Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to BioWare and EA. I own nothing.

Author's Note: So, the instant I threaten to take a break, my muse throws a cocktail in my face and laughs at me. However, she and I both agree that it's time I get back to the last chapter of this trilogy. There will be more mysteries to suss out, and I kindly ask that time be given and other theories thought out. In a galaxy of intrigue, nothing is what it seems. With that in mind, it is now my greatest joy and pleasure to greet you with the first chapter of This Side of Eternity.

Bright Blessings,

~Raven

Thessia

In the stunned silence, Zhira watched the years. They flew past her amethyst eyes like comets streaking across the sky. She could feel the tension rising in the air. The confusion. The tears. The as-yet unspoken accusations. She did not want to do this. She did not wish to rend time asunder and damage it, perhaps even irreparably. But, she knew that the wound she opened was not new.

No. This scar in time was centuries old, torn by actions necessary for survival. She did not know if those actions, that rationale, still possessed their inception's necessity, but that did not matter. The words had been spoken, the beginnings of a convoluted truth. Much like the time that stitched the truth together from destinies, fates, and wars, three hearts could be made anew…or torn asunder.

"Did I make the right decision?" Zhira asks, looking to the broken stars, to the destruction surrounding…the destruction from which no planet escaped. Even now, the ghosts of war are dancing. Even now, the cries of the dead still ring, hanging in the still air as the galaxy attempts to breathe free.

"You can't be asking yourself that now."

"Can't I?" Zhira questions her actions and herself yet again…it is perhaps the first time she has done so.

It will not be the last. There will be no end to these questions, even years going by and time seen to its resolution and resolve will answer nothing. Questions of the heart are often so. They are murderers in their own right. She knows this. She knows that asking is perhaps slow suicide, but that does not stop her from speaking the words into the galaxy, carefully inflected with meaning and emotion.

"You did the only thing you could do, given the circumstances."

"I made it as though it didn't happen." Zhira protests. "But it did happen and I do not…I do not want to forget that. I want to keep all of what happened close and dear and never forget and never surrender and yet it seems…it seems as though I've given all of it away."

"It's still in your mind, Zhira. Just as much as it's in hers. Just because there won't be a record of it stamped somewhere in the damn electro-circuitry of the galaxy or splashed on the extranet doesn't mean it didn't happen."

Zhira knows she's hearing wisdom. She knows that she is hearing the truth. She knows that her questions are petty and perhaps even pathetic. The entire galaxy was nearly erased from existence and memory, and here she stands grieving for the stupidest and simplest of things. But it had hurt. It hurt worse than the moment when her mother fired the bullet and ripped across her neck, leaving a scar-weal of remembrance that made her aspire to be something better than the T'Aryn name.

"I don't know." She whispers, the words sounding like a death-knell in her own mind. She made her decision. To un-make it now would be paramount to…to murder. "I feel as though I took the greatest of loves and…and threw it away."

"How in the void do you think you managed to do that?"

"Because she doesn't know." Zhira laments. "She doesn't know and when she does…when she does, Aethyta, it is going to kill her."

The matriarch, Zhira's friend, mentor, and savior, offers her characteristic smirk. "Those might be the stupidest words that ever came out of your mouth, kid."

Zhira's eyes fill with tears. She allows them to feel. It is a time for weakness, now. It is a time for sorrow. Only a fool would refuse to acknowledge the brokenness of the world…the brokenness of every soul. No one had lost nothing. At this moment in time, every race, every people, were united in their desperate search to claim something undamaged. Zhira knows the truth. All the grasping hands will find nothing. Including her own.

"She won't understand." Zhira breathes. "I have…I have stolen from her, Aethyta. I've taken what was her right and that…that can't be undone."

"Regardless, she'll forgive you for it." Aethyta claims, and Zhira can but pray that it is the truth. Though, now, she does not know to whom she prays. The Goddess has fallen. Been proven a myth. Been taken from the asari as surely as Thessia was razed. "I already have."

"That doesn't matter." Zhira claims, adamant. "You aren't her."

"No, but she's part of me." Aethyta asserts. "And if my girl knows anything, she knows…" the matriarch pauses, perhaps feeling grief of her own, though she has stood stalwart in the galaxy's darkest days. "…she knows how to lose. How to let go. You taught her that."

"I never wanted her to have to use that knowledge again." Zhira whispers through the curtain of her tears. "But, I suppose, there was no stopping it. I cannot change my mind, and I cannot undo this, and I…" She looks at the matriarch, her friend, her confidant, her source of wisdom, "…I have to say good-bye."

"I know." Aethyta nods, her eyes filled with the hard-earned wisdom of centuries. Most of her age and rank were deluded, believing themselves so high above the universe that pain could touch them no longer. Unlike them, Aethyta feels sorrow ripping through her. Zhira shares no biology with her, but she is as dear to the matriarch as her own daughters.

"Will you tell her…if she wakes…will you tell her I am sorry?" Zhira knows that she is pleading, but she has no pride left to lose. She gave it away the minute the anesthetic entered her system, sending her into the sleep of an irrevocable decision.

"I will." Aethyta promises.

"Thank you, Aethyta." Zhira does not reach out. She does not clasp her friend's hand. She does not indulge in a final embrace. She does what she knows how to do all too well.

She walks away from her family. She carries a great burden and blessing. She destroys a great love.

"Mother." A hand rested on her shoulder, jarring her from the pain of her memory. "Mother, please." Zhira looked into her daughter's beautiful, strange eyes. She saw the pain therein. Pain of body and pain of soul…the pain only a confusion so deep could cause. Her heart broke anew. "Mother, please, I do not understand."

Zhira heard her daughter's unspoken words as she always had.

Please help me. Please tell me. I cannot make sense of this new world, this wound ripped in time and the truth itself. Guide me, I beg of you.

"Will you listen, heartlight?" Zhira asked, holding up her hand before Sen spoke once more. "Will you listen to the tale in its entirety, and subdue all judgment until such a time as…as the whole truth is revealed?"

Zhira watched her daughter struggle. She knew Sen's need was great. She knew the words she had spoken, the most hidden of revelations, would tax the soul of the one she loved most in the world. Her body was already damaged, already in such pain. Could her heart endure more?

Yes.

The word did not come from Zhira's mind, or Sen's mouth. The matron looked around the room, wondering who might have spoken, for the answer to her unvoiced question was so definite and concrete that, in Zhira's heart, she felt a strange peace. Her daughter could bear it…she could bear the truth, and more. She could bear her mother's sins and secrets…but…but could she forgive them?

Yes. The answer came again from nowhere, firm, calm, and still. It's in her blood.

"I will." Sen promised, and Zhira smiled, simply because she knew, after this tale was told, she might never know that expression again.