Ten: Liara
"Delegation," Benezia said, her voice tired but laced with wry resignation, "is an art form, and one that you would do well to master if you intend to continue at this pace."
Liara's head jerked up from its resting place atop her desk, wincing as the tight, tender skin down the side and front of her neck pulled with the sharp motion. She winced again, inwardly, when a data stick slowly unpeeled itself from her undamaged cheek and fell, clattering away amongst the clutter surrounding the bases of her monitors. She touched her hand to her face then, feeling the rectangular indentation the stick left here.
And for one, long, horrible moment, she was a gangly thirty year-old again, caught staying up well past her bedtime and now due a lecture from her disapproving, exasperated mother. She blinked, opened her mouth to stammer out an excuse, and then, at the last second, remembered where, and, more importantly, who she was now: Liara T'Soni, Shadow Broker, war veteran, elected leader of this encampment, chosen bondmate of Commander Shepard and a hundred other things besides. She did not make excuses. Even to her own mother.
Her mouth snapped shut again.
Still, falling asleep at her desk was a very bad habit, one that she'd been trying to break since her first years at university. Unfortunately, it was also one that had been not so much enabled as encouraged by the war; on the Normandy, Shepard, Garrus and Tali and the others had been in no position to judge the hours she chose to keep. Here and now, however, it wouldn't do to be caught napping in such a fashion. When you were the leader, you had to put on a strong public face. Moments of weakness - doubt, confusion, pain, sorrow, fatigue - were private. Shepard had told her once that people can only have confidence in you if you seem to have confidence in yourself.
At least it was her mother who had found her, and not someone whose heart she had to win.
"I do delegate," she countered after she'd regained her composure, only to have her protest undermined by a yawn.
The motion pulled uncomfortably at the right side of her face, much as her earlier movements did to her neck, and she repressed another wince. Asari healed, if not more quickly, than more completely than every other known species bar the vorcha, but the burns had been deep, the cuts to the bone, and they'd used up all of their miracles keeping Shepard alive. Without a dermal regenerative unit, it would be years, Karin had told her, perhaps decades, before the scars would fade and the skin fully heal over. A few decades, at the very most, of ugliness, discomfort and numbness, the loss of an eye and some fingers and teeth – Liara considered it all a very small price to pay. It was something that she reminded herself of every time she chanced to catch her own reflection.
"Not near as much as you need to. You patrol with the commandos, forage with the scavenging parties, oversee the building works, stand watch-"
Liara felt her eye narrow, more than slightly discomforted to realise that her mother was apparently tracking her movements so closely. She wasn't quite sure whyshe was surprised to find out this was so - Benezia had always kept a very close eye on her, and it wasn't as if Liara was hiding most of her activities - but something about the realisation niggled at her nonetheless.
Moreover, she had not come so far, done so much, to stand being lectured like a naughty schoolgirl. She had experienced more, accomplished more in the past four years than most of her elders managed over their entire lifetimes. She was at least their equal. But if she was going to stand up to the matriarchs when she inevitably came into conflict with them, she would have to lay the groundwork for it here, now, with the most intimidating one of all.
"Those things all need my attention," she said mildly.
"Perhaps," Benezia allowed, equally mild, "but not all of them to the extent to which you presently give it. Must you go out with the scavenging parties?"
"I spent almost fifty years working around ruins of one sort or another. I am the only person in the camp who's qualified to assess what buildings are and aren't structurally sound. There were several deaths and more injuries before I arrived."
For all her irritation, the words came out more brusquely than she'd meant them to. To cover her annoyance at her lapse, she occupied her hands straightening the clutter piled upon her desk. It was a poor setup indeed compared to her now lost facilities at Hagalaz, or even to her room on the Normandy, but she hadn't dared bring the bulk of her equipment with her. The handful of monitors, three communications terminals and a dozen scattered datapads and sticks were better than nothing, however, and what remained of her information network had been warned to expect disruption and delays, months of low-priority backlog.
When she looked back up, it was to find her mother watching her, an odd expression on her face. As Liara studied Benezia in turn, she was distantly shocked by how much the asari before her differed from the mother of her memory. Her mother had always been a beautiful, slightly distant figure with an enigmatic smile, a love of bright colours and a wardrobe full of flowing gowns. The asari seated across the desk from her was thin and pale and tired, her face drawn with pain, her shoulders hunched. She was dressed like the rest of them, in warm but filthy pants and jacket, the dark grey of which did nothing for her pallor. She was, as she had been that terrible day on Noveria, and again that first evening aboard the freighter, suddenly small and very mortal, not at all the untouchable goddess of her childhood.
