Liara

I awoke with tears streaming down my face and a pit of embers burning and aching inside my chest. I sat up in my bunk, holding my hands in front of me and searching them for bloodstains. The stains did not exist, but in my mind's eye I could see them. Avarya's blood. Nyxeris' blood. The blood of all those who had threatened me or my interests. And…and my own blood as well. My foolishness that had nearly taken my life.

Yes. I realized, at long last, and it was a realization laden with pain, laden with guilt, heavy with all the emotions that I had run from over the years. My actions are what have led me here. There was a catalyst, yes, but I had a choice. I took an absurd, false comfort in Zhira's words when she said that I was "driven to" my actions.

I shook my head at my stupidity, ignoring the prying eyes of the few humans in the room, letting their scrutiny wash over me and go unanswered. I rose to my feet, needing to move, needing to feel some sort of air across my face, breathe in a space not so confined. I moved out of the sleeping quarters with alacrity and walked through the halls of the ship.

I felt an assurance in those words that I did not deserve. With the thought of being "driven to" my actions, I felt guiltless…and Zhira did not intend to give me that. Instead, she gave me words that she hoped I would find the meaning of. "Driven to"…like a passenger in a ship, unable to dictate the direction, fearing the end, but seeing the sole other option as jettisoning from the craft and risking death…and so I went, in my own grief, in my own cowardice, to the destination.

I could have abandoned ship, I thought as I walked through the sleek, shining halls of the Normandy SR2. I could have attempted to save myself but I…I did not. Zhira had to drag me from the abyss I willingly fell into and now I have…now I have hurt the one most injured in all of this.

The memories of the dream ran through me and I shuddered. My nose filled with the stench of decaying, rotted flesh. The buzz of flies echoed in my hearing, as well as the image of them feasting and breeding on the dead. The dead that I had made so. The holes in existence that I had pierced into the fabric of the galaxy. The holes in my own existence…that lived on the tip of a needle that I and my actions had pushed into my veins.

I leaned against the wall, breathing hard, sweat dripping down my face, mingling with the tears that fell, still and silent in the wake of a realization that shattered me increment by increment. Joker had been right. Zhira had been right. And Shepard…my dear, beautiful Serena…she had done no wrong. The pain of my life rested on my shoulders and suddenly I needed to tell her.

I needed to take the story and pour it out in front of her. She deserved to know that my bitterness and my anger and my blindness were not…goddess! I had slaughtered Nyxeris in front of her, knowing how deeply Serena felt. Knowing that she had brought me into war, into battle, that she had taught me to kill. I had taken an emotional knife and driven it into her heart.

I thought of her face, of the agony and anguish in her eyes on Virmire when I had spoken with heat and fire about destroying our enemy. They were the first adamant, aggressive words that had left my lips, and hearing them stamped pain on her face. Pain and fear…fear that she might have begun to craft me in her own image.

Pain that she should not have to bear! Everything inside of me screamed as I entered the CIC, watching a skeleton mid-shift man their posts. I needed to find Shepard before we reached Hagalaz. Words were pulsing under my tongue, every beat of my heart pounded restlessness and misery through my veins and I needed to fix what I had broken. Serena deserved to know the reality of my dreams. I needed to free her heart from the tether that bound it to my actions…because I knew, deep in my soul where once she resided, that she did count all of my actions against herself.

I moved further into the CIC when a door slid open and Shepard emerged, her posture stiff, her shoulders ramrod straight. Her lips were set in the thin line that boded no good thing for anyone who wished to try her.

"Serena, please!" I heard Miranda Lawson's accent and ducked behind one of the bay supports, hiding in the shadows. "You don't…"

"Miranda, I don't need this." Shepard's voice was low and tight, and I could see the faint crease between her brows that…that manifested when her very soul bled. "It's bad enough that Kelly is psychoanalyzing me every time I head to the galaxy map. I don't need you doing the same thing to me based on her reports."

"You are so frustrating." Miranda, not prone to over-dramatic gestures, simply splayed her fingers when others might have thrown up their hands. "We are trying to help you. I am trying to help you."

"Like you did when you pulled me across death's great divide?" Shepard asked with a heated eloquence, the eloquence that had placed a gun beneath Saren's jaw and aided his finger in pulling the trigger. "Making me wake up in a world that doesn't make sense anymore? I've lost too much, Miranda."

"Shepard, see reason." Miranda entreated. "You have denied and denied and now…now the one to whom you were chained has freed you. Would it hurt you to accept a little comfort?"

