Thessia

Sen stared at her mother, attempting to process the words she heard, the promise she herself made. The aches and pains of her body dimmed beneath the onslaught of a hundred thousand questions. It could not be true…could it? How could she be the daughter of the Savior of the Galaxy? How could she have never, in three hundred years, discovered the secret of her heritage and…and why now? Why now, after a series of coincidences that brought her to this moment?

For a moment, Sen wished she had not turned around when the nurse chased her down and presented her with a patient's chart…Liara T'Soni. The asari who had quickly become a friend and mentor…her mother's friend, or so they would have her believe. Sen did not understand how a friendship could survive over three hundred years of silence and for…for her to be Shepard's daughter and to have come from Zhira's womb…she did not understand. She could not be certain that she wished to understand.

All around her, she could feel her world crumbling. All of the truths she believed without question were now flashing through her mind. She did not know if she could trust anything, or anyone. In some distant part of her consciousness, she realized a terrible truth…that she could know more of the truth in Edward Dorsen's brutal beating than she might ever learn from her mother, the life-giver sitting before her now. She knew it would be so easy to see the truth…she could ask for a meld, ask to see the memories in their unaltered state but…

"Do I have to hear this?" Sen asked, her voice emerging on a quiver of uncertainty. "Is this not something I can…something you could show me?"

"Would you want that, Sen?" Her mother questioned in return. "Would you want to feel the events as they unfold? Would you be capable of withstanding the raw emotion and the horrific brutality of that time? I know you have seen death, my daughter, but have you seen it on such a grandiose scale; have you smelled the stench of rotting corpses and run by them, unable to honor the dead for there is simply not enough time?"

Sen felt blood draining from her face, leaving her paler and colder, if that were possible. Even though she spent years as a trauma surgeon, repairing garish and ghastly injuries, she'd never seen what her mother spoke of. There had been nothing for the last three hundred years save small conflicts and the occasional terrorist cells of fools whose stupidity and ideology would never perish, regardless of the advancements made.

Sen knew that, since the Reaper War, there had been no grand galactic conflicts. Many had forgotten, but the asari and, oddly, the krogan, kept the memories of that horrific time alive and present, reminding the shorter-lived races of the horrors and waste of war on such a scale. There had been centuries of relative peace…peace in Sen's time. All of it the gift of the woman that was myth, legend, and reality…and the other half, if her mother spoke the truth, of Sen's genetics.

"No." Sen answered, muted, humbled. "I have no desire to…to see such things. I just…I want to know. I need to understand, mother."

Sen watched as Zhira winced at the term…something she had never done before, and the physician wondered how deep this secret ran, how far back this pain extended. The asari before her looked so far away, so different from the one Sen knew from her first breath and leaned on for support and guidance and love.

A knock at the door startled them both. Sen's heart began pounding in her chest. Her three hundred and thirty-six years of life were about to be irrevocably changed. Her beginning had to be so different from what she believed, and the question of her parentage, which Zhira had carefully deflected each and every time, would be answered.

"Come in." She called and the door opened, revealing Liara…Liara, who was now a part of Sen's history in a way she did not know, nor could she fathom. The questions arose in her mind again, a clamor seeking for the truth, the burning need for knowledge greater than the pain of her beaten body.

Liara pulled a chair from the corner of the room to Sen's bedside and sat down. The matron looked more weary than Sen had ever seen. Her gaze flitted between Liara and Zhira, seeing the pain in both of their gazes as they looked at each other. For a moment, her resolve wavered. She cared for the two of them, deeply. Her lips parted and she nearly spoke, nearly told them that she did not need the truth if it would do nothing but harm them. In spite of the confusion, bewilderment, and wondering, there lay in her heart a love for both of them. Without Liara, Sen never would have managed to make it through Mira's injury…the elder asari had imparted so much wisdom, given her so much history already…had Liara not suffered enough? Had not her own mother, whose amethyst eyes spoke silently to Liara with a pain so eloquent it transcended description?

"Do not say what you are thinking." Liara looked to her, offering words of counsel. "Though it warms my heart to see that you care for us…there are things you must know, things that you deserve to know."

"You have given me the story of your life, Liara." Sen protested. "You've granted me entrance into your deepest pain, and I have not the right to ask you to venture further in…not for my sake. A simple truth will suffice, I swear it."

Liara smiled, soft, sad…with a touch of pride in her azure eyes that Sen did not yet understand. "Brave as you are, I know your words are a lie." Liara whispered. "Once, I believed the same…I believed what the asari teach, that the second half of our parentage is nothing but an amalgamation of genetic material, that we are nothing of our second parentage, that the womb from which we are born dictates all that we inherit. I believed that to be true, for many years, until I met my father. You deserve the entirety of the truth, Sen…it is not simple…" Sen watched as Zhira reached out, taking Liara's hand in her own and offering her strength. "It could never be simple. But the complexity of it can be translated, if you will give me the ability to do so."

"I will." Sen promised again, stricken by the sorrow in Liara's gaze, though her eyes shone with the same, inexplicable emotion of regret and pride that they had so often over the course of their friendship.

Liara breathed deep and closed her eyes, preparing to bare her soul and unearth her secrets. "There are many who believe that this story begins from the day that the Reapers invaded the Sol system and attacked Earth. For many of us, the beginning of that year of horror did arrive at that moment. However, for Shepard and myself, the end of the world began earlier…the end of the world began with a kiss of farewell." Liara breathed deep again, gathering her strength. "For the asari, a kiss is a simple thing, a symbol of love, a conduit of pleasure and connection. It is the same for humans too, save that a kiss has dual meaning for them. It is a sign of a promise made—it is also a symbol of betrayal…"