Shepard had never been to an underwater city before, on Earth or anywhere else.

Due to her injuries, Mordin had put his foot down on her starting any actual work until the following morning. With nothing else to do but wander and think, she found herself following Tali and Deefa around, as the quarian marine showed the complex to her friend.

There was a wide, almost park-like square in the center of the facility. Here, there were soft blankets of pale pink grass, dotted with gray and lavender trees whose boughs drooped like old Earth willows. Above, past a huge dome, there was only ocean, with glints and gleams of sunlight far above.

Tali and Deefa didn't seem to mind her company. The younger quarian was as fascinated with all of it as much as Del was, with the added bonus of still getting used to being without her suit. She lay on the grass, feeling the tiny plants brush on her hands and cheek, reveling in their softness. She plucked small flowers from the trees, holding them under her nose and sniffing at them as if she were drowning and had finally come up for air.

Her enthusiasm and delight were infectious, and reminded Shepard of how much in her life she had taken for granted.

When was the last time she'd ever just walked barefoot on grass, or sand? When was the last time she'd noticed birds in the sky, or insects crawling along on their intent duties? She never just stopped and looked around anymore. She tried to remember, and realized it had been back in college.

She remembered as a child she used to get so frustrated when she'd bring her mother and father some discovery she'd made outside- a rose bud that had one off-color petal, or a rock that looked just like a seashell. They'd inevitably pat her on the head, say 'that's lovely dear', and then continue on with whatever business call or party planning needed doing. They never really saw her treasures, and moments after she'd showed them, they forgot she'd even interrupted.

Now I do the same thing, she thought. Ignore the world around me to focus on work. I could touch it and smell it and interact with it at any time, and I didn't. This poor quarian girl has dreamed of nothing else for her entire life, than what I simply ignored and took for granted.

Even now, half her mind was still on work, running through what she knew of the PMD and Osco and trying to piece together any possible, feasible method of cure or inoculation that wouldn't involve exposing patients to enormous amounts of radiation. Frustrated she could not escape her own brain and prevented from actually working on the problem right now, Shepard wandered off a bit from Deefa and Tali, only to spot a familiar figure enter the square a hundred yards away.

The Spectre didn't so much as glance at the grass, or the trees and flowers, or even the ocean held at bay above her. She seemed to be agitated, speaking into her omni-tool. Curious and concerned, Shepard headed her way. Before she got within ear shot, the asari shut off her tool and sat down on a nearby bench, wiping a hand over her face and scowling at the dirt in front of her feet.

Knowing she dare not sneak up on an armed Spectre (if she even could), Shepard spoke.

"Captain? Are you ok?"

Liara looked up at her, then straightened. She nodded and gestured at the bench beside her. Taking the invitation, Del moved over and sat down, clasping her hands together on her lap.

"We will have a guest joining our team in a few hours," the asari said, her voice almost stubbornly neutral. "I have a suspicion that Osco may be hiding either in dark space, or the galactic core."

Del's brows knit. "Are either of those really possible? The core is just an enormous cluster of black holes and supernovae. I can't image she'd be able to survive there. And searching dark space would-"

"I know," Liara said. "However my intuition is insisting that she is either in one place or the other, and my intuition has not yet let me down."

"So…who is this guest then?"

Liara shook her head. "Her name is Miranda Lawson. She is quite intelligent, spent most of her life studying the Omega 4 relay. At the end of her research she believed the relay actually linked to the galactic core. She thought she had developed a way to travel through the relay and navigate the core safely. She asked for permission to test her theory, but the Council refused. It was too dangerous, and she had no substantial proof to sway them."

"What happened?"

"She did it anyway. Broke a dozen Council laws and sent seventy souls through that relay before I managed to apprehend her. I brought her before a tribunal and she has been serving seventy consecutive life sentences in a maximum security penitentiary ever since."

"I take it by her sentence that those people she sent through never came back."

"You would be correct, Merah."

At the sound of the nickname Liara had given her, Del unconsciously brushed her hair back behind her ear again, shifting nervously.

"So she's coming here now, because you think she may be able to get us through that relay safely."

"I think she knows more about that relay than anyone else alive. I think if we have a shot at this, we need her expertise." Liara fixed her with a look. "And it is not 'us', doctor. You are not accompanying my team. You have work to do, a cure to find."

"I think you'll see that I have to go," Shepard said calmly, then looked up at the sea, changing the subject before Liara could respond. "You know, since you walked in, you haven't once even glanced at the ocean, or the trees."

