It Might be like Flowers
Liara dreams of screaming in a language she can't quite understand, and blood. All around her bodies move frantically, calling out to one another in the fading light. She presses her palms to the sides of her head and curls up on herself, wishing it would stop, whatever this is. She's never been this frightened, scared to her very core. Never been so sure that she wont survive to see the next day.
She can't see what they're running from, but she can feel a terrible fear all around her, washing through her. She doesn't need to know the language to understand that these people are running for their lives. In the distance she can see ships rising into the air by the hundreds. They're trying to escape the planet. They're evacuating from their homes.
A horrible sound tears into her mind, shearing her thoughts. A piercing scream. Stumbling on her hands and knees, she looks up at where the light is completely shrouded by a huge ship, flickering with red lightning.
"Reaper... It's a Reaper!" she screams at the sky, at the people frozen around her. None move, and for the first time, Liara notices that she doesn't recognise the species. She scrambles to her feet, pushing at the bodies in an attempt to get them to understand; they need to run or they're going to die. She tries to summon her biotics, struggling to focus her mind.
"Don't just stand there, please! We have to run! We have to..."
She looks into the sky, at the huge looming creature, concocting a thousand escape plans, none of them good enough. Where is Shepard?
That is the thought that overrules all others, as another dark shape emerges from the clouds. Then another, and another, and the screaming starts again, the crowd pushing her to the ground. Ships are falling, burning, from the sky.
Where is Shepard?
Through the blood falling over her eyes and the bruises that cover her skin she tries to crawl to where the forest of sprinting limbs are thinner and presses her body into the wall, sobbing. All around her the world turns to fire and boiling, and the screaming to the harsh grind of machines choked with blood.
~*~
She wakes slowly, falling between the pounding vividness of her dream and the flat monotone of reality. At first she doesn't realise, and takes the rising of her consciousness as the opposite. The bright alien world is fading because she is dying, or choking into a deathly sleep in the smoke.
When she feels the soft blanket and the hard wall pressing on her out flung hand she wills her eyes to open, struggles silent and motionless to wake and be away from her nightmare. With a desperate effort she forces herself awake, pushing herself up on her elbows.
Relief quickly falls away to terror as she looks around, blinking away the blur of sleep. The room is bathed in an orange glow, and she thinks for a few terrible moments, curling into the blanket, that the dream has followed her.
Shivering at the thought of metallic claws tugging at her skin she darts her glance around. The light of a holographic console reveals the source of her fear, but it's the woman typing listlessly at the panels that dispels it.
She finds a voice, "...Shepard?"
Starting, the commander whips around in her seat, one hand hovering over where a pistol would be, if she wasn't in such a state of undress. Seeing Liara she stops abruptly, shoulders falling into something like relax. She smiles, though it's tired.
"Hey. I didn't know you were awake." She gets up, stretches, comes to sit by her on the bed and looks across at her nervously. "It's early. The kind of early that shows up when it gets really late."
"I had a nightmare."She blushes, seeing in her mind countless nights where Benezia would sit just there, tired but still smiling at the little girl who had called her from her meditation over some vague night-terror.
Shepard smiles too. "I think there's gonna be a lot of sleepless nights in the weeks and months to come. It wont be forever."
"I know." Liara lets Shepard kiss her softly back into the mattress, squeezing her hand. She expects her to crawl under the covers too, but instead the commander, satisfied that her lover is properly reinstated into sleep, returns to her console and her mysterious early hour work.
It must be important, then. She's a hard worker, but exhaustion hangs heavy in every movement she makes. The asari closes her eyes and tries to drift back, but curiosity and the thought of what waits for her under her subconscious will not release her. She opens her eyes, frowning at the sight of the Citadel's Saviour washed out in the colour of death, the death of an entire civilisation.
Maybe because they are the only ones living who would understand, but Liara wants to speak; "I dreamed of the Protheans. I dreamed of their world, or one of them, burning. I saw the reapers darken the sky."
Shepard stops to look at her while she gives her speech, then turns back to the screen. For a long time neither of them move. Shepard breathes slowly; Liara counts forty-three inhales before she speaks.
"It wont happen again. I will die before I let them come again. No cycle last for ever, not even them. Those prothean scientists gave us the one thing that we needed; a warning. A chance. And we're not going to waste it. This time it'll be different, and you know why?" She was on her feet and pacing now, turning a fist into her palm. She doesn't wait for a response. "Because this time they are the ones being hounded. They are the ones who've had control taken from them. This time... This time they wont find us running and hiding, isolated and alone."
She stops suddenly, as if embarrassed at the fire that had crept into her words. She sits back down, a hand on her forehead. Looks back up at the screen, at Liara, back at the screen.
"Don't dream about them Liara. Don't be scared. If I let them make you afraid..." She falters there. Liara climbs out of the bed and sits across her, arms around her neck, pressing her into a chaste kiss.
"I'll go wherever you go, Shepard. I won't be afraid, so long as I'm with you." She smiles, and it is returned.
She looks to the console, a list of human words and names shining dimly. "What were you looking up?"
"Oh." Shepard shifts her over to better see. "I was looking for something. A book. It's taking longer than I'd thought."
Has she ever seen Shepard read? It doesn't quite fit with the image of her throwing geth aside or threatening krogan more than twice her size. Late night literature searches was something the young doctor was more likely to engage in. "Something to help with the reapers?"
"No... Just a children's story." She blushes and will not meet her eye. "Something I remembered, sort of, when I was almost asleep. But I can't recall the name, the author, even really what it was about." She smiles nervously, squeezing Liara's waist. "It just seemed really important that I find it. And show it to you. I just..."
They walked, a little unsteadily for how hard they held each other, toward the bed and gracelessly collapsed into a heap, still lit by the orange glow. Liara held Shepard and tried not to tangle her fingers in that crest of hair humans found so alluring but she felt made their heads look too small. Shepard yawned and threw an arm over her shoulder, falling into complete stillness learnt over many tense nights when unconscious movement could mean death.
"There were three sisters, and one of them fell in love with a flower," she whispered into her skin. Left unattended the hologram faded and the room was dark again.
"Liara, they said she was silly, because flowers die when it gets cold, and besides they can't love you back," her voice slurred into a yawn. "And she cried and said that if she saved it from the cold, then it would surely love her, and, and..."
Little lines formed between Shepard's eyebrows as she thought. Sighing, she nuzzled into her lover's throat. "I can't remember, how it ended. I think it made me cry." But Liara was already asleep.
End
((A/N – I wanted to write some Shep/Liara based around nightmares and stories. The style is also a little different from my usual, a bit more flowery/pretentious/purple/something. This little thing takes place after ME1 but before ME2, and probably has more symbolism than is healthy. Sorry about that. Also a shout out to EternityEmbracer, my fellow ME writer/person-I-beta-for/super awesome friend.))