Liara
I felt lightheaded as I returned to my bedroom. However, for the first time, it was a lightheadedness that had nothing to do with withdrawal, or the drugs. It felt as a completely different sensation, accompanied by a lightness in my shoulders that made me feel…free. Of something.
I wonder how soon this will fade, my darker mind wondered. This is not something conquered in a day. Nor in a week. Some who fall as far as I have fallen never lift themselves from the ground, no matter if their promised life-span exists in decades or centuries.
I heard faint noises coming from the other rooms in the apartment, and I knew it was Zhira carrying out my wishes. Finding what I had tucked away and destroying it. I did not know how it could have been possible, but I felt stronger than I had since Feron and I had scoured the galaxy, searching for Shepard's body, and faced down the Shadow Broker and the Collectors.
It is because it was my decision, I realized and a clarity I had not felt for months infused me, a clarity that reminded me of the asari scientist aboard the Normandy, ever inquisitive, ever pressing for answers, no matter the terror that mind stem from the finding of them.
Zhira re-entered the bedroom. I expected to see some sort of triumph in her, some light in her eyes that conveyed her pride in having brought me this far, but there was nothing of the sort. She seemed unchanged from the asari who had spoken to me, harshly and without mercy, not minutes ago.
"It's done." she said, sitting in the chair next to mine, searching my face for…something. "How do you feel?"
"I…" I measured my voice carefully, afraid to use too much of it, afraid to remind myself of a time when I spoke words that had meaning, "…I do not know."
"That's fair." Zhira smiled, revealing a kindness that her harsh voice and rough speech would not allow most to find. "How does food sound?"
I allowed a small quirk of my lips in self-deprecation. "Truthfully?" she nodded. "Awful."
"Good." she nodded her head and brought up her omni tool. "I'll order something then."
"Why are you doing this?" I at last felt cogent enough to ask the question that had plagued me since she had lifted me in her arms and carried me out of Eternity. "You have given me glimpses, pieces, but why choose me, Zhira? Why choose me for your ultimate compassion, when surely there are thousands of lost souls on this planet who could have used your intervention."
Zhira pursed her lips, considering my question. "You're not wrong." she nodded. "But I guess it's because too many of those who could have used my intervention were too much like me."
"What do you mean?" I asked, enjoying the clarity, remembering what it felt like to have a meaningful conversation with another that needed not go elsewhere, that need not be avoided or hidden from.
"I don't have much sympathy for the addicts who were like me." Zhira explained. "You obviously know a little bit about my family, what we've done, what they," she emphasized the word, "continue to do. I oversaw my grandmother's Illium interests in the drug trade for fifty years."
"Goddess." I breathed.
"Something like that." Zhira muttered, shaking her head. "I was…untouchable. People feared me, no matter their species, no matter who they were or what they did. The power backing them was useless, because I had more backing me. I was a manufacturer, a dealer, and an enforcer. I've…I've done things I'm not proud of, Liara. I've killed people."
My hand twitched at my side, hearing the abject sorrow in her voice. I wanted to reach out, at long last, make contact with another living being who had taken the time from their hell to help me fight through my own. And I obeyed the instinct that drove me. I lifted my hand from my side and placed it on the angle of Zhira's elbow.
"In that," I whispered, "you are not alone."
"Yeah, I know." her voice sounded dejected, and I realized that she believed that I spoke to her in generalities, that she did not realize that I spoke of myself. "It doesn't change the fact that I fell that low. Regardless, at that time, I couldn't bring myself to care. I remember looking over the profit reports one night and just thinking 'why the hell not'?" she laughed in mockery at what she had been. "I was tired. Looking for change. Needing something new. The drugs were easy, and for me, they were free. Of course, my grandmother would have flayed me alive if she'd realized I was sampling the product, but I felt fucking invincible. I mean, I'd ripped apart a squad of commandos by that point. Who could touch me?"
I remembered, once, thinking the same thing. Not from my own actions, but because of how invincible I had felt when protected by Serena. How the prowess and the strength of the Normandy crew had made it so easy for me to find my own. And how, when I had found it, I had been welcomed into their ranks as one of them. I rested my other hand across the scar on my chest, the first and only bullet I had thus far taken. I had survived that. Not many did.
