'Does this unit have a soul?' 'The answer to that question is yes.' Legion slumps over, sacrificing itself for its people and for peace. Shepard wakes up panting, the tears streaming down her face. She bolts from the bed and runs for the bathroom. Before Liara can see.
Liara watched as Shepard left the bed and knew that something had to be done. It's happening more and more. She's getting worse, not better. So much worse. Liara threw the covers off and followed Shepard.
"Shepard, we have to talk about this."
"Nothing to talk about. I'm fine. Go back to bed."
Liara could feel herself getting angry. "You're not fine! You need to talk to me!" Liara paced outside the door. "Why don't you trust me?"
"I do trust you, Liara. I trust you more than anyone." Liara can hear that Shepard is trying to stop crying but she can't. Liara raised a hand, pushed with her mind and the locked door flew open. Shepard was on the floor, leaning against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest.
Liara knelt down on the floor next her and started to cry. "Shepard, this isn't working. You need to do something. You won't tell me what happened. You won't tell me how I can help you."
"I don't need your help, Liara. I'll be fine."
Liara took one of Shepard's hands and tried to look into Shepard's eyes but Shepard continued to look down, refusing to meet her gaze. "You're lying, Shepard. You're lying to me and you're lying to yourself!" Liara took a deep breath and tried to lower her voice. "You're hurting Bene and you're hurting me. It's like you aren't even here anymore. You just go through the motions. When we meld, all I find is this darkness inside you, getting larger and larger. I'm afraid you're going to lose your mind. Please, Shepard, I'm begging you!"
Shepard looked up, her eyes pleading. "I don't want to hurt you. I would never hurt Bene. I just need more time."
"Time to do what? Why won't you just tell me what happened? Why don't you trust me anymore?" Liara said it with so much pain and frustration that Shepard could feel her heart breaking all over again.
Shepard looked at Liara for a long moment and for an instant, Liara thinks she is going to speak but instead she just looks down again. Liara dropped Shepard's hand and stood up.
"If you can't talk to me, you need to talk to someone. If you don't...If you don't, I'm taking Benezia and I'm leaving you." Liara's voice quivered as she said the last words. Liara got up and walked out of the bathroom. At that, Shepard sprung to her feet and shouted after her.
"Well then, you're the liar! I promised you that I'd never give up on you and you promised me that you would never give up on me! Don't you walk away from me, you fucking bitch!"
Shepard heard that Benezia was now awake in the other room and was crying, afraid of the shouting. Liara marched towards her room intent on gathering her up and leaving. Shepard repressed the urge to run after Liara and grab her arm. To somehow physically stop her from leaving. She could feel the old, familiar rage threaten to overtake her. I need to get out of here right now! Instead of turning towards her daughter's bedroom, she turned towards the front door and ran out.
Long minutes later, after running through the darkness, unthinking and without direction, Shepard finally got winded and stopped. She left the apartment in her sleeping clothes, just shorts and a tank top and the night air was chilling her damp skin. No money and nowhere to go. Shepard looked around her and thought that it looked familiar. Need to regroup. Need somewhere to think.
Shepard continued on a few blocks up town. There should be a hotel up ahead. Shepard had her omnitool but not her credit chit so there isn't any way she could pay for a room. She would have to break in and then worry about paying the owner later. Shepard made her way to the side entrance. She might get noticed walking in the front door. The way she is dressed would definitely attract attention even if the employees did not recognize her.
She managed to bypass the lock on the side door easily enough and to her knowledge, no alarm was triggered. Shepard found her way to the stairs and started walking up some flights. She tried floor seven. Lucky number seven. She walked to the middle of the hall and then knocked softly on one of the doors. When no one answered, she bypassed the lock and opened the door just a crack. Seeing no movement or bags in the room, she slipped in. It was obvious from the untouched bed that the room was unoccupied and would probably remain that way at least until afternoon as it was already early in the morning and unlikely that the hotel would be checking in many more guests that night.