But if that was what she saw in Benezia now, what did her mother see in her?
"I'm lecturing you again, aren't I?" Benezia said abruptly, her eyes falling closed, hand flying up to massage her temple.
"A little," Liara agreed, taken aback.
"I had not meant to. I only-" Benezia sighed, eyes opening, hand dropping. "I was concerned for you. I did not see you eat dinner."
Her hand fell further, to a jacket pocket, which produced a pair of triangular MRE packs. She checked the labels, then offered one across; Liara took it with the sudden realisation that she couldn't remember eating lunch either, and that breakfast had been a very long time ago indeed.
Liara's stomach growled at the thought of food, earning her a slight smile and an "I thought as much" before Benezia ripped the top off of her pack. It steamed, momentarily filling the cargo hold with the enticing smell of meat and savoury spices, but then MREs, in Liara's unfortunately extensive experience, always smelled better than they looked. Or tasted. Liara quickly tore open her own, and the two of them ate in silence, Liara trying not to stare when her mother, without any apparent hesitation or embarrassment, resorted to using her hands when the flimsy utensil broke, deftly scooping the hot morsels into her mouth and licking her fingers clean. Benezia had always been refined, fastidious.
"I did mean what I said about delegation," Benezia said carefully when they were done. "You're working too hard. You will burn yourself out if you are not careful."
Liara began to protest anew, but stopped, mouth hanging half-open.
This was Benezia T'Soni talking. She'd been counted as a leader amongst their people for centuries, since well before Liara had even been born. No, forget that: this was her mother talking, offering her advice. How many times over the last few years had she longed for just five minutes of her counsel? And yet she was just going to ignore it, now that she had it?
Shepard wouldn't have, she knew. The Spectre expected all of her crew to provide her with honest opinions, honest advice, honest truth, even if it wasn't what she wanted to hear. She'd hear them all out, weigh up this idea with that fact and those suppositions, and then decide on a course of action. Liara could do the same. She shouldn't dismiss things out of hand because she didn't like what she'd heard, or felt she had to prove herself more powerful and knowing than person who was saying them. If she let herself get into that mindset, she'd be no better than the thrice-damned Council.
"Perhaps," she conceded. "What do you suggest?"
Benezia was silent for a moment.
"You should look at how best to optimise your time. Take the scavenging parties. Were it not for your structural evaluation expertise, would it be necessary for you to accompany them?"
Liara frowned. It had been necessary for her to go out with the scavenging parties. They'd needed her knowledge, her gun and, not to be immodest, the reassurance of her presence. She, on the other hand, had needed to get a feel for the lay of the land around them and an idea of sorts of things they might expect to find, in what condition and quantities. But was her presence still required? It she were being honest with herself then... no, it wasn't. Now that the commandos were rested enough to run the necessary security, she was really little more than another pair of hands to clear and haul once the structural survey was out of the way.
"Probably not."
Benezia nodded.
"Then your value to that task is as an assessor. Concentrate your efforts there, and give oversight of the scavenging parties themselves to another."
"I... suppose I could go ahead of them and do the survey work on my own-"
"With an escort," Benezia insisted.
"I'm not a child anymore," Liara shot back, her irritation of earlier returning. "I can take care of myself."
"As you were taking care of yourself when you were burned?"
She stopped her hand from flying to her face just in time.
"That was different."
"How, precisely?"
It had all happened so quickly, and yet it had seemed to be the longest minute of her life. In one heartbeat, she was running, her lungs burning, eyes streaming from the smoke, a few metres behind Shepard as the two of them and Garrus hurtled down towards the beam. The next, the Mako was pin-wheeling through the air in slow motion towards her, and then Shepard, Goddess, Shepard was turning back...
Mother and daughter, their gazes locked and held.
"Fine," Liara said shortly. "With an escort."
She redirected her attention to one of her terminals, flicking it over to the list of dossiers she'd been building on the camp's occupants, scanning for names, faces and skillsets until one jogged her memory. She brought it up and swung the monitor around so Benezia could see.
"Palla Liakos was an assistant to Matriarch Efrosyni's steward before the war. She has shown herself to be a competent organiser with a strong work ethic and a good eye for salvage. She seems like the logical person to take over coordination of the scavenging work."
