#shordin

Her voice echoed kindly around him in the Normandy's medical bay. Too kindly, for how chilly the thermometer had been in his mouth and how sterile the lights above him were.

Mordin's eyes narrowed further.

And the bed squeaked as he shifted with annoyance. "No need," he said. "Well enough to keep working. Propagated a bacteria culture myself this morning. Bacillus ryskosis. Very interesting. " He took a breath, ignoring how the air scratched against his throat and how cold he felt. "Not contagious," he added with a smothered cough.

"Mordin," Shepard said, "I'm not letting anyone on this ship work when they're sick."

She was leaning against a counter nearby, watching everything with a troubled expression and her arms crossed. Her freckles had faded with pale concern, matching the cast of his own face.

Mordin's eyes fell back to normal at the sound of her voice. But he waved her concern away with a gesture of his hand that immediately retreated to cover another cough. There were endless things to do as the only research scientist on the Normandy. He had samples to cook, and more bacteria cultures to propagate. And, more importantly, the Collector database wasn't exactly going to analyze itself.

His mind raced through a fog as he thought about all of it. The simple truth of the matter was that he was brilliant and he was harried, and he had places to be that didn't involve inconveniences like sitting around in bed all day. So Chakwas and Shepard would just have to understand, despite the way they were both looking at him.

The bacillus ryskosis would also have to understand, despite its lack of a functioning neural network.

So Mordin stood up to leave, slipping past the combined protests of the human pair, hurrying until he was only a few feet away from the medical bay's entrance. But as his pace grew faster the world began to wobble in his vision, slowly turning sideways.

He took a painful, frustrated breath and immediately leaned against a counter to steady himself.

Shepard paled even further. Her face wobbled at the edge of his vision like everything else. "Is he really going to be all right?" she asked Chakwas.

"Oh, he'll be fine," Chakwas answered. "But doctors are absolutely terrible patients," she added. "I know because I'm one of the worst. He might need supervision to make sure he rests properly."

And then Chakwas gracefully held out the vial of liquid dextromethorphan to Mordin. He began debating under his breath if it was more embarrassing to take the vial or keep clutching the counter like he was enduring an earthquake.

He stared at the vial for a moment. "Would have prescribed four milligrams," he said, but took it.

"Only so you could keep working," Chakwas replied with a knowing smile. "Now, I'm assigning Shepard to make sure you get your rest. I'm sure you won't mind."

Mordin blinked down at the vial, then glanced at his free hand still clutching the edge of the counter. Chakwas obviously thought that she was sweetening the deal before she thoroughly knocked him out. But the truth was that it was very important to Mordin, lone research scientist of the Normandy SR-2, that Shepard didn't worry about him. He made a point of not letting her take care of him at all.

He wasn't concerned with himself, or the dust on his uniform and the long hours he kept. And if he could have just hidden in the lab and then come out again when he felt better, as bright and quick as usual, that would have been ideal.

He glanced uneasily at Shepard, who remained pale and watched him with fracturing patience. "I'll pull rank on you if you try to go back to work, Professor Solus," she said, lifting her chin slightly.

Mordin smiled a little at that despite himself. She never pulled rank on him about anything. "Understood, Commander," he said.

Chakwas nodded with approval. "Doctor's orders," she added. "You'll feel better when you wake up."

Mordin sniffed with an air of outnumbered dignity, then drank the medicine. It tasted like cherries.

Shepard smiled at him. "Come on," she said and helped him up.

Mordin's eyelid's wavered as she led him to the elevator. "You're going to take a hot bath," she was saying to him, with the same firm voice that she used to convince strangers to pour out their deepest secrets to her. "And then I'll bring you some tea. Gardner probably has some civvies in the storage deck that you can wear as pajamas until you feel better."

And as the elevator ascended Shepard unhooked his weapons, then his omni-tool, frowning while she thought about something. She paused for another moment, then reached up and took his silver audio-input device off of his shoulders. Mordin's eyes widened as she unceremoniously turned him around and yanked the entire thing from its place on his back.

Mordin glanced over his shoulder and down at her, trying not to smile and beginning to fail while she manhandled him. "Realize the subdued state might be tempting, Shepard," he said. He cleared his throat with a wince. "Try to restrain yourself."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at him, holding everything in her arms. "Excuse me?"

