A/N: So I made sort of a huge mistake – I forgot that if you recruit Liara first, she doesn't try to do a meld, because while she's curious about the beacon message there's no reason for her to initiate it unless you're know you're looking for the Mu relay or trying to help process the information from the Cipher. Which sort of drastically shortens this chapter and defers some of the more interesting revelations I had planned.
Oh, well. They'll come later! In the meantime, have Shepard playing nice for traumatized people.
The shuttle, designed as it was to deliver the Normandy's entire ground crew (and extras) anywhere it might need to go, was downright empty with only the four of them rattling around in the passenger compartment.
The Mako was a total loss, of course. Even now it was almost certainly buried under meters of magma and ash. However, in a choice between 'the equipment' and 'half the ground team and the mission objective,' Shepard would pick the latter every time... especially when she was on the half of the ground team to get buried!
"Commander," the voice of the Normandy's co-pilot called from the cockpit. "Got Joker on the comm, wants to talk to you."
Probably wants to complain about scratching the hull, or something, she mused. "Put him on the PA system," she ordered.
The snarky lieutenant's voice immediately echoed through the shuttle bay. "Too close, Commander," it scolded. "Another minute and you'd be swimming in molten sulfur. Those shuttles aren't really equipped to land in exploding volcanoes. They tend to fry your sensors and melt your hull. Just, y'know, for future reference?"
She rolled her eyes. "Tell him he can join the ground crew any time he likes," she called back to the cockpit and leaned back against the padded bench seat.
Joker was, for his crusty exterior, an excellent pilot. She'd take a lot of lip from a man who'd literally fly through the ash plume of an exploding volcano to haul her ass out of the fire. It wasn't a risk-free maneuver – the fine silica ash spewed out by a volcanic eruption wreaked havoc on high-precision engine machinery, and if the engines of the shuttle didn't need replacement after even this one short run she'd be impressed.
"We almost die out there, and your pilot is making jokes?"
Liara T'Soni was sitting primly, hands folded in her lap with her head cocked slightly to the side to listen to the pilot's conversation. It was a wonderfully incongruous picture, Shepard thought, with the impeccably poised asari in a torn and scuffed uniform completely covered in ash and grime.
Shepard held up a finger, hoping that the asari would understand she was asking for a moment, then reached up to unclasp her helmet. She tugged it carefully over her hair – it was completely coaked in dust, blood, and krogan viscera, and she distinctly did not want to get any more of that on her skin than she absolutely needed to – before setting it on the seat beside her and addressing the doctor.
"It helps relieve tension," she explained, "and helps humans deal with traumatic events. Don't read too much into it."
"Commander?" The pilot called down again before Liara could reply. "The ash plume is growing faster than I expected. We're going to have to detour around it. It might take us a little while to get back to the Normandy."
"Exactly how long are we talking, here?" Shepard asked. A fifteen minute shuttle ride wasn't bad, but if it took much longer she'd start shedding the rest of her gear. Her armor was excellent as far as protecting her from harm, but it still wasn't pleasant to sit around in – especially after a heavy workout, and their mad sprint out of the mine definitely qualified.
"Probably forty five minutes, at least. I don't want to push the engines after all that dust they took on the ground."
She sighed and nodded. "Alright, Lieutenant, thanks for the heads up."
Turning back from the path to the cockpit, she addressed the shuttle. "You heard the woman. It'll be half an hour before we get in, so go ahead and make yourselves comfortable."
She tugged off her glove, tossing the blood-coated piece of armor on top of her helmet before reaching into a small storage bin affixed to the wall. It was a shuttle, not a five star hotel, but any combat shuttle carried some emergency supplies. Shepard had also tucked a few extras on board, given her own proclivities. In this case, the container held a bunch of slightly less vile biotic energy drinks.
Biotics in the Systems Alliance were issued food supplies in the same way that other soldiers were issued ammunition blocks. Current thinking (or perhaps corporate contributions to the people in charge of such decisions) had led the Alliance to provide small, sickly sweet energy boosters that most military biotics called "radioactive waste" for their luminescent green coloring and striking resemblance to cartoon depictions of spent fission reactor material.
While Shepard would use them, when given a choice she preferred some of the consumer-grade products that were more akin to an extra-sweet sports drink than a double shot of lime-flavored syrup. One of the first things she did while on board a vessel was stash a case or two of the bottles around where she or other biotics on the team might need them.
"Here," she said, handing one of the bottles to the asari. "Drink this before you pass out."
"Ah?" Liara started, before focusing on the proffered bottle. "Oh! Thank you, Commander..." she trailed off, blushing. "I'm sorry, I don't even know your name."
Shepard smiled. "I'm Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance, currently serving under the Citadel Council Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," she said, gesturing at the blue wing above her breast. "The quarian with her nose in her omni-tool is Tali'Zorah nar Rayyah. She's our resident expert on geth systems. The surly krogan in the corner is Battlemaster Urdnot Wrex. I suppose you could call him a krogan cultural attache if you wanted, but really, he's a mercenary."
"Ha!" Wrex barked. "'Krogan cultural attache.' I'll have to remember that one."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Tali said eagerly with a wave before returning to her omni-tool.
"I... see," Liara said slowly. "I suppose you already know who I am."
Shepard nodded. She knew quite a bit, actually. Benezia was – or had been, at least – a powerful figure in the asari political scene, and her daughter had not gone unnoticed, even if she seemed to care little for the world of influence and intrigue.
"I do not mean to sound ungrateful, but... I am not sure why you came to get me. My relationship with my mother is-"
"-not the only reason we came to find you," Shepard interrupted. "In fact, while it provided a nice justification to both my superiors in the Alliance as well as the Council, it's not even the main reason."
Liara looked well and truly confused. "It's not?"
"No," Shepard said, mindful of Wrex's evaluating gaze, "it isn't. You being related to Matriarch Benezia is a nice bonus, but it's not the primary reason we came to get you."
It was stretching the truth a bit, Shepard knew. She was planning on using the girl against her mother, either as a source of information or as a hostage, and that had been a fairly large factor in her choice to bother finding her at all. Given her overwhelming reaction to being associated with Matriarch Benezia or Saren, however, Shepard deemed it prudent to focus more heavily on the part of the asari's life that she had chosen and worked for, rather than the one that she had been born into.
Despite the deception, there was still a kernel of truth in her remark. While her last name was definitely the main official reason for the mission to Therum, Shepard had a far more personal quest of her own to fulfill. The asari's paper had hinted that the prothean communications beacon worked by directly dumping the contents of their messages into the minds of the recipients, but was frustratingly sparse on details.
But that would be an issue to raise later. "Tell me, Doctor," she continued, "have you been following the news lately?"
Liara shook her head. "I have not," she admitted. "My work tends to take most of my focus, and extranet access at the ruin was spotty at best. It usually is not worth my while to check."
Shepard let a long explosive sigh and settled back in her chair. "Then I need to bring you up to speed," she said. "You see, about two days ago, on the human colony of Eden Prime..."
The rest of the crew was assembled in a loose semicircle when Shepard, Liara, Wrex, and Tali stepped out of the shuttle to a smattering of applause.
