Any man can find it in him to feel deep, painful, powerful sorrow should be respected. A man who is capable of great sorrow is also capable of fantastic good.

- Byetta Soverain, Drell Priestess

There was a reason he didn't tell many people about who he used to be. There was a host of reasons, in truth, and shame actually ranked fairly low on the list. Nothing good ever came of shame, and Shepard had always been too pragmatic to let useless emotions hold much sway over him.

The main reason he didn't tell many people was that he was sure most of them would never understand it. People who have never had that hunger gnawing in their veins and the back of their mind would never understand what it meant to love the needle, even after it had started to kill. Most of them couldn't conceive of a reality so brutal and foul that the fevered dreams of a dying junkie were fairer places to spend one's time.

Those places could not be described by a mortal tongue. It was like trying to explain a nightmare to someone and expecting them to feel the same boneless, visceral terror you felt while you were immersed within it. Once, when he had been younger and more ignorant, he had tried to explain it to some of his friends and they had all asked the same question.

Why didn't you just leave?

As though he'd somehow known there was a reality outside of Trinidad. He hadn't even known men went into space and lived there until he was twelve years old. As far as he had been concerned the whole world was Trinidad, a howling miasma of violence that inflicted itself upon him every waking moment. He had been too busy surviving to plan an escape, even if he had known one was possible.

He didn't blame them for not understanding. After all, he couldn't understand family or formal etiquette or polite society in general really, because he had never been exposed to enough of it for it to make a meaningful impression. Most people who had lived a life where they ate everyday and didn't need to be overly concerned with getting shanked while they slept couldn't even conceive of a world where such things were possible, let alone and entire city built around human suffering. And at its heart that was what Trinidad was, really, a beast that fed on the wounded and the weak and spat them back out as its foul, cankerous children.

At least one good thing had come of it, though. So maybe it was a shame that it was burning.

The whole of Cuba was burning, aerial photos flashed across the screen showing an island bathed in raging fires with nothing but charred black soil stretching on for miles behind them. The purge had begun in the heart of Trinidad and crawled out toward the rest of the country like a plague. The Reapers were ruthlessly methodical. Everything down to every edge of coastline had simply been wiped off the face of the planet.

Not just the dark brutal places, but everything that was remarkable and beautiful about the place as well. The night markets of Havana, the market towns along the coast, the miles of white beach scrawled like a satin ribbon alongside the crystalline blue waters of the sea, all of it was gone. As a hot south wind blew over the burnt remains of the north island it blew clouds of black ash out across the water until the beautiful shallow coral seas were stained black and heavy with the ashes of the dead, the ashes of twenty-three and a half million people who had been obliterated without mercy.

All that blood and smoke, and for what? The news outlets of the galaxy were all asking the same question, feverish with panic. Was this just an omen of what was to come, were the Reapers going to stop trying to harvest their civilizations and just obliterate them now? Why Earth and not Palaven? Why Cuba and not Geneva or New York or Hong Kong?

Shepard knew why. He knew the answers to all these questions. He knew why the Reapers had come down on the jewel of the Caribbean to with such biblical wrath. It was all about him. It was all to send a message to him.

It was egotistical perhaps, but unmistakable. Nowhere else on Earth or in the galaxy had been targeted that way. Cuba had been wiped off the Earth by the Reapers to show him that nothing he loved or cared about was safe, as a display of raw, opulent power and ego. It was a casual genocide so negligent it had taken barely a day for a handful of Reapers to carry it out.

It was nothing to them. Then again, pretty much everything was. To them twenty three and a half million lives was data, neat and sterile, a taunt more than an act of war. The Reapers claimed to be beyond human understanding, but Shepard had called bullshit on that a long time ago. They were like bullies were all over the galaxy, just bigger and more important.

Shepard hated bullies. That was something he'd learned about himself in Trinidad.

He watched his home burn from the couch in his cabin. He was supposed to be on duty but he couldn't make his rounds, not while it was still going on. He had to look, had to see it happening and soak it in and engrave it on his memory. He had to take the weight of it on, not flinching, and not bending an inch no matter how heavy it might be or else the Reapers would have won.

If he let this break him the Reapers had won. So he gritted his teeth and watched the vids. He didn't shy away from the rage they invoked, the pulsing scarlet fever they spread across his mind. This anger was good, it was iron and blood and fire, he could feel it pulsing through him, rushing in his veins until it was as much a part of him as anything else.

He had wanted to wipe Cuba off the face of the Earth once, but not even his darkest imaginings had contained carnage like this.

Twenty three and a half million people. He had thought that three hundred thousand was a heavy number to contemplate, but this was something else entirely. It was staggering, even to him. Twenty three and a half million. A number so huge the human mind could not even process it properly.

"Shepard," Liara sounded breathless as she burst into his quarters. Her hands were cupped over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. "I didn't think... I've been hearing about this all day and wondering why they would do that on just one island of just one planet and I realized-"

"You realized that the Reapers wanted to teach me a lesson," Shepard laughed, and it was a sound without any mirth in it at all. "Wait until the rest of the galaxy realizes it."

"They might not," Liara sounded hopeful at least. "The Alliance has always made it a policy to pretend you sprang into existence the moment you put that uniform on. It's not common knowledge that you're from Cuba."

"I was from Cuba," Shepard shook his head. "In the past tense. I can't be from somewhere that doesn't exist anymore."

