Shepard watched Liara shake her head, pull the blanket up over the face of the soldier to whom she was attending. "Shepard."
"How're the casualties?"
Liara took Shepard by the arm, towed her a few yards away from the alcove where the injured—and the dead—reposed. "Not good. We lost a lot of people."
"How're you holding up?" It was odd how the context of that question had changed in almost four years.
"This is it," Liara answered composedly.
"Yeah," Shepard agreed when Liara left it at that. "This is it." And she managed to infuse the confident zeal that this was truer for the enemy, rather than the defenders.
"You know, I don't know what to say?" the asari smiled ruefully. "I just know I'll have a clever line five minutes from now."
"Aw, get a jump on one after we frag these…" Shepard shut her mouth, her lips puckering almost comically.
"What?" Liara asked, her expression teetering on the edge of a smile.
Shepard leaned over. "I'm surrounded by navy guys and geth—I don't think using 'synthetic squids' would be at all appropriate."
"You're the only person I know who would worry about a thing like that at a time like this," Liara chuckled, shaking her head.
"I try," Shepard shrugged.
"Shepard?" Liara sounded a little self-conscious, but determined.
"What? No, what?" Because, at the first question, she'd felt herself come to full alert which, in itself, seemed to amuse Liara.
"Don't worry about it. How is it Joker puts it? 'Don't sweat the small stuff.'" Liara shook her head. "I do have something for you…if you want it. A gift, and it will only take a moment."
"Oh?" the offer surprised Shepard, and something like unease touched her drift.
"Better than a word but nothing that can encumber you, I promise," Liara assured her. "Do you remember the first time I joined my consciousness to yours?"
"Yes." Unpleasantly.
"In the same fashion I can show you some of my own memories. Asari exchange them sometimes, with their friends or the people they respect. It can also be a way to say farewell." Liara's blue eyes were large in her face. Clearly this was important to her, but she would not force the issue. She knew very well, and Shepard knew she knew, that Shepard liked to keep her mind to herself, her thoughts only put on display by word of mouth or body language.
"I'd be honored."
Liara smiled. "Close your eyes."
Shepard did so.
A disorienting sense of rotating in place came over them, and then they were standing together in a dark place, but it wasn't a frightening sort of dark place. The immensity was peppered with stars, strange little glowing lights. The place was so large and so empty, but it didn't make them feel small. On the contrary, one might find oneself feeling disproportionately large.
Shepard reached for one of the little lights, stopped short upon reminding herself where she was. But the light darted about her hand, as if it were investigating her, as if she were the anomaly.
It wasn't a sound, but her ears said she heard it, a subsonic pulse that did not disturb the air, but which she recognized from repeated experiences. She turned around to find just more of the darkness, and Liara standing off to one side. The asari pulled her forward a few steps, pointing her in the right direction, then tipped her head against Shepard's shoulder.
Liara waited patiently.
It started as a sliver of blue on the horizon. It wasn't until one realized it was a kind of light that was only blue at the outset that one knew it for the source of the not-sound that initially attracted an onlooker's attention.
"What is that?" Shepard's voice was a whisper as the light grew. No, not grew, raced towards where she and Liara stood. It seemed to have to cross a great distance to get to them. "Liara, what is that?"
But she wasn't…scared…of it. It was not a comfortable thing to see bearing down on her; she found it frightening but not 'scary.' She doubted she would be able to articulate what the difference was for anyone.
The light filled the entire horizon, arrowing towards where she and Liara stood, so big, so immense, that it would run over them, blow past them with the force of a passing freight train…and leave them unharmed.
The light burned Shepard's eyes, too bright, too pale, too hot to look into. Her eyes teared up to protect themselves, her muscles tensed, her breath caught in her throat, and touched a very old memory: her first parachute experience. Her Hollywood jump, that mix of emotions that made her so sure she wanted to jump out of that shuttle with that flimsy parachute between her and a long, uncontrolled fall.
The wall of light, or memory, hit her. Her involuntary step backward brought her back to her own mind. Shepard reached up. Her cheeks wet with tears she did not understand. "That was…" she shook her head. "…what a rush…" but the words did not come out as robustly as she would have liked.
"Thank you, Shepard. For everything," Liara murmured, reaching up to wipe the residual salt water from Shepard's face with her fingers. "So, are you ready to win this and call it a day?"
"Hell yes." A note of renewed confidence, of braced certainty, filled Shepard's voice. It had been the thing the tired soldier, feeling ancient and weighted down by care, needed. Shepard clapped her on the shoulder, then started for the door, some spring back in her step. When she reached the door she stopped, looked back over her shoulder. "Liara what was—" she shook her head as if deciding if she was meant to know in concrete terms, Liara would have explained it. "I'll see you in a bit."
Liara waited until the door closed. "It was you."