Liara

The meld feels different than it has for the past two years. Before, with the others, it felt like sharp, jagged spires of nerve endings and selfishness shredding through their consciousness, straight into their bodies. I had fused myself with them on the blade of a razor, slicing away all but the temporary bliss that sated the monster I had made of my pain. I had been that monster with them, crashing into them, piercing them with anguish and agony and twisting it until it became pleasure. With Serena, it feels different. It is different.

In the distance, I feel her body, the thrum of blood through her veins, the aftershocks of her climax at my hands. However, before me lies an image that, in any other's consciousness, I would have shattered, then ignored. However, I pause, struggling with myself and my wants. I want to be with Serena…I want to remember the pleasure that she could bring me to but also…also, I want the connection that I have been without for two years.

So I do not shatter the illusion. I do not bombard the place she has prepared for me inside her mind. Instead, I let myself walk into her landscape, my bare feet crunching through the sand, the wash of the ocean pounding in my hearing. The sky overhead is cloudy, the sun nowhere to be seen…there is nothing but me, the sand of the beach, the crash of the waves, and the woman in the distance, waiting for me.

I wonder if she is afraid. We had spoken to each other in anger. We had sharpened our words with the intent to pierce…is she not concerned that I might take this time, this place, this meld where I possess all of the power, to forcibly make her feel the pain that has hounded me? The woman who waits turns and the wind tosses her hair. I pause, my breath stolen by the simplest of realizations.

Serena has never been afraid of pain. The thought feels somehow new and old at once, as though it is something I have always known but…but never before acknowledged. She has instead accepted it as proof of life…and continued living in spite of it…and living better because of the lesson of it.

I continue moving, walking towards her, smiling at the fact that here, inside her mind, we are still clothed. Outside of the meld we are naked, embracing, but here we are separate, protected, not yet joined in mind and soul as we are in body. Serena turns to me and I gasp as I see her face…bisected by the angry scar from the wound she received at Akuze. She reaches out to me and her hand is scarred from the thresher maw attack on Edolus.

"Serena," my voice holds concern and I realize that, in this place, I am speaking from the heart…and my heart cares. My heart cries out, wanting, needing, hurting...yet willing to risk being hurt again…and it has taken standing here, inside her mind, melded and joined with her, to realize this. "Serena, you are…" I reach up and run my finger across the scar on her face, "…you are wearing your old scars here."

Shepard looks down at her hand, then lifts the loose shirt that she wears, looking at the wide swaths of scar tissue splashed across her body, memoirs of battles fought and trials endured. Her silver eyes flicker and, for a moment, I believe it is sorrow that crosses her features…but a closer look tells me that I am wrong.

In her eyes dwells the radiant light of understanding, the bright dawn of realization. Profound relief washes over her and her eyes meet mine…holding an expression of complete content. I do not understand why seeing her old disfigurements can change her in this way, and, as I have ever done, I ask.

"Serena, are you all right?" I question, because she still has not spoken, not said anything, and all I can feel is her heart kicking in her chest.

"I'm…I'm real." her voice is awe and wonder and content. "I'm still me…" she places her hand over her heart, "…here. Where it matters, Liara, I'm still…still me. Nothing has been taken and I…I don't have to question…I don't have to question."

The pleasured shock echoing in her words causes me sorrow. I ache to think of Serena ever questioning her beauty, her strength…her very identity. There is still so much societal worth based on physical appearance and, by that standard, Serena should have rejoiced when she found herself restored. Instead, she had agonized. She had grieved. She mourned for she had lost something dear and precious.

Instead of hiding them, of running from them, Serena had, inside her mind, turned her scars into symbols of what she had endured. She had kept them as marks on the map of her life, reminders of trials that she had lived through, moments and injuries that had changed her. They had not held her back, but driven her forward.

Those moments, that pain, that suffering…made her kind. How did I not remember? How did I let myself fall so far from the memory of the woman who exemplified how pain can beautify? I allowed my pain to twist me, to mangle, to distort…to change my heart.

"Liara." Serena reaches out with her scarred hands, lacing our fingers together. "I can feel you, exquisitely. You're still inside me…you always have been. I hear you always. I heard you when I was dead. I hear you now."

"I am not speaking." I murmur as she begins walking backwards.

I follow her into the surf, feeling the water lapping at my bare feet. My eyes lock with Serena's and I feel the peace of Athame's temple washing over me. She smiles and I fall into the rhythms of her body. Her blood pounds through my veins, her thoughts whisper through my mind in a sweet, barely remembered song. I inhale, feeling her breath in her lungs, an infusion of life because in that breath is content and acceptance.

"I still hear you." Serena whispers, reaching up, cupping my cheek with her hand. "You're crying. You're hurting."

