7. Return
He goes back to Palaven. Solana waits for him at the shuttle port, slaps the intact side of his face.
"Good to see you too, Sol."
"Shut up," she says, and gives him a hug.
At home, his father greets him with his usual scrutinizing stare, but fails to synchronize his subvocals at hello. Whatever thoughts the old man has about the sudden waiving of medical fees for his wife's treatment he keeps to himself. Other than one awkward welcome home dinner and stilted updates on his mother's condition, they set him up in his old room and ask no questions. He guesses they are too enmeshed in their sorrow to bother with the prodigal son.
His Collector tissue donations to the Helos Medical Institute have translated to a private room at Aventen Medical Center, as well as two salarian experts on genome therapy for Corpalis Syndrome. They blunt none of the grim facts: neurological damage, hypertonia, impaired cognition, intermittent catatonia, prognosis poor.
When he does see her, she doesn't recognize him. From a certain perspective, this makes it easy to keep to himself. His mother would have been the only one of his family to shine a light on his dark corners. The universe has a sick sense of humor.
Not that he believes in the sentience of cold, infinite space.
When he's not visiting her, he watches the vids over and over. They were recorded exactly forty-six minutes after Liv got out of his arms and began dressing with precise, measured movements. She brushed her hair, reapplied her epi-patch, but didn't clean herself. Neither one of them did.
On the vids is Shepard, in civilian clothes, expressionless as reporters swarm around her Alliance escort like a pack of starved varren. He was next to her when she made the call to the press with thirty minutes to Citadel arrival, in spite of having assured both Anderson and Hackett of a low-profile transfer. She ignores press questions except to comment on the Reaper threat. Curt words, to the point, eyes boring through the camera.
In one recording, Councilor Anderson's tense expression can be glimpsed in the background. Khalisah al-Jilani has just asked the Alliance brass to comment on Shepard's Reaper warnings, and none of their evasive replies dim the bleakness of Commander Shepard's words, the intensity of her stare.
In the end, the talking heads have a field day: Reapers—fact or delusion; the first human Spectre in disgrace; ties to human supremacist group; court martial possible
A month of this, at most. And then—nothing. She falls off the grid like she never came back from the dead to do what she does best. Liara sends him a brief update on an encrypted channel: Earth, Vancouver, Alliance base. Relieved of command. House arrest. No court martial yet.
He shuts off his commlink in disgust. He paces. He downloads the capture he took of her their last time on the Normandy to his battered old vid screen, and stares at it until it's time for his evening visit.
His mother is having a good enough night to be sitting by a window overlooking the vast Cipritine skyline. Vases filled with the slender argintius blooms she used to love crowd most surfaces, a sign his father stopped by earlier.
"Hi, Mom," he says.
She doesn't answer. She only answers on the best of nights, and tonight is just above average. Under the blanket covering her atrophied legs, he can see the regular tremor of her hands. Her bright blue eyes are fixed on the distant silver horizon.
He sits in the chair next to hers and places his hand on top of hers. She's so frail, like she's being erased out of existence from the inside. "Looks like it'll be a clear night. We'll get to see Nanus trailing Menae."
He thinks he detects a slackening in her hands' involuntary motion, and he pretends she's whole again, capable of helping him unburden. He squeezes her hand through the blanket and says, "Remember that story you used to tell me, about Nanus and Menae? Nanus couldn't let Menae go alone into the silver fog of the spirit lands, even if it meant changing along with her. Now they are one spirit, and they follow each other through the stars until the end of time."
The tremors stop for a moment, start up again. She's tilted her head a little toward him, but her rigid neck muscles prevent further motion. Her eyes, it seems to him, burn like blue suns.
"Of course, you told it better than that," he says as he helps ease her posture. A long, miserable pause, then: "You always knew what to say, what to do. I know you still do, while I—"
His mother's fragile hand flutters like a trapped naphidus as the pale orb of Menae comes into view. Behind it rises the smaller, bluish semicircle of Nanus, and he thinks he can feel the universe blooming secret and black behind the familiar sight of Palaven's moons.