Liara
I had forgotten so much. I had forgotten what it was to face a day without the promise of pain, what the word "innocent" actually meant…what it was to lack regrets. I had forgotten the joys of perilous times, the moments of laughter carved from the bedrock of adversity that made life worth living and able to be lived. I had forgotten that a single smile in the right eyes could wrench stars from the heavens.
I had forgotten how seeing the sorrow in Serena Shepard could realign everything. I had forgotten the grace that lay at the center of the flame that burned within her, and I had forgotten all of this with intent and purpose. I had not wanted to remember how the mere sight of her could draw me forth from any shell, be it the naïve, precocious archaeologist I had been, or the hardened, embattled and embittered seller of secrets I had become.
"Liara…" Shepard's voice dropped into a deeper register.
It was the voice in which she had relayed confidences of the heart. It was the voice in which she had whispered words of love and passion and promise. I could not bear listening to it. I could not hear it again, because she had been mine, and she had denied that above Alchera. She left me behind. She left me behind and walked forward into the flames.
"Time has changed us all, it would seem." I quipped, moving behind my desk and putting it between Shepard and I, a physical barrier to complement the invisible walls between me and this Cerberus construct.
"Two years makes a lot of stuff look different." Shepard approached me in the same manner I had seen her reconnoiter enemy territory. Wary, short steps, her body poised for combat. "And I think that I…that I need to…that I need to say this. Liara, I don't understand what the fuck just happened. I don't understand." her silver eyes glittered and I hardened my heart. "Please help me."
Why does she need to know? Miranda said that they were here for information. Surely I can placate her with the information they need and she will stop seeming…so very much like my Serena. I want to know the truth as much as you do, Shepard. I am simply in a better place to acquire it.
"You do not need to plead with me, Shepard." I said, crisp, cool, taking a seat. "Tell me what information that you wish to acquire for Cerberus and I will provide it, if I am able."
"Can we leave Cerberus out of this for one goddamn second?" Shepard asked, but I sensed no anger in her tone.
"Why?" I asked. "They are the reason you are here, not only on Illium but also alive." my last word came forth dripping with hatred as years of repressed emotions and tears rose to the surface of my psyche.
I had forgotten much. But I had remembered in equal measure. I remembered the pain that had claimed my heart, and the panacea that had been the needle. I remembered the darkness that had taken over me, and while it had been my choice…at the time, I had seen no other way clear. Because at every junction, at every moment of chance to veer differently, I held bliss and fugue in one hand, and in the other the emptiness and nightmares of Shepard's charred corpse staring up at me.
"How do you know about that?" Shepard asked. "How do you know Miranda?"
"Not in the same way you do," I remembered the operative's arm around the commander's waist. "Our relationship was more professional and much less pleasurable, I can assure you."
"What the fuck are you saying?" Shepard demanded. "Are you going to say a goddamn word to me, Liara? Not about me or about Miranda fucking Lawson or Cerberus? Are you going to talk to me?"
I shook my head. "Cerberus is bad for my business interests, Shepard. In allying with them, you've become competition, and while I will help you for the sake of a friendship once shared, I will go no further."
Shepard's expression changed to one I had rarely, if ever, seen stamped on her features. It was shock, pure and simple desolation singing in her gaze and the curvature of her lips.
"A friendship once shared?" she asked, and her very tone ached. "Liara, what happened? What happened during those two years? Cerberus…Cerberus rebuilt the Normandy and put me in command. We have to stop the Collectors, and I don't quite know why…"
"Oh?" I lifted a single brow upward. "Then your trusted operative did not tell you that the Collectors are in fact allied with the Reapers? She did not tell you that your mutilated corpse was not…"
"Stop." Shepard ordered, and for a single moment I was back aboard the Normandy SR-1, obeying the orders of my commander because my lips stilled. "Miranda Lawson came here for information." Shepard stated. "I came here for you."
Because it's you…Shepard's old words echoed in my head, spoken in Saren's base on Virmire, when she had taken the pain, the invasion, the psychic rape of the Prothean beacon…letting herself be broken instead of me.
