Sing Blue Silver
by HugoCogs (April 2013)
Disclaimer: Bioware makes the marionettes, I just make them dance.
A/N: I know, I know. I really should be working on part two of W Minus. You can blame Arcana Mortis for that. She is participating in a thread I've set up to discuss ideas for Asari weddings, and made a brief, but lovely image of a wedding under twin full moons. Somehow, that idea inspired me to consider what it might REALLY be like when Asari meld with intent to procreate. The description is that they "choose through their partners desirable traits and pass those along to their children", but what does that cold, passionless description really MEAN? This is my weird, experimental, semi-free form attempt at answering that question.
And yes, I know in canon, Thessia has no moons. I'm ignoring that in my fanon. As the Bird People once told Arthur Dent "It works that way because it's artistically correct."
So this is a companion piece to whats going on in OMUTB. It's pretty spoiler free. I mean what, were you not expecting them to eventually get married in the end? ;-)
Shepard and Liara walked hand in hand, the Thessian ocean breeze whipping against them, chill and refreshing against their skin, the bikini/sarong-skirt bridal outfits they wore offering little protection from the elements. But they were too absorbed in eac other, too love-drunk to care.
Their wedding reception had lasted late into the night. All but the most die-hard revelers continued on, and it wasn't much of an effort for Shepard to lead her new wife out the back door, where they ran together, laughing like children, towards a secluded bluff overlooking the beach. They had been pawing at each other all day, unable to come to full satisfaction, holding back, knowing that when they could finally find solitude together, and in each other, it would be...amazing. Incredible. Staggering.
Liara looked up, the twin moons full and high in the sky. She had wanted so badly to see them, burned so brightly to make love under them. Holly was more than willing to oblige her, as her fingers deftly worked at the knots holding her outfit on her frame, as Liara worked in tandem on Shepards. Quickly made naked, Shepard pushed her back against a smooth cliff face, practically attacking her in hungry, desperate little kisses, eliciting a thrilling keen in the back of Liara's throat, prompting her to hook a leg around her lover.
They ultimately fell to the ground, lips, tongues, legs, breasts, locked against each other, each desperately wishing to find a way to be closer, and ever closer still. It was all so much for Liara, all so overwhelming. She had never been so excited before, never felt so free, so wanton. Something inside her was welling up, was thrumming, almost demanding, spreading up, from the core of her being, bursting out. She suddenly grabbed Shepard by the head, fingers knotting up in her hair, her eyes deep black pools of eternity.
"Liara...are you...?"
And then it suddenly swept her away, like a tsunami. And then there was nothing more.
Shepard has thought she had understood the nature of ecstasy, knew the definition of closeness, had experienced the emotion of love. All of these were laid bare as pale imitations in the blinding, all consuming Truth of the melding she currently experienced with Liara. It was...different this time, more intense, somehow. But that was to compare a single candle to a lighthouse, and say that one was simply "more intense" than the other. She was...so lost in her partner at this moment. Liara was everywhere...and her everything. When looking in the sky, the sky was Liara, and the sun and the moon were as well. There was nothing beyond, before, or after Liara. Shepard began to question her own identity,her own separate distinction...did she ever exist? Was there ever a woman named Holliandra Shepard to begin with? Or had it been another aspect of her Goddess in blue? Love was blue and pleasure was blue, and pain was blue and sex was blue and death was blue, and blue was Liara.
Was she always Liara? Everything tasted Liara, everything sounded Liara, everything smelled and felt Liara. Oh God...she wanted to be consumed by it...absolutely swallowed, destroyed and reintegrated into Liara. It was getting harder...to...remember what...
And then there was no Shepard, not in any meaningful way. There always was and only would be Liara. Shepard had become an open book to her. There would be no secrets to her. There could never be...
It's Christmas Eve, and bitterly cold. Holliandra wouldn't have been more than 15 years old. In a dark and mercilessly windswept alley, she cradles something in her arms, her body wracked with sobs. She looks down at the kitten she found an hour ago...couldn't have been more than 8 weeks old. It was a miracle that it had lived this long, but it was clearly the runt of the litter, and even in the 22nd Century, nature was as red in tooth and claw as ever. Holliandra forced herself to look at this tiny, fragile, helpless creature. The end was so near...she knew there was nothing else she could do now...but be there. Offer succor.
