Chapter 1: Dead Dreams & Living Nightmares
Exploration couldn't be beat by any other sense of wonder in the galaxy - apart from Prothean wonders, of course. There was reverence in the silence, and most times Liara had to remind herself that there was a very real danger that threatened to destroy that reverence, that wonder, that exploration. It was too easy to get lost in the radar as she scanned for anomalies and threats alike.
Unfortunately, threats were usually the only ones responded to. That didn't stop Liara from trying to point it out.
"Commander Shepard? I have spotted something on the radar and have run an analysis on it; whatever it is, it possesses some very unusual energy readings."
"Geth?"
No.
But.
"I... I am uncertain, Commander." Prothean. Definitely Prothean. She just knew without seeing it. How? Only one solution could find that out. "Perhaps we should investigate?" Liara held her breath - and her innards - when the mako rolled to a jerky stop despite the slow speed they were crawling at. Did Tali and Garrus actually work on the suspensions? It seems likely that they did.
In their minds, anyways.
Her own inner cursing was disrupted when Shepard looked over her shoulder, though her face was unreadable with her helmet consuming it whole. Her stoic gaze threatened to pierce Liara's lie, and it was yet another very real danger with potential to be fatalistic. Fortunately, the commander seemed to never suspect her, oddly enough. Everybody else did.
After a terse moment, of which Liara bravely stole a second to glance over at the other doomed compatriot - Williams - in the mako, Shepard nodded and turned in her seat.
"Send me the coordinates. Chief Williams, man the guns and provide firing support if Dr. T'Soni and I are ambushed. Elimination over extraction."
"Roger that, Commander."
Ambushed? The word recoiled in Liara's gut viciously. She second-guessed herself and ran another analysis on the anomaly, keeping the readings to herself. It definitely wasn't geth.
Maybe.
It seemed that truthfully and technically, she was telling a half-truth in that she was uncertain.
Gravity kicked when the micro-thrusters engaged, and Liara had one hand hooked under her chair to keep her in her seat - despite the belts that promised security. It never felt that way with the way Shepard drove. Not something the scientist would ever dare confess, lest the stoic soldier silently conspire to airlock her. Maybe not, but humans were still an intimidating anomaly to her.
Ground had never been more appreciated - and grieved - than every mako landing. Liara did her best to contain her enthusiasm and wrongdoing as she waited on Shepard, following the commander's lead in gearing up and getting ready to head out into the toxic atmosphere of Eletania.
There was something that pooled in Liara's stomach; a sense of dread? It didn't make sense. She caught glimpse of a smirk playing on Williams' face before the gunnery chief head up to manually control the mako's armaments. A clue, perhaps - but thinking of it, the soldier almost always wore such gleeful expressions when it came to the possibility of gunfire and explosions. Something the commander seemed to also enjoy, though that excitement was significantly tamer; on second thought, with a permanent stoic face to betray nothing, all the evidence lay only with the frequency of which explosions were... caused.
Humans, so destructive, so fierce. Liara always found herself hitching and holding a breath whenever the commander looked her way or issued a command - like now, exiting the mako. The scientist followed Shepard out and towards the location of the radar anomaly. Liara forgot herself in the presence of a strange silver ball, floating in the air, and absentmindedly walked towards it. A firm hand on her elbow snapped her out of her reverie and she nearly jumped, startled in her own skin, repressing it viciously as she looked at the human who stopped her.
"Commander?"
Piercing emerald eyes scrutinized behind the helmet's visor, the rest hidden behind the helm's breathing ventilator - not that it'd offer insight to see the human's expression anyways. Shepard remained eerily quiet, and for some reason she looked back at the mako. She let go of Liara and made some sort of hand signal presumably for Williams, and the cannon revved up as it cocked in their direction.
It aimed directly at Liara.
"C-Commander?"
"I don't appreciate being lied to, Dr. T'Soni."
