Liara laughed as she turned around to face her; a huge smile broke out on Mali's face as their eyes met. "Awww, how'd you know?" Mali asked as Liara released her and brought her into a hug. It was warm and soft, and everything that Mali missed about Liara. The asari smelled like paper and forest, just like Mali remembered.
"I saw your bag by the door, you idiot," Liara replied teasingly, "you left it right in the open for all to see while you decided to sneak around and try to scare a heart attack out of me." Mali snickered as she let go of the asari and stepped back.
"And I got so close too." She faked disappointment.
"Have you eaten?" Liara smiled, warmth radiating from her eyes.
"Not yet, but you don't have to cook me anything, I can just eat some left-overs." Mali opened the fridge door, but Liara pushed her out of the way and started grabbing ingredients from the fridge.
"Nonsense-you look like you haven't eaten in years-let me cook you a proper meal. Victoria, why didn't you alert me to Mali's arrival?" The asari asked as she started to bustle around the kitchen. Mali propped herself up onto a counter and enjoyed watching as Liara threw some veggies into a frypan on the stove.
"Since Mali did not alert us of her imminent arrival I assumed she was attempting another one of her poorly planned guerilla warfare missions-what do you call them?-oh yes, 'pranks'."
"And I thank you kindly." Mali smiled. "Remember, me and Vic are as thick as thieves." Liara rolled her eyes as she stirred the veggies.
"She is such a great help around here when you are gone-I forget how bad an influence you are on her."
"Don't look at me," Mali sniggered, "whatever mean streak she has she picked it up from the streets."
"I'm sorry, but it is impossible for an AI to possess a 'mean streak'. I do not have a body to place the mean streak on." Mali snorted.
"It's just a figure of speech Vic."
"Why don't you go put your stuff in your room while I finish up here." Liara spoke to Mali.
"Ok." The girl hopped down and Liara watched with a smile as the girl swung her long duffle onto her back and disappeared into the hallway.
"It's good to have her back Vic." Liara said.
"Yes it is."
Mali opened her door and was greeted by the familiar features of her room. Unlike the rest of the house, were most everything was white and everything was organized as the asari preferred, Mali's room boasted color and a feel of slight dis-order, much to Liara's annoyance. When she had first moved in the room had been characterless with not much furniture, but Mali had quickly remedied that when Liara had adopted her. A string of soft multi-colored lights hung above the long window that graced the far wall of the room. When Mali walked in they lit the room with the soft hues of orange, reds, blues, and greens. In front of her her full bed with a white comforter and pillows was neatly made, but the corners of objects shoved carelessly underneath was testament to her double standards where Liara didn't care to inspect for cleanliness.
To Mali's direct right floor to ceiling white bookcases stretched the length of the wall to her right and they curved around till it met the wall with the window. Across from the bed, on the other short side of the rectangle-shaped room a small white desk broke the floor to ceiling bookcases briefly, and a small plush chair sat in front. The books that adorned her walls varied from history to philosophy to fantasy, and everything in between. Denied the pleasure of reading for most of Mali's lived life, anything she could get her hands on she read. Mali slumped her backpack near a wall and collapsed on her bed, staring at the twinkling galaxy ceiling above her. A message beeped on her omni-tool and Mali checked it-it was from Oliver.
Rockhouse gym tomorrow? 8?
Sure. She sent the message and closed down her omni-tool.
"Mali!" Liara called. The teen sighed and made her way back to the kitchen, where Liara was placing two bowls of rice, chicken, and veggies on the table, along with that infamous tray of sauces.
"One of my favorites! Chicken stir-fry!" Mali exclaimed as she sat down and dumped yoshida sauce over everything. Liara chuckled and sat down next to her.
"I find it hilarious that all your favorite foods are so simple Mali: Stir-fry, nachos, anything with barbecue sauce…" Mali shrugged.
"Well when you keep it simple I find you get more out of life." Mali replied as she mixed her bowl up. Liara looked at her funny. "What?" Mali turned to her.
"Sometimes the wisest things comes out of human mouths," Liara shook her head, "it still surprises me every time." Mali smiled and took a bite.
"Yum!" Liara gave a pleased hum at Mali's appreciation of her food as she dug in as well. The table was quiet for a few moments before Liara spoke up.
"So how long do we have?" She asked, putting down her bowl. Mali wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before answering.
