Liara

I attempted to pretend as though all was normal when I arrived at my office the next morning. I nodded to Nyxeris, who responded in kind, but I walked a little faster past her desk and into my own office, behind the doors where I could pretend like my world was not splintering away from the close, careful order it had known for months.

From the moment I had opened my eyes to the daylight, I had re-played last night's conversation with Zhira over and over again. It hurt every time I recalled the unshakeable truth in her tone. She had been right, about all of it. She had been right in saying that I could not blame Shepard for all that I had endured. I could not blame her for the destruction of my life…that had been my doing.

It did not change the fact that the pain of her death still lived in my soul, and I had stitched its essence into any dark action I had taken. It would take time within my own psyche to sever one event from the other…and that severance would simply make healing the multiple, differing wounds all the more difficult.

I have chosen a difficult road, I thought to myself as I opened my terminal to receive a condescendingly worded missive from Miranda Lawson. But it is one that I must travel. I have done the same before, when I left Therum and entered Shepard's protection, when I stayed on the Normandy after Benezia died.

I typed a message back to Operative Lawson, giving her the names of two separate contacts who might know the whereabouts of the asari Justicar Samara, and the drell assassin known as Thane Krios.

Garrus, Tali, Miranda, a new Normandy…and now these two. I mused as I stared at the message, terse, to the point, and providing no more information than strictly necessary. Cerberus is at least looking at the Collectors as a viable threat if they are assembling a team with this much skill…and apparently trusting Shepard's personnel choices. I smiled, lacing my fingers together and perching my chin on them, thinking of different, happier days. I highly doubt that Cerberus, fully in charge of this mission, would willingly allow the likes of Tali'zorah vas Neema aboard one of their ships…all of their systems would be hacked and tapped within the day.

I closed my eyes and remembered different times, leaving the present moment behind, attempting to focus on the moments of beauty and panic and passion and even…even pain. Pain had been given meaning then. It had possessed a reason for its existence, and I had accepted and moved through my mother's loss…even coming to love the woman who had killed her.

I was able to arrive at a place of peace after Benezia died. I walked myself through the arguments, the tears, and the anger that had been present then, as well. Why, after two years, am I still unable to forgive and move past Shepard's death? What made it different, in my own mind? What was it about that loss that I let throw me over sanity's edge?

"It's okay to hate me, you know." Shepard's voice echoed in my thoughts and I thought the words odd, for they were not words I ever imagined her speaking to me.

"Is it?" I questioned the truth of that for the first time, hearing my words aloud, not expecting a response.

"I wouldn't expect anything more." the reply came and my eyes flared open.

Again, the mere sight of her took me by surprise. She wore no armor this time, looking calm and confident in a snug, black, long-sleeved shirt. It hugged every line of her body, the outline of her firm breasts, the defined musculature of her arms, the breadth of her shoulders. Her hands were at her sides, tucked into the pockets of black cargo pants, a position of casual ease which I envied her.

I caught a whiff of the scent I remembered from lying beside her, in her bed. Gun oil and vanilla. The brutal juxtaposed against the gentle. The war inside her separate and apart from the gentle spirit she worked so hard to preserve. She looked the same. Smelled the same. Spoke in the same voice with the same syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation.

Is it you? I wondered. I want to believe it is…while, at the same moment, want to believe it is not. Because, once dearest, you do not know me to love me. And I do not yet know how to forgive you.

"Why have you come back, Shepard?" I asked, though this time I kept the anger pulsing in my throat and against my wrists from eating into my tone. "I have already sent Operative Lawson the details on where to begin inquiring for the two individuals you are looking to recruit, and Nyxeris reported, after I left, that you succeeded in hacking the data terminals. There was no reason for you to return to my office yourself."

"Seeing you again wasn't a reason?" Shepard asked, flashing a wicked smile.

Once, beneath that expression, my heart had melted. In the part of my mind that had not recovered, that never processed, never accepted her death, I did so again. I remembered tracing that smile in the night with my fingertips, feeling how soft her skin could be, remembering the light, feathery kisses that she had pressed to my fingertips, and how the tickling sensation had made me laugh.

"Not as such, no." I replied, sitting back in my chair, wondering how she could forget the angry words we had traded yesterday.

"Well, I do have a reason." Shepard claimed, pulling a chair away from my desk and taking a seat.

"Oh?"

Please, dear Goddess, I am not ready for this. I can barely sit here, looking at her, without falling to pieces. I want to shout, I want to speak in anger but I am trying to be calm, I am trying to understand. I need help!

"I spent last night trying to drag information out of Lawson." Shepard answered and her brow lowered in the way that meant she was desperately serious. "All she would give me is the goddamn party line. So, with EDI and Tali's help, I searched through the old Cerberus records of what the fuck happened. I found a bullshit report with hardly any information. All it mentioned was Miranda brokering a deal with 'two alien operatives', and that somehow the fuckmothering Shadow Broker was involved."

"The 'two alien operatives' were myself and a drell named Feron." I replied, grateful, in a way, that Cerberus had not documented every sordid detail, including the manner in which I had arrived on Omega…on board a ship filled with corpses.

Shepard nodded. "I'm certain there's more to the story than that." she said. "But I'm not going to ask you to tell me. I'm here to give you something and to…to tell you I want to help you follow where it leads." she placed an OSD on my desk. "I owe you my life, Liara. This is the one way I have right now to say thank you…and maybe the only way you'll hear it from me."

I picked up the OSD and uplinked the data to my terminal. What I saw made my heart begin to race.