He couldn't help himself, not even with every word burning against his throat. He turned around again. "Intent to undress on full display," he explained, a little proudly. "Understandable, of course. Human hormone cycle. Attractive salarian pigmentation. Problematic considering the bacterial circumstances."

Shepard smirked and looked up at him through strands of red hair. "Mordin, I don't think you need to worry, " she said, almost teasingly. "I'm very good at not even trying to kiss you, remember?"

"Indeed," he agreed with a dip of his head. "The very best."

But, if Shepard was going to kiss anyone at all, it would have been him. Mordin felt a little smug about that. He was obviously her favorite.

And having her fuss over him wasn't as bad as he thought it would be, even in such a state. On the contrary, it was vaguely endearing. They entered her cabin. And after he took a long shower, breathing in hot steam and feeling a little regretful about the lost potential for the world of science that day, Mordin found himself in Shepard's bed wrapped in every warm blanket she had. The white jellyfish in her aquarium drifted like clouds nearby while she tucked him in.

Mordin said, "Worrying, Shepard. No need for it."

Her hands hesitated, clutching military issue gray wool. She looked embarrassed suddenly and pulled them away. "You're right," she said. "I don't ever know what to do when people get sick."

"Understandable," he replied. "Can't shoot a cold. Penchant for destruction mostly useless. Feelings of helplessness lead to irritation, lead to worry."

Shepard nodded. "My usual strategy is to drown people in omni-gel or find you and release an antidote into an H-VAC system, I guess."

He smiled at that. "Good strategy."

She patted his chest affectionately, and then stood up. Mordin watched her go until he was alone in the blankets with a click of the door sliding closed behind her. And it was in the silence, with nothing more than the gentle burble of the filters in the aquarium, that Mordin acknowledged how terrible he felt. His head pounded with pain and he felt vaguely dizzy. The medicine had yet to take effect.

The bacillus ryskosis was truly a villain, he thought. It would be prudent to eradicate it from the galaxy when he felt better. He glanced at the door again, wondering if Shepard would set aside funding for the endeavor. He knew she probably would.

He calculated the costs and then the equipment needed until she came back. And Shepard carried a steel teapot on a tray from the mess. She set it on the nightstand next to him and poured him a cup of tea. "How are you feeling?" she asked as she handed it to him.

Mordin held the hot cup carefully in his bare hands. He patted his throat with a finger.

Shepard frowned. "Still? Even with the medicine?"

He nodded. His throat felt like sandpaper, and he drank the tea in a single gulp.

Shepard sighed, then looked around the cabin. "Well, we should probably get you something to do so you don't go completely stir crazy. I don't have a vid screen in here, but I could get you some music or something."

Mordin looked down at the empty cup, tapped his finger on it. At any other time, he would have said yes to music. His thoughts were racing through his brain without distraction or outlet. But he shook his head, unsteadied by even the simple movement. Percussion would have ended him. Worse, he might be tempted to sing along.

Shepard took the cup from him and set it on the nightstand. She tucked the blanket over his shoulders again. "It's strange to see you so quiet," she murmured. "I don't think I've ever seen you just... not talk."

Mordin took a breath. "Don't like the silence," he managed to say, pushing through the pain and trying to hide his unease. "Troublesome. Lots of thoughts. Ideas. Regrets. Prefer to get them out during the day."

She glanced at him. "Does it work?"

Mordin tilted his head as he thought about it. Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes.

Shepard nodded at the unspoken answer and sat down at the edge of the bed. Mordin knew that she wasn't a stranger to being haunted by the past, if her own tendency toward a lack of sleep was any indication. "Do you want me to talk for a while so you don't have to?" she asked him.

He glanced at her in surprise. Shepard was more of a listener, in his experience.

His throat was already beginning to throb from the exertion of speaking at all. "Would enjoy that, actually," he still said.

Shepard smiled and said, "Do you care about the subject?"

Mordin shook his head, clearing his throat again. He shifted beneath the blankets and his hand slipped along his own bare side before he settled it on his stomach. Bare skin met bare skin, etched with lines. Mordin hesitated, thinking about it, and then left it there. It was an unusual sensation without the gloves.

And he felt as if he was sinking for a moment, lost in blankets and pajama pants and the waning relief of the hot tea. Vulnerability wasn't a feeling that he was used to, or enjoyed in the slightest.