Liara sank down on the couch next to him, but he waved her touch away and stood up in response. As much as he appreciated her efforts to treat him like a human being and her interest in his actual feelings, he didn't want to be coddled right now. Anger had put too much fire in him, burning through him, and it needed to be carefully controlled. If he lost control this would burn him out, it would use up everything he had left and leave him as a husk of his former self.

"Maybe they can rebuild..." She said hesitantly.

"I'm sure someone will, and it might even be Cubans that do it, but let's not kid ourselves, T'Soni. Cuba is gone. Anything that comes out of the soil will be at worst a poor imitation and at best an homage to what once was," he sighed, rubbing at the muscles standing out under the skin of his neck. They were hard and knotted as old wood under his fingers, and he could feel that tension pulling the rest of his body out of balance. His spine felt crooked, his legs ached and no matter what he did nothing was helping him keep control of this smouldering red anger.

"This isn't your fault," she said firmly.

"Christ, I know that. I'm not some stupid teenager who thinks he controls the world-" Shepard cut himself off and closed his eyes. "God, I'm sorry Liara. Can you come back in an hour? I need to exert some control over myself."

"No," Liara frowned, "this is good Shepard. This is the way you should feel."

"I doesn't matter how I should feel," Shepard replied. "I can't let this break me."

He sighed in the silence that followed and teetered back over to the couch, collapsing onto it and trying to release some of the tension from his aching muscles. His tendons groaned like old ropes as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

"There's one thing I know, that could help," Liara said finally. "It's usually something only Asari do..."

"I'll take all the help I can get," Shepard said wearily. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he couldn't do this on his own, and he didn't see any point in fighting that realization.

"Sit up and face me," Liara instructed him, folding one leg across the couch so she could face him head on. He copied her so they were sitting face to face and raised his hands with her as she brought both of them up, palms facing out. She pressed their palms together and dropped her fingers between his so their hands were interlaced.

"Open your mind," she said softly. Her voice had the soothing, meditative quality all Asari seemed able to generate to one degree or another. Shepard thought of Samara, who surrounded herself with that feeling every moment of the day, and had a momentary pang of nostalgia.

Shepard closed his eyes, letting himself slip into that thoughtless calm that accompanied meditation. His breath grew strong and steady, his heart rate dropped and when he opened his eyes again the whirlwind of emotion had settled. He felt centred and calm again.

Liara opened her eyes and they were black, full of solemn power.

"Embrace eternity," she said, her voice echoing through his mind, rippling through his chest and into his heart until it reached his soul. She reached into his mind with her arms open wide. Tell me, she whispered into his mind, let me share the load.

There are certain things that words, no matter how grand and poetic they may be, will never be able to make people understand. Memories though, intense and visceral memories full of smells and screams, those can make someone understand. They could allow Liara to live a moment just as vividly as he had all those years ago.

He hadn't been prepared for that. It was too much too suddenly and he let go of everything at once, dumping a lifetime of pain and grief at her feet like a bag of dirty laundry. He felt empty as she sorted through it, like the secret of it had been an actual pressure in his body making everything tight and painful.

Then they were sitting on the couch again, just two people holding hands, and Liara's eyes were blue again.

"Oh," she gasped, tears flooding her eyes and running down her cheeks. "Shepard."

He wouldn't have been surprised if she turned away, but she leaned forward and embraced him like a brother instead. She understood. She had not only seen what it was like, she had felt it. She knew what he was.

For the first and only time in his life Shepard put his head down, cradling it against her neck, closed his eyes, and wept.

Sometime later, when the bitter tears had dried on their faces, Shepard leaned back and felt for the tension that had been riding his body day and night for the last six months. His muscles felt almost gelatinous after that massive expenditure of emotion. He felt mercurial, like he could do anything. He was also completely exhausted.

"Shepard," Liara took one of his hands in both of hers, "I never knew."

"No one does. I mean, Alenko sort of does. He knew more than anyone else did, until now. But he doesn't really know," he emphasized the last word, catching her eyes as he did. "I've never... that was... Thank you. I can't even... just..."

He shrugged helplessly.

"Thank you," he said again, with force, squeezing her hand in his.

She smiled at him, beautiful and guileless. As sweet as the day he'd met her, even after all this time.

There was something truly transcendent about baring his soul to someone like that and receiving nothing but love in return. His entire life had been built on the rotten foundation of Trinidad and what had been done to him there. No matter what he called himself or what other people might know him as, if he went deep enough he knew X would always be there. Perhaps it was impossible to truly escape the notion that he might only ever be X, that everything he did now was just an artifice built to hide his true self from the world.

But Liara knew that wasn't true. She had looked into the deepest part of him, and found something worth caring about.

Shepard leaned back against the couch and draped an arm around her, pulling her close against his side. Her head nestled against his shoulder and she sighed wordlessly. He rested his cheek lightly against the top of her head and closed his eyes. Her hand rested lightly on his stomach and he covered it with his own. After a moment they were both asleep, drifting weightlessly through clear dreams, free for a moment from all that darkness.

I have to say, I really didn't like Liara in the first game but she grew on me quite a bit in LotSB and ME3. Almost as much as Garrus, she seems to be one of the only people who Shepard seriously discusses his feelings about the war with. And since I neglected her so dreadfully in the first two parts of the story I thought I should do something special with the two of them. If only Shepard liked the ladies Liara...