1 – A Careful Warning

"A vanity exercise for the sole benefit of a tyrannical megalomaniac is all this amounts to, Shepard. I would love an explanation to why this is more important than getting to the migrant fleet and securing alliances from those with something to give."

"C'mon Liara, are you seriously saying you can't see how kicking Cerberus out the Terminus systems doesn't help the war?"

"You already have her array of her thugs going to war for you. I don't see what else she can offer. Certainly nothing that's worth your life."

"Woah – since when I am dying on this mission?"

"Omega's been the haven for pirates and mercs and the centre of anti-Citadel space for centuries. It's had to be well defended. And Goddess knows what Reaper tech upgrades Cerberus have incorporated."

"If the Goddess doesn't know, I'm hoping the Broker might..."

The stare that would wilt Haestrom's sun. She's so completely unimpressed with my crude attempt at subterfuge. She grabs her datapad, stabbing at it with her barely contained annoyance.

"Do you think I would have let you leave without given you anything I could to help you? You don't need to manipulate me Shepard."

"I know, but I mostly just like you seeing right through me."

She smiles a little. I know I can always get her to smile a little, no matter how mad she is at me. She's a sucker for my charming wit and I'm a sucker for doing anything to get even the merest hint of a smile.

She drops the smile quickly: back to business and trying to work herself back into being furious.

"I've sent you the schematics one of my contacts sent a few weeks ago. Incomplete, but might help," she says briskly, still avoiding my gaze.

She slides the pad back on her desk. "I'll tell you who else I can see through."

Here it comes.

"Aria T'Loak." she says triumphantly. "She's got plans for you. Why else wouldn't she let your crew come with you?"

"She's got a lotta tricks and she'll need to rely on most of them to get control of Omega. I imagine she'd rather not give away her secrets with Archangel behind her."

"Garrus I can understand – but James, or I could back you up instead."

"She'll see Vega as the meathead and she won't respect it. And you – well, you, she's just plain jealous of," I tease.

That was mean of me. I know it instantly. She doesn't deserve that. Finding her on Mars has been the best day since finding a wide-eyed, terrified but defiant Asari trapped in a stasis field on Therum.

Having her back on the Normandy has brought me alive and steadied my aim. I find any occasion to come and see her, amid her piles of tech and field reports, in an almost calmly hostile platonic atmosphere. I knew I'd get nothing but a fight telling her about Aria and Omega, but I couldn't not come before going into the field.

To her credit, she doesn't rise to my cruelty.

"Nothing about this feels right, Shepard," she exhales.

"There's a helluva lot of people on Omega. Regardless if they help the war or not. Cerberus has a stranglehold that hurts us. God knows what they're doing to those people when we've seen what they're doing to their own soldiers. Omega today, cannon fodder tomorrow."

"Reinstating Aria as dictator hardly helps them."

"Better the devil you know," I shrug. "Actually, I know both devils. And one is definitely worse than the other."

"Aria T'Loak can't be trusted," she says, almost sulkily.

"Not with small children or...?"

"Aria's not... indifferent to you," she says carefully.

"I know, she just called me the best," I grin. "Nice that someone thinks highly of my battle prowess and ability to not die."

"I sincerely hope you're not playing a game with me for your own amusement, Shepard!" Liara snaps.

Uh-oh. We have nostril flare, eye twitch and the slightest biotic glow. I don't mind acting dumb, as long as I know the punchline. Instead, I might be about to get punched.

"She has a liking to you. She's drawn to those whose power equals her own. It attracts and threatens her."

"I have no idea where you're pulling this from..."

"I'm a very good information broker," she says, calmly, looking up at her screens, all automatically swivelled to her attention. "Aria has a tendency to change people, change worlds to suit her. She'll bring out the worst in you."

"You know what I think, Liara?" I say, standing up and ready to end this argument.

"What's that?"

"I think you know this is a worthy operation for the gain – for the people of Omega, for resources for the war, for giving Cerberus a serious knockdown. You think there's no more tactical risk in this mission than any other we've been facing lately."

I'll take her wordless, motionless response as agreement.

"I think that you are hopelessly and insanely jealous of me being with Aria unsupervised. That she'll corrupt me and then the aphrodisiac of power will send me into her lustful, waiting arms."

She squirms. I've got her.

God, I'm being cruel again.

(Is it so terrible that I just want a reaction, just to know if she...?)

"You and I... are just friends," she says, sadness penetrating through her steady disposition. Makes me feel like the Worst Damn Person in the cosmos.

What was I thinking? All these months, side by side with her – in what could be our last months – not touching, not holding, not loving (at least not aloud).

I was thinking that I was angry with her. I am angry with her.

That the night before the Omega-4 relay was the worst I've ever felt. I felt I was going to die. And I didn't want her to come with me so she would too. I wanted her with me, because I knew no power in the universe would stop me from keeping her alive. I always know I'll make it back if she's with me.

Yes, I was weak and lonely, stupid and self-flagellating. I was shell of the person I needed to be to see my team through. It was my moment of fallibility.

But to feel that she didn't believe in me and couldn't be with me when I felt I needed her most - even after being in her embrace once again, after taking the Shadow Broker...

It ruined me that night before the relay. Only in the day, looking at the people whose lives I held at my command did I find my strength and resolve.

After Mars, it could have been so easy to forgive. Forget. Love. Hold. Have. She asked me about us. She always asks. She never tells me. She never takes me. She always just seems like she wants to make it easy for either of us to slip away gracefully. That we don't really matter. That her passion for me doesn't drive her, whereas mine charges through walls for her.

She didn't love me enough. That's how it felt. And at the beginning of all of this, I gave her what it looked like she wanted, and let her off the hook.

But these months... I've rarely been away from her, on the Normandy or in the field. I'm addicted to her. And it feels reciprocated, albeit in her careful, careful way.

And if I'm imagining the tension compounding the chemistry, to bring everything to just sub-meltdown levels of reaction – just fizzling under the surface - then I'm probably mentally ill.

But I still keep her just out of touch. Because she never reaches out to grab me.

Not once.

"And I am honoured to serve at your side, Shepard," Liara continues. "I can't stop you from going. Just – Please - Be careful. Don't let Omega change you. Don't let your guard down. And don't let Aria fool you."

I'm already a fool.