A/N: This is a continuation/addition to chapter 74, Dossier: The Immortal, a response to TTH Challenge #6382.
It is a non-YAHF Buffy/Mass Effect X-over that I've currently got underneath the Working Title "The Immortal" though I'm definitely looking for better name ideas. This snippet takes place during the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, between the events on Illium and the confrontation with the Shadow Broker. Xander and Garrus went with Shepard to Liara's apartment and it was Xander who left with Liara and Shepard to chase after Tela Vasir.
This is Liara and Xander's first official meeting.
BtVS/ME2: LotSB- Liara and Xander
"I've heard rumors about you," Liara said to Xander as she approached where he was sitting in the hanger.
"Rumors?" Xander asked with a raised eyebrow.
"There's quite a few of them," Liara replied. "Conjecture mostly, but they're there throughout the Republic."
"I didn't realize I was such a person of interest to the asari," Xander replied honestly.
"You survived a melding with an Ardat Yakshi," Liara states. "How could you not be of interest to the Asari people? Very few outside our species know of them. Fewer still know of the threat they possess. Conventional wisdom states you should have been nothing but a mindless husk, yet here you are."
"My mind is a dangerous place," Xander shrugged somewhat self-consciously. "I've not bonded with another asari since."
"Because of what happened," Liara said with understanding.
"Partially," Xander replied with a sigh. "Nothing could have prepared me for that experience, but it's more about what COULD happen than what did."
"I... I don't understand," Liara replied in confusion.
Xander shrugged. "Like I said, my mind is a dangerous place. It's just better that I found out just how dangerous with someone trying to kill me rather than with someone who I felt I could spend a lifetime with."
"Better?" Liara asked.
"Alaria didn't deserve that," Xander replied. "Even if she was trying to do it to me. With the way I feel about what happened between us when it was someone I didn't have any deep feelings for..."
"It would be much worse if it had been someone you would have considered seriously bonding with," Liara finished.
Xander gave her a weak smile. "Yeah..."
"Is it because of whatever happened to you that makes you so long lived?" Liara asked Xander.
"For my species you mean?" Xander asked with a smirk.
"Other than Justicar Samara, you are currently the only crew member on board who is older than I am," Liara told him. "And possibly the only one with the potential to outlive me."
"Good point and no," Xander replied. "I was 16 when the first event that left an echo in my mind happened."
"First event?" asked a startled Liara.
"Yeah... That's about the reaction I usually get," Xander replied. "My mind has been messed with quite a bit over the years. No one I know that knows of me in any real capacity would touch my mind with a 90 foot pole and if it wasn't for the fact that she had me so deeply enthralled, I would have warned Alaria of the potential danger."
"I see..." Liara replied in a disturbed tone.
"No... You really don't," Xander replied in a quiet voice. "And I hope you never do." He sighed. "The biggest reason I won't meld with another asari though, is the fact that she's not completely gone," Xander told Liara.
"What do you mean, 'not completely gone'?" Liara asked as she looked at him in shock.
"She left behind an echo of herself," Xander informed her. At Liara's alarmed look, Xander tried to reassure her. "It wasn't on purpose. I could feel that much through our bond. And honestly, when it happened it was a one in a million chance."
There was an awkward silence between the two of them.
"So... You're an archeologist..." Xander began, much to Liara's confusion, though she was grateful for the change of subject. "Is it as exciting as in the vids?"
"What?" Liara asked astonishingly.
"You know..." Xander said trying to convey meaning through his expressions. However, whatever message he was trying to send, he might as well have been a Rachni for all that she understood. "Don't tell me the asari don't have anything like Indiana Jones?" At Liara's blank, but confused stare, he added. "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider? Stargate?" Sensing Liara's continued confusion. "You asari don't know what you're missing! It's official! Once this thing with the SB is done, we're having a movie night!"
"Shouldn't you clear that with the Commander first?" Liara asked with a wry grin.
"She's likely to make it an executive order," Xander replied. "She's almost as big a movie buff as I am. Of course, for her, they're 'retro', really old retro at that. I saw a lot of them when they first came out."
"And there are fictional vids, 'movies', about archeology?" Liara asked dubiously.
"I'm surprised you guys don't have any," Xander replied.
"Video entertainment was something that was introduced to both the asari and the salarians," Liara pointed out.
"I... didn't know that," Xander admitted.
"Even the turians had video entertainment, though theirs mostly focused around ancient religious doctrine- mythology- and war. In fact, Galaxy of Fantasy is a culmination of several old vids and tales," Liara informed him.
