Captain's Personal Log: Crescent Nebula, Tasale System, Ilium

Part II: Nothing's Ever Fixed

When we originally arrived, my eyebrows tried to climb into my hairline as the concierge told me Liara T'Soni had paid our docking fees. I was surprised to hear she was on this planet at all. Why wasn't she on some dusty world somewhere digging through Prothean pot shards or something? Maybe the Illusive Man was actually correct. Apparently working for the Shadow Broker, if in fact she was, was very lucrative. While Miranda visited her sister, Tali and Garrus came with me. I hoped it would be like old home week, but I wanted my oldest friends nearby in case more dirty laundry got aired. I really hadn't wanted Jacob around when Kaidan did what he did. Given what I remembered about Liara's feelings for me, I was definitely bracing myself for a repeat of Horizon.

I asked around and we finally located Liara. The three of us entered the office and found the young asari speaking to a hologram of a rather pale-faced human who stood twisting his hands nervously in front of him. Her voice echoed in my memory and bounced around in my mind, the visions of the Cipher flashing through and overwhelming me. Memories that weren't mine crowded my consciousness and filled me with the touch, sight, scents and sound of the death of an entire species. No! I was alive! I was here! I closed my eyes, reigning in my sudden fear, as she said, "Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have," her voice was cold and she paused to tap something into a datapad. "I'll make it simple, either you pay me, or I flay you alive. With my mind." The connection winked out with a fuzz of static. Liara turned around and my eyes flew open at the sound of her excited voice, "Shepard! Nyxeris, hold my calls!" I found myself being hugged tightly; if it weren't for my armor, she might have cracked a rib. She glanced over at Garrus and Tali, smiled softly and shook her head enigmatically. The engineer and the infiltrator glanced at each other and Garrus shrugged.

Puzzled, I watched her walk to her desk. Liara, little Liara was scaring people. Hell, she was scaring me. She turned and said, "My sources said you were alive, but I never believed . . . it's very good to see you."

I crossed my arms and frowned at her, "You're threatening to flay people alive now?" Flaying, destruction… explosions, death. I blinked, startled at the Prothean flashback, they weren't usually this vivid unless I was asleep.

She gave me that soft smile, again, "Oh, that? That was just a customer unhappy with the information he received. He'll pay, they always do." Her voice was still so soft and mild; it was eerie considering she'd just threatened someone with flaying, someone who apparently believed her threats. She turned to look out over the city, "Ever since I helped you stop Saren, people have wanted to be my friend . . . or not be my enemy. I've set up a respectable business as an information broker. It's paid the bills since you . . . well for the past two years. And now you're back, gunning for the Collectors with Cerberus."

I sat down when she did, Garrus still standing behind me. I could feel the disapproval radiating from him in waves, the crossed arms and his weight shifted backward to one leg helped with that particular assessment. "That's not exactly public knowledge," I told her.

"Neither is you being alive, Shepard. Information is my business, now," she smiled. I think she was trying to reassure me. I wasn't. "And if you need information on finding people, I'm happy to help." Disturbed by her business-like attitude and distant pleasantness, I asked about the two people I was there to recruit, Thane Krios and an asari named Samara. Then, oddly, she asked for my help in hacking. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at the two people, who, before my resurrection, would have been the ones able to help her. Before my resurrection, I couldn't hack a locker combination programmed with my own birth date. Suddenly, I woke up and nothing electronic was safe from me. I guess her information on my medical situation also included my upgrades. I wondered if she knew what else they'd done to me, but I was afraid to ask. My own strength increase, biotic and physical, was frightening enough.

Liara's hacking was a simple errand and it gave me a tour of the area of Nos Astra around her office. It also showed me a slice of asari life a human rarely gets to see. Two of them stood arguing about some sort of contract. I listened in a little, past the name calling (apparently, one was a "pureblood," the other's father was a batarian), and decided neither was going to kill the other, or bust out the biotics in a public place.

It only took a few minutes to deal with Liara's request and suddenly a familiar-looking green asari stood in front of me. I stopped so quickly, Garrus ran into me. He had to put his hands on my shoulders to steady himself but dropped them to his sides very quickly. Tali came up to stand next to me, but Garrus stayed at my back. I wondered why he'd been following so closely and what had had him so distracted he didn't see me stop.

"Shepard! I – I don't suppose you'd remember me. I'm Shiala. We met on Feros during the geth attack. Saren had given me to the Thorian creature as a slave, and you killed it. . . and saved me. I promised to help Zhu's Hope. I'm actually here on Illium for just that purpose." The colony had begun rebuilding itself, but the colonists were ill from the effects of the Thorian. She filled me in on the crummy contract the colonials had been forced to sign out of desperation. My heart broke for them. They just couldn't seem to catch a break. They'd asked for treatment, but ended up forced into being guinea pigs. Again. The green asari explained that it was an asari firm that was screwing over the colonists. Tali snorted in disgust and Garrus clicked his cheekplates against his mouth in irritation. I crossed my arms and felt my blood pressure rise in the colonists' defense. When Shiala explained the reason she was green, I wanted to dig Saren up and shoot him in the head again, even if Garrus had done it the first time. She asked me to talk to the rep, Erinya.

