A/N: This is a prompt from the Mass Effect Kinkmeme I decided to fill. I was searching for Aethyta/Benezia fills when I came across it. The premise is something I've been thinking about for some time, but I wasn't sure how to make it work. Along comes this OP who gave me a way with this awesome prompt and I'm very appreciative.
Original request here:
The battle against Benezia on Noveria takes a surprising end turn when the matriarch is slammed unconscious by a biotic charge, so powerful it could have made a krogan wince, right in front of FemShep and Liara. Turns out Aethyta cared enough to spy on, and interfere in Benezia's downward spiral into indoctrination and has decided that enough is enough. She takes Benezia into custody/locks her up/kidnaps her to her private mansion for rehabilitation/whatever-floats.
- A different spin on how Liara got to meet her other parent.
- Runs parallel with the story of ME1, but now leaving Liara a very befuddled young asari with two parents.
- Huge plus if Aethyta and Benezia have huge arguments over the whats and hows of child-rearing in front of Liara.
- Liara, for the first time in her life, gets to see someone rile her mother up.
-Up to the author how long you want to go with the story. I'm kinda happy with just ME1.
Her tits felt like they were going to freeze off. As a former spy for the asari government, Aethyta had been to many strange places over the course of her long life. Hell, forget spying. Oftentimes she would simply wake up in a Goddess forsaken place after a night of heavy drinking. She never liked the cold places, however and she was pissed that her former bondmate just had to pick one of the coldest habitated planets in the galaxy to go ass-fuck crazy.
Hell yeah, she knew about Nezzy and her turian boyfriend's drop into the deep end. Well, the turian had always been crazy, but this was too much, even for him. Nezzy may have left her over a century ago, and she may have agreed to the separation by not going after her, but that had never meant she had to stop watching over her girl, and soon after girls. Her ex-bondmate was brilliant, she had always known that, but there were times when Nezzy would get too excited, get too caught up in her damn cooperation mantras and sharing shit for the good of the galaxy.
Only, this didn't make any fucking sense. Her Benezia would have never attacked a human colony, dumbasses though they were, she would have tried to talk some sense into the brainless idiots. Not go along with a psychopathic turian Spectre to slaughter the hapless species. The geth was a whole other issue she planned to bring up with Nezzy. Oh, yes, she planned on confronting the other matriarch. She kept her tongue when it became obvious that Nezzy didn't want her to make contact with Liara, she kept her silence when Benezia spoke out against Aethyta's ideas to fight and build for themselves, despite their past conversations over both their philosophies, on her last day in the Forum. Those had been hard enough, but damn it all if she was going to sit silent and watch her former lover make a damn fool out of herself at the order of some damn Spectre.
So she had followed her here to this Athame forsaken icicle after the agent she had watching her ex-bondmate and daughter had reported the very worrying, and yeah, horrifying actions taken by her ex-lover in the past few months. It was fortunate that Nezzy had first invested in Binary Helix while they were still bonded. Otherwise, she likely would not have thought to check for Benezia here so quickly. Hopefully the stubborn asari would speak with her, but she was prepared for anything. The reports of the Spectre having fucking geth at his beck and call of all things made her nervous, not that she'd ever admit it. Who the hell knows how they would react to her showing up like this. She called her favors and had a group of Eclipse girls freezing their nipples off right alongside her in their Grizzly as they slowly made their way up Peak 15.
It was cold in the facility; entirely different than her experience on Therum, hot and arid as it had been. Though, Liara had to admit that she actually preferred the hot planet to this place. She wasn't particularly fond of the cold, and there was the added horror of the rachni and geth and fighting her mother and acolytes. No, she much preferred Therum.
She, Shepard and Tali had finally put down the last of her mother's forces and had her cornered. As cornered as a Matriarch could be at any rate. She had told Shepard once, in their awkward conversations, that her mother was a very accomplished biotic. She hoped the commander remembered. She fiercely hoped that this wasn't actually happening. As much as she truly enjoyed meeting the commander, she did not relish the thought of her mother as a traitor. None of Benezia's actions made any sense in these past few months. She had not spoken with her mother in several years, but she struggled to think of why or even how Benezia could change so much in such a short time for their species.
Her mother had always believed in cooperation and negotiation with other species. Liara could not think of any reason why Benezia would ever ally herself with the anti-human Saren. They had utterly different ideals and the ruthlessness of the attack on Eden Prime was beyond the Benezia that she knew. Something changed.
"This is not over. Saren is unstoppable. My mind is filled with his light. Everything is clear."
The Matriarch's words made her feel ill. Never had she heard her mother speak this way. Cold, unfeeling and against the teachings she had always abided by. She did not understand why Benezia seemed to have aligned herself with Saren so completely and she desperately wished to know.
"The rachni didn't cooperate with you. Why should I?"
