Liara

I sat, staring at the myriad screens before me, reading reports from agents spread all across the galaxy. My eyes traced the words and translated them, but I knew, later, that I would have to re-read them. Important as these reports were, they were not foremost in my mind, not what I cared about, and not what held the full measure of my attention, contemplation, and thought. Even sitting, my hands were clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms with every flex of muscle. The words before me smeared to an unimportant blur.

"You're still angry." Came a voice from the door, solid and sure, calm and, often, comforting. It did not comfort me now. I raised my head and glared at Shepard, letting her read the fury still present in my eyes. "Don't even try to kick me out, Liara." She said. "Even if I came back later, you'd still be furious."

"Be that as it may, there's no need to foist your presence on me now, especially with it being so unwanted." I insisted, staring down at my reports again, though they meant as little as they had before she spoke, if not less. "I have work to do, if you don't mind."

"I have work to do too." Shepard replied, her voice echoing over the cold, metallic floors of the Shadow Broker's ship. My ship. My new home. "But you didn't see me glowing blue and yelling at you when you went to do yours. Why is mine any different?"

"Would you like an itemized list?" I snarled between gritted teeth, knowing that Shepard would push the issue between us until something broke. It had been so between us from the beginning. I did not wish to be the one who broke. Not this time. Not again. Not until she realized what she was doing to me.

Shepard leaned against the doorway, opened her omni-tool, and extended it out to me. "Here's Miranda's." She quipped. "Would you like to compare and contrast?"

"Do me the favor of not trivializing my concerns." I hissed, sending a code from my console to Shepard's omni-tool, shutting it down remotely. "Ever since the Normandy's return from the Omega Four relay, and your return from the edge of death, I have been keeping watch. It is not just Cerberus looking for you, Serena. The Alliance is actively seeking you as well. Cerberus has done with you what they did when they were searching for your body, and contracting with bounty hunters of any race. You have a price on your head, and you are wanting to leave the one safe place for you in the galaxy?"

"Liara," Shepard's voice lost its insouciant edge. She pushed off of the wall and walked closer to me, her silver eyes burning with all the gravitas and emotion they bore when we spoke of difficult things…or made love. The expression upon her features and the light within her eyes was mine alone. It made me tremble down to my very core. "I'm not doing this for me."

"No." I sniped, unwilling to let the fire burning in her gaze subdue me beneath the power of our love, our connection. "You are doing this for Admiral Steven Hackett of the Alliance, which baffles me, Shepard. You would leave safety for the sake of the very man who might have signed the orders to hunt you down and bring you in?"

"No, god…fuck. No." Shepard ran her hand through her hair and the light of the screens caught the new scar splashed across her face, highlighting the missing lobe of her ear…she'd lost it here, in this very room, helping me subdue the Shadow Broker. "I don't want to do this for him." She stressed the word. "I'm doing this for us, Liara. For me. And for you. Hackett's word carries a lot of weight, and I did work for Cerberus for a good year, there. Was it worth what I've learned? Fuck yes. But it wasn't worth anything else, as everyone else on the Normandy, who defected with me of their own free will, knows. Now, I've got Karin Chakwas as a character witness, and if I do this one thing for Hackett, then I might not get courts martialed."

"You speak as though you want to go back to the Alliance." I said, rising from my seat and moving to where she stood, in the middle of the room…the room that, for me, still held the echoes of that conflict and reminded me of the pain in my spirit as I, once more, fought alongside the woman who taught me what it was to fight for the right reasons. "Is that truly what you wish to do?"

"Yes." The word sliced across the space between us, chilling me to the bone. "But not because I want to be a soldier. Not because I want to fly through space and not because I want to shoot people. You know me, Liara. I don't want any of those things. But I know the Reapers are coming. And I can no more sit here with you and wait it out than you could. Be honest with me, Liara, when they come, as you know they will, will you stay in this ship and do nothing while worlds burn?"

"Of course not, but I…"

"Then why are you fighting me on this?" Shepard asked, her tone lacking anger, lacking heat, lacking anything but her love for me and her logic, in which I could find no flaw, no matter the desperation with which I tried. "I have two choices, alaínn anam. I either fight with the Alliance or I fight with Cerberus, and I'd rather let a fucked up military with good people in it have me than a group that wanted me to keep a Reaper to study it so they could figure out indoctrination and use it on the whole goddamn galaxy to put humans on top." She drew closer to me, smelling as she always did, of vanilla and gun oil. "I don't want that world, Liara."

"And I do not want to lose you." I whispered as I leaned into her strength and felt her arms wrap around me, my security and my fortress. "I am terrified of losing you again, Serena. You do not know how much…"

"Yes, I do." Her voice whispered across my crest as she cupped my cheek and drew my eyes to hers. "I see it in your tears when we sleep beside each other. I hear it in your voice when the nightmares make you weep. But we both know the true danger is coming. And we've already seen that, as it comes to the Reapers, the Council is useless and Cerberus, the only other organization that wants anything to do with them, is too dangerous. So, please, let me do what I can to make amends. Let me do this thing for Hackett, and try to suss out the rest of what went wrong after I died. The most important thing is right in front of me."

"All right." I understood her words, and I did not want to cause her pain. She would leave regardless of my wishes. I knew it was better to let her go with my encouragement than with my anger. "But I will ask you for the promise you would not give me when we came together again. Just for this time, Serena, promise me that you will come back. Promise me that you will do this thing for Hackett and come back to me. We can negotiate from here, so that the Alliance does not find you and bury you beneath a millennia of paperwork and red tape, and so that you will be safe from Cerberus as well. Will you do that, at least?"

Shepard smiled and her eyes filled with love and another emotion…pride. Pride in the words I spoke, pride in the fact that we stood together against all odds, loving and in love. I felt that self-same thing, and wondered if it were as easily read in my gaze as in hers.

"Just this once." She nodded her agreement. "I promise."

I said nothing further, merely clung to her, knowing that soon she would depart the safety of this ship for a galaxy that wanted her, dead or alive. I would do what I could from where I sat to keep either organization from finding her. She may have once belonged to the Alliance, and then to Cerberus, but neither of them had claim on her now. Serena Shepard was mine and, if I could make it lie within my power, nothing would happen to her.

The embrace ended and Shepard pulled back, Once again, her hand cupped my cheek, and my heart ached in my chest as she leaned down and sealed her promise. With a kiss.