A/N: Sorry for the wait. Hope this makes up for it.
Liara is scared.
As an asari, she's no stranger to losing people. Though she's just barely over a hundred, she's still lost a handful of non-asari friends over the years to a variety of misfortunes - violence, disease, age… it's just part of being long-lived. But this… this is different. Alena's life had only just begun. She hadn't even been halfway through it yet. And still she was torn away in an instant.
It's not fair. Not even slightly.
Liara cries openly at Alena's memorial service, shaking and sobbing out of control. Tali reaches over and puts a comforting arm around her, lending the asari her shoulder to cry on. Liara isn't sure why Tali is going out of her way for her even in the midst of her own grief, but she's grateful to the quarian all the same.
With her friend's help, she manages to get through the service.
The first few weeks are the worst.
After Alena's funeral, the crew goes their separate ways. Lucas, Kaidan, Ashley and Joker go back to the Alliance. Tali returns to the flotilla. Garrus gets his job back at Citadel Security. Even Wrex gets himself together, going back to his old job as a mercenary.
Liara's dig site in now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Her mother is dead. She has nowhere to go.
Liara knows that Alena would want her to pick herself up and move on - she understands that. But the pain is still so raw. It feels like only yesterday that the woman charged into her dig site, gun in hand, Lucas and Tali in tow, and started grilling her with questions about her mother. When she closes her eyes, she can smell the dust in the air, feel the ground shaking, hear the mechanical chatter of the Geth outside.
It is six months ago, and she is boarding the Normandy for the first time. It is five months ago, and she is watching her mother draw her last breath. It is four months ago, and she is sitting beside Alena in the medbay as the woman clutches the hand of an unconscious Kaidan, the wounds he obtained on Virmire open and weeping pus. It is three months ago, and Alena is pulling herself out of a pile of rubble, her front splattered with Saren's blood and her arm bent at an irregular angle, but an unmistakable grin on her face as she strides forward.
It is one month ago, and the Normandy is burning. It is one month ago, and she and Ashley are hauling a wounded Lucas into an escape shuttle as Kaidan runs off to find Alena. It is one month ago, and she sees the flare of the Normandy exploding behind them in the shuttle's rear viewport. It is one month ago, and the shuttles are touching down on the surface of Alchera.
It is one month ago, and Staff Commander Alena Shepard is dead.
At that point, Liara's eyes snap open and she dissolves into a fresh bout of tears. The pain is unbearable, the memories overwhelming. She doesn't want to remember anymore. But the memories won't leave him alone. They follow her everywhere she goes, every nook and cranny of the Citadel she explores. In the elevator, in the shuttles, in the streets, in the shops… everywhere.
Liara can't escape it. Her late friend's face infiltrates her dreams and her reality alike, leaving her broken and lonely and utterly, utterly terrified. And all she knows is that she has to escape.
So when she's offered a job on Ilium four months after the Normandy's destruction, she jumps for it. Liara is desperate for a way out, and now she's found it.
The morning that she leaves, she takes everything with her (which admittedly is not much, but still…). She boards her ride without a second thought. All she knows is that she needs to get away - so she does.
Liara doesn't look back.