Erinya was a real piece of work. I'd never met an asari supremacist, but I suppose humans didn't have the market cornered on being assholes. She blamed her partner's and her daughters' deaths on alien interference. The partner died in the geth uprising and her daughters died in Saren's attack on the citadel (which was apparently Garrus' or all turians' fault, given the glare she shot at him). She prated on about asari superiority. She was in pain and taking it out on Shiala and Zhu's Hope. I was somewhat sympathetic. I'd hardly been rational after Akuze, but I never avenged myself on innocents. I caught Tali shaking her head in exasperation at the asari. Garrus was just glaring at the woman with his arms crossed. So, I pulled out a guilt trip. I felt like a heel when the asari stumbled backward, crying, to crouch against the low wall. Erinya relented and revised the contracts.

I returned to Shiala to report that she could take good news back to Feros. "Thank you, Shepard. You've saved Zhu's Hope again. I don't think I could've. . . is it always like this? Yesterday's problems lingering in some new form? Isn't anything ever just fixed?"

I shrugged, "You've got the power to make a difference, Shiala. Not everyone does."

The green asari set her jaw, "You gave us a chance by saving the colony. I can't let them down. I won't. Thank you for what you've done here, Shepard. I'll keep doing what I can." Her voice got a little wistful and her hand rose to almost touch my cheek, "Maybe sometime, when I'm not organizing the colony and you're not . . . doing whatever you do. . ." Astonished I just stared after her.

At least Garrus waited till she was gone before laughing, "First the Consort, then Liara, now her? Shepard! Do you bathe in asari pheromones every morning or something? I don't think I've seen one person ever hit on by so many of them in my life."

I glared at him, "Laugh it up, Garrus."

Tali looked from one to the other of us, "The Consort hit on Shepard?"

Garrus laughed harder, "She gave Shepard a freebie!"

I could feel my face turning as read as the pattern on my armor. Tali turned to stare at me incredulously. "She gave you a freebie?"

I rubbed the back of my neck, "I wanted more money. We were broke and you both needed new armor… instead the cheapskate took me to bed. I was too astonished to say anything."

Tali cocked her head at me, "How was it?"

I shuddered, "Disturbing." And it had been. I wasn't attracted to women, at all. And I knew asari, thought technically weren't women, they still hit my radar as female. Sha'ira had been all over me the minute I walked into her chambers. She'd even made Alenko uncomfortable, and he admittedly thought asari were hot in general. She'd chased Garrus and him out of the room before giving me my "payment."

Tali made a doubtful snort, "That's not usually what people say about the Consort, Shepard."

I laughed, "The whole thing was odd, Tali." I glanced at Garrus, "Besides, I'm not the only one who has to beat off other species with a stick."

His grin faded, "What are you talking about?"

"Remember Doctor Michel? She wrote me asking about you. Called you a hero. Asked if I could bring you by and she'd buy us, meaning you, drinks or something."

"I, uh…"

I smiled widely at Tali, "It's true! It sounded like wouldn't object to him putting his boots under her bed!"

Tali laughed, "I'm not sure what that means, Shepard, but I get the idea."

Garrus' neck was dark blue in embarrassment. His blushing made it that much funnier. "Garrus and Chloe, sitting in a tree… K-I-S-S-I-N-G…." I trailed off at his horrified expression.

"Why would we sit in a tree, kissing?" his voice cracked.

"It's just a children's rhyme, Garrus. Usually when human children practice kissing, they hid somewhere. Sometimes they climbed a tree."

He blinked at me, puzzled and distracted from his discomfort for a moment, "You have to practice? It's not instinct?"

I shrugged, "Some of it is… but to be truly good at, well… practice makes perfect."

He cocked his head at me, "Have you? Practiced?"

I snorted, "More than I care to admit." My traitorous memory very helpfully supplied me with the feel of Kaidan's lips against mine and followed it with the dimmer memory of my dead fiancé's.

"So, are you good at it?"

"Kee'lah! Garrus! You can't just go around asking things like that!"

I laughed, "I've had no complaints." I raised an eyebrow, "Why? You want lessons before your date with Doctor Michel?"

He cleared his throat and looked away with a nervous chuckle, "Uh, no. I don't think I'll be taking the doctor up on her offer anyway."

I shook my head, "Don't discount humans so soon, Garrus. Millions of asari can't be entirely wrong." He and Tali both laughed. We crossed the market to look through the weapons merchants' stalls.

Next to the merchants, the krogan spouting poetry to his asari lady love was too adorable for words. Garrus had to laugh at me for making her give him a break. "Never pegged you for the hopeless romantic type, Shepard."

"We all have our weaknesses, Garrus."