Disclaimer: While I enjoy playing with their toys, I do not own or claim ownership of BioWare and/or any of their properties/characters.
Waking after a while, Ellanis immediately blinks the unconsciousness out of her eyes to find that she was tied to a chair. After struggling against the ropes for a moment, she found it was likely that with enough effort, she could break the bonds that held her down. However, after she began to put pressure against the ropes, she heard a low moan from behind her. As she turned her head she looked to see her asari bondmate tied to a separate chair behind her, bleeding from a minor head wound. A look of horror came across her face as her heart caught in her chest, watching the dark azure fluid run down her love's cheek and drip onto the permacrete below them both, starkly illuminated by the single huge light bulb far above them.
Her head was finally starting to clear after waking, and her only guess was that they had both kidnapped and were being held in a warehouse. Repositioning herself as she continued to loosen the ropes, Ellanis managed to lightly knock the top of her head against Liara's head frill, enough to jostle the blue woman into waking slightly with a groan.
::Ella… where are we?:: , the asari thought to her partner, only using mental communication so as to not aggravate her pounding head further. When Ellanis' only response was a small shake of the head and an mental call for quiet, Liara nodded and swallowed some of the saliva building up in her mouth, trying to rouse herself more without making a great deal of noise. She knew that Shepard could more quickly assess what was going on with quiet observation, but she was still worried. Those men had come barging into their home, kicking down the door and rapidly incapacitating her before she had had time to call anyone or even to mentally warn Ellanis about the intruders. It seemed that they had cleaned up their tracks well enough to trap her lover as well, so obviously she should be getting prepared to assist as much as possible and back Ellanis' play.
It had been a long while since she'd had to think this way, but Liara found her mental state quickly returning to wartime, her eyes losing some of their light and her facial expressions hardening as she shrugged off the pain and focused on their surroundings. Seeing a few of the intruders coming in from around a corner, she mentally pointed them out to her commander, who nodded slightly in acknowledgement.
As the armed men marched around the corner, Liara and Ellanis found that once they stepped into the light, it seemed that not all of them were human. Some of the troops standing before them were Asari, some Turian, but all of them appeared battle-scarred. Their faces were a mix of anger and tiredness, a feeling both Shepard and Liara knew well. After the squadron came to a halt, a man stepped directly in front of the two, and Ellanis breathed sharply in surprise. "You.. You were the one who shot me that day," Ellanis seemed puzzled at first, but then that shock quickly shifted into fury. "You said that some of you remembered what I had done. I'm still trying to figure out what that means, besides… Oh, I don't know, saving the damn galaxy?" Before she had finished speaking, Ellanis was fuming with rage, nearly tearing herself from the bonds that kept her restrained to the chair before she had a number of weapons and biotic fields aimed at her. Every single trooper was aiming to kill.
The man's first response was a small smile, and then six very simple words. The words themselves were innocuous separately, but together, they delivered a cold and harsh reality:
"The mass relays are gone, Shepard."
With that sentence Ellanis sighed, her expression going from rage to silent understanding, and then regret. She paused, took a breath, and then began to speak. "I know. It had to be done to stop the Reapers. I've already had my regrets about that decision and-"
"YOU KNOW DAMN WELL THAT TRAPPING BILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD NEVER CALLED EARTH THEIR HOME BEFORE IN THEIR LIVES WAS NOT RIGHT!" The soldier balled up his fist and smashed it into Shepard's face violently, making her ears ring from the force of the blow.
Regaining his composure, he adjusted the glove on the hand that had just smashed into her face and sighed. "In your blind determination to destroy the Reapers, you instantly trapped so many races, so many people, here on Earth. People who had never had any desire to live among us! Even other humans who had gotten away from Earth for good reasons, you trapped them as well. It was you who made that decision. You made it for all of us, without our consent. Did you even wonder how anyone would feel about it besides you and yours? I think it's high time that you get what you deserve."
