AN:- Alrighty then, time for Virmire. Man, things are getting near to the end now aren't they? Enjoy.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Virmire

Liara was still by the lockers when she reached the cargo bay, examining her armour and weapons. "Anything wrong?" Shepard asked, coming up behind her.

"I was just thinking about things," The asari replied, sounding a little despondent.

"You sound down, is it anything I can help with?"

"I am not sure," The scientist stepped back and forced a smile, "My life has changed so much since I joined your crew, it is still hard for me to adjust sometimes."

"How so?"

Liara reached into her locker and pulled out a shoulder pad, "See this?"

"It's the armour I got for you, what about it? I was going to upgrade everyone soon anyway."

"It is not that, it is that I need it at all." Liara went over to the bulkhead and sat down against it, "When I was researching the Protheans, the most I ever needed was a simple environment suit, enough to keep me protected against harsh weather." She dropped the pad to the floor, "Now I have to worry about bullets, and acid burns, and all sorts of alien creatures attacking me."

"Do you regret joining the crew?"

"Not so much. I have met you, and I had forgotten what it was like having the company of people, and for those people to be friends is even better. But in many ways I miss my old life, and sometimes I feel a little resentment that I was ever taken away from it."

"This is about your mother, isn't it?"

Liara nodded, "I have been talking to Doctor Chakwas about this since Noveria, and still I cannot bring myself to accept that there could not have been another way. Seeing the thorian, and how Shiala was able to break free of its control…"

She trailed off, but Shepard understood, "You think your mother should have been able to break free as well."

"I do not even know if it would be possible, but even though I can see the differences between the two, I cannot make myself believe it."

Shepard moved over so she was sitting right next to Liara, their shoulders pressed together, "Your mother, what was she like?"

"She was strong, she was wise, she was everything an asari matriarch should be."

Shepard shook her head, "No, what was she like as a mother? You keep telling me about her as the other asari saw her, not as you saw her."

"I do not wish to speak ill…" She sighed, "But I suppose you have earned the right to know something about me. My mother bore a great shame, that she had had a pureblood daughter."

"Pureblood?"

"Asari prefer to mate with other species in order to add greater genetic diversity to our species. When an asari has a daughter with another asari, they are called pureblood, and are seen as an eventual genetic dead end."

"Your childhood can't have been pleasant."

"I suppose you could say that. I did not have many friends, and with my status so widely known it was somewhat of a relief to finally leave my home."

Shepard thought there was something else underneath that, "And I guess your mother didn't help you that much?"

"No." Liara pulled her knees in against her chest and pushed her face into them, "She did not."

They sat in silence for a few minutes and Shepard battled with herself. You can make a nice gesture without it necessarily being driven by your feelings for her. You're her Commander and her friend, it's your duty to keep her morale up and your part in the friendship to keep her happy. Stop being a baby.

She slipped an arm around Liara's shoulders and pulled her close, breathing in deeply and enjoying the warmth of the scientist's body. "You don't have to talk about it; I just want to know more about you, as a person."

"There is not much interesting, even the parts where I have a story to tell, the story is nothing but lonely years spent doing very little."

"I think I could do with a few years doing nothing."

"Maybe when this is all done we will have some."

Liara rolled her head round and their eyes locked for a long moment. The dim light of the bay reflected off the scientist's skin and her head was full of the colour and the warmth and the smell. "Liara…" She began, not sure what she wanted to say.

"We should be resting, letting ourselves heal." There was no conviction in the suggestion.

"When I was given the Cipher, I saw things, not the vision, things about myself. Things I needed to realise so I could learn the Prothean way of thinking."

Liara's voice was very quiet, barely more than breath against her cheek, "It must have been incredible; I cannot imagine anything I would like more than to know those things."

"It showed me things that I've lost, and things that I have, and things that I want to hold onto."

"So what do you want?" The question was innocent, but Shepard's entire body was flushing with blood, and she was very aware of the blood pounding through her arms where they now encircled Liara.

"I want to be able to rest, and I want to be happy again, and I want someone to be happy with."

"That is quite a list."

"I don't know if Chakwas would approve, or if I'm really any more ready than I was." It was very hard to stay logical when Liara's mouth was half an inch from her own, half open and breathing hard. "But I'm better enough to know that I can talk to someone else, if you still want to be let into my head."

"You have all the Prothean knowledge in there now as well. Everything you do seems to be making you more and more… fascinating to me."

Shepard suddenly remembered their first real conversation, how flustered Liara had been to describe her interest. Now it sounded like she knew exactly what she was saying, and her mouth was still so close.

The shift change rang, a long rattle that woke the sleeping crew and signalled to the others that they could return to the pods. Shepard and Liara untangled and stood, taking her shoulder pad back over to the locker and stowing it as the engineers flooded into the cargo bay and boarded the elevator.