Liara stared at her, then followed her gaze to the deep blue water, the clusters of colorful fish. "I have seen the ocean before," she said. "On Thessia, there are nine oceans, and a hundred seas. We are born of the water."

"You've seen it before, so you cannot look at it again?" Del asked.

"I have a lot of things on my mind."

"All the more reason to stop and look at the sea," Shepard told her. After a moment's awkward pause, she said, "I'm sorry. I just…I've been thinking about my life, about my family. My parents were different people when I was young. We were always going on camping trips and to exotic places. We watched sunsets and saw mountain mists and thunderstorms. Then they somehow…forgot about all of it. They always had one more meeting, one more party, one more election. They forgot about the way the early morning light would turn the snow on a mountain to liquid gold. After a while, so did I."

She looked over at Liara. "I can't even imagine the things you must have seen in your life. You live and work in space, travel to a thousand different worlds."

"You never left Earth," Liara told her. "Not until you went to Virmire, and once there you stayed put."

Del's cheeks heated in shame and she nodded. "Yeah, it's true. An entire galaxy out there to see and I was too afraid to go and see it. At least, until someone blew up my house and I was dragged out into the unknown kicking and screaming. Even now, if I weren't recovering, I'd be huddled in the lab, looking at slides-…instead of here, looking at the ocean."

Liara was silent, looking at the waters for a long moment. Glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, Shepard tried to puzzle her out.

She always carries herself so stiffly, guarded. Is that an asari thing? No, can't be…Jura doesn't do that.

Shepard had only spoken with the Aswa's pilot briefly, but Jura had emoted during that encounter- smiling, lifting her brows. Liara had only really smiled at Shepard once, and played every other encounter so close to the chest that it was all but impossible to tell what she was thinking.

Maybe it's me? Maybe she doesn't like me, but she has to deal with me because I'm the one they're counting on to stop the plague…

"Do you have family?" she asked, before she was even aware she was going to speak. As Liara glanced at her, she felt the now-familiar heat crawling over her cheeks. She abruptly remembered what had happened the last time that she had asked the asari about her family, and her mouth went dry.

To her surprise, Liara didn't leave this time. Instead, she spoke.

"Family is important to you."

"Everyone needs someone they care about," Shepard said. "And who cares about them in return. Doesn't even have to be about blood. I mean, look…"

She pointed across the square to Tali and Deefa, the marine watching the younger quarian in amusement (and probably a healthy dose of envy), as Tali dipped her bare hands into a small pool of water.

"They're family, but they're not related," Del said.

Liara inclined her head, then sighed, looking back at the water far above. "I have a sister. Half-sister, really. Her name is Vivek. My father is her mother."

"Vivek," Shepard said, as if testing the word out. "You are close with her?"

"Not really. We grew up together, but my interests and hers did not much coincide. She is four years younger than I. As a child, I suppose I was jealous of her. I had to share my father, and she had both of her parents. I remember thinking that her father ought to take her away to Kahje and raise her there. All I had was Aethyta. It seemed fair- in a child's logic, at least- that I get to keep her to myself."

"Kahje?" Shepard asked. "Her father…was a drell?"

"Hanar," Liara said. "I know, it seems an unlikely pairing…even more unlikely if you knew my father. Still, she used to tell me that love is the thing that is important, not the coverings in which it is born. Beneath, we are all the same souls, she said. 'Find the ones that move with love, and you have all that you will need.'"

She snorted slightly, her lips tightening with bitterness. "It seems his soul did not move with as much love as she had imagined. He abandoned us when Vivek was twenty. He was the second bondmate that had abandoned my father, leaving her with a child to raise on her own."

"Not on her own," Del said gently. "She had you."

"I was hardly of help," Liara replied. "Too young and too angry to be of much use. Fortunately, Vivek was quiet and easygoing- it was not in her nature to cause trouble. She is bonded now herself, and recently had a baby. Nora…I have yet to see her."

"Do you still talk to them?"

"My father, on occasion. Vivek, when she remembers some holiday or anniversary. Her distance is not purposeful…she is sweet but somewhat vacuous."

"You don't call her?"

"I am a Spectre," Liara said. "It is best that distance is kept. Spectres make many enemies over time, and some would not balk to harm loved ones. They do not need me in their lives, and I certainly cannot justify putting them under risk for my own selfish need."

Del was silent a moment. Perhaps sensing another question she did not particularly want to answer, Liara asked one of her instead.

"What of your family? You are particularly close?"

