Thessia

Liara sat down, crossing her legs in an attempt to keep herself from fidgeting. She would never admit it, but being in this place was pure, unbridled torment. The quiet, hushed atmosphere with its false veneer of serenity, the whispered voices bearing urgent tidings, and the chill always prevalent in the air did their share to drive her back into a part of her life that held so much pain.

The asari closed her eyes, placed her hands in her lap, interlacing her fingers so that they would not shake, and breathed deep. Behind her eyelids, stories played out. She saw the beautiful, vibrant red of human blood smeared across the floor. She felt bullets piercing her body, remembering the searing pain, the stolen breath, the violet streams running down her skin.

She felt a warm, blood-drenched hand slip inside hers, violet and crimson mingling to an entirely new color. No vows had ever been sworn between them, but what could be a stronger tie than this? What could better solidify love than sharing blood and fear and wounds? The universe could take its symbolic swearing and oaths and forget them. It could be two hands joined, stuck together with their respective blood…that was marriage, was it not? That was the bond that had mated them…more powerful than a bracelet or a ring and a declaration.

I am yours...

Liara opened her eyes and the phantom warmth in the palm of her hand vanished. A simple illusion, a want created by the mind. It lasted but a moment, but it was the moments that could keep you alive, keep you living and fighting and struggling forward. Liara had learned that. She looked towards the glass of Mira Dorsen's room, watched Sen sit down beside the injured woman.

The pain in the doctor's face screamed to Liara's heart. She knew this agony all too well. She had known it from the moment a human voice broke into her dehydrated fugue state on Therum. The moment she had seen the flare of Serena's silver eyes.

She insisted that they were grey, Liara thought, a small smile quirking her lips, a smile of things cherished and lost, joy mingled with sorrow, the blend of emotion the universe so often dictated. But I could see nothing but a precious metal, something radiant and powerful, pure and adamant when I looked into her face. Never could a color be so eloquent in agony, so exquisite that even bearing witness to the intensity of its emotion cut you to the bone.

Sitting in this place that reminded her of and personified hell, Liara allowed herself to fade back into the memories of silver eyes. She idly twisted the memorial bracelet around her wrist, the metal etched with her lover's name. It was simple, as Serena had been. Just a name, her rank, and her dates of service.

My beautiful soldier, Liara's eyes roved over the etchings on the bracelet. I miss you. I wish you could see me now. I wish you could know what has happened in the centuries since...since the end.

Liara shook herself from the thoughts that would take her nowhere but unpleasantly back in time. She did not often dwell on the loss, looking forward into the future as she had been told to do…begged to do by a raspy voice, chapped lips, and pleading silver eyes.

Don't stay in the dark, Liara. It's gonna swallow me, and I belong there. You don't. You never have.

A shiver ran down Liara's spine as the ghost of Serena, the words from her past, every syllable perfectly captured, whispered through her mind. Liara clenched her hands into fists. This was the reason that she had avoided hospitals, the stringent smell of the antiseptic, the harsh overhead lighting…it was not good for her to be here.

Liara's heart fluttered in her chest and her omni-tool beeped at her with a low alarm. The asari bit back the pain, accustomed to it after three hundred years of living with her condition. She bent double, breathing slow, deep, and even, refusing to let the fear and the pain take over. Liara counted for fifteen seconds hoping that, as it usually did, the tachycardia episode would pass. But her heart insisted on rebelling, continuing past the typical fifteen second flutter.

Liara winced, closed her eyes, and reached into her pocket, withdrawing a small hypospray injector. She pressed it against her neck, right at the pulse point, gritted her teeth, and depressed the button. She winced at the burst of air piercing her skin, flooding her system with amiodarone. Liara straightened, grateful for the emptiness of the TCU waiting room. She did not want to be seen this weak, this broken.

Regardless of the fact that I am. She shook her head at her needless shame, and found her eyes wandering once more to the room where Sen sat, her hand intertwined with Mira's limp fingers.

Liara had seen the asari goddess debunked, rendered nothing more than a Prothean who came to educate the asari race and bring them up in the galaxy. Still, she whispered a prayer to the Goddess of Some Where and Some Time for her friend. A prayer that life might be easier for Sen than it had been for Liara herself, or for Zhira. A prayer that life might be kind.

Liara's omni-tool beeped once more, the tightness in her chest eased, the pain faded, and she could breathe easily again. She heard the sound of weary footsteps in the hall and looked up, meeting a pair of haunted, emerald eyes. The nurse was young, still in the turbulent thick of her maiden years. The simple medical tunic she wore bore wide, uneven smears of violet. She leaned against the wall taking slow, staggering steps.

Oh sweet, loving Goddess. Liara rose to her feet. She recognized the look in the young nurse's eyes. She had seen it too many times. It was the expression of someone losing their soul. The intense anguish of a heart clawing at the last remaining shreds of sanity.

It is the look that Serena wore, Liara rose from her seat, near the end. Frantic, frenetic, and tortured. Lost and adrift and begging for mercy.

Liara walked to the nurse and extended a hand. The maiden asari took it with trembling fingers. She looked up at Liara and saw. She saw the compassion, the understanding, the years of suffering endured and the understanding that so very few might offer. The nurse lurched away from the wall and staggered into Liara's arms. Liara guided her to the seats, sat down, took the maiden into her arms, and let the stranger weep on her shoulder.

I know, little one, I know. Liara thought, understanding the tremors that shook the nurse's body, the tears that stained her clothing. The maiden in her arms had just witnessed death, and her inability to save the life under her care. Liara understood that helplessness. She understood that guilt. She understood the expression in the maiden's eyes…the overwhelming emotion that would soften and become a ghost of yesteryear, a lesson, a moment, a nightmare.

Music. Mathematics. Sorrow. Liara remembered Shepard's words as she massaged the back that heaved with desperate sobs. Universal languages. Perhaps nightmares are universal as well. I have enough to haunt one-hundred, millennia-long lives. Goddess, be gentle to this maiden. Be gentle to her in the ways that the galaxy was not gentle to me.