"You've certainly given me a lot to think about… Commander." Liara tried for the same tone as before, but it sounded much dirtier without the build-up, and Shepard couldn't resist barking out a short laugh, covering her mouth immediately. Thankfully, Liara had realised as well, and was going her odd shade of dark blue and pink. "I don't think I should try to be enticing."

"You should definitely be enticing more often, just maybe not so, uhm, erotic."

"Interesting definition Commander," Now the asari was back to her precise speech patterns, and Shepard almost found it more alluring, "I shall have to investigate the difference between erotic and enticing, so as to be better prepared for our next confrontation."

She nodded and headed for the elevator, leaving Shepard to lean back against Williams' gun table and let out a long breath, trying to calm her heartbeat. "I love it when you talk dirty to me," She deadpanned to the empty hold, then went to check on her own gear.

Virmire was approaching fast as Shepard's team gathered in the cargo bay. She was up in the cockpit with Joker, running over some final mission briefings.

"Once we're on the ground, try and find the salarian team, but remember to keep an eye on us as well. We don't want something to sneak up on us."

"And if the AA guns I'm picking up start firing on us?"

"Get to ground as fast as you can, Pressly's already scouted out a half dozen places you can land with ease, try and keep your flight pattern over those areas as much as possible."

"Gotcha." He checked one of his computers, "We're coming up on the drop-zone now, you'll wanna get down to the cargo bay."

She nodded and left the cockpit, flexing out the joints of her armour to make sure her latest modifications had settled right. She wouldn't know for sure until she was in combat, but all the tests had come out green. The elevator ride gave her more than enough time prepare mentally for another mission, and by the time she stepped out into the cargo hold she was ready for the drop.

"Alright people, into the mako, we drop in two."

They piled in and Shepard strapped herself into the driving seat. "You know there's still time to change seats Commander," Garrus told her from the gunnery space.

She smiled, driving the mako constantly had at least improved her driving abilities, but every time they got in Garrus still felt a need to comment. The smile vanished as Joker's voice came through the speakers, "Count it down Shepard."

A digital counter appeared on the front screen, counting down from twenty, "Tali, get ready on the thrusters, it's going to be a hard landing, Garrus, Wrex, be ready to engage on sight." Ten seconds, "Hang on people, it's going to be rough."

"Okay, let's take out those AA towers as fast as we can so Joker can land." She shoved the mako forward, and they cleared a corner, the tyres spinning hard as they fought for purchase on the riverbed.

Right around the corner bullets started peppering them long range, followed by a couple of rockets from some drones. Garrus and Wrex opened up as Shepard forced them through at top speed, trying to clear the geth. "Not stopping for sightseeing Commander?" Ashley deadpanned as they flew over an armature.

"No time, and besides, these guys are small-time."

"When did geth become small-time?" Kaidan asked, "We used to find it hard to take down a couple of squads."

"We have places to be." They rounded another corner and had to slow to a stop when they saw a gate closed up ahead of them.

"I'm getting a signal from that gate," Kaidan reported, "We can shut down some of the AA guns from here."

"Garrus, Wrex, stay here and provide covering fire, but try not to blow us up, Ashley, stay and defend the mako, everyone else with me."

She charged up onto the bridge with her squad following her, forcing a couple of the geth back behind cover. Garrus opened up and the resulting explosion brought a chunk of roof right down on the robots. "Nice shot Vakarian," She yelled over the edge of he bridge while Kaidan and Tali went ahead to shut off the towers.

As the gate rumbled open beneath her she linked her comms to Joker, "How's things up there?"

"We've got some fire, but it's avoidable." There was a pause, "Alright, Pressly says one of the towers just went offline. Way to go Commander."

"We'll try and get the rest shut down as soon as." Kaidan and Tali rushed back and she led them down to the mako, "Stay on station."

"Not much else I can do Commander."

She started the mako and gunned forwards again.

The second gate they came to went down just as easily, but the third was defended by two colossus. As Shepard pulled the battered mako into the cover of a rock she craned round to look at her team, "Alright people, I'm open to suggestions."

"Why not just do some of that crazy SPECTRE stuff that gets us out of these situations?" Garrus growled, trying to stem a trickle of blood from where he had smacked his head on the console. "Usually you'd just charge down the tanks single handed and somehow come out okay."

"Well I'm sorry Garrus, but I'm all out of special moves."

"How about just crashing the tank into them," Tali was watching her screens, "You did that one time."

"I can't just go crashing into things when I feel like it."

"Coulda fooled me." Wrex snarked.

"Okay, everyone get ready to attack," She was looking out of the rear screens, "I think I have an idea."