"I wonder what I should talk about," Shepard said to herself. She settled next to him and distracted him with a shift of the mattress. Blankets began to accumulate around her while she tucked herself in with him. "I guess I could tell you about when I became a Spectre. You missed that part."

Mordin felt his interest pique and took his hand away from his stomach, settled it at his side again. And then Shepard, usually a quiet person in favor of listening to others, began to tell him about it. She leaned against his shoulder.

"The whole thing started when Nihlus boarded the Normandy. Joker thought he was really suspicious." She paused, frowned a little at the memory. "I agreed with him, even though I regret it now. I'd never met a Spectre before, didn't have much experience with turians. When we went to the Citadel I'd never even been to the Presidium before."

The warmth of the blankets combined with her voice and surrounded him. It was low, with a soft pitch of affection whenever she smiled at him.

Listening to her was soothing. And, halted by his own forced journey into silence, Mordin began to travel with Shepard's words, walking along the Presidium with her while she marveled at the lake and the embassies for the first time. She described the Council chambers to him, and then the restaurants full of executives and diplomats. And Shepard explained to him quietly, almost aimlessly, about a bar called Flux where a volus named Doran had taught her to dance. She laughed a little when she remembered it.

"He taught me all of my best moves," Shepard said, glancing at him with a dry smile that was very self-aware.

In the slowing fog of his thoughts, Mordin almost felt that he was looking out the windows of Flux with her. He had never been there. He supposed that the medicine was finally taking effect, stronger by the moment.

The watery lights of the wards trembled as he watched them, veiled by both of their reflections on the glass. "Will have to send a thank you note for the entertainment," he said.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Hey, No talking, Mister."

Mordin glanced over at her and smiled. "Apologies."

She shook her head a little but smiled up at him. Then she placed her hand over his mouth in the cabin, willing him into silence, and winked at him in Flux. "So," she continued, leading him toward the neon evening of the wards, "When we couldn't convince the Council that Saren had shot Nihlus, we went looking for clues."

Mordin closed his eyes and listened. Shepard led him through the alley and the firefight to save Tali, then headed to C-Sec where she pointed out the orange tinted trees that grew without sunlight. They stepped into an elevator where tinny music played on the speakers.

Mordin reached out as they ascended, unsteadied by the idea of percussion, and took Shepard's hand in the blankets.

And when he tried to open his eyes again, the cabin was made of dim shadows and the gentle noise of the aquarium mixing with her voice. It was soft and insubstantial. Mordin wasn't quite sure if Shepard was still talking, or if he was dreaming in broken fragments. He knew that he was still holding her hand.

He reached out, placing his other arm over her to anchor himself, cupping her shoulder. In the haze, her voice paused and then continued again.

"Mordin," she was saying quietly to him, "are you all right?"

He settled against her, with his head resting against her collarbone. He could hear her heart beating at eighty-one beats per second. He closed his eyes.

The jellyfish floated like clouds above the Presidium's lake while she continued the story.

And it was during the second Council meeting that Mordin fell completely asleep, holding onto Shepard beneath the blankets while he watched her in the growing crowd of the Council Chambers. Shepard stepped forward to become the first human Spectre in history, and Mordin finally lost the battle against the eleven grams of dextromethorphan.

He really would have prescribed four milligrams, he thought as he faded.

He relaxed completely and drifted to sleep. Here was Shepard's red hair, he thought as he did so. The smooth fabric of her shirt, pressed against his skin. The sound of very soft breathing that he had come, over time, to associate so closely with her presence. The smell of the tea on the nightstand.

And Shepard saved the Citadel while he slept next to her.

He knew that she would.

Mordin dreamt of clouds against a blue sky above red trees. And when he awoke a few hours later, he took a deep breath. The cabin greeted him with its firm and less medicated reality. He noted that the air didn't scratch against his throat anymore. It was a simple matter to dig himself out of the blankets and pillows and sit up. He didn't even feel dizzy.

"Salarian physiology," Mordin said to himself, feeling smug at the advantage. He would be able to go back to work now.

