So….it's been nearly 2 years, I doubt anyone's still reading this. I just couldn't stop it rattling around in my head so here it is. Thank you to anyone who reads this, it's very much appreciated.
Chapter 8
Spacer.
There are many words that describe who and what I am, some of them less flattering than others. Ask a roomful of people who know me and they will say one thing. Ask a room of people who know of me and you will get something entirely different. Ask the same question to my closest friends, deepest enemies, past lovers and current crew and you'll get more still. They are vast and they are varied but in general they are wrong. There is only one word that describes, explains, and justifies me.
One word.
Spacer.
My life has been spent in the stars, aboard stations and ships, I am, without doubt the epitome of the word. I am not American, Canadian, French or Chinese. I am not from Europe or Asia, I am a spacer. That is my nationality and my race, my country of birth. The number of months I've slept planet side can be count on two hands; half of those being my N7 training on Mars. I have never been to Earth, never been closer to the planet than the day Garrus, Wrex and I stopped the VI on Luna. If you were to ask me what shade of the blue the sky was I couldn't tell you, if you told me unfiltered air taste better I wouldn't believe you, if you said that weather came in shades of grey I would nod and say okay, but what does it really matter? People have written songs about Earths majesty, poems about its beauty, and while I can recount enough to sound as if I know the world they speak of the truth is that I don't.
A spacer; I know the taste and feel of space. I cannot describe to you a sunset but ask me to explain to you how a ship with a defective dampener feels in retrograde orbit and I can write you a sonnet. I can describe to you in iridescent detail the way a mass effect field shimmers, how it dances around a frigate, but struts around a freighter. How it hugs a fighter and fights a dreadnaught.
I am a spacer, I know ships and stations. Everyone I have lived and loved on is burnt brightly behind my eyes lids; I can close my eyes and walk the halls of every one. I still remember the layout of my first bunk, could draw for you the pattern etched on the ceiling of my first cabin. If you played for me the sound of ventilation fans I could pick out for you the one that was once mine.
I'm not telling you this to brag, or boast, this is not a skill particular to only me. I am telling you this so you understand, that you agree and believe me when I say that this is not the Normandy, this is a dream.
"Commander."
Chase says with a salute and the briefest of nods. She hands me a data-pad and turns away, disappearing into the rest of the crew. Everything is as it should be, everyone is at their station; standing to attention and ready for action. But this is not the Normandy, this is a dream.
The scrolling text on the data-pad catches my eye, nothing but row after row of meaningless computer code, largely indecipherable except for one line that runs through it.
Tell me about Benezia.
I throw it away in disgust.
I see Joker at his helm, pass through the Specialists at their terminals, nod at Danes, smile at Liddell, collect my messages from Pressly, look up to my Mother at the galaxy map and salute Evans at the door; walk lower.
Lowe passes me on the stairs; Adams disappears behind the elevator doors deep in conversation with my Father. Grenado and Jiao still smile at each other across the table. Ashley and Wrex chat over Alliance rations, Tali points at her paste in mild irritation.
Chakwas moves around her medical bay; Jenkins stands guard at the door.
This is a dream
Kaidan wipes the sweat from his brow as he over sees his terminal, Garrus leans against the wall and chats to him casually. They nod as I walk past them, towards the rear of the ship; I glance at the sleeper pods, at May'ia, at Tanton and San'del. At the tiny form of Liam Calfree, at Matriarch Lidanya, at her navigator, at every single one of the Ascension's crew.
This is a dream.
It's a fact I know, can see the lines between reality, the seams where memory and dream collide but it doesn't make it easier. A backwards glance at Kaidan, his skin beginning to melt, to burn, a twist of the head to Jenkins, his chest ripped open by lazar fire. I spin back round, close my mind to him, to them, to the people I have failed but my weakness is all too prominent here, in the lines of the dead.
A dream, this is….is….this is….
