not mean the two Kaiju sighted, but the fact that they are supposed to fight by their father’s side – and it’s a movement that Alec Ryder does not miss, his eyes fixated on where his children’s hands are inter-twined.

Their Drift is smooth, goes perfectly well, the fall into Scott’s trust almost muscle memory by this point. But even with all the knowledge, most brilliant minds of this galaxy brought together to find the weaknesses in these monsters set on wiping them all out, when a new one comes out from the waves, it’s the field team, two people connected, the adrenaline rushing in the moment, that figures out the breaking point of every single beast they fight against. When one falls, they expect it to remain fallen, the blue staining the water in the poisonous colour of their victory.

First and only mistake: in the blinking lights of a Jaeger, they can’t really make out the Kaiju blue – and so, their enemy is not actually dead. From that night, Sara Ryder remembers only how her throat hurt, stuck in an endless loop of screaming, the same image burnt into her eyes, searing pain scarring through her body. They leave her side open, turned to where the Kaiju has fallen, and they pick up the movement a second later than their father. Alec Ryder sacrifices the arm of her daughter, the Kaiju teeth dug deep in the metal, her shout looped through the coms. Cora has to blink the stifling panic rising from him, synchronize her motion with his desires: because he attacks the creature, his side slamming into the Kaiju’s body. Its tail pierces, as an arrow, through the metal hull of their Jaeger’s head, and in 32 seconds, Alec Ryder stops breathing.

Cora goes falling into the sea, taking the monster with her. Hyperion is dark, all connections to the dome rendered useless. There’s something wrong with the Drift – Sara knows instantly when Scott’s consciousness is snuffed out of hers, the absence hurting worse than her wound. The smell of charred skin makes her want to throw up, but she understands, instinctually, that if she does not move, reach a shore, they’ll both go sinking down. So she grinds her teeth, struggling with only half of her own capacity, lacking her twin’s entirely, to get this metal beast of theirs moving. Hyperion groans around her, but eventually listens.

Good girl, she thinks, tears brimming in her eyes.

And she thinks of nothing else but: one step after another. Until she collapses, the smell of salt water and sand strong all around her. She can hear people screaming, some indistinct shouting, and she tries to mumble and babble, at the humans and aliens that desperately try to claw at her, that they have to check on Scott – Scott that she knows nothing about, that it’s been months and years and decades since she hasn’t known anything about him.

***

Sara Ryder – though she rarely goes by her last name anymore – takes down the comically large goggles from her face, and grins up at the turian approaching her.

“Vetra,” she says, allowing a bit of warmth at seeing her boss seep through. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Business,” Vetra replies, and from the subvocals that she learnt to pick up on, she knows the turian is worried, serious, perfectly professional.

They’ve worked together, selling bits and pieces of Kaiju on the black market, for four damn years. If Vetra wants to still pretend like she can’t be read, that’s on her. Sara wipes her hand on her pants, taking of her gloves.

“What’s up?’ she asks, falling into steps with her boss.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

“Who?”

Vetra’s expression remains respectfully blank. “I won’t ruin the surprise.”

“No one knows me, you know that.”

“Not no one,” a voice says from behind her, and she whips around so fast that her vision turns dizzy.

The turian has already disappeared, clearly knowing better than linger for the shit-show that is about to go down. Sara frowns at the older woman in front of her: prim uniform, though any identifying logo is smartly left out, hair cut short in military standard style, the posture of someone who is used to getting what they want, being listened to. This woman can’t possible think she is stupid, right?

“What does the Program want with a retired pilot?” she asks, crossing her arms across her chest, clearly defensive.

“I’m Foster Addison. Second-in-Command.”

“I do not care.”

“Sara, please-” and at the terrible glare that the young woman sends her, she shuts her mouth, trying to think of another approach. “Things are getting worse.”

Sara nods, tensely. She knows, she follows the news. She follows Kaiju attacks minutes after they happen, to harvest organs and blood, after all. Addison knows it too, since she found her. She knows too, that lately, every attack had a casualty in their pilots too: sacrifices of a few in the name of the survival of many. It’s a concept she stopped believing herself in, since she became an orphan.

“And?” she asks, growing impatient because Addison, in typical politician-turned-military style, is dragging out what she wants to say.

“We need you back. You are the only Ryder left,” Addison says, and Sara stills, turning to glare at the older woman.

“I don’t care. Do it without me, I’m not going back into a Jaeger.”

