Well. Uh. Yeah. This is both A. super late and B. super short.
I haven't given up on this. I'm about to graduate college, however, and life got... busy. I'm going to go for smaller, shorter updates to hopefully let me get this story done.
The most frustrating aspect of her job was also the most advantageous.
The Council, in their wisdom, had seen fit to give the Spectres nearly unlimited authority in how they completed their duties. The few limitations Shepard had on her power were self-inflicted, borne of tradition rather than actual oversight.
This was all well and good, of course, until one actually needed to use that authority. Spectres were not common, after all, and interactions with them for the common citizen of the galaxy were rare. As a consequence, her authority – while nearly absolute – was also very poorly defined. The person in charge of programming, say, a computer mainframe could not simply have their software spewing out its operator's darkest secrets if somebody happened to mention the word 'Spectre' within hearing distance of the VI pickup.
As a consequence, while everybody was in theory required to help her in pursuit of her duties, how they often did so was very much up to them. Which meant that rather than simply walking up and flashing her badge – not that she actually had one – to open the door, she had to track down somebody who could open the door, convince them she was who she claimed to be, explain that, yes, in fact a human had been appointed to the Spectres, and yes, said human did need assistance, and no, the person didn't have a choice in the matter.
Every. Single. Time.
This fact was clearly not well known to the general public, as her e-mail inbox was absolutely full of requests, legitimate and otherwise, from countless individuals and organizations begging, requesting, or demanding that she use her authority to further their cause.
She pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair. "Computer," she called, waiting for the chirp of acknowledgment before continuing, "create a new inbox sort rule-"
A soft chime from her door interrupted her.
"Abort," she said to the VI pickup, then pitched her voice to carry through the hatch. "Come in!"
The door hissed open to reveal Liara, who smiled tentatively. "I apologize if I am interrupting, I did not realize you were speaking to somebody-"
Shepard waved away her concerns. "Just setting up inbox sorting. Apparently someone leaked my e-mail address, and, well... computer, please report file size of the inbox for Shepard, Elle," she ordered.
"One hundred and sixty eight point four gigabytes," the computer promptly replied.
Liara winced and Shepard shook her head. "And that's with the system bouncing large files, too" she said with a sigh. "Well, I'll get it sorted out eventually. What's going on?"
"Garrus and Wrex have returned, and Chakwas wished me to remind you that, and I quote, 'you have been cooped up in that cabin for five hours, come out and eat dinner," the asari said. "She also mentioned something about 'squished potatoes' that I'm afraid my translator did not quite catch."
Shepard leaned back in her chair and smiled, wincing slightly as the muscles in her back twinged. "It's a boiled and mashed starchy root with seasonings... and one of the few meals the Systems Alliance provides that doesn't suffer after being packaged and prepared by a soldier of dubious culinary experience."
"In any case," Shepard said, lacing her fingers together over her head before leaning back and forth to work the kink out of her back, "I appreciate the information. Let Chakwas know I'll be right out for me?"
She pushed her arms straight up above her head, then dropped them and rolled her shoulders around. Really not getting any younger, she mused before glancing at the Liara still standing in the doorframe. "Unless there was something else you needed...?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at the asari.
Liara blushed a deep purple and shook her head back and forth rapidly. "No, no, no, I'm sorry, I'll see you at dinner," she stammered out all at once while backing out of the room.
Shepard blinked in bemusement at the closed door, then gave a small shrug and returned to work.
Goddess, I am such a child!
One gesture. One gesture was all it took, and it wasn't even one directed at her. The Commander had simply been stretching out after spending too long at her terminal – nothing Liara herself had not done countless times before in her time at the university. There was no reason to stare at the woman like one would gawk at a ground car collision.
Except, of course, for your ill-timed and ill-advised infatuation with the woman in the office you just ran out of, she thought, sighing, before making her way back to the medical bay.
"Grrrgh- OW!"
Liara jumped as the medical bay door slid open to a krogan snarl of pain, and Liara nearly tripped over her own feet walking in.
"Oh, quit your whining," Chakwas said, unperturbed by hundreds of kilograms of upset lizard standing over her while she worked. "It's barely skin deep. You won't even have a scar for it."
"Something that stings this much should damn well leave a scar," Wrex grumbled. "OW!"