The pods stretch on into infinity, I can't count their numbers; thousands, hundreds of thousands. More? Could it be more, could there be more lives that I am responsible for ending? I want to check the names, learn them, burn them to my memory so they're not forgotten but there so many, too many. So many names, asari, volus, salarian, so foreign and alien I could never know them all.
Athia Siol
Amthina T'fil
I take off running, like so many of my dreams the corridor becomes endless, it stretches on and on but no matter how fast I run, how hard I push I cannot escape the names.
Aol Titus
Benezia T'soni
Be'cal Tiath
B….
The name rolls round my mind like thunder, I stop, turn and step back, look from the name plate up to the body. It hangs…no she, she hangs loosely as if floating. Head lolled back, elegant neck exposed, chest cavity ripped apart, decimated and bleeding.
Gun fire, mine.
"Tell me about Benezia Ripley."
Those are my words but not my voice, at least the words sound hollow in my ears, heavy in my throat. I touch the glass. I wish I'd never said them, forced that question, I wish I'd never heard his answer.
A doorway opens beside me, a viewpoint into Liara's world behind the med-bay. She stands at her desk, turns, smiling in that way that is just for me. Soft, warm, loving but sad.
"Shepard, I have the feeling you wanted to talk to me about something."
Welcome memories beckon me, I remember this, remember where it leads, what conversation is to follow. Remember the blush that rises in her checks when she tells me her feelings, when I admit to mine. It would be easy, so easy, to step forward into it, to lose myself in it, but this is not that kind of dream.
"You know? Aye I don't imagine anything gets past you now do it lass. You've got that way about you so you have."
He sits in the pod behind me, shrouded by smoke, his old eyes weary and clouded. I regard Liara silently as I stand in the space between the asari and the Irishman. The light from her terminal projects a halo around her face; she is so beautiful. Opening my mouth to tell her this, I want to take a step towards her but can't, I'm trapped in the in between, my words not under my control.
"Tell me about Benezia." Whether a question, a statement or demand it's directed at them both, covers both of these memories forever entangled, forever merged.
"She rarely spoke of her partner," Liara replies, we've had this conversation, it is exactly the same but suddenly so different. "Though I know my father- if you want to use the term, was another asari…"
A look to Ripley.
"Parently hundred or so years ago, May'ia knew the Matriarch quite well, wouldn't say they were friends or nought but they went round in the same circles, had the same friends." He taps his pipe against his palm, looks past me to Liara. "She never liked her, or so she says, they never got on."
"It is possible Benezia's partner was too embarrassed by their union. She may have been too ashamed to publically acknowledge me as her offspring." The asari looks at me, through me to the man behind. I take a step back, ashamed by her eyes burning with emotion, by my own unshed tears. "It is possible she wanted to be part of my life but something happened to her before she had a chance."
Their words aren't meant for me anymore. Ripley shrugs.
"May'ia din't like to talk about it but I think she had a thing for the bondmate, they'd been friends since they were nippers, did everything together. Never took their engagement well."
"She never spoke of her partner. Whatever happened, it caused her too much pain to dwell on it."
"Benezia was, well…"
Moving my eyes from the floor at Ripley's words, I meet Liara's eye, an acrid, bitter taste in my mouth, my throat tight.
"She was with child when May'ia convinced to leave her."
I realises too late it was me speaking, it was me breaking her heart like that. Liara opens her mouth to reply, I never hear the words.
This is a dream and I wake up.
xX0Xx
With a short intake of breath my eyes open and I sit forward, eyes fluttering over unfamiliar surroundings. There's the feeling of movement, of a ship in motion to be more precise, the sound of engines, is this….no, it can't be, the Normandy is light-years from here. There's pressure against my chest, a tightness, a touch tells me it's a strap; civilian made, then it hits, a sky cab, a town car; the transport to the T'soni estate.
"I didn't mean to wake you Shepard." Liara says gently, her hand is on my knee I notice, gripping it tightly.