"My sister and I were closer when we were younger," Shepard said. "Inna is older by about five years. When I was small I idolized her. I still do, to an extent. She always seems so put together, always calm and rational, no matter what's going on."

"And you do not think you are calm and rational?"

"If you'd asked me that question before all this happened, I would say yes, of course I am. The plague, the quarians, Osco…some of my rationality may remain intact but my calm is going to have to spend several weeks on life-support, I think."

To her gratitude, Liara seemed to find this funny, and smiled at her. Del couldn't help smiling back, before nodding.

"My mother and I are still somewhat close, I suppose. My father was better when I was young, before he started running for office. Now, sometimes, I wonder who this stranger is that stole my Dad away and took his place. I hardly understand him anymore."

"I am sorry, Shepard."

"Yeah, so am I," she said. "You know, I haven't yet gotten an answer to that vid I sent them. Do you think they're ok?"

"I think if they were not, the Alliance would have let us know by now," Liara told her. "Osco is smart and has tech way beyond anything that can be expected. They do not know how hard or easy it would be for her to track them down. A complete communications blackout may be for their safety and yours."

"May be, but you don't know for sure, do you?"

"No, I do not," Liara admitted. "I can ask for you, if you like."

Del nodded. "Yes, thank you. I'd appreciate that."

Another slightly awkward silence passed between them, before Shepard cleared her throat. "So…what do you do for fun?"

"Fun?" Liara asked.

"You do know what the word 'fun' means, don't you?" Del replied.

Liara arched a brow and smirked a bit. "I have heard of it," she said.

"Oh good, so it's not just a human concept then."

"Hardly."

"So what do you do? Do you have a hobby? Do you…paint? Listen to music? Compose music? Knit?"

"Knit?" Liara coughed as if she'd just taken a drink that went down the wrong tube. Shepard grinned.

"Hey, knitting is nothing to be ashamed of, not even for a big bad Spectre."

"I do not knit."

"Then help me out here. What is it that you do to relax?"

"I…" It was the first time Shepard had seen Liara hesitate on anything, or seem even remotely vulnerable. For a moment, she looked far younger, softer somehow. "I like to read."

Del smiled. "Read anything in particular?"

"History, mostly," Liara replied. "Ancient languages, old cultural practices among the various species."

"You like the past?"

"I find it interesting," Liara replied, and looked upward again. "I imagine what it would be like, to be on Thessia before the asari managed space travel. How must my ancestors have felt when they stood on some low hill in the night, looking up at all the stars, wondering what secrets they contained. What was it they imagined, so far out of reach? How did they see those stars, and explain them?"

Shepard smiled. "Humans used to think the moon was made of green cheese."

Liara blinked at her. "What?"

Shepard laughed. "My people were a funny sort back in the day, I suppose. They thought the Earth was flat and rode on the back of a turtle. They believed the sun and the moon revolved around it, that it was the center of perfection, of the universe, marked by God's being. Once we had rocket travel and could go into space, people became fascinated by aliens. There were even stories of bug-eyed little grey men who would come and kidnap people, do experiments on them, then wipe their memories and dump them back on Earth."

Liara smirked. "They were not grey, they were green."

Shepard stared at her in confusion. "What?"

"The aliens, they were not grey, they were green. They were salarians."

"Are you telling me that salarians came to Earth to kidnap people and anally probe them?"

Liara roared with laughter. The sound made Del giggle a bit herself, as she tried to decide whether or not the asari was teasing her.

"Not exactly," Liara smiled, wiping at her eyes. "Those would have been evaluation teams from the Citadel, in preparation for first contact. The medications administered would have caused some hallucinatory effect, distorted and lost memory. It was that way on purpose. I do not believe there was any actual 'anal probing', but you'd have to ask the salarians about that."

Del was astonished. "They do this a lot?"

"I would not say a lot," Liara replied. "The Council anthropologists try and keep tabs on developing sapient species across the galaxy. Mostly they observe them and their culture from a distance, monitor their development. They do not interfere, just watch and learn. When a species advances enough to experiment with space travel, they fall under more heightened scrutiny. Normally, individuals as such are not taken as you are describing, but humans are incredibly genetically diverse- more so than any other species in known existence, actually. Usually instead, ships are shown briefly to small sections of the population, and the media output is monitored. It is a very handy way to measure how a species would actually react to meeting alien life."

"And how did mankind fare?"