In fact, he remembered that it was just about time for the latest samples to be done cooking down in the lab. He moved to get out of the bed, theorizing that if he was quick enough he might even have time to create a few extra ocular flash-bang implants for the crew before evening. His uniform lay waiting for him, draped over the couch. He picked up the black and red undersuit, and then the dented armor stained with dust. He picked up the shoulder speaker.

But Mordin looked down at everything gathered up in his arms, then back to Shepard. She was fast asleep beneath the pile of blankets, breathing softly and steadily.

He hesitated as he watched her. Mordin had always been impressed that the various biological uncertainties and impossibilities that made up Shepard's existence could combine in such a way in private. She was a hurricane of precise, tactical violence out on the battlefield. She was kind on her ship, a little temperamental but still beautiful and intense. He had never been surprised that she was the first human Spectre, nor that someone would go to such lengths to save her from the fate of Alchera.

They must have missed her, he thought to himself. He would have. Shepard was, after all, very good at not even trying to kiss him.

But occasionally he would point to his cheek, leaning over in the lab, and she'd kiss him there. After all, if Mordin was ever going to kiss anyone at all, it would have been her.

And so he watched her for a moment, blinking slowly. Then he left the uniform with its dust on the couch and headed back to the bed. He sank into the blankets again and pressed his forehead against hers.

Shepard opened her eyes, still mostly asleep. "Mordin?" she said quietly.

Mordin wrapped his arms around her, smiled when she did the same. "A pleasant occupation," he began singing very softly to her, "for a rather susceptible professor..."

 * * *

Beneath the crisp lights of the Normandy, Shepard sees more.

Mordin presses a finger to his lip and holds it there, eyes flitting about the lab.  A soft hum of appreciation sounds from his throat.

“Let me know what you need,” Shepard begins, “and I’ll get it for you.”

“No budgetary concerns.  Hmm.” He says it less like a question and more like a confirmation.

Shepard crosses her arms and nods.  “Cerberus will provide you with anything you require, so long as you can get the job done.”

Mordin tuts then, his hand falling back to his side as he pitters around the table.  “Expected Cerberus’ extensive funds.  Did not expect generosity of such to non-human contracts.”  He glances back at her with little more than acknowledgement. “Still, could not ask for more challenging proposition.  Excited to get to work.  Will need time, Shepard.  No distractions.”  With that, he turns from her, fingers already tapping along the terminal’s keys.

She stands there in the lab’s threshold for a moment after his abrupt dismissal.  And then she makes her way from the room, his unexpected hum of farewell following her through the corridor.

 * * *

She finds herself in the Tech Lab most days, her mug of coffee leaving a perpetual ring stain along the tabletop beside the research station.  In the time between missions, she makes herself useful. It is easier to mindlessly sift through omni-tool updates and ship-wide performance reports, than to stare up at her cabin’s skylight from the vast emptiness of her bed, to watch the stars drift past – the same stars she had drowned in two years past.

She rubs a hand down her face and stares blearily at the screen.

She doesn’t realize it’s well into the night cycle until Miranda is on her comm., checking in for her shift.

Mordin has been singing.

Shepard notices it like a sudden splinter, a prickling of awareness beneath her skin, adamantly wedging itself into her periphery.

She glances back at him, maybe for the first time, and he takes notice, lips turning up in an acknowledging smile.

“You…you sing?”  Her words leave her before she has time to taste them along her tongue.

He hums his agreement, a single note of affirmation, song suddenly aborted.

Her brows narrow as she turns in her stool, one foot brought up on the lower rung. “I guess I never would have pegged you for it, all science-y and all.”  She wiggles her fingers with the words.

He cocks his head in question.  “Strange, unfounded supposition,” he says, not accusingly.

She doesn’t rightly know why she had thought it, now that he comments on it.

He seems to understand, and goes back to his work, nodding.  “Music, sound constructed in time. Follows patterns, often cyclical,  but many dynamic factors.  Must account for pitch, rhythm, structure, sonic differentiation of texture.  Still –”  Mordin pauses, pulls a single stiff breath through his nostrils, dark eyes focused on the terminal before him.  “Offers some element of the unknown – the unquantifiable.  Uniquely intriguing to the, hmm,” – an amused chuckle – “’science-y’ type.”

Shepard blinks at him, all the stars and dark space and cold, frozen worlds of her past drifting by.  Until she is staring unabashed, lungs stilled, fingers itching with a familiarity she cannot recall.