"I didn't mean to fall asleep." In fact I didn't even know I had, nor how long ago it was. The last thing I remember was boarding the sky cab, Liara telling me it was a two hour trip to her estate. It was light then, and it's light now, but the sky is a deeper shade of blue, the shadows not quite so pronounced but these signs means nothing to me. "How long was I out?"
"An hour, maybe a little more. You were mumbling in your sleep."
"I was?" Panic rises in me, is that why she woke me, did I speak it out loud?
This is a dream.
Yes it was but also wasn't it was so close to real it hurt.
"Nothing too dirty I hope? I wouldn't want to embarrass our esteemed host." I shuffle in my seat, try to mask my disquiet with a poor attempt at humour. Old habits.
The driver of the skycap glances into her rear view mirror, it took me a few moments to remember she was even here, but slowly as I become more awake my faculties are returning to me.
We were met at the gates by one of Benezia's remaining acolytes, Jatietha I believe her name is, a couple of hundred years Liara's elder but an age more unyielding. There's no movement in her reflected eyes, not the smallest glimmer but I can see the disapproval all the same. Is it directed towards me, that anger, that angst? I am after all the killer of her sage, I could understand the iciness of the look that reflects back at me but I'm not convinced it is. With a smooth, causal motion I take Liara's hand in mine, hold it tight; I don't like the colour in the air.
"How long till we get there?"
"Not long Commander, thirty minutes, hopefully less." The cab turns off the main skyway, we begin to descend. "Would you like me to turn on the holoplayer? I believe there's a performance of the U'lta adagio scheduled in a few minutes."
"That would be very kind, thank you Jatietha."
"My pleasure Sia."
The front of cab disappears then, as Jatietha activates a holographic screen in the window between us. An asari takes her place in the centre of a spiral stage at an instrument that I can't even begin to describe and as music flows from it. I feel Liara relax.
"Goddess." She murmurs, closing her eyes. "I never did like her."
"She is a bit, what's a nice way of putting it…." An involuntary glance to the electronic barricade, if Liara has relaxed it must be sound proof even though I've never seen anything similar before. "Reserved? Severe? ...Bitchy? "
"My mother raised me far too well to possibly comment but yes, the latter. I've met more polite tax inspectors on Ilium."
"Ouch T'soni, was that an insult? I almost didn't recognise it coming from your innocent lips."
Liara laughs and I realise I've missed it; it's been to long since I've heard the sound. "You're a bad influence on me Shepard."
"I'm a bad influence on you?" I ask, eyebrow quirked, corner of my mouth high. "I've still got bruises on my ass that say different."
A blush rises to her cheeks, just the slightest purple tinge. "That was very unlike me."
"In that case you should be unlike you more often." I say with a playful pout before realising how that may have sounded. "Wait that came out wrong."
She nudges me, a teasing smile tugging on her lips. "You're not nearly as smooth as you like to believe Shepard."
"You take that back," my mouth drops in fake aghast, "I am as smooth as I believe, in fact I'm smoother, oh I could tell you stories that would make you blush." Liara raises her painted brow at me questioningly. "Okay so I can't think of any right now but…"
The sensation of her lips pressed on mine is a heady, exhilarating one, even the lightest of touches such as this. It's a fleeting, chaste kiss more reserved than I am used to her giving me but still when she pulls back a few seconds later my lips still tingle from the contact. Liara cups my cheek, her thumb brushing over my lips, tracing my scar. For the briefest moment the look she gives me is heart wrenching in its honesty and intensity. It's open, deep, heartfelt and over all too quickly.
"There are a few things I should tell you before we arrive." She whispers into me, her breath light against my neck, warm, halted and strained. "There are a few things you should know."
"Okay." Bringing my hand up to her I caress the back of her neck gently, studying her; the light in her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. "As long as it isn't that you're actually married with lots of little blue children then I think I'll cope." My weak joke does nothing to lighten her eyes; I frown. "Shit, you're not actually married are you? Because that's a conversation we should have had before now."