"You were…confusing," she said. "In the beginning, there was hostility. Your movies and books revolved around evil aliens invading or intergalactic war against barbaric and nightmarish creatures. It was almost decided then that the Earth would be quarantined, that it would be too risky to the first contact teams, when humanity had demonstrated an urge to fire first and ask questions later. Even among your own kind in those days, hate was sown between ethnic, religious, biologic, and other cultural groups. If you could not even accept other human beings who varied from a perceived 'normal', how could we expect you to accept completely alien individuals? Your species would never have been contacted, and any interstellar devices launched from Earth would have been tracked and destroyed."

Shepard was appalled. "That's kind of harsh, isn't it?"

"Perhaps, but it is a lesson that was learned the hard way, much to our regret. For example, the yahg. It was decided to go ahead with first contact despite our knowledge of their culture, and the first contact team was systematically massacred. It was far too dangerous to consider what they might do on a galactic scale should they depart their homeworld, but our observations told us they would settle for nothing less than galactic domination. So, they are under quarantine, until they mature out of such warlike behavior."

"That didn't happen with Earth though," Shepard said. "We weren't quarantined."

"No. As I said, you were confusing. Though there were hints of hostility in the beginning, soon the media began showing alternative views. Beneficial aliens, peaceful galactic exploration and coexistence. Tolerance and acceptance of those who differed from themselves. Those who saw these changes petitioned the Council to refuse a quarantine and rather adopt a compromise. With evidence presented, the compromise was agreed upon."

"Which was?"

"I am not entirely sure, to tell the truth. I believe it became simply a 'wait and see'. If you could cooperate enough to find your mass relay, then perhaps you would be mature enough to join galactic society."

"Then everything went wrong, and the First Contact war began."

"And the rest you know," Liara replied.

"Are there other species being monitored right now?" Shepard asked. "Others who haven't yet developed space travel, who are looking up at the stars and wondering what is among them…not knowing that they are being watched in return?"

"There are four as of this time," Liara said. "Two are still quite primitive- equivalent to your stone age. It will be thousands of years yet before their people have the technology to travel among the stars. One species is in a type of renaissance. They are learning art and philosophy, but are still some distance away from flying the skies, let alone the stars."

"And the last?"

Liara looked troubled. "The rakir," she said. "There is some debate about them going on at the moment."

"They are launching rockets?"

"No, actually. They are in what you would call the 'Bronze Age'."

"So why the debate?" Shepard asked, confused. "They shouldn't have space travel for centuries yet either."

"No, not on their own," Liara said. "The rakir are a special case. They are predators, and everything in their culture reflects this. Like the krogan, they are about strength and honor. They keep their basest bloodlusts under control by channeling them in unique ways. It is truly fascinating, but I could spend weeks describing their rituals and hunts and mating customs, and you still would not hear a tenth of how the rakir became and remain civilized."

"So there is a fear that they would do violence, like the yahg?"

"There is a very strong possibility," Liara said. "However, the anthropologists monitoring the rakir are insisting they be raised early to the galactic community…because they are killing themselves."

Shepard's confusion only grew. "If they're tearing themselves up with war to the point of extinction, isn't that exactly why they need to be quarantined?"

"It is not war that is killing them," Liara said. "It is their children."

"I don't understand."

"I am not terribly familiar with the research, I can only tell you what I have heard. There are three genders among them- fertile males, females, and what they call 'stunted'. The Stunted are genetically male, but for some reason they do not advance through puberty properly. They remain small and weak, and besides being completely sterile, they have no hormonal drive to copulation at all. Two hundred years ago, the chance of a stunted child being born was one in a thousand pregnancies. Now, for every child born male, there is only a one in ten chance that child will grow to be fertile, and the odds are rapidly getting worse. Fertile males are becoming a vanishing species. The rakir don't yet have the technology to reproduce without male coupling. When fertile males stop being born, the rakir will die."

"That's horrible," Shepard said.

"Yes, and while no one knows the cause of it, the anthropologists have several theories. They believe they can track down the reason and halt the downward spiral, saving the rakir. In order to do that, however, they need several rakir to cooperate with experimentation, and they would then need to disseminate the results among the entire population before the balance tips too far."

"And they can hardly do that if the rakir aren't made aware of aliens and alien tech."

"Precisely. The Council fears a violent species uplifted far too soon, and the anthropologists know that a rich and unique culture may very well be lost if they don't act quickly to save them. As I said, it is a matter of heated debate."

"I'm suddenly glad I'm not an anthropologist," Shepard said. "Though I would be happy to help them with the genetics research. I mean, once this plague madness is over with, and if the Council will allow it."

"I think, if those two things come to pass, they would be very lucky to have you on the research team, Merah."