Liara

I could not escape the gaze of those eyes. The eyes that Shepard had loved not so long ago, those eyes that shone with fearlessness in the face of the truth. Avi had never been "diplomatic" as Serena had once termed me. She had never hesitated to call Shepard out for hiding herself, being afraid, avoiding an issue. She had been unafraid to breach Shepard's theoretical armor. Instead of waiting for it to fall, as I had, Avi Rivera had stripped it off with her own hands, and then shown her commanding officer that she was strong enough to bear the scars that lay behind it.

"Why are you here?" I asked, my lips trembling as I backed further against the console, as though it might hide me.

"That's a stupid question if I ever heard one, Liara." Avi replied. "You brought me here."

"I…I do not understand." I shivered as the drugs sped through my system. "I have seen the sort of woman you are…you would not return from death to heap recriminations on me."

"No." she nodded. "But you would."

I blinked, slow, attempting to understand her words. I had seen Avi Rivera on the Citadel after Sovereign's remains had crashed through the Council chambers and Garrus and I thought Serena crushed to death beneath them. Avi had pulled Shepard from the wreckage and brought her to me. I had taken Shepard from Avi's arms, felt the solidity of the deceased ensign's body, the warmth of her skin. In a meld, I had seen her return to Serena, only briefly, and the commander had touched her…real as she had been in life.

I reached out for her leg, to touch her, to confirm her reality. My hand met no resistance, no physical form, though I could see her body in front of me. She had no body and no flesh. She was…

"Never seen your thoughts made manifest, Dr. T'Soni?" Avi needled. "You can't make something mystical out of this. You're using my image because it's one you relate to. Someone else who loved Shepard."

"Someone else who left her." it did not matter that this was a hallucination.

It felt real, because I needed it to be real. I need an outlet for the rage and the grief that my heart would not cease feeling and my mind would not process. I had still not cried over my loss of my lover. I had screamed, I had dreamed, and I had murdered. But I had not wept. And I needed this pain, this fresh, raw agony so that I could feel something that might transcend the emotion that threatened to drown me.

"Oh shut the fuck up, T'Soni." Avi kicked back in the chair, crossed her arms, and glared at me. "I didn't leave her. Not like you. I was fucking shot. Sergeant Ivey put a bullet in my gut, and I did what you wish you'd done. I died with Shepard."

"But she did not die." I countered.

"Really?" Avi questioned. "You mean the person that you met on the Normandy was the same person I knew and loved?"

"Not precisely but…"

"Part of her died on Akuze, Liara, with me." Avi told me, sliding out of the chair and sitting on the ground, cross-legged, her eyes piercing through mine with clarity, brevity, and the brutal bluntness that had defined her character. "And I died with her. Just like you keep thinking you should have done."

"I should have." I muttered.

"And now it's too late." Avi kept speaking, saying my thoughts aloud, telling me that which was my own mind, my own thoughts. "Now it's too late to be anything but a stupid suicide, and you're better than that." she paused, purposeful. "Aren't you?"

My lips trembled. "I…I don't know."

"There's a chance she could live again." Avi looked away from me, towards the ceiling of the ship. "Aren't you the least bit happy about that? The least bit excited?"

I shook my head. "She will not be Serena." I whispered my fears. "Her soul is gone, but Cerberus is only interested in her body, in her face. They do not care who she was. If they succeed, they will bring back who they need...not who she was."

"So gentle." Avi nodded. "God, the way she could talk sometimes. The world condensed to a pinpoint and everything faded to her words. Who knew a marine could be that fucking eloquent? And her hands, like poetry in motion. The way they felt on my skin, all rough texture and soft movements, and the way she'd whisper in my ear…"

"Stop!" I shouted as the memories of my nightmare overtook me, the pleasure panging through my body that turned into…into what had to be hell. "Why are you saying this!? Why are you tormenting me?"

"I'm not tormenting you, Liara." Avi's crimson lips lifted in a smile. "You're doing this to yourself. The drugs, the nightmares. Your mind is slipping away from you, and you can't control everything. The minute you walked away from Serena in the burning Normandy, you lost any semblance of control you had."

"You're wrong." I countered, unwilling to believe that I, who had defied my mother, one of the most powerful matriarchs, could lose something as simple as control and presence of mind, as it related to the conditions surrounding me.

"Am I?" she asked, her brows lowering with suspicion. "Or did you not just put a needle in your arm because you got scared after a little nightmare?"

"What are you saying!?" I demanded. "If you truly are a construct of my own mind, why are you tormenting me yet further!? Where is your kindness, Avi? Where is your sympathy?"

"If you really wanted that," Avi replied, shrugging her shoulders, "then I would exhibit it. But you don't. You're trying to tear yourself apart, to make sense of a world that's all fractured and splintered and shattered. There's little pieces of you scattered all through the galaxy, and poor little Liara doesn't know how to put them back together again. You want to shred yourself until you don't exist anymore."

"I order you to be silent!" I screamed, rising to my feet and yanking the needle from my arm.

"No." she hissed. "You brought me here. I'm your helplessness, your reminder. I trusted you, on the Citadel. I put the woman I loved in your arms and I trusted that you would take care of her. But what's funny is…I'm not the face of your failure."

"Then what are you?" I asked, almost driven to tears by this spectre that I had made real, made speak.

"I'm what comforts you." Avi said. "Because right now, you'd rather be hated than loved. Love, Liara, would remind you of your true failures. You don't want me to leave, because what comes after would be a worse torment."

A scoff of disdain burst out of my throat. "I highly doubt that."

"Oh really?" Avi smirked. "Then I'll go away for a little while, just to show you what tortures your own damn mind can conjure."

With a salute, she faded…but I heard footsteps in the ship. A remembered cadence of a stride I would never forget.