"Got it!" Chakwas said, holding up a flattened bullet to the light. "Steel. Won't even need chelation. Now hold still while I get the gel patch adhered. Yes, yes, I know it'll heal just fine without," she said, heading off the protest Liara could already see forming in the krogan. "I don't want you bleeding on the mess table."
"Hmph."
"I must admit, Wrex, I am somewhat surprised to see you here," Liara said, moving slowly into the medical bay. "Garrus said that you had no issues with your mission?"
"We didn't," Wrex rumbled. "I've done business with those guys in the past. This was from a mugger in the Wards. Scared kid shot me by accident."
Liara cocked her head at him. "By accident?"
Wrex grinned. "Brat thought he was jumping a lone turian. Didn't see me. Turian flashed his badge. Boy near wet himself!" he said, chuckling at the memory. "Panicked and pulled the trigger after that. Eh, it was still funny."
"I see," Liara said, trying to keep the wince that was threatening to take over from her face. The krogan's views on stupidity were well known, and while she had little sympathy for muggers, she was distinctly not comfortable with the idea of murdering a desperate child, even in plausible self defense.
"Oh, don't give me that look," Wrex sighed. "He wasn't packing anything big enough to hurt us, so I put a little fear of krogan into him and we dropped his ass at C-Sec."
She blinked. "That is... remarkably restrained of you."
Wrex snorted. "Yeah, well, Garrus wanted to scare him onto the straight and narrow. Don't think it'll take, but it's not my problem now. C-Sec can deal with the headache."
He lifted a clawed hand off of the bandage slowly, testing its bond to his skin, then grunted in satisfaction when it didn't move. "There. It's set. May I go?"
Chakwas laughed. "Yes, you may go to dinner, Wrex. Try not to terrify too many of the marines."
"Not my fault they're cowards," the krogan muttered on his way out the door.
The doctor hummed to herself as she tidied up the leftovers from the minor bit of surgery.
"You like him," Liara observed after a moment.
Chakwas tossed the materials into a biohazard bin and moved to the sink to wash her hands. "I like most of my patients," she said. "but you're right, I do. He is both wiser and kinder than the front he puts on for the world."
Liara glanced out the bay window at the mess hall, where the krogan was devouring an entire loaf of bread to the not-so-subtle awe of the ship's marine detachment. "I will defer to your judgment," she said as diplomatically as she could manage.
Chakwas gave her a lopsided smile and toweled her hands off. "That isn't to say he hasn't earned his reputation, mind," she said. "But enough about the poor krogan. You nearly sprinted out of the Commander's cabin. She's not upset, is she?"
Liara managed not to trip – barely – at the doctor's question while her heart began doing a decent imitation of the Mako's engine. "I- no, everything was fine," she stammered.
Chakwas raised an eyebrow.
"Truly! I-" Liara cut herself off and let out a quick breath. "There is no way I can convince you, is there?" she asked.
In response, Chakwas reached over and tapped the privacy screen on the medical bay window. "Liara, if she has done anything out of the ordinary-" Chakwas began.
"No, that isn't- I mean, she didn't mean to-"
"Liara, you of all people should know what 'out of the ordinary' behavior can indicate in someone... like her," Chakwas said sternly. "If she was-"
"She was fine!" Liara blurted, then bit her lip. "I... got distracted, and, ah, left her to her work..."
"Oh," Chakwas said. "Oh. Well, then."
The silenced stretched between them, and Liara wished – and not for the first time – that she could simply vanish into the deck.
It would be preferable, I think.
Chakwas sighed and rubbed her temple, giving Liara an aside glance. "You know what she is, of course."
Liara nodded mutely.
"Well, I can't tell you not to spend time with her, and to be frank I wouldn't even if I could," she said. "But, Liara... she is not your friend. I am not her friend. She does not have friends. She cannot have friends. The Universe decided she didn't get to have that part of her life, and that is a tragedy of the highest order."
The doctor sighed again and stood. "I help her out of respect for the person she pretends to be. I think she knows that now, and I hope she understands. But I can never forget what she is, or what she could become. Neither should you."
"That said," Chakwas continued, "if you enjoy her company, and she yours, then by all means, spend time together. I know for a fact she appreciates the evenings you spend talking, and she isn't lying when she says that you're an asset to our ragtag bunch of misfits."