Xander smiled. "I've played that. It reminds me of some old Earth games friends of mine used to play, mostly Final Fantasy mixed with Dungeons and Dragons with a bit of Warcraft mixed in."
"You never played them?" Liara inquired.
"A bit, here and there, I was too busy fighting an underground war in my teens and early adulthood to really get into them. After The Sunnydale Collapse, I ended up working with my friends to reestablish an old organization whose upper management was wiped out by one of our enemies and getting deployed to Africa for a few years before being deployed globally as a fixer," Xander answered.
"I'm surprised you're being so forthcoming with so much information to someone you've barely met," Liara stated.
Xander shrugged. "Shepard vouches for you," he pointed out. "And you were one of the crew members from the original Normandy." He then grinned at her. "Besides, if you're even half as good as it's been implied you are, then you either already know that info or could easily find it."
Liara smiled back at him. "You are more devious than you appear. Your alias 'Mr. Fury' is less superficial than I initially believed."
Xander snorted in amusement. "You've done your homework it seems, though I never thought old Earth comic books could ever be considered plausible intel. Besides, you info broker types are more like Nick than I'd ever been. I don't have so many secrets that my secrets have secrets and I try to stay out of that cloak and dagger business as best I can."
"You're not wrong, though I think you have more secrets than you imply," Liara stated.
"Not gonna try and get them out of me?" Xander teased.
"Shepard vouches for you and if you're even half as good as I think you are, it'll give me an enjoyable challenge to find them out on my own," Liara pointed out with a smile. "After all, I am very good at my job."
"We'll just have to see about that then," Xander challenged. "So what brings you down here, Doc?"
"Curiosity, mostly," Liara told him honestly. "You're every bit as intriguing as the Commander. More so, in some ways. Your species only lives approximately a century, yet you're older than I am and only look about as old as the Commander. You survived a melding with an Ardat Yakshi… Something no other being as ever done. That already makes you extraordinary and doesn't take into account your roles in military service."
"Sheesh, Doc. You're gonna make me blush," Xander replied sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
"I don't mean to embarrass you," Liara responded quickly.
Xander shook his head and waved off her apology. "Don't worry about it. Even after 200 years, embarrassed seems to be my natural state around beautiful females. Apparently, some things never change."
Liara's cheeks tinged a slightly darker blue at Xander's compliment.
"Feel free to ask anything you want," Xander offered. "I can't guarantee I'll answer, but I won't get offended at whatever question you ask, so long as you don't get offended by any non-answers I give."
"Fair enough." Liara replied, then hesitated for a moment. "What makes you so long lived?"
Xander smiled. "Something my friend Willow did to me to accomplish a certain task dealing with a certain artifact."
"The Key," Liara stated. "The one you're said to be the guardian of."
Xander nodded. "The Key has been in my care for a long time. It's supposed to serve a certain purpose, but only god knows what it is. Willow's friend was a bit vague on that point."
"You make it sound like you were given some sort of prophecy," Liara said.
Xander nodded again. "Got it in one, Doc. I've always hated them."
"I never took you as the prophecy believing type," Liara told him.
"I try not to, but I've seen too much to not believe," Xander replied. "I don't put much faith in them. Most, you can't tell if they've come to pass until after the fact and others only come true because people have gone out of their way to make them come true: self-fulfilling prophecies. My friend Giles had a book of prophecies, I forget what it was called, but every single one of them was said to come true." Xander shook his head. "Well, one of them said my friend Buffy was going to die. Buffy, of course, panicked and said some things, leading to Giles trying to take her place. Buffy then changed her mind, knocked Giles out and then went marching off to her death. I decided at age sixteen with absolutely no training at that point that I couldn't let that happen no matter what Giles, Buffy or Angel said or did. So I got some weapons, charged to Buffy's boyfriend's, Angel, apartment, and guilt tripped him like you wouldn't believe to take me down to where Buffy was going, despite the threat of imminent death waiting for us if we followed Buffy down there."
Xander's gaze took on a haunted look as he was silent for a moment.
"Are you all right?" Liara asked concernedly.
"Yeah… It's just… That night was one of the worst nights I'd ever experienced," Xander replied. "Buffy confronted this guy that called himself 'The Master'. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can guess. We got there too late. Buffy was unconscious lying there face down in a pool of water. She was so pale… And she wasn't breathing…"
Liara gulped. "What happened?"
"I prayed and gave her CPR," Xander replied and smiled sadly. "I'd been in love with her at the time and my heart broke at the sight of her lying there lifeless. I was so relieved when she came back to the land of the living. Of course that feeling of euphoria was short-lived, because as soon as she woke up her first word was 'Angel'."
Liara winched in sympathy. "Ouch."