"Last minute volcanic escapes a specialty," Shepard quipped to the crew before raising her voice to carry across the cargo bay. "Mission is officially finished as of..." she glanced at her omni-tool "1654. Excellent work, all of you. Ground crew, go get cleaned up if you haven't already. Officer debrief in the comm room at 1800. Alenko, go ahead and give the jarheads a debrief before then, the doctor and I will need a while to prepare."
"Aye aye, ma'am," he said, snapping a quick salute before jogging after the retreating marines.
"Doctor T'Soni, stay with me," she murmured to the asari. "We've got a few things to take care of before the debriefing."
The poor girl – woman, by the age in her dossier, but Shepard couldn't help but think of her as a girl – was like a fish out of water. Not only had she never been aboard a military vessel before, she'd barely even worked with humans and spent more time holed up with books and ruins. Competent, certainly, but almost shockingly naïve when it came to other people.
Shepard idly wondered how she would handle the pressure that was rushing toward her. She would be thrust into the center of a whirlwind of scandal, political intrigue, power jockeying, and likely even assassination attempts as a result of the vacuum left by her mother's treason.
It didn't really matter, in the end. As long as Shepard got the information on the prothean beacons she needed, what happened to the doctor was of little concern to her.
Shepard tapped her foot in exaggerated impatience while waiting for the elevator to return back from the second floor. "Our first stop is Doctor Karin Chakwas," she explained when it finally arrived. "She's the ship medical officer."
Liara's face deepened into a worried scowl. "Are you injured? You should have said something, I am trained in-"
"Not me," Shepard laughed. "You. Standard procedure after a search and rescue operation like this is a checkup."
"I assure you, I will be fine," she reassured her, a little testily.
Shepard smiled. Almost as reluctant to go to the doctor as the marines, she thought. "Consider it your first order on board a military vessel, then. Or do I need to regale you with tales of soldiers who didn't realize they were injured due to shock and died later?"
Horror stories aside, there were very good reasons to get checked out by a doctor after an event like the one Liara had been through. While she didn't doubt the doctor's claim to be uninjured – if a soldier had been through what Liara had, she'd have told him to drink some extra water and get to bed early – she had a distinct ulterior motive to get her into the medical bay: To perform a full body scan.
The ability to miniaturize tracking devices had gotten almost ridiculous as technology progressed. There were countless implantable tracers, and many people got them voluntarily to aid with search and rescue operations. Shepard herself had one that could be toggled on and off built in to her translator implant. Knowing what kind of gadgetry might be tucked away beneath the asari's blue skin was important, especially given her relationship with Benezia.
Of course, telling someone that just got out of a life-or-death survival scenario that you're scanning them for hidden spy cybernetics was gauche, to say the least. A mandatory 'look for any unnoticed injuries' checkup was a much more politically sensitive way to get the same information... and a good idea, to boot.
"I suppose it couldn't hurt to be examined by a medical professional," Liara admitted with a sigh.
"That's the spirit," Shepard said, tapping the door to the med bay open and stepping aside. "After you."
"Doctor Chakwas, I'd like to introduce Doctor Liara T'Soni. Liara, this is Doctor Karin Chakwas, our resident medical officer."
"A pleasure," Chakwas' warm and grandmotherly voice said. Shepard didn't know if it was actually grandmotherly or not, having never known a grandmother, but the term seemed inoffensive and most of the crew felt it fit.
"Nice to meet you," Liara replied. "Commander Shepard felt that it was necessary that I visit. Truth be told, I feel fine-"
"-but she insisted, yes, I understand," Chakwas nodded sympathetically. "You're not the first person she's dragged off to the medical bay who didn't want to be here. There was this one marine during training-"
Shepard tuned them out while Chakwas rambled on. She was quite a talented doctor, and while both Shepard and Kaidan had enough first aid training to keep someone alive and stable, she was actually a fully licensed physician.
Her musing was interrupted by Chakwas stuffing a grime-covered pile of cloth in her arms. "Here, Shepard, hold this."
Shepard looked bemusedly at the object she now held. "What?"
"You can carry her things. If I set them down, I'll have to spend the next half hour cleaning the dust off the floor. You're already filthy, so you get to hold them."
Shepard draped the tattered jumpsuit over her arm as the doctor stepped back inside the holographic privacy curtain. The doctor was also quite good at putting people at ease. Making the big – well, physically little, but metaphorically big – scary soldier into a coat rack was part of a process that had started the moment she and Liara had stepped inside the medbay. It was part familiarization, part distraction, and part 'honestly' showing another side of the commander. All together, it was designed to put the patient – who might be scared or upset – at ease, make them feel safe, while still providing necessary treatment and examination.
"Hmm," Chakwas hummed. "Have you had anything to drink lately?" Chakwas asked after a few more minutes.
"Shepard gave me an energy drink on board the shuttle ride here," Liara replied. "Otherwise, no, not since this morning."
"Not one of ours, I hope?" the doctor asked, half to Liara, and half to Shepard.
Shepard snorted. "Give me some credit," she said. "I gave her one of mine."
Chakwas nodded with a smile. "Good, good."
Through the blurring of the curtain, she saw the outline of the asari's head move back and forth. "Good? What's wrong with the Alliance ones?"
"Many things, the least of which is the taste," Chakwas said dryly. "The biotic energy drinks the Alliance provides are laced with mild stimulants and are quite concentrated. Shepard gets some of the simpler off-the-shelf ones that aren't tailored for human physiology. They also don't actively dehydrate you, which was my primary concern."
"I see," Liara said.
"But Shepard's are fine, especially if you were overusing biotics. Now. I think we're about done here... Shepard, can you head to my locker and grab a spare jumpsuit? I think she's roughly my size."
"We'll grab one on the way to the showers," Shepard countered. She didn't want to out and out say that she wasn't letting Liara out of her sight until she was certain of her loyalty, but the fact remained. A biotic – even a tired one – was more than a match for a good portion of her crew put together in close combat. No, until Shepard was absolutely sure Liara was telling her the truth about her relationship with her mother and her sentiments toward Saren, the doctor was to be kept under a watchful eye.
"Fine, fine," Chakwas said, waving her hand at her.
"We?" Liara asked hesitantly.
"Unless you prefer being covered in ash, grease, and gunsmoke, yes. I know I want to get out of this suit as soon as I can."
"I... yes, that would be nice," she stammered.
"Something wrong, Doctor T'Soni?"
"Ah... no. That is... I am not terribly experienced with your kind, and I do not..."
She's like an awkward teenager, Shepard thought while suppressing a smirk. "I'll happily answer any questions you might have. Just know that if you have any questions on human behavior or customs, feel free to ask Chakwas, Kaidan, or me. I'd be careful asking the rest of the crew; they might think you're joking or find it funny to give you a wrong answer."
"Why would they do that? I am merely curious."
Shepard laughed and shook her head. "I'm not a psychologist. Chakwas, how would you explain trolling to someone unfamiliar with it?"
