Four: Benezia

Benezia T'Soni lay staring silently at the ceiling in the darkened room. She was alone save for the hum of the ship around her, and the slow, reassuring rhythm of Aethyta's breathing as she slept in the cot beside the door.

She had eaten and drank and slept herself, for a time. Physically at least, she felt all the better for it, the dull aches of her body subsiding, though the pain in her temples was only a little diminished. A shower had been promised in the morning, along with a reprieve from bed, and she found herself honestly looking forward to both. She felt unclean, as if her skin crawled with filth, and, bound to bed, she had nothing to do but think. And remember.

"Can't you see?" said Saren. His taloned hand gripped her shoulder tightly enough to draw blood. "Surrender. Cooperate. It's the only way we can survive."

"Yes," she said, covering his talons with her hand, ignoring the pain, the intrusion into her personal space, and instead reached for his mind with her own, past the jagged edges and strange echoes and frantic whirl of thought into the unshakeable certainty beneath. "I see."

And she did.

She shuddered and fumbled at her side for the datapad Liara had left for her, flicking it on so that she was bathed in the glow of the small screen. With the extranet apparently inaccessible, the only content on the device was preloaded and sparse: a timeline of the war of sorts, starting just prior to her arrival on Noveria, and some associated codex entries, dossiers, news reports and vid clips. Limited, certainly, but it was at least a distraction, and some bridge to understanding her current situation.

She was three years dead, and a traitor.

While the former had come as something of a shock, she hadn't been particularly surprised by the latter. She was a traitor. A criminal and worse. But dead? How were they now to explain away the fact that she wasn't?

The lie had been told skilfully, and often enough that even her fellow matriarchs believed - that, at least, was evident. In the relevant interviews, editorials, speeches and analyses included on the device, she would have seen some signs, subtle ones, that they were laying the groundwork for her eventual return, be it for imprisonment or, less likely, exoneration. She saw none.

It was also evident that her 'death', the circumstances around it, had shaken asari politics deeply, seeing a marked shift in power away from her own faction. She would not be being immodest if she said that she was- had been - one of Thessia's leading voices. She'd been able to sway important debates with her presence alone, set new policies at a galactic level and guide the direction of her people with little more than a quiet word in the right ear. For her, of all people, to fall from grace, in such as spectacular, public and, above all else, abrupt fashion...

She closed her eyes and tried to play it out in her head, forcing herself to think through the pain. Pain was good. Pain was her mind resisting the channels of thought that Saren had ingrained within her.

Her friends, of course, would have been horrified. Particularly affected would have been Effy, Gaiana and Rosi, who'd shared her concern at the possibility of a Spectre - of Saren - going rogue. The turian was powerful, wealthy, influential, and an extremely effective agent for the Council, but had begun to show signs of instability that his masters and, indeed, most of their own peers seemed wilfully blind to. When their careful investigation had hinted that there might be some truth to the rumours that Saren was looking for means to pursue his poorly-hidden vendetta against the humans, they'd been forced to act. A turian Spectre attacking humans and human colonies? With tensions between the two races already fraught, the actions of even a single rogue agent could spark a new war.

Of the four of them, Benezia had been best placed to act, already having ties to the turian through Binary Helix. They'd spent years carefully manoeuvring her into exactly the right position, helping her befriend him so that she might be drawn into his confidences enough to begin to sway him.

Her 'death' would have been a severe blow for her friends on both a personal and a political level. Privately, they would likely have felt responsible for the outcome of events, and she thought that they would have loved her well enough to grieve at her passing, whatever the exact circumstances. Publically, though, they would have lost standing, tainted by association even as they would have been forced to disavow her. Their proposals and reforms would likely have stalled, all of their decisions and ideas, past and present, subject to greater scrutiny from their peers and from the masses. Many ideas would have to be abandoned for several decades at least, if not entirely. After all, if they could misjudge one of their own intimates so badly, what else could they have been wrong about?

It would not stop there. The entire progressive faction would have been weakened, its four most powerful pillars knocked out from underneath it in one fell swoop. The dominant centrists would have been nudged a step or two towards the welcoming arms of the conservatives, undoing centuries of work weakening that faction. Both of those sides would have seen a surge in numbers too, as minor players and individuals with less ideological investment followed the prevailing wind. The overall result would have been a marked trend towards stasis and smug insularism, the very last thing her people, so slow to react at the best of times, needed.

And, ultimately, it would all be an enormous boon for those who actively disliked her, or hated all that she stood for. She was not so foolish as to think that she did not have enemies. It was very difficult to survive over eight hundred years of life without acquiring at least one or two. Her actions would have been treated by them as proof of some hidden and dangerous instability, something they'd suspected all along. They'd point to any even mildly questionable decision she had made over the years and use them to construct a pattern, likely starting with her decision to have a pureblooded daughter.

