AN: Read with caution. Some descriptions may upset some readers in this chapter (call me paranoid).
This takes place after Liara escapes with Shepard's body from the Shadow Broker's base, and before she turns it over to Cerberus.
As always, the characters belong to Bioware.
Tears flowed down Liara's cheeks, her eyes bloodshot from crying. In front of her lay the stasis-tube which contained the body of her lover. Through the blue-tinted glass of the observation port she could see the remains, but she could not see Shepard in them.
The last time Liara had seen Shepard alive, her lover was looking after the safety of others. She had been commanded to see the crew of Normandy to safety, while Shepard had gone to the cockpit to make sure Joker, their friend and pilot, made it out as well. Shepard had been full of life and vibrancy and passion. Shepard was not this charred and then frozen piece of meat in a tube before Liara.
"Shepard," Liara whispered, pressing her fingers against the tube that had cost her so much. She wanted to hold Shepard again. She wanted to say goodbye. Her left hand reached down to the release on the stasis tube, knowing that she shouldn't open it if she truly wanted Cerberus to try bringing Shepard back. Liara squeezed her eyes tightly shut around fresh tears. 'No science,' Liara thought as her left hand pulled on the stasis-tube's release handle, 'can bring Shepard back from this.'
With a hiss, the seal broke on the technological coffin that held the Savior of the Citadel's corpse. Hydraulic pistons eased the lid up and mist rolled out of the chamber. Liara looked down on Shepard and shook her head softly. Her right hand caressed the charred flesh along Shepard's jaw, fingers coming into contact with bone where flesh had burned through. Sometime during Shepard's descent into Alchera's atmosphere, the hard-suit's helmet had come off. Truth was that most of Shepard's hard-suit was gone. All that remained was the chest-plate of her N7 armor and little bits of ceramic plate that had burned into her thighs.
Liara leaned into the stasis tube and hugged the body of her lover. She eased Shepard up, holding her, wishing that Shepard was alive with her. Knowing that what Cerberus had promised was impossible. The damage to Shepard's body was far worse than Liara had ever imagined. There was no flesh left that she could see that had not been burned. Shepard's left hand was a fleshless claw. Her right arm was missing entirely.
As she held the body, Liara's fingers bumped into the badly damaged "black box" data-logger that was located next to the Shepard's rebreather. A loose wire inside the device conspired with Liara's nudge.
"I love you, Liara," Shepard's voice slapped Liara, her last log entry played back over the data-logger's speaker. The voice was thin and hoarse from lack of atmosphere when the recording was made.
"Oh, Shepard!" Liara wailed, fresh sobs wracking her slender body. At one hundred and six years old she was young for an asari, but she knew as she heard Shepard's voice that she would never love another as thoroughly as she had loved the young human infiltrator. "I may be giving your body to the devil," she whispered between sobs, "but that devil will not get your last message to me."
Working as quickly as she could, the asari laid the corpse back down in the stasis-tube and began the process to remove Shepard's chest-plate. Several of the latches had molten and seized, and Liara had to force them open. But in a few minutes the body was completely nude, the armor and its precious message to Liara safely removed.
Sealing the body back into the stasis-tube, Liara's tears slowly stopped.