The medbay was dim and quiet at that time of the 'night'. The muffled sounds of machines coupled with slumber's breath was all that could be discerned, and the window shutters were still closed giving Liara and El'Jaid some privacy. She sat in a chair next to El'Jaid. Her hand holding the sleeping Commander's as her thumb gently ran circles on the Specter's warm skin. Dr. Chalkwas had long since gone to bed. Liara herself should have been sleeping as well, but her concerned mind could not let her rest.
She had spent the past few hours set up her things in the Observation deck. After that had been completed, EDI had let her in to El'Jaid's cabin. The fish still swam around; oblivious to the world beyond theirs. Liara had done her best to pick up the broken shards of glass and model plastic. She had even found El'Jaid's bent and distorted tags again. She didn't ask anyone what had happened, from the state of the rest of the room, she knew.
Right now she had to be close to her Commander. Her savior. Her love.
As she sat there, every so often El'Jaid would start mumbling, or let out a quite scream in a language Liara knew was Prothean. The sedative that Dr. Chalkwas had administered had worn off long ago. Now El'Jaid 'slept' due to simple exhaustion. But for all intents and purposes she was still gone from the world.
All Liara could do was be near, and for the moment that would have to do.
Liara's eyes went back to the ancient data pad she held in her lap. It had been her mother's and was one of a few things that Liara had taken possession of since Benezia's death. It held the full three thousand chapter text of the Asari Ushiad, which when translated in to standard Galactic was, The Illumination. It was the main theological text for the followers of the Goddess Athame.
Liara's eyes roved over the old, but never dimming display.
...For rather than give her Joined-Lover as a sacrifice to Lamia; she challenged the Ardat-Yakshi to single combat and slew the wicked creature. And so the Lady Athame was brought before the Grand Inquisition of the Tribes. She was bound and shackled under the charge of Hersey, and for killing their false goddess.
The Inquisition desired to show Athame as a sham. An apostate to their society. They held anger in their hearts, and their mind's were blind. They now were lost, for they had no one to lead them.
"Tell me Lady, what defines Good and Evil? What defines Life and Death? Do we truly have souls or are we just shards left to be devoured by the Great Black?" An Inquisitor asked Athame. The rest of the Inquisition stood at their allotted stations in front of their 'chosen' false deity.
Athema turned to the young and ambitious questioner. "If you were to kill your sister-kin would that be an evil act?" She asked the inquisitioner.
"Of course my Lady."
"When a flower wilts and loses it's color. Will giving it back to water or earth give it life?"
"No my Lady." The questioner responded with certainty.
"Are you not an individual, autonomous and true until your final day?" Athame asked.
"Of course my Lady.
"Then you have either been deceived or have acted rashly." Athema said calmly. "For is it evil to kill a sister-kin to protect your daughter and home? Can you not take the head of the Hai'zu that has wilted and lost it's color and have it committed to water or earth and have it grow anew again? When you Join yourself to another, are you not both made as one from that moment of the joining until the end of time?" The Goddess asked simply.
The Inquisition's mood turned ill. The Lady's questioner turned angry and lashed out. "Your a trickster! A twister of words! I knew none of the details when you asked for a response to your first questions!"
"And you are impulsive and impatient. For I never required a response. I only asked the question. It is sinful to react without knowing all that you can. It is foolish to do nothing when you should act. It is blasphemous to believe that life ends with the Death. Such are my answers to your questions."
So spoke Lady Athame. Praise to the Goddess.
"Praise to the Goddess." Liara spoke softly as she set down the data pad and turned to look at El'Jaid. Liara had never been particularly religious. Yet after she had given El'Jaid's remains to Cerberus. She had admitted that she had turned toward the Goddess for answers of some kind. She had turned to the Goddess to find absolution for everything that had happened. Absolution for the friend who had sacrificed himself for her, and Absolution for the woman who lay in the bed next to her. Every time she had read that section of the Ushiad she couldn't help but feel as if she was the impulsive and impatient questioner. Yet at the same time when Liara turned and looked upon El'Jaid, she couldn't help but feel thankful to the Goddess for giving her a second chance. For giving El'Jaid a second life.
Perhaps I'm not as rash as I think I am. Liara thought as she gently withdrew her hand from El'Jaid gentle hold and crossed the medbay for some water.
As she withdrew from the dim illumination of El'Jaid's bed, the darkness enveloped her. As she stood cloaked in the dark looking back at the sleeping Specter, a shiver ran through her as a gnawing thought crossed through her mind. What bound you in the cold void? What kept you here? You said the last thought you had was of me, and the first you had was of me when you awoke...What was that thought?
As Liara stood there alone, in self imposed silence and exile, the door to the medbay opened up. Her eyes were momentarily blinded. It was like the coming of dawn. But as quickly the doors had opened, they closed again. And Liara and El'Jaid were no longer alone. As Liara's eyes struggled to readjust to the darker atmosphere of the medbay she could hear the soft steps of an individual as they approached closer and closer.