"No Shepard," A smile eventually cracks, brightening her face. "I am far too young for marriage. That would be seen as very poor form by my kind, particularly for a daughter of a T'soni, although I suppose it is on the general right lines."
"Is it?" Cock one eyebrow, lower the other. "How's that exactly?"
With a small sigh Liara turns from me and stares out the window.
Liara was a little over twenty when she left Thessia for the first time, closer to fifty when she moved away entirely and a little over seventy when she eventually returned. While I was learning to form my first syllables she was thousands of light-years away unearthing Prothean ruins on distant, hostile planets. I have heard her talk about these moments in her past before but on such rare occasions that it is easy for me to forget the years that stretched out before I knew her. If I could, if I had nothing but endless time I would happily sit and listen to Liara recount tales of when she fell through the cracks of a ruined city, or discovered long lost Prothean data. But this is not the story of the memories Liara loves, this is a story of the memories she wishes she could forget.
xXoXx
Thessia is beautiful in the summer.
The cities gleam and glimmer against a sky of intense, radiant blue. There is no blue in any other sky, under any other sun on any other planet that could ever rival this one. It is a shade that is unique to Thessia, one that is integral to its myth and mystique. The asari know it simply as 'Thesi' or 'of the goddess' and Liara has missed it terribly.
Closing her eyes and lifting her face skywards Liara basks in the warmth from her home sun. She has been travelling for weeks, cramped into the cargo hold of a volus freighter that was never designed for the athletic build of the asari. With no room to stand she hunched in cramped a corner, hands holding the loose fitting helmet of her environment suit flush against herself, trying to keep in the purified air she needed to live. The Captain and crew had kept away from her, she wasn't sure way, perhaps they knew of her lineage or of her Mother's recent politics. Whatever the reason, she enjoyed the solitude of her transit, enjoyed the way she could listen to the daily lives of the crew without the interference of awkward conversation. Sitting in the darkness she had listened to the sound of galactic news floating to her and was amazed at what she had missed in her months of isolation. For the sake of the Goddess there was a new species! The Turians were at war! How had she missed so much?
Raising her arms above her head she stretches away the lightyears as her body sighs in relief at being in the open once more. It has been five years since she left her home world, an insignificant number in a millennia of life but still it has felt like an age to her. She has missed its air and ethos, the buildings, the culture, the music. She's missed athica tea, fresh tinti and green ji.
And her mother; she has missed Benezia most of all.
Opening her eyes again she signals a skycap with a wave of her slender gloved hand over the transport control. The excavation she thought so passionately to be a part of, that was the final tear in their delicate relationship, was a failure. Her writings had been discredited, the T'Soni name stained. The professors and scientists told her the hypothesis was flawed, that to continue with this research would result in this exact chain of events. Benezia warned her of what would happen if she took this trip, she had not lied. Her mother has been distant of late, they have had no correspondence in months and her comm bursts and emails have gone unanswered. Benezia told her, in no uncertain terms that by choosing this path she was taking steps away from her family name and no matter how Liara hoped that her mother's threat was empty the silence proved it wasn't. After all what other reason was there?
"By the Goddess; look who has finally appeared."
Turning from the console slowly Liara's faces the asari that stands at a few feet away. Her thin frame was draped in bright yellow silks that were tapered at the waist and flowing at the thigh revealing underneath flawless purple tinged skin. One hand rests on her hip, the other strokes along her side softly, a subconscious gesture only the asari would understand.
"Only three days late. Although I suppose I should just be thankful you're here at all, given past experience where you're concerned."
"There were delays at Illuim, my transport had to be rearranged. If I had known you were going to greet me personally Leta, I would have stayed on the volus ship that smelt of methane."
The two maidens stare at each other passively, neither breaking contact until Liara eventually allowed herself to smile. She rushes forward, greeting Leta in a bone crushing hug.
