Liara
"The sunsets on Mindoir." Shepard spoke, her eyes not meeting mine, but fixed on the floor. "They were some of the most beautiful I've ever seen. Standing in the fields, just watching the sun go down…but I never dream of that. I never dream of the beautiful things, or the happy moments."
Slowly, her head lifted, and the curtain of fire surrounding it framed her. The scar stood out in stark clarity against the pallor of her face. In the far reaches of her silver eyes, I could see the fractures, the working of a mind that forced itself to remember the good, even as the darkness came to visit her night by night and twist years of memories into hours of horror. But it was my eyes alone that met hers; Shepard's gaze lay elsewhere, in some distant place I could not reach.
Is the dark all that matters? I asked myself, hoping against it. If it is not, then how is it what dominates her thoughts and sleeping moments?
"What do you dream of?" I asked, attempting to guide her telling, to let her realize that she was not alone in this, that I would remain beside her, willing to listen to her nightmares and her life and not remove myself, emotionally or physically, from this moment shared between us.
"One night." Shepard whispered. "The one night when everything went to hell. We'd been warned that colonizing was dangerous, but my parents wanted to be part of it…to find a brave new world, to save our home planet, which countless generations before us had raped and abused. I was born on the ship, in space. The first ground my feet touched was a new planet, a new place that no humans had seen before. We made it our own, and even though life was hard, we were happy."
I attempted to picture Shepard as a child, small and helpless, fresh-faced and unscarred. I found that I could not do it. The woman sitting in front of me dominated the area in which she resided, casting away all other thoughts or imaginations. It seemed strange that she would present a person who had never been young, not known the travails and griefs of adolescence…but perhaps hers were so much more terrible than those of others.
So much so that she goes out of her way to portray a woman who has always been…Commander Shepard. As though what transpired in her past never occurred. It is not that she flees her past, but that she has killed it. In every mind save her own.
"I was fifteen when my mother got pregnant again." Shepard looked past me, through the walls of the ship, to another place and time. "They'd been told it was impossible and we...we were all delirious with joy. My father…giddy is the only word I can use to describe him. When Elizabeth was born…it made everything complete, somehow. She was the light of our world. I used to hold her in my arms and sing her to sleep. My entire life revolved around our farm, and my little sister."
"And then everything changed." I mused, remembering the vision, of the young Shepard huddled in the basement, holding that which was dearest to her in all the world.
"Yeah." Shepard closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against them. "I was outside, fixing some of our equipment, when I heard the ships and the gunfire. I'd never seen anything like that in my life except on vids. I ran for the house just as my dad ran outside to see what was happening. He had a gun in his hand and he screamed at me, told me go inside…but I didn't listen. A shuttle landed in our front yard…full of Batarian slavers."
I imagined the shock and horror she must have felt, looking on a foreign enemy for the first time, confused as a peaceful life became something worse, something harsh. Even on a new planet, filled with things foreign from Earth…it would have been all that she knew. It would have been normal for her. She would never have known of the harshness of the galaxy on a wide-scale.
I placed myself in Shepard's mind, then and now…realizing that she was, in her own way, wiser than I. For even I, in one hundred and six years, had known less of the hardships of the galaxy than she had. I had been born into wealth and power, into a name respected by my people, even if my conception had been tainted with un-traditional ignominy. I could never hope to comprehend what forged her, divorced as I was from such things.
But I can attempt to...and is that not worth something?
"My father opened fire." Shepard's voice sounded raw and rough. "Just…blazed a line of bullets across them. They shot back."
She did not notice, but I watched as her hand rubbed across her left thigh. In the shared memory, there had been great pain there.
"I took a bullet." Shepard whispered. "My dad dropped his gun and hauled me into the house. I was screaming, light-headed…I didn't even know what had happened, only that it hurt. I don't even remember my mother's face. All I remember is her putting Elizabeth in my arms and helping me into the basement. I sat there, huddled on the floor…and…and…"
Shepard's voice cracked and her eyes focused on mine for the first time since she had begun to speak. They were hollow and cold, so cold I could sense that the commander shivered. I reacted on instinct, reaching out and taking her hands in mine, looking at the tones of our skin, the tan and blue intertwined, warm and cold colors juxtaposed in a pleasing visual.
"There was a shockwave and a deafening roar." Shepard breathed. "I heard the walls of the house splinter and fall apart and then blood…blood dripping through the floorboards and landing in my hair and Lizzy started crying…" she paused and inhaled, struggling to breathe, as though she inhaled the dust of her wrecked home even here, in the sterile environment of the Normandy.
Her silver eyes were pained and shocked and pleading, her grip on my hands tightened to a degree that nearly became painful.
"Liara," she said my name, and I never wanted to hear it in that tone ever again, choked and half-dead, "Liara, I can't do this. I…I should go."
She pulled her hands from mine, as though my touch burned her, and rose, the force of her movement knocking me backwards.
"Shepard, wait." I pleaded, knowing that if she walked away now, that her shield would return, reinforced and harder than ever to break through; that this moment, left untended and unexplored, could crumble into something disastrous.
"No." the word was as forceful as a bullet. "I…I shouldn't have brought you into this. Forget it ever happened."
The door closed and I rose, reaching out and touching the cold, unforgiving metal. I could hear the commander's footfalls as she walked away.
"I can't." I whispered, curling my hand into a fist and pounding on the door, leaving a hollow echo of my frustration. "And I do not want to."
