I have been very remiss about replying to comments of late, I know. I'm going to try to get through the backlog these next couple of weeks. But thank you to everyone who has left feedback - it gives me the warm fuzzies.
Liara
It wasn't until much later in the evening - so much later, in fact, that virtually everyone else in the camp was asleep - that Liara finally found herself left to her own devices for more than five minutes. She'd actually had to order Aurelia away, to her own bed, to get it, ignoring the girl's protestations and wounded looks at Liara's continued refusal to let her share her sleeping quarters. Such as they were. It might have been the more conventional living arrangement, and certainly the one more in keeping with Aurelia's new role as her 'guard', but it was an imposition that Liara would resist as long as possible. She had always been an oddity amongst her people, shunning their communal spaces in favour of solitude, or as close to it as could be managed. She needed time to herself, isolation in which she could just sit and think.
She was trying to do that now, bathed in the light of her monitors, sorting through news reports, reports from her agents, reports from the various militaries and more. But the screens had grown blurry before her eye before she was even a third of the way through the material, and she'd caught herself reading the same passages over again more than once without really comprehending what had been written there. She needed to sleep, just for a little bit. But there was still work to do.
It had been an exhausting day, physically, mentally and emotionally. The physical aspect of it had been expected - one did not spend a day in the field with a group of battle-eager krogan and expect a garden stroll - but the mental and emotional had not. It had been nothing but crisis after crisis since she'd gotten the call to return to the camp, and difficult conversation after difficult conversation until she was tempted to give into her supposed krogan genetics and head-butt someone because it seemed like it was either that or cry from sheer frustration.
She blinked and rubbed ineffectually at her eye, trying to focus on the news reports in front of her instead of the events of the day. Civil war on Tuchanka. She'd had most of it from Grunt already, but an outsider's perspective never hurt. The brewing war was a relatively minor conflict compared to some that the krogan had endured, but it seemed so idiotic to win the greatest war the galaxy had ever seen only to fall back to attacking each other. But that, in some strange way, seemed to be the point. A few of the... less progressive krogan clans had seen the first hard evidence of the genophage's cure in their sons and daughters and then looked about the galaxy to find all of the other powers, great and small, brought low. It was time to conquer again, they'd decided, time to put the proverbial boot back into everyone else.
Wrex, thankfully, had disagreed. And, since he disagreed with the backing of most of the female clans, and was the one whose work had brought about the cure in the first place, he would win. It was really just a matter of time before he crushed the rebels utterly. Liara supposed it helped that he was, objectively, a great deal more foresighted and politically savvy than his opponents. His decision to reform Aralakh Company and send potential recruits off-planet for trials was clear evidence of that. Membership of Aralakh was an undeniable honour, one worth fighting and dying for, and so, in one simple, seemingly innocent stroke,Wrex had robbed the other clans of their best and brightest remaining warriors, including many a clan leader or warlord's son. That this meant those fine fighters were now under the command of one of his most trusted lieutenants, a member of his own clan, only would have made it all the sweeter.
Of course, if something were to happen to Wrex now...
Frowning, she sent off a string of instructions to her three remaining agents on Tuchanka, and more to another couple who'd had dealings on the planet in the past. She then spent another half hour setting up new priority logic for Glyph to follow when dealing with news of Wrex and his immediate associates. When that was done, she closed the window and brought up the next.
Aria T'Loak, the so-called 'Queen of Omega', had evidentially decided that 'Queen of the Terminus Systems' had a nicer ring to it. According to Feron's hastily-collated reports, she'd been cutting quite a swathe through the otherwise lawless sector, using her still imposing army of mercenaries to clear our Reaper remnants, capture planets and grind her few remaining rivals under her extremely fashionable heel. And, of course, she had devoted a not inconsiderable portion of her army and other resources towards finding and wiping out anything to do with Cerberus. One did not 'fuck' with Aria, as the saying went, and expect to come away unscathed.
