A/N: Liara/Wrex, because someone asked for that. This is more a series of drabbles than anything else.


I. Genocide

Liara thinks she knows about genocide.

She is asari, who have long lives and even longer memories, and she is young for an asari but she has studied the rachni wars and the krogan rebellions and the disappearance of the Protheans for decades upon decades; Liara thinks she knows about genocide, because she has spent her life on dusty backwater planets, reconstructing how millions of people died in an instant some fifty thousand years ago.

The Protheans had an empire spanning the galaxy. It fell beneath the onslaught of the Reapers. Now, there are no more Protheans—and if that is not genocide, then what is?

But it is not until she meets Wrex that she realizes how excruciatingly slow a genocide can be. The Protheans were gone in a matter of centuries. The krogan have been dying for over a thousand years.

They are still dying. It is a death that will take millennia—and Liara, who is young for an asari, knows that she will not be there to see an end. Somehow she had always thought that genocide would be quicker. A blast of white-hot fire, for instance, as a star goes nova; a plague that mutates beyond the ability of scientists to combat; another species, faster, quicker, stronger, coming in with gunships and cannons ablaze.

Not this.

II. Blue

"T'soni," Wrex growls at her when she enters. "Let's get this over with."

"I—yes—I'm sorry—"

He eyes her. "Apologizing for anything in particular?" he demands, the glow of his biotics already spreading across his arm. "Or just your existence in general?"

She can feel herself flushing. There is a tugging at the edges of her clothing; she raises her own field to counteract it. "No, nothing," she says, as blue fills the room. "Sorry."

"You just did it again."

"I'm sor—" Liara claps her hand over her mouth, flustered. "Oh, goddess. You're right. Oh, I sound like an idiot—"

She is babbling. Liara stops talking immediately, wide-eyed and mortified, while Wrex looks amused and sends every unattached object in the practice room swinging through the air in a haze of blue.

III. Asari

This is the mind of an asari: arching and intricate, ribbon-like pathways curling away into the distance in graceful loops and swirls, and colored in all the shades of violet and silver that exist—and some that do not. When Liara thinks she thinks in conundrums and paradoxes: the Protheans were powerful, but they fell; Shepard is determined, but the Council is stubborn; she wants to live, but people keep shooting at her. Liara picks her way through tangles of thought and emotion, carefully, and records each step as she does so, because after all she is a scientist and believes in things like Proof and Rigor.

Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. The Protheans were powerful, but they fell—the Reapers came from dark space and annihilated them all. Shepard is determined, but the Council is stubborn—they both need to compromise, a little each way, and everything will work out.

She wants to live, but people keep shooting at her—well, she will have to practice her shields.

Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; two opposites (a paradox, a conundrum), and she puzzles through them until there is a conclusion. Liara is a scientist. If there is a question of why or how she will consider it until she has an answer; because all things can be answered.

Her mind is intricate but it is not tangled. There is a pattern to all things.

IV. Years

In retrospect, "I'm sorry your species is dying out," isn't the best way to begin a conversation.

But they are alone at the workbench on the lower deck, cleaning their weapons, and it is very quiet and very awkward and Liara needs to say something to break the silence or else she will start fidgeting from nervousness, and most likely drop her pistol, and the ammunition will explode and tear a hole in the hull, and then they'll all die

"Me, too," says Wrex. "Probably sorrier than you are."

"Oh," Liara says, feeling like a fool. "I—I didn't mean to blurt that out."

"Yeah, I know." Wrex is doing something complicated with his assault rifle. "It's all right."

"Oh."

He casts her a glance. "Funny thing is," he says, wiping down the barrel with a cloth, "I always figured I'd have a kid or two by now. There's still some fertile females around. And I had the credits."

"What happened?" Possibly she shouldn't have, but it seems as though he is making an effort to make conversation, and in any case Liara is curious.

Wrex shrugs. "Didn't pan out. I tried a couple of times, but nothing came of it. Those salarians did a damned good job with the genophage."

"Oh," Liara says again. And, because she does not want to sound like a corrupted audio file, "You could always, um—"

"Spit it out, doctor."

"—try with an asari?" It's been done before. "You—you're very strong, and a powerful biotic, and your child wouldn't be a krogan, but—"

"Thanks, T'soni." Wrex is chuckling. "But I think I'm a thousand years too old for you."

Her jaw drops. "I—I wasn't—that wasn't a proposition—"

"Yeah? It sounded like one."

Oh.

Oh, it had, hadn't it? Liara can feel herself flushing. "Oh, goddess," she says, and covers her face with her hands. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking—"

"Relax," Wrex says. "I'm flattered, actually. Let me know if you do decide it's a proposition—I wouldn't mind trying it with an asari." Then, when Liara can only stare at him in mortified silence, he nods toward the pistol she is still holding in her hands. "Need some help with that?"

V. Speech

Sometimes the mind of an asari comes up with strange things.

Wrex, she thinks, is very direct. She isn't sure if it's because he's a krogan, or if it's because he's Wrex; Liara herself dislikes squabbling and violence, and she is asari—but she is also dreadfully shy, and that is her own fault entirely. So perhaps both? Which doesn't really answer the question.

Liara has never quite understood the complicated dances of social ritual—not saying certain things, or deferring to people who don't know what they're doing, or listening to advice from the well-intentioned but misinformed—which is why she has spent the past few decades in silent echoing ruins, surrounded by dead technology that won't try to talk to her. Liara has a tendency to blurt out the first thing on her mind; not always a good thing when she happens to be thinking something that would be dreadfully embarrassing to say out loud.