"A good choice," Benezia said after a beat, barely glancing at the display, and Liara remembered that her mother had probably met the matron at some point, if only on a professional capacity. "She will do well, and I believe she will relish the distraction of responsibility now that," her voice hitched slightly, "Rosi is dead. Take her with you when you conduct your surveys so that you may plan together, and that she might learn from you."
That seemed reasonable enough. And it would make her feel better about taking a guard. Palla, for all her other skills, had shaky biotics and had never fired a gun in her life before Liara had made basic arms training part of the daily routine for anyone intending to venture beyond the compound's walls.
"Ok," she agreed, and turned the monitor back around. "Anything else?"
"Potentially. Have the commandos elected a leader yet?"
Liara frowned, not sure where this was leading.
"I don't believe so. But I don't see-"
"Then I would suggest that you approach the huntress you feel best suited for the task and ask her to call a vote. Sooner rather than later. With your backing, she will be more likely to be elected, and will be more likely to remain in place if already established before the Pishan camp arrives with their three. Do you have a preference?"
"Aurelia-" she began.
"-is very young-"
"I don't care how old she is."
She honestly didn't, and, frankly, given her own youth, could not afford to. If anything, she'd been trying to make a point of being age-blind when it came to assigning tasks, focusing instead on ability and leadership skills. Aurelia might be barely seventy, not even old enough to vote yet, but there was no denying that the girl was smart, skilled and resourceful, and had the respect of her fellows. She'd had to be good, to get herself and so many others through the invasion and bombardment where asari five, even ten times her age had failed.
"-and she is equally devoted to you," Benezia continued, slightly louder, over her objection. "You need only look at her to see it. Ask her to be the first member of your personal guard. I believe that she will accept, and it is the kind of work she is trained for. I can provide the formal words with which to extend the invitation, if you like."
"Personal guard?" Liara spluttered, more than a little taken aback. "I told you, I can-"
"Hear me out, please," Benezia said, one hand raised for silence, the other pinching the bridge of her nose. "You intend to retain leadership of the camp once the Pischan group arrives, yes? And if the Vael'Dra and Tetrallia camps join us as well? And any others we might encounter?"
"Well, yes," Liara admitted. She hadn't so much intended as presumed. "But I don't see-"
"Then you will need the guard," Benezia said firmly, her hands dropping once more to her lap. "Eventually, more than just the one. It is not just about protection, Liara, though I admit that I will feel better for knowing that you have it. It is about status. The guard says that you are too important to the community to be risked. It says that there are those who believe that service to your cause, your ideas is worthwhile endeavour. That others feel you capable of leading."
"You had a whole platoon at one stage," Liara remembered.
Benezia had always had an armed escort, back as far as Liara could recall. Her childhood had been full of serious, armed and armoured figures training out on the balconies and in the gardens, stoic asari who'd turned every excursion embarked upon, no matter how minor, into a circus, if not an outright ordeal. Most of them had intimidated Liara dreadfully when she was little. Later, as a young adult, she'd railed against them for affording her only the illusion of privacy, and resented them for stealing her mother away from her ever more frequently. The last holiday they'd taken together, ostensibly a mother-daughter affair to celebrate Liara's fiftieth birthday, had included an entourage of almost sixty, and been cut short by some crisis or another back home. It was only when Liara had escaped to university the following year that she'd gotten free of them all, and confirmed her suspicions that few other asari lived as they had, guarded and herded constantly.
Several of the other students had teased her mercilessly about her upbringing, when they'd learned of it and who her mother was. The poor little rich pureblood, who didn't even know how to make her own dinner because there'd always been someone on staff. Go run back to your mother, they'd sneered. She nearly had, more than once, after her attempts to defend herself had backfired. In the end, it had seemed both safer and somehow less cowardly to lose herself in her studies instead.
"Yes," Benezia said with a sad smile, and Liara remembered, as well, that whatever entourage Benezia had taken with her after Saren was dead now, to an asari, with the possible exception of Shiala. However much Liara had resented them, they deserved their fate no more than her mother did. "And consider what that said about me and my place amongst our people."
"I thought a personal guard volunteered themselves," Liara said carefully, searching for a way out. Even if it wasn't completely unnecessary, she'd had enough of that sort of thing to last a lifetime. "Or were assigned by the city."
"Most, yes. But the one you wish to be your guard captain should always be asked into your service, for much the same reason you should ask the one you wish to lead the other forces to call the leadership vote."
"We cannot really afford spare anyone at the moment just to stand outside my door looking official."
