Liara's intertwined fingers bounced slightly in her lap as the shuttle encountered a bit of turbulence.
Her azure eyes rose slowly from her gloved digits to the other side of the cabin where Shepard sat with his elbows perched upon his knees and clasped hands resting on his chin.
How different he looked without his armor, she marveled as she studied the way the dim overhead lamp illuminated the folds and creases of the dark leather jacket he was wearing.
John Shepard was by no means a slight or unassuming man—his sleeves were painted with the curves of the toned muscle beneath and his hazy blue eyes sat in a fixed gaze at nothing in particular, showing anyone who cared to see just how far away from the interior of the small Alliance transport his mind lay.
Though they were the only passengers aboard the Kodiak, the Lieutenant Commander seemed unaware that Liara was closely watching him. During most missions, the cramped bay of the craft was overflowing with bodies and equipment, generally leaving the smaller members of the team like Liara and Tali to fight for elbow room.
There would be the off-color joke from Garrus or Vega and everyone would laugh (or groan) and respond with one of their own—the lively banter more akin to a group of students going to a night club than a squad of professional soldiers about see combat.
Now however, they rode in silence, and the asari couldn't help but feel such jostling and vitality would've been preferable. Though by no means a man unacquainted with the concept of quiet contemplation, John's habitual wordlessness was increasingly worrisome to Liara. However whenever she tried to give voice to this distress, the N7 simply offered a warm smile in reply and thanked her for her concern, doing little to allay her worries.
With the Reapers vanquished for nearly a year now, the commander (and, by extension the Normandy) had been designated as an emissary for the Council and the Alliance to fortify the shaky bonds between the various races that threatened to fracture under the stresses of petty infighting and squabbling over the delegation of relief supplies as the galaxy slowly began to rebuild. For his part, Shepard seemed lost—happily so, but lost none the less.
By consequence of having been dragged out of the smoldering remains of the Citadel and informed that he had not only accomplished so many had considered impossible but survived, the commander suddenly found himself without a greater purpose in life. For the past three years, he had borne the weight of the galaxy upon his shoulders, and now he was finally beginning to enjoy the fruits of the peace he had sacrificed so much for. Survival, it seemed, was the one thing the Hero of the Citadel had been unprepared for.
The shuttle rocked gently as it set down and there was the soft hiss of depressurization as the door swung upward, flooding the dim passenger bay with sunlight.
Shepard stiffly began to rise from his seat, waving away Liara when she moved to help him to his feet. Using his dark mahogany cane to gain purchase on the grooved metal flooring, he pulled himself to his feet and carefully clambered to the door of the shuttle. The cane—cloaked in black varnish and polished to a shine—was necessitated by the injuries he'd received to his right knee during the Battle of London. He would recover, but it would take months if not years of physical therapy and surgery to restore full functionality to the damaged joint, so his walking stick was never beyond arm's reach in the meantime.
Liara too stayed at his elbow, constantly studying him as he walked to ensure she was prepared to catch him should he take a misstep. Shepard had at first found such codling humorous and, perhaps, somewhat enjoyable, but as the weeks became months, he became increasingly frustrated by her attempts to assist him. He came to despise his reliance on the cane and longed to be rid of it. It had robbed him of his confident stride and people had suddenly stopped looking at him the same way as before. Even the crew of the Normandy—men and women that had stood alongside him through the worst the galaxy could throw at them—pitied him, no matter how carefully they tried to mask the look in their eyes when he spoke to them.
He was so sick of the way everyone tiptoed in his presence—as if he might fall apart if they upset him in the slightest. For a time, the N7 had journeyed to the cargo bay where Javik resided to speak with him on an almost daily basis—basking in the prothean's blunt honesty the same way a convict locked in solitary might bask in the fleeting glow of the sun when it passed his window. But such solace had since been lost when the ancient warrior departed from the Normandy.
Seizing the overhead handle in one hand, he carefully stepped from the shuttle and onto the world's soft grass. Closing his eyes and inhaling deeply through his nose, Shepard took in the fragrances of Mindoir. The last time he felt the warm breeze of the colony against his face seemed a lifetime ago.
