A Bittersweet Almost Goodbye
Commission for @fereldanrenegade, and my very first Mass Effect commission! I was a little nervous about it, but honestly it fell into place as easily as Dragon Age ever has, due in large part to Peach’s excellent character info email (I’m super serious when I say you can’t overload me with info, but also her organization was On Point). Anyway, here, have a thing!
The Citadel apartment was huge, almost hilariously so. Sonya wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry about it, so she did neither. A gift from Anderson, she wasn't quite sure what to make of it. The gift of a place to live just before a potentially (probably) deadly mission could seem like a jab if she didn't know him better than that.
It hadn't come without its difficulties, but those were sorted now. And it was time for a few moments of peace before the last battle. She'd already thrown a last hurrah for the crew, but tonight, this was for her. Well, her and Kelly.
They'd started in the main part of the apartment, at the bar, but once she was tipsy and Kelly had drunk a glass of wine she had confessed that it felt too big, too open, after spending so much time on a ship. They'd moved to the bedroom after that, which was still at least as big as her entire quarters on the Normandy.
Sonya kept Kelly tucked against her side, lightly running her fingers over the woman's arm just to feel her. She had a glass in her hand, still half full, but with the buzz in her head and the feelings in her heart and the woman under her arm, she found herself just swirling the liquid more than drinking it for once.
“And now we come to it,” she murmured, and leaned into the blonde head that tucked itself under her chin. “When I leave this apartment in the morning, I go to war. I go to fight for life itself.” She didn't say when I leave you in the morning because that thought hurt too much, even if it was the truth.
Tender lips found her cheek and she heard the soft click of a wineglass being set on the bedside table. “You're going to be just fine, you know,” Kelly whispered to her, as though speaking louder would cause something to shatter. It wasn't until then that she realized she'd been speaking just as quietly. “You're the great Commander Shepard. You came back from the dead. You'll come back from this, too.”
Sonya’s stomach knotted itself into a bow. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint Kelly, after all. “I can't promise you that, Kelly,” she whispered, her voice cracking just slightly. “I can't promise you that everything is going to be okay, that I'll come sauntering home to sweep you up in my arms. I can't promise anything.”
“I know,” Kelly whispered back, and she could hear the tears in her throat. “I know all that.” Her hand cupped Sonya's cheek and she gently turned her head to meet her eyes. Watery blue met stubbornly clear red-tinted brown and Kelly smiled for her, always so sweet and so understanding and so endlessly supportive, just as she’d always been every since they met on the second Normandy. “But I believe in you. I've seen you do impossible things. I've seen you come back to life. I've seen you break into a Collector ship to save me from certain death. I've seen you face impossible odds more times than I can count. And I'll see you come through the other side of this, too. I have faith that you'll come home to me, like you always do. And I'll keep on having faith until you come home, in whatever way you do.” She choked a little, then, turned her face away to wipe a tear, and this time Sonya turned her face, cupped her cheek.
If a kiss could speak, it told Kelly that she'd try, that she promised she'd do everything she could to come home, to be worthy of her faith. If a kiss could speak, it poured her heart out, described how much she loved her in perfect detail. If a kiss could speak, all the tears that she couldn't shed were shared. If a kiss could speak, it could make Kelly understand the knot in her stomach and the stones in her heart and how absolutely fucking terrified she really was.
A kiss couldn't quite say all that, but Sonya did. Or she tried to, tried to make sense of the jumble of thoughts and feelings that she couldn't pin down, couldn't untangle. And Kelly held her, helped her, and by the time Sonya felt emptied of it all she had her head pillowed on Kelly's stomach, arms around her.
“Take care of the apartment for me,” Sonya murmured. Giving away a gift she'd only just received felt wrong, disrespectful, but if she wasn't here to live in it anyway, what was the harm? Better that Kelly have a nice place to live. And wait…
“I'll keep an eye on it for you,” she vowed. Neither of them said anything more that night, and there was little sleep to be had as they both felt in their bones the dreaded ticking of the clock that would tear them apart come morning.
