VII) Therum

1) After Feros, Shepard set the team on an intensive search through Dr. T'soni's academic papers, cross referencing their publication dates and times to destinations and prothean ruins to create a trajectory of her movements. (Wrex was thoroughly unenthusiastic about it, but seemed thoughtful when Shepard showed him an estimation of what it would have taken them without using those methods.) They hone in on the Knossos system, and eventually, Therum.

Upon entering orbit, they detect Geth presence. It became a simple matter of following the Geth, extrapolating which set of ruins they hadn't searched, and then landing the Mako and blasting through the resistance. Wrex preferred that last part. Garrus did to, but his professional pride wouldn't let him admit it. They meet their subject suspended in a blue energy bubble, helpless, yet almost completely safe.
"Help! Could you help me? I activated the security barriers because the Geth attacked me." The pretty young asari shook her head. "Geth! Can you believe it? Geth! outside the Perseus Veil!" There was some discussion among the team. Wrex stayed silent, while Ashley voiced her distrust, citing the fact that her mother had turned.
"Ash, not everyone is as close to their family as you are." Ashley backed down.
"I suppose that's true. Still. Be careful Skipper. Not all asari are as nice as Livy and Nala." Shepard shot her a look, half-annoyed. He knew that one from personal experience.
"Spread out. Look for a way around the barrier curtain." He turned and looked at the elevator they had come down on. "Kaidan, Garrus, hold perimeter. Tali, see if you can find an interface or access port." Shepard looked at Wrex. "Guess we're searching the old fashioned way." Wrex grunted and holstered his assault rifle. He strode off toward the haphazardly stacked storage units on the other end of the enclosed cavern. Shepard turned to face the suspended archaeologist. He smiled slightly.
"Hang in there, Dr. T'Soni. We'll get you out of there."
"And I'm the one that needs a stint with Joker?" Ashley grumbled over comms.
"Somehow I doubt you would have resisted the same temptation, Chief." Kaidan said wryly as Shepard shook his head and headed over to where Wrex was re-arranging the cargo containers.

(a) "How are you coming Tali?" Shepard asked as he peeked inside an empty container.
"I've isolated what appears to be a power coupling."
"Appears to be?"
"It's... hard to tell. Rerouting power around it only makes the lights a level below Dr. T'Soni turn off." Shepard sighed.
"Keep working. No telling when the geth reinforcements will catch up." A rumbling laugh emanates from the far corner of the cave, and Wrex rounds the bend holding a long box.
"Superior firepower is always tactically sound." his face was carefully impassive. Shepard grinned at him in return. Setting the box down, Wrex lifted out the body of the laser. Shepard called Tali over, and they begin setting up the laser.
"One minute, Shepard." Her hands activate her omni-tool, and begin flying in obscure patterns over the bare interface on the back of the laser. She calibrates it, then ran some calculations on the probable structural damage to the increasingly unstable lava-rock the ruins were situated on.
"It should be okay." She says, her eyes scanning the data she received from her scans. She checked the floor, then back at her omni-tool. "Should be." she repeated, frowning. The others, oblivious to her uncertainty, power the laser on. There is a tremendous pulse of energy, followed by an equally ominous rumbling, and a giant hole was created in the sunken buildings structure, allowing them in past the barriers.

3) "What was that?" Dr. T'Soni asked, almost to herself. She hears the whir of an ancient elevator, and the the strange squad that claimed to be here to protect her appeared in her peripheral vision.
"That console should get me down from here." Liara said, gesturing as much as she was able. She saw the quarian approach the console eagerly. There was a bit of hesitation as the ancient computer booted in script unreadable to all but the most learned of prothean scholars.
"3rd button from the right!" their leader spoke without more than glancing at the haptic interface. Liara tilted her head slightly, curious.
"How does he know that? He barely looked at it." the quarian muttered, apparently disgruntled. She pressed the button anyway, and the barrier dropped, and Liara fell with it. If she weren't tired and starving, she might have called on her biotic ability to slow her fall. Liara landed with what grace she could, the staggered to her feet.
"Thank you, I... I am glad you came. Those geth might have killed me. Please, could you take me off-world? My ship is not supposed to return for another year."
"How do we know we can trust you?" One of the Alliance marines leaned forward menacingly, her helmet obscuring her expression. The one called Shepard put a hand on her shoulder and eases her backwards, away from Liara.
"Not the time." He says as he moves past her. He steps forward and offers his hand. Liara stared at it for a second before recalling what little she knew about humans. She shook the hand.
"I'm Commander Shepard. We're here to rescue you, and we might need your help." Shepard looked over his shoulder and said nonchalantly, "she's not had enough practice to lie well while terrified, Ash."
"How would you-" Liara's shocked exclamation was cut off as the ground lurched, and everyone stumbled.
"Up the elevator! Go!" Shepard calls as the ground and the ruins give another gut-wrenching shake. Liara looked from him to the team, to the tower that felt like it was sinking. Weighing her odds, she chose the human commander.

