Liara

I looked at the commander, wondering if this would be another stilted moment between us, another door opened and un-entered. I realized that I did not want it to be so. The beat of my heart continued, fast, fierce, aware of the shield flickering around Shepard like a guttering fire.

She said I kept her secrets safe…as something more than an expression of mere gratitude.

"You have done me the same courtesy." I replied, lingering on the threshold of the open door. "Though I do not know what secrets of mine you hold."

"Yeah." her hand went to the back of her neck again, squeezing, massaging the tension from her muscles. "I guess I've been meaning to talk to you about that. It just never…seemed like the right time."

"Is there ever a right time?" I asked, hoping that Shepard would realize it was not a rhetorical inquiry.

"I'll take a page from your book and say I don't understand." Shepard's lips quirked upward for the briefest of moments. "This is…honestly, Liara, this is a place I've never been before. It's just different."

"Different how?" I wanted to know, perhaps for my own comprehension, perhaps because I could explain to her what had happened.

"You can hide things when you're just talking." Shepard elaborated. "It's easy to pick out the details that you don't want known and confess or confide enough to make someone understand without baring your soul completely." She half-laughed again and tucked her hair behind her ear. "How do you think I got the military shrinks to clear me for duty again?"

"Shrinks?" I questioned, unfamiliar with the term.

"Psychologists." Shepard explained. "The people they keep on hand to root around in your brain and ask all sorts of questions, make sure you aren't going to kill yourself or anyone else. Looking back on it…maybe the Alliance should consider hiring an asari for that sort of thing."

"All I saw were your memories, Shepard." I told her, keeping my voice gentle. "I lived your experiences, some as though they were my own. But I have no way of knowing your emotions in that time, or how it has affected you. All I know is where you have been but I want…" I trailed off, suddenly nervous.

My hands began to tremble and the back of my throat became uncomfortably dry. I beseeched the commander with my eyes, asking her to find the rest of my words, to understand them as she had tried to do everything else.

"You want to know more." Shepard finished, her eyes still holding the softness that mesmerized me. It seemed so antithetical to the character she portrayed.

Perhaps this is the look Kaidan wishes to see when Shepard looks at him. For it is fathomless and pure, distant and present, longing and self-assured all in one. It…it causes me to shudder, my heart to burn, and I do so want to know what it means, and why it seems that she gives it to me alone.

"I do." I nodded my head, allowing myself to be honest. "I have simply been too afraid to ask. You are quite the imposing woman, Shepard."

She laughed, and I took time to listen to the low, melodious notes. It seemed such a strange reaction in this situation, but I attempted to change my perspective for a moment. And I found that, once under consideration, it did not seem that the humans laughed too much, but that the asari did not laugh enough.

"I suppose I am." she mocked herself. "First human SPECTRE, sole-survivor of Akuze, the child saved from Mindoir."

My mouth opened in shock as the commander spoke of the things I had seen in her memories, the things she had wanted kept secret.

Is it easier for her, knowing that I know? Does she not fear that I will judge her? That I will hold her past anguish against her? How can she stand in the face of that tragedy?

I looked into her eyes, seeking illumination, and finding that the bright silver had darkened to the color of a threatening storm. Though she might speak of it lightly, the burden of which she spoke was anything but easy to bear. I could see more clearly the lines around her eyes, the reasons for the dark shadows. I remembered Kaidan speaking to me of Shepard's nightmares, and I wondered if she could ever escape from those moments.

"How can you do that?" once again I spoke before thinking. "How can you simply speak of those times in passing, as though they were never long days and hours of your life? As though they did not mark you in a very permanent way?"

Shepard stiffened, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. However, I did not see the mask of pretend congeniality cross her face as it had with Kaidan. She seemed to absorb the blow of my words and turn it inwards, towards the shield she wore, in an attempt to weaken it and let whoever lay behind to come forward and speak freely.

Shepard sat down on the floor, leaning back against the desk, her knees raised, her hands pressed together, the tips of her fingers resting on her lips.

"I can't pretend it didn't happen, Liara." she whispered. "But it's human nature. If you talk about something enough, if you dismiss it enough, it always seems like there's a chance it'll go away completely."

"But it never does." I breathed, revisiting her memories in their vivid, stark clarity.

"No." she shook her head and her hands fell into her lap. "It never does. I don't know what you want here, Liara." she admitted. "And yet somehow I find myself wanting to figure it out. Hell…I even want to give it to you, and I don't know why."

"Perhaps the why of it is not important." I ventured, though inside I shook with the gravity of what Shepard had just said.

"Could be." Shepard allowed, looking up, those soft storm-tossed eyes on mine. "So tell me what you want, Liara. Please. I…I can't figure it out on my own."

My heart broke, seeing the commander in this moment of vulnerability. Her voice was not detached, clinical, as it had been when she explained about Ledee, Jeong, and Shiala. It sought and searched and asked, and I would not be afraid of her answers.

I sat down in front of her, on the floor, wondering what a human would do in this situation. If they would reach out and touch, or remain detached and away. I did not want to break this moment by asking, so I remained as I was, looking into her eyes.

"Tell me." I whispered, hearing a note in my voice that surpassed curiosity and scientific inquiry. "Tell me who you are, Commander Shepard. And know…" my voice trembled as the words came from a place I did not know lay within my heart, "…know that you can hide nothing, and find comfort in knowing that you do not have to."

"You make it seem easy." Shepard said, her voice low.

"It can be." I attempted to convince her, and myself.

"Well then," her shoulders tightened and her hands clenched, "I guess we'll see how it goes."