Shepard shook her head and bought her hand up to her nose, wiggling the tip experimentally. She gasped with pain.

"Shit" Grimacing into the mirror she sighed. Cloudy green shined back from two impressive black eyes. She snorted back a mixture of blood and warm water spiting it out into the sud filled, red flecked basin. When she was happy, she moved from the washroom and into the cabin proper, throwing herself down into the chair by her console.

Garrus had told her to get some sleep "EDI"

"Yes Commander" The melodic tones rang out in her room.

"Can you forward me the latest casualty reports from earth?"

"Yes Commander, forwarding them to your console now, anything else Commander?"

"No EDI, that's it"

Shepard turned the screen on and accessed the reports, her eyes going wide as the list of names started scrolling before her. She watched for a moment before the volume overwhelmed her and she turned the screen off. With a sigh she made her way to the bed and lay down, her eyes falling shut as she thought of Mordin and all the other people lost to war so far.


"Joker" EDI glanced across at the pilot sat next to her.

"Yeah?" He answered distractedly.

"I have a question to ask you"

"Another?" He sighed and looked at her, taking his cap off and scratching his head "What is it?"

"It is about Commander Shepard" EDI paused "I do not wish to impede upon the Commanders privacy but something is troubling me"

"What is it?"

"I am picking up some disturbing noises from her cabin"

"Whoa whoa" Joker waved his hands and shoved his cap back on "Whatever goes on it that room stays in that room"

EDI keyed something into the console and a wailing scream rang out in the cockpit. Joker jumped, his face a mix of horror and shock as he cut the audio.

"Christ" He ran his fingers through his beard.

"Commander Shepard is asleep, but am I correct in assuming this is not a normal human reaction to sleeping?" EDI looked at him.

"No no, it's not" Joker tapped a button on his chair "Liara?"

There was a few seconds of quiet "Yes Joker what is it?" she sounded tired.

"There's a problem with Commander Shepard, can you go to her cabin please?"

"What?" Alarm coloured her voice now "What's wrong?"

"I don't know Liara, I really don't know"


The first time Shepard heard that scream, she was nearly sick. In that sound, in that one tormented, pleading, demanding and hopelessly lost tremor were all the sounds of fear she had ever heard. In that voice she heard even her own voice, her own soul, crying out for something. For an un-nameable something.

The scream came again. Another world another voice, another life. Something evil and empty beseeching from a corner of the blackest part of the universe, hanging there timelessly, in agony and waiting. A million tired and blind stolen voices all wrapped up in that one howl, all the eternal sadness and losses and pain ever known to humanity. It was all there, as the centre of goodness in the universe was sliced open and left to bleed its crimson fluid into the dirt. It was a lone animal being eaten by a bird of prey. It was a hundred children being crushed beneath iron treads. It was one good soldier with his heart in his blood soaked hands. It was the soul and the pain and the very fibre of life, draining away, without light, without hope.

Again the scream, trembling once more on the air, weightlessly, tingling off into emptiness.

"Shepard!" Liara shouted, her biotic barrier crackling as Shepard's fist impacted it hard, directly where her face would have been.

Shepard stared, eyes barely focused as she felt the impact of a massive horror stifle her own cry of disbelief and terror. Then she backed away, scrambled a retreat up the bed and slouched there, sweat drenched back, flat to the head board, with the last thing she ever hoped to see burning behind her eyelids. The sight of Liara, staring at her in fear. A scream had woken her, a god awful scream, and something else, her name, over and over again, her name.

"Shepard" Liara lowered her barrier and reached across the bed Shepard looked terrified, but the sound of her soft gasps held Liara back, unsure, was Shepard fully awake?

"Did I hurt you?" Shepard choked out, running both hands through her hair and looking around the room, eyes wild.

"No Shepard, never" Liara moved up the bed "I shouldn't have tried to wake you, I'm sorry, but you were screaming" she shook her head and swallowed. The scream had been inhuman, wrenched forward from a fear she could not understand "Joker contacted me, told me you needed me" she threw the words out, babbling "I didn't know what to do" she wanted to reach out and take Shepard's hand, wanted to comfort her somehow but Shepard wouldn't even look at her.

"Oh God" Shepard bought her knees up to her chest and combed her fingers through her sweat dampened hair again. She was looking out at the wall but it felt like the world, the universe and forever.

"What happened?" Liara moved closer, her legs hanging off the bed as she reached out and pulled on Shepard's hands, tugging her forwards. Shepard resisted at first, then succumbed "Lay here" Liara indicated for Shepard to put her head down on her lap, and she did so without protest. Liara traced the freckles on her cheeks and nose, ran her fingers through the base of her hairline and sighed at the bruises around her eyes "Nightmares Shepard?"

"It was so real" Shepard shifted so she was lay on her back, head resting in Liara's lap "always so real"

Liara nodded, fighting her own terror at what she might see, at what could possibly have scared the most formidable human ever to grace the universe to tears, and placed her hands over Shepard's temples.

"Do you trust me Shepard?" She smiled as Shepard nodded, her eyes heavy "Relax" she uttered and entered the meld.

Liara watched through Shepard's eyes as she fought herself. She felt everything as Shepard would have, every fear, every pain and witnessed every grotesque horror. She was fighting herself. Dreaming about physically fighting herself.