Chakwas exhaled slowly. "I'm not sure I'd even know where to begin," she hedged. "There's plenty of literature on the subject if you're interested in that sort of thing. For now, T'Soni, I would suggest staying close to Shepard or Alenko – they can help you get your feet under you, and they're both aware that you're not just a blue-skinned human with different hair."
"The superficial similarity between our species is quite remarkable, yes," Liara commented.
"Tell me about it," Chakwas smiled. "It gives the evolutionary biologists back home fits, especially given how different our species' histories are."
She reached up to the wall and tapped a button, sending the privacy hologram flickering out of existence. "You're all done, Doctor T'Soni. Let me get you some nutritional supplements for your stay with us and you'll be good to go."
While asari were more than capable of eating human food for short periods – coffee and dark chocolate were particularly popular, as 'bitter' tastes were interpreted differently by asari taste buds than human ones – long term consumption would leave an asari deprived of a few amino acids that weren't present in human fare, to say nothing of the lack of element zero in human fare. In order to simplify logistical concerns, asari working on human vessels typically ate human fare with a small supplement to compensate for the missing amino acids, vitamins, and minerals.
Liara politely thanked the doctor before turning to Shepard and nodding.
"All set? Okay, we'll swing by the lockers and find a jumpsuit for you to borrow. I want to get this off of me before I have to give the briefing."
Liara was, quite frankly, overwhelmed.
She had never worked with humanity before, and if she had to sum up their behavior in a single word it would be hurried. They seemed to do everything quickly – combat, making friends, medical examinations, discussions, even their speech. While the salarians had them beat for raw frantic energy, there was a certain... driven... quality to the actions of the humans she had met so far that was quite unfamiliar to her.
Perhaps it is merely my long stays on remote digs, she mused as the Commander tore through several lockers, occasionally holding an Alliance jumpsuit up to her before shaking her head and returning it. She didn't want to impose on the crew, but at the same time, she would be glad to be out of the thoroughly ruined jumpsuit she was currently wearing.
That line of thought brought her mind uncomfortably close to the topic she had been trying to avoid thinking about. Asari were not, as a rule, self-conscious... but Liara was not most asari, and growing up as the isolated pureblooded child of what amount to asari nobility had left her without a large amount of experience dealing with other people.
It wasn't even fear of embarrassment or body image problems that worried her. After a hundred years, you were either comfortable in your own skin or you weren't, and Liara had accepted her somewhat unusual appearance comfortably many decades ago. No, what she feared was giving offense, or coming across as a fool to the obviously competent people who had risked so much to rescue her.
To make matters worse, the humans appeared to be working extra hard to ensure she was comfortable, a fact that didn't make her anticipate the coming debriefing any more. What if she couldn't help, or it was all a mistake? What if they'd risked so much to find her, only to for her to be useless? She scarcely had spoken with her mother; they had gone their separate ways years ago, surely they knew this...
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block the thoughts out.
"Hey, you okay?" Shepard's concerned voice sounded in her ear. "Do you need a moment?"
She blinked, forcing her eyes open to see the furrowed gaze of the human woman before her. "Doctor T'Soni?"
She shook her head rapidly. "It is nothing," she muttered. "I am-"
No.
She couldn't bring herself to lie to these people, to this woman.
"I will be fine," she finished, forcing a faint smile. "I promise."
To her relief, Shepard appeared to accept that, leaning back and nodding slowly. "Okay. Well, if you need anything, even if it's just a break, please let me know. Now, I think this will fit you-"
The human pursed her lips. "Well, it'll be close enough, and it's only for a day or two anyway. Come on, let's go get cleaned up. I want to get out of this damn armor."
The showers were empty by the time they reached them, the last of marines having finished a few minutes earlier.
"It's not rocket science," Shepard said with a grin as she pointed at the shower control, "despite the complications the Alliance engineers keep trying to add. Temperature adjustment on the left, flow on the right, don't use the bottom rack to store anything you don't want soaked because the idiots mounted the shelf too low and it gets splashed."
Liara nodded slowly. Shepard wasn't sure what her particular hangup over the showers was – perhaps she had thought them to be some kind of open communal things, instead of a typical stall-and-showerhead affair. Asari were supposed to be fairly un-self conscious, although she supposed there always could be exceptions.
She was more concerned over the distant look that had come over the woman while she had been trying to find a jumpsuit that would fit. Shepard didn't know if asari were subject to post traumatic stress disorder like humans were, but if they were, the events of the previous day could certainly cause it. It probably wouldn't affect her ability to help Shepard get what she needed, but the risk was there, and there were treatments that didn't involve psychologists' couches available.
Of course, she could be overthinking it, and the poor doctor could just be overwhelmed. A mission like that, while more exciting than most, wasn't that outrageous by her standards... but Shepard didn't exactly live a normal life even before becoming the first human Spectre.
I'll discuss it with Chakwas later, she thought, putting it out of her mind as she stripped out of her bloody armor and sweat-soaked jumpsuit. The armor she carefully spread over the floor of the shower stall she'd selected, while the jumpsuit was tossed in a hamper on the side of the room. She shivered when the cold air brushed over her body, stabbing the shower control with a little more vigor than was strictly necessary.
She always loved showers. Post-mission ones, however, took the cake. There was nothing quite as refreshing as letting a hot spray of water assuage sore muscles or carry the grime left after a particularly dirty job away. It was one of the few times in the military that she could actually relax, where nobody expected anything of her. She didn't mind the burdens – she'd signed up for them, after all, with her eyes open – but even so, it was nice to set them aside, if only for a little while.
"Commander? Shepard?" Liara's hesitant voice came from the stall next to her.
She regretfully shook herself out of her reverie with a little sigh before wiping the water from her eyes. "Yes, Doctor?" she asked, hoping she sounded polite.
"I was wondering... where are we going next?"
A fair question. "Our first stop is likely the Citadel," she said. "I need to offload one of my marines to a proper medical facility, and that's the closest one around. After that, I'm probably headed to Arcturus to resupply. With the shuttle out of commission and the Mako buried under a fresh layer of basalt, I don't actually have a way of deploying troops without shoving them out the airlock... and I think our quarian would object if I started using her living quarters as a troop deployment venue."
Her reply was met with silence for a long moment, and Shepard wondered if she'd offered offense. I didn't think the joke was that bad...
Judging by the unchanging sound of water hitting the floor from the next stall over, the asari had stopped moving, too. "Doctor? Are you okay?"
"...someone was hurt?" came the suddenly small voice.
Shit.
Of all the various reactions to stress and violent situations Shepard studied in order to better integrate herself with society, survivor's guilt was one she understood the least. She knew what triggered it, of course, and how it functioned, but unlike most of the other common emotions she had a very hard time making logical sense of it. It wasn't like hatred, or frustration, or even love – those she understood, and she could make sense of the things that fueled them even if she herself didn't experience them like others did. Guilt was different, though, and she had to constantly be careful of accidentally giving herself away when she was supposed to feel guilty for something, especially when she was tired or stressed.
