#jaal x female ryder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pathofcomets · 3 years ago

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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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