Shepard pulled a thin and desperately sharp blade from somewhere as she battled with herself, grappling with her own image interminably, slashing at her flesh and the sensitive folds of skin between fingers, until the very essence, the very reality of death by knife became a gagging terror in her sleeping body. It was as though the sense, the feel of death in progress was evoked. More than a dream, it was a new threshold of anguish, a vital new terror she would ever after have to support. It was something new to live with. Until finally she had locked her own hands around the hilt and driven the slim blade into her stomach, deep and with difficulty, feeling it puncture and gash through organs. Pulling it away from her mortally wounded self she used it again and again until the other had fallen, been battered to her knees and dispatched. She watched herself go screaming, pushed abruptly away, knife still embedded, from a ledge, twisting and plunging. The passion with which she had watched her own body fall, the desire in herself to the feel the weight of it going down, had been the worst disgusting detail.

"Goddess" Liara broke the meld, placing her hands over her eyes as she tried hard not to retch at the images of Shepard bleeding and tormented.

Shepard dreamt of brutality and fear. The most disturbing part was the brutalized combat itself. It was not an image that could be retold when awake without bringing a look of shock and horror to the face of the confidant.

"The same dream, the same damned recurrent dream" Shepard sat up and hung her legs off the side of the bed. She leant forward, elbows resting on her knees as she cradled her head in her hands "never exactly the same but the same subject, night after night" she spat "chapter after chapter like some morbid book of murder!" her voice was a growl.

"How long has this been going on Shepard?" Liara couldn't look at her yet, couldn't not see the blood and the death.

"Not long, and it's not every night" Shepard shrugged "I try and avoid sleep at the moment, or wait until I crash sleep, that way I'm too exhausted to dream"

Liara looked at her now and wanted to cry. Her beautiful green eyes were blood shot and red rimmed, the deep golden flecks that normally radiated were dull, lifeless and full of fatigue. She stood up, trembling for a moment , then stalked, half stumbled, fell across the room and landed on the easy chair next to the bed. As soon as she touched the seat silent tears spilt over "Goddess" She ran her hands over her eyes, willing the emotions to abide.

"Liara" Shepard rose from the bed "I'm sorry I didn't mean..."

"No Shepard its fine" she regained her composure "residual feeling from the meld that's all"

"Ok" Shepard dropped onto the bed and slid upwards, bracing the pillow behind her. She stared at the skylight, caught sight of her reflection and nodded. The face staring back at her was good, composed, very composed in fact, which was the complete opposite to what she felt.

Liara still felt sick. She felt like her mind was covered with a thin film of horror and despair, a terrible ache that twisted like smoke, thick and black within her. She took a big shuddering breath and stood up, moved over to the bed again and sat down.

"Go back to sleep" Liara instructed her gently, putting a hand out to forestall the oncoming protest "Please Shepard, I can help you but you have to let me"

Shepard nodded and threw her arms out on the bed. She smiled when she felt Liara curl up to her, nestling in the crook of her armpit and laying her hand on her stomach. She closed her eyes and then was forcing herself to sleep. Eyes closed, knowing the woman next to her would protect her, she commanded sleep to come, and quietly, timid like a deer in a deep foreboding forest, it came, and touched her. So that she began to dream again. That dream again.

At last, after all the nights, the dream had broken its pattern, and the terror was different, further away, more distant. If I can figure out what this means, I'll know, Shepard thought suddenly, in the midst of the multi coloured haze of the dream, she knew abruptly, certainly, that if she could just make some sense from the events unravelling behind her eyes (and she knew for sure it was a dream this time ) there would be peace for her, finally. So she concentrated. If I can just understand this, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, what it takes to satisfy myself to get myself to leave, to go away, then I'll be free, it will be quiet again and this will be over.


She lay there flay on her back, the other side of the bed creased only by a small furrow made by her twitching arm as it had flung away from her; the other side of the bed that Liara had inhabited, was now untenanted. She flipped onto her stomach in the now darkened room and reached out for the clock on the nearside cabinet. It flashed the early hour at her and she groaned with utter relief. She'd slept for eight hours straight without waking. In one movement she flipped aside the clammy bed sheet, hit the floor and fumbled her way to the shower.


"Liara" Joker spun around in his seat and looked at her, expression grim "How is the Commander?" he rested his chin on his fist.

"Better" Liara said as she pulled alongside him. She glanced across at EDI "Thank you EDI"

"My pleasure Doctor" EDI's furious motion over the keypad stopped and she looked at Liara for a moment "Will Commander Shepard be displeased that I violated her privacy? My auditory sensors are tuned to pick up any unusual noises throughout the Normandy" she paused "I was not spying"

"Of course not" Liara shook her head "I believe she would appreciate you keeping the event private, but she could never be mad at your concern EDI" Liara looked out through the view screen, her haunted eyes reverted, as if looking at something only she could see "I'm glad you told me, thank you"

"Then it is my pleasure to look after you both Doctor T'Soni" EDI turned back to her console, hands moving furiously again.

"Anderson told me to look after her Liara" Joker muttered, oddly morose "How the hell am I supposed to do that? It would be easier to look after a group of Krogan toddlers" he sighed.

"You're doing a good job Joker" Liara smiled at him and laid her hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. His affection for Shepard was obvious.

"Damn though" He looked up at Liara from under the brim of his cap "I heard that scream Liara, what the hell causes Commander Shepard to scream like that?"

"Honestly Joker" Liara looked at him sadly "You don't want to know"

"You're right" He shook his head "She's faced down Thresher Maws, hell she's looked into the laser beam of a damn Reaper at point blank and not even made a peep about it" he sighed " I have no idea how she stays sane"

"Me either Jeff" Liara gave his shoulder another squeeze "But between us I'm sure we can manage to look after her"