Liara

I have been here before. Once, some time ago, I walked this same plain, saw these same grasses driven in this same, gentle wind. I had seen the faces of those Serena loved, listened to them as they waited for her to come to them in death. To reunite. To all be together again.

I do not know why I now walk this same road. Those haunted days are done. Those times of grief have been surpassed and transcended. Still, the scents of nutmeg and honeysuckle torment me. Sweet and spice taunt me as I walk through the verdant waves, knowing that I will see Shepard's paradise, a paradise that, when I had this dream before, she had been denied.

However, when I go to the clearing, there is no one. Elizabeth's infant gurgles do not gladden the air, Avi's eyes to not spark, Hannah's voice does not lift in the songs of dead languages. There is nothing here, no promise of an afterlife, and in this dream, it makes sense to me. Shepard is no longer dead…but perhaps she is still trapped, trapped in the hell I once found her in. In this same dream, known two years ago.

I move through the haven that smells of sweet and spice, walking towards the darkness I know will come. And it does. The smell of honeysuckle is intercepted and destroyed by smoke. I see a thousand fires dotting a hundred hilltops and beneath my feet bones of every species crumble into the dust. This is a warrior's place of punishment, perhaps a place locked inside their mind, perhaps a place that they venture to after death.

The gentle breeze ceases, the air becomes stifling, and I struggle not to fall to my knees as sweat burns in my eyes and runs down my back. I hear the roar of the fire in the distance, and I know that I will find Shepard standing before it, bleeding from her many wounds over the years. I know that in her eyes will be the darkness that threatens daily to consume her.

She does not deserve that. I think to myself. She is alive again and has a chance to make her life different. In spite of my anger, in spite of the past that separates our hearts for eternity, I can be kind enough to lead her from the flames that wish to devour. I can return her heart to her.

The flames burn hotter and brighter than they did before. Shepard stands in front of them. This time, there are chains hanging from her wrists, anchoring her to the field of fresh corpses. The smell of rot, decay, and blood mingles with the smoke, catches in my throat and I swallow down the churning in my stomach and the disgust that fills me at the sight of Serena in chains, surrounded by those that her life has destroyed.

"Shepard." I call her name, her last name, the name that she gives to the world.

This is not a personal moment between us. This is a transaction in my dream, a final freedom to the specter that has haunted me for two years. It is time to let go, truly. Time to move forward. Time to lock her out of my mind and out of my dreams and out of my heart.

Shepard turns towards me and her eyes are anguished and shattered, splintered pieces of a star in the blackest of nights. Her face is as it should be here, as I remember it, with the wide, red scar splashed across her features. Her hands bear the scars from the thresher maw's acid, she does not stand straight, but stooped, as though broken by the pain of former injuries.

"Do not come any closer, Liara." She warns me. "This is not for you to see, and nowhere that you should be."

I shake my head and laugh, soft, in derision. "You do not need to protect me any longer, Shepard." I caution her. "We are far beyond those days."

"You can't change my heart." Shepard says, and the wound across her face tears open anew, droplets of blood running down her cheeks like tears. "Please, do not come closer."

"Do you not even realize that I am attempting to free you?" I snap as I move closer and reach for her wrist.

The chain rattles and tenses as I pull it too tightly. I look down to the bodies that anchor the chain, and blood drains from my face. The black, void eyes of Matriarch Avarya stare back at me as flies gather in her open mouth and creep from her nostrils. The bodies on which I stand are those that I have slain. The agents of the Shadow Broker, the extortionists who gave me transport to Omega, the many I have killed since coming to Illium. Avarya is the anchor for the chain on Shepard's right wrist, and the anchor for the restraint on her left is…Nyxeris.

Horrified, wondering why this is happening, why I witness what I do, I wreath my hands with biotic energy and snap the chains on both sides of her. Still, even after she is free, Shepard does not move.

"What are you doing!?" I yell over the roar of the flames. "Why are you standing here amidst my dead!?"

Shepard's eyes fill with tears that mingle with the blood on her face. She lifts her scarred hands and I see smears of crimson, violet, blue, and orange. Blood of every species stains her clothing and her skin.

"Because I'm the one who taught you how to kill." She says. "I'm the one who put a weapon in your hands and I'm the one who placed in you in harm's way. The first person you killed, you did so alongside me. Therefore, I am to blame for your dead."

"No!" I shriek, hating her, in this moment.

Hating how she would stand before me and shield me from the world. Hating how she had always attempted to keep me from her side and its dark influence.

"You cannot take the blame for this, Shepard!" I shout. "You cannot stand in my stead before the judgment of the galaxy!"

"Don't you blame me for this already?" Shepard gestures to the corpses, the lives I have stolen from the galaxy, the mothers, fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, and sisters that I have ripped from this world. "Do you not think of me every time you shed blood? Did I not force you to become this? Did not my death make you stand in this place, where you took life not in a place of protection, but in a place of anger and rage and borderline desperation? Are their lives not on my conscience, Liara? Am I not the source of your anger and your grief, the reason for your every action and self-mutilation and nightmare?"

The answer that comes to my lips is instinctual and adamant and it does not leave my lips, but flies straight through my heart like a blade slicing into flesh. The fire in my soul, the intentions that brought me here on the edge of right and guiltlessness, fades and cools. I feel as though a blinder has been stripped from my eyes, and now, instead of indignation and frustration with the woman who stands before me, there is only immense pain, and my own, deserved guilt.

"Serena, come with me." I tell her, extending my hand.

Her own, bloodied fingers fit within mine and I inhale, hard and sharp, at the remembrance of her touch in light of the truth that is hammering between my temples. I walk backwards, leading her away from the bodies and the flames, from the crimes that were mine, that I committed that…no matter my reason and my justification…are on my hands.

Shepard stumbles as we leave the fire, growing weaker and weaker until my arm laces around her waist and I pull her against me, supporting her, feeling the heat of her body become a chill that I know, for humans, is dangerous. Her breathing is harsh, sharp, even as we leave the horrid landscape of war and move back to the waving, verdant grasses and the sweet smell in the air.

"Just a few moments more." I plead with her, now desperate to free her, certain that I will wake from this dream and be allowed to come to terms with what I have witnessed here. "Stay with me, Serena."

But she cannot. After a few more steps, her strength gives out and she collapses. I drop to my knees beside her, alarmed as I see scarlet rapidly staining her shirt on the left side. I unzip her shirt and fling the material aside, horrified as I see the horrid, gaping wounds that she had suffered on the Citadel, when Sovereign's remains had pierced the Council chambers and ripped her apart.

I look into her eyes and the silver is dull and glazed. Her skin is pale and waxy, almost frigid to the touch. The blood on her skin is stark and true fear strikes through me as I watch her fade.

"I do not understand." I say the old words that drew us together, into conversation, into understanding, and, at last, into love. "I do not understand what is happening! I took you from that place." I place my hand against her cheek as I once did. "It is not your fault, not your burden, not your…you had nothing to do with it."

Nothing. How quick I was to absolve you of guilt when faced with the evidence of my crimes. How can a simple, violent image break me in a dream when reality did nothing but harden my heart? None of this…none of what I have done was…was truly your fault. All you did was…was what you felt you had to do. How could I have been so blind and broken and stubborn? How could I have been so damnably bitter and selfish and…

"Serena, please." I beg as her breath slows. "What can I do to help you? You should be getting better…you're out of hell, Serena."

"What...don't…you…understand?" her voice rasps. "You are…you're my…you're my hell…álainn…anam."