"What…what changed?" I asked. "What made you want to step away from…from the addiction?"
Zhira laughed, as she had promised me I would once again. "I took on the wrong matriarch." she answered. "You remember Aethyta from Eternity, right?" I nodded. "She was in the area when a major transaction went down. Funny thing is, I don't think she would have stepped in at all if guns hadn't been drawn between the two sides and we started firing. Aethyta ripped in there like…like some sort of fucking demon. I've never seen a gun twisted into so many pieces of useless metal before. Or a body." she shuddered.
I watched Zhira carefully, looking for any sign of discomfort, any sign that these memories brought her pain. I wondered if they might have spawned dreams in her akin to the ones I suffered through each time I closed my eyes and surrendered to sleep.
"In any case, I was scared and I was pissed." Zhira continued her story. "I'd never seen anyone that strong, that powerful. But I was Kariah T'Aryn's granddaughter, and our interests had been attacked. I had to stand up to whatever had blitzed through my guys and the other guys. So I took on Aethyta." Zhira laughed again. "Biggest and best goddess-damned mistake I've ever made. She kicked my ass from Illium to Thessia and back, and at the end, when she had her boot planted on my chest, she looked down at me, and I still remember her words."
"What were they?" I wondered.
"Goddammit, you're a fucking kid." Zhira quoted. "And you're high as the fucking Citadel."
Those words were in keeping with the little verbal interaction I had had with Matriarch Aethyta. I nodded.
"Aethyta dragged me back to her place. Took care of me and got me clean. Helped me see things a little more clearly. As soon as I got a grip back on my life I went back to my family. By that time, the assassination had happened. Kariah T'Aryn was dead. My mother was ruling the family now. It was actually easier to face her than it would have been my grandmother. I told her I was done, leaving, and that I didn't want any more of what the name T'Aryn had to offer."
We are more alike than Zhira knows, I realized. She turned her back on her family as I did mine. Though her family was embedded in dark things and my mother stood as a pinnacle of the asari people. We both rebelled. We both turned our backs on what our heritage desired for us.
"What happened then?" I wondered, feeling closer to Zhira than I had, sensing a kinship between us that before had not existed.
Zhira turned and ran a single finger down the thick line of scar tissue on her neck.
"This." she answered. "As I was leaving, my own damn mother pulled a gun and tried to kill me. I'd promised her my silence and Goddess knew I still loved her. But no. Leaving was too high a crime. Getting high wasn't. Even getting addicted wasn't. But being free of that life, that madness, was deserving of death."
"Zhira, I am…"
"Don't say sorry." Zhira's amythest eyes flickered. "I don't need anyone's pity, Liara. I've moved past that. I was a stupid kid who decided to get high to switch things up. I was fucking stupid, and I don't have the patience for that in anyone else. People who choose it need a swift ass-kicking. I'm aware it's a flaw, that I'm too hard on the world, but my heart isn't the sort to bleed for just anyone."
"Then…why me?" I asked again, believing that the answer would soon come.
Zhira shifted in her seat and faced me. "Because I could see the ghosts swirling around you, Liara T'Soni." she whispered. "I was dancing and I looked down, and I saw your eyes, and all of a sudden I was in a place darker than any I'd personally ever been to. I saw the glassy sheen in your eyes, the sweat on your skin, the blood running down your arm, and I knew that you were someone who deserved saving. Because you hadn't chosen it…you'd been driven to it. And that's why. That's why you."
Tears pricked my eyes and began to fall. I had felt so useless, so worthless, for so long. I had been abandoned by my lover, who chose death instead of a life with me. I had killed one of the revered matriarchs of my own people in the coldest of blood and fled my home. I had nothing left but this inheritance and the dim promise that Serena Shepard would be in the galaxy once more.
But she will not…she will not be the woman I loved. Such a thing is impossible.
"Now you know my side of things." Zhira said, slow, measured. "Will you tell me yours? Will you show me what grabbed your throat and drowned you in the darkness? It doesn't have to be right now. It doesn't even have to be soon. Just tell me that you will. I'll help you face it, whatever it might be."
Her hand reached out, palm open, waiting. Feeling strength once again, I placed my hand inside hers.
"I will." I promised. "I will."
