After Lair of the Shadow Broker
She'd been wrong, embarrassingly, hilariously wrong about pretty much everything having to do with Liara T'Soni, and as she sat on her bed, her eyes still fixed on the door that the archeologist had just left through, Melanie Shepard's mind was cataloging all the times she'd realized that in the last few days.
The first had been when she'd returned to Illium to deliver the intelligence on the Shadow Broker that she'd gotten from the Illusive Man. Her decision to destroy the Collector Base had served as a pretty definitive resignation from Cerberus and, despite what had passed between them, she wanted to spend a bit of the limited free time she now had helping Liara to finally put this obsession with the Broker to rest.
After she gave the data to the asari, the revelations she'd gotten in return stunned Melanie: that it had been Liara who had given her body to the Lazarus Project, that she had crossed the Shadow Broker to do it, and that the Broker was working with the Collectors. Melanie had believed that Liara had stopped caring about her and that she had lost her focus on the real threats; instead it turned out that everything she'd done had been to save Shepard, to defeat an ally of the Reapers, and to avenge the person who'd helped her do it. She knew why Liara had hesitated to tell her this before, that she'd been guilty over what Cerberus might have done with Shepard's body and afraid of how Melanie would react when she found out, but she still wished she'd known before she made a fool of herself.
The feeling that she'd misjudged Liara's emotions only deepened after Shepard had arrived at her apartment to find the information broker missing. While looking for clues as to where the asari might have gone after the assassination attempt, she found much that she hadn't expected. The picture of the Normandy SR1 by Liara's bed, the painting of Ilos on the wall, the piece of Shepard's old chest plate, all of it told Melanie that she wasn't the only one that had had trouble moving on.
Those thoughts and more were racing through her mind as she and her team, along with Vasir, approached the Baria Frontiers office. She'd been trying to figure out what to say to Liara, how to apologize for her harsh words weeks earlier but no sooner had she stepped out of the car than her indecision was washed in a wave of heat and force. As she picked herself up and stared at the shattered facade of the building in front of her, she had felt a knot forming in her gut; Liara couldn't be dead, especially not when there was so much left unsaid between them.
Shepard was always cool in battle, but as she'd fought her way through the mercenaries flooding the offices, she'd felt like ice, putting bullets between the eyes of the Shadow Broker's forces the only thing preventing her mind from focusing on worst-case scenarios. It was only when Liara reappeared that the tension within the Specter released and she could allow herself the luxury of thinking beyond the moment.
In the battles that had followed while tracking down Vasir and on the huge ship orbiting Hagalaz, Melanie had been deeply impressed at how formidable the archeologist had become, never more so than when they'd confronted the Shadow Broker. The yahg had been arrogant and dismissive of them, thinking that he knew all of their secrets, but when Liara revealed that she knew his as well, she broke his composure, shortly before she broke the skylight and brought down the lightning that vaporized him.
Afterwards, when Shepard put her arms around Liara to reassure her that her quest was finally over, she started to suspect. The way her heart-rate rose when Liara's body pressed up against hers, the swell of emotion when she felt Liara's breath and tears warm against her face, all of it warned Melanie that the barriers she'd tried to put up around her relationship with the asari were starting to break down but it wasn't until that evening, when Liara came back with her to the Normandy, that she'd known for sure.
Since she'd returned from the Collector Base, Melanie had been telling herself that she was okay. Objectively, the mission had gone much better than she had any right to have expected, the crew rescued and the base destroyed with only two casualties: the geth that EDI had dubbed "Legion" and the assassin Thane Krios. She had gotten out cheaply given that this was supposed to be a suicide run, but with Liara, she could admit that it still hurt, that victory had cost more than she wanted it to. Once, she would have been scared by how easily Liara was able to slip past her mask and get to the pain underneath, but not anymore. Now, Melanie welcomed how at ease she felt around her, and that's when she knew. She had been wrong two years ago when she rejected Liara, and when the new Shadow Broker got up to leave, their evening sadly over, a part of Shepard just wanted to grab her, to pull her close, kiss her, and plead with her to stay.
It wasn't the right time though. She still had a mission to do for Hackett, rescuing Amanda Kenson, and Liara had to get her new base of operations back up and running. Afterwards, when Melanie gets back, there'll be a little time for them before the galaxy intervenes again, or at least that's what she told herself. She knew then that she loved Liara T'Soni and despite all the times she's been wrong, she hopes that maybe, there's still a chance to make things right.