"It is very good to see you again Leta."
"It is good to see you also cousin. The festival would not be nearly as entertaining without you here to somehow interrupt it."
"Festival?" Liara asks, releasing the embrace around her cousin to peer at her, intrigued. "You can't mean the festival of Atheme? That is not until the summer."
"It is summer you dull stone. Have you had your head trapped in some Prothean do-dad again? How could you forget your mother's most important day?"
"I…." Have been outside of asari space. Have been distant. Have no idea. "I should make the journey to the estate before the light fades."
"Of course cousin." Leta says, hooking her arm through Liara's and cupping her shoulder with the other. "The acolytes will be so pleased to see you, they have been talking about you're return none stop for the entire fasting. Shiala is positively effervescent with excitement, which will please you."
With a small blush and shake of her head Liara smiles at her cousin.
"I was very young."
"Of course you were." Leta teases as an X2M skycar settles in front of them. She gestures at the hatch that opens with the slightest hiss of compressed air and they slide into the soft leather seats. "You have no idea how much the House has missed you. It has not been the same since your departure."
Liara studies her cousin carefully, internally wishing this conversation could wait, knowing that it can't. Pulling at the tips of her gloves she asks. "Have the troubles not eased?"
"No….if anything, since you left she has….I mean, the Matriarch has…." Trailing off Leta's grows distant. "It's not right to talk of such things outside of the House. You will see for yourself soon enough and then…." Her words end there.
An hour of soaring above the fire red fields of the Athican skyline left Liara disappointed when the journey ends. She had forgotten the fields turned this colour in Summer and wished she could spend more time above them, watching the tinti beans shift into to intricate spirals under the down draft of the cab. The outline of the estate was beginning to come into view and with it the patchwork painting of flora and fauna changed from auburn reds to orchid purple as they descended into the tree lined drive. The Oluja-tica was in full bloom and despite the apprehension she felt at knowing the reception she might receive Liara felt, for the briefest moment, a sense of elation.
She was finally home.
The skycar's thrusters reversed, their progress slowed and Liara took a deep, steadying brief as they landed. Leta exited first, her slender, athletic body effortless in its movements making Liara's seem stilted and clumsy in comparison. Gazing up at the estates entrance way was like looking onto the stage of some theatrical masterpieces. Massive columns of engraved Biatia marble could be mistaken for the gateway into a mythical land or at least Liara used to believe. Today they were more like a portal into hell.
They were surrounded as soon as they landed. Eager, frantic, hesitant, enraged, calm; Liara could see all these emotions in the eyes of the Acolytes who surrounded her, women she had known since infancy. They called for her, touched her in that way that only the asari could read. They ushered her along, words flowing from them in panicked tidal waves of sound she could barely understand. She felt weightless, powerless as they dragged her through the Estates entrance, along the Maidens walk and up the Echoing stairs till finally the sea around her parted and she faced Benezia's oldest and most trusted friend.
"Liara, it is good you have come."
"Tatila. Auntie." She breathed reaching for an embrace her mother's eldest sister returned. "Is it as bad as they say….has she really….?" Silently, Tatila turned the handle of the ancient Tica door and Liara stepped into….."nothing…I don't…" Eye turned to Tatila in distress. "Where is the Matriach…..where is my mother?"
"There is much to discuss Little Wing."
Liara turned away from the window and looked back at me, the deepest, most heart-breaking look of sadness and loss etched onto her face.
"The Matriarch never returned to the Estate. She left the House broken and in tatters. The few acolytes who remained stayed out of loyalty, to our name to…I would like to believe loyalty to me but more likely to my Aunts. I've told you before that the T'Soni family is held in high regard on Thessia, my Mother and my Aunts all sit on the council of Matriarchs for the province of Serrice, at least…well I suppose Benezia will have been replaced by now but…." She takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. "but still the T'soni family is viewed as being very influential, is very respected. When Benezia left that day, hours before I arrived she left a….hole, in the fabric of Serrice, one that is not easily healed.
