Liara

Oh Goddess please stop! Please!

All I can hear is the sound of the sea. All I can see before me is the monster living in my spirit fixing heavy, ancient chains around Serena's wrists. The shackles snap around her skin and I see blood pooling beneath the metal and dripping down her fingers. The chains sink into the ocean surf and Serena's body snaps wire tight as she attempts to fight the weight threatening to drag her beneath the sea.

The phantom of me, the creature of my pain and anguish, this perfect likeness that possesses hatred instead of eyes and contempt instead of touch, looks at me in triumph. It has what it has wanted for two years…the chance for retribution, the chance to replay every memory, to hurl every insult. It has saved the tears I have shed and fermented them into an acid…an acid that it prepares to pour on a gentle, scarred heart.

Serena says nothing, her jaw locked, her eyes fixed on some distant horizon. I wonder if she is seeing…if she is watching the last years of my past, if she is receiving what she has asked for. I wonder what the phantom of myself will do to her…I wonder if she will emerge from this broken and the thought torments me.

There is still so much that she must do…yet she risks herself with me. She risks her heart and her consciousness…and I am no longer gentle. I am no longer kind. I am no longer the asari that seeks to heal the warrior's heart and she has asked for my suffering and begged for my vengeance and I am callous enough to answer.

I am callous enough to accede to her wishes.

"Please," I do not speak to Serena, but to my monster made manifest in our joined minds, "do not harm her. Let her see what has been but do not…do not inflict unnecessary torment. Remove the chains. Stop the bleeding."

It turns to me, its eyes of hate glimmering and gleaming as it glares at me as though I, who crafted it, who let it be, am despicable. It smiles and its teeth are sharp, angled, glittering with a silver edge that reminds me of the needle and oblivion.

"You created me." it speaks, its voice fathomless, deep, dark, reminding me of Benezia when she spoke beneath Sovereign's indoctrination. "You created me and brought me forth into this world, harboring me in your beating heart, building a shrine to me in the temple of your mind. She has asked and it is I who will answer her. You were once weak enough to let me rule you. You are not now strong enough to stop me."

It turns from me, back straight, shoulders set, confident and assured. There is no defeating it, because it does exist and because I have allowed it to rule me…I have not conquered this, simply left it in the unexamined portion of my soul. That place is no longer unexamined. This monster still lives and breathes within me, and now it is ruler of this meld, ruler of what Serena will endure.

It walks to Serena and touches her cheek in a mockery of tenderness. When its hand leaves her face, I see deep gashes in her pale skin. Her nostrils flare and her neck tightens as she absorbs the pain, and my heart breaks…for I know there is much more in store for her…enough to break the gentle heart that she fights to keep beating.

"You are the author of my sorrow." my monster addresses her, voice venom and vitriol. "You are the spectre haunting my dreams, the cold sweat on my brow, the hot tears on my cheeks. You are the word I whisper when I plunge the knife inward and the fire that burns in my vengeful heart. You are the hand that has shed innocent blood."

"I am none of these things." Serena insists. "But I accept that you believe me to be."

"No." it growls, low and menacing. "This is not belief, it is truth. Do you doubt me, Shepard? Do you doubt the veracity of my words and question my existence? Do you believe that you deserve no share of the agony I have endured? Arrogant, just like the rest of your pathetic race."

The monster that wears my face, that speaks from the darkest part of my soul, reaches into the ocean waves and pulls from them a well-remembered silver box. With a flourish, its hands open the lid, revealing the contents. Serena watches it remove a syringe with a wicked needle, and I attempt to open my mouth to speak, to end this, to sever the meld, but I cannot. I am locked inside my own consciousness, unable to prevent what is happening, because Serena has asked for this.

"You humans love your symbols." it examines the syringe and its contents, which I know are not real, but a vivid reminder, a sadistic visual of what it…what I…have wished to put her through. "You hide behind them and let them speak in your place. You hide behind the symbol of Commander, of Spectre, and now, of Cerberus. So here is my symbol, Serena. Within this lies what you subjected me to, what you forced me to endure."

"Okay." Serena accepts her position, accepts the words that she is hearing. Her eyes move beyond the emotional construct that is my rage and my sorrow and my suffering, and settle on me. A faint smile crosses her lips, and her silver eyes are kind.