Liara was not entirely sure whether the other asari's ascent from interesting galactic footnote to genuine force to be reckoned with was a good or a bad idea, in the greater scheme of things. On one hand, Aria was a pragmatist who looked out for her own; the Terminus Systems might well benefit from some kind of centralised rule, and the rest of the galaxy might breathe a little safer knowing that someone was in place to rein them in from the worst of their excesses. On the other, Aria had never been a friend of any law but her own, and her rule might just mean that the surviving gangs of pirates, raiders and slavers would simply become bolder and better organised.
On yet another hand, Shepard had always liked her, trusted her, seemingly despite herself. And Shepard was an incredibly good judge of character.
She'd continue with the wait and see approach, Liara eventually decided, and leave Feron and her other agents to continue funnelling resources out of the Terminus to Thessia and other needful places. There were ways and ways to deal with Aria T'Loak, if the situation turned for the worse. Her past was not as well hidden as she would have liked - not to the Shadow Broker, at any rate - and contained several things that the matriarch would certainly sooner see left buried. And, if she expanded too far, too quickly, she'd start getting pushback from the quarians and the geth, and eventually even the turians and the humans, trying to protect their vital remaining garden worlds.
The report concluded with Feron noting that Zaeed Massani had been seen nosing around Omega. Liara sent back orders to facilitate his stay on the station and arrange the provision of any armaments he might require, and to, if possible, make arrangements for him to see Aria herself, if she hadn't picked him up already. The two shared a fierce hatred of Cerberus; Aria could no doubt make good use of him in pursuit of her vendetta, and anything that hurt the remnants of Cerberus was something Liara could get right behind.
Liara closed her eye, pinched the bridge of her nose, and brought up the next report. The last report for the night, she told herself. She'd read it over, think it over, and then go to bed. It was, however, by far the most depressing of the material she'd read to date: resource distribution within the Republics.
It both irritated and worried her that it was so difficult to get any sort of news regarding what was happening elsewhere on Thessia, let alone what was going on out in the rest of the Republics. She knew more about recent events on Earth than she did of those on her own planet! What news that did come through was bleak, evidence the Reapers had known their grisly business all too well. They'd targeted the major manufacturing hubs and garden worlds almost exclusively, bombarding them from orbit to leave them like they'd left Thessia - little more than smoking ruins, choked with billions of dead, facing a prolonged, artificial winter. There were reports of rioting - rioting! - in some places, starvation in others and the re-emergence of diseases thought long eradicated in still more.
Those few places that had been spared the Reaper's full attentions were, in most cases, little better off. Few of the Republics' research stations, mining words and newest colonies had been self-sustaining; soon the survivors at such outposts would be starving along with the rest. Many of those that were had been overwhelmed by an uncountable numbers of refugees, often to the point of collapse. Those few places that did have aid to spare were distributing it freely, but in such an uncoordinated fashion that some groups of survivors received more than they could possibly use while others went cold and hungry.
She was guilty of that herself, she realised abruptly. She had made a real difference in this camp, with her supplies and, dare she say, her leadership. In doing so, she had also improved the lot of those living in the other camps within the city. But that was a handful camps out of hundreds, even thousands, and a few hundred people out of millions. And that was only if she looked to Thessia. She'd had to start somewhere, she knew. But should it have been here? This? Could she have done more good by starting elsewhere? Taking a different approach? Looking at the larger picture from the outset?
Maybe her mother had been right about that too, about her trying to do too much here. Her other advice had been good. The scavenging teams were working as well under Palla as they'd ever done under her, the construction crews (quite perversely, in her opinion) seemed to accomplish more when she wasn't there to keep a watchful eye on their progress and the commandos had elected Dora as their leader at her suggestion. And, of course, there was Aurelia.
Well, that was still taking some getting used to, but she had to admit that she was starting to grow fond of the younger asari's company. She was more than capable enough as a guard, even if she sometimes seemed to grow tongue-tied in Liara's presence, and had a fundamentally sweet nature that hadn't been entirely stripped away by the war. And Liara had to admit that having the commando check, repair and prepare her arms and armour for her saved time each day that could best be spent on other things.