She remembers music.

But she also remembers silence – in the airless tomb of her exo-suit, the spinning, intangible whirl of stars as she drifted, grasping uselessly, the thin fissure across her helmet’s visor that threatened to break into a thousand irreparable, inevitable cracks.

How even her gasp for air was soundless.

Pitch, rhythm, structure.

Miranda’s impatient ping to her omni-tool breaks Shepard’s focus, and then she is grasping for her mug and moving voicelessly back into the main hall, the door sliding closed behind her.

Mordin glances at the stained ring left from her coffee.  He doesn’t wipe it.

 * * *

Shepard switches from her assault rifle to her shotgun just a fraction of a second too late.  The krogan bearing down on her takes a shot to its shoulder, but it’s still moving, still barreling toward her, her back to the rock, heat sink still empty, arm coming up as meager cover when her shields fail.

The krogan slams into her at half speed and then abruptly stills when a shock of ice blinds her, her already ragged armguard cracking, splintering at the elbow where a sharp, instant freeze stabs at the joint.  She winces, breath knocked from her, but she has enough mind to push the frozen beast from her, releasing a shotgun blast into its face and watching it slump to the ground beneath shards of ice.

She looks right and sees the smoking barrel of Mordin’s submachine rifle, iced at the edge where his Cryo Blast had burst forth.

“Bravado understandable, Shepard, but not recklessness.”  He cocks the reload on his rifle and steps back behind cover.

She is already honing in on the coming vorcha, but her mouth smarts with a retort too long dead. She glances at her exposed elbow, the cracked, blackened skin of frostbite suddenly jarring.

Her blood seeps between her teeth.

 * * * 

Mordin gently pulls the sheet back over the krogan corpse, his slender fingers whispering over the material, flies greedily hovering just above, lying in wait. He releases the sheet just past the crown of its head and they descend.

Shepard watches with dark, static eyes.

“So much waste,” he murmurs – mournfully, if she thought too long about it.

Hefting her rifle to her other arm, Shepard stands with her weight on one hip. “I recall reading about your infiltration of Weyrloc Clan’s agricenter.”

He glances up at her, blinking stoically, but otherwise still.

Shepard attempts to clear the accusation from her voice, but she knows some taint of it has seeped in regardless.  “You didn’t seem so concerned with female krogan deaths then.”

The sharp breath he sucks between his teeth in dismay brands her, barely discernible if she hadn’t been looking for it.  She doesn’t look away when he stares at her.

The skin around his jaw tightens with his steady swallow.  “Actions then were necessary, unavoidable. Couldn’t risk rising growth of krogan birth rate, or political fallout if results of testing published.  Covert operation was only viable option for continued peace.”  He spreads those slender, ghosting fingers along the medical bed’s edge.  “It had to be done.”

“You had to perpetuate the lie.”  Her answer comes quicker than either expects.

Mordin cocks his head, lips pursed.  “May judge my actions as subversive of current galactic ethics, Shepard, but cannot deny the differentiation between keeping status quo – ” he hesitates, thrums a single finger in tense thought along the table, and then continues, “ – between suppressing possible catastrophic power shift to entire galactic civilization and…and…” His furiously blinking eyes shift to the sheet-covered corpse, dark stains already seeping through the thin cloth.  “And this,” he ends on a near whisper.

Shepard watches him in expectant silence a while.

“Females at agricenter…not a vain sacrifice,” he offers to her silence.

“According to you.”

He looks up at her then.

Sighing, Shepard leans one palm along the table and inclines toward him, the bloodied corpse still between them, the flies still circling in their hunger.  “But you still remember them, don’t you?” she presses, hoping for something she can’t put to words.  “You still remember when you put them down.”

His eyes narrow, trying to discern her intent, his hands slipping from the table edge.  “Will always remember.”  The somberness with which he says it seems to seep into his shoulders and flood out into the air around them, until even the shadows of the room have dulled into a vague but persistent anchor at their feet.

“You know, I used to envy how easy you seemed to ‘forgive and forget’, how easy you made moving on seem.”  She motions to him with one waved finger in his direction, a casual allegation, before it curls into her palm, fist pressing back into the table.

She doesn’t give much mind to the slickness beneath her knuckles, the warmth of something wet trickling over the table edge.

