The Translation in Blood

Crucible outpost, Reaper War.

To say Hannah Shepard was nervous was probably the biggest understatement ever.

She couldn't make herself stand at the dock with the other people of note, line up and salute as the council boarded. Just watching the ship dock with hers had set her shaking, her teeth chattering with anxious nerves. Torn between elation and terror, she'd all but bolted to her quarters and threw herself into her shower.

The pounding hot water did nothing for her nerves. She's hoped that her emotions and passions had mellowed with age, and believed for a while there that she had... but here she was again. Hands shaking, breath stolen, rubbing her face over and over under the torren of water trying to clear her brain.

After about an hour, she decided it wasn't working.

Her reflection in the steam-painted mirror was no help. Hannah was sure she was mocking herself, a grimace in glass and water painted with heat and air.

The jig is up, she thought. If he doesn't know that you care, he will soon.

Her eyes flicked to the disguised bottle of concealer on her counter. Or not.

Chewing on her bottom lip, she grabbed the jar and a towel, contemplating the former as she wound the latter around her body.

It wouldn't hurt to cover up and meet with him now, try and gauge if her daughter was correct with her feelings or if she was jumping the gun. Hannah didn't know if she could handle the drama of presenting herself to the Turian councilor with every Turian in the room able to see the marks on her face.

Yeah no. No, I think discretion is going to win out here. She worked the lid as she left her bathroom, plopping down on her bed with an irritated grunt as the jar refused to open.

"Dammit," she swore softly.

"Troubles?" Sparatus asked politely from where he stood at her desk.

"No, the damn jar won't-"

Hannah shot to her feet with a startled inhale, and her towel decided her abrupt change in position was too much for it.

So there she was, eyes wide, dripping on her floor, butt naked with a jar of concealer in her hands that still refused to open.

And a Turian staring at her face like he'd been hit by a truck full of Krogan cheeleaders. Male ones.

With batons.

Regardless of where her talents lay as a diplomat and an admiral, Hannah was still a soldier, and naked or not she was not imobile.

Or so she kept telling herself.

It was those eyes, green and piercing and wide with surprise, riveted to her face with an expression of shock and somewhat else she couldn't place. His mandibles were flared and she swore his fringe bristled along his crest. She kept telling herself to move. She needed to move.

Her eyes finally listened to her, tearing away from his face for a split second to glance at the door, but it served only to warn Sparatus of her desire. Still bristling, he growled low in his throat and took a step towards her. The action freed the adrenaline she needed to move, pulling her legs under herself and lunging into a dash for the door.

In her fifties, she was in damn good shape, and she completely ignored her nudity as she dove under Sparatus's arm and slapped her hand against the door lock. She actually made it four steps outside before the two sets of guards, one human, one Turian, immediately stepped in front of her.

Naked, startled, and panting, she had about a half second to accept their immobility before a pair of strong, long, powerful arms swept her back and threw her unceremoniously over the shoulders they belonged to.

Presenting her very fine rear to everyone in the hallway.

"See, gentlemen?" Sparatus rumbled over Hannah's indignant curses, orders, and screaming. "I told you; foreplay." And with their chuckles, he turned back around and walked into her quarters, keying the door to lock behind him.

Embarassed beyond all borders, Hannah flailed until he deposited her on the bed. She was on her feet in a moment, daring to glare up at the two feet he had on her.

"This is an absolute outrage!" she screamed at him, her face red, practically spitting anger at him. "In front of my own- and you just- I thought you would- ...AND YOU BROUGHT THEM INTO IT-"

Sparatus leaned over and gripped her behind the knees, yanking them so she feel backwards, and kept her thighs open as he leaned over her, completely clothed and totally pinning her.

It took her a few more spluttered sentences before she realized what he was doing; he was purring.

When she went quiet, barely seething and just staring at him, his hands threaded into her hair and framed her face in his hands. His eyes ran over the marks she knew he could see, slowing taking in every addition, every modification, tracing a spot with his thumb, tilting her head to see how far a mark went.

While he examined her, she did the same to him. Time had been pretty easy on him, but it could have just been her own biased affection. His darker than before, supple and matte, his fringe longer and sharper, his shoulder broader. Some of the edges of his spurs and ridges were longer, like bone growths, and his eyes...

His eyes were as verdant green and glowing with life as the first time she sank into them.

She didn't notice she was trembling until her teeth began to chatter, and not from cold. Emotion, decades of pent up something-or-other and the ache of loss the last several years, was welling up in her chest, a fountain of anxiety that increased with every second he stayed silent. When the tears started to fall, she gasped his name, a plea for ... anything. He shushed her with the brush of a thumb across her lips.

She closed her eyes when he ran his other hand across the bridge of her nose, tracing the lines of his marks on her skin, traveling up and up until... he paused.

"You ... cut it? Was this because of the design...?" he asked, letting the question hang, eyes traveling up the lines he could see and the stripe that split her crown. She flushed, knowing what he spoke of.

The unexpected side-effect of the lichen was obvious about a month after the inking, when her hair grew back in everywhere but where she'd been inked. It struck her a ironic, and perhaps fitting punishment for how she'd dismissed him. Careful french-braiding hid the naked slash of skin, or other such clever disguising.

She squirmed in his grip, and softly explained the issue with the ink, blushing.

What am I, 18?

"It's the same such stuff, then? From the ravine..." He tilted his head and looked directly into her eyes. "Did you go back just to get this, Hannah?"

With a wiggle of hip and a twist of her pelvis, she freed her legs enough to wrap them around his lean waist, hooking her knees around and squeezing him into her. He gave a soft grunt but was otherwise unsurprised, giving her that Turian smile that she'd missed so much and dream of so often.

He drew a tress around one of his fingers, twirling it around and around, his eyes never leaving hers at the deliberate, familiar caress. He purred when she sighed his name and squeezed him closer, mandibles spreading as he brought his head close and gently kissed her chin.

"Shut up," he murmured. "We have some catching up to do. The men outside have been given orders not to disturb us for at least eight hours-"

Hannah spluttered.

"-by someone who far outranks me," he added.

She blinked at him. "The Prim-"

"Come now. Even he can't pull those kind of strings right now."

He drew his talon down the line of her jaw as she frowned, confused. Then it dawned on her and her cheeks burned pink.

"That little-"

"She's your spitting image, you know," he murmured, something in his tone dampening the fire before it'd even sprung. "It's been hard all these years not to ask about you whenever I spoke to her, had a moment alone or just ran into her. She's tall, and proud, and she holds her shoulders like a soldier and whips her sniper rifle up just like a Turian infiltrator." The pride came off him in waves. She had a hard time keeping him focus; her vision was starting to swim. "Though I hear there's at least one big, tall, Vakarian reason for that."

The way he waggled his brow plates at her made her laugh despite the water in her vision and the choke in her throat. Her arms drew around his neck and she pressed her face into his throat, between his cowl and his neck, and sighed to feel his purr grow louder and his own embrace wind about her.

"I'm so sorry-" she began, the ache and the need to breathe returning. He shushed her and kissed her neck, tightening his grip on her.

"Shut up, you stupid pyjak," he whispered in her ear, drawing back to kiss her. "We're not wasting time on stupid misunderstandings and emotional outbursts. Alright?" He tilted her chin to bring her eyes to his.

She bit her lip, feeling the years slip away; she was younger and caught up in his eyes, distracted and lost and drowning in him, his sharpness, his tender regard. She nodded quickly and whispered, "Alright."

***

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