Her knowledge is devastating and true and I tremble in spirit and in body, feeling the pleasure caused by my quivering hand infuse Serena's flesh, the sensation of it spilling into me. Tears fill my eyes and fall from them, dripping from my jaw into the sea below, the water that I feel cannot cleanse, cannot wash away, cannot make it better.

"You once did something for me, Liara." Serena enfolds me in her arms, holding me as the ocean swells and the tide rises around us. "You were insistent, you were kind, and you took the pain of my body. You held it in your own and you endured it so that I would know what pleasure was. I will never forget that moment. It was resplendent, perfect, and a gift I never thought I could grant in equal measure."

"Serena…" my voice is hesitation, the words aching in my chest are uncomfortable and I feel the pain within gnawing at them, hacking at them, changing their intent and purpose.

Stop, please! I do not want to hurt you! I want to try to…to fix this!

I scream within, decrying myself, praying to every force that might change this, asking them to descend, to place their hands in the life of a single asari and human, to join us together and erase what divides us. I beg for my mother's wisdom and Serena's arms tighten around me, making me believe that she can hear me…even if she does not hear the words of my thoughts, she can hear the agony in my soul. The broken, orphaned asari…the disillusioned, naïve archaeologist who has become queen of the galaxy's underworld. The scholar turned killer.

"Serena, no." I deny her. "Do not ask for this. You do not want it, trust me, please trust me."

"I trust you implicitly." Serena assures me. "I've been hurt, Liara. A lot. But I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the hollow aching in your chest with dark talons streaming out of it, clawing at you, fucking everything up. I can feel that, Liara. You just…you just took me to heaven and I want…I want to do the same for you but if I do, this moment, this bliss that's making my heart double time like a motherfucker is going to be stained by all that pain. I love you, Liara, and I'm asking you to…to give me your pain like I once gave you mine. Because I want to take you to heaven, and you're still stuck in hell. Let me, álainn anam."

"You do not know what it is that you ask." I caution her, feeling the darkness in me swell and expand, wanting to devour the woman audacious enough to believe she can carry it.

"You're still so angry." Serena does not address my statement. Instead, she aims her words like a bullet, striking me. She wraps me tighter in her arms, her hair whisping against my crest, something soft and gentle and exquisite as her touch. "And I don't blame you for that anger. It's your right. But it's hurting you. Let me carry it a little while, so that you can rest."

"Why should I?" I ask, stiffening in her embrace as my defenses rile and the ocean tide rises to our waists.

"Because you've gotta bleed the wound clean sometime." Serena tells me, her eyes relaying the truth of the many times she has bled, literal and figurative. "And because I've missed you, and I've dreamed of you, and I want all of you. I want to see you; I want to know your life. I want to know your sorrow and your suffering, your triumphs and trials. I want to know what I missed, what I couldn't be there for you through...because I can be here for you now."

No you do not! Because I allowed pain to poison me and if you see…if you see it will poison you too! I must…I must work this through before I allow you into the sacrosanct temple of my anguish.

The saltwater surrounding us continues to rise. Minor wavelets lap at my breasts, the ocean in Shepard's mind speaking to me. Telling me that she is strong enough to carry the darkness in my heart, to let it wash away and dissolve…but will it dissolve? Or will it warp and twist Serena? Will my anger re-kindle hers as it did when we spoke? Here we stand, together, yet worlds apart.

I reach out and ghost my fingertips across her cheek, drawing her eyes to mine. The monster of pain within me rages, ready to come forth and devour, ready to enact the longed-for assault on her senses, psyche, and memory. She had asked; I would answer. Just as she had led me on the battlefield, untried and untested, allowed there only because I demanded to help. I demanded to carry my share of the load.

I had blamed Serena for much of my pain…wrongly, yes, but the thoughts were entrenched, holding their position, and any assault on them that I had tried, any change that I had attempted to effect, had failed. I look up, meeting the silver of her eyes, realizing that the warrior I admire wishes to help me. To share in the burden.

"You asked for this." I remind her, and she nods.

I close my eyes, surrendering to the rising tide, the scent of salt, and the feel of Serena infusing and surrounding me. A deep inhale. Exhale. The key is my acceptance, my allowance, and I grant this moment both of those, opening the vault of my memory, releasing the monster of agony and anguish, hearing it roar in triumph. My lover's eyes gleam like the stars, like the edge of a blade, and the monster of my pain finds her joy and opens its maw, serrated teeth of anger and wrath crashing down, biting into Serena's spirit.

Her eyes flare wide; her lips part in a choking gasp as the monster, whose form is mine, whose face is mine, gnaws at her flesh. With every bite, every assault, my memories invade and bludgeon her mind. She lives my grief and I hang my head, weeping...weeping for I know she does not deserve this punishment or this anguish.

You asked for this.