“But it turns out, memory’s a bitch even to salarians.”

She pulls from her lean and walks from him then. She doesn’t wipe the blood from her gloves.

 * * *

The Medbay’s lights are as crisp and stark as the Tech Lab’s, and for a moment, she confuses the two upon waking.  Shepard blinks groggily up at the ceiling panels, her vision still inking black at the edges.

It isn’t the pain that wakes her.

There’s something lighter – tender even – insinuating itself into her consciousness, beneath her skin, into her bones.  Until she is full of it.

Mordin’s song.

She glances about the room until she sees him, tinkering with something far beyond her scope of scientific ability in a petri dish beside Chakwas’ secondary terminal.  She ignores the throbbing in her muscles, the tearing pain in her side.

She ignores many things these days.

Her hand goes to her ribs and her grunt of pain seems to catch his attention, because he stops humming, hands stilling over the petri dish, his omni-tool flashing closed.  He turns slightly, so that he is gazing over his shoulder at her. His lip quirks upward with the subtle touch of reassurance.  “Ah. Finally awake, hmm?”  He turns back to his work.

“How long has it been?”  Her words are like chalk on her tongue.  She thinks about getting up, but the lulling effect of his presence slows her limbs. Instead, she lays still along the bed and flits her gaze back to the ceiling panels.

Mordin glances to his omni-tool, alight once more. “Four hours, thirty-seven minutes.”

“The Collector ship?” she asks on a sigh.

“Not in pursuit,” he answers succinctly, back still to her.  “EDI can provide updates on current findings.  Illusive Man still calling every hour.  Doctor Chakwas refused inducing consciousness though, told him ‘If it’s the only sleep she ever gets aboard this ship, then I’m damn well not going to be the one to wake her from it.”  He chuckles then, his shoulders lifting with the sound.  And then he stops, his hands hovering to a halt over his new find from the Collector ship.  Glancing back at her, his mouth creases into a frown.  “Do you…require her presence?” he asks hesitantly, eyes flitting over her form.  He half-turns to her, arms held awkwardly at his sides, as though he is unsure.  

But Shepard has never seen him unsure, and the possibility brings a small smile tugging at her lips at the sight.  “No, Mordin.  That’s alright.”

He cocks his head at her.

“Just…give me a minute.”  She closes her eyes and keeps her hand to her tender ribs.  When she doesn’t hear a response, she opens one eye to catch him standing tentatively in the same place, dark eyes on her.  His lips make a tight, pursed line.

“Don’t stop on my account,” she tells him, settling back along the bed, eyes closing once more.  After several quiet seconds, she hears him returning to work.  After several seconds more, she lets out a faint whisper that is more plea than anything.  “I meant your humming, too.”

Another silence – this one like a clench of air in her lungs.  The room is too small for such quiet, and she fears that both of them may know this.

But then, he sings.  Something foreign, but steady and calm.

Pitch, rhythm, structure.

She listens to every note and doesn’t fall asleep. Instead, she is blaringly awake.

Agonizingly aware.

 * * *

“Oh god,” she murmurs, before retching onto the grimy tile again, the stark light of Afterlife’s neon sign cascading over her form as she kneels on her hands and knees off a side alley.

She can hear Mordin sigh behind her.  “Warned about dubious alcoholic beverages.  Did not listen.”

“Oh shut up,” she moans behind the curtain of her hair, fingers curling along the floor.  Another wave overcomes her and she coughs up a string of bile, one hand pushing the hair away from her cheek unsuccessfully.  “Just…just hold my hair, okay?”

“Hmm?”

She glances over her shoulder, eyes wet and face bursting red from the exertion.  “Just hold my damn hair back, will you?”  She watches him blink dumbly at her before kneeling down beside her.  She leans back slightly on her haunches, knees aching from when she had dropped unceremoniously to the hard tile.  She sniffs loudly, eyes rolling shut in exhaustion.

And then there is the gentle, hesitant pressure of his fingers along her scalp, pulling her dark hair cautiously from her face. Strands slip forward again, but he recaptures them easily.  He almost loses his grip when she shoots forward to retch again, but he follows her down, fingers threaded in her hair.

When she is sure she is finished, she reaches a hand back and grasps shakily for his sinewy wrist.  He lets her hold him there while she breathes.  The heel of his weathered palm is cool at the nape of her neck.