Shepard threw herself down on the bed. Her mind was racing. Liara was leaving her. Or at least she threatened to. How could this happen? How could she be such a complete and total failure as a human being that her marriage only lasted 4 months? Shepard felt angry with herself and angry with Liara. She should have had better control of her emotions. She couldn't keep slipping up like that. It was easy during the day when she was conscious and could divert her thoughts away from the genocide that she had committed but when she was unconscious; it came back to her every night.
Shepard knew that it was just illogical and a waste of time and energy. There was nothing that she could do about what she did now so why did she keep thinking about it? Why wouldn't it just go away? She had a life to live and a daughter to raise. What's done was done. Right decision or wrong decision, there was nothing anyone could do about it now. So why was her own mind betraying her? Dragging her back to the decision again and again? Maybe Liara was right when she said that Shepard was losing her mind. Maybe this is how insanity started.
The next morning, Aethyta woke up early to the sound of the buzzer at her door. She dragged herself out of bed, mumbling to herself.
"Whoever you are, you better have a good reason to wake me up this early or I swear, I'll throw your fat ass right through a wall!" Aethyta yelled as she hit the pressure pad to open her door. She found Liara and Benezia standing at her doorstep. Liara had tears in her eyes and Benezia was still asleep against her mother's chest.
"Shepard and I had a fight."
"So what? You're bonded. Bonded people fight."
"This is serious, Aethyta. Shepard ran off into the night with nothing."
Aethyta sighed and stepped aside to let her daughter enter.
"We got in a fight and she ran off. I don't know where she is. I'm so worried about her and …"
Aethyta held up her hand to stop her daughter's torrent. She gently took Benezia out of her arms.
"Let me put her back to bed and then you can tell me what happened. She's obviously still asleep and there's no reason why she shouldn't get a good night's sleep because her parents are idiots."
Aethyta left the room as Liara paced, trying to think about how to explain to her father why she was so worried. When Aethyta returned, she nodded towards the kitchen.
"Come on. I'll make some tea and you can tell me why you're so hysterical about a little fight."
Liara walked into the kitchen and sat at the small table there.
"Okay, we had a fight but it's more than that. Shepard has…not been herself. Something happened to her during the war. Something that she thinks about all the time. She won't tell me what happened that made her so upset. When we…"Liara trailed off, more than a little embarrassed to be talking about all this with her father, who she still barely knew. But there was no one else who she could talk to. "When we meld, there is this big, black area of her mind that she won't let me near. She's afraid to let me see those memories and those feelings. At first, I thought it was just all the horrible things that we had to see and do during the war. I thought that she just needed time and then she'd tell me. I thought it would get better. Instead, it keeps getting worse. She has nightmares almost every night. I catch her just staring off into space. It's like her body is in the room but her mind is elsewhere more and more."
Aethyta nodded. "I know that she had a really rough time while you were away. I figured it was just a case of PTSD like so many soldiers have. With all the shit she's seen, it would impossible for her to not have some mental scars. She seemed so much happier once you and Benezia got back."
"And she was, for a while. But for the last couple months, it's just gotten worse and worse. She won't tell me what happened and she refuses to admit that there is anything wrong."
"Okay. So what happened last night?"
Liara let out a deep breathe. "Last night, she woke up having a nightmare again, crying. She ran into the bathroom and I confronted her there." Liara looked down at her hands on the table and swallowed. "She still wouldn't tell me what was wrong. I got mad and frustrated and I said something I probably shouldn't have. I told her that if she didn't talk to me that I would leave her and take Benezia with me."
Aethyta shook her head. "Well, that was a really fucking stupid thing to say. The first sign of real trouble and you're ready to bail. Like mother, like daughter, I guess."
Liara stood up, angry. "This was obviously a mistake to come here. I apologize for bothering you with my problems." Liara said coldly.
"If they find her body in the bottom of the lake because she couldn't stand the thought of the one person in the whole universe who she trusted more than anyone betraying that trust, then you'll have to live with it."
"How can you say something like that to me? You are so hateful sometimes. Shepard wouldn't do that to me. She wouldn't do that to Benezia."
"If you hadn't had the same thought yourself then why are you here? She wouldn't do it. But maybe this darkness inside her would. We need to find her."