Like spending a day in the field with Grunt and his recruits.
That, in hindsight, was a mistake - a big one - and not just because her body now trembled with exhaustion any time she even thought about moving. There were a dozen other, far more productive ways she could have spent her day, but the krogan had more or less expected her to come along with them. She'd earned their respect before– what, with being part of the geophage cure team and fighting Kalros and all. Wrex had gone so far as to publically declare her an honourary full krogan and a sister to his clan– but she needed to maintain that respect if she had any hope of keeping Aralakh Company in line here on Thessia. Combat, showing them that her injuries hadn't made her weak or soft, seemed the best way to do it. She liked to think that she'd done Wrex and Shepard proud, and, in truth, had rather enjoyed the excursion.
Goddess, now that was a disturbing thought: when, exactly, had she started seeing combat as recreation? And how much of that had factored into her decision to spend the day running and gunning instead of sitting and working?
Perhaps she should have said no, and left the krogran in the capable hands of the commandos, found some other way to remind them of what she was capable of. She'd accomplished more at this terminal in an hour than she had in the seven she'd been beyond the compound's walls. And, if she had stayed behind, she probably would have been able to head off the afternoon's... unpleasantness.
She glanced past her terminals and down the length of the empty cargo hold, towards the small cabin where her parents slept, as if her eye could pierce both walls and darkness. Shaking her head slightly at her own folly, she brought up the security monitor she'd installed in the room instead. Aethyta, judging by the slight wheezing through her re-re-set nose, was sound asleep in the cot jammed up tight beside the door. Her mother, though, lay back upon the single bed, staring at the ceiling, her eyes dark pools to the image intensifier and her face dead of expression.
Attempted suicide by Justicar, Aethyta had called it, with all of her usual tact. Liara wasn't entirely sure. She'd known that Benezia had been struggling a bit since being brought out of stasis, but didn't think that things were that bad. If anything, she'd actually thought that her mother was finally starting to put the guilt aside and rediscover some of her old self. Their talk, the advice, the way Benezia seemed to be finding a place in the community being built here, how she was finally interacting with people other than Liara and Aethyta, and Aethyta felt comfortable enough leaving her alone to do so.
But then again…Aethyta, as it turned out, had left her alone not because she'd felt comfortable doing so, but because she'd simply, if badly, needed a break. What to do about that, though, Liara had little idea. While Aethyta was more than right when she said that it was unfair to expect her to be at her side every moment of every day, Liara was far busier than she'd expected she'd be. They needed more people they could trust to watch her, to be there with her. But, again, as Aethyta had pointed out, there were more than a few in their community who still saw a traitor whenever they looked at Benezia T'Soni; others remained wary of her or pitied her, neither attitude seemed likely to help things.
Putting Benezia to work with Falere might help until Liara, by some miracle, found someone else to help share the load. The matron was quiet, patient and disciplined, and knew all too well how the Reapers used and discarded their unwilling servants; it would, at least, fulfil the 'busy' side of the equation, and give Aethyta something of a break when Liara could not.
But then, of course, there was the problem of Falere herself.
Liara sighed. For every asari who'd been happy to see the Justicar, there had been two who'd been... less than happy to see her daughter. She couldn't really blame them that much. Ardat-Yakshi, according to every piece of folklore, every ancient epic and every modern vid, were monsters; cunning, remorseless demons with an unslakable, uncontrollable urge to mate and kill. Recently discovered medical fact was so tightly bound up with more than fifty thousand years of fiction, religion and speculation that hardly anyone was sure where the legend ended and the disease began. Liara had remembered all of those legends when she and Shepard and James Vega had been creeping through the monastery, and had spent the entire mission wanting nothing so much as to bring the whole place down and flee. It was only later, when she'd been safely back on the Normandy, that she'd remember the research she'd done into Samara when the Justicar had first joined Shepard's crew - the broken voices on recorded conversations, the dozens of unread emails from sister to sisters and the terrible, horrible little list of abandoned possessions - and had gotten angry. She was a pureblood. It could just as easily have been her, dying in that cold, lonely place, so far from her home and everyone she loved.