Survivor's guilt was the worst: Sometimes, there really wasn't a reason for things to happen, yet people apparently drove themselves literally mad asking why they were the ones to live, or why someone did something for them. To Shepard, it wasn't even a question: They saved you because they wanted to, and you survived because either planning or good fortune put you in the position to be saved. If you wanted to be polite, you thanked those that cared about such things for the assistance and you moved on with your life.
I don't think I will ever really understand people, she thought with a grimace. Well, at least it's relatively easy to take care of.
"Yeah," she said almost casually. "One of my marines decided that his arm was a better bullet stop than a building. We don't have the tools to do reconstructive surgery on board, so we're taking him somewhere they can do that."
That was the understatement of the year. If the marine kept his arm at all he'd be lucky, by Shepard's estimation, and no matter what his career as a soldier was likely over... at least until the cybernetics got good enough to replace the limb, assuming they did before he aged out of active duty service.
But Liaria didn't need to know those things. As far as she needed to know, he'd taken a hit but would be fine in the end. She trusted her soldiers not to be resentful; by the time you ended up on a ship like the Normandy serving under somebody like Shepard, you knew the risks and were proud to serve... or you left.
"Besides," she added to the growing silence, "it was a volunteer mission. Every single member of the crew was given the option of transferring to another vessel when we were assigned to the Spectres."
A sniffle. "It- it was? They were?"
"Sure," Shepard said. "Hell, doctor, it was a blind volunteer mission. Everyone signed on to this one knowing it was a long shot. The chance to stop another Eden Prime from happening, no matter how remote, was worth it to everyone on board. We didn't know if we'd find you alive, we didn't know if you'd be helpful or hostile, and even assuming you're willing to help us we don't know if the knowledge you have will be useful for the mission. Everyone came anyway."
Liara appeared to think that over for a minute. "I definitely do not understand humans," she said faintly.
Shepard shrugged, massaging her cinnamon-scented soap out of her hair. "I don't think we understand ourselves a lot of the time, to be perfectly honest," she admitted. "But back to your original question. We're headed to the Citadel first, then likely to Arcturus, then we'll decide from there where the next best spot to go hunting Saren is."
She lifted a piece of her armor from the floor, eying it skeptically as the drainwater ran pink. "What about you, Doctor? Do you have any plans?"
"I do not know," Liara answered slowly. "With my mother... as she is... I suppose I am the leader of my house, and I should make haste for Thessia to ensure everything is in order, but..."
"But?"
"...but she is my mother. I cannot just, just... abandon her to her madness! I should, I mean, that is..." she trailed off.
"You want to find her," Shepard suggested.
"I... yes. I know it's foolish, and that she has an army on her side and I'm alone and without help, but... I want it, all the same."
Shepard smiled to herself then, an empty and heartless grin.
Got you.
"It's not foolish at all," she said while she scrubbed the blood off her gauntlet. "She's your mother and you care about her. I know if my mother was running around doing something like that, I'd want to find her, too,"
Which also wasn't entirely a lie, when she thought about it. Shepard had never known her parents – her earliest memories were of the 10th street Reds back in Vancouver, and none of them had claimed to be her mother or father – in fact, they'd always said they'd found her as a newborn in a recycling center, of all places. Shepard had never been able to get a different story out of them, and so her past remained a mystery to her. She would have liked to have known her parents, or at least known of them. It might have helped provide a few explanations about her existence that she was missing.
"I suppose it is understandable," Liara admitted.
Shepard set the gauntlet aside and ran the stream of water over the chestpiece of her armor. "Most things are, when you think them through. Even radicals believe their course of action is right when taken within the context of their own value system."
"That is precisely what worries me," Liara said quietly. "Asari are not not known for succumbing to bouts of insanity nor for being easily swayed in their beliefs, especially by the time we become matriarchs. If she is following in Saren's footsteps, then she must truly believe in his cause and his methods... and I am scared to think of what might prompt that."
The silence stretched between them, then, broken only by the patter of water on tile and the gentle rustling of Shepard scrubbing at her armor.
"Well," she said finally as she set the last piece aside to dry, "we'll just have to find out, won't we?"
The quiet murmur of conversation in the communications room died abruptly when Shepard entered, Liara trailing close behind. She gestured silently at the seats set around the edge of the room.
"First things first," she said after everyone had gotten settled in, "let me congratulate and thank you all on a successful mission. Our objective-" she gestured at Liara, who blushed, "-was successfully recovered, and with only two casualties. Speaking of which, I know what happened to Tanaka, but what about you, Williams? How are you doing?"
Ashley shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Not going to lie, ma'am, I got a pretty nasty burn," she admitted, "and I won't deny that it smarts a bit, but I'll manage."
"Good to hear," Shepard said with a smile. "Now. I know a lot of you come from different backgrounds, but my debriefings are pretty simple: We go over what happened, address any concerns or points of interest, discuss what changes, if any, need to be made, and then break. Alenko, I'm going to ask you for your team's mission report – you're familiar with the format."
Kaidan nodded. While she had no doubt Garrus could figure it out easily enough, Kaidan didn't mind filing mission reports and Garrus appeared to loathe most forms of paperwork.
"Garrus? Why don't you get the ball rolling, here. Your team dropped at the living quarters; what happened?"
The turian's mandles flared as he thought. "It was pretty easy at first," he said after a moment. "We broke into small squads and began clearing the buildings – standard three-man entry teams per room, the usual procedure. We didn't even encounter resistance until we'd almost completely swept the facility, and even then it wasn't that impressive – single geth platforms wandering apparently at random."
He sighed. "The office complex was where we hit a snag. I don't know how, but they managed to get one of those big ones- what did you call them, again?" he shot a questioning look at Tali.
"Colossus," she supplied.
"Right. Colossus. The geth got one inside the building, and between the sensor jamming and the architecture we managed to walk right into the thing. Tanaka took a burst when he picked the wrong time to try to shoot it and Williams almost got hit by its big plasma gun when she threw a grenade on it, but other than that it went down pretty easily."
"How'd you end up killing it?" Shepard asked, curious. She'd used rather more force than necessary to take hers down, but even so it had seemed to take an awful lot of damage from her hit for a supposed combat vehicle.
"Truthfully, ma'am, I don't think we did," he admitted. "Our rifles barely scratched the shielding on that thing. We tried grenades, and those worked better, but we weren't carrying enough to take it down. We ended up splitting up – Alenko and I stayed with a few volunteers to keep it occupied while Williams led a group to the floor above it with our grenades. We dropped part of the building on it and trapped it, then called for evac."
"I don't think it'll be a problem for the locals," Joker added over the intercom from the cockpit. "The whole place was buried under molten rock when we left orbit."
She glanced up at the security camera tucked in the corner of the room. "Thanks, Joker."
"Anytime."
Settling back in her chair, she turned to Kaidan and Ashley. "Seems like it went fairly well," she said. "Do the two of you have anything to add?"
The two glanced at each other before looking at Shepard. "I think we need better weaponry," Kaidan said. "The rifles we have work well enough for most things, but it takes nearly two full overheat cycles to just drop the shields on some of the heavier units. Their armor isn't great, but their shields are tough, and staying out of cover long enough to pump that much fire into them opens us to a lot of risk."