"She will need not attend you all of the time, not yet. But if you do not choose a guard yourself and intend to stay in a leadership role, it is inevitable that the community will force one upon you, much as they are attempting to force Aethyta to stay behind the walls," Benezia said, not unkindly. "The outcome will be the same, but you will not have the choosing of those who watch your back. And, without a guard, you will have greater difficulty in convincing any other matriarchs you encounter to take you seriously. They may elect to overlook your youth in dealing with you, but they will overlook you entirely if you do not present some visible representation of your powerbase."
Liara pinched the bridge of her nose with her good hand, unconsciously mirroring her mother's gesture of earlier. She could feel the beginnings of a headache. Goddess, but she hated politics. But what had she come here to do, ultimately, if not get involved in just that? If she were to effect any sort of change, she must give at least give the appearance of playing along with the system as it presently stood.
"Fine," she sighed, ungracious to her own ears. "I will consider it. What else?"
Benezia watched her for what seemed to be a very long time, eyes searching her face until Liara began to feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny.
"Yes..?" she prompted, to cover her rising discomfort.
"Liara..." Benezia began, her voice soft, gentle. "Why are you doing this?"
Liara felt her heart sink. This was going to be it, she knew. No more evasions. No more lies, other than the necessary ones, the ones she told everyone. Still, she tried, summoning up her best, most neutral expression.
"Someone has to."
"I know. But my question would be: why must it be you? You are so young, and I know that you have always hated politics." When Liara didn't immediately answer, she continued, in a much softer, almost pleading voice: "What did you do during the war, Little Wing? It seems that everyone in the camp knows but me. They treat you like a hero."
Liara wet her lips, her mouth feeling unaccountably dry.
"You have to understand that much of what happened aboard the Normandy is classified," she said slowly, carefully. "My role most of all. People... speculate."
"What, then, was your role?"
"Intelligence," she said, knowing that this was close enough to the truth to pass for it, and the official cover story besides. "Translations. Research. Some field missions. Coordinating the supply chain for the Crucible. And, well, I suppose you could call me Commander Shepard's second officer as well, after Garrus -Garrus Vakarian. Commander Shepard was the Spectre the Council, um, sent after-"
"I know." Her mother pressed her hand, almost absently, to her side where she'd been shot. "She is also the one they now call the 'saviour of the galaxy', is she not?"
"Yes," she agreed, knowing full well how the title would vex her beloved when she awoke, let alone the increasingly messianic way some people spoke of her. "She cured the Genophage and got the krogan to fight alongside the turians for almost the entire war, forced peace between the geth and the quarians and united the whole galaxy to face the Reapers. She was the only person to make it to the Citadel to activate the Crucible. Were it not for her, none of us would be alive today."
She was not quite able to keep the pride from her voice as she spoke, and found she didn't care. Shepard deserved pride, praise. Love.
Benezia was watching her intently again.
"Your wounds - from a mission?"
"I... was part of Hammer," she admitted, staring, not at her mother, but at the blank monitor array, at the memory within her own mind. Screaming at Shepard, her and Garrus both, to go, go damn her! The Mako, crashing to the earth, knocking them both back, off their feet, the breath leaving her lungs in an explosion of air. A taloned hand in hers, pulling her upright. "With Shepard. And Garrus. It was the final push. All or nothing. Garrus and I were caught in an explosion."
A lance of hot red, cutting through the Mako like butter. Diving to the side after Garrus. Hearing the whoomph from within the tank, the flare of orange light. Pouring everything she had left into her barrier through her outflung hand, feeling it melt away under the sudden blast of heat and light and pressure. Darkness. Pain. Fear. Shepard-
She blinked, and there was a hand covering her own, with its missing and mutilated fingers, concerned eyes meeting her remaining one.
"Liara-"
"I'm fine. Sorry," she said, returning to the present and managing a wan smile. "Shepard made it in the end. She was the only thing that mattered."
She slipped her hand out from under her mother's with that and turned her attention back to her terminals. It was the work of seconds to load up a datastick with most of the material she'd excised from the pad she'd given her mother that first night.
"Here," she said, holding it out for Benezia to take. "This should answer most of your questions. Those that it can't... I'll answer what I can. Much of it is-"
"Classified. I understand," her mother agreed, taking the stick. There was another long pause, Benezia watching her carefully once more before she spoke:
"Aethy... Aethyta says that you have finally taken a lover."
"Yes," she said, feeling that she ought to be surprised or angered or even embarrassed by the new line of questioning, but finding none of those emotions within herself.
Another pause.
"It's this 'Shepard', isn't it?"
Mother and daughter, their gazes locked and held.
"Yes."