Cry, Baby, Cry
The loft was silent for a long time after Liara finished speaking. The asari held her breath, afraid to even look at Shepard, but knowing that she had had to tell the human everything. It would have been impossible to have kept the knowledge to herself during a meld.
The commander sat on the bed, face buried in her hands. "How old?" she asked again, for the fifth time. Maybe for the sixth.
"Just a few months." Two months and three weeks and one day and six—no, seven hours.
"Months," Shepard repeated. "Months. Gee, you'd think you could've managed to include a mention of her in one of those emails you sent to me. 'Everyone here on Mars has been so very kind, if a bit distant. They all love the baby, though. Oh, by the way, I cannot remember if I told you, but we have a daughter. She is blue, obviously, and she cannot yet sit up on her own, but she appears to be fond of soft blankets and canned peaches. I look forwards to the time when you can meet her!'" If it were not for the bitterness in the woman's tone, her mimicking of Liara's voice and diction would have been amusing.
"Would that really have been too much, Liara?"
"What do you want me to say, Shepard? I cannot undo what has been done."
"Now what I want matters? Don't you think it's a little late for that?"
"I…"
"What I want…I want you to say that this is all some sick, sick attempt at a joke."
"I thought—I thought she would be a good surprise for you, when you were released from your confinement." Marriage, old age, and a lot of little blue children. Isn't that what Shepard had said she wanted, that night on the Normandy before she threw herself at the Collectors in another attempt to die in a blaze of glory?
The human laughed angrily, the sound uncomfortably similar to that of a sob. She rubbed her hands over her eyes with harsh, quick movements. "Well, I'm surprised, I'll give you that." Her shoulders slumped as though she had already seen their cycle fall to the Reapers.
What had Liara done? She crossed the room with quick, miserable steps and dropped to her knees in front of Shepard. Put her hands on her bondmate's legs. "Please, look at me," she begged. "I'm so, so, sorry, my love. I should have told you, you're right. I should have gone to Earth and made sure you met her. It was selfish, I suppose, to keep her to myself. She—She is so…The first time she opened her eyes and looked at me…She is…"
Words would not come. "Was," Liara choked out the correction, tears streaming down her face. "She was so incredible. Her eyes remind me of you, so clear and sure of herself, even if she's only an infant. She was my good-luck charm, my reminder of all the most beautiful things we were fighting to protect. I should not have kept her from you. Please, love, please forgive me."
She pressed her face into the top of the human's thigh, trying to stifle her grief. After a moment a familiar hand came to rest on the back of her head. Its touch was confident, strong. Forgiving.
"We have to go back," Shepard said coolly. "To Mars. We have to go get her."
"What?" Liara looked up, disbelieving. "We cannot do that! You were there, Shepard, you saw the Reapers landing on the planet! There is no way that we—Even if Cerberus hadn't—" She thought of the small room she had shared with her daughter, of the small crib and the wide eyes and the bright life that Cerberus had ripped away from her. From them.
Shepard stood. The sudden movement forced Liara to fall back onto her heels. "No!" The soldier balled her hands into fists. "We—I—I can't just leave her there." Her voice broke. "I'm her dad. I'm her dad, Liara, I'm supposed to protect her! How could you have let me just run towards the archives when you knew she was—"
"We couldn't have saved her and the data both! And without the data, everyone's daughters will be killed by the Reapers!"
"Screw the data! I would have gotten the data back from Cerberus! How are we supposed to get her back?"
"Don't you think it killed me when I realized what we had to do? When I realized that I'd never see her smile again? That I'd never see you hold her?"
"You had months with her. Months, and you hid her from me. I've got nothing, Liara. Nothing, and we can't even go back for her body so I can hold her and cry over her even once, and bury her somewhere clean and safe, with grass and a view of the way the sun hits the snow on the mountains at sunrise. Oh, God." When the soldier's legs gave out, Liara was there to catch her.
"I'm sorry, Shepard, love. I'm so, so, sorry." She ran her hands through the human's hair, trying to calm her, trying to calm herself, trying to calm them both. "So sorry," she whispered, pressing her lips to her bondmate's cold cheeks, pressing her forehead into the warmth of her bondmate's neck.
"Liara, is this real? Was she real, and now she's really…dead?" Shepard's voice sounded so lost. It took all of the asari's strength just to meet her gaze and nod. "Honest?"
"I wish to the Goddess I could tell you I was lying."
There were tears on both of their faces, so their gentle kiss tasted like salt and misery.
"I don't—You haven't even told me what her name is. Was. What her name was."
Oh, Goddess. Imagining this particular moment hundreds of times had not been enough. Liara never anticipated this particular moment being as heart-wrenching as it has turned out to be. "I—" she cleared her throat, keeping Shepard's face framed in her hands. The little bit of contact was more comforting than anything she had any right to. "It is rather a young custom for the asari, but since we became a spacefaring species, we have taken to allowing our daughters' fathers, when the parents are bonded…" She paused, looking up at Shepard for reassurance that they were bonded, that they would stay bonded despite this new pain.
"Bonded," the human repeated flatly, eyes vacant. "Like us?" Hopefulness in her voice broke Liara's heart even further.
"Like us, yes," the asari agreed, relieved, stroking the human's cheeks again, pushing limp strands of hair out of the way, and kissing her face. Ashamed to feel so happy that she still had at least one of the two people she needed in her life. "Well, the custom is to allow the father to name the daughter. The name can be a permanent bond between that parent and her child. I knew we would see you soon, and so I—"
"You didn't give her a name?"
"She was your daughter to name. I called her Ossy—Ossaedra. It means 'bright-eyes.'"
"Sabrina." Shepard interrupted. "Sabrina Fair. The savior" Amazingly, she managed to smile. "Not even a year old, and already doing what she had to to save the galaxy." Her weak smile shone through a fresh wave of tears.
Liara did not understand. Shepard wrapped her arms around her bondmate and whispered something. An old human poem. In praise of Sabrina the savior.
…
Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honor's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save!
.
Brightest Lady, look on me.
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
Drops that from my fountain pure
I have kept of pretious cure;
Thrice upon thy finger's tip,
Thrice upon thy rubied lip:
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold.
Now the spell hath lost his hold;
And I must haste ere morning hour
To wait in Amphitrite's bower.
Author's Note: This was written for a prompt on the kmeme that asked for a glimpse at what it would be like if Liara had mapped Shepard's DNA before the commander took off through the Omega-4 relay. I do not have any explanation as to why my mind went to such a dark place. I've been thinking about putting together a counterpoint to this story that's less dark.
The poem quoted here is from Milton's Comus.