A/N: Bioware owns all. Thank you, subscribers and reviewers! Sorry so slow. Life gets in the way sometimes.

1 Month Ago

Jack Harper dreamed of Shanxi, more so lately than ever before. The Artifact loomed and gleamed and hummed into his bones. Its shape made no sense. Its curves conformed to no mathematical formula that Harper could discern. His favorite part—the worst part—was when the Artifact gave him all the time he needed to try to discern it. He measured the Artifact, sometimes using an old-time measuring tape, sometimes with an omni-tool. Harper would take a pencil and paper and plug the numbers he'd collected into formulas he had never learned. Sometimes he had a calculator, too. Sometimes his calculator and his omni-tool fought for dominance, and that led to a new tributary of the dream altogether. It always led into the blue light.

Jack Harper dreamed of blindness. He pushed Ben away from the Artifact, and the blue light burned away the universe. Sometimes it was still Eva's voice that called his name; something to grasp in the all-consuming blue abyss, but these days it was usually Shepard's. Ben's high-pitched giggle came from everywhere, as if the scene were taking place onstage in an ancient auditorium. The maddening cackle drowned out all other sound until it became something wholly different: the roar of a thousand Reapers.

"They're inside us," Ben whispered, his voice somehow a part of and separate from the Reapers' unholy blare. "They've always been inside us."

Jack Harper fell into the cerulean void, dissipating into a centillion fragments.

The blue light of Shepard's aquarium and the hum of the Normandy's systems brought Harper's thoughts briefly to these unsettling dreams. The sound of his alias on Shepard's lips yanked him back into the present.

"John, please," she said, more frustrated than needy. "Just… say it again."

She'd taken his momentary silence as a tease. So much the better. On Illium, Harper had felt an overwhelming urge to reveal himself a man, rather than the monster Shepard liked to imagine he was. Now, in the electric blue of her quarters, he found that impulse conspicuously absent. The idea that he was a beast without conscience, without the capacity for tender emotion, appealed to him just then, as clearly it did to her. Her sanctimony with regard to him might live to see another day, but the rest of her would fracture tonight. When the time was right, she would shatter as he did at the end of those terrible, beautiful dreams.

Harper said it again, nice and slow. He enunciated every syllable, with particular emphasis on the hard consonants. He drew out the r's like the slavering animal she wanted him to be. Shepard closed her eyes again. Her knees drew up slightly, as if by their own accord, and her right hand found its way to her clavicle. Her left hand clutched at the sheet.

Shepard tilted her head down and licked the pad of her right thumb. With her fingers she slid her tank top down and off her breast, then swirled her thumb around her hardening nipple.

"Then what?" she breathed.

He was so hard for her it was painful. But this was not just about getting off; it was about control, and proving a point. And then getting off.

"Then..." Harper took a long drag from his cigarette. "Then I will probably have breakfast."

Shepard's eyes opened and she scowled. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's the most important meal of the day, you know," Harper continued. "I was thinking Belgian waffles. Do you like Belgian waffles? With the war on it's difficult to find real whipped cream, but I have my ways."

"Really, John? That's where we're going with this?" Shepard snarled. "Waffles?"

"You look chilly," Harper smirked. "Maybe you should cover up."

A litany of curses in several languages fell from Shepard's mouth. Rather than follow the Illusive Man's helpful suggestion, she tore the tank top from her torso. "I'm not chilly, you smug fuck. I'm… GAH!"

"But you just said I left you cold, didn't you? Frankly, I don't see what you're so upset about," Harper said coolly, as he instinctively dodged the tank top that flew at his projected face. "There's nothing more between us, remember? Or, am I confused? What am I missing?"

"Nothing," Shepard said. "It's nothing. You're not confused."

"Oh, I think I must be," Harper replied, unabashedly staring at her pert breasts. "If you're not cold…"

"What do you want from me? I mean, you came here…"

"Yes…"

"You came here, all power-tripping like you haven't failed to achieve every objective you've put forth since this war began..."

"Shepard," Harper replied, his hands at his heart in mock-offense. "You wound me."

The Commander shook her head and laughed a little bit. "All the trouble you must have gone through to get to me. Smuggling that communicator on board…"

"Trust me; it was no trouble at all."

"What, then?" Shepard asked. "You can't fuck me from wherever you are. You can only watch. Like the old days. Feeling nostalgic, John? You want me to touch myself for you?"

Harper pretended to think about it. "Do you want to?"

"I…" Shepard blinked. She furrowed her brow. "I don't know. I think I'd rather you touched me."

Harper's heart seemed to still. "Meet me on Elysium," he breathed. "You can be there by tomorrow night."

"I can't. There's a war on, remember?" Shepard said quietly. "And we're not on the same side anymore. If we ever were."

"We always were," Harper declared. "Tell your crew you're off to fetch something for morale. Some… artifact."

If Shepard noticed the curious inflection in the Illusive Man's voice, she did not say so. Instead, she smirked. "Give me Kai Leng and I'll consider meeting you."

"Meet me and I'll consider giving you Leng," Harper shot back.

"Just like that?" Shepard raised an eyebrow.

"Just like that," Harper nodded.

Shepard took a deep breath. "Maybe," she said. "But not tomorrow. I need a week."

"One week," Harper agreed. "Elysium."

"Maybe," Shepard reiterated. "But for now…"

"Yes?"

Shepard reached under her pillow and grabbed her pistol. "I really need some sleep."

The shot blew apart the communicator, and Harper found himself back on Cronos Station, hard as a diamond and staring into a dying sun.

He pressed a button on his console. "Jana," he said, as calmly as he could manage. "My office, please. On the double."