Shepard's eyebrows screamed upwards. "I can't pay the price for the comfort you would offer me, Miranda." She said, blunt. "Cerberus already has my body, my mind, and my actions. I'm not giving them my goddamn heart. It's all I've got left."

"Cerberus is not asking for your heart, Shepard." Miranda insisted, and my own heart thundered in my chest. "I am."

"The answer is no." Shepard shook her head and pushed her hand through her fiery hair. "Because you'll have to find your own heart before you ask me for mine."

An old feeling began to burn deep in the pit of my belly, a heat and a fire that had warmed me in the most chilling of situations. Once, I had gloried in Serena's love and the fierceness of her loyalty. But I denied myself the chance of finding that again, and now another sought to stand where I once stood…in the light of Shepard's dying star.

"Fine, consider the poeticism an attempt to reach you." Miranda's finger traced the collar of the ridiculous, skin-tight suit that she wore. "You're a tactile woman, Serena. You need touch, you crave connection, and you've taxed yourself by abstaining from it. My orders are to help you however I may."

"Then get back in your office and find me everything the Illusive Man has on the Shadow Broker, and all the info we have on Hagalaz." Shepard snapped, though her shoulders slumped, as though Miranda had spoken a truth that burdened her further.

Miranda frowned, somehow making the ugly expression seem like elegant disdain. "Don't tell me you're not in pain, Serena." Miranda urged. "I know every micro-expression of your face, every nuance of your body language. I read your brain waves like the pages of a novel for years. I know you in a way that you need to be known. All that is left is for you to accept it."

"Miranda…" Shepard began, but stopped.

Miranda stepped forward and closed the distance between them. Her arm laced around Shepard's waist and she pulled the commander closer. The operative's free hand caressed Shepard's cheek and before I could think of anything to say or do, their lips met. Miranda's hand threaded into Shepard's hair and pulled her closer.

I did not feel rage as I watched their lips duel. I could feel only loss, anguish, remorse, and sorrow. My knowledge had come too late; my epiphany had failed me. I had asked Shepard to walk away from me, not to speak of love, and thus I deserved this sight, I deserved to witness this. Still, none of these realizations could keep my throat and stomach from twisting into knots of regret and horror. I could not look away, needing to torture myself, needing to increase my pain level until I could theoretically black out and ignore this until I had the time to process it properly.

I expected to see Shepard's arms enclose Miranda. I expected the kiss to deepen, because I, too, knew Serena. I knew how much she craved a kind touch. I remembered her begging me not to walk away when I saw the scarred wreck of her body. A body that would be perfect now. She no longer had to fear intimacy because of it. She could fit alongside someone as seemingly flawless as Miranda Lawson.

Now, I was the one who bore the physical scars. I was the one whose heart was a wreck and she was still…she was still the tormented woman I had known, whose life I would not even wish on my enemy. We were no longer broken in complimentary places. We could no longer fit into the lines of each other's lives.

However, the kiss ended with Shepard placing her hands on Miranda's shoulders and pushing the other woman away, exhibiting great gentleness. Miranda's eyes were narrowed, confused, shocked, perhaps even the slightest bit angry.

"Miranda." Shepard spoke. "No."

"You did kiss me back, Serena." Miranda needled, but in a voice almost raspy with desire.

"Yeah, well, I'm human." Shepard turned on her heel. "I can make a fucking mistake if I want to."

Miranda stalked back into the room they had left together and Shepard walked toward the flight deck. Her hands were clenched into fists, and I could see the tension in her bunched shoulders. She walked like a woman clinging to her last shred of will, her last bastion of strength. A bastion I had raided and destroyed with my words. I had taken away hope from the woman who had only hope to live on.

I closed my eyes and saw them kissing once again, playing it over and over as penance. I had abdicated that position, forfeited that right. I had been a fool for the past two years, and even now. I had learned nothing…but I could start. Shepard might have been lost to me…but it no longer seemed right that such a thing be so. Now it simply seemed…devastating.

And it is my fault. I am the one to blame and…and this weight on my chest is so new and heavy and I do not want it, but Serena does not deserve it. And she needs to know.

I moved from my seclusion, intent on following Shepard when a hand on my shoulder arrested my movement.

"It's been some time, my dear." I heard a familiar, once-beloved, crisp accent behind me. "I think perhaps you need a slight debriefing of the current situation. And of what just happened."