Liara's eyes then fixed on the form of a woman approaching El'Jaid's right side. Her arms crossed in front of her chest as she leaned back and looked upon the sleeping Commander. The intruder's face gave not a thought away. Liara crept closer, but still remaining in the sheath of night. She knew this human woman. She was dressed in a pair of baggy gray sweat pants, and wearing a black camisole.
"Good evening Ms. Chambers." Liara said softly as she walked forward in to the light.
Kelly Chambers let out a quiet shriek in surprise and jumped into the desk near where Liara had been sitting sending Liara's data pad clattering to the floor.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean startle you." Liara said consolingly.
Kelly simply smiled finally recognizing who had accosted her. "It's alright Dr. T'Soni." Kelly kneeled down and picked up the fallen data pad. Her eyes quickly grazing over the text. She stood up and handed the data pad back to Liara.
Liara took it but still held a quizzical look on her face.
Kelly returned Liara's gaze with a small smile. "I couldn't sleep. I had to come and see how the Commander was doing." Kelly sat down in the chair on the right of Shepard's bed and Liara drifted over to another on El'Jaid's left. Liara's eyes looked back to the sleeping Specter's face. El'Jaid's mouth continued to mumble and the look of angst was on her face.
"I'm surprised to still see you awake Dr. T'Soni." Kelly said quietly. "Your trip from Halgalaz must have been a long one."
"It was. But there are times when my mind won't let me rest." Liara responded as she took El'Jaid's left hand in to her right. The look of strain on the Commander's face seemed to weaken at Liara's touch.
Kelly did not miss the change.
"It was a mistake for Shepard to take that call. It was like a relapse for her." Kelly said with a touch of bitter anger on her voice. "Hackett shouldn't have made that call. He had already asked enough of her."
"What do you mean?" Liara asked.
Kelly looked up at the face of the Shadow Broker. And her response was much more careful. "What have you heard so far?"
"Only that the Bahak system has gone silent. The Batarian's are calling for war against the Alliance, and that the Normandy was last seen in the Bahak system by Batarian satellites before all communication with the system was lost. Finding out exactly what happened though is partially why I am here." Liara responded deflecting her interest away from Bahak. She didn't want to hear the conjecture or rumors from anyone else besides El'Jaid. Even it was from El'Jaid's Yeoman. Bahak would wait till she could talk with El'Jaid.
"What is the other part to why you are here?" Kelly asked picking up on Liara's cue.
Liara pulled away slightly and raised her legs up on the seat. She wrapped her left free arm around them, hugging them to her chest as she let her eyes fall. "For two years I couldn't be there for her. For two years she was dead, and I struggled to move forward. I couldn't move forward."
Kelly leaned forward tucking one leg under her body as she listened.
Liara continued. "Some could say...have said...I was obsessed. Maybe I was. I did act rashly. I acted from a point of grief and pain. I reasoned at first that only she could stop the Reapers. I rationalized that by taking her body and giving it to Cerberus, that I has doing it for the best; even though I knew that they would only use her. " She brought her gaze up and looked Kelly right in the eyes.
"And now you don't believe that only Shepard can stop the Reapers?" Kelly asked softly.
Liara winced at the question. "I...I didn't mean it to sound like that."
Kelly just simply sat and listed, silently urging Liara to continue.
"After I left Shepard's body with Cerberus; I hoped that she wouldn't come back. I prayed for her to finally be a peace and rest. I begged Miranda to just leave her at rest. That the price was already far too high for her, and for me." Liara said simply. "When I saw her again on Illium. I wasn't even really sure if it was her. I had reports saying that she, or someone trying to be her had been seen. Sounded almost like a extranet rumor, and I took it as such. For two years since I had left Shepard with Cerberus I heard nothing. I had sent out feelers looking for any information, but after a few months of finding nothing new; having no indication whether or not Cerberus had been successful, I gave up. I was shocked that she was standing, literally standing in front of me in my office on the Trading floor. Yet I still could not believe it was her. Even when she helped me rescue Feron, I still didn't truly believe it was her. I know modern day science can repair a body. That any VI can imitate a famous person reasonable well. But I didn't believe that the dead could be brought back to life. Honestly I'm still surprised by it." Liara said and she softly rubbed El'Jaid's hand with hers.
"You wonder how can a soul comeback to life." Kelly stated simply. Liara gave a slight wince affirming Kelly's insight.
"I don't know much about the many Asari philosophies, and even less of the Ushiad, and I am not a theologist by any means." Kelly stated softly. "And I know that Shepard is not particularly religious. But to most Hindu's, when a person dies prematurely their soul enters a state called the Subtle Body and remains there until the time of their life is done. Until that time, they believe the soul will try to reenter the body if it can."