She sighed. As always, her thoughts came back to Liara.

She opened her eyes and refocused on the datapad, trying a variety of keyword searches related to her daughter against the data. There was remarkably little mention of Liara at all throughout the entire timeline, and even fewer pieces of photographic or vid evidence. Some news footage of Liara and a krogan being pulled out of a pile of rubble on the Citadel following Saren's defeat. A brief and uncomfortable interview, seemingly from not long after, at an awards ceremony. A few tangential mentions of her with regards to a ship called the Normandy and the human Spectre Shepard prior to that vessel's destruction and then... nothing.

It was puzzling, and more than a little bit worrying. Had Liara simply continued with her chosen career, there would have at least been a new article, or perhaps a paper or two over the past four years. The history of dead races might never have captured Benezia's imagination, but she had made a point of reading Liara's work, if only to gain some insight into how her estranged daughter thought and about what; she had some idea of the significance of the rediscovery if Ilos as a result. Certainly Liara, once freed from the Spectre's crew, would have gone straight back and lost herself amid the ruins? Well, perhaps that was it. Such an expedition would attract strict security measures, lest unscrupulous researchers determine the location of the planet and try to plunder its riches.

But... No, that couldn't explain it all away.

Liara said the scars now adorning her body had come from Harbinger. Harbinger had a quite detailed entry to itself, a living ship akin to Sovereign but bigger and thought to be, in some way, the leader of the Reapers. For Liara to have faced the monstrous machine, she must have been part of the military action on and above Earth, for it had sat there since the start of the war. And, even if she overlooked that little detail, the fact remained that the datapad contained extensive biographies on a wide variety of seemingly insignificant people, most evidently written by Liara herself. What did she care of a human called Samantha Traynor, part of the Normandy crew or not? How many times did she need to read about how wonderful the damnable human Spectre was?

"You sleep alright?"

Her head jerked up in surprise to find Aethyta, sitting on the edge of the cot, watching her impassively. When had she woken up?

"Yes. I suppose."

"Nightmares?"

"No."

She had not dreamed at all, such as she could remember. For the first time since she'd boarded Saren's ship, her sleeping hours had contained... emptiness. It was welcome.

"How's your head?"

The ache was constant, but the throbbing had, at least, decreased in frequency. The room no longer swam when she moved. The pain that remained was welcome. A reminder.

"Improving. Thank you."

"Eh, I didn't have anything to do with it," Aethyta said dismissively, and then pointed towards the datapad with her chin. "I see the kid gave you some reading material."

"What? Oh, yes. A... history of the war, of sorts. But I believe it's incomplete."

"Yeah?"

"There's nothing about Liara in here. A few mentions just after I... 'died', and then nothing. It is clear that she put it together for me, but... She avoided my questions too, now that I think of it."

Aethtya sat still for a long moment, evidentially thinking. Then she shrugged in that way that meant she knew more than she was willing to say.

"She's probably working up to it. There's a lot to tell."

"You were involved?"

"For some of it. I... We... Well, it's... complicated."

The inflection to the final word immediately put Benezia on guard.

"How 'complicated'?"

Aethyta's internal debate was lengthier but rather more obvious this time.

"The truth of the matter?" Aethyta sighed eventually. "The kid went right off the deep end for about two years. Set up shop on Nos Astra as an intel broker, of all things. Fell in with some bad people. It was bad enough that the other matriarchs got worried that she was turning into another you. Well, you after Saren. At the time I thought it was because you died and then the girlfriend got herself-"

"Girlfriend?"

The word burst from her mouth before she could quite stop it, and the look Aethyta gave her was almost amused. She supposed it would be funny, to an outsider's perspective: war, death and other horrors, her daughter 'going right off the deep end' and she was immediately side-tracked by the possibility that Liara had finally found someone to share her bed? But it was something clean and simple to focus upon, and Benezia always been one to look for good news within bad.

She'd despaired, over the years, of her daughter ever taking a lover. She'd even written to Aethyta about it on more than one occasion, seeking advice. Most maidens had taken at least three or four partners to bed by one hundred, either trying the other species out for fit or simply interested in the novelty of it. Benezia herself had done so in her youth and, while she had not taken a bondmate until Aethyta, she'd nonetheless had a welcome succession of bodies to warm her bed, her heart and her mind, even after her daughter's birth. But Liara had always seemed actively disinterested in pursuing such vital connections.

"Yeah. Your little girl's all grown up despite herself."

"I- Goddess!" She gave herself a moment for the news, and the relief, to sink in. "Did she survive the war? Are they still together? Is it anyone I know? What-"

"I don't think it's my place to spill the beans on that one. The kid can tell you what she wants to when she'd good and ready."

