Cities in Dust
A Mass Effect 2 fan fiction by xahra99
Shepard was dead.
Liara T'Soni heard the news blasting from a public terminal as she left Eternity that evening. The broadcast was brief and to the point. The Normandy and her crew had been killed in action. There had been no survivors.
Liara paused in the middle of the Concourse to listen to the rest of the transmission. The asari crowds around her detoured smoothly and carried on walking. Nobody else seemed troubled. Shepard had died once already, after all. A terrible loss, the broadcast said regretfully, and then continued with its program. Three sentences. That was all. No more. No details.
Liara didn't know whether to be angry or grateful for the omission. Commercials blared from the terminal behind her as she turned abruptly and weaved around the other shoppers to a quiet spot by the railing. Her headset interrupted when she was halfway across the concourse. Liara raised a hand to switch it off, but she wasn't fast enough.
"Liara?" It was Nyxeris' voice. She sounded worried. Liara was never late.
"I'm fine." Liara said briefly. "Cancel all tonight's appointments."
"Of course," Nyxeris replied. The headset cut off abruptly. Nyxeris didn't ask why, or how, or even remind Liara who was waiting. It was not the first time Liara had had reason to be grateful for her personal assistant's discretion. She reached the railing and halted, alone with her thoughts.
Shepard was dead.
And not just Shepard, but the crew. Joker. Tali'Zorah. Garrus. The others, whose names she'd never learned.
Dead. All dead.
They'd died saving the universe from a threat it refused to believe even existed.
Although Illium was climatically controlled and kept at an even temperature, Liara felt a chill. She knew better than to hope for a second resurrection. Even Cerberus had limits. And she knew what was out there, in deep space.
Liara raised her eyes to the sky. The stars were bleached out of existence by the lights of the colony, but she could make out a few, the brightest. She thought of Shepard and the Normandy; floating there among the stars. Objects in space.
Around her, life went on. The towers of Illium glittered serenely in the dark. Beyond the city, the curved horizon glowed faintly. The last rays of sunset stained the sky like blood. The dim light hid the tears on Liara's cheeks as she wept silently.
No emotion. No weakness. No regrets, Liara told herself. She'd thought that she'd grown hard during her time on Illium. She'd been wrong. Despite her resolution, tears dripped on the plastic railing between her clenched hands. Liara watched the lines of traffic bob amongst the skyscrapers with empty eyes and reminded herself that she was lucky.
If she had still been Shepard's lover, she would have been on the mission; gunned down on the Normandy when the geth overwhelmed her, or shattered into stardust when the ship exploded. If she had been on the mission, she would be dead. The thought brought Liara no solace. She didn't feel lucky.
She felt devastated.
The emotions were much more vivid than she had expected.
Shepard had been only one lover in what Liara could expect to be a very long life. One year, out of a thousand. Moreover; Liara was young, only just past her first centenary, but she could already feel the transition from maiden to matron coursing sealike through her veins. She was a different person now.
By the time Liara died, Shepard would be little more than the merest footnote in history. Many asari would have mourned only the missed opportunity. Their brief union had been childless. A pity. Shepard's daughters would have been strong.
But still Liara wept.
She'd thought she had put her old life far behind her when she'd settled on Illium. With Shepard gone, she'd carved out a new profession as an information broker. She had gained a reputation for being tough but fair. But now, her new profession seemed seedy and dangerous, the lights of the city a little less bright.
And with Shepard gone, the galaxy itself may be in peril, she thought grimly.
From what she had heard, the Normandy was lost, and Shepard with it. Liara refused to eliminate the possibility of a miraculous recovery. She'd been wrong before about Shepard's death, after all. But if Shepard was dead, and if they'd failed...
Liara didn't even want to consider the possibilities of failure.
It took all of the ruthlessness she'd learned on Illium to turn her mind towards the chance of Reaper conquest. If Shepard had failed, the Reapers would already be on their way. The Systems Alliance had destroyed Sovereign, but they'd paid a great price. It was more than two years after the great battle, and the Citadel was still being reconstructed.
"And that was just one Reaper..." Liara muttered under her breath. She imagined the Reaper fleet hanging over the dark Ilium skies, imagined the harvest, the destruction, the deaths...
Liara wiped her eyes and turned away. She took the stairs back to her office two at a time.
Of course Shepard had not failed. It was inconceivable that Shepard had failed.
But if Shepard had...
Then Liara T'Soni would be ready for the Reapers. And she would make sure Shepard had not died in vain.
Finis.
We found you hiding-we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed by eager hands
But oh-your city lies in dust, my friend.
Cities in Dust: Siouxie and the Banshees.
Author's Note: Spoilers, obviously. Implies a previous Shepard/Liara relationship. Although my Shepard is male, I tried to make this as ambiguous as possible. And yes, I know that the Normandy and Joker survives whatever. Either the news Liara hears isn't true, or it's an AU, whatever. I wanted to explore her emotional change between the events of ME1 and 2. I'm hoping that the reason she went through such a sea-change is that BioWare are saving her for something special in ME3. In which case it'll be a pity I hooked my Shepard up with Tali just to see what she looked like under her facemask (fat chance there, then)