Ashley nodded in enthusiastic agreement before wincing. "Ah- ow. What the Lieutenant said, ma'am," she hissed through gritted teeth. "Bigger guns."
"Bigger guns, check," she said dryly. "We need to head for Arcturus anyway to replace our shuttle engine and get another Mako. I'll see what kind of weaponry I can pry out of the quartermaster there."
She began tapping in a note on her omni-tool to get more powerful weaponry for ground forces.
"What about your side of things, ma'am?" Ashley asked. "The jarheads said you came back covered head to toe in blood with lava lapping at your heels."
"The blood was from a krogan mercenary, and the lava was from a mishap with a mining laser," she explained without looking up from the note she was writing.
"Yeah, uh, I think I'm going to need to details," Ashley said dryly, leaning forward in her seat.
The explanation of her team's role in the mssion took significantly longer than Garrus' brief summary. The crew listened raptly while she quickly summarized her group's role in the assault, from the forward outpost to the fight with the colossus, through the mine, the activation of the laser, the quick battle with the krogan mercenary and the mad dash through the collapsing mine before the shuttle flight back to the Normandy.
"So let me get this straight," Ashley said with a barely suppressed grin when she finished, "you literally punched the smile off of his face?"
Shepard quirked an eyebrow at the chief while Wrex guffawed. "I suppose I did," she admitted.
"Ha!" the chief barked, slapping her knee. "God, I wish I had footage of that."
"It was messy. So," she said to Wrex and Tali before Ash could drag the matter on, "is there any comment you'd like to offer on our portion?"
"Just one," Wrex rumbled. "Can you teach me how to hit like that?"
Shepard eyed the krogan levelly, thinking. Technically he was a biotic, one of the rare and dangerous true krogan battlemasters. Her techniques weren't something she normally taught, since most Alliance biotics relied on a range of preprogrammed neural impulses built in to their amplifier while her methods were much more... instinctive. It wasn't impossible, though, and she relished the possibilities that came from combining the already impressive close quarters combat capability of the old krogan with her own significant force multiplier.
"I'm not sure," she replied. "It's not easy to learn, and I don't know how your amplifier works, but it might be possible. I know the Alliance has been working on standardizing something similar for our own adept training programs, so it's not inconceivable."
The old krogan looked at her with an odd look in his eye. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it – surprise? Apprehension? Wariness? Krogan facial expressions could be notoriously hard to read, and the older ones tended to be very good at hiding their feelings. Wrex was no exception.
"Anyway, that's something you and I can handle later," she said, glancing at Liara. "Doctor. I gave you the highlights of what we're doing on the shuttle ride back here. Have any ideas?"
Liara sat up slightly straighter in her seat. "Several," she said. "First, however, I must thank all of you for what you did, coming to get me. If you hadn't, I would have died in there, or... been dragged off to Saren."
Kaidan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "What did Saren want with you, anyway? Do you know something about this conduit we're after?"
"Only that it was somehow connected to the prothean extinction," she said. "That is my real area of expertise. I have spent the past fifty years trying to figure out what happened to them."
Fifty years? She's only a bit over a hundred; that's a fairly impressive portion of her adult life to dedicate to a single project. She pursed her lips. It's also the main reason I came to get you, doctor. Let us hope the half-century was not spent in vain, or I'm back to square one.
"Fifty years?" Ashley asked, raising an eyebrow. "Just exactly how old are you, anyway?"
Liara bobbed her head in embarrassment. "I... hate to admit it, but I am only a hundred and six,"
"Damn!" Ashley whistled, leaning back and shaking her head. "I hope I look that good when I'm that age."
"A century might seem a long time to a short-lived species like yours," Liara explained, apparently ignorant of the slightly indignant look Ashley wore, "but among the asari, I am scarcely more than a child. That is why my research has not received the attention it deserves. Because of my youth, other asari scholars tend to dismiss my theories on what happened to the protheans."
If Shepard hadn't spent an afternoon in the Citadel library making her eyes bleed going through scholarly papers, she'd have lined right up with all the other asari scholars in disregarding her work. Not out of a belief that the young doctor wasn't capable, or that age led to greater accuracy in scientific studies, but simply because wildly radical and out of the mainstream theories were – more often than not – complete and utter crock. Humanity had its own share of nutjobs that blamed "mainstream scientific oppression" for not giving proper attention to their absolutely batshit ideas, and she suspect the asari weren't immune to it, either.
But she had read the doctor's paper, and it meshed almost horrifyingly well with the scattered and broken images the beacon on Eden Prime had dumped into her brain. Even now, she could conjure the sound of alien screams and the distant smell of burning flesh to mind as if she'd been standing there in person watching it happen.
"I've got my own theory about what happened to them," Shepard offered. Let's see how she reacts when the shoe is on the other foot, she thought. Now she was the apparently ignorant upstart bringing a new idea to the table, putting Liara in the position of established knowledge and authority. It would be interesting to see how she reacted.
Liara gave a little, almost imperceptible sigh. "With all due respect, Commander, I have heard every single theory out there. The problem is not a lack of hypotheses, rather, it is a lack of evidence to support – or disprove – them. The protheans left remarkably little behind."
"It is almost as if somebody does not want the mystery solved," she continued, more to herself than to Shepard or the rest of the group. "It's like someone came along after the protheans were gone and cleansed the galaxy of clues."
Images flashed through Shepard's head, of beams of light searing the flesh off of indistinct bodies on the rubble of a burning world.
"But here is the incredible part," she went on more confidently, looking back up at Shepard. "According to my findings, the protheans were not the first galactic civilization to mysteriously vanish. This... cycle... began long before them."
Shepard shook her head briskly to clear the memories of the beacon's message. "Where'd you come up with this theory?" she asked. "I thought there wasn't any evidence."
"I have been working on this for fifty years. I have tracked down every scrap and shred of data, every crumbling ruin, every wild claim. Eventually, patterns start to emerge, and even if there is no direct evidence... the circumstantial is far too compelling to ignore. There were other civilizations that predated the protheans, likely many of them... all apparently obliterated at fifty thousand year intervals."
Well, I see why her ideas aren't readily accepted, Shepard thought. I'd be smiling and nodding and changing the topic right now if I didn't have damn good reason to believe she's right. The girl really needs to learn to not sound like a true believer.
"If the protheans weren't the first, then who was?"
The asari sighed and shook her head. "I don't know. Evidence for the extinction of the protheans is scarce enough as it is, finding traces of the ruins they built their civilization upon is an order of magnitude more challenging."
She brightened. "I believe I can say with some confidence that it has been happening for thirty or forty million years, at least."
"Whoa, wait just a minute," Ashley said, skeptical. "Thirty or forty million?"
"Y-yes," Liara stammered. "There are ancient ruins on airless worlds, all constructed at the same time, yet all without any signs of airlocks. It takes millions of years for solar wind to strip the atmosphere from a planet. There is the great rift of Klendagon, a planet that seems to have been struck by a kinetic weapon of unimaginable power thirty seven million years ago. Even our current galactic society hints at it – have you never once considered how strange it is that so many species would reach spacefaring levels of technology within what is, cosmologically, practically the same time? A thousand years is a long time even for the asari, but compared to the billions of years it takes a species to evolve, it's nothing."