There was a twist to Aethyta's tone at the last that she recognised as bitter, and had a sudden, terrible feeling that they'd inadvertently strayed into territory that she'd desperately wanted to avoid. She had no strength for a confrontation now, whatever she deserved.

"Aethy-" she began.

"Don't you 'Aethy' me, Benezia T'Soni," Aethyta snapped, real fire in her eyes, sudden anger in every line of her body. "You've got no right."

It was a moment before Benezia could find her voice again.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," Aethyta harrumphed, and glanced down, clearly deliberating. When she looked up again, the anger was still there, but contained, restrained, smouldering. "You should be sorry. You promised me that you'd tell her before she hit one hundred."

"I-"

"You. Promised," Aethyta reiterated in a tone that brooked no further interruptions. "Let her decide if she wanted to meet me or not. But then she turned up in my bar at one hundred and seven with no idea who the fuck I was, and by that stage it was too late for me to do a damned thing about it except pour her a drink and let her walk out the door."

"I left a letter," Benezia said quietly into the sudden, ringing silence. "In the event of my death."

"And a fat lot of good it did!" Aethtya all but spat. "They seized all of your assets and papers as part of the investigation. And since she knew you weren't really dead, I'm guessing Liara didn't feel the need to push the issue for access."

"I couldn't have known that would happen!" she protested.

"That's not the point. Goddess! Was it really that hard to say: 'Hey, kid, your other parent's name is Aethyta Argyris and she'd like to meet you one day'?"

"Yes," she whispered, bowing her head. "It should not have been, but it was."

When Aethyta spoke next, her voice was quiet and level, which was somehow far, far worse than the open anger of just seconds before.

"Were you that ashamed of me?"

"What?" Her head jerked back up, eyes seeking out Aethyta's. "No! Never ashamed. Never of you."

Aethyta, though, clearly did not believe her.

"Then why?"

She'd been eight months pregnant when she'd left Aethyta, with another five to go. Pregnancies among matriarchs were not unheard of, especially among ones who'd made the change young like herself, but were certainly uncommon enough to be noteworthy. Some of the physiological changes accompanying the transition from matron made it more difficult, and certainly more uncomfortable, to bear young. She'd been sick almost daily, her days cut short by fatigue as her body struggled with two conflicting sets of hormones and other biological instructions. It had been worth it in the end, of course, but there had certainly been times when she'd wished she'd chosen otherwise.

Conceiving had not been a sensible decision. Aethyta had actually said as much, even if she'd ultimately swallowed her doubts and agreed to be the father. Between her own works and putting out the political fires that her bondmate invariably managed to raise, Benezia had simply had too much going on in her life to have and raise a child. And it had been a new and unneeded source of tension in their relationship, too. The strain had become particularly evident as Benezia's health and patience declined; the arguments and debates that had been the hallmark of their time together had begun, for the first time, to sometimes lose their playful edge.

But it wasn't until that one late night as she lay abed, exhausted but on edge in the wake of yet another argument with her bondmate, that she'd understood the full implications of her decision, and had a moment of stark, horrible clarity: the realisation that their daughter, made in love, would drive them apart. Asari, of all the known sentients, were the most demanding of offspring, slow to mature and dependent upon their mothers for decades. If Benezia was time-poor before the child was born, she would only grow more so deficient once she arrived. Something had to give, and since it could not be the child, it needs must have been either the asari that she loved, or the position amongst her people that she had already sacrificed so much for. Her matron years. Her relationship with her sisters. Her faith.

She'd laid her hand upon her slowly swelling belly then, felt the sleepy stir of the unformed mind within her, and had wept as a secret, dark voice whispered that a young pureblood would have an easier time of it if the father was not there as a constant reminder of her parentage.

She'd never been ashamed of Aethyta. How could she be? Aethyta had passion, intelligence, a wicked sense of humour and a strength that had only made her hidden vulnerabilities all the more endearing. Benezia had been frustrated by her, certainly, annoyed, amused, surprised, charmed and more, but never ashamed. Ashamed of herself, however? Yes. Oh, yes. Especially when she knew all too well what one of her former bondmate's oldest, deepest vulnerabilities was.

She closed her eyes, feeling the tears threaten once more.

"Please," she whispered, "must we do this now?"

There was another long moment before Aethyta answered, her tone almost aggressively reasonable.

"No, I guess we don't. You're not really up to it. I know. But we have to, sooner or later."

"I know."

"Do you. Well, whoopdeedo." Aethyta rolled her eyes and settled back down onto the cot with a rustle of blankets. "You should get some more sleep. You're going to need your strength when we get back to Thessia."

"I know."

"Hmmph."

Benezia switched the datapad back off and lay back herself, trying to get comfortable in a bed designed for a human. And, later, when she dreamed, it was not Saren at her shoulder but Aethyta, whispering beautiful poison into her ear while her homeworld burned and her people screamed in darkness.