She waves an arm in the air – and it’s the one that she has sacrificed to save her brother’s life, marked by electric burns from the Drift overload, an ugly scarring covering the skin. Addison twists her mouth, a bitter taste on her tongue, because Sara Ryder is twenty-two and she has fought in more battles than most military personnel can attest to. But all her efforts have been for mostly nothing: her twin now in a comma in a facility that is paid by the government as thanks for his service, when they’re not sure if he will ever wake up at all. From the middle of the ocean, Sara Ryder has dragged their torn Jaeger to the nearest shore, all the time sending and breathing life into her brother.

Their father has already been lost in that fight, sacrificing himself to save his second in command, a Cora Harper, and… his children. For a man that has been known to be logical and cold, Alec Ryder has allowed himself to be led by emotions until the very end.

“We have a plan, ending it all for good. Newer technology, new recruits. We might have a chance.”

After all this time, is what she does not say, because they’re rounding on three decades since this entire nightmare started. Her father has spent more time knowing a world with Kaiju in it, than without. It’s the only reality Sara has known herself. It’s a legacy, an inter-generational burden that she herself has chosen. But back then she was not alone. Now, as Addison herself pointed out, she is the only Ryder left. They want her because she is the only link to their beginning.

Sara stops, staring at Addison over her shoulder. What can she say? She has known this day will eventually come. Jaeger pilots don’t ever truly retire: they just die. She always imagined that if she were ever to brace the largeness of the Drift again, it’ll be by her brother’s side, made strong and brave yet again. The uncertainty of what the Program wants for her, has prepared for her, it pierces at the armour she tried so hard to build during these past years.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asks, at last.

Addison looks surprised. “Vetra has been our main supplier for months now.”

***

“You sold me out?”

Addison is struggling to keep up with Sara’s paces, angry and determined as she is. Vetra turns, almost smiling.

“It was about time for a career change for you.”

“It was not your call to make!”

“You look at these damned Kaiju corpses as if you mourn them! You change the channel each time a pilot interview airs. You cannot stand to say your own name out loud. This is not the place that can release you of whatever phantom pains you carry.”

“Still not your call to make.”

“Someone had to do it,” Vetra counters, and the two stare at each other for a tense moment.

Addison checks something on her datapad, and Sara knows she has run out of time.

***

When she steps back in a dome, it’s like no time has passed at all. She wonders, where did all those years go, because she knows she achieved nothing, she knows she has gone through life only half awake. Her other side is still asleep, still so far out of reach, even when she visited Scott, held his hand in her. And yet, here, with the beeping of machineries, the shouting in at least six different languages, the smell of iron strong in the air – she can almost pretend like everything is alright again, like this is all that she has ever known, and there’s safety in that.

It’s a tradition they started before she was born, that they want to remember every fallen person in the Program. Most of them are pilots: those that died in a battle, those that died because of the side effects that took so long to figure out, especially when considering such different alien biology as well. Some are construction workers that fell, slipped into the emptiness that makes a Jaeger’s height. Some are crushed souls, under crumbling domes. Their faces are all plastered against the widest wall of all of their buildings, respect and pain in this remembrance gesture. She stops in front of it, scanning for all the new additions, even though most she has already learnt by heart. Addison allows her this pause.

She meets Ellen’s smiling face, and Sara smiles in return. Alec’s photo is as taciturn as he has been in real life, and yet she is still touched to see him again. And then, much later into the rows, she sees Scott’s face staring back at her. Their photos have been an inside joke, each of them winking with one eye, grinning with teeth showing. She can feel despair clawing up her throat, and she moves before she even realizes it. Her hand rips away the photo, leaving a white square on the wall, and she keeps the photo close to her chest, frowning up at Addison like it’s an affront.

“He’s not dead,” she says, protective and overwhelmed by the blinding desperation in her voice, where it trembles, weakly.

“Of course not,” the older woman hurries to agree. “But the doctors think even if he wakes up, he won’t ever be able to pilot a Jaeger again.”

“When he wakes up,” Sara says, her voice so faint that the other woman barely even hears it.

“What?”

“Don’t talk about my brother. Ever again.”

“But I can, right?” a scruff voice comes from her left, and she whips her head so fast that it hurts.

She falls into the waiting embrace, Drack’s arms spread open. She squeezes him close, this krogan the closest thing to a friend, to a relative – that she can hope for: not only in this dome, but in her life as well.

