Liara
When I awakened, it was not my body that felt pain, but my mind. It did not seem right that the two voices who had been the strongest influences in my recent life should echo in the same room. Yet I could hear Zhira and Shepard speaking, and inasmuch as I wished to open my eyes and put an end to the universe that had put them in the same place, I did not.
I kept my eyes closed, because I needed to hear the words exchanged between them. I knew that any conversation that I had with Shepard would be weighted by the time that separated us, tinged by the emotions that we once shared, and clouded by the emotions that perhaps neither of us wished to harbor and yet could not deny. Zhira, however, had none of those burdens. She knew Shepard from my mind, knew how much I had loved her, and what we both had sacrificed…and what we had both given to the other.
"Sure you don't want me to take a look at your arm?" Zhira asked.
"It's fine." Shepard insisted once again. "I'll have my shipboard doc look at it when we head back to the Normandy. Are you coming with us or…"
"No." Zhira said, and my heart fell, for I had thought she might. "Li's blood-grudge is none of my damn business, and I intend to keep it that way. She's going with the person she trusts most in the galaxy, so I'm good to stay here and run things."
Shepard laughed, but its tone felt derisive and mocking. "The one she trusts the most, huh?" Shepard asked. "That might have been true...once."
"You look like a kicked varren." Zhira stated in her blunt way, and I could only imagine the slight grin quirking Shepard's lips. "What the hell brought you to Illium? And how'd you get mixed up in Li's mess?"
"I had some recruiting I needed to do planetside." Shepard answered, candid as she had ever been, when possible. "When I found out she paid my docking fees, I…I felt like I needed to see her. Apparently she didn't pay the fees, but…but it was good to see her anyway."
"You've missed her?" Zhira made the question seem offhand, but I knew her too well to believe that.
Zhira was disarming, enchanting in a rough manner that I knew Shepard would understand and be endeared to. But behind her easy smile and casual speech, Zhira's mind was sharper than a razor, and she said nothing without purpose. A harmless conversation was, in Zhira T'Aryn's world, something that did not exist.
"More than she knows and more than I can say." Shepard's voice lowered, becoming rough with anguish, tempered by sorrow and sleepless nights. "But it would appear that it's not right for me to feel things like that or say them anymore."
"Oh?" Zhira questioned. "Why do you say that?"
"You're her partner, so…" Shepard trailed off and I heard a heavy sigh echo through the room, a desperate edge of loneliness whispering into the cobwebbed corners of my heart. "So what was my place isn't anymore, and I've got to learn to live with that."
"You don't sound as pissed off about that as I thought you'd be." Zhira goaded her, guiding her somewhere, a destination I did not know, but wanted to discover.
"You really don't want to look in my head and see how fucking pissed off I am." Shepard's words were low and almost distraught. "And I don't want to give you the satisfaction of knowing. Suffice to say that not everything is as it seems."
"You're right, at that." Zhira spoke, and I could see, in my mind's eye, her slow, easy smile spreading across her face. "So you're still in love with her then? After all this time?"
"If you're looking for an excuse to biotically slam me into a wall, I'm not going to give you one." Shepard spat. "But there's no all this time about it. Not for me."
"Damn." Zhira cursed. "Even being dead didn't dampen your ardor. Pretty impressive for a species who can't stand even looking at one thing for too long."
"Why the hell are you asking me this shit?" Shepard asked, and I recognized the low, thunderous anger in her voice. Anger that would never be given physicality, but lay within her as a maelstrom of potential and destructive energy.
"Just clearing up some things for my own edification." Zhira answered and I rolled my eyes behind my lids. "And I apologize for giving you the wrong impression earlier, Shepard. I'm Liara's business partner."
A dark, low laugh sent shivers down my spine. "It would appear I've been had." Shepard murmured. "Which begs the question, Zhira T'Aryn, of what's keeping me from handing you your ass right here and now? You've dragged things out of me that you don't have a right to know, not before Liara does, and I don't appreciate being played for a fool."
"If I were playing you for a fool, Shepard, you'd have a right to, as you so eloquently stated, hand me my ass." Zhira stated. "But I'm not. I'm finding out something that it is necessary for me to know."
"Mind telling me why it's necessary?"
"Not in the least." Zhira's voice drifted further from my hearing and I realized that she had stood up. "I care a great deal for Liara, as I'm sure that you've noticed. If I can help it, I'm not going to let a single thing fuck with a heart that's as goddess-damned damaged as hers."
"If she's told you anything about me at all, you know that's the furthest thing from what I intend or want." Shepard stated, sounding so open, so honest, that it made me grieve for the chasm that held us apart.
That neither of us can seem to find a way across.
"I know that." Zhira said, calm. "That doesn't change certain facts, Shepard. Liara is not the asari you knew two years ago. She's changed, she's grown, and you're going to need to come to grips with the fact that what you want might never exist again."