But if something is coming through and wiping out everyone that's set foot off their own planet...
"Whoa." Ashley shook her head. "Are you sure?"
"Am I sure? Yes. Can I prove it?" Liara sighed. "No. Not yet. But the evidence fits. I just do not know why."
"They were wiped out," Shepard said quietly. "Obliterated to the last at the hands of a genocidal race of synthetics they called the Reapers."
"The- Reapers?" Liara's expression of confusion was mirrored around the room. "But I have never heard of- How do you know this? What evidence do you have?"
"It is time, it seems, for the whole story," Shepard said with a sigh. "Liara, do you remember the question I asked you when we first met?"
"I- yes, you asked me about one of my papers," she said, confusion plain on her face. "I don't understand-"
"I may have lied to you all, at least by omission," Shepard interrupted, addressing the room. "Doctor T'Soni, it was not 'some prothean relic' we were tasked to pick up on Eden Prime, it was a communications beacon."
Liara went silent then, her mouth forming a little 'O' while her eyes widened.
"And," Shepard continued heavily, "it wasn't nearly as badly damaged before we got to it as Anderson and I implied it to be. It wasn't fully functional, obviously, and it was definitely not designed to work with human physiology, but... it left a message," she finished, tapping the side of her temple for emphasis.
"Why didn't you mention this before, ma'am?" Kaidan asked, his tone a little hurt. "The council probably would like to know."
"Put yourself in their shoes, Lieutenant. Your up-and-coming candidate for the Spectres just had her brain zapped by a fifty thousand year old piece of technology design for use on aliens, and is hallucinating visions of doom. Does that make you trust her more or less?"
Wrex laughed, and Kaidan smiled ruefully. "I see your point, ma'am. Oh!" His eyes widened. "That's why we went after T'Soni first, isn't it? You wanted to ask her about the prothean beacons!"
She nodded. "It was a big part of it, yes," she confirmed, glancing at Liara. "So, Doctor. Does that qualify as evidence?"
Liara was blinking, her eyes flicking back and forth while she muttered. "Messages to the mind, a vision... yes!" she perked up, staring at Shepard with shining eyes. "The beacons were designed to transmit information directly into the mind of the user. Finding one that still works is extremely rare. No wonder Saren and the geth were willing to attack Eden Prime! The chance to acquire a working beacon – even a badly damaged one – would be worth any risk."
She frowned. "But... the beacons were only programmed to interact with prothean physiology. Any direct transference would be horribly garbled at best. You are fortunate you were not rendered comatose, Commander!"
"I have something of an advantage," she deferred. While she didn't know if the chunk of element zero in her head let her survive the experience, it certainly helped blunt the intensity of the feelings conveyed. While the message was gruesome, any part that would have struck the parts of her mind responsible for emotional responses would have merely triggered a mild biotic field when it interacted with the element zero in her skull. Come to think of it, I wonder if that madman scientist wasn't so crazy after all... perhaps he merely activated the beacon while they were excavating?
"So we know that whatever Shepard saw in the beacon is likely real," Kaidan said, hauling them back on topic. "Where does that leave us? Saren's obviously trying to track these things down. Why?"
Ashley paled. "They're machines, right, Commander?" she asked, and Shepard nodded. "Hey, uh, Tali?"
The quarian craned her neck to face the chief. "Yes?"
"Do you think that with the help of the Geth, he could... I don't know, reprogram these things if he found them? Make them obey him?"
The room was silent.
"I don't know," Tali said slowly. "I mean, technically, I'm sure it's technically possible, but... I don't even know how to begin figuring out how feasible it would be."
"There's a very real chance he already has," Shepard said grimly. "Kaidan, that huge ship we saw on Eden Prime, the one leaving the spaceport? That looks a lot like one of the ships that was killing protheans in the beacon's message."
The silence stretched out longer this time.
"Well, Shepard," Wrex said finally, "you certainly don't get in trouble by halves."
"Tell me about it," she said dryly.
"Maybe this conduit is, I don't know, a path to the place wherever these things go when they're not pillaging the galaxy?" Garrus offered with a flare of his mandibles.
Kaidan shrugged. "It's possible, I suppose, but I don't think sitting here speculating about it is going to get us anywhere."
Liara gave herself a small shake. "You're right, of course, I'm sorry. I let my excitement for scientific discovery get the better of me. But..."
Shepard raised an eyebrow at her. "But?"
Liara closed her eyes, as if she was forcing the words out. "But I must admit that aside from confirming what my paper already covered about prothean beacons, I know nothing about these Reapers or the conduit. Yet I find myself asking another favor of you."
"What favor is that?"
Liara opened her eyes, staring at Shepard with a pleading expression. "Please let me accompany you," she said in a rush. "You have already discovered far more of the protheans and their history than others have in centuries of toil, and if what you suspect is correct, then you will undoubtedly dig far deeper into their history than even I could... and you are on the trail of my mother, as well."
She said the final part barely over a whisper, and Shepard's translator actually failed to catch half the words. Given the context, it was obvious, however... and entirely to Shepard's benefit. Hell, if she asks to come along, I don't have to make an excuse for not dropping her off on the Citadel when we get back!
Sometimes things really did work out.
"And if all else fails, her biotics will come in handy when the shooting starts," Wrex said somberly from his seat.
"Pending the results from Citadel Intelligence's background check," Shepard cautioned, "welcome to the team, Doctor T'Soni."
"Thank you, Commander," Liara said fervently.
"Don't be so quick to thank me," Shepard said with a smile. "I think we're pretty much done here. I'll go let the Council know how things went. Oh, and Kaidan, please show the doctor the ropes before dinner. The rest of you, dismissed."
Shepard had whipped a quick written report up for the council. It covered, briefly, what her team had encountered on the surface of Therum, as well as some of the less... speculative... material they had gone over during the debriefing. The debriefing itself stayed private, both as a matter of Alliance policy and her personal preference not to sound like a lunatic to her new employer.
"We've received your report, Commander," Tevos' holographic form said. "I understand Doctor T'Soni is on board the Normandy."
"I assume you're taking the necessary security precautions?" Sparatus sneered at her.
She ignored the turian's antagonism. He could sneer all he liked, so long as he didn't get in her way.
"Of course," she said coldly, and was a little pleased when the councilor flared his mandibles in surprise. "Until the expanded background check I requested from both Alliance Intelligence and the Citadel Intelligence teams report back to me, she is to be accompanied constantly by a biotic member of our crew. Furthermore, even if she is a double agent, this hull is a complete faraday cage by necessity. Nothing she records or observes can possibly get out until we let her out or grant her system access."
"Besides," she added as an afterthought, "the geth on Therum were trying to kidnap her, and nearly killed her in the process. I don't think she's too pleased with them."
"Benezia would never allow Saren to harm her daughter," Tevos said.