She leaned in and whispered, shushing in a motherly fashion, as best, and as comforting as she could offer, through sob after sob. "Im sorry" she repeated, over and over again. "it's almost over...I won't let you go till it's over." And when it was finally over, she had never told the other Furies. Had never told anyone. On the streets, kindness was a vice, a weakness. But she wouldn't let herself be dragged down to that level. She wouldn't let herself become barely better than a rabid animal, like so many of the other girls she knew who had succumbed.
The kitten gave one last mewl...was it thanking her? And then closed its eyes for the last time, held close against Holly's bosom. She held on to it, for another half an hour, before she began to chip at the frozen ground of a nearby vacant lot, determined to bury the body, as impossible as the task seemed. She ignored the frostbitten fingers and the creeping hypothermia, until the job was done.
Lying in a hard bed, in a medical clinic in one of the shelters, half dead with pneumonia and running a 103 degree fever, she just started up into the LED lighting panels in the ceiling, when it finally occurred to her: There is no God.
How could there be? How could something claim to be all knowing, all powerful, and yet stand by and allow the world to be the way it was? No...it was obvious to her, so obvious now. The reason why people came up with things like God is because they didn't, couldn't, wouldn't face the truth: that the Universe in and of itself was a cold, cruel, unfeeling place. Honor, justice, fairness, kindness, compassion...all of these things only existed when people worked to bring them forth unto the barren landscape of existence. People were ultimately the Paragons of what values they espoused. Maybe it was easier to go with the flow, go with selfishness and recklessness...people still had to survive the best way they could, especially out on the streets...but she could still do her best to fight on, her best to show others that you didn't have to sacrifice one's better angels upon the altar of expediency, to survive,
She wanted something better...
Rise up. Lead shot. Drift In, Fire! ThewwwpPOP. Roll with recoil, reload, lead shot, Fire! ThewwwpPOP.
Account for wind, correct for pull, adapt for local gravity. Lead up, set up zone, let them line in. Let them come to their deaths for you. Fire! ThewwwpPOP
She was the dispassionate scientist, crunching the numbers in her head, and benefitting from the ultimate results. Feedback loop, correct for mistakes, reiterate, recurse, reload. Every shot was a new world unto itself, living and dying in a mere heartbeat or two.
She was the artist playing upon her canvas with fear and death and blood. She was a maestro of mayhem, a prima donna of precision. You understood or you did not. There was no in-between.
She was the force of nature, the water flowing effortlessly across the rocks, inexorably grinding them down. She was actionless action, the mindless mind. She was Zen and the Art of Infiltration. She was the Valkyrie, divine Warrior Goddess, blessing her soldiers on the field. Her Kung Fu was simply stronger than yours.
She was mind and she was body at it's finest. She was the statue, where the chisel had chipped away the dross, and left the pure and the Platonic.
"I am Scorpia,, Queen of Queens. Look upon my works, oh Batarians, and despair."
Torfan was many things to her, and she to it. She would teach them the cruel folly of their ways. She would take payment in blood or surrender. She would sign her name across their hearts and heads.
Lieutenant Holliandra Shepard always had to admit it to herself: when she was in the zone...it was even better than sex.
Up the decks and down again, Mama Shep is walking.
Shepard, Shepard, Shepard, Shepard.
I should go. See you soon. We'll talk again later.
Shepard, been thinking about a past mission. Lets talk, you might learning something.
Shepard Commander. Commander Shepard.
(Is it time for Serrice ice brandy?)
Hey Lola, Hey Lola, Hey Lola.
In my cycle, in my time.
She's not here to coddle you.
She's not here for your excuses.
She's only here to give you what you need, to be a better:
Soldier
Warrior
Lover
Fighter
Teammate
Person.
and you give her what she needs, in return.
(Emergency. Induction. Port.)
Down the decks and up again, Mama Shep is walking.
(Excuse me I should really get back to these calibrations)
Shepard was on her knees...somewhere? The memory...was fuzzy...indistinct. Was it real, or was it imagined?
On her knees, the cold, hard deck plates press against her legs. There is blue...there is so much blue. It's not Liara, but it reminds her of her. Reminds her, perhaps, of the one redemption, the one salvation. The one hope to retain her humanity. The one talisman against the savage alien unknown of apotheosis.