4) "I don't have time to deal with this idiot!" Shepard shouted as their group came face to face with the krogan battlemaster leading his squadron of geth. Liara took a small moment to be awed at the fact that the human was staring down one of the deadliest forces known to the universe and had the nerve to be annoyed.
"heh, I like you, human." The krogan battle master chuckles once, before Garrus' round breaks his shielding. He raised his own weapon, and was thrown backwards by a joint push by Kaidan and Shepard. Liara stared uncomprehendingly at the lava rising around them, fear turning her usually overactive mind into blank buzzing. The Geth gained purchase on the small squad, and began a flanking maneuver. The Commander glowed with a dark corona, and ran forward screaming. It was a terrifying sound, a roar and a war whoop rolled into one. The krogan stood up, flared his own biotic field, and met the charging human laughing maniacally.
"Professor! A little help!" It was the female human. Somehow, though there were two barriers and a few geth between them, Liara felt her glare. The buzzing in her head increased. She peeked above the edge of her makeshift cover, and noticed that bullets weren't bouncing off of it. She ducked back down. She could do this. Liara took a deep breath focused. Her fist glowed in the bright blue light. She peeked over the barrier again.
"Doctor! NOW!" One of the other humans - Kaidan, she thought yelled.
And Liara moved. Before she could think, before she could push the fear in her head away, she stood up and yelled. A pulse of dark energy erupted from her still form, slamming into the conveniently grouped geth, flinging them bodily into the lava that was beginning to creep over the edge of their small platform. Liara stared at her hands in shock. Where had that come from? The ground shook again, and when she looked up, the Commander was pushing her onward, motioning towards the walkway. She ran.

5) Back on the Normandy, Shepard watched their acquisition with concern. As the rest of the team stripped off their armor or complained about their wounds, or simply sighed in relief of making it safely out of what was effectively a geth-filled volcano, Liara sat by herself, in a daze. She made no move towards the new set of clothes that Ensign Draven had thoughtfully put out for her. She sat, staring at the wall in blank incomprehension. Ash came to stand beside him.
"Can we trust her, skipper?" she asked quietly. Shepard sighed, and turned to face her.
"She's not good at lying." He smiled slightly. "And asari as a rule are very good at lying."
"Sounds like there's a story behind that comment."
"There is." Shepard said quietly. He turned away for a second. "But asari like her are dangerous. The best liars are the ones most familiar with the truth. The ones who were guileless before." Ash looked at him, concerned.
"We can trust her for now. She's exhausted, in shock, and starving." A strange expression flitted across his face, and he tilted his head slightly. "She's not eaten in 6 solar days, in fact."
"How did you know that?"
"I... don't know. It came..." He turned to look at Ashley, his eyebrows furrowed. "I knew when I shook her hand. It was..." He frowned. "An influx. Information. Her character, the marks of things that had recently happened to her." A bit of silence passed, and then Shepard said softly. "She's young, Ash. Go easy on her. She's already done better than most civvies in combat." Ashley nodded uncertainly, and Shepard clapped her on the shoulder, then strode off towards the blank-faced Asari. Tali, despite having the least to do after-mission, was one of the last to leave the lockers. She looked between Ashley and the bench where Shepard was introducing himself to the doctor. Again. Ashley shrugged at Tali, and the two left the garage.