Liara listened turning over what she had just heard in her head.
"What little I know of the Ushaid, it speaks that if a person dies in agony, their last thoughts can rivet their soul in this plane, rather then returning to Athame." Kelly continued.
Liara's brows furrowed in disdain, and her body shivered.
"That upsets you, doesn't it." Kelly said consolingly.
"She told me that when she died, the last thought she had was of me, and the first thought was of me when she woke. I don't want to be the reason; the cause of her agony. She deserves more than this. She deserves rest." Liara hissed.
"And what if you are?" Kelly responded, her tone turning hard. "Does it matter now? Here in the present? With all that has happened. The mission to stop the Collectors, helping you take up the mantel of Shadow Broker and now with Bahak; it only makes me an even more firm believer that wishing for things to go back to how they 'were' is foolish. All we have is the present and all we can do is work in the now."
Kelly steepled her finger's in front of her mouth letting a few moments of silence pass by. "I don't mean to pry, but do you believe that Shepard is who you remember her to be?" He asked delicately.
The question was rhetorical. Liara knew what Kelly was hinting to and she didn't want to respond. The fact that she could touch the very fiber's of El'Jaid's being meant that she had an insight to El'Jaid that few others had. Something's, and some experiences were just private.
"I don't make it a habit of talking about my patient's, even to loved ones. And I don't make it a habit of talking about private matters unless the other person is willing to. But, on a professional level; Doctor to Doctor, I don't need to tell you just how fragile Shepard is." Kelly quipped. " She has always been a text book case of PTSD. She copes very well through heavy regime of exercise, and by focusing on her duties. She has also avoided the pitfalls of substance abuse. But as far as I can tell, she has always refused treatment of any kind beyond what she can do for herself. And that was well before the beacon at Eden Prime. " Kelly quipped sourly as she looked up the ceiling. "I'm asking for your help and insight."
Liara's frown deepened slightly, but she relented her silence. "Yes...and...No. When we last...joined, I could feel her. I knew the she was her. But at the same time she was different. Changed. I can't really explain it other then say that I knew it was her, but different. Alien. She just wasn't simply...she's not just Shepard." Liara said clinching her body closer together, but even still she refused to let go of El'Jaid's hand.
"Every time I've tried to 'talk' with her, she turns it on it head and aims everything I'm using on her right back at me. She treats it like a game. Damn frustrating. Yet with you; I can tell she is different with you." Kelly said looking back to Liara.
Liara diverted her eyes and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Perhaps its the classic example that opposites attract. In this case almost literally." She responded.
"Perhaps. But I don't believe so. When she met you, you didn't represent any faction for her. You represented something that she possibly feels she can never have. Freedom, safety. A blank slate. A chance to start over." Kelly said lackadaisically.
"What? I don't understand." Liara was lost.
"When Shepard met you, you were researching the Prothean Ruins on Therum. You didn't represent a government, faction, or company. You were just following something you loved. Did you know that Shepard wanted to study linguistics after she graduated from high school?"
"I...no. I didn't. How do you know?" Liara asked surprised. She knew El'Jaid liked books, and history, but had never really inquired as to why.
...she had never really gotten the chance...
Kelly gave a small smile. "Cerberus has a very detailed bank of History when it comes to Shepard. They needed it when bringing her back. And since I was to be her counselor, I needed to know as much as I could about her. I read a transcript of a physiological evaluation of Shepard right after Mindior."
Liara shut her eyes. "By the Goddess..."
"Instead of following her desire, she bound herself to the Alliance. An establishment to which she harbors a lot of anger and pain towards. And why? Because she wanted to make it better. More effective. She didn't want another Mindoir to happen. She doesn't want another person like her." Kelly responded in a clinical manner, and she stood up. Her time was over.
"So what...what now? Should she just continuing to run from the Alliance? Liara asked.
"That is an option, though not a likely one." Kelly said as she started towards the door. "Shepard is convinced the Reapers are coming, as am I. But it is all a matter of when. No one knows. But she will need the Alliance to fight them. At the same time keep in mind Dr. T'Soni; that the Alliance, and the Council do not and will not take kindly to Shepard's message. Things will get much, much worse before they get better."
"Then what else should I do? I will help her fight the Reapers, I can force the Alliance to listen. I can..." Liara said hurriedly, but Kelly cut her off.
"If you want this. If you want her. Be there for her. Treat her like you always have. A person. Many people already don't, and many more, won't. If you want her, you can't turn back now. You can't run away." Kelly said forcefully.
"I don't run..." Liara growled in indignation.
"Good, because the nightmare is far from over." Kelly said as the med bay doors opened like heaven's gates again and she was gone.
Author's Note:
El'Jaid Shepard is half Hindu-Indian (Mother's side), and half Scotch-English (Father's side).