That sense of dread came back in full force, and the scientist would have rather been kept in the dark about it now. Her innards twisted, her palms splitting clammy in a breath of a second. Her hand twitched and screamed to grab her pistol, but every muscle was frozen as her eyes locked on the mako's guns. The ominous whir sparked to life, a sound so unwillingly familiar to her, with how often these humans fired at everything - like the native pyjaks of this planet just to recover some mundane data module that paled in comparison to wonders like the one that floated beside them. Her lie was necessary.
Her lie was necessary.
"We've already investigated everything on this planet, Dr. T'Soni. Insubordination is not tolerated on my ship."
"I-I was not..." Liara's throat tightened as the whir revved louder than she remembered. Now, in the crosshairs, everything sounded so deafening - and almost muted.
"Dr. T'Soni."
Shepard's muted voice bled in the background. The end of the cannon barrel began to glow, and it fired. Eletania's lush greens turned inky black, tentacles of darkness clouding her vision. She lay, watching herself from above, as the toxic grass was stained purple with her blood. There was no pain. There was no light. There was the inevitable end. Her tunnel vision focused, seeing emerald eyes inside her head, despite standing over her own body. Numbness swept over her, expanding from her toes until it swallowed her up to her heart. Nothing awaited her. Fear no longer beat and screamed inside of her. Was this how death truly was?
It was almost... peaceful.
"Dr. T'Soni?"
Shepard's muted voice wormed it's way to be clearer. A faint shake of the shoulder. She possessed feeling again.
"Dr. T'Soni, wake up."
A firmer nudge, and the words felt so... Logical, yet even more mystifying. She was awake. She wasn't going to be awake for longer, slipping into a more permanent sleep; but slowly, her mind stitched reality back together, piece by piece, sensation by sensation. She hadn't opened her eyes, even though the slight shaking remained persistent, and ran a more dedicated experiment as she first wiggled her toes. She could feel them again.
Embarrassment rushed to warm the base of her throat, and she chanted calm within her thoughts to remain cool as she locked this secret away. The commander didn't need to know of this - and yet, Liara couldn't convince herself that that was the reason why she was nervous to open her eyes.
It wasn't until she heard her door slide open that stress melted away from every pore in her body - only to be shoved right back in again with the commander's clear voice.
"Dr. Chakwas, I think something's wrong with Dr. T'Soni. She wasn't like this after the last meld."
By the Goddess, this couldn't get much worse. Liara had to cease this before the medical doctor exposed her. She still tried to play it as collected as possible as she feigned a yawn and slowly sat up from her cot, stretching an arm. She forced her eyes open - a little more force than needed - as her gaze locked onto the two humans observing her from the doorway with equal mixed puzzled and concerned looks.
Well, Dr. Chakwas looked like that, anyways.
"Dr. T'Soni." Shepard approached decisively, her militarily posture hard at work with square shoulders and purposeful strides - as if she was still on a mission.
Did this human ever shut off? Something Liara could relate to on some degree, with her brain.
It wasn't some time until the scientist realized that was an unspoken question weaved in Shepard's even tone, and she swallowed to lubricate her dry throat. It didn't stop her from croaking like the thorian creepers they encountered on Feros. She shuddered at the thought.
"Y-yes, Commander Shepard? Did you come to check up on me?"
Shepard nodded towards Dr. Chakwas, a silent command of sorts when the medical doctor left and gave them privacy. If only Liara could understand this human even half as well as everybody else on this crew could.
"How are you feeling?" Shepard stood by the bedside, still rigid; if it was a tactic to make Liara feel awkward - or even intimidated - it worked marvelously well.
"I'm fine," she strained a small smile. It wasn't reciprocated. One of the first observations the scientist inside of her noted was that this human rarely - if ever - smiled.
"Good."
Shepard still stood, and suddenly she had this ability to make time just stand with her. Liara's nape began to feel as clammy as her palms did in her vivid dream. She stole a peek at her terminal - which turned to two, then three, watching the clock as the numbers changed excruciatingly slow. She realized her smile faltered when her gaze panned back to Shepard, and she renewed her efforts - not knowing what else to do, hoping it would instigate... something.
