Title: Nightmare
Author: Theano
Rating: M
Summary: Shepard keeps having nightmares.
Nightmare
"Everyone's dying."
Shepard had never seen anything so horrifying - or pitiful. Husks had never frightened her like this, not when they'd first clambered off their dragons teeth, not when they ran at her, mouths gaping in mindless howls. Even the turian and batarian things somehow failed to inspire her dreams with terror.
Banshees had a special horror all their own.
Blue skin so delicately scaled you could only see the tiny, jewel-like patterns in the right light; a sort of natural grace that the greatest human dancers could only aspire to. A voice that could beguile, that could send a thrill up the spine like the goosebump shock of stepping into a steaming bath.
All - all of it - betrayed in this. A once-beautiful visage transformed into a skeletal rictus; the graceful scalp stretched and tortured into a crown of thorns. Breasts that could have nurtured, a woman's full figure bloated with Reaper rot.
And it had Liara's face.
"You can't help me," it shrieked, and killed her.
She woke, gasping, in a misty woods. Laughter tinkled somewhere near her, and she scrambled to her feet, desperate not to fail this time - Everyone's dying! - but already sure how this dream would end.
"You can't help me," the boy said, and smiled at her as he burned.
Sparks jumped from his flaming hair, and soon Shepard's uniform was sizzling, her skin blistered and cracking and falling off while she screamed again -
Somewhere the stars came out.
She was in her own cabin, on her own ship. The Normandy flew as swift and silent as she ever had, ghosts and all. The universe beyond her skylight shimmered with watery reflections; the play of the mass effect field soothed her, pressed her back into sleep, pulled her out into the endless field of stars.
They were waiting for her there. The Reapers. Shining like those stars. Burning like that little boy.
"You can't help us," Harbinger's voice rumbled around her.
Shepard woke again with a start.
Every Reaper was made of death, formed of the melted detritus of a murdered species. What - who - had Harbinger been?
Beside her, another woman stirred and moaned, trapped in her own nightmare. Shepard touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Liara? Wake up, it's okay."
Liara's eyes snapped open, blacker than the sky outside. "Shepard!"
"It's okay, it was just a nightmare. I'm sorry."
"Everyone's dying," Liara breathed. "You can't help us." Her lovely mouth stretched into a terrible grin, skin peeling and turning grey, claws bursting from gentle hands that could do such extraordinary things with a lover's body...
Asari didn't sweat, Shepard knew it, but the tangled sheets were damp and filthy, and she couldn't get away from the thing that couldn't possibly be on her ship, in her bed -
"Embrace eternity!"
End.
A/N: Liara isn't an ardat yakshi, and so could never have been turned into a banshee - but if I were in my Shepard's place, I'd sure have nightmares about that.