The Normandy had entered the system as part of its mission to reestablish contact with the hundreds of worlds that fallen silent during the Reaper invasion. The human colony had emerged from the conflict relatively unscathed, having lost only a few hundred souls when the Reapers destroyed the planet's only space elevator and a handful of supply stations clustered near the mass relay.
Catching wind of the Normandy's arrival, the governor of the colony had extended an invitation for Shepard to visit the surface, calling him home to the sun-kissed grasslands he had last seen out the window of an Alliance evacuation transport.
The commander had initially planned to politely decline, wanting to keep old wounds, painful as they may be, closed. However Liara, by virtue of gentle persistence, had persuaded him to accept.
Waiting a moment for his companion to join him, John wordlessly surveyed the small clearing amidst a number of prefabricated buildings that had served as their landing pad.
A few colonists stood around where the shuttle had touched down, casting the occasional look in his direction and quietly conversing amongst themselves. If the commander, dressed in civilian attire and leaning heavily on a cane, didn't live up to expectations, it didn't show. A few approached him and asked to shake his hand; offering their thanks or congratulations. One, a man in his early twenties wearing a neatly pressed suit named Simon or Simons, or something like that, introduced himself as the governor's liaison and formally welcomed the pair to Mindoir.
Liara spoke for the both of them, thanking him and assuring him that they didn't need anything. She politely declined his offer to arrange a transport for them (Shepard had firmly insisted upon walking), and was able to shoo him away after a few minutes, but not without receiving the agent's contact information and promising to call him if they found themselves in need of anything.
Now rid of their audience, Liara tenderly laced her arm into John's and walked with him along the dusty dirt road that served as the colony's main thoroughfare.
The settlement was fairly unremarkable; composed of a mix of steel prefabs buildings and wooden houses, it was scattered across the better part of half a square mile along a series of gently rolling hills bisected by a shallow brook.
A few vehicles lazily rumbled by laden with farming equipment and on occasion a passerby would greet Shepard by name, though the doctor couldn't be sure if they were people the commander knew.
As they walked, the asari kept a careful eye on her companion. His expression had donned the blank mask of impassiveness, leaving her locked out from the maelstrom of emotions that she knew had been whipped into a frenzy beneath his stony visage.
She'd seen such a side of him only twice—following the Fall of Thessia, and when she'd finally found him in an Alliance field hospital—and even then, it had only been fleetingly . It was the public, indomitable face of Commander Shepard he showed even as the man behind it lie broken and vulnerable, and to see it now grieved her more than John could ever understand.
Hopeless to try to reach the man she loved in such a state, Liara trekked on, praying with each forward step that it was the kind of brokenness that led to healing.
The lieutenant commander would occasionally halt in stride, standing for a brief moment and his expression would soften to a look the archeologist could only call thoughtful. Several times he stopped in front of a building and once to watch as a group of children leisurely strolled past with a wagon in tow, though at other times nothing at all seemed to prompt him to stop, and he would simply stare wistfully for a few seconds at the horizon or a field of crops, perhaps seeing what once had been there. But all the same, when he resumed walking after each stop his face became expressionless once again.
They eventually arrived at the heart of the hamlet, emerging into a small plaza paved with carefully laid stone brick and surrounded on all sides by quaint little storefronts. In the heart of the square was a large, polished stone cut into a prism that tapered slightly as it rose. It stood slightly taller than the colonists who walked by it and each face of the black stone was etched with lines of text too small for Liara to read at such a distance, though they were undoubtedly the names of colonists lost during the slaver raid over a decade and a half ago and the marines who sacrificed their lives to stop it.
To her surprise, Shepard seemed content to pass by the memorial. However, he was stopped as someone emerged from one of the small shops and met him on the walkway. The figure, an old woman with thinning black curls and olive skin freckled and darkened by the sun, called him by his first name disbelievingly several times before her wrinkled features split into a wide smile. The commander smiled warmly as well, though his eyes were tinged with sadness.