"I'm aware." Shepard whispered. "But don't stand there, as an asari, and give me the same shit I'd hear from one of my species. I've died before, Zhira T'Aryn, and in more than one way. That's taught me something."
"Oh really?" Zhira sounded skeptical.
"Yes." Shepard said, emphatic, in the tone that had stood against Sovereign on Virmire and the Citadel. "Change is inevitable. And it's allowable. But in the same way that a rock or a tree can't change their base nature, we can only evolve from where we started. All of us. I've been brought back to life and I'm working with an organization that I fucking despise because I'm trying to do the right thing. That's a change. My body used to be a sickening wasteland of scarring, and now it's fucking perfect. That's a change…"
"Are you going somewhere with this, Shepard?" Zhira demanded. "Or just trying to twist my head so that I don't see you for what you are?"
"Fuck no." Shepard seethed. "I'm just saying that everyone changes. But at the end of the day, I'm still the woman whose mother's blood dripped into her hair. I'm still the woman who held her murdered baby sister and couldn't protect her; the woman whose lover was killed by Cerberus. I'm still Serena Shepard. And, no matter what's happened, no matter the horrors that she's witnessed or the pain she's been through, she is still Liara T'Soni. And I love her. Now, if it's all the same to you, I've had my fill of this. I trust you to take care of her, and she knows where the Normandy is. We'll be waiting for her there."
I heard footsteps moving towards the door and felt slightly relieved, knowing that I would be able to wake up and not have to face Shepard after hearing her words, words that had driven straight to my core and left me beautifully bruised.
"Hey, soldier." Zhira called after her and the footsteps stalled.
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to be able to deal with it if Li doesn't see eye to eye with you on that whole change thing?" Zhira asked, and even I could feel the razor edge of her words.
"I'm a soldier." Shepard whispered. "If she doesn't…well…humans don't live all that long. Especially soldiers. I'll deal with it just fine."
The rhythm of footsteps came again, then the sound of a door closing. Zhira sighed.
"Have you heard enough yet?" she asked and I opened my eyes, frowning at the mirth in her amethyst gaze.
"Quite." I said, sitting up, gladdened by the fact that my side barely protested. "So, what do you think?"
"I think you're a fucking idiot." Zhira said, glaring at me. She knelt down and rested her hand on my knee, locking her eyes with mine. "I know there's a lot of hurt there, Li." She told me. "But that woman is…goddess…she's something else. She's a human with the Long View, and that's both scary and sexy as hell."
"You don't understand…"
"The finer points of it, no, I don't." Zhira nodded. "But what I do understand is that woman just told me that she loved you through death and back into life again. I'll understand your choice, no matter what it is, but do yourself the favor of looking at her the way she looks at you."
"And how does she look at me?" I almost sneered.
"With pain and perseverance." Zhira's eyes went distant, as if in memory and respect. "As though every moment of being near you was killing her, but, because it was with you, she would deal with it. A lover who is unafraid of being hurt…that's not something you find every century."
I shot daggers with my eyes at Zhira as I went through my things, packing for the trip to Hagalaz. "I do not want someone who is unafraid of being hurt." I told her. "I want someone who is willing to hold love and their lives in higher regard…"
"Higher regard than what?" Zhira asked, challenging me with her questions. "Than someone else's life? If that's what you want, Liara T'Soni, then you want the love of a coward, and you need to let that woman know it, because she deserves a chance for someone who will love her for who she is, flaws and all."
"And I do not deserve such a thing?" I queried, letting anger spice my tone.
"You do." Zhira nodded. "The both of you do. That's why, I imagine, back at the beginning, you fell together, because you deserved each other, because you could love each other. But keep up this dogged look at only one half of the situation, the most subjective half, the half of your personal pain, and you'll find that you don't deserve that kind of love anymore. And you'll find that Shepard deserves better."
Anger roared at me with the fury of a hurricane. I lifted my finger and pointed it at the door, directing Zhira to leave.
"How dare you take her side in this?" I snarled. "You, who saw everything that she did to me?"
"Oh, Li." Zhira's eyes filled with compassion. "I saw what you did to yourself. And the one person who can help you through it just walked out that door."
"That is not your decision to make." I slammed one of my open drawers shut.
"I'm not making a decision." Zhira said. "I'm stating a fact. I've never been anything but honest with you, Liara. I can see I'm hurting you and that's tearing me apart, but I'm not going to stand here and take your side to make you feel better. Choose her or don't, I won't condemn you for it, but only if you make that choice after talking to her and at least trying to understand as much as you can. You have a chance here that every single person who has lost someone they love begs for. Don't throw it away."
Listen to her! My thoughts shrieked. All you have to do is listen!
"I will…consider it."
Zhira offered a wan smile. "That's all I can ask. Now, go kick the Shadow Broker's ass."