Ellanis just shook her head and muttered for a moment before rolling her shoulders and sitting up straighter to lock eyes with her accuser. "I already paid for my mistakes in that war, and I'm still paying. I died once, nearly died again, and every damn day, I have to live with the memories of the people who I let down and watched die, and they all died bloody. Day in, day out, I am already living with the never ending guilt and rage over some of the things that I've done, things that I can never fix. Don't you think that for anyone, that's enough payment for some of the things I had to do to save ungrateful people like you?"
Her words stirred a murmur in the crowd. Some of the troops spoke amongst themselves, and Liara could watch the unease spread over the crowd, almost like a shadow, at the words of the famous Commander Shepard. A few of the Asari had probably watched Thessia burn, and Turians who had fought and bled on the moons of Palaven. Even a few of the rowdier ones among the crowd, like the Krogans and the Batarians, were nodding at Ellanis' words, knowing the things that she was famous for.
Hearing the whispers and turning, the armored man standing in the spotlight glowered over the crowd and spoke firmly. "You all are here today because Commander Ellanis Shepard promised you she would try to reclaim your homes and save what was left after the fight with the Reapers. And what did you get? A bucket load of empty promises, and being forced to live on a world that is not your own. Do you really think this woman deserves your sympathy?" With his speech, a few of the assembled faces among the crowd began to harden again, although many of the conflicted visages remained.
However, once the man turned, Ellanis and Liara both used their opportunity created by his monologue to continue working at the ropes binding them to the chair. Before he turned back around to grimace at Shepard once again, they had loosened the binding considerably, enough that either of them could be up at a moment's notice. The soldier leaned over the pair and smirked. "I bet you don't even know who I am, do you? I suppose it doesn't matter. All I was to any of you 'heroes' was just another man on the ground, a man you could order around like all the rest as you embarked on your fucking ridiculous suicide mission and trapped all of us here. Before I was a soldier, I was a family man from Mindoir. I made a home out of that rebuilt colony world, with a wife, kids… I'm probably never going to see them again. "
Ellanis sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry. You knew the risks when you signed up to fight that war." She then looked him dead in the eye again.
"Just like you knew the risks of kidnapping Commander Shepard and her partner."
Shepard rose up quickly as his eyes grew wide, slamming her head into his nose with an audible crack of bone smashing cartilage. As blood gushed from his face and he stumbled back, Liara projected a barrier for the few foolish people who raised their guns and shot on instinct alone. Most of the soldiers there were either dumbfounded, terrified of the angry veteran, or rounding up their compatriots.
Ellanis got out of the chair fully, sweeping out the legs of the man bleeding in front of her before descending on him with a flurry of blows, raining fists down onto him until Liara pulled her away. "Ella, stop! You're going to kill him!" As she looked back at what was left of the man, Ellanis shook her head and shuddered. "Thanks, Li. I…. I don't know what I was doing. Just base reaction I suppose. He hurt us both, and I…"
Liara sighed and held her bondmate while she tapped a button on her communicator that called Garrus and gave him their location for a small rescue. "You did what you do best, Ella. You fought. But we don't usually need to fight anymore, and we don't need to kill people. Let's just go home, alright?" She bit back the reaction of being horrified at her lover's mental state during that beat down. Almost… animalistic. She worried that all the effort she had been putting into rehabilitating Ellanis was coming to naught with this one simple gesture from a group of people that just wanted someone to blame for being unable to go home. Liara sighed and thought of their future, hoping that someday that she and Ellanis would truly be able to live in peace.
AN: It's been a while, but here we are again with a new chapter for all of you guys. I'm sorry that I haven't updated for a long time, I've been super busy with a lot of life stuff. I hope to be getting back to getting stuff to you guys. Also, I have an editor now! Thanks to my lovely partner g0askalice, who will be doing overviews and editing for me as well as a bit of a dartboard to get ideas to stick.
Shoutouts!
n7athan28: I'm so sorry for being evil. Not really. Hope this gives you some relief from that cliffhanger!
DracoRegina: Love the feedback. Hope I'm kicking it up that extra notch!
Shepard and Liara's story are back, with a bit of a kick. Stay Tuned, and Stay Blue, my friends.