I'm cold.

I can't seem to get warm. I'm sitting on my bed, wrapped in my duvet, mug of hot chocolate burning my fingers, and yet I'm shivering. Nothing seems to be able to take the chill from my body.

My head feels like someone is crushing it in a vice, and the dim light hurts my eyes. The painkillers Karin has prescribed have had little effect, taking the edge off the pain but unable to banish it completely. My nose is still bleeding every so often, intermittent and uncontrollable.

I take a gulp of hot chocolate, and it warms me briefly, but all too soon the soothing heat fades and I'm shivering again. It's the worst comedown I've ever experienced, and I fervently hope it will wear off before too much longer.

The door to the cabin hisses open without announcement. Only two people aboard, Karin and Liara, enjoy that privilege. For all that the Doc is a close friend, I am happy to see my guest is the latter. I may be about to endure the same lecture about foolhardy stupidity, but it will be easier to get Liara to forgive me; Karin seems to take each of my mishaps as some sort of vast personal insult. "Hey, Li."

"How are you feeling?" The asari has foregone her usual light combat suit for soft trousers and a vest, giving me a nice view of her lithe body.

"Still freezing," I admit, taking another gulp of my drink. "I tried showering, this is my third hot drink, nothing seems to work."

Liara sits down next to me and rests the back of her hand briefly against my cheek. "You still feel cold," she observes, "but it's not as bad as it was. Goddess, you were like a block of ice when we pulled you out of that mech." She rests her head on my shoulder. "You scared me," she says quietly.

"I'm OK, Li." I try for reassuring, but the worry I can see in her eyes does not abate. Somehow, her quiet remonstration is worse than if she were yelling at me again.

"You stopped breathing," she tells me, a tremor rippling across her tone. "In the shuttle, for a few seconds. If Garrus hadn't been there..." She squeezes my arm. "Don't ever do that again."

"That I can promise." Guilt for putting her through yet another bout of anguish pricks at me as she strokes my hand tenderly. I may not have promised her anything, but I feel like I betrayed her all the same. Once again, however, there wasn't any other choice. "I'm sorry, babe."

Liara nods in acceptance. "It was the only way any of us were getting off that wreck alive, I know that, but you took an appalling risk down there. Was it worth it?"

"I don't know," I confess. "Leviathan and its offspring are powerful, no question, but they're as alien to us as the Reapers. I intrigued it, I think; it implied that it had been watching, and that we were making more progress than sheer dumb luck could account for. And now that they've been discovered, their survival depends on winning this war too." I sigh heavily. "I don't think I made any friends, though, backing them into a corner like that. One more reason to keep my hardsuit on." I wince as a pulse of pain shoots through my head, and rub at my forehead to try and ease it.

Liara notices the movement, and lifts her head, twisting round till we're face to face. "Your head?" she asks, and when I nod gingerly in confirmation, she places the index and middle fingers of each hand against my temples. Her touch is warm against my chilled skin as she gently massages it in tiny circles. Some of the pressure eases, and I let out a heartfelt little groan of relief.

"Better?"

"A bit. God, I feel like someone's trying to crack my head open."

"Is it anything like the pain from the beacons?"

"It's worse," I admit. "But it's the same kind of pain."

Liara purses her lips for a moment, thinking. "The symptoms are similar to if you had been exposed to a meld for too long, or if you had been... forced."

"Kind of like an Ardat-Yakshi?" I ask, suppressing a shiver.

Liara nods. "Exactly. Your brain will be in overdrive, trying to process the information. There are some relaxation techniques that might help, but the pain will doubtless not allow you to focus." She traces her thumb down the side of my face. "I could try to help?"

"Yeah, Li, if there's anything you can do..." Deep down, I'm a little worried by the fact that the pain doesn't seem to be wearing off. There's too much to do, too much at stake for me to be laid up for however long this will take to clear up on its own.

Liara stands up and takes my mug, setting it on the bedside table. She kicks off her sandals and climbs onto the bed, seating herself with her back against the headboard. She pulls her knees up, then moves her feet apart to create space between her legs. "Sit here, with your back to me," she instructs. "You can wrap the duvet round us if you're still cold."