"Liara?"
Where ever Liara found herself lost is quickly shaken away with a flick of her head when I touch her hand gently. She frowns, blinks twice then looks at me tiredly. "I spent so much of my youth wanting to explore the forgotten parts of the galaxy that I pushed my Mother away from me. Every time she reached out to me, tried to guide me I found some obstinate reason to oppose her. Eventually she stopped trying, became distant until finally she….Since her death I've thought of that day often, wondered if only I'd come home earlier, been where I was meant to be, perhaps I could have pulled her back from the insanity Saren brought out in her. Could I have saved her?" She sighed, rubbed her eyes and let the rhythmic tones of the Adagio wash over her.
Words don't come easily, like I've forgotten how; lost myself so deeply in her story. I could tell her now, about Benezia, but would it hinder or help her? Would I just be saying it to clear the knot in my stomach and not to ease her wondering? What does it show in the grand scheme of things, that Benezia's delusions were greater than she believed, or that there was nothing to be done to save her. The feeling of indecision is fast becoming my least favourite emotion.
A crescendo came in the music and her mood seemed to lighten and, again I lose my moment.
"Goddess how my mind wonders at times, I have gone so far from the point of my story I barely recognise it. You need to know, that Matriarchs do not just leave in the manor she did it…it is viewed as a great insult, to my species, to society, to the rest of my family as a whole."
"Are you saying that your family disowned you because of Benezia's action?"
"No, oh Goddess no, nothing as direct as that, that is not the asari way. My name was simply…downgraded…it's difficult to explain to someone who is unfamiliar with our culture but I just wanted you to know that if you feel as if the mood is icy or that people are talking behind our backs…"
"They are?" I grin at her, she does her best to return it but it's only half felt.
"Yes. My presence here is required, but I'm not sure that it is….desired. Even the name, the term they keep calling me by…."
"Sia?" A small nod of the head from Liara; a sad far-away look in her eye. "I thought that was just a standard prefix, the asari version of Miss."
"Perhaps, to some. I could understand why you would think that certainly, but….." Her eyes focus on the Salarian figure as her voice reaches a high sustained and mortally beautiful note. "It is possible I am imagining it, Sia is just an old word with lost meanings. It would not be the first time I have made, what was that saying Joker used? Mountains out of molehills? My mother would reprimand me daily for it, thinking that people were talking about me behind my back. She always says that…" Liara catches the words as they leave her, realising her mistake and quietens. "I don't suppose that matters now. "
She turns her attention to the changing scenery outside the cabs window. The sun has set now, silhouetting the skyline of Serrice against a sky that is tinted with purple ink. We must be getting close to our destination; the cab has begun to descend out of the sky high way to the lesser used routes. The buildings have changed, become more suburban but no less spectacular; I look back at Liara.
"It is alright that I'm here isn't it? I don't want to be in the way."
"No, in fact you will cause quite a stir. A famous Spectre, and a human at that I would not be surprised if you get at least one proposal of marriage." This time the grin she gives me is genuine and huge. "And a dozen offers to meld."
"Really? Suddenly I'm not quite so apprehensive about this trip."
Liara's laugh is accompanied by a slap to my arm. "Be careful what you wish for Commander, an amorous asari is a dangerous thing."
"Tell me about it." Resting my hand on hers, I turn to look at her deeply before grinning at her. "I have the wounds to prove it."
If Jatietha heard the girlish squeal Liara drew from me over the sound of the U'lta adagio she made no mention of it when we landed. This moment, that laugh, the look in Liara's eyes, I wanted more than anything to hold onto it forever and not let it slip into the next, because what came after will forever haunt me.
Liara turned from me, her face stilled eyes widened and filled with anguish, terror, sorrow. I follow her eye line, and gasp.
The House of T'soni was in flames.