Author's Note: Hello all! Thank you so much for your patience. I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Dragon Con and had some memorable moments. Foremost among them being able to meet Courtenay Taylor and Kimberly Brooks (the voice actresses of Jack and Ashley Williams, respectively). But I am more than happy to be back, and excited to continue writing. Thank you once again for bearing with me, and I hope you continue to enjoy.

Bright Blessings,

~Raven

Liara

"Are you certain you are all right?" the transport driver asked as I exited the skycar and stumbled.

"I'm fine." I replied, perhaps too fast, perhaps without the gentility of tone so innate to the asari.

She nodded; I closed the door and moved away, clenching my empty hands into fists, feeling the bite of my nails into my palms, forcing myself to remain awake. I had avoided sleep from the shuttle ride away from the STG ship, to the transport to Thessia, and even now refused to let exhaustion conquer me. A full day, or more, had passed, but I would not comprehend time.

My time had been stolen. My life had been invaded, and here I stood at the gates of my…it was not my home. My home had been with Serena, in her arms, in her heart, with our arms wrapped around each other as a fortress. This place stood…I had been born here, raised here. My dreams had taken their first breaths on these grounds. My dreams had died in the void of the horizons that fueled them.

I sighed and opened the gate interface, entering my access code with trembling fingers, knowing that it would not have been changed. Those who lived here would not have done so. The gates opened and I stumbled through, carrying nothing. I had left here with much, and gained more…but my return was empty.

Still, I knew comfort would lie within. Benezia had many followers, many acolytes. They had lived with her and shared her life in ways that I had never been able to. They had felt her loss, perhaps more keenly than I. Therefore, I would find comfort. I would find understanding. There would be no soldiers here, no hearts of stone that took death upon them and cracked it, forcing it away so that the mission might be pursued.

Strange, once, that I had thought such an ability powerful, perhaps even admirable. Now it seemed cold, needless…cruel with the intention of being so. I could not sever my soul from my emotions. Serena deserved more. She deserved more than the feckless, stony grief of soldiers.

I lifted my head as the wind brushed my cheeks, bringing the scent of the sea with it. I rubbed my eyes, clearing the grit from them, for the first time taking in my surroundings, the grounds of my ancestral home.

This is…wrong.

The estate, which had always been kept immaculate, had deteriorated. The fountain before my home no longer shot joyous streams of water into the air. The stone surrounding it had been overgrown by feral vines. The grasses had grown wild, standing much too tall, whipped by the wind coming from the sea. The carefully groomed topiaries had stretched beyond their shapes, looking somehow monstrous in the glow of sunset. The pathway to the estate was shot through with weeds, the mortar dark, and a sheen of moss had begun to grip the outlying stones.

What has happened here? I wondered as curiosity and confusion bred clarity out of the fugue of travel and misery. Benezia would have left the estate in the care of one of her acolytes when she left to seek out Saren. This level of disrepair would not be tolerated. Even after she died, after the matriarch's censure of her…how is this possible?

I walked to the door and gave it my code, but it did not allow me entry. I knocked, but received no answer. The windows were dark, ominous, like gaping holes filled with questions that knew no answers. I pulled up my omni tool and entered the frequency for the small security station on the estate…received no response.

Instead, a pre-recorded message blared from the speaker.

"All assets of the T'Soni estate have been seized pending an investigation into war crimes committed by Benezia T'Soni. Access is denied; trespassers will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

My blood heated as I remembered Matriarch Avarya, her stern countenance and condemnatory words aboard the Normandy, when Shepard had requested that Benezia's body be transported back to Thessia. Even though my mother's body had been returned home, even though the asari councilor had listened to Shepard…the damn matriarchy had still condemned my mother for actions committed against her will. And their order had made me a criminal for standing on land that belonged to me.

"Step away from the door." a voice jarred me from my thoughts and I turned, slow, looking over the form of an asari in leathers, her weapon trained on my chest, her jacket embroidered with the symbol of Avarya's personal guard.

I raised both of my hands, though the gesture was moot. Our biotics rendered my species always armed; only drugs or dampening fields could strip our natural weapons.

"I mean you no harm." I said, meaning the words.

My mind had reached the limit of its tolerance. All I wished was to hide away from the world, to attempt to comprehend, to let the mystical aspects of time take hold and begin their supposed healing. The wound inside my heart and soul would not cease bleeding. It was the ache between the beats of my heart, the cruelty of every exhale, the shadows taking residence in my eyes.

"State your name." the commando ordered. "And how you got through the gate. Now."

"I am Doctor Liara T'Soni." I replied. "And this is my home. I have been away for decades, so it is possible that my access codes were overlooked when the estate was seized."

"I am required by law to take you into custody and question you." the commando said, moving one hand from her weapon and retrieving a pair of biotic dampening restraints. "If you are carrying any weapons, relinquish them now."

Something cracked inside. It deafened me as my spine twisted and my mind rebelled and my overtaxed heart beat one time too many with the life it should not have had. I should have been with my lover, cast adrift into the wastes of the void. I should have perished above the wastes of Alchera.

"Go back to Avarya and tell her I have returned." I stated, refusing to comply with the commando's demands. "Tell her that whatever her grievance may have been with my mother, I shed blood for this galaxy, and will not be treated as a common vagrant or looter. Leave my home at once."

"Doctor T'Soni, I have no wish to restrain you by force, but will do so if I must."

Again the ear-splitting crack. Again I felt anger in my heart instead of the grief that should be present. Without thought, I reached out with my biotics, molding them to the commando's form and clenching my hand into a fist. Her body snapped forward at an angle of terrible unnaturalness and a ragged cry left her throat. I held her still as I walked forward, letting the pain of Serena's death wash away in this moment of unadulterated fury.

I pulled the pistol from her hand, taking the barrel of it in my fist and slamming the grip across her face. An ugly tear appeared in her skin, dripping violet blood down her cheek. Blood that should have been mine, that should have been boiled by the frigid temperature of space. I lifted the commando and walked back down the path, ignoring the moans of pain and gasps of agony. I resolved that no sound so wretched would be peeled from my lips. Not in pain. Not in anger. Not in grief.

The gate opened at my order and I glared at the pathetic commando in my grip. Her eyes were filled with anguish, and I could hear broken bones grate as I suspended her above me, helpless. I reached with my other hand and removed her omni-tool, crushing it against the stone with the heel of my boot.

"If this world will continually show me no mercy," I hissed, "then I shall repay in kind. If you should survive, do inform those who would seek me out that to come near me is to welcome their demise."

With that, I threw her through the gate, watching as she skidded across the road, landing against a tree with a sickening thud. The gates closed and I turned my back on the wounded asari, as everyone I knew had turned their back on me. I returned to my home and threw a crackling ball of biotic energy at one of the windows flanking the door. Weariness replaced the anger of before, and as I walked through the rain of shattered glass, I prayed that Avarya would be foolish enough to send more of her own.

Because, in that moment, in listening to bones crack, in watching flesh split, I had forgotten the still bleeding wounds in my own soul and psyche.