 * * *

Mordin’s fingers light against the permanent ring stain left from her coffee mug along the research table.  He stares at it, the pads of his fingers trailing along the stain and then to the edge of the table.  He pulls a weighted, silent breath through his lungs and blinks his fathomless eyes at the ring.

Shepard comes through the door then, a soft whoosh signaling her entrance.

He glances up at her, hand falling back to his side.  The grooves and marks of his rust-colored skin are apparent in the stark Normandy light.

Shepard blinks at him, standing in the threshold, hands holding two mugs before her.  Her gaze flits to the coffee stain on the table, then back to him.

Somewhere off in the distance, too far for them to see this night, the Omega relay gleams in brilliant uncertainty, a threatening, red-hazed orb.  Tomorrow, it will be behind them, and Shepard wonders if that will be a comfort or a menace.

“Coffee?” she offers meagerly, her hands motioning with the twin mugs in her grip, shoulders shrugging in apprehension.

Mordin scrunches the wrinkles around his nostrils in mild distaste, but he’s conscious enough to try to hide the motion, instead turning to the lab’s far window.  “Stimulant unnecessary, Shepard, especially of such…hmm, undesirable taste.”

She hides her disappointment well, a thinning smile gracing her lips.  She nods – once, then twice, though not so sure – her eyes landing on the mugs. “More for me then,” she says, voice low as she turns to leave.

“Coffee unwanted, but perhaps…conversation?”

His voice catches her attention before the doors can slide open before her.  She pauses, glances back over her shoulder, eyes flitting over his face.

That soft, worn smile, perhaps not blatantly inviting, but subtle in its encouragement.

She walks back into the room.  “I’d like that.”

She likes more than that, though she does not voice it this night, nor any of the nights after when she sits and wonders at her survival, the Omega relay only a memory in the distance.

She wonders at her lasting.

 * * *

It is many months before Shepard sees him again, amidst Cerberus bombardment and the secrets of Sur’Kesh.  She stills, only barely, the urge to raise her palm to his cheek, to know he is real, to remind herself that some things last.

Instead, she blinks gleaming, salt-tinged eyes at him, fingers curling into her gloved palms, a vacant, disbelieving tilt of her mouth.

If she thinks too hard about it, she will realize that missing him wasn’t the hardest part.

It was not knowing whether she was missed as well.

And then there is an explosion in the elevator, and she throws herself back, hitting the ground hard, hip-first, her frostbite-scarred elbow slamming into the tile.  The hiss she releases in pain brings Mordin to her side instantly. When she blinks through the fog, he is tugging her up, and in the moments they re-access their exit route, Shepard focuses on the pressure of his fingers under her forearm, the slight downward lilt of his lips when he eyes her critically, gauging her condition.

But she is the first to speak.  “Are you okay?”

When he sees she has no lasting damage, his eyes alight with something she might have called mischief if she had known him better.

But she knows him far less, still, than she is ever likely to be satisfied with.

“All outer extremities accounted for,” he replies lightly, pausing before glancing up to indicate his shorn off horn.  “Mostly,” he finishes on a chuckle, glancing back down to her, releasing his hold of her arm.  His smile is something singular and private.

At the same time Shepard discovers she is in love with him, she also discovers that they may not live long enough for it to matter.

 * * *

When she comes to him in the Medbay, he is still leather-lined and pock-marked; she is still a cross-stitch of memory and fabrication.

“I suppose there are worse places to have found you in,” she tells him, referring to their recent incursion on Sur’Kesh as she leans back on the table ledge next to him with a smirk.

Mirroring her position beside her, Mordin stares out past the Medbay windows, past where even Shepard is unsure she can follow.  “Certainly can’t claim conditions were ‘amiable’ when essentially planning subterfuge amidst colleagues but –” and here he laughs, short and rueful, his tongue holding back the sound after a second, “- reminiscent of former STG days.  Dangerous, covert, stimulating.  Good to be back in action.”  His fingers are a breath from hers along the table, though neither moves to get closer.

They share a look – maybe nostalgic, maybe content.

Quite possibly regretful if they looked any further.

Shepard tears her gaze away first, back toward the window.  “You always were a risk-taker, though you’d never admit it.”