"Um…four days." Mali watched as Liara's eyes darkened. "It's all Hackett could give me. I'm starting new biotics teaching with someone at the Citadel soon."
"They didn't like my lessons?" Liara asked, crossing her arms.
"No, no!" Mali waved her hands apologetically, "It wasn't that, it's just…well…they don't agree with some of the things you taught me about biotics."
"You mean I didn't teach you enough ways on how to blow things up." Mali winced as Liara slapped her fork down on the table and rose, striding towards her office.
"Liara, please, it's no big deal…" Mali jogged after her. "Don't do anything you'll regret." She winced. It turned into a tense silence as Liara typed at her screen for a few minutes, then she sighed and turned her terminal off, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Subject Zero."
"What?" Mali asked, confused, from where she stood leaning against the door.
"You are being trained by Subject Zero or Jack, as she chooses to be called, an ex-criminal and now a biotics teacher for the Alliance at Grissom Academy. Before you she was considered the strongest human biotic out there. If she's left that post it must be for something important…"
"And you found this out how?" Mali asked.
"I hacked into the Alliance mainframe."
"Liara! That's a crime!" Mali exploded. "I could have just told you in a week who it was when I got there!"
"I wanted to know before-hand who they are shipping my daughter off too, and who they think is better than me. It's not at all any consolation to be upped by an ex-convict, psychopath, and very emotionally challenged woman." Mali raised an eyebrow.
"You have history?"
"I worked with her during the Reaper War, but I kept my distance-she had a fowl mouth and a disregard for manners that I found irritating. The best part is-this woman loves blowing stuff up-a perfect role model for my teenage daughter!"
"Liara," Mali frowned, "I know what you have taught me-all life is precious. That is why I must go so I can learn how to better save people's lives with my biotics. You must understand that while you are a great teacher, you don't have a soldier's sense of duty to the cause, and your biotics reflect that. The Alliance needs me to be an efficient weapon and the only way there is through military biotics training." Liara turned to fully face Mali from her computer with her hands in her lap as she spoke.
"That's what I'm afraid of Mali-to them you are just a tool they expect to fix their problems-but you have feelings and a heartbeat. You are not a weapon, you are a person, and if you put a person through enough fire they will come out burned." Mali involuntarily flinched at Liara's analogy, her back suddenly itching.
"It's clear I can't sway you Liara, but you must agree to the fact that either way I can benefit from more training. I'm sure they wouldn't trust this Jack with their new biotic hope unless they were certain she was stable." Liara sighed.
"Maybe, but the Alliance isn't the greatest at defining 'stable'. They recruited you back in the day." Mali slightly smiled.
"True, but they straightened me out in the end."
"I straightened you out," Liara said with steel in her voice, rising. She still stood a few inches taller than Mali, even though the girl had grown; she made an imposing figure when she talked authoritatively like that with her eyes flashing. "And don't you forget that. If you come back with a new-found love of killing small animals be sure that I will do it again." Mali was sure she was getting a little taste of what Matriarch Benezia had been like, and also of the true power that Liara rarely showed. The power that ripped tanks to shreds like butter and blasted legions of enemies into dust. She slightly gulped as she replied.
"Yes Liara." The asari nodded at her and walked back to the table, intent on finishing her dinner. Mali sat back down next to her, feeling like she was sitting on pins and needles, and picked up her half-heartedly, not really wanting to finish her dinner. Liara's reaction to Mali's announcement was strange, it wasn't what she had anticipated at all. Usually the asari was calm and composed, but a quick peek in her direction showed the asari stabbing at her chicken forcefully. Obviously something was bothering her, or she wouldn't be so worked up. Whatever the reason, this was not how she had pictured her first evening home.
"Is something bothering you Liara?" Mali tentatively asked. Liara sighed and she put her head in her hands on the table. "Hey, no elbows on the table." Mali quietly teased, easing some tension from the asari's shoulders. Liara made a face, but took her elbows off anyway.
"I feel like I still barley know you." Mali's eyebrows rose, surprised. "They are always carting you from one place to another and you are barley home, where you should be. You've been through enough Mali-you deserve a break." Mali frowned. "Sometimes I think you are avoiding me." She quietly added.
"This is by my choice Liara-I want to be an N7, no matter how long it takes. I'm not trying to be away so much."
