Six: Liara

"Wait, you're-" the girl began.

"Yes?"

"You're Liara T'Soni, aren't you? You were with Commander Shepard on the Normandy and-"

"Yes," Liara said smoothly, torn between relief and disappointment but masking it with a smile.

On one hand, her newfound fame would certainly make the task ahead of her easier. If people thought her a hero, experience suggested that they would be more inclined to listen to what she had to say. On the other, part of her had rather hoped that her supposed celebrity was not so well entrenched amongst her people. Her time as the Broker had only served to reinforce her natural disposition towards the limelight and shunning thereof; being known, a face recognisable galaxy-wide, was dangerous and deeply uncomfortable besides. The attention had been bad enough on Earth, those few days.

"I am. And you are..?"

"Aurelia Vamos," the youth said, drawing herself up and saluting in the southern style, her open hand flat over her heart. "I was part of Matriarch Eachannythis' retinue. I - Goddess! It's an honour, Lady T'Soni."

It took a moment for Liara to realise that the compliment and honorific was directed towards her. She had to force herself not to turn around. There had only ever been one Lady T'Soni while Liara had been alive.

"'Lady T'Soni' is my mother," she corrected gently but firmly. "'Doctor' will suffice for me."

She saw the flicker of a question pass across the commando's face, and then her gaze fell over Liara's shoulder. The rifle snapped back up, the young asari falling back into a defensive stance.

"Wait, that's-"

"My mother," Liara said, quickly moving to position herself between the two, turning her head slightly so she could keep the sniper's nest in view. She was still trying to get used to having half of her normal field of vision. She heard movement behind her, and knew that Aethyta was bringing her own gun up, making the suddenly tense scene worse.

"But she-"

"She was in stasis, during the war," she said quickly. "She was indoctrinated. Do you know what that is?"

"I've heard rumours," Aurelia said, glancing between mother and daughter uncertainly. "Some kind of mind-control..?"

"Yes. Exactly. The Reapers targeted the leaders of the major races and tried to brainwash them into betraying their own people. That's why the Batarian Hegemony fell so quickly. My mother's crimes were not her own, and we have nothing to fear from her now." Or so Liara devoutly hoped. She reached out, then, and laid her hand atop the rifle's muzzle, exerting a gentle downwards pressure. "Please. If you cannot trust her, trust me."

After a long moment, Aurelia let the gun drop, then abruptly holstered it behind her back. Liara felt a surge of relief wash through her: the first hurdle cleared.

"Sorry, my La- I mean, Doctor. It's just-"

"It is quite understandable."

She favoured the commando with another smile, and only then did she dare a glance over her own shoulder at her parents. Aethyta was watching her with a hint of approval but Benezia...

Liara looked away quickly, not quite ready to face what she saw there.

Aurelia led them through the camp, quickly joined by her slightly older partner Griete, explaining the situation as they went. Liara interrupted periodically to ask questions or clarify matters, as did her father; Benezia, though, remained uncharacteristically silent, head bowed whenever the commandos snuck suspicious glances back at her.

Aurelia and Griete were all that remained of the household guards of two different matriarchs. The pair had met in the ancient, disused sewers below Armali's winding, paved streets, each directed by their Lady to get their household's children to safety. The bombardment and invasion of Thessia, for them, had passed mostly in darkness, the children barricaded in some forgotten cellar while they took turns to raid and scavenge above ground for supplies. Sometimes they encountered other survivors and were able to lead them to safety. At others, they were not.

By the time Reapers had finally fallen, their bedraggled group had numbered almost fifty. The two commandos had been joined by a third, and a matron who'd run with a merc company in her maiden days. Twenty-three children under thirty, including toddlers and an infant still at her terrified mother's breast, a dozen more girls progressing towards maturity and a handful of civilian adults, mainly matrons. When they'd emerged from the safety of their hiding place, they'd joined other shocked survivors in making their way towards the markets, where Matriarch Efrosyni and her half-dozen surviving followers had begun to organise a camp.

Liara recognised the name as a figure from her childhood, one of a group of politically powerful asari her mother had always seemed to find time for, sometimes at Liara's expense. Benezia recognised it too; Liara heard her sharp inhalation of breath.

But Efrosyni had been wounded at some point during the final days of the defence, and, sickened from the subsequent infection, now lay on her deathbed. Without her wisdom to guide them into decisive action, the adults of the camp, skewed wildly young in any event, were locked in debate, trying and failing to build a consensus on how best to proceed without her. The division of opinion was threatening to splinter the camp and Liara reflected, not for the first time, that the perpetual plebiscite that was the asari political process was as terrible at responding quickly and rationally to crises.

This flaw in their governance had been recognised, long ago and by wiser heads than Liara's, and systems put into place to account for it, but never had a disaster of this magnitude even been contemplated. The police and other emergency responders had been all but wiped out in the initial bombardments and invasion waves, the High Command that oversaw their shattered military decimated, scattered around the surviving colonies, and the matriarchs that kept their people's wisdom and the knowledge of their laws alive were all missing or dead- or worse.

The Reapers were efficient killers. Liara would give them that. And they'd seemed more interested in killing her people outright than gathering them up for processing, like they did to the other races. One day, perhaps, she'd have time to investigate the discrepancy.

When they reached the largest of the emergency shelters, pulling double-duty as a dining hall and debating forum, she was stopped from entering by a hand on her arm.

"I would speak with Efrosyni," Benezia said as she turned back. "She is my friend of old. Please."

There was concern, in her mother's eyes, for her friend, but there, too, behind it, something dark and fearful as they flicked towards the shelter and its audible hubbub. Liara found herself suddenly reminded of all of the engagements and parties and functions she'd been dragged along to in her youth. Hundreds of mornings, afternoons and evenings spent in misery, wishing she were somewhere, anywhereelse, hiding in corners and out-of-the-way places, alone but for the nervous flutter of her heart in her chest, the wretched stammering of her own voice and the certain knowledge that she would never be as beautiful or as elegant or as intelligent as the asari who moved gracefully through the throng, laughing with melodic voices and flirting with light hands and swaying hips.

Liara let her own gaze flick over to Aethyta, who saw the question in her eye and shrugged.

"Eh, I probably wouldn't be able to resist kicking their heads in anyway." She nodded to Griete. "Alright babe, lead the way."

When her parents were gone, Liara sighed. It would be easier, without them watching, to be the person she'd become, but the irony of the situation was not lost on her. She, who had shunned the political sphere, seeking it out. Her mother, who'd lived for it, fleeing in apparent fear.

"Lady?" Aurelia prompted when she didn't move.

"Doctor," she corrected absently, still frowning at the door. She had always promised herself that she would never be like her mother. And yet, here she was, about to do an incredibly Benezia-like thing, albeit in a Liara-like way. Or so she hoped.

She opened the door, stepped through it to stand at parade-ground rest at the back of the crowd, and waited until silence, in dribs and spurts, fell, heads turning. Only when she had the full, undivided attention of every person in the room did she speak, her voice cool and calm and deadly quiet:

"What is going on here?"