While she couldn't blame them, not really, she had not dealt well with those who had complained to her, both publically and privately about Falere's appearance in the camp. She had been tired, tense and worried about her mother, and her temper had boiled too close to the surface. Even now, thinking about it made her annoyed, as much at herself as at them. Falere had left her home of hundreds of years to help the very same people who'd given her a choice between prison and death for a genetic defect they had little interest in curing; they should have welcomed her with open arms and showered her with thanks, not met her with fear and barely-concealed hostility. And Liara should have worked to ensure that was the welcome she received.
On the up side, she did not think that any would accost the matron now, not after her outburst. On the downside, her 'honeymoon period', as Shepard would have said, was over. She knew enough to expect more of her decisions to be questioned, her authority to be challenged now. But that was really all the more reason to look at what other tasks and responsibilities she could delegate to better focus on the bigger picture.
Tomorrow. She would start on that tomorrow. No more adventures.
She stood and stretched carefully, flexing her fingers, turning her head and working her jaw and facial muscles as Karin had told her she must. Her missing fingers always itched prodigiously after she'd been working at her terminals for any length of time; she shook her hand out violently in the ultimately unfulfilled hope that it'd stop. She had just given up on that and was just preparing to lock down her rig for the night when she heard the airlock cycle up near the cabin, and the Broker interface automatically died, leaving only the news feed and public inbox up.
"Justicar," she said by way of greeting as the other asari approached, the ring of her boots on the metal floor echoing around the near-empty cargo bay.
"Please, it is Samara to my companions. And to my friends."
"We're friends?" she replied warily, suddenly mindful of all Aethyta had said despite Liara's own protestations of trust. Justicars were trouble. She'd thought that herself the night of the party on the Citadel, and avoided her where possible. All it would take would be one wrong word...
"You are a friend of Shepard's. Or," Samara said, cocking her head to one side as if to better examine Liara, "I am given to believe, more than her friend."
"More," she agreed, resisting the urge to sigh. After EDI's unshackling, their romance had been the Normandy's worst-kept secret. She'd overheard no end of gossip and, at times, extremely tawdry speculation, to say nothing of the jokes, smirks and knowing looks, especially after that last ever shore-leave on the Citadel. They'd managed to keep it on the ship, in Shepard's apartment, and out of the tabloids, but it had been a near thing.
Samara smiled, and it was like the sun peeking out from behind a storm cloud, a momentary burst that turned her face from stern and uncompromising to warm and welcoming.
"Then I would call you friend. And even if not for that, I would still call you one for your defence of my daughter. Thank you."
Liara blinked, taken aback.
"I asked her to come here; I would not have done so if I wasn't willing to defend her. And, anyway," she waved her hand vaguely, recalling her earlier thoughts, "I am a pureblood. It could just as easily have been me. For such a supposedly enlightened species, we have many prejudices."
"That we do."
Liara stood awkwardly under the Justicar's stony-faced scrutiny, uncertain as to what she should do or say next, unable to pick up any cues from the older asari that would indicate how best to proceed. She felt the old, nervous flutter rise in her chest and quashed it as ruthlessly as she could, taking up her seat behind the desk to prevent herself from fidgeting. She gestured to the seat opposite, killed the monitors and swung them out of the way.
"Um, thank you for... this afternoon," she began as the Justicar took up the other chair. "I did not expect for Mother to react that way."
Samara shrugged elegantly, and threw up her one hand in a dismissive gesture.
"She is far from the first. You might call it an occupational hazard. But over time I have found that those who seek me out, genuinely, to receive justice for their own crimes, are often those who deserve further punishment least. And what I said of Benezia was true. She, herself, has committed no crime under the Code that I am aware of, though I am certain that you will have difficulty convincing her of that fact. You would do well to keep her from me, for now at least."