She sobs, as she did in that alley, so long ago,cradling her own humanity in her bosom now. I'm sorry...it's almost over...
There is no choice. There is no other way. It's here and now. All or nothing.
"It had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong". That's what he said, wasn't it?
She looks up to the figurative heavens, and cries out once more, eyes wet.
"God...I know I've never had any faith before. Never believed. I'm still not sure I do now but...if you're there...if you're real, if you exist. If you ever existed." She she started to stab an accusing finger upwards, almost hissing her words through clenched teeth. "Then you damn well make sure that I don't turn into some sort of monster. That I remember that everything good and decent worth hanging onto in life is because of her.
She looked back down again, her...whatever it was it was she was needing to do? Liara didn't understand...there was something...strange...about this memory...but she had no frame of reference to compare how it should have been? Only...instinct.
Shepard finally rose to her feet, looking almost defeated. She closed her eyes and then whispered a single word.
"Liara."
The image formed in her mind. The tone of her skin, like a perfect day. The ridges that formed around her head...Shepard tried to keep from laughing as she realized it reminded her of an old style bike helmet. The freckles on her face, much like what she had on her own. She tried to make Liara as real and as fully formed as possible in her mind, before suddenly reaching out for...something.
What was she grabbing?
Oh...Oh Goddess...something was wrong...she couldn't watch further!
Liara trembled for a moment, shaken. She hadn't expected this, hadn't known what she had done, had acted, acted on instinct. It took her this long to finally understand:
She was a Matron now.
There was no shock of revelation, no sudden insight. It simply was her Reality. She Understood. And she Accepted.
She gathered all that she had seen, all that she had poured through and over. All the sins and secrets that were her soulmates life, and kept all the best parts for herself: compassion, talent, drive, ambition, duty, command, humility. She gathered them up, all around her, as they crumbled in her hands, as if forming a shimmering, silvery, glowing powder. Like the very stuff of stars themselves. She gazed at it, almost blinded by the pure white intensity of what she had created. What she held in her hands. It pulsed, like a living thing. No...WAS a living thing. No...WAS Life. Life Itself.
She felt a compulsion to hold it to her chest, press it into her sternum. It was...so warm. It effused her, it filled every cell in her body with indescribable bliss. It melded with her. She was suddenly, in one great and utterly, impossibly brief moment, the chain of creation, back beyond her mothers mothers mothers mothers mother...far back beyond when the Asari looked upon their Prothean mentors and called them "Goddess". She was another link in the unending chain, another bridge between the past and the future. She was Now.
She felt, literally, the unzipping of RNA, and it's recombination. The scrambling and resequencing of genetic material, as if Shepard's essence had been tossed out, like dust into the wind, and the random, tracing patterns it formed became the blueprint for something new.
Her Child.
Their Child.
"Asari genetics don't work like that" she had said.
Oh Goddess...she was so right...and so very,very wrong.
False dawn was trying to crawl it's way up the horizon, hanging on by it's barest fingertips when they came to. Somehow, they had come to a prone position, lying on their sides, facing each other...their eyes falling into each others.
They blinked in almost perfect unison together.
"Holly" she said, almost languidly, almost frightened. Confused and reassured all at once.
"I'm here", she said. In a distant, faraway voice, but with a sly grin forming on her lips to show that she was coming back to Earth.
"I'm pregnant" Liara declared. Very simply. There was no other way to put it. It was an undeniable fact that she couldn't hide from her...her wife now. Her bondmate.
"I know" Shepard replied. "...Cool." Again, cracking a drunken smile.
Swallowing hard, reaching out to hold Holly's face she looked on the edge of tears "I am so...so sorry. I...I don't know what happened. We...the moment was so perfect, and...I didn't know what had happened...until it was too late. I am so sorry, I should have prepared you. I should have..." her voice trailed off, threatening hysteria in it's tone.
Shepard suddenly silenced her with a kiss. And then another. And then another again. She began to kiss her cheeks, the ridges of her head, lingering on her ear and neck, followed up with soft nibbles on the sensitive flesh. Kiss after kiss moved their way down, over breast, and down sternum. She nuzzled for a moment, at Liara's abdomen, and she could feel Shepard's slight smile against her skin.
She wept, with relief and joy and horror and wonder as Shepard made love to her.
She realized sometimes fate takes the heart by the hand, and mind and body are obliged to follow.