Instead, the marine stared.
"Good," Shepard repeated.
Something changed. There was an air of expectancy surrounding her. Or was Liara reading too much into this? The room, the interaction, something lingered, something clawed and screamed in the silence, but she couldn't quite pick up on it. She had a lot of work to do in understanding humans and their social behavior, and then she has this particular human to decrypt on top of all that puzzling nonsense. Give her an actual tangible mystery unearthed in her hands and she could navigate with ease, but this particular expedition wasn't getting easier even with more and more clues revealing themselves to her.
Suddenly, the marine sat on the edge of her bed. There almost seemed like there was crack somewhere, a promising fissure in posture, but the glue that held it together refused to relent. Shepard remained tough and rough around the edges. Liara couldn't help but feel intimidated by the action, the slight invasion of privacy, and she shifted backwards on her cot, forcing her to roll more on her side. Shepard's hand abruptly stuck in one of her pockets, bringing the scientist's awareness to the bulge of an object hiding in them.
Curiosity teased and brought her senses to life, sharpening them, soldering her awareness to reality as the last vestiges of troubled sleep drifted away. She had numerous guesses in the few seconds the soldier's hand was hidden, before the object was pulled out. Confusion wracked her with a new mystery.
"What is this, Commander?" Liara tentatively reached towards the small glass box where two minerals resided inside, kept separate by a pane between them.
"Minerals," the marine responded tersely. She appeared to wait, the minerals incrementally nudging forth, until Shepard outright grabbed one of Liara's hands and forced the palm up to relinquish the glass box on it. The commander stood up as abruptly as she had sat, and once again moved as decisively as she would on a battlefield when she strode for the door. Her tone had seemed... different, for a moment, but snapped back and held a familiar commanding air about it. "Run tests on them, Dr. T'Soni."
Time began to flow again when that door slid shut, and Liara was left in the beloved safety of solitude again. Her gaze flickered from the door to the clock, something in the back of her brain making note of how long it was taking her until she finally snapped out of her mystified muse. The only way to wrap her mind around anything that just happened was to run tests, as suggested. Or demanded. Or commanded.
It didn't feel like a command though. Not truly. Maybe.
Goddess, was this human ever going to get easier to understand? Liara's been in Shepard's brain, for crying out loud. It didn't get any easier than that; but there were walls, walls cloaked in barriers, and shields protecting the barriers. That wasn't just a hidden place in memories, that was a bunker caging the memories.
Something told her the code to accessing that bunker lied within this glass box.
Unfiltered data poured on the PDA screen at the touch of button. Spectre access.
To this day, the marine still was getting used to the convenience, to the information she would never get even if she climbed a few ranks higher in the Alliance. It was useful - it was dangerous. It carried with it a temptation to read up on everything she could... everyone she could.
One such notable interest was the asari crewmate on Lucy's team. After Noveria, after Feros, initial professional indifference gradually grew into curiosity. The scientist was as naive and green as they came, yet was surprisingly formidable in matters of the mind, both in intelligence and tactics. Dr. T'Soni adeptly picked up military strategy despite never being formally trained nor often in danger - having taken great caution not to find herself in those situations to begin with. Her innate superiority of biotics appeared to come so easily, so seamlessly, and Lucy learned from Lieutenant Alenko just what it was like to be a biotic - for humans, anyways; but she'd observed the wealthy amount of evidence unfold before her eyes in various live combat situations.
And yet, Dr. T'Soni carried with her an air of humility rather than untested superiority; a welcome change, from most asari that Lucy has crossed paths with. Her opinion on aliens - both individually and as a whole - was slowly evolving thanks to her crewmates as they educated her, but none was making as impressive of an impression as the good doctor was.
Impression. That was something related to digging, or fossils, or archaeology, or whatever. Wasn't it?
Lucy would have to remember that line someday. Maybe.