I move obediently, settling myself between her legs and leaning back until I can feel her breasts brush against my back. She grips my shoulders and pulls me back until I am resting firmly against her, then she tugs the duvet up around my neck. Liara's body temperature is lower than mine, so normally she feels slightly cooler than me, but tonight, cold as I am, the warmth of her body seems to burn into my back. "Try to relax, Rachel," she murmurs in my ear before placing a tender kiss just behind my earlobe. She threads her fingers into my hair and begins to gently massage my scalp and neck. "Close your eyes, and imagine a place where you feel at peace. Somewhere calm."

I obey, conjuring the image of a wild sea shore, a cold, lonely beach on the far north-west coast of Scotland, on Earth, where I once spent several weeks on an N5 training course. With so few inhabitants throughout history, the area has a splendid, wild solitude that touched me deeply. "OK, I can see it."

Liara's fingers work steadily, rhythmically, unwinding kinks and tension points I wasn't really aware of. "Good. Describe it to me as I join with you."

"I'm standing on a ridge of grass and heather overlooking a beach, with the sea beyond. The grass is tall and scrubby, the kind you get growing where the land starts to reclaim the sand dunes from the beach. The heather is in bloom, clusters of deep purple peeping out from behind the grass stalks. There's a cold breeze whipping in off the sea; it smells of salt and freedom. The sand is golden-white, pristine, dotted with pink rocks, and the sea is bright jade in the shallows, darker blue as it deepens. The sun's overhead in a clear azure sky, and the waves sparkle with silver."

"Open your eyes," Li whispers. I'm standing on the beach I've just described, watching the waves roll lazily onto the shore. The wind ruffles my hair, I can smell salt, seaweed, and freedom. Liara is standing beside me, holding my hand, and a sense of enormous well-being and peace encompasses everything.

"This is beautiful, Rachel," Liara breathes as we step off the dune and down onto the soft sand. "When the war is over, will you bring me here?"

"Sure. I'd love to."

Liara leads me by the hand to an outcrop of rock, and she sits down with her back to the stone, patting the sand in front of her. "Here. Sit with me, mind and body in harmony."

I do as I'm told, and her fingers begin to knead my shoulders and neck, gently but firmly. "Relax. Feel the warmth of the sun."

I close my eyes, and warm lassitude starts to seep into every muscle, every limb. "Mmm, that's good."

Liara pauses for a moment, moving her head so that her mouth is next to my ear. "Now that we've got it fighting for us, I'd appreciate it if you'd avoid talking to Leviathan any further. I don't want any tentacled creature inside your mind," she nips lightly at my ear with her teeth, "except me."

"Oooh, I'd jump you for that if I had the strength," I retort, running my hands up her thighs.

"You couldn't jump a puddle right now," Liara laughs. "You're completely helpless. And you're all mine."

"Somehow, when I imagined being at the mercy of some omnipotent alien being with awesome mind-control powers, this wasn't how I saw things working out."

"You're not complaining, are you?"

"Well, you have to admit, you're not really all that terrifying. You haven't even given me a nosebleed yet."

Liara leans in, wrapping on arm across my chest and gripping my shoulder firmly to restrain me. "Perhaps not, but I do know your greatest weakness, Commander Shepard."

"Oh?"

Her hand slides beneath my shirt, ghosting over my abdomen. I try to flinch away, but she has me pinned. "I know you're ticklish," she murmurs, nibbling at my ear again. "Do you surrender, Commander?"

"Utterly," I concede, relaxing against her. "I'm your obedient prisoner."

"My willing slave?"

"Mmm, that too. Just let me get a quick nap, and I'll be ready to satisfy your every whim."

Liara turns my head, and her lips meet mine in a tender kiss. "As appealing as that sounds, I think you might need more than a nap. Go to sleep, Rachel."

I close my eyes, and the warmth of the sun and Liara's embrace draw me gently down into the welcoming darkness.

"That's a trip you still owe me," Liara notes as she pulls back from the meld. "If the Reapers haven't ruined the area, of course."

"Somehow I doubt it. That beach is a long way from any major population centres, which was the point of the training."

"What do you suppose Leviathan will do if it survived?"

"I can't imagine. What do you do with yourself once you've been forced out of billions of years of navel-gazing? Assuming of course that Leviathan even has a navel."

"It worries me a little, I have to confess," Liara says uneasily. "They were technologically advanced enough to create the Reapers – they are aeons ahead of even the Protheans in development. Even if there are only three of them, if they were of a mind they could pose a real threat."

"Well, one problem at a time, huh?" I tease her gently. "C'mon, let's try and focus on something else. We're getting close now."