The commander was perhaps the most confident person Liara had ever met. Never had she witnessed anyone stand up to the Matriarch as Shepard had. Her mother never inspired fear, though the way Shepard was currently smirking at Benezia in challenge was something completely foreign to Liara's knowledge of Benezia's interactions with others.
"I will not betray him. You will—You…," Benezia grasped at her head for a moment before straitening again. When she did, her eyes were much cleared and much more familiar to Liara than the cold, hard gaze she had before. "You must listen. Saren still whispers in my mind. I can fight his compulsions. Briefly. But the indoctrination is strong."
Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Why are you able to break free of his control now?"
Liara firmly agreed with Shepard's implication. Despite wanting to believe her mother was in fact being controlled by Saren and not aligned with him, it seemed difficult to believe. Though, Shiala had told them that Benezia had been swept away by Saren's influence that she had actually wanted to help him off the path he was taking. It was just so difficult for her to believe that her mother had failed to sway him, that she instead had been corrupted and her powerful will trumped by Saren's. She had never known that to happen.
"I sealed away a part of my mind from the indoctrination. Saving it for a moment when I could help destroy him. It will not last long."
"So you could turn on me again?"
Her mother sighed, "Yes. But it would not be my will, Shepard.
"People are not themselves around Saren. You come to idolize him. Worship him. You would do anything for him. The key is Sovereign, his flagship. It is a dreadnought of incredible size and its power is extraordinary. The longer you stay aboard, the more Saren's will seems correct. You sit at his feet and smile as his words pour into you. It is subtle at first. I thought I was strong enough to resist. Instead, I became a willing tool, eager to serve.
"He sent me here to find the location of the Mu Relay. Its position was lost thousands of years ago."
Finally, Liara saw her mother instead of whatever it was that she had been acting as. This Benezia was far more earnest and less cold than the Benezia that had attacked them. Attacked her. She watched as Shepard spoke with her about the Mu Relay and could see the regret and sorrow of her actions.
"I took the relay's location from the queen's mind. I was not gentle." Deep regret had bled into her mother's tone and if Liara had doubted that she had been under some sort of mind control, she didn't now. The Benezia she had known would never have invaded the mind of another willingly.
"You can still make it right," Shepard told her firmly. "Give me the information."
"I was not myself, but—I should have been stronger. I transcribed the data to an OSD. Take it. Please," Benezia very nearly begged.
Liara found her voice. She had been satisfied with letting the commander handle the confrontation as she found she could not force herself to speak to her mother while she was acting so cold and brutal. Not after her first attempt had led to the Matriarch attacking them. Confrontations had never been her strong suit. Speaking to people in general had always ended up with her embarrassing herself as she did with Shepard when the human had come to the medbay to check on her. But now that Benezia seemed to break control of Saren, Liara was far more confident in speaking with the Benezia she remembered.
"Knowing the relay's coordinates is not enough. Do you know where he planned to go from there?"
Her mother looked even more regretful at her question.
"Saren wouldn't tell me his destination. But you must find out quickly. I transmitted the coordinates to him before you arrived. You have to stop—me. I can't—His teeth are at my ear. Fingers on my spine. You should—Uh, you should—"
Horror filled Liara as she watched the truth of Benezia's claims of indoctrination come true before her. It was easy to listen to her mother claim that she was not in control of her own actions, but watching it unfold in front of her, watching her previously gentle, wise mother struggle for control broke her heart. Her mother was disappearing before her eyes.
The sheer desperation Liara felt at that moment painted her voice, "Mother, I—Don't leave! Fight him!"
Benezia turned to face her. Sorrow and pain laced throughout her very being.
"You've always made me proud, Liara."
Liara's heart dropped at her words and the clear farewell within them.
The Matriarch then turned away from them and went rigid. As if the Benezia that had been so open with them had never been. When she faced them again, it was the cold, unfeeling and deadly Matriarch capable of killing her own child challenging them again.
"—Die!"
Reluctantly, Liara slowly brought up her pistol as her mother began to glow with biotic power. Tears threatened to fill her vision as she realized that whatever her mother had now turned into was perfectly willing to destroy her as well as Shepard and Tali to serve her master, Saren. If they wanted to get out alive, they were going to have to kill her mother.
Benezia raised her arm in preparation for a biotic attack, and while Shepard and Tali had begun to open fire into her Barrier, Liara stood frozen. Benezia was looking into her eyes; the attack was going to be meant for her. Time slowed as her mother started the physical movement for a Throw, one destined to be extremely powerful given her mother's extraordinary talent and mastery of her biotics. Shepard then noticed the Matriarch's attention as well and moved towards Liara's position. She wasn't going to make it to Liara in time, however, and the scientist prepared herself for the impact.
It never came.
The sound of a powerful biotic discharge surprised them all, including Benezia; especially when the source of the discharge barreled into the Matriarch at phenomenal speed. Benezia was slammed into the corner of the rachni queen's tank with a deafening crash and the form of another asari appeared in the wake of the biotic charge to the utter shock of those still conscious.
"Nezzy! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"