Addison looks like she just swallowed something very, very sour.

“I wasn’t aware you two knew each other,” she says, trying to seem not displeased.

“That’s because you’re shit at your job,” Drack says, and oh, Sara has missed someone always telling the truth and the truth only, no sugar-coating, no pretending.

The krogan pats her shoulder, and steals her away, cutting Addison’s tour before it even begun, taking the matters into his own hands.

“Tann will hear about this!” Addison shouts after them.

“Tell him to kiss my ass too,” Drack waves his other arm in the air, and he nuzzles closer to Sara, looking at the picture where a much younger and more mischievous Scott Ryder smiles up at them.

“He’s not dead,” she says, defensive again.

“Nah, kiddo’s a fighter.”

He can feel her physically relax against him, and he struggles even more to force his pace to match hers: tired, small, human steps.

***

Since angara are as a species open with their emotions, their compatibility in the Drift far surpasses that of any other. Add a whole lineage of military fame, and the most successful pilots in the Jaeger Program have been angaran – even when popular bets were on krogans, or turians –for their military prowess and history. They have separated their matching warriors fairly, across each inflicted planet, a diversity that forces many alien races to grow accustomed to others, and fast. They couldn’t allow their differences to put the Drift sequence into danger, so every potential candidate knows, besides the expected fighting and history, the culture of all their allies as well.

But still, when director Tann is introduced to Sara, she finds herself not really wanting to show him the faintest bit of politeness. Maybe it’s just his face, or the way he speaks: like every word affects him, fake. Maybe her father was not the best man in this galaxy, but at least with him around, the fate of the world wouldn’t have ended up on the shoulders of the likes of Tann. She finds some pleasures in knowing that most of the old-timers (her, Drack, even Liam, whom she got to see in the dining halls, and who loudly shouted her name and hugged her in front of everyone) absolutely loathe him.

“So this is the famous last Ryder?” he hums, frowning as she slouches in the chair in front of him.

“Can’t say I’ve heard anything about you, Tann,” she says, sweet as poison. “Have you ever piloted a Jaeger?”

“Director Tann,” he corrects, frowning. “No, I haven’t.”

“Thought so.”

Because he has no disregard for anything that makes a pilot exactly that. He has woken her up at exactly 5:30 A.M. to take her on his own tour, thinking she might consider it an honour, when she was raised in buildings exactly like this one. She doubts there’s a dome on Earth that she doesn’t know inside and out, like the back of her hand. His assumptions have irritated her, his humongous ego that have allowed him this much self-importance. Pilots have been generally left to their own devices: training at fixed hours, and free time unless there was an attack. No one can train for twelve hours straight, and Tann’s belief that that is exactly her plan reeks of someone who hasn’t tried holding a plank in a decade.

Then he has insisted on calling the Jaegers by their serial numbers, impersonal to the bone. He sees the naming as nothing but an easy marketing device, when the pilots’ entire soul goes inside that machine, breathing life and meaning into a chosen name. Hyperion has not survived her last mission, and that was a loss of a magnitude that Tann won’t ever understand. Because he never attempted stepping inside a robot.

Worst of all, he thinks the phantom remnants of the Drift are nothing but mental relapses, that can be cured through therapy. The doctors, Carlye and T’Perro have shaken their heads when they noticed the start of her anger – and she has found peace in knowing that at least those that hold her life in their hands don’t think her a fraud for something that has owned her heart since she was sixteen. It is obvious he cares nothing for this Program: Tann a most unfortunate, and mostly political choice, for sure.

She feels, deeply, the absence of her parents: and her parents’ friend, in the midst of whom she grew, almost all already lost. The younger generation gives her some hope: Kesh, Drack’s granddaughter, who constantly head-buts the directors, and supports the pilots despite the fact that most of the time the consequences get ugly. Peebee, their resident Kaiju expert, is brimming with knowledge and enthusiasm, exactly what she likes to see in their scientists.

Cora and Liam are now piloting together Alec Ryder’s old, improved Jaeger. They never talk of who they lost, feelings that can be reached only in the Drift, secret but for those special moments. Sara gets it, and cannot find them any fault in matching one another.

The human woman simply took her aside, gifted her a bouquet of flowers, that in the depth of her window-less room would have lasted exactly two days, and said:

“Your father saved my life. I am sorry.”

