Thessia

Liara entered her secure room and sighed as she sank down in a battered leather chair. Glyph turned on the feeds, the reports from agents galaxy-wide, but Liara's vision blurred as she began to read them. Too much had happened, and focus had fled.

Fled towards the asari who now rested under her roof. It had been decades since Liara had opened the doors of the T'Soni estate for anyone but herself. The feeling of not being alone, not being isolated, carried its own brand of strangeness.

"Doctor T'Soni," Glyph spoke, breaking the silence, "I have taken the liberty of placing a watch on Mira Dorsen's medical reports as they are updated."

"Thank you, Glyph." Liara replied, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers against them, attempting to scrape away the exhaustion. "Have there been any changes?"

"At zero two hundred hours she was taken into the operating room." Glyph replied.

"Goddess." Liara breathed, for the first time thinking of how much she despised what her life had become.

It was so easy to lock myself away again, Liara sighed. After…after the war and the horrors that followed, it was too easy to become who I once was. However, I traded dusty digs on faraway planets for the comforts of home and the concealed importances of the galaxy at my fingertips. It is all archaeology regardless. Discovering buried secrets.

Serena would…she would hate this life for me.

"It is not my fault." Liara spoke to the nothingness, to the ghosts that surrounded her. Ghosts of a happier time, a happier time regardless of suffering or fear. "My reasons were torn away from me. Everything I had. Vanished in the dark." she breathed the last words and the monitors darkened at a single command from her fingers.

In the silence, in the quiet, in the black, Liara's thoughts wandered, venturing at a frenetic pace, anywhere away from that day. Anywhere away from that moment where the galaxy had turned on its end and Liara had seen…she had seen the harshness of the galaxy, the gore of battle, the fear of near loss. But that day had shown her something crueler than a soldier's mandates. It had shown her something darker than the phantoms of bloodshed and fighting for survival. Something bleaker than the nightmares that haunted her.

It had shown her the abject monstrosity of fate. That something deeper than those residing within it moved the galaxy. It had no conscience, no respect, and no knowledge of love. She had been innocent at that time, had seen mystical, marvelous things that had convinced her that love was immutable in the face of the weapons of man and the vagaries of the galaxy. Being proven wrong had been…devastating.

"Doctor T'Soni," Glyph re-appeared from wherever it was he had gone, and Liara looked up, "I thought you should be informed. There are sounds of distress emanating from the guest room."

Liara rose from her chair and pushed away the exhaustion that had begun to take hold. She exited the secure room and walked to Sen's, her heart catching in her throat as she peered in the door. The younger asari shivered in the grip of a nightmare, the soft light of the morning sun highlighting the planes and angles of her face. Liara's breath caught and her heart cracked yet further.

She walked to the edge of the bed and rested her hand lightly on the doctor's shoulder. She did not think Sen would have a violent reaction to being awakened, but she could not help the instinct that sleeping beside a soldier had honed.

"Sen." Liara spoke, and the asari's eyes flared open, casting about the unfamiliar space until they settled on Liara.

Her breathing evened and she wiped at the light sheen of sweat across her face. "Wha…what happened?"

Liara sat at the edge of the bed, folding her hands in her lap in order to restrain the movement they wished to undertake. To comfort, to calm. "You were having a nightmare." she said the words, tasting their bitter familiarity. "Do you remember anything?"

"Yes." Sen replied, her voice ragged. She propped herself up against the headboard and drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. "I dreamed…I dreamed I was there. That I couldn't do anything. That it was too late. I dreamed I…"

"Held her while she died." Liara whispered, recounting the dreams that haunted her nights. "I know."

"I don't." Sen breathed, and the confession tore at Liara's heart. The known demons were always easier to confront. "Liara, I don't. I do not know…I do not know how to confront this how to…how to silence the screams inside my own head. I do not know how to lose anything. Especially not…not something I loved."

"Oh, Sen." Liara's voice cracked, and she moved, wrapping her arms around her friend, imparting a voiceless comfort to a pain no words could assuage.

"I don't know what to do." Sen asked. "I am…I am attempting to prepare for the worst, but I do not even know what the worst may be, or what it will look like, or how it will feel. I have no comprehension of…anything. And part of me screams at myself…how did I ever have the pride to attempt to comfort the families of patients who did not survive? How did I deliver the news with a calm countenance and…"

Liara pulled out of the embrace and eyed the younger asari…the sole living person to enter her home in over two centuries.

"Because you didn't know." Liara explained. "It is easier to look at things with a critical, clinical eye…but after they have touched you, you will never see the world in the same light again."

"I…I do not like to ask for anything." Sen whispered, staring down at the bedcovers. "But I am terrified. I need…"

"You need to know how loss can change you." Liara replied, feeling the ache in her heart intensify. She had known this day would come…and had not wanted to face it. "You need to know how something as transient as fear, as inexplicable as coincidence can shake the very foundations of your established identity."

"Yes." Sen looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It is all right." Liara answered. "I knew, one day, this time would come." She paused, gathering her composure. "There is no sound in space. No warning. When the strike comes, all you hear is your own world fracturing, splintering to pieces."