"Maybe she doesn't know?" Valern suggested. Shepard doubted that, personally, but it was possible... especially since the only reason Saren would have to go after Liara was if Benezia told him about her.
"Or maybe we don't know her," Sparatus said wearily. "We never expected she could become a traitor."
"At least the mission was a success," Valern said.
Sparatus snorted. "Apart from the utter destruction of a major prothean ruin. Was that really necessary, Shepard?"
She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes at the turian. Was it strictly necessary? How in the world would she know? She had made the best possible choices she could given the knowledge she had at the time. Second guessing her actions after the fact was pointless.
Instead, she politely shrugged. "I saw no alternative, and explained my logic in my written report," she said, gesturing at the holographic data slate in the asari's hand. "The mission had recovering the doctor as the primary objective, with all other goals being secondary. I acted accordingly. If you wish me to preserve prothean ruins precariously perched in unstable mines over active volcanoes so that they might erupt and naturally obliterate the dig site, you are, of course, welcome to suggest so in my mission objectives."
Tevos covered a smile with the back of her hand, and Valern coughed. "Of course, Commander," he said. "The mission must always take priority."
"Good luck, Commander," Tevos said. "Remember, we are all counting on you."
The evening had been a whirlwind of activity for Liara. Lieutenant Alenko – Kaidan, as he asked to be called – had given her a fairly thorough tour of the vessel that would hopefully serve as her home for the immediate future. Liara was hardly an expert in ship design, but even to her the differences in design between the Normandy and the passenger vessels she had traveled upon previously were obvious. The Normandy was darkly lit, with exposed structure and bulkheads and very low ceilings. It lacked the open spaces and smooth curves favored in asari architecture, and she was grateful for her time spent in cramped spaces doing research or exploring digs: It would be all too easy to become claustrophobic inside the walls of the Normandy.
She had been introduced to many things: The brash, fast-paced nature of human social bonding, their unusual choice in foods, their (comparatively) extroverted nature, the organization and operation of one of their military frigates, and that was only before dinner. It was all quite overwhelming, and that was even with the Commander and Kaidan kindly running interference between her and the rest of the crew. She was especially grateful for that last part, as even after they had received word from the Citadel that her claims of estrangement from her mother checked out, the crew had still been... wary was the best word she could think of.
It was thus with more than a little relief that she discovered that Doctor Chakwas had made some space available in the back room of the medical bay for her to use as quarters. It was somewhat cramped, and there were storage boxes filling half of the room, but it was blessedly quiet and somewhat removed from the hubbub of the rest of the vessel – a fact that she appreciated more than usual at the end of a very exhausting day.
The doctor had even been kind enough to loan her the use of a spare holographic display and keyboard, allowing her to write out her thoughts without straining her neck peering at the tiny screen of her omni-tool.
She was just putting the closing statement on her journal of the Therum dig site – dig ended due to volcanic eruption consuming dig site and all gathered artifacts – when there was a quiet rap on the door.
I didn't think it was locked...
"Come in," she called softly, almost startling herself when her voice echoed through the hard-walled room. The door hissed open, revealing Shepard squinting in to the relative darkness of the back room.
"Oh, Goddess, I'm sorry," Liara stammered, reaching for the lightswitch.
"Don't be," Shepard said, flicking it on. "I should be the one apologizing, were you getting ready for bed?"
"Ah- no, I was just jotting down some notes. You know, closing the dig site log – things like that."
Shepard nodded. "I'm sorry the dig site was destroyed. I would have avoided that if it was possible."
"If a mere mining laser set it off, it was likely ready to go at any time," Liara demurred. "I should be thanking you – I never had the chance to do so properly, after the geth. If you hadn't shown up..."
If she hadn't shown up, I would be dead now, dead or dragged off in the claws of the geth before Saren and my mother. It was something of a sobering thought, how close she'd come to just... vanishing... as if she'd never been in the first place.
"Just part of my job," Shepard said with a shrug. "I will admit being glad we showed up in time, though," she added with a faint smile.
"So am I," Liara agreed fervently. "I know you took a chance bringing me aboard this ship, and not tossing me in – what was it the marine called it? The brig? – the moment we landed in the shuttle. I have seen the way your crew looks at me. They do not trust me."
Her eyes hardened. "But I am not like Benezia. I will do whatever I can to help you stop Saren. I promise."
The Commander looked at her then, long and hard.
It was, if she was being perfectly honest, quite unsettling – not at all unlike what she imagined it was like for a research sample under a microscope, held immobile between two glass plates while an entity unfathomably greater than she examined every aspect of her in minute detail.
After an uncomfortably long pause, she nodded, slowly and deliberately. "I know. I believe you."
And that was that. The hardness left the human's gaze, and she gave Liara a reassuring smile, full of warmth and comfort. Their conversation moved on to other things, things Liara expected the Commander to ask, things about her mother, some unusual questions and a sympathetic ear regarding her missing father, a few general questions about asari culture... it was quite pleasant, actually, talking to someone who seemed to enjoy the simple act of learning.
Then, of course came the unexpected question. "What about you, Liara? I mean, I've read what other people have to say, of course, but it's all fairly dry. Lists of names, dates, and accomplishments."
"Me?" She blinked. "I am afraid I am not very interesting, Commander. I spend most of my time on remote digs, unearthing mundane items buried in long-forgotten prothean ruins."
"I somehow doubt you find that as boring as you make it sound," she said, and Liara smiled.
"Do not misunderstand me," she explained. "I love my work. Seeking out history's lost secrets is a passion of mine. And... I enjoy the solitude. Sometimes, I find I just need to get away from other people."
Her eyes darted up to the Commander, looking for any sign of judgment or disapproval, but there was none. "I can understand that," she said, the ghost of some unreadable expression flitting across her face for a moment. "It's nice to get away from other people sometimes... although I'm not sure I share the sentiment to the degree that you do," she finished with a smile.
"I suppose it comes from being a matriarch's daughter. People expected me to follow in Benezia's footsteps. They wanted me to become a leader of our people."
I am hardly a leader of anyone.
"Matriarchs guide their followers into the future; they seek the truth of what is yet to come. Maybe that's why I became so interested in the secrets of the past. Aheh..." she shook her head. "It sounds so foolish when I say it out loud, almost like I became an archaeologist simply to spite Benezia."
Shepard shrugged. "Do you like it?"
Liara blinked. To ask such a thing so bluntly... yet, it is the correct question to ask. "As I said before, I love my work."
Shepard spread her hands, as if the point was self-demonstrating. "Then the reason you chose to do it doesn't really matter, does it? Whether the path you chose was born of rejection of what you thought your mother wanted or because there was something really interesting about archeology to a young asari, you obviously enjoy it now. If you like it now, does it matter what prompted you to take it up in the first place?"
Liara rolled the words around in her head. It was not strictly asari wisdom – that tended to be far heavier on the condescending futurism, and less focused on justification – but it was wise nonetheless. If she liked what she was doing, then there was no reason to worry that she chose it for a petty reason. It was a noble trade, and one she liked, so why shouldn't keep at it?