But Wrex never seems to mind. Which is a relief; he is direct, and expects everyone else to be, and even when she says something really silly like I'm sorry your species is dying out all he does is look at her and say Me, too.

—and she's staring off into space thinking about him, like, like—

Like a Maiden with her first infatuation. Liara sighs. Oh, dear.

VI. Maiden

Thesis, antithesis—she wants, but she is afraid; she is curious, but she is afraid; she is impatient with herself for these feelings, but she is still afraid. And Dr. Liara T'soni, dedicated researcher, sits in her lab and does not think about her feelings because she does not even know where to begin. Her emotions are rapidly becoming tangled. There is an answer to this conundrum (this paradox) but for the life of her she cannot imagine what it is.

She has heard, from very reputable sources, that all Maidens go through this stage of self-doubt and anxiousness. It is a stepping-stone on the path to maturity. It is a lesson in melding, and intimacy, and connections. Adolescence is awkward for everyone, the Matriarchs say; in two or three or four centuries, you will look back on this and smile to remember all that you have learned.

Somehow these assurances do not make it easier for her right now.

VII. Proposition

"If I were to proposition you—" (much, much later, after she has stopped being embarrassed about that time and that other time and oh dear that other time, and it seems like it is time to be embarrassed about something new)

Wrex looks up from a shelf of plutonium rounds. "Is that why you've cornered me in the ammo bay?"

"No!" Liara flushes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—that is—I was just wondering—"

"Yes."

"—what?"

"If you were to proposition me, I'd say yes." Wrex picks up a lump of ammunition, peers at it, and sets it down again. "Was that what you wanted to know?"

"I—I mean, I also admire you a great deal, it isn't just that—" Liara stops. Oh, she should have stayed in the lab.

"Thanks." Wrex sounds amused. "Well, are you?"

"—what?"

"Propositioning me."

"Oh. That." This is quite possibly the most awkward moment of her life. Well, except perhaps for that one moment several years ago where she informed Matron Mellorene that her thesis was wrong, in front of a dozen other asari doctorates. But that does not make this any less awkward. "Yes," Liara says, wondering if it is like this all the time, and if so, how her species has managed to not die out in all the millions of years that reproduction has been required to take place.

"All right," says Wrex. "So how is this supposed to go?"

VIII. Krogan

This is the mind of a krogan: all lines and planes and sharp edges, determination like tempered steel, and long, long stretches of nothing but movement in one direction, very fast, while above the sky swirls an angry red. Wrex is very old. He has lived for centuries and will live for centuries yet—if he is lucky (and he usually is)—and in those years and years he has seen many things. Very little surprises him these days. Wrex thinks in straight lines and they do not bend.

The Protheans were powerful, and they fell. Shepard is determined, and the Council is stubborn. He wants to live, and people keep shooting at him. There are no questions to answer because there are no conundrums. All empires fall, and the Council are idiots, and if people are going to be shooting at him then they had damned well be prepared to die.

Wrex has a simple mind; linear; no Gordian knots of philosophy or theology to untangle.

Don't underestimate him, though.

Wrex thinks in straight lines, but those lines stretch out to infinity.

IX. Calm

"Well, we—we have to be very relaxed, and—and—" Liara is the opposite of relaxed. She is standing by the door, babbling and wringing her hands nervously, and she feels like an idiot. "—and we would connect to each other on a—a neural level, and—"

Wrex is looking more amused by the second. "You have no idea, do you?"

"Well, I don't have any practical experience—" Her face is hot. Liara stops talking, and wishes briefly for the Normandy to open up beneath her and swallow her whole.

"Yeah, it's kind of obvious."

She will not apologize. It certainly isn't her fault; she will not apologize, she will not

"I'm sorry," bursts out of her before she can stop it. "Oh, goddess. I keep doing that, don't I?"

"Come here," Wrex says, from across the room. "I won't bite. Well, not unless you want me to, anyway." A pause. "Or you could stand in the doorway and let the entire crew hear this."

She is by his side in a flash, the door sliding closed behind her. Wrex chuckles.

"Relax, T'soni," he says. "This isn't supposed to hurt, is it?"

"No," she says, and stretches out ribbon-thin tendrils of violet and lavender and silver toward his mind as her eyes fill up with inky blackness—

IX. Eternity

This is an asari and a krogan in a melding: silver and slate and charcoal, crimson and magenta and scarlet; swirls of amethyst against tempered steel, edges and waves, shapes like understanding and dry wit and companionship; flying, or perhaps free-fall—

Thesis, antithesis, and a coming together that is greater than the sum of its parts, a solution to the contradiction—

—or, there is no contradiction to begin with; no conundrum, no paradox, only a straight clear path to travel down, fast and smooth and free—

Or, there is a contradiction, but it does not matter. Or, there is a contradiction, and it does not matter. It seems so paltry, now; and somewhere Liara is smiling because she is no longer afraid.

All things look small against the backdrop of eternity.


A/N: You know, I didn't think it would work at first, but then I got really into it and it turned out much better than I had expected. It's sort of a romance and sort of a coming-of-age, and Liara acts like a stuttering teenager because she sort of is a stuttering teenager? Anyway, let me know what you think, and leave me more pairings that you'd like to see.