Mass Effect 2 - 4 - Thane - Assassination

Plot: A rewriting of all scenes on the Normandy involving Shepard and Thane.

Featuring: FemShep, Thane
Timeline: During ME2
Content: flirting, romance beginning
Fourth part of Mass Effect 2 - Thane Series

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The days that followed her conversation with Thane proved very interesting and challenging for the young woman. Being warned that the Drell had decided to take up her dare, Miridian had expected to dodge his false murdering attempts rather easily, but that was discounting Thane's very large panel of skills in the art of taking life. Of course, as a fair player, she did her best not to change her habits: she kept accepting Gardner's food even though it always resulted containing a fake toxin, continued to go about her everyday business and put herself in possibly risky situations. Her objective in this exercise wasn't to prove that she was smarter than the Drell, but rather to evaluate her response skills to potential assassination.
The results were very satisfying at the beginning, for she evaded all the killer's tries to take her down. She successfully noticed when her food or drinks were poisoned, disarmed all supposedly deadly devices installed inside her cabin and blocked Thane himself when the man would try a more head on approach. It took the crew a couple of days to realize what was going on. Another day to understand that it was merely a joke. And one more for Miranda to actually believe it was one.
Shepard enjoyed this situation. A lot. To her it was an enticing game. As the time passed though, her opponent started putting in place more and more complex schemes. Instead of just going with a raw attack, he would very smoothly set in motion a series of events, sometimes involving Shepard's most trusted friends. The young woman almost lost the contest when an unaware Tali genuinely offered her a poisoned tea as the two of them spoke of Kal'Reegar and the Quarian's feelings about him. How did she avoid the trap? Mere instinct honed by years of prudence... She had never been so close to be assassinated, and yet she knew she was hunted. That spelt talent for the Commander.
On his side, though he would never part from his neutrality mask, Thane seemed to have a lot of fun as well. She could read in his gaze a light of amusement every time she escaped him and a hint of satisfaction when she only did so at the last second. The more they played the more tension rose between them; but it was a playful one, even an exciting one in the Human's opinion, especially since it had started to lead them into somewhat awkward situations. For example, she had once stopped his hand when he had tried to aim a gun at her face while she was sleeping, and had ended pinning him against the floor, half naked. Another time, she'd had to block his neck between her legs inside a narrow duct of the ship where he'd tried to get to her while she was helping with repairs...
All this certainly didn't help tame her growing attraction for the assassin, but it was a formidable way to keep her mind busy and her skills sharp.
The game had gone on for about two weeks when Miridian took a bold decision...
She was alone in the armory, working on some new improvements on her Revenant rifle, when an occasion to put it in practice presented itself. She suddenly felt his presence. Very close. She could have moved, dodged, countered in a second. Instead she remained exactly where she stood, keeping her breathing regular and casual, moving about the pieces of the weapon with dexterity. But as she did so she couldn't help remembering Nassana's guard back on Illium that the assassin had approached in a similar way...
Her fingers were just putting into place a delicate part of the rifle when he attacked. In the span of a heartbeat, a smooth and mild warm scaled hand flattened against her lips, a strong body pressed itself against her back while a second hand seized her cheek and twitched her head brutally on the side. She realized at that very second that, had her trust into Thane been misplaced, the man could have killed her right there and then. The power that she felt in his arms as he mimicked a neck snap would have proved fatal, even to her. But as it was, the man stopped his movement before even hurting her spine and breathed against her ear:
- Dead.
She shivered. The ideas than ran through her mind at that moment would have made the assassin blush, had he known. She wanted to let her head roll backwards to rest it on his shoulder and offer him her neck... The sensation of his palm on her lips and of his chest against her shoulder plates was driving her crazy. Her heart sped up.
Damn it... she was completely done for.
He felt the confused throbbing against his torso and froze, worried to have harmed her. He freed her immediately, unaware that the young woman withheld a cry of protest at being released so soon. She turned to face him and the intensity of her gaze left him dumbstruck.
The baffled light shining in her black eyes, her irregular breathing, her heartbeat running wild... the symptoms were the same for all species and hardly mistakable, even for him.
She wanted him.
That simple thought raised a violent physical turmoil inside him. A fever that hadn't possessed him in years... He recoiled from it, stating instead with as little emotion as he could:
- You heard me. Why did you let me kill you?
"Calm down, Miri..." She told herself silently.
In a second, she was back to normal, but she knew he'd read her confusion. "Better this way", she thought, she never liked hiding anyway.
- I'd always wondered what it felt to fall between the hands of a skilled assassin, she replied playfully. I just wasn't ready to die to sate my curiosity...
She was fully conscious of the flirting implied by her sentence. Hell, she hadn't done that for a long time, but it felt good.
Thane was absorbed by her glittering iris. They had always been appealing, but the flattering hunger he could perceive in them at that moment was throwing him off balance... and onto a field he was far from comfortable with.
- Should we call the end of this hunt? He suggested.
"Hell, no!" The little voice inside her head shouted.
- Yeah, I think it's gone long enough, she answered with a smile.
She returned to her rifle, before adding teasingly:
- You still owe me a sparring session, though.
He stared at her tantalizing nape for a moment then slightly shook his head as to help him get rid of embarrassing ideas.
- Maybe another time, he replied evasively before leaving the armory.
Miridian smiled when she heard the doors close: she was certain now. They would get there eventually...