"You have no idea…" Xander replied. "That was just part of a long list of grievances I used to have towards Buffy's paramour. Admittedly, if it wasn't for Buffy between us, I probably would have eventually have called him a friend." Xander shook his head again. "For all he claimed to love her at the time, he was willing to let her die. He had her heart and he was just going to let her go… The day before everything went down… I asked Buffy on a date and was rejected. I won't lie and say I wasn't more than a little bitter over the whole thing, especially with everything that happened afterwards, because I was, but I didn't give up- not once, even when Giles, Angel and Buffy all did and in the end… I was just Xander. I didn't have Angel's skills, Giles' knowledge or Buffy's abilities, but I fought tooth in nail for the girl I loved, who didn't love me back, because it was the only thing I felt I could do, the thing that felt right."
Liara smiled sadly. "I know that feeling. Back on the original Normandy I had a bit of a crush on the Commander, but she only had eyes for Lieutenant Alenko. Still does, even though they've been apart for so long." Liara looked down in shame. "Occasionally, I still have nightmares of the day the original Normandy was destroyed. I remember hearing about how Shepard was ejected from the ship, her hard suit cracked and already losing oxygen before she even started descending towards the planet below… My mind always conjures up some very horrific imagery of what happened…" Liara shuddered. "Knowing the potential consequences, I recovered the Commander's body and gave it to Cerberus. I care for her greatly, and despite how wrong I felt it was to bring her back to life, I couldn't let go. Everything felt so wrong without her…"
Xander grabbed Liara's hand in comfort and led her to a chair so that she could sit down. He took the seat next to her.
"Did you tell the Commander?" Xander asked.
"Yes, and she forgave me… Thanked me even, for saving her life and giving her the opportunity to continue to fight the Reapers and save more lives," Liara replied, wiping away some tears.
"And yet you still feel guilty about the fact that after everything you've been through, you resent the fact that she still doesn't see you how you want to be seen," Xander said in understanding.
Liara's expression was one of deep guilt as she nodded.
Xander shrugged. "It happens. It's life. Lord knows I resented Buffy for a lot of things and she was every much my hero as much as I'm sure Shepard is yours. Wanting someone to want you like you want to be wanted isn't a sin." He then grinned. "I'd say it was human nature, but…"
Liara laughed a bit at that as she wiped her eyes. "I guess some things transfer between species."
"I have little doubt that you're an amazing woman," Xander told Liara sincerely. "You're a friend of Shepard's and part of the original Normandy crew. That right there says a lot about you, especially as one of the people you faced down was your own mother. Shepard would be lucky to have you, but she can't change how she feels any more than she can change the stars in the sky."
"I can still hope," Liara replied.
"Just don't put your life on hold for something that may or may not happen," Xander advised. "That's hardly fair to either you or Shepard. If it happens, great! Spectacular, even. Just try to move on otherwise."
"We seem to have gotten a bit off topic," Liara commented.
"A bit," Xander acknowledged, "But you came down here to talk and we did, so mission still accomplished, even if we both shared a bit more than either of us meant to. Anything else you want to talk about."
Liara hesitated once more. "What is the Key?"
"A mystery. A long forgotten relic to a door to anywhere and everywhere, created for a purpose long forgotten," Xander replied.
"It sounds mystical," Liara replied.
"Legends are often like that," Xander replied. "Remind me to tell you about The Slayer."
"One girl in all the world with the power to fight vampires?" Liara asked.
"You are good!" Xander exclaimed. "I can count the number of people on one hand who know that legend in the entire galaxy and still have fingers left over. Pretty much anybody and everybody on Earth knows of vampires and demons in one form or another, but only a select few have ever heard of The Slayer."
"I only found vague references linked to an organization that looked to be like more like a secret society more than anything else called the IWC- The International Watcher's Council," Liara said. "Your associate Rupert Giles was once a member."
Xander was fully grinning. "I'm tempted to ask you to marry me. You really have done your homework. I couldn't really fit Joker's description of the shy, mousy librarian type with the image I got from the footage I've seen of you in action, never mind what I saw on Illium. Brains, beauty and badassery wrapped up in a bundle of innocence and class and a focus to succeed that parallels few others when you really put your full effort into it."
"Checking up on me, I see," Liara riposted.
"On Shepard, mostly," Xander told Liara honestly. "Footage of you and the others was incidental. You were of particular interest due to the fact you have no real combat training, yet you fight better than most Matrons and even some Matriarchs."
"You're looking for The Slayer!" Liara exclaimed.
"I'm pretty sure I've already found her," Xander replied. "It just took me a long time to get close enough to her to act as her Watcher, albeit covertly."