I do not know how she is not judging me, how her eyes are the sole calm thing in this place. My spirit is in anguish, the ocean surrounding us kicks and bucks with the force of the tide. Serena is a captive of the waves, a captive of my pain, but she offers me a smile. She offers me the kindness inside her eyes…a kindness I do not deserve.

Why? I wonder, watching in horror as the monster that is me, that I am, reaches for the shirt that Serena wears and tears it off of her body. I look at her nakedness, at the scars in which she reposes the truth of herself. They are bared now to hands that will not be gentle.

Still, I find her body beautiful, in spite of the flaws in her skin, the imperfections that have made her perfect in my eyes. The monster of my pain does as well, for its hands are reaching, tracing and feathering over her skin. Its mouth, those sharp teeth, lower to Serena's breasts. She gasps as it laves its tongue across the taut skin, sending shockwaves through her nerves. It continues to pleasure her, and Serena's gasps become moans of want and anticipation. Abrupt, the moan cuts off in a cry of pain…the monster has turned its intimate touch torturous. It has bitten deep and I cringe at the sickening sight as a thick line of blood begins to drip down from Serena's punctured nipple.

Serena's lips tighten and her eyes harden with the expression I know she adopts when she is fighting through pain, struggling to surmount it, not to feel it, but the monster will not stop its feasting, will not stop ravaging her skin, her helpless body, with kisses that both tantalize and torture. Before my eyes, Serena's body becomes a landscape of pitted wounds and dripping blood. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted as she breathes in short gasps that must be both pleasure and pain.

The monster smiles at the bloodied canvas of Serena's body. It glories in its destruction, its preparation for what will come next. I get to my feet, determined to put an end to this. Serena has suffered enough. I have suffered enough. It is time for the exchange of pain to end, for understanding to return and reconciliation to happen. She does not need to take this burden onto herself and I will not see her abused needlessly.

None of this is her responsibility. No matter what that monster, that dark place in my heart believes and wishes, it is simply not true.

I struggle through the ocean waves. They are rising higher, churning with intensity as the sky overhead darkens. This is no longer a place of peace, but a place of torment. I must change it. I must make it different, alter it, take responsibility and chain my own madness. I fight through the saltwater, imagining how it must burn in Serena's wounds, loathing myself for allowing this, for being weak in the face of my pain.

"Stop this!" I shout, clutching the shoulder of my monster, determined to bring it to heel.

It turns to me and its eyes are alight with flagrant fanaticism, the spirit of obsession that was born in me from the first moment I dug in the earth and found a simple secret. I fade to nothing in the glare of my most primal instinct. To reveal. To find. To undo the secrets of the world surrounding me. Serena has asked for these secrets.

"You do not want me to stop." my obsession monster breathes. "Because I am you. You are mine. She," it looks to Serena, anchored to chains in the churning water, bleeding from so many wounds, punctures made by teeth and claws that belong to me, "is ours. She asked for this…and you know that the pain you endured was not without the knowledge and memory that is the divinity of love. We are part and parcel, two halves of one whole. Take her as she desired, for she offered herself. Touch and be touched. Destroy and be remade."

It takes my hand and places it on Serena's hip. She flinches but her eyes are bright, bright with hunger and pain, with want and anguish, the contradiction that is humanity's actions and desires. The heat of her body strikes a fire in me and, in the churning ocean, I press my body against hers, feeling the sting of the salt and the thick of her blood. The clothes I am wearing fall away and we are naked together. My lips are on Serena's, a frenetic, frustrated kiss. My hands rove over her body, unmindful of the wounds that my darker self inflicted…because I do not care.

In this place, I want. Her strong, muscled thigh slips between my legs; she holds me steady in the churning of the water and my hand strays from her punctured breast, down the muscled, lacerated skin of her abdomen. My fingers slide through the folds of her sex and she pitches forward, her head resting on my shoulder, her panting breath a symphony. I know she is hurting, the wounds I have inflicted burning, but I also know that she wishes for me to touch her. To claim her as my own.

I look to the monster of my pain and obsession. It holds its syringe, its drug, its stored recollections of every nightmare, every horror, every crime, every tear, aloft. I close my eyes in acceptance, in the knowledge that the woman in my arms asked for this. My fingers find her entrance, her soft whimper pierces the skin of my shoulder. Slow, excruciating, I slide my fingers inside her body as the other me, the darker side of my soul, slips the needle into her veins.