Liara

Save me or slay me, now's your chance.

I stared at Shepard, suddenly tongue-tied. She had taken this to the battlefield, where all would be straightforward. Battle plans. Lines drawn. Definitions. I realized that I had not prepared for this. I had prepared to continue to needle her, to continue to hurt her until she broke and the final confrontation came into the light. A confrontation of mutual anger, mutual hurt. But not this.

"I…I am not ready for this." I said, hating myself even as I said the words because they sounded weak and pathetic.

Shepard's lips quirked. "You mean you didn't spend the last two years thinking of things to say to me?" she asked. "You're coming up with all these ways to hurt me off the top of your head?"

Her flippant tone angered me, and I did not even pause to wonder if that was its purpose before words flew out of my mouth.

"Are you really going to take umbrage to a few verbal jabs?" I questioned her, moving a step closer. "What gives you the right to claim that I hurt you when you ripped my beating heart out of my chest!?"

I expected to see hurt, or pain, or regret, but all that I witnessed in her eyes was the softest of sorrows, the palest of grief. I wanted to see her become angry. I wanted her to answer me blow for blow, shout for shout, but I could see in the set of her features, in the trembling of her lips, that she would not.

"Yes, I did." Shepard whispered. "I can't fix that."

"No." the heat washed out of me; the fire died.

This will be civil. This will be simple. This will be straightforward. I am tired of hurting. I am tired of being angry. I do not know if I have the emotional fortitude to do as Zhira suggested, and listen to Shepard and attempt to understand. But I can set both of our hearts at ease. I can relinquish my anger and let Shepard…let Shepard be free to do what she wishes with her life, but it will not include me. It cannot.

"What do you want, Liara?" she asked, looking as though she would harness the stars and set them at my feet if I asked.

"I want to know why." I breathed, though inside my heart it was a scream, a scream of release and the receiving of answers that I wanted, but no longer needed with vehemence and vitriol. "I want to know why you locked me out of the elevator. Why you made me run. Why you chose to die."

"I didn't choose it." Shepard replied, collapsing back into a chair and seeming to sink inward into herself.

"I do not want to hear that." I shook my head. "I want you to answer my questions."

"You deserve that." Shepard nodded from the depths of her chair, from the weariness in her spirit. "I locked you out of the elevator for a very specific reason, Liara, and it's a reason that you probably won't understand…or appreciate."

"Please enlighten me." I leaned against her desk and folded my arms.

Shepard traced patterns on her cargo pants with the tip of an index finger. Her brows knit as she meditated on the question, weighing her words carefully before she let them loose. After a moment, she sighed.

"Because I didn't want you to see what I saw." She whispered. "Seeing someone you love in danger…watching them die…it makes you want to drink bleach in an attempt to get the images out of your head. I didn't want that for you. I didn't want you to see me get hurt, or die, because I knew that it was a real possibility. And that's why, when you found me, I asked you to run. I needed you to save yourself, because I needed to know you would live. I needed to know that you would be all right. But I didn't choose to die, Liara. It just happened."

She fell silent, perhaps believing that she had answered all that I had asked in the manner in which I desired. But she had not. She still had so much to answer for, and simple sentences would not repair two years of nightmares and pain and cravings.

"It. Just. Happened." I repeated her last words back to her, making her hear them again, filling them with all of my quiescent pain. "You say you didn't want me to go through the pain that you did, but you have no idea the impact that your death had on me, Serena. And no amount of love that you still claim to possess can mend those hurts. You no longer deserve access to my pain. It is not your place any longer."

"So I can't even try?" Shepard asked. "You can't even let me hear what happened, let me try to understand where you've been for these last two years?"

I shook my head. "No." I told her, feeling a wall of ice encase my heart. "No, I will not."

"I see." Shepard leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. A curtain of fiery hair shielded her eyes, and I wondered if she wept.

If so, those tears are too late.

"Is there really any need to walk through the last two years?" I continued. "You have lost a lover before. And if your memory is as keen as you say, then you surely remember Avi and her loss in exquisite detail. You remember every single gruesome moment, and thus can understand when I say that I share that trait with you."

"Yes, I can." Shepard whispered. "And there is nothing I can say, nothing I can do, to make it better."

"Then why are you trying?" I asked, unable to understand why she thought we could still belong and be part and parcel with each other's lives, knowing that both of our lives had been destroyed, hers in a very literal sense.

Shepard lifted her head and her eyes looked like a blade that had been plunged into her stomach. Her entire bearing seemed like a fragile thing on the edge of shattering. I felt that if I were to meld with her now, to see into her soul, that I would find a fragile, broken thing, desperately attempting to claw at the past and stitch it to the present with trembling, bleeding hands.

"Because I can't make it better, but maybe I can make it different. Because that's what love does." Serena spoke, so open, so honest, so very much who she had been before that I felt my heart crack.

There is too much pain there. My soul quivered. I cannot go back, but I can go forward. These two years can be forgiven. I will forgive them, and go no further. My life is elsewhere now.

"Do you realize how much I suffered?" I asked, keeping my tone even.

"No." Shepard answered. "No, I don't. But I'm willing to hear it. I'm willing to see if…if you're willing to show me."

She is willing to let me show her every agonizing moment, every slice of the needle into my arm, every piece of flesh with which I sated my lust, in whom I buried my sorrow and shame and anger. She is willing to undergo the immeasurable agony of watching someone that she loves in absolute pain, bent on self-destruction. Serena has always been willing to accept pain. Can I do this? Can I meld with her, link our souls, allow her into that part of me that I have kept secret and sacred for so long. The monster I have fed as a tribute to my bitterness? Will showing her not reawaken the anger I am attempting to disavow?

"I think it best that we not venture there, Shepard." My throat felt tight as I said the words and saw her eyes go distant and dark. "It is just that…too much time has passed and too much pain has been endured and I am no longer capable of sharing that with you."

Shepard nodded her understanding. "There's a big difference between capable and willing, Liara. But I realize you're going to tell me that you're not really in the realm of either right now. So this is where you want to leave it? Nothing?"

"It has been nothing for me for two years." I breathed, knowing that the words would hurt, but that it would be best to end this as soon as possible.

"Right." Shepard's lips tightened and she nodded. "So this is how you want to leave it? As nothing? You don't want to…to try to fix it?"

"For me, Serena, it has been broken for too long. I have been broken for too long. I need to rebuild my life and I cannot…" I took a deep breath, "…I cannot do that with you."

"So…" she splayed her hands in a universal gesture of helplessness.

"So we will go to Hagalaz. We will free Feron and defeat the Shadow Broker. We will work together as we once did. And then we will part ways." My voice attempted to shake and I refused to allow it. "We will not speak of the past; we will not remember what once was and…and I would appreciate no more declarations of love. You should free yourself from that, Shepard."

I rose from my seat, feeling as I had after a successful gathering of information. Triumphant, but tired. The atmosphere felt tight and heavy, pressing on my shoulders, pounding between my temples. I felt as though I had won, but the victory seemed hollow and harsh and nearly not worth it.

"Liara," Shepard said my name and in it lay a galaxy of promise and a world of precious things sundered and crying to be rebuilt. "You can ask me not to say anything. You know I won't. But silence doesn't matter. Because I'll still feel. You can't ask me not to feel; not to act on it."

I breathed deep and nodded. "Those are your demons, Shepard." I told her. "Not mine."

The door slid open and I walked through it. It closed and I leaned back against it, pressing my fingertips to the bridge of my nose.

What is this terrible world I have made? I wondered. Where love is a demon?