"Why do you want to be one so bad? Because your father is one?" Liara accused harshly, frowning and startlingly Mali with her outburst. However Mali pushed back, intent on defending herself.
"No! I want to because it's my dream!"
"You don't have to do this for approval Mali-you don't have to prove anything!" Liara countered.
"It's not approval!" Mali denied. Liara shook her head.
"You've been pursuing this more relentlessly then anyone I know, so relentlessly in-fact that you are making Shepard uncomfortable with your level of dedication-like you are searching for an answer or something and you think that becoming an N7 is that answer! You've achieved more than anyone else your age could ever dream of, yet still, you push yourself! Why?" Mali turned her face away, not looking at Liara. How had she turned the conversation on her? Mali thought. Mae's face flashed inside her head, and guilt rose inside of her stomach. Before she could stop herself she blurted out what she had been thinking.
"I'm not good enough." Mali whispered, the echoes of Mae's laughter ringing in her ears.
"What did you say?" Liara asked.
"I'm not good enough!" Mali yelled, her eyes on fire as they met Liara's. Liara reeled back at the ferocity of Mali's outburst.
"And you think becoming an N7 will make you better?" Liara said that as more of a statement then a question, but Mali answered anyway.
"Why wouldn't it?" Mali stood up and took her bowl to the kitchen, scraping out the left-over food into the garbage and then placing it in the sink.
"There's something more to this that you're not telling me." Liara replied, as naturally intuitive as ever.
"No there isn't." Mali slammed her cup down in the sink, using that tone in her voice that let Liara know she was treading on shaky ground. However the asari chose to ignore her warning and push on.
"There is Mali, I know you."
"Maybe you should just stop poking your nose into things that don't concern you." Mali spat, surprised at her own venomocity. "I'm going to bed." Mali turned and stalked to her bedroom, shutting the door. Liara sighed and cleaned up the dinner before laying down on the couch, rubbing her temples. So, the intuition that she had felt from their vidcalls was right, there was something going on. However it looked like Mali wasn't ready to share, and Liara wouldn't push her, having learned from past experience.
The next morning Liara woke with a resolve to fix things with Mali, seeing as they only had three days left and she hadn't even had a proper conversation with her for eight months. She woke early and decided to make her a pancake breakfast knowing the way back in to her good graces was through her stomach-just like Shepard. She hummed as she cooked, thinking about the first time she had met the grown up Mali-the girl storming into a council meeting in only a hospital gown and fire in her eyes demanding to know the fate of her friends. Liara shook her head and chuckled, Mali hadn't changed a bit in the last two years. Still so stubborn and reserved, keeping what was going on inside her a secret.
Speaking of her, she should have been up by now-zombifying on the couch at least. Liara wiped her blue fingers on a towel to dry them and then walked to Mali's closed door, knocking on the girl's door with the back of her knuckle. To her surprise it opened slightly as she put pressure on it; it wasn't fully closed. "Mali?" Liara called softly as she poked her head in. Mali's bed was neatly made-but empty-and as Liara walked fully into the room she realized it was empty as well.
"Somali left this morning." Vic spoke up.
"What?!" Liara exclaimed. "Did she have her stuff with her? Did she leave?"
"She had A bag with her, but I do not know the contents. And since you already know that she is not in the house I must assume that you are asking whether she left this house with the intention of vacating the planet, which I cannot answer." Liara clutched her crests in frustration and paced the room. A slamming door caught her attention and Liara rushed out to the living room to see a slightly sweaty looking Mali kicking off her shoes with a black gym bag in her hand.
"Mali!" Liara rushed to her, stopping only a few inches away, making Mali reel back in surprise, almost tripping over her own discarded shoes. "Where have you been?!"
"Uh…the gym." Mali replied, dumfounded at Liara's reaction to her arrival. "You have nothing against working out, right?" Liara turned her eyes to the heavens with a relived sigh, then looked down toward the confused girl.
"No, no, of course not. Just excuse my overreaction, it was nothing." Liara swept passed her back into the kitchen, turning the stove off. "Are you hungry? I made breakfast." Mali took in the pile of pancakes, and dishes of eggs, sausage and fruit and saw them for what they were. An apology. She smiled.
"I'm always hungry." Mali replied with a lopsided grin. She looked so comical to Liara that the asari laughed.