She jammed the mako into reverse and they started to back up the cliff behind them, clearing the rock and giving Garrus an angle, "Tali, thrusters, now!"

They launched off the cliff, the rocks behind them exploding under the combined force of two electrical blasts, Garrus fired again and the mako spun in mid-air, helping them avoid a hail of bullets. They came to a rest on one side, tilting dangerously as the wheels caught again. One of the colossi had dropped off her screens, but the second was still standing.

The mako crashed back onto two wheels, and Garrus wasted no time in firing, taking the thing's head off in a single shot.

"Nice shot Garrus."

"Final AA tower down, bringing us in to land."

"We'll be along soon Joker."

There were more geth between them and the salarian group, but after two colossi the team weren't particularly concerned.

"I am not sure I like this Commander," Liara told her.

"What Liara?"

"There are a lot of geth here, the only reason I can think of is that this place is of some importance to Saren."

"And if this place is important, then whatever he's doing here can't be good."

"That would be correct."

"Of course this place is going to be really important," Ashley leaned back from her seat, "Nowhere we go is simple. Everything has to be about world-saving, or galaxy defence."

"I blame Shepard," Garrus said.

"Of course you do, everyone always does."

"We may have a problem Commander."

"Go ahead Joker." She put him on speaker.

"The salarian captain can explain when you get here."

They could see the camp ahead of them, the Normandy in the river ahead of them. Behind the camp Saren's fortress was buried in amongst the mountains. Shepard pulled them to a stop and let herself out, marching along to the beach to where she could see a salarian leaving a tent.

"Are you in charge here?" She called as she approached, "What's the situation?"

"I'm Captain Kirrahe, third infiltration regiment STG, you and your crew have just landed in the middle of a hot zone, every AA gun within ten miles has been alerted to your presence."

Fantastic. I thought we'd brought them all down, "What are we supposed to do now?"

"We stay put until the council sends the reinforcements we requested."

"We are the reinforcements."

She didn't know much about salarian facial expressions, but the way he stepped back in surprise was easy enough to gauge, "What! You're all they sent?" He collected himself, "I told the council to send a fleet."

"We couldn't understand your transmission, they sent me to investigate."

"That is a repetition of our task," He sounded irritated, but it could have been to cover up nervousness, "I lost half my men investigating this place."

"So what have you found?" If she couldn't leave, she could at least try to get some information.

"Saren's base of operations." I knew it, this place couldn't just be some accounting firm. "He's set up a research facility here, it's crawling with geth and very well fortified."

"Is he here," That would at least give them a target, "Have you seen him?"

"No, but his geth are everywhere," We noticed, "And we've intercepted some comms referring to Saren, this is his facility, there's no doubt about that."

"What's Saren researching?"

"He's using the facility to breed an army of krogan."

Oh crap, he wouldn't. She knew he would though, finding the creepers and rachni had shown her exactly how far Saren would go to create an army of disposable warriors, "How is that possible?"

"Apparently Saren has discovered a cure for the genophage."

She remembered her history lessons, even if her codex hadn't started beeping at her. If the genophage was reversed the krogan would be free to breed, and within a generation they would have an army to overturn the galaxy with. And if they had been sterilised once they could be sterilised again. Saren's plan seemed pretty well thought out this time.

"The geth are bad enough, but with a krogan army he'd be almost unstoppable."

"Exactly my thoughts, we must ensure that this facility and its secrets are destroyed."

"Destroyed?" She hadn't noticed Wrex coming up, but now he was pushing past her, "I don't think so, our people are dying, this cure can save them."

"If that cure leaves this planet the krogan will become unstoppable, we can't make the same mistake again." The captain snapped at him.

Wrex shoved a finger in the captain's face, "We are not a mistake!"

"Is he going to be a problem?" Kirrahe asked as Wrex stamped away, "We already have enough angry krogan to deal with."

"He'll be fine," Shepard looked over to where Wrex was drawing his shotgun and blasting the river, "I'll talk to him."

She went over to her squad, who were watching Wrex and the salarians equally warily. "Everyone, I get the feeling that we're going in soon, so try and find any spare supplies the salarians have. I'm going to try and calm Wrex down, we're going to need him."

"Okay, but be careful skipper," Ashley stayed behind as the others moved off, "You don't want to get into a fist fight with a pissed off krogan."

"Thanks for the help Williams," She said drily, "Just don't gun him down unless he's about to kill me."

"You got it."

AN:- So I'm sure everyone's wondering, who is Shepard going to choose?

I'm not telling.

And, as promised, Liara and Shepard talk dirty. Basically I wanted to have a little more time with them being insecure, but then I realised that basically they have to be getting intimate very soon. The almost kiss in the game was pretty fun, so I stole it and did it earlier.

I hope everyone's enjoyed reading this story, because I've had a blast writing it.