And Sara has cried, ripping each petal one by one, mumbling I miss him, I miss him not – until the last one finally fell to the floor, a painful stop on the first choice.

***

It takes them a while, finding her a potential good match. It’s not that they don’t have enough recruits, because they do. But in the face of the possibility of dying with each morning one wakes, people start relying on superstitions, on lucky charms, on such gimmicks. There’s an asari who tattoos all of her kills on her body, a salarian that insists his costume to be red, a krogan that carries a piece of a kaiju tooth around his neck. The opposite is true as well: a turian always fails the first Drift, but the second is always perfect, because for a split of a second, the triumph over his own sense of self is too scary to squash. A human who knocks on wood three times before getting inside of a Jaeger.

And the Ryders, who are considered cursed to die or kill their co-pilots in their missions. Her father had his own streak of losses, and she is a disaster that already happened. She might even believe it on her own, if she were bothered enough to care. The first week back was unnerving, simply because so many people would just stare at her, as if she were a ghost.

She feels like a ghost, for all the duration of that co-pilot search; to be so alone, so purposeless in an ocean of others who have someone help find their footing. She realizes with a start that she is jealous of them, yearning for the kind of full acceptance that comes only through the Drift.

She feels lost. Until:

An arm, gorgeously purple, extended in front of her, typical human greeting.

“Jaal Ama Darav,” he says, his name like a song, like a current that drags her away.

She gathers his hand between her two, traditional angaran salute. His skin is warm; hers grow warmer too, when he smiles at her.

Then Drack blows a whistle, starting their sparring match, and she’s knocked off her feet before the sound has even ended.

“One-zero,” he says, his voice still like a melody calling out to her.

She flips back on her feet, quicker than he expected because his eyes widen for just a fraction of a second, and she’s already wrapping one leg around his knee, her elbow pushing hard against his shoulder. He goes stumbling down, and she straddles his waist, keeping him pinned down to the floor. Where her fingers touch his skin, at the wrists, her heart pulses in joy.

“One-one,” she breathes, hard.

Jaal’s eyes grow amused, finally taking the challenge seriously. He is way bigger than her, and he uses that to roll their bodies, switch their positions, so it is him on top of her. Her shirt rides up, and his naked knee touches the expanse of skin freed at her torso, and his eyes grow wide with some kind of recognition, stars dancing in them as he stares at her.

He feels it too. The current of promise, the rightness of their togetherness, the pull of their connection. She could almost cry in relief. Instead she brings her hands up to his face, cupping his head in her palm, so much skin-on-skin touch that renders them both dumb but for the need for more.

“I win. It’s you,” he says, his voice awed and low, only for her to hear.

People talk, about how it’ll feel to find your person, but it is a totally different thing to experience it on your own. For Sara too, this is new; she has known Scott her entire life, the most natural thing in the world to be paired up with him. This is new, but still oh so, so right.

“It’s her,” he says, louder this time, for their audience – though they probably pieced it together already by now.

Cora Harper is the first one that starts clapping, and Sara catches her eyes, swearing the other woman looks almost proud. Kesh whistles, stomping her feet in union with Drack, their own form of applause.

Jaal leans closer, resting his forehead against hers, and she can feel (no, really, feel) his thoughts: Please don’t leave me.

***

Drack presents them their new Jaeger as if it’s something holy. It is the closest thing to religion that she has. The Tempest.

So the next obvious thing is to test their robot out. It’s standard procedure that the pilots dress together – most at least familiar to one another. Jaal and Sara hover, suddenly embarrassed by the intensity of their want to be close to each other, inside that Jaeger, connected – and the standards of the world they’re in, under which they grew in.

She sighs, being the first one to unbuckle her military pants, tug her shirt out. Jaal watches each movement, transfixed, wondering how she’ll look when she commands a killing machine weighing tonnes.

She snaps her eyes to him, her gaze softening.

“You might want to turn around. It’s an ugly sight,” she sighs, and that’s the only warning that he gets before she pulls her shirt over her head, revealing the deep, white scarring around the entire left side of her torso, arm included. The wound, scarred over, creating rivers and valleys deep into her skin, almost shining in the light of the med wing.

“You are a wonderful woman,” he says, and she startles, blinking up at him, trying to find the point where the truth ends and the lie begins, unable to do so.

She is afraid to trust him, knowing instinctually that she wants nothing more than to do exactly that.

