Liara

I had never disliked silence. In fact, for most of my life, I had craved it. I would spend hours, days, without hearing another person's voice. It allowed me to listen to the ground I walked on, to unearth the secrets that I sought there, to find what had been lost to the millennia. Silence could be comfortable, enlightening, and peaceful.

It was not so now. I lay in the bed, waiting for tears that did not come. I did not even know how to grieve this. All I knew was that my heart, which had been filled with the whispers of promise and the quiet comfort of love…had become a wasteland where a wretched, gnawing silence dwelt.

When I had lost Benezia, I had been there. I had watched the light leave her eyes. I had held her, listening as she broke the silence with her last words, ragged whispers of love and reassurance, conquering the great quiet that she went to, leaving her mark on the world.

But I had not been given that with Serena. She had been torn away from me. She had been taken to a place I could not follow. I could not see her, not hold her for the last time, not still my heart with tangible knowledge nor touch the source of loss.

I looked out of the window to the stars. They had been her peace, they had been her quiet place of rest and healing. But now, the black surrounding me appeared to be but a yawning chasm of death that swallowed all who entered it, who crept at the edges of their lives and waited for the moment to devour them, to leave the world devoid of their presence.

"I thought love could endure anything." I whispered, not knowing if anyone was near to hear me. I had listened to the opening and closing of the door several times…but I did not care if anyone were beside me.

It would not matter if they were. I had been left alone in the world. Because she had refused to answer me. She had refused to promise to return. I had begged her not to value another's life above her own, but she did not know how to be selfish. She did not know how to place love above the mandates of her own stupid, foolish, soldier's heart. She had done what she needed to do, with no thought for how I might suffer.

Joker had lived. A man with a disease that made his existence so fragile, so tenuous, had somehow taken precedence over the life of the woman who had proven herself strong enough to save the entire galaxy. It had been his hands that failed her. It had been his weakness that cast her out into the dark, into the fiery, freezing wastes of space.

I closed my eyes and pictured her face as I had last seen it. Fierce, defiant…that strange look in her eyes that was not the immutable determination of the warrior. It had been…gleaming, bright, as though she witnessed the edge of eternity, as though she had seen into her future and known…known something that no mere mortal possibly could.

It's time.

"You convinced me love could transcend death." I whispered, and the words tasted bitter in the silence of the ship that was not my home, the ship that had come to the wreckage too late, that had not been able to save us all. "Why did you lie to me, Serena?" I hissed. "Why did you not tell me that you could see your own death in the future? We could have fought…you…you could not lose another battle, you swore that to me."

It's time.

How had she known? Is this the reason that she had activated the elevator while I had stood outside? Is this why she had made me key into the ship's communication systems, to hear what was happening…so that I might know all that transpired and be able to protect myself with that knowledge? She had taken me with her in the fight against Saren, though she had not wanted to. She had wanted to keep me safe…but had not.

She had known she would not lose, then. But this time…this time…somehow she had grasped the thread of her own fate and followed it to its end.

"I would have died with you." I breathed to the loneliness surrounding me, the silence that took form and slowly pressed on my chest until it became so heavy I thought my ribs would break. "I lived for you. For the dream of us. Why did you save me from that? Why did you force me to run? Why did I listen?"

Why did I listen? The question would not cease repeating through my mind, so fast and rapid that the words began to trip and run over each other until I could distinguish no clear one of them from the clamor.

The incessant furor drove me from the bed. I stared at my clothes, damaged by the smoke, burned and singed, but I could not bring myself to care. I wanted to wear the destruction of the Normandy. I wanted to bathe in the stench of death in hopes that I would become one with it and exit this world that held nothing but an expanse of pain extending to every horizon of every planet.

I knew one thing. I was alone here. The humans had their own company. They had the comfort they could draw from each other. Their silences would be broken by the camaraderie of soldiers, who knew loss, who knew that death could take as it wanted without consequence. They would never understand. They could not love her as I had loved her. She had been their commander, but she was my very soul.

I had remained with them because Serena was one of them. But her death severed my connection, and as much as they wished to care, as much as they wanted to offer words of comfort…they had already segregated me from them. They had placed me in a stark, locked room because the energy they could not understand nor fully harness might pose a danger to them.

They were weak. They were weak, and cowardly, and fearful, and the death of the best of their race had turned them back into the controversial beings they had been from their discovery of the galaxy. I could not be among them any longer. I could no longer care for them. I could not accept their sorrow, for it rang hollow in my hearing and my heart.

I walked to the door, ignoring the aches and pains and complaints from my body. I knocked on it and it opened, revealing a young salarian in armor, armed with what looked to be a tranquilizer weapon.

"I need to speak to your commander." I informed him. "Regarding transport back to Thessia."