With that, Aethyta started to make calls. She knew that a Shepard who didn't want to be found will not be easy to find. They will need to hire professionals, better than the police.
Shepard woke up to the sound of a door opening. She had only just entered a light sleep and she remembered immediately what had happened and where she was. She bolted up from the bed but it was not fast enough. An asari in a business suit came in the room with two uniformed security guards in tow. When she saw Shepard her expression changed from one of annoyance to surprise.
"I can pay. I just needed a place to stay for one night. I will pay you and then leave." Shepard stammered out.
The woman in the suit nodded her head towards the door and said "you two can go. I've got this." The two security guards left the room with the door shutting behind them. "I've got to admit. I was prepared to find just about anyone in here but I never would have thought that I would find Commander Shepard in one of my rooms."
"Like I said, I have money. I just don't have my chit on me but I will pay you."
"It's an honor, Commander Shepard. Oh sorry, they made you an Admiral so I guess that's what I should call you. My name is Alyona and I'm the manager of this hotel. Don't worry about money. Your credits are no good here." The woman looked around the room and saw the complete lack of personal belongings in the room. "Is there anything that I can get you? Anything you need?"
"No, thank you. And I insist on paying you for the room. I just need a room for a couple days. Until I figure out what I'm going to do."
"Suit yourself. As far as I'm concerned, you can stay here as long as you like, on the house."
"That is very kind of you. But unnecessary. I will leave in a couple days and will pay you when I leave." So that Liara can't find me before then. Shepard knew that if Liara even cared enough to look for her at all, charges to their bank account would give her away instantly. Without a chit, her movements could easily be tracked. But then, Liara was so angry with her last night, maybe she wouldn't even care where Shepard was. Maybe she wouldn't even bother to look.
"Very well. Please call the front desk if there is anything you need."
Many hours later, Shepard was sitting in a chair with the lights still off despite the fact that the sun had set hours before. She heard a knock on the door. Surprised, she opened the door. She stood aside as a floating tray moved into the room, full of various drink and food items. Alyona followed behind, a smile on her face.
"Don't worry. It's all on the house. I noticed that you haven't left the room all day and you must be famished."
Shepard narrowed her eyes. "Am I being watched? Why do you care so much if I am hungry or not? Are you looking for some kind of endorsement or something? Why are you being so generous?"
"Don't worry. There are no cameras in our rooms. We do have sensors that tell us if someone is in the room or not. I'm not looking for any kind of endorsement." Alyona hesitated. "Think of it as a gift from one soldier to another."
Shepard could feel the woman's sincerity and she relaxed. "In that case, thank you Alyona. I guess I am getting a little hungry."
"Good. Please let me know if there is anything else that you need."
Shepard needed not to be alone with her thoughts anymore more than anything else. Before Alyona left the room, she cleared her throat.
"So, you were a soldier? Did you see action during the War?"
Alyona stopped at the door and then turned around. She gave Shepard a humorless smile. "Yes. And too much. I was a Commando during the Fall of Thessia."
"I was here right before the Fall. It was one of the hardest defeats I faced in my whole career. How did you manage to get off planet?"
"I didn't." Alyona sat down in one of the chairs at the small table where Shepard's food had been laid out. "I was a Commando with the Armali City Guard when the Reapers came. When it became obvious that Thessia was gone and what was left of High Command ordered the evacuations, I and the rest of the Guard were tasked with staying behind to fight the reaper troops. To delay them to buy the civilians as much time as possible to get off planet."
Shepard started drinking one of the ales left her and offered one to Alyona.
"A suicidal mission if ever there was one. So, how did you survive?"
"I survived because you saved us, Admiral Shepard." Alyona smiled as Shepard rolled her eyes and waved away the thought with one of her hands. "There were thousands of us in the Guard. All of us highly trained and experienced. All of us strong biotics. But we were no match for those monsters that they sent here. They just kept coming and coming. It didn't matter how many we killed. Kill one and it was replaced by three more."
"I know all about that. The longer the fighting went on, the more people they captured and the more creatures they turned out."