"I... suppose it doesn't," she said, and felt a weight – not a great one, but a weight nonetheless – lift from her shoulders. "They really are fascinating, you know. And we know so little about them! Here they are, these wondrous, mysterious figures, creators of so much of what rely on in the galaxy... and we don't even know what happened to them. Can you blame me for wanting to find out?"
"I'm certainly not arguing," Shepard said.
"It's part of why I find you so fascinating," Liara continued on, gaining momentum. "You were marked by the beacon on Eden Prime; you were touched by working prothean technology! I am fortunate if I can tell what a piece of prothean technology did."
Shepard chuckled. "Sounds like you want to dissect me in a lab somewhere."
Oh, goddess, did I really just imply- "What? No! I did not mean to insinuate – Ah, I never meant to offend you, Shepard. I only meant that you would be an interesting specimen for an in-depth- Ah, no, that's even worse!"
She wished she could sink into the deck, that people would just forget she existed. Goddess, how could she be so tactless? Here is the woman who rescued her from a horrible fate treating her with far more kindness and understanding than she deserved, and she has to go and bore her to tears with long-unresolved issues with her mother before implying that she'd like to study her like she did one of her artifacts!
She buried her face in her hands.
"Calm down, Liara," Shepard's voice was steady, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. "It was a joke, really, I'm not offended."
"...you must think I am a complete and utter fool," she muttered. "Goddess, how could I be so dense?"
"Liara, it's okay," the voice said again, and the hand on her shoulder gave a gentle squeeze. "Hell, I'd want to study me if I were in your position. Why do you think I didn't tell the Council, or even the crew, everything that happened with the beacon at first?"
Liara let her hands fall and saw only sympathy on the Commander's face. "I'm not offended, honest. See?" She gave her shoulder another squeeze before stepping back.
"Now you know why I prefer to spend my time in the field with data disks and computers. I always seem to say something embarrassing around other people," she finished bitterly. "Please, let's just... pretend this conversation never happened."
Shepard gave a small shrug. "If that's what you prefer, I won't speak of it again. I meant it about not being offended, though, and I am interested in your thoughts on the protheans."
"Truly?"
The Commander nodded firmly. "Yes. Another time, perhaps? It's been a long day for both of us, and we both could use some rest."
"Ah- yes, that would be wise," she replied automatically, still recovering somewhat from the faux pas she had just committed.
"Good. I'll let you get some sleep. If you need anything during the night, there's always someone on watch in the engine room and up in the CIC. You can also usually find Kaidan at his workbench – the man's a bit of a night owl, even after long missions. If there's an emergency that they can't handle, you can always come wake me up, although fair warning – I can be a bit of a bear when I'm sleepy."
Liara wasn't precisely sure what a 'night owl' or 'bear' was, at least not in the context the Commander used the words, but it was reassuring to know that somebody would be up if there did happen to be any issues.
"Pleasant dreams," the Commander said with a casual wave as she walked for the door.
Liara took a few moments to gather her thoughts, then changed out of her borrowed jumpsuit and settled down on the folding cot they had set up for her.
She was unconscious in seconds.
Back in her cabin, Shepard shut the door and toggled the privacy notification on the lock. It wouldn't prevent anyone from entering, but it would politely inform anyone that tried to do so that she didn't wish to be disturbed. It was a fitting compromise, as the commander of an active-duty warship had to be available at a moment's notice, but was also a human being that needed privacy now and then as well.
The doctor is an interesting woman, she mused while stripping out of her jumpsuit and tossing it in the hamper in the corner. She came off as a bit of a nut at first, with her devotion to her ideas, but Shepard supposed that was to be expected for someone who spent fifty lonely years working on a single project. Social graces were not a given, nor were they like riding a bicycle. Shepard had lost count the hours she sunk into trying to learn how to put people at ease during her years in "career image rehabilitation" search-and-rescue service after Torfan.
Apparent nuttiness aside, the doctor was obviously well-educated and a quick thinker in addition to being a competent combatant. Avoiding an ambush attempt mounted by a krogan mercenary and a small army of geth for hours was no mean feat, even with the advantage of home ground.
It was almost a pity, then, that she had to go dangle the doctor like a piece of blue bait in front of so many people trying to kill her. Although... there was something delightful about convincing the bait to put itself on the hook. She had honestly expected a greater challenge befriending and convincing the asari to stick around and help in her search.
Perhaps I underestimated her attachment to her mother, she thought, folding her arms behind her head and staring at the ceiling. Or maybe she does not fully understand the magnitude of what we are facing.
She smiled. Or perhaps it is exactly as she said, and she simply wants to learn what happened and see what comes next. You are not the only one in the galaxy driven by curiosity, Elle!
Unfolding her hands, she reached out to tap the light panel next to the bed, plunging the room into darkness.
It wasn't long before she, too, drifted off to sleep.
A/N: Next stop: The Citadel (with a couple sidequests, including a few ghosts from Shepard's past), then off to Arcturus, then probably Feros.
NOW FOR THE Q&A SECTION. I promised this last chapter, and while it's a bit late, better late than never. I probably should PM this to people, but some of the questions have come up a few times, so I suppose putting them in the A/N isn't the end of the world.
AlsoKnownAsMatt: I was torn whether to use House T'Soni (as that appears to be her family name) or House Benezia (because there are no references to Benezia's last name anywhere that I could find). In the end, I think I flipped a coin. As for Liara's biotic prowess, I went with what made sense to me rather than what's stated in the game: Asari are potentially very powerful biotics, but not every asari chooses to refine her skills. I treat a bunch of special forces training, top of the line hardware, a decade of practice, and a unique trump card as superior to the asari innate ability, which is why Liara isn't that astounding at first. Liara will definitely come into her own as a biotic combatant with the things that are in store for her, don't worry :)
EagleGamer15: The prison part was mine, I believe. I think in the game it was supposed to be an empty archive, or something? I couldn't find anything on the wiki or on my various playthroughs, so I went with what made sense to me.
N.Q. Wilder: I didn't actually mean to give him a southern accent... that was completely accidental. I meant him to sound kind of casual or slurred, but re-reading it it totally sounds like a southern accent. Oops.
As for research... I suppose I actually do quite a bit. There are some things I know off the top of my head (long and short term desert survival techniques, user interface design, physics, prison architecture, basic biology and emergency medical treatment) and others I don't (military lingo and ranks, communication protocol in the military, what a real debriefing looks like, details of archeology.) My true fortune comes from having a number of friends and associates who can help fill the gaps. For example, my sister (an archeologist, and the source of some hilarious jokes that will show up later) helped me with dig site questions, and my former roommate was a combat medic in the U.S. Army and answered my questions about protocol and the like.
I'd be more than happy to explain my writing process, but that will take a bit longer, so in the interest of getting this chapter out the door I'll put that one in the to-do list for the next chapter.
Side note for those interested: Feel free to questions in the reviews or via PM. I'll try to respond to private messages from here on out, and if I think something warrants clarification or explanation (like the Benezia/T'Soni bit above) I'll stick it in the A/N for the chapter after the question was asked.