"I'm not yours for the taking." I said, clipped. "You may have another Normandy, a new crew, eager to follow you into danger…"
"Garrus and Tali are on board the Normandy SR-2." Shepard said, and her words seemed like a plea and protest intertwined. "Wrex is a clan leader on Tuchanka, changing things, working towards a better life for the krogan. Ashley is…" a fog drifted across Shepard's gaze, a fog of all things suffering and anguish, "…Ashley is doing okay."
I rose from my seat, needing to stand for these words. Somehow, they had convinced this construct that she had Shepard's memories, relationships, and friends. Garrus and Tali were with her. Because they could believe what half-truths Cerberus had planted in Shepard's mind. But they had not been there. They had not seen the broken features and collapsed body. They had not seen full knowledge of her death staring them in the face.
"Do remnants of a former truth make you believe you can recreate what was lost?" I asked, my teeth needles, my tongue poison, my heart fire. "You cannot pull from the detritus of the life you led and attempt to build it again, Shepard. If you have any of the memories of the true Serena Shepard, then you should know that. You have lost enough to know that…imagine the lives we've led, having lost you."
"You don't think I'm me?" Shepard asked, her words tremoring, shaking, so unlike the calm, competent woman who spoke and loved with a gentle surety that could shake the foundations of planets.
"I know you are not." my words sliced through the air like an armor piercing round. "I know you are not because it was not Cerberus who traipsed the galaxy to save your body from horrors unknown. It was me. I searched for you, I found you, and in so doing I lost another friend and made an enemy as dark and steeped in mystery as the Reapers themselves. You have your life back, Shepard, but mine is at risk and thus I will give you what you need and bid you farewell."
"It does not have to be this way, Liara." Shepard insisted, not realizing that I would listen, but not hear. "Let me prove to you that I am who I say I am. Let me prove that I'm not…not some construction of Cerberus. I understand your anger and I can see you bleeding inside because…because I am me and in that self that I believe in there is you and I know you and I know my…my need for you…and my love for you."
My mind began working, flying back to two years ago, when I had spat in the face of one who considered himself my benefactor and savior. The Illusive Man asked for me to continue working with Cerberus. He wanted a partnership, and I denied him. What better way to achieve his goal than to create a perfect incarnation of the last living being that I loved and use her to persuade me to join his cause? No. He is crafty, I will give him that, but to believe a word leaving her lips would be to sell myself into servitude, and I have followed that path once before, and found myself destroyed at its ending.
I will not ally fully with her. I will not give in to the machinations of a radical human supremacist. But I will not deny the power of someone who can help me achieve my own ends. I will not love her and I will not join her…but there is no harm in using her.
"I need proof, Shepard." I spoke, letting the bitter steel in my voice fade. "I need to know that you are still the same commander that I loved and cherished and lost that…that unspeakable day. There are secure terminals throughout Illium that contain information that my organization desperately needs. It will help me find the enemy I made, and perhaps rescue the friend that I lost. There are security systems that will need to be hacked, then information downloaded from terminals nearby. Will you do this for me?"
"Yes." Shepard agreed, and I could see the determination in her eyes…the determination that had ripped Sovereign out of the sky and made her live through Saren's final onslaught.
This woman is not the same.
"Excellent. Have Operative Lawson send me a message, detailing what information she needs. As I said, I will not withhold it. Now go. I have a meeting in a few moments and I cannot be late for it."
No such meeting existed, but I needed to be away from this office. Its security and peace had been tainted and I could…I could smell Shepard, a scent that wrapped me in so many memories I felt I would lose my mind beneath the weight of them.
Shepard walked to the door and held her hand over the control, stopping its automatic opening. She looked back and, through a veil of fiery hair, spoke.
"You ask so little of me, Liara?" she asked, her words composing a symphony of sorrow and pain she had no right to feel, for she had brought it on herself when she had chosen to die. "You ask so little when you know I would…" she sighed, heavy and deep, "...I would give anything for you, álainn anam."
She left with but a whisper of the door and I felt as though I had been struck in the deepest parts of me. My eyes burned, my gut twisted, and I crumpled to my knees from the sheer shock. Every belief had been challenged, every perfect truth chipped and fractured because…
…because those words were her mother's dead language…and…and Cerberus would have known nothing of name she gifted me in private. They would have had to have been born of…of Serena's memory. Her mind. Oh goddess, what is happening?