Thessia

Pain in its raw form had never before looked…so elegant. Sen had seen the freshly wounded and the terminally ill come under her care. Their pain had been fierce, their agony blistering, and Sen had immediately begun to do all within her power to heal them and rid them of the anguish they carried.

The pain in Liara's eyes was different. It was pain, but also peace. Longsuffering mixed with wisdom and comprehension. The asari before her now was worlds away from the person she had described to Sen in terms that made the cardiologist cringe. Despondent. At sanity's edge. Hallucinating images of the dead, speaking to the phantoms crafted from her own mind.

"There is nothing worse than grieving, and having no purpose." Liara whispered. "I had kept it at bay while searching for Shepard, but after finding her, I had nothing. I was running to Illium, away from those who wanted me on Thessia…and I chose to run from my own mind as well. From my own emotions."

Sen's heart panged. She had delivered the worst of news to the families of her patients. She had been forced to tell them that all of her efforts, all of her work, had been for nothing, and that death had taken their loved one. She had seen the tears in their eyes, and, in her calmest voice, directed them towards the hospital's grief counselors.

Now, she trembled. She wondered if her failures had led to the manic, monstrous grief that Liara described. She wondered if those to whom she had spoken had hallucinated the presence of their loved one. If they had filled their bodies with illicit substances and been tortured by nightmares.

Is there anything I might have done, Sen wondered, anything I could have said to make that news less painful? How would I react…were I to receive that news…about Mira?

Sen's throat tightened. Mira's loss was an unimaginable horror that she did not want to dwell on. But, she looked at the company she kept, I know I can trust Liara to help me through it.

But Liara had no one. Sen realized, perhaps for the first time, how terrible it must have been to be truly alone during the time Liara described. No wonder she had fallen to pieces. But Liara had also said something that piqued Sen's interest.

"All this time," Sen found her voice, "you have spoken of choosing. That you chose to leave the crew of the Normandy. That you chose to use violence against Matriarch Avarya. That you chose to find Shepard, chose to leave Feron behind. Now you say that you chose to run from your own mind. Did you know…at that time…that you were choosing these things?"

Liara laughed. "Of course I did not." she replied. "I felt forced into every choice I made. I felt spurned by the galaxy; that all the stars had aligned against me. And feeling the victim was easier than coping with all that had happened. It was easy to be eaten alive, easy to capitulate instead of understand. It was easier to feel rage rather than pain. Easier to hide from sleep than to let my subconscious mend itself with the nightmares."

"So…how did you cope?" Sen asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

How did she break herself from that and attain the wisdom that she possesses? How did she come from that grief to be the asari that she is now?

"I reached Illium," Liara answered, "with various pieces of my ship ripped apart. I spent the two solar days alone, tormented, haunted in turn by the phantoms of Avi and my mother. I kept using the drugs…which I discovered were a mix of levoamphetamines and Hallex."

"Goddess." Sen breathed. "I can see the draw of course." the doctor's mind sped through her litany of pharmaceutical knowledge. "The euphoria described by Hallex users is certainly addictive, as well as its propensity to heighten the libido...but the combination with levoamphetamines…you were playing with fire…and it's no wonder you were hallucinating."

Liara nodded, a small smile on her lips as she remembered the stupidity of her youth. "They dimmed the pain." she explained. "They kept me awake, they kept the nightmares away. Any time I reached the point of sobriety, life would crash in once again and I could not endure it. It was easy to acquire them on Illium. Easy to feed the addiction that brought euphoria and forgetfulness. The side effects were obvious, the weight loss, the headaches and tremors, but the euphoria of the Hallex did away with my worry over that."

Sen's brow creased as she heard Liara describing her addiction with no hesitance or worry. As though she did not care what Sen might think.

"How are you able to tell me this?" Sen wondered aloud. "These are things that no one knows about you. These are the secrets you have kept for centuries and yet…yet you are giving them to me?"

"Regardless of those who know and do not," Liara met Sen's eyes, "I am not ashamed of my past, Sen. I have done what I have done, and at the time I had my reasons."

"So…you feel no shame?" Sen asked, attempting to understand Liara further. "Not even for the murder of Matriarch Avarya?"

Liara's eyes darkened, but they did not lose their gentle expression. "Remorse is not the same as shame." she replied. "I do grieve my actions, regret my responses and the darkness that drove me to hideous acts and hideous things. But I need not feel shame for such things. Where I have been has led me to where I am. And I wear my darkness and my light, shameless in both. I have done my best to make reparations for the hurt I caused. My heart has served a sentence for those crimes that no external punishment could impart."

"Liara…can you admire someone and find parts of them reprehensible?" Sen asked.

"Yes." Liara reached out and touched Sen's hand.

The cardiologist stared down at their intertwined fingers. For so long, Liara T'Soni had been a paragon in the galaxy. History wrote of her accomplishments, her actions during the Reaper War that had helped save the galaxy from extinction. But no one truly knew what the hand that held Sen's had done. How it had harmed others…how it had harmed the body it belonged to.

"I will not fault you for your judgment of me, Sen." Liara said, her voice low and fraught with meaning. "I have done things that are not admirable. I have been someone worthy of no respect and devoid of any emotion that might resonate with another in a positive light. I am not telling you this to better your opinion of me. I am telling you this so that you might know the entirety of who I am." Liara bit her lip, looking, for some reason, as though these words pained her to speak. "I am…I am your friend, Sen, but if anything I tell you makes you question your decision to be the same to me I…I understand."

"No." Sen hastened to clarify. "It isn't that. This is simply…a great deal to process."

"I understand." Liara relinquished Sen's hand as her omni-tool chirped.

Liara looked at the message from Glyph. The VI had information, though the message did not illuminate what it was. Liara frowned at the VIs programming for absolute subterfuge…something she had not been able to break it of through the centuries. She would have to find it to receive the information in person.

"Pardon me for a moment." she rose from the bed and spoke to Sen. "I will return shortly."

Sen nodded and Liara left the room, walking down the hall, wondering if all that she had told the cardiologist had been the truth. Most of it had been truth. She was more than willing to admit her flaws, to admit to the crimes she had committed and the actions she had taken. But one of the things she had done went further than the drugs she had abused in order to forget. One of them went further than the violence she had committed and the lives she had taken.

I betrayed my own heart, Liara thought as she went through the rote steps of accessing her secure room. I attempted to drown myself beneath an onslaught of sensation…for the bliss of the moment to drive away the horror of the past.