The Drift is a terrible, beautiful thing. She falls into it, joyously, anxiously: her memories mingle with Jaal’s, flashing by in an instant, understanding everything regardless. She is flushed with exhaustion, knowing him now in a way that no other person does. He is warm with exhaustion, knowing her now in a way that only one other person does.

Then he gets stuck, time slowing down, and she watches a younger Jaal, one with less scars, one seeped in happiness and love, embracing a beautiful angaran woman. The scene snaps, sounding all wrong, and Jaal stands, stone faced and hurt, silent tears falling down his cheek, as the same woman – the one he has loved as if she were the sun of his world – kisses his brother, is named his co-pilot. She knows their names and their faces, from that cursed wall of memories and honour, and she understands that these are people that he lost, twice over. Now it falls into place why she recognized his name, when he introduced himself.

She says his name, though this Jaal is stuck in a memory where she does not exist, cannot hear her. The scene snaps again, and now Jaal’s cries are loud sobs, even as the dome around him cheers with victory. It all looks wrong to her, this place back on Havarl, his home planet – but the violent feeling of pain and guilt is familiar enough, deep in her gut.

Sara tries again, to say his name, call him back to her. But then she blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, she is in one of her memories instead. At first, her brain is confused, trying to catch up with the change, but when she realizes exactly which moment her brain decided to conjure, she screams.

Jaal tries, to wake her, bring her back to him. Even when he shakes against her shoulder, her eyes are wide and fixed on the unconscious body of her brother, and the shout turns hoarser, though it does not stop. Her pain is almost blinding him. She cannot get out of this dream – nightmare, and it only stops when Kesh finally pulls out the electricity cord, rendering the entire Drift a fail.

His entire body hurts, but he manages to get to Sara’s side, throw her helmet aside, her mouth open in a silent, terrified scream. She claws at him, her grip so painful that he has to grind his teeth together not to scream, and he hushes her, patting her hair away from her eyes in an awkward manner. He never felt his hands this big or this clumsy. She falls unconscious before the doctors get to them, and only once they do, he allows himself the same respite.

***

“Jaal,” she croaks, upon waking up, first word out. “How is Jaal?” she tries again, getting to a seated position on her medical bed.

Lexi chuckles. “First thing he did was to ask about you, as well. He is fine.”

“I want to see him,” she says, and if Lexi were a pilot, maybe the more correct phrase would have been I miss him.

The doctor sighs, as if she’s dealing with the requests of a petulant child. But she does relent, and two minutes after he receives the message, Jaal erupts in the room. He’s panting, clearly having run the distance across the building, and her relief hits her like a tidal wave, strong and certain. She’s in his arms before she gets to realize that this is what she wanted from the get go.

Jaal’s fingers snake under her blouse, splaying across her back. I’m sorry. She noses against his collarbone, breathing in the smell of him, spice and salt. I’m sorry too. They don’t let go of each other for a long time, the position uncomfortable, but one that they need, especially after they’ve been in each other’s brain and heart, especially after both of them failed the other.

“Do you regret it?” she murmurs, against his shoulder, her own emotions a wall of blankness.

Jaal shakes his head, a movement that she feels close to her hair. “No. You?”

“No.”

And she hugs Jaal tighter, because next time in the Drift, he’ll know it is not entirely a lie. He’ll know she feels like a traitor towards her family name because of it. But next time in the Drift, when she falls, he is there to catch here.

She never strays again; she never gets stuck. Jaal may still hurt, but in time, it gets less blinding.

***

They get their first kill three months in, during a solo mission. Back on solid ground, she still has the eerie impression that when she walks, she should feel the resistance of a wave, before the certainty of the ground. So, in his joy, to the chorus of Jaeger BOMBS! Jaeger BOMBS! coming from the dining hall, Kesh’s voice being the one eager to drink newbies under the table, Jaal sweeps her up in his arms.

Her forehead rests against his, the surprise tickling pleasantly at her belly. Instinctually, her legs wrap around his waist, and it seems so effortless, the way he covers the distance to their rooms with her entire body hanging on to him. She never wants to lets him go.

He stops, in the middle of the hallway, staring first at his door – then at hers. She just blinks, twice at him, saying something without opening her mouth, and his hand finds the handle of his room, and in two more strides, they fall onto the uncomfortable hardness of his military mattress.

It smells like his home, she recognizes, sweeping her palm against the material of his bedsheet. She finds herself sometimes, going about her day, and remembering small details about him and his life, overwhelming in how real she can see them inside her mind. Then she can feel the amused tug of his shy pleasure. But it’s the first time they have bridged the gap between memories and reality, crashing it all together into one.