“Not the only risk-taker in the room,” he supplies.

She smiles then.  Actually smiles.  It is such a foreign feeling she doesn’t know whether to laugh or wail or stay deadly, unaccusingly still.

Maybe then she could feign away this clutch of her heart.

“Some risks are worth taking,” she answers, pushing off from the ledge and heading toward the door.  She halts just before exiting, turning to nod at him in tender farewell.

When Mordin catches sight of the darkened, scarred patch of skin along her elbow, just below the rolled sleeve of her uniform, his throat tightens, fingers curling spastically along the table edge.

She is gone before he can open his mouth in retort, or agreement, or anything more than silence.

This silence they have each let settle between them like rust.

 * * * 

“Had to be me.  Someone else might have gotten it wrong.”

How she hates the words.  How she hates even more the quiet determination with which he says them, eyes turned toward the tower, shoulders sagged with the weight of inevitable responsibility.

Around their arrested forms, the Shroud is slowly disintegrating, debris and shrapnel falling all around them.  She has no time, and he has no alternative, and in the midst of all this, Shepard finds that the words she needs are simple.

“I’ll keep you with me,” she whispers to him amidst the fiery hail.

Somehow, he hears her.  Somehow, he turns to her.

Somehow, she thinks it might be enough.

“Here,” she emphasizes, one trembling, gloved fist thumping against her plated chest.  “I’ll keep you with me here.”

Tuchanka’s sun is a blaze of fire at the back of her neck, her helmet sitting forgotten on the stone steps.  Embers flare around them, sand blasting her cheeks in the wind, and smoke curls around her boots, the ground quaking beneath her with a promising rumble.  It reminds her that even Reapers may die.

But memory does not.

“I’ll keep your memory,” she breathes, stepping closer.  

She knows she will never be close enough.

He grasps for her elbow, wiry, purposeful fingers anchoring her to him, curling along her armguard.  It is the most desperate she has ever seen him.

He watches her with dark, unnervingly wide eyes. His lips purse, the harsh wrinkles around his mouth tightening.  He dips his head down, his fingers flexing over her elbow.  A sound leaves him that is somewhere between a sigh and a choke. “Only wish to have something…greater to offer…than a memory.”  He doesn’t look at her, instead keeping his eyes trained on her shoulder, but the way his body inclines toward hers says more than either has ever put to words.

Just his proximity.  Just the sureness of his touch on her arm.  Just the soft exhale of his breath between them.

She releases a tremulous chuckle to mask her terror, a hand coming up to cover her mouth as she blinks back the salt-sting of tears.  “Careful, Mordin.  For a moment there, I was beginning to think you liked me.”

“More than liked, Shepard,” he mumbles.  “More than a moment.”

She stills, palm cupped over her mouth.

He looks up at her then, a secret, sacred smile gracing his lips.  His touch along her elbow lightens, and then slides down the length of her arm, until he is grasping at her hand, stiff, slender fingers pressing against her gloved palm.  He holds her there amidst the destruction for what might have been moments or might have been ages.

Neither seems quite long enough.

Another sigh, his head cocked to the side.  And then his mouth – that tender, exquisite thing – opens for the last time.   “Go.”

She fumbles as his hand pushes her away.  He steps back from her.

“Mordin,” she half-moans, half-cries, breathless, aching – feverish.

He says nothing as he releases her, whisking away into the elevator and up and up and into the Shroud where she would follow if she hadn’t promised him.

If she hadn’t promised to keep him.

Bits of concrete rain around her, the air trembling with the explosions.  She stumbles through her haze back to the vehicle, her eyes skyward.

The blaze of the Shroud’s implosion isn’t near as blindly as she expects.

Tuchanka’s sun never seems to set.

 * * *

Years later, she finds her fingers move to that scarred, dark patch of skin along her elbow when she thinks too long about the past. Because some things never leave you, and Shepard knows this lesson best.

Like an old frostbitten wound.

Like a ring stain of coffee along the Normandy’s research desk.

Like his song in her bones.

Like rust.  Like memory.

Sometimes when she wakes, she spreads her hand over the empty space beside her on the bed and imagines his warmth.  She keeps her windows open, the red sun always at her back. She knew, before she even knew she loved him, that one day she would look for him and he would be gone.

But she keeps him, even still.

She keeps him.