Amber glowed at her as her PDA demanded attention, and her focus shifted back to the present. She inwardly chastised her wandering mind - it was happening more often now that it wandered to that subject - and she renewed her effort to read the reports on what could be gained from ExoGeni regarding the Thorian they encountered. She made herself comfortable on the bed, as comfortable as one could be with something designed to be anything but even in the Captain's quarters, and got lost in her report before she could with her thoughts. It wouldn't last long.
Data melded and bled together into one fuzzy orange screen as her thoughts wandered again, but this time not of content wondering. The vision and the Cipher took over, images first echoing in the recesses of her brain, images that burned brighter as each one slowly flickered through as if her life played before her eyes on an Old Earth projector. The pulse in her neck thumped just a little harder, a little faster, against her will as her calm was chipped away.
Every blink reminded her of the horrors, and she could almost hear metal screeching like nails on a board. The deafening roar was faint - but at the same time, thundered loudly as if housed directly inside her ears.
"Commander Shepard."
Distant, small, insignificant. No, it carried something with it. A beep accompanied another call of her name. She felt as though she was watching herself from far away, through a scope, and a gentle hand on the shoulder echoed somewhere in her mind. Good soldiers' cries - rallying and dying - followed with it. Heat licked her fingers, drawing her eyes down at the calluses and scars painting twisted canvases on her hands. Overheated rifle, tossed aside.
"Commander Shepard?"
Command. What is the command? What is the point of command, with no one left to follow it? Every soldier dead. They were no match for the pirates, because no one expected to fight on leave. Civilians fought for their home, their colony, but were woefully unprepared for both assault and death. Hold out for reinforcements. That was all she could do, left all alone, and she survived by some miracle. They called her a hero for it. When she walked through the massacre among dead friends and innocent people, struggling to survive and advancing to the shuttle for safety, never at any point had she felt like a hero. Not when she felt relief.
Relief that she was alive, and the batarians weren't; every single one had a smoking hole in their heads.
Good, growled something inside of her, leaving a pang of hunger for blood.
Cool callousness grazed her forehead - her hand shot up, fingers wrapping around a blue wrist. She scrutinized it, or tried to, staring at it disoriented.
"I-I am sorry, Commander Shepard," the voice supplied the answer: Dr. T'Soni. "You were so lost in haunted thoughts, I..."
Green eyes met blue, and Lucy stared as the ocean pupils danced nervously like a boat caught in a storm. The scientist's smile reflected that dance, then turned sheepish, knowing that she was caught - and knowing that Lucy knew too. It stirred an uncharted emotion that the marine was still exploring in the only way she knew how, and it wasn't working very well; a frustrating problem. Give her a rifle and a batarian instead and she will navigate the solution to the issue of a breathing batarian very fast.
One word lazily tethered her mind back to the present. She swallowed subtly, ensuring she had a clear and strong voice - it seemed to be the most effective at drawing quick answers from Dr. T'Soni. "Haunted? What made you think that?" Nevermind actually denying that, or confirming that she'd been saved by such thoughts.
As expected, a firm tone snapped the scientist into shape, and she somewhat forcibly pulled her hand away. Lucy wasn't aware of how much force she had exerted until she noted the massage of the wrist, nor was she aware what she had until it was gone; a minuscule part of her almost seemed to reminisce the wrist. She was no fool. What she was feeling - and what she had gifted with the minerals - was plain as day to anyone with eyes.
A frustrating problem.
Dr. T'Soni's mouth opened, but nothing came out. It nervously clammed closed, the corner of lips twitching in that meek smile again. It was dangerous.
"I asked a question, Dr. T'Soni," Lucy urged methodically, hoping to mask herself and where her eyes were undeniably welded to. She looked up - another strategy, of course, to draw the answer out of the skittish scientist. Of course. Of course...
Time seemed to stand still for a fleeting moment, peering into the ocean. A familiar but old sensation washed over the marine too briefly to catch and enjoy the memory; sun and water, fishing rod in hand, knee-deep submerged as the line deftly flew around her. She missed fishing. It was simple. It was peaceful. She just was.
"I gave an answer, Commander Shepard," came a low, almost amused tone, though the scientist's shy smile betrayed her confidence.