It’s the first time she has stepped inside his room. On the wall above his desk, he has an array of photos, his many relatives, both lost and left at home. In a different manner, his father put on its feet the Jaeger Program back on Aya: his hands building the robots. In a similar manner, he had his children fall head-first into the things he gave his life and time for. Jaal knows that her room is starkly empty, the same as she has received it, just the sage green bedsheets, the colour that Hyperion has once been, on the first day she laid eyes on it.

“Why?” he asks, because this is her home now.

She closes her eyes, and Jaal finds her hand, clasps it in his. It doesn’t soothe the fear.

“I can’t believe in forever anymore.”

His surprise is stifling, almost chocking her. She feels sorry for saying it almost immediately, remembering the talk of curses, Jaal’s own fear at being abandoned, which mirrors her fear of losing everything to the point where she stands alone.

She shifts, leans closer to him so she can tug him against her. She mimics one of his gestures, her hand snaking under his shirt, and she doesn’t smile at his surprises gasp. She wishes apologies into him, and he grabs her hand, kisses each finger, one by one, until she cannot doubt anymore that the two of them are quite alright.

***

Scott woke once, during all this time. And then she traumatized him so much that she lost him all over again. So Sara doesn’t say what she means anymore. It’s a cruel joke from the universe that she’s made to care about the type of people from who she cannot hide. When they fuck up one of the missions, to the point they need Liam and Cora to jump in to save them, she stands in the hallway, watching hopelessly as they take Jaal, unconscious, from her arms.

She then limps and hobbles through hallways, hissing like a feral creature at anyone who offers her help, who even look wrongly at her – until she finally ends up in front of Kesh’s office. The young krogan says nothing, even when Sara crouches on the floor and under her desk. She barks only one short order to her assistant, who stares wide-eyed at the scene in front of her, and five minutes later, Ryder is given a pack of ice to press against the bruises growing against her knee and ankle.

“You know you cannot hide forever?” Kesh says, when she finishes a report, closing a dossier as if to accentuate her point.

“I can try,” Sara mumbles, and eventually the krogan offers her a small pillow, her own jacket to use as a blanket.

In total, it takes six hours. But when Jaal shows up to her doorstep, Kesh simply gets up from her desk, says nothing, and passes her office key to the angara wordlessly. Each of his footsteps are in rhythm with the beatings of her heart. He stops where Kesh has been, then turns, leaning his back against the desk. She can only see his legs from where she’s hunched down.

For a long time, they say nothing.

“Sara,” he says, and it’s a call as if she’s summoned by magic, her heart pulling her to him. “I am alright.”

She cries then, loud wails, desperately clawing at her makeshift blanket. Jaal squats down, and he cannot fit under Kesh’s desk – so he asks for a compromise. He opens his arms, waits for her to blink away her tears, to trust his peace offering.

And then she falls. He catches her. It’s growing into a habit.

***

Jaal’s nightmares are terrible things: alarms blaring, the screech of Jaegers brought to life, the overwhelming feeling of the ground going from under your feet, the entire world trembling around you as a Kaiju steps so close to where you pray for your life. The staining colour of Kaiju blue, seeping into sand, poisoning his reality. His mother, crumpled to the floor, hugging one of his father’s shirts to her chest, and silently sobbing out each new loss.

Sara paces the hallway separating their rooms, having had the same dreams as him again. It takes him such a long time, to shake the terror from his bones, and she rests her forehead against his door, feeling it all and unable to do anything from the other side of a locked door. Eventually, Jaal opens the door, exhausted and dishevelled, and he simply rests his forehead against her shoulder. Her fingers move, tenderly, at the nape of his back, massaging a knot away, from where it pains the both of them. They say nothing: someone returning from a night shift sees them, politely turns on his feet and decides to take a longer route to his room.

“I have nothing to offer you,” he says, and the question of So why choose me? remains untold, though burning so needy in her throat that she cannot not answer it.

“I get you and it’s already so much more than I am worth.”

He drops to his knees, tugging up her shirt, pressing his cheek against her navel, his skin thrumming.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“Never.”

Her viciousness surprises even her.