"Don't I know. Come dish up!" Mali took her plate to the table, but Liara motioned toward the deck. "Why don't we eat outside today? It's very nice out." Mali shrugged and followed Liara to their small veranda that made a small platform before descending to the real porch that held the pool. They settled side by side on a small couch that looked out toward the ocean with their meals. Silence ensued for a while as they ate, both enjoying the breeze, until Mali put down her empty plate with an appreciative sigh.
"I swear Liara, sometimes I think you over-feed me."
"No way," the asari shook her head, "with the amount of activity you use your body in you should be eating probably more than four-thousand calories a day." The settled into a companionative silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts, their thighs and shoulders lightly touching. Mali felt the tenseness of Liara next to her, her trained eye picking up on her body language as it was trained to do. Mali knew she needed to apologize, yet she couldn't bring herself to-she didn't even know herself why she had turned so aggressive when Liara had probed her last night.
Her feelings were confused as it was, and Mali was afraid that if Liara found out about Mae that she would become angry that Mali had never told her about her-and also she would find out how Mali failed, and how it ended in the death of a close one to her. Mali was afraid to admit to her own fears-fears she had tried to ignore but were becoming increasingly present in her mind the more she tried not to think about them- that she wasn't good enough. However, Mali had to get one thing straight between them. "Liara," Mali spoke up softly, "did you think I left you this morning?" Liara winced and turned away.
"I have to admit that a small part of me feared a little, but I should've known-"
"-Liara-" Mali interrupted softly.
"Yes, I was afraid." Mali bit her lip, guilt washing over her in waves. She turned to the asari next to her and grabbed her hand and held it in her own.
"I would never for one second think about leaving you like that. Liara, no matter what, I love you." The asari wrapped her arm around Mali's shoulders and pulled her close to her side.
"I should not have pried, I know there are things in your past that are still very painful for you, and I know that if you need someone you know I'm right here." Mali nodded into her warm shoulder. They stayed like that for a few minutes, both soaking in the view and the moment, before Liara stretched and stood. "We are having company over tonight, so we need to clean the house and get ready." She smiled down. "Your room definitely needs a good cleaning." Mali frowned.
"It's not that dirty!" She defended. Liara gave her a critical stare.
"Mali if it gets any dirtier people might start mistaking your room for a landfill."
"Home sweet home, I guess." Mali sighed exasperatedly as she stood up. "Let me just shower first." Liara nodded and they both walked back inside. Liara went to start cleaning up from breakfast but Mali stopped her.
"You go do what you need to do, I'll clean this mess up." Liara raised an eyebrow.
"Maybe N7 training was good for you anyway." She joked lightly. Mali returned her smile and started breaking out the Tupperware. Mali heard the shower turn on and smiled to herself.
"Vic, can you turn on my Sunday Mornings Mix." Mali requested. Almost immediately the old playlist of mixed jazz and dubstep that Mali had put together began to play. She listened to the music as she cleaned, drumming on the pots and pans to the beat as she dealt with the dirty dishes and singing along when there were words. She was currently singing along to a remastered version of 'Aint No Mountain High Enough' when she heard a barely audible chuckle. She whirled around to see Liara in her bathrobe, quietly snickering into her hand at Mali's antics. "What? You've never seen a human sing and dance before?" She accused.
"You call that singing?" Liara quipped with a crafty smile.
"Hey!" Mail exclaimed, throwing a dirty dish towel at the asari, who dodged it.
"Don't think you can get me that easy!" Liara replied mischievously.
"That was just me warming up." Mali cracked her knuckles menacingly. Liara had to stifle another snicker.
"Right, and I'm a quarian." Without warning Mali lunged at Liara, flaying another rag like a whip. And thus the event forever dubbed after as 'The Epic Dishwasher War' was born. It involved a lot of rags, water, and biotic usage. By the end of it both were soaked and smelled like the inside of a dirty pot.
"Great, just more to clean up." Mali turned in a circle, taking in all the destruction. The couch was tipped on its side as was the table, turned into forts for their small war. Wet spots and dirty rags littered the carpet and random things were thrown around the room, accidental casualties of the game.
"You think that is bad-I have to take another shower!" Liara frowned. Mali snickered and then broke into a run towards the bathroom, tossing her rag to the ground as Liara rushed after her.
"Not before me!" She cackled as she heard Liara let out a surprised grunt as she slipped and fell on the towel.
Next Time: Mali vs Samara