Dr. T'Soni was doing strange things to her. Was this an asari thing? A by-product of the meld for the Cipher? This newfound awareness of this possible thing the marine was possibly feeling had coincidental - possibly suspicious - timing after all. She was indifferent before.
So what was different now?
"Right, understood," Lucy struggled not to mumble, in hopes to deny the very adamantly clear part that she didn't fucking listen.
"Something tells me you would have a very different answer to my answer, Commander." Dr. T'Soni's words danced subtly, as was boldness on her features. She took a moment and walked to the desk to help herself to the stool, making herself comfortable as she wheeled over to the bed. She gingerly picked up the PDA - that Lucy barely remembered the contents of - and briefly looked it over, a sadness crossing her face. "It is unfortunate with what happened to those colonists."
Screams filled the air, in the air of Lucy's mind. She forced it out of her thoughts and left silence no such opportunity to feed the scientist any personal answers.
"It is, but they can rebuild now. They will rebuild." Something tight balled in the marine's throat for a moment, but disappeared as fast as it came. "And they will move on."
"Mm... humanity is resilient, indeed. That used to be intimidating."
"To you, or others?"
Dr. T'Soni looked up in contemplation, a small smile gracing her with the resolve in her eyes when they met with Lucy's again. "Both," the scientist admitted. "You still are."
"I still am what, intimidating?" Lucy's brows furrowed in confusion. "How so? I never pointed a gun at you."
A melodic chuckle thrummed deep in Dr. T'Soni's chest. "That would certainly leave no room for misinterpretation. If that is the only definition and strategy employed by your species to intimidate others, then it is no wonder that there are so many misunderstandings regarding your intentions with how you humans behave." She gave a slight shake of her head. "You do not need a gun to intimidate, Commander Shepard."
"Whatever it is, I could use more of it when I need it. It doesn't always seem to work."
Dr. T'Soni hummed thoughtfully. She rocked a little on the stool, it's worn use betraying it's age as loosening parts creaked. The scientist looked down at it, concerned, seemingly breaking thought; but that small smile snuck it's way back on her lips again, and that small feeling inside Lucy was making itself more and more aware to her, becoming more magnetic and enthralling.
This was dangerous. Dr. T'Soni was dangerous, more dangerous - and intimidating - than she gave herself credit for or postured.
It would make all of this convoluted mess simpler to navigate if she did.
"Perhaps it is not whether or not you need more of it, Commander Shepard. If there is one thing you have taught me on the field, it is that if that strategy fails, then a employ a different strategy. 'Tis a lesson you should heed: try, try, try again, I believe the human proverb went, immortalized by William Edward Hickson." Her face scrunched up as she tested the alien word - alien to her, anyways - on her tongue again. "'Tis. Human language has evolved so much."
It was Lucy's turn for her face to scrunch. "Where did you learn that?"
Dr. T'Soni almost seemed abashed, and shrunk in her stool a little. "I have been researching as much as possible on the extranet. Your species has a lot of history."
Ah, and history has made itself very known that it was one of the scientist's many favorite topics - and hobbies. It made sense. One thing still didn't.
"You could research virtually anything with the resources and access you have been provided, Dr. T'Soni. So why human history?"
Bashfulness disappeared, replaced by something akin to devilishness.
Dr. T'Soni smirked.
Something about it spoke more than words ever could, perhaps like a certain gesture earlier. Have the minerals been analyzed? Has the marine's encrypted message been decoded? It was almost nervewracking to wonder, and be intentionally left wondering, evidently. For once in a very, very long time, Lucy's heart beat a little faster.
It reminded her what being human was like before she died.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading my first chapter! With the legendary edition out, this has reignited my love for writing and has helped me creep out of a writer's block as I tackle this genre instead. I hope everyone's experience with the game has been great, both old players and new. What a nostalgic ride it's been taking me on. Hope to see you in the next chapter, feedback appreciated as I am always looking to grow and improve as a writer and bring you a better quality story :) Thank you very much if you take the time to do so!