The woman, stooped with age and a full head shorter than Shepard, began recounting his trips to her shop as a boy, and even Liara smirked as the old clerk detailed the antics of an eleven-year-old John trying to carry home a sack of feed bigger than he was.
Eventually the elderly shopkeeper apologized for rambling and wrapped her entire body around the much larger man in a hug, pulling away after a moment and very sternly instructing him to take care of himself as her amber eyes welled up with tears.
Shepard said nothing, instead offering another smile and a reassuring nod then quietly watched as she disappeared back into her shop.
Studying the familiar storefront for a moment more with a look of sorrow in his eyes, he returned to walking.
The pair continued out of the square without further interruption and walked until they reached the edge of town where the houses became more interspaced and the grass grew long. John halted where the road became little more than a trail worn across the grasslands and peered at a modest homestead that sat alone in the distance.
He took a deep breath and slowly released it, as if he stood there with the weight of the world upon his shoulders, and Liara realized instantly it had been his home before the attack.
She stood next to him and weaved her lithe azure fingers within his and gave a gentle squeeze, asking a thousand worried questions without speaking and offering every comfort her heart could provide.
He was numb to all of this—his mind instead lost in the pains of sixteen years ago. In the pasture below was his family's home; a woman knelt in flowerbed, a trowel in one hand and a watering can in the other.
She looked up from her work and smiled, speaking to someone else as they walked out the front door. Emerging into the cool breeze that swept over the hills and plains of the colony, a man smiled back at her. His dark brown hair hung in thick locks and he had a strong, squared jaw hidden beneath a neatly groomed beard.
In the distance a smaller figure walked through the fields, carefully inspecting the first leafy sprouts of the summer for defects.
Suddenly the ghastly, haunting howl of a siren rose from the horizon, and John's mind relived the next few hours in a single instant of violence.
Though the Shepard clan—like so many of the other colonists—hadn't gone down without a fight, by the time the sixteen year old slipped into unconsciousness he knew he was the only one left.
Eventually, an Alliance search party had found him in the foyer of his home—stained with blood, but still clinging tightly his father's rifle. Hundreds had been killed, and thousands more had disappeared into the holds of the slavers' ships—lost to the clutches of slave brokers in Hegemony space.
But eight years later, humanity had paid the bastards in kind on Torfan. The very name still brought a surge of hatred that flowed through John's veins like fire, and for a moment he could taste the desolate moon's chalky soil in the back of his mouth.
There was a reason they called him The Butcher.
Any other time such memories would've brought remorse and reminded him of how far he'd once strayed, but now—standing here—it brought a sense of brutal satisfaction for a fleeting second before regret washed over him.
Liara called to him softly, her voice wrought with concern. She lifted her hand to caress his cheek, but he pulled away from her touch, his face now ripe with shame and sadness.
The asari retracted the appendage and took a half step back to allow him a bit of space, her eyes full of hurt.
The commander began trekking back in the direction of the colony without so as much as a backward glance to see if she was following. His walk was labored and uneven, leaving Liara to wonder whether his knee was acting up or if the crushing weight of so many memories had finally found him.
She followed at a moderate distance, unsure if it was better to give him space or to walk beside him. As they reentered the village's central plaza, the doctor briefly lost sight of him and she frantically scanned the throngs of milling townspeople for any sign of him.
After a short search, Liara spotted the familiar silhouette of his broad shoulders standing alone at the memorial with his back turned to her as he ran his fingers over the indented text. As she hesitantly approached, he suddenly lurched forward and his knees met the rough surface of the paving stones, his black cane clattering to the ground beside him.
The asari ran to reach him, cursing herself under her breath for failing to realize how draining several hours of walking had been for him.
Falling to one knee at Shepard's side, she laid a tender hand on his back and felt the tremors of sobs as they wracked his body.
Detecting her touch, he slowly rose and looked to her, his eyes red and swollen. The doctor leaned forward and embraced him—pulling him as close to her as she could as if the wind might steal him from her arms.
John Shepard, thrice the savior of the galaxy and a man who had seen his parents killed before him sixteen years ago, pressed his face into his lover's shoulder and wept before the inscription of their names.