"Aethyta intends to. I am afraid that she does not much like Justicars."
"A wise, if suspicious, attitude." Another sunburst smile, quickly gone. "Aethyta is the one who protected her?"
"I believe so. She is my other parent."
"Ah. They are bonded?"
"They were, once," Liara said. "Before I was born. Not anymore."
"I see," Samara said, and that was that. Silence fell, and Liara found herself wondering if Shepard had to work at her conversations with this asari as much as she was having to.
"Was there something that I can help you with, Justi- Samara?" she tried, dampening down the urge to fidget once again under the matriarch's piercing gaze.
Now it was the Justicar's turn for hesitation, her eyes flickering away.
"Yes. I wondered... I had wondered if you had any word on the Commander. The last I had heard, she was alive but mortally wounded."
The words were soft and diffident, but suddenly, absurdly, it was all Liara could do not to cry. Goddess! And she had been so good today too, thinking about Shepard only as she had been or would be, not as she presently was. She felt the sting behind her eye and closed it, forcing herself to take a steadying breath. No, damn it all, she would not cry, not here, not in front of the Justicar, not in front of one of Shepard's crew. She refused to. Shepard would be fine. She would not cry. She had nothing to cry about.
When she looked back up again, Samara was watching her with concern and regret.
"Forgive me," she said. "I did not mean to upset you."
Liara waved her concern away with her damaged hand and stood, turning her back to the other asari so she could take another, deeper, steadying breath.
"I receive regular reports," she said, distantly impressed by how level her own voice sounded. "She is in a coma. She received severe burns, multiple fractures, and many of her implants were too damaged to be salvageable.
"She will recover though. I am sure of it."
"Then I am certain of it too." The Justicar's next words were more softly spoken still: "She is the strongest person I have ever met."
"She is," Liara agreed.
A large part of that strength, though, came from those she chose to surround herself with. She had a gift for leadership, for inspiring others to her cause, but it was a gift that Liara did not share, however much she sometimes wished she might. However much she needed allies.
"I need your oath," she said abruptly, wheeling back.
Samara blinked at her in surprise.
"My oath?"
"The Third Oath of Subsumation. To bind your cause to mine."
The Justicar's surprised expression melted back into her serene mask, coloured by a hint of disapproval.
"That is not an oath to be given lightly, nor on demand."
"You gave it to Shepard when you joined the Normandy after knowing her for less than a day."
"Shepard's case was unusual. The circumstances were exceptional," the Justicar replied, folding her hands neatly in her lap as she regarded Liara with expressionless eyes. "Why would you require such a thing?"
"Look around us, Samara," Liara said waving at the walls of the freighter as if they weren't there. "Our homeworld is in ruins, and a hundred more planets besides. You swore an oath to protect our laws and uphold our norms, but what are they, now, after all of this? Our people are starving, Justicar. Our children are orphaned, our leaders are dead and an entire generation of maidens has been decimated. If these are not exceptional circumstances, I don't know what would be."
To Liara's surprise, it was approval, not censure, that dawned in the Justicar's eyes, and the faintest hint of a smile crossed her lips.
"Very well. I make no guarantees," Samara said evenly as she rose to her own feet, "but I will meditate on what you have said. I should have an answer for you on the morrow."
"That's all I can ask for, really," Liara replied, suddenly aware of just how quickly her heart was racing, how weak her knees felt. "Thank you."
The Justicar nodded.
"You are welcome. And now, if you will excuse me, I think it is well past time for bed. You would do well to seek sleep yourself, I think."
"I intend to, believe me. Sleep well, Ju- Samara."
"Sleep well, Doctor T'Soni."
The Justicar was almost at the airlock when she paused a final time and called back over her shoulder. The words stuck with Liara, bouncing around in her head even as she stripped down and all but fell into her cot, leaving her feeling her oddly proud in their wake:
"I think that Shepard has chosen well in you."