***

He takes her to Havarl. She tries to remind herself that these are normal people, and her hand twitches impatiently at her side all throughout diner, because it is empty, because it is lacking him. When his knee touches hers, even clothed, she coughs on her food, dropping her cutlery in her plate – and one of his youngest siblings laugh at her until his drink spills out his nose.

It’s a time difference that she is not used to, and she falls asleep on the couch as they watch TV. One by one, his relatives spill out the room, and Sara ends up laying down the couch, her head in Jaal’s lap. It’s the first time he tries this, after he’s seen Suvi braid her hair once before, and his fingers are clumsy. When his nails scrap against her scalp, her mouth opens, a mewl, as her head pushes against his touch. The pleasure blooms all over his hand, all hers.

She blinks one eye open at him, and he tries not to look like a thief caught in the middle of a criminal act.

“I miss you,” he says.

“I’m right here,” she mumbles, his finger against her cheek, her chin, never tired of her.

He sighs. It’s still not enough.

His mother, stars bless her heart, prepares her a separate bedroom. She stares, from the hallway, at this kindness and considers it a personal offense. She waits for the older woman to leave, and before Jaal gets to follow her, she grabs his arm, slamming his body against the wall. She glues onto him, her body flushed against his, the only way in which her much smaller self can pin him on the spot. But after so long, her simple touch would have been enough to override his brain into stupidity.

“You can’t be serious,” she whispers, and she tries to sound angry, even when she knows her entire being must thrum in the simple, shameless pleasure of him.

“What am I supposed to tell them, then?” he asks, biting his lip, hope ringing in her ears.

She gets on her tiptoes, her mouth a centimetre away from his, her lips tantalizingly soft.

“Ain’t I already yours?”

“In all but name,” he sighs, and when he pushes, albeit gently, against her, she listens to him.

Because after the seventh Drift, something changed. No secrets can be kept between partners; the shame of one would simply render the sequence defective. So Sara has laid there, her soul barren, called it love and waited for Jaal to walk out on her. He has suffocated her with his joy, with his raging adoration – and they have laughed and giggled for hours after their Drift.

And that has been all.

“You make my heart sing,” she says, but it is in Shelesh – and for a heavy moment, Jaal’s brain cannot keep up with what is happening.

In a flash, it is her body that is pinned to the wall, Jaal’s mouth finding hers, so hungry and desperate. He murmurs I love yous in-between each kiss, and her body glues to his – and they do not sleep in separate rooms that night, or any night afterwards.

***

They’re invited to a gala, by a president or another: whatever the fuck Peebee is making their Jaegers drop through the breeches, they haven’t had to reset a clock in four months. It’s after two boring speeches (Tann and Addison respectively) and a large selection of questionable music that they’re finally allowed to breathe. Most people here anyway are too intimidated to talk to them directly – which is why she eventually finds Jaal alone, in a corner, looking very dashing and very frowny.

Her skin immediately tickles with his own hum of happy approval at her compliment, arousal growing between her legs when he washes over her all the way she looks to him. She extends out an arm, and he’s already halfway to meeting her.

“Dance with me?” she asks, and she thinks her open back dress is the best decision of her life, because that’s the place his palms rest on.

“I don’t know how to dance to these songs,” he hums, though he allows himself to be swayed onto the dance floor.

“If I know how, you know it too.”

He chuckles. “You don’t either.”

“That’s the fun in it.”

She doesn’t let him go.

***

She takes him to visit Scott – after the news of his recovery. It’s more like… she cannot imagine doing this on her own. And better to just get the betrayal out of the way, like ripping a bandage all at once. It’ll hurt now, only to heal better later on.

They look nothing alike, Jaal thinks. And then: they look exactly alike.

It’s clumsier, the absence so long, the link so faint – but they still find their arms around each other. No words, for what feels like an eternity. Jaal does not move from the doorway. Then Scott’s eyes find his, growing wide with realization: maybe about their roles as pilots, maybe about their relationship.

“Sara,” he breathes and his twin looks at him like he is the second most important person in the world. “I am so happy you got to still live.”

***

Turns out, Jaeger pilots can retire. She’s the first to do so.

Sara Ama Darav, Jaal writes into the naked skin of her back, flushed and red and warm, and he leans to press a kiss against her tailbone, where his invisible script ends. Her toes curls, a smile caught at her lips.

#mass effect andromeda #me: andromeda #jaal ama darav #sara ryder #female ryder #jaal/ryder #jaal/female ryder #mass effect #jaal x ryder #pacific rim AU #writing

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