"Right. Well, we fought them for days, weeks. Out of the thousands of Guards who started the fight, they whittled us down until there were just a few dozen of us left." Alyona stood up and looked out the window. "They had us cornered in a half-destroyed building that used to stand right…there." Alyona pointed out the window to where a new, gleaming building now stood. "We were almost out of ammo. We were almost starving and all of us were so weak, we could barely manage a barrier, never mind a warp. And then suddenly, there was this red light and then the reapers just fell over."
Alyona sat back down and put her hand on Shepard's arm briefly. "That was you. We were that close to death and then by some miracle, it was over and we had survived. I don't know exactly what you did up there on that Citadel far away in the Sol System but whatever you did, you saved us. That is not an abstraction to me and the thousands, millions of soldiers who were fighting and dying at that very moment. And we will never forget it."
"It wasn't me. It was the galactic fleet. It was all the scientists who built the Crucible. It was all the members of the fleet who sacrificed themselves so…
"But it was you who fired the Crucible. It was you who made it up to the Citadel against all odds and it was you who managed to fire the Crucible. It was you who made the monsters go away. If it weren't for you, the ships and the scientists and the soldiers wouldn't have mattered. It's obvious that you are haunted by the War. I can see it in your eyes. Anyone who's been there would be able to see it. So, that's why I say, if you are having problems with your bondmate or having problems dealing with the ghosts or whatever reason you are here, you are welcome to stay here for as long as you like because I know what you did and I am in your debt. We all are. And if the corporation that owns this place objects, they can just go fuck themselves."
Shepard kept her eyes down and mumbled. "Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I won't take advantage of your generosity too long."
"Take as long as you like, Admiral and I mean that."
Liara was pacing in her living room late at night, unable to sleep. There had been no sign of Shepard all day and all night. How could she say such a stupid thing to the woman she loved more than anything else in the galaxy? She was trying to bring Shepard closer to her again but instead, she had pushed her further away than ever. Her father was right. If something happened to Shepard, it would be her fault. How ironic would it be for Shepard, who was loyal to a fault, who was always faithful to her duty, her ideals and her friends, to fall now after all that she had been through because Liara just wasn't as good a person as Shepard? Liara felt beyond worthless.
Aethyta came into the room behind her and put a hand on Liara's shoulder. Liara jumped; too absorbed in her own morbid thoughts to notice that she had entered the room.
"Nothing yet?"
"Still no word. She hasn't tried to make contact and she hasn't used any money. According to the people you hired, she hasn't been seen by anyone. How is that possible if she's okay?"
"Are you forgetting who you're talking about here? She's an N7, she's a Spectre. If she doesn't want to be seen, she won't be seen. She's probably just somewhere thinking about what to do." Aethyta sighed. "I owe you an apology. Even after all these years, I still have anger towards your mother and I took it out on you. You remind me so much of her."
"I'm nothing like my mother. She was so much better than I'll ever be. Shepard deserves someone better than me."
"That's not your judgment to make. She's loves you. No doubt about that. I don't know what happened to her or why she's so upset but you are her sun. Without you, she wouldn't have made it."
"Then why is she getting worse now? Before I came back, she was getting her life back in order. She didn't have this blackness."
"You're wrong. She's strong so I hope that she would have eventually gotten herself back but she was a shell before you returned. I saw her before and I saw her after you returned and the difference was night and day. The light had returned to her eyes. Maybe she is getting worse now that you are back because she knows that she needs to deal with whatever it is that's eating her alive. She needs to deal with it before you can ever have your life together."
"I shouldn't have pushed her. If I were like my mother, I would have been wise enough to see that."
Aethyta smiled. "No, you're not your mother. I bet if she were here, she'd tell you herself that you are so much stronger than she ever was at your age and so much smarter and so much wiser."
"Well, none of it matters because I've failed her when she needed me the most."
"You don't know that. When she comes back, you need to be strong. You need to help her with whatever this is. The rest is up to her. You can't fix her. She has to do that herself. All you can do is be strong and stand by her."