She reached a hand out and patted Liara on the shoulder. "Now, as the ship's medical officer, I'm giving you the same advice I had you give her: Eat. You both overdid it on the last mission, and it looks very bad for the Systems Alliance if their soldiers and allies pass out from hypoglycemia while fighting. To the mess hall with you!"
Dinner was, as always, a somewhat chaotic affair, made more so by the trickling in of members of the ship's crew returning from their leave before the mandatory check-in deadline later that evening. Still, the food was passable and her company was, if not welcome, at least ignored by the crew.
She'd eaten her fill (and a bit more besides, at Chakwas' insistence) and was just getting ready to settle in to her backlog of scholarly articles at her terminal in the back of the medical bay when she was interrupted by a polite knock on the door.
"Come in," she called, turning half around in the chair.
The door hissed open, and Liara's heart made a small jump for her throat before settling back down to its proper location in her chest.
"Liara," Shepard said with a slight smile. "Are you busy?"
"Not with anything that cannot be interrupted," she said, mirroring the Commander's line from earlier. "What can I do for you, Shepard?"
She very firmly pushed all the things she wanted to do to her into a distant corner of her mind.
Shepard pursed her lips. "I never really learned how to say this, so I'm just going to be blunt," she said. "We'll be arriving at Noveria tomorrow morning, and I want to discuss what your role will be in our efforts."
All of Liara's previous thoughts fell out the bottom of her stomach, to be replaced with a yawning dread. "And?" she asked.
Shepard glanced at the door behind her, then sighed. "I would prefer to bring Benezia in for questioning, but after seeing how the colonists behaved on Feros, I'm afraid that's not going to be very likely."
"I... wish I could disagree with you," Liara said, half closing her eyes.
In truth, hearing it didn't hurt quite as badly as she thought it might. Her mother had behaved erratically for over a year. It had been a fast separation, by asari standards, but that hadn't made it less of a complete one.
Shepard nodded. "My question for you, then, is whether or not you are willing to accompany me on the ground team, knowing that this will almost certainly end in Benezia's death."
Well, she does not mince words, Liara thought with a wince.
Still, the question was an important one: Could she pick up the sidearm the Commander had given her, loaded with ammunition outlawed for its brutality, aim it at the woman who had sung her to sleep as a child, and pull the trigger?
She thought back to the message she'd received shortly before the krogan had arrived on Feros to kidnap her, how anger and fervor had replaced kindness and wisdom in her mother's eyes, how the love and understanding that had been the cornerstone of Liara's childhood had just... vanished.
My mother is gone. Whoever – whatever – is left is little more than a mask wearing her face.
I hope.
She looked back up at Shepard's uncompromising – but not cruel – gaze, and nodded slowly. "Yes. I will help. I do not think I would be able to live with myself if... if I do not at least try to help her. And..." she half closed her eyes. "If... if she cannot be saved, I... I owe it to her memory to make sure she doesn't hurt anybody. She... she would not want that."
Opening her eyes, she gazed at the Commander. "I will be ready, Shepard."
Alone in her cabin, Shepard ran through her mental list for the next day. Shower. Breakfast. Coffee. Briefing. Medical checkup. Liara checkup. Kit prep. Deployment. Return to Normandy. Mission debrief. Mission report.
She sighed. She was running out of leads to follow, and the Council's intelligence services had been slower than she'd have liked.
Not entirely unsurprising, I suppose, given their lack of agent oversight.
Truth be told, she was growing somewhat concerned. Traitor he might be, but Saren was no fool, and he'd done a fine job covering his tracks and working through intermediaries. Noveria needed to pan out, or the shiny new ship she'd been given command of would have nowhere to go.
I have enough pieces to know there's a much bigger whole here, but not enough pieces to begin to put it together, she thought with a grimace.
At least she'd saved the most promising mission for last. Of the three leads she'd had, Noveria had possessed the highest chance of yielding important information, and as fortune would have it, it had also been the one that she could reasonably postpone, albeit not without significant grumbling from the authorities on Noveria regarding her heavy-handed use of Spectre authority to delay Benezia's departure.
Well. Tomorrow, Noveria. Hopefully that leaves us with a lead, otherwise... well. There are worse jobs than desk jobs.