a) It was a bit of surprise when the asari and Shepard walked into the debriefing together, but the Normandy crew, used to the quirks of their commander, said nothing. Liara initially sat in her seat as if she was afraid of encroaching on the personal space of those around her. Everyone noticed the marked change in her when the Protheans were brought up, however. She got up, pacing, and seemed oblivious to the knowing stares among the team as she mentioned a 'cycle of extinction'.
When the crew updated her on the 'collected memories of the protheans' given to Shepard, she sat down in shock. She rubbed her face, then looked up at Shepard, who had said little so far.
"That's how you knew what button to press!" She said excitedly. Shepard tilted his head slightly.
"Very perceptive."
"But you say you still don't understand the beacon's message?" Shepard frowned, then said slowly,
"It's... bits and pieces, like the message is corrupted."
"Maybe I can help." Liara was up and pacing again. "What you know of the protheans, you know from an inside perspective. Things that would seem obvious enough to overlook for you would stand out to me. I've studied them for more than half my life." Shepard said nothing for a second, then said quietly,
"And you're offering this out of the goodness of your heart?" Liara flushed, her cheeks growing darker.
"I.. admit my professional curiosity. You were offered a chance that many would kill to have." She looked up, her eyes shining. "Think of it! The memories of an entire race!"
"Would you kill to have it?"
"What? No! Never!" Liara looked at Shepard, her eyes wide and horrified. "That would be.. monstrous. To destroy someone's future for a relic of the past?" She straightened. "I have a duty to the past. But it does not come before my duty to the present." Shepard stood up, and Liara seemed to shrink a bit before him.
"Very well. You may Join with me. Help us understand why Saren needs the Conduit and what the Protheans wanted us to know."
"You have joined with someone before?" Liara said, suddenly shy.
"Something like that." Shepard's face was expressionless.
"That's how he got the Cipher Liara." Kaidan supplied.
"Very well Commander. Relax. Embrace Eternity!"

b) The resulting influx of an entire species' memories and the flood of new haptic perceptions caused Liara to nearly faint. She excuses herself from the debriefing. Chakwas fusses over her a bit, then suggests Liara rests somewhere quiet without a lot of loud noises. They settle on the medical station behind the bay itself. Once alone, she collapses into the chair, and holds her head in her hands, her head bursting with the combined weight of the Cipher and the frankly disturbing visions of the Prothean's collapse into chaos at the hands of the Reapers.

She didn't know how long she had sat there, holding her head, desperately searching to control her own experience, when a pneumatic hiss disrupted her meditation. She started, spinning to see who had entered. It was only later she realized she hadn't heard any footsteps, just the door. The Commander stood before her, his face oddly concerned.
"How are you handling it?" he said softly.
"It is - formidable." Liara rubbed her temples, and looked up at the Commander. "And you received the beacon's message without the Cipher?" Shepard nodded, and she let out a breath. "You must be extraordinarily strong-willed, to survive something like that." A slight smile appeared on the Commander's face.
"I believe one of my instructors called me 'stubborn as a mountain faced with an eviction notice." Shepard made a pained face. "She fancied herself a poet." Liara laughed, then clutched her face as one of the cipher's persistent images flashed in front of her eyes.
"It fades with time." Shepard said softly. "You're strong. It will not master you if you do not let it." Liara nodded, a strange hope forming at the words. It was a badly needed tonic against the overwhelming despair and rage that accompanied the beacon's insistent, incoherent message.
"Thank you. You had every reason to distrust me, yet you did not." Shepard shifted uncomfortably in reply.
"I knew I could trust you." Hesitant, he continued, "You will notice... changes. I don't think the Protheans perceived sensory details the same way we did. The sense of touch..." Shepard looked down at his hands. "You touch people, and you understand things about them. Things that have marked them. Using an omni-tool becomes much more intuitive as well." he added wryly.

c) Liara staggered, the beacon asserting its message once again. Unthinking, Shepard put out a hand to save her from falling. They both freeze, receiving a disorienting flash of input.

i)Shepard sees a young asari who'd cast herself adrift on the currents of the past finding herself suddenly in a position to direct the future. He sees her hesitancy, her self-doubt, the old, never-quite healed wound of her and her mother's separation, and the damage that news of Benezia's treachery had wrought. He also sees a core of strength as hard and blazing as the Normandy's drive core.
Liara sees a man who's lost everything but his convictions, the consummate soldier not by choice, but by necessity. A man who held no hope for himself, but marched on nonetheless, holding to his beliefs in spite of what they might cost him.
They both laughed nervously.

"I apologize, I was supposed to be comforting you." Shepard said, rubbing the back of his neck. He lowered his hand, and looked back up at Liara. "I don't know exactly what you saw. But we are going to stop them. Saren will not reach the Conduit. We will stop the Reaper's return. I will not allow this cycle of destruction to begin again." His voice was firm, commanding. But he lowered his eyes. "I won't keep you." he finally said, and walked out. After the door had hissed closed, Liara said distantly to the empty room, her head spinning,
"He doesn't expect to survive."