"The Commander," Liara realized.
Xander nodded. "The Slayer has been dormant for a long time, reawakening, I believe, around Elizabeth's sixteenth birthday, and not a moment too soon, I reckon. How else do you think she managed to survive all that she did when so many others, stronger, hardier and better trained did not? How else do you think she's broken or set every form of combat training record that Alliance has? She had Olympic level stats even before her upgrades from the Illusive Man, yet she doesn't put in nearly that amount of training, something that should be impossible even with genetic modification. Let's not even get into the weapons she carries around. Most humans who have those particular weapons have them modified for human use, Shepard's Claymore is unmodified and designed to be used by Krogan."
"Why? How?" Liara inquired.
Xander shrugged. "I never asked the particulars, they never particularly mattered. I only knew that what we were doing what was necessary and needed to be done. I've been friends with a lot of Slayers, from the Slayer Prime, to the last girl to truly be called The Slayer to the Potentials and all the ones who wanted to be strong. I even trained a good many of them too. And then came The Reintegration, when All Slayers became One Slayer, The Slayer, only the girl who was to be the new Slayer Prime died and no new Slayer was called and with Humanity looking towards the stars, 'One Girl in All The World' became 'One Girl in All The Galaxy' and we had no idea where to even begin to look, which is why I spent so much time in Asari space, until Mindoir. By that time, others had either moved on or died and I was The Last of the True Watcher's after the International Watcher's Council became the Intergalactic Watcher's Council."
"What does that mean for Shepard?" Liara asked concerned.
Xander smiled sadly. "It means I help her defeat the Reapers and keep her alive the best I can. The Slayer, as far as I can tell, was dormant for over 100 years gaining strength. Elizabeth Shepard is stronger, faster and more skilled in combat than any other Slayer I have ever seen or heard of in their entire history, which predates Earth's written history record. She's more powerful than even Buffy was and drives just as badly. Sad to say, but defeating the Reapers is what the Commander was born for."
"No pressure, right?" Liara joked weakly.
"It gets worse," Xander replied.
"Worse?"
"The IWC has always been the home guard, the harbingers of the guardian, and the vanguard for the saviors of humanity," Xander informed her. "The Guardians of the Gate, if you will, between Humanity and the Gates of The Underworld."
Liara caught on quickly. "You're referencing something."
"Old Earth mythology, specifically, Greek. The Guardian between the world of the living and the land of the dead was a three headed dog named Cerberus," Xander replied.
"Cer-Cerberus!" Liara stuttered.
"It was easy to recognize the logo, despite the name change," Xander told her with a slight nod. "It was something my friend Willow came up with when we were kids. The IWC was the first organization to come across evidence of the Reapers. Jack Harper, known today as the Illusive Man, has been fighting them since The First Contact War- the Relay 315 Incident, if you're a turian. We even brought Saren Arterius into the fold for a while, since he and Harper stopped Saren's brother, Desolas, from turning the whole of Palaven's population into mecha turian drones using a Reaper Artifact. Only things have gotten worse, not better, the more we've tried to fight them. Saren got indoctrinated by Sovereign and Harper has become more and more paranoid about the Reaper Threat to the point of desperation beyond all reasoning. Experiments of involving Rachni, Thorian husks and Thresher Maws… The experiments done to Jack on Pragia… My bet is he was trying to create his own Slayer, despite knowing that it doesn't work like that." Xander shook his head. "For all his genius, those are not the actions of a sane, rational man, but a desperate one who feels like he's been backed into a corner and is now grasping at straws to find any solution, no matter the cost. Harper's sin has always been pride, I just hope the cost isn't more than the galaxy can pay."
"I… I don't know what to say," Liara replied.
"What is there to say?" Xander asked. "That I've known the Illusive Man since he was a snot nosed kid crapping his pants? That I helped raise him and was the one who told him about girls because I was filling in for his dead parents? Or that I was, at one time, his friend and mentor and was unable to stop him from turning into a mockery of everything he once and still claims to stand for?"
"Does Shepard know?" Liara asked in reply.
"Some. She knows that the Illusive Man and I have a history, and I've even told her of some of it," Xander told her. "She suspects a lot, though she's been careful not to ask directly. Despite our differences, Harper knows there is no better Watcher in the Galaxy and had her track me down for this mission knowing I'd do my duty to The Slayer, even if I wouldn't do it on his terms."
"Where does The Key fit into all of this?" Liara inquired.
"That is a long, personal, story, one I'm not ready to share. Sorry," Xander replied emotionally drained.
"It's all right, you did say that there were some things you wouldn't share," Liara responded as she put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Thanks," Xander told her gratefully.