Chapter 21: I Remember Me
"Before we begin, I just want to re-iterate what I remember from your report," Liara started. "These visions, this 'dream', you deduced it as a warning the Protheans imparted of some kind of machine race that would eliminate all species. At the time, you speculated it was geth, until further investigation led to the discovery of the Reapers. But you never quite went into detail as to what kinds of images the dream imparted on you."
"Because it was hard to put it into words. It wasn't just images, and they were hard to make out. It was more like... Feelings and sensations. I could feel hatred for the enemy, dread in the face of destruction and defeat, and a stubbornness to fight to the last breath. There were snippets of information that didn't make sense - and some that did, some that said 'strategy' to me, but I never learned what those strategies even were. And then pain." Lucy's eyes were more easily discernible without the illuminating implants shielding her emotions. They traversed far away, haunted, returning with a gentle hand clasping her cheek. She smiled small. "I must warn you, Dr. T'Soni. The visions are gruesome. They disturbed even me, and I have seen much in my lifetime. Are you sure you're ready for this? Will you be safe?"
"I want to decipher this mystery surrounding the Protheans, but more than anything, I want to help you. I believe the melding will help so that I may be able to decompartmenalize all that knowledge for you and organize it. Perhaps impart my interpretations so that you have a sense of clarity within your mind. I'd imagine an imprinting of a species onto a brain that isn't developed to handle that kind of imprinting must be causing havoc for you."
"At first, yes. The headaches have subsided." Lucy shrugged. "Or maybe I've just gotten used to it. Could be why my concussion is taking longer than usual to go away, despite being minor."
"Your brain may be too active to allow it to heal properly," Liara smirked slightly, "And I think it's already active enough, with the way you are."
"What's that supposed to mean?" The soldier inquired innocently, and her earnest confusion always tempted a session of senseless kisses all over her face.
"Focus." Liara settled for a chaste peck on the lips. "You never stop thinking - that, anyone can see when they take one look at you. And you haven't stopped working, always taking on missions, Siame."
"That word again," Lucy breathed, angling her head as she snatched the asari's chin to keep her in place. "I don't understand. 'One who is all'?"
"That's the literal translation, that's why I said you're not allowed to look it up on the ethernet," Liara chuckled as she tried to ignore the blush inevitably consuming her. "You have to come to... Your own interpretation of it, like the visions. I will say it's an endearment in my language."
"May I at least start researching your language on the ethernet?"
Caught off guard, Liara pulled away in surprise. She nodded dumbly. "If you'd like, but didn't you want to not understand me when you turn your translator off?"
For reasons not going to be mentioned, of course, of course.
"Oh, right. Good point." Lucy gravitated closer as she tugged on the archaeologist's chin, her tongue poking the lips for permission to enter. As soon as she did, she dipped out with a smirk and gently bit on Liara's lip, pulling it, along with a hiss. The soldier's pride was beginning to become more noteworthy every time she elicited such reactions, and leaned back with a satisfied smile that screamed success. "We're getting sidetracked."
"That's because of you!"
Liara huffed and settled in to sit beside the soldier, taking hands into her lap. She rubbed soothing circles with her thumb, massaging it into the back of Lucy's hand.
"You'll feel my consciousness push against yours. When that happens, I will wait for your permission. I have heard humans naturally resist the connection no matter what, but I do want to try to make this process stress-free for the both of us. I will be able to search for the visions, but it will aid me if you have a strong image and direction in your mind before I meld with you. So... Close your eyes."
Once, it used to be a matter of debate, where Lucy would tense and look around, protesting to such a thing. It made Liara's heart swell over the realization that she truly was trusted, when the soldier didn't seem to hesitate even for a second now.
"It's hard to call upon even a single image from the visions," Lucy murmured. "What if I try to remember the feelings it invoked?"
"That will work too. So long as you have something related to those visions, it will help me find where in your consciousness all that information is stored."
"Alright." Lucy sucked in a slow deep breath. "It's like... Meditating. But not as calming."
"I'd imagine not," Liara chuckled, "With what you said the visions are like."
"I think it would be beneficial if we would set aside time in our agendas to meditate together, though. Dr. Chakwas has recommended that to me numerous times, but I've just never been able to get the hang of it. I think you could help."
Liara blushed slightly. She squeezed their hands. "I'd love to. Now focus, you're getting sidetracked again."
"Right. Right. See? Can't meditate. My mind is buzzing on everything else, and-"
"Shepard."
Another deep breath. Lucy's eyebrows pinched cutely, her body tense all the way down to her hands. The archaeologist stayed true to coax circles into the skin, waiting patiently as she observed that tension melt away. She leaned forward, trying not to stir too much movement as she did, whispering tenderly in the soldier's ear.
"When you have those images, I need you to try to create a place of calm next - that will serve as the place we start before we explore the visions, and the place we will come back to, to wind down." She caught on to her critical error upon the slightest introspection and wonder as to what would be considered calming for Lucy. "It cannot be in the middle of war or a battlefield."
Lucy's lips twitched subtly. She was still relaxed, nodding slowly and purposeful. It didn't seem to be as difficult for her as the asari assumed it would be when she nodded soon after again.
"I'm ready."
"She... Has a calm place? A non-violent calm place?" Trepidation struck Liara. "Erm... Just what exactly am I about to head into? Am I actually ready for this?"
She had to work on calming herself for a moment, bringing images to her mind that brought her peace. The garden she'd walk through as a child - sometimes running through with Kaleema, against mother's pleas so that they wouldn't get hurt. The array of yellow that painted her memories, whether they be mother's dresses, the flowers, or the fiery sunset as it dipped in the horizon of the sea. The latest addition was a certain human's hair, the way it fluttered about when it was down, the softness in her fingers. Her heart rate slowed and she felt the soldier softly squeeze her hands.
"I'm ready too," Liara whispered. She opened her eyes and carefully plucked the glasses off the soldier's face, pressing their foreheads together. She begun to expand with her consciousness and push for a neural connection. "It'll be like a dive. I'll see you soon, Shepard. Embrace Eternity."
Nothing, at first. It was a peaceful transition in the darkness, but it was cold. Unbearably cold - freezing as it chilled her skin rapidly. Then she realized she couldn't breathe, that when she looked up, there was light refracting and moving in waves. She narrowed her eyes and grumbled to herself as she kicked and propelled herself to the surface. When she broke through the water, she looked around, splashing indignantly at the distant body relaxing by the shoreline.
"It wasn't supposed to be a literal dive," Liara grumbled to herself as she swam. "She put in a lot of effort just to summon the images of dunking me in the water..."
Words whispered into her mind, reminding her that they were intertwined here.
"It's one of my happiest memories," Lucy's calm voice had sounded warm, like the evening sun that hung over their heads. "Taking your hand and throwing you in."
"Why does that not shock me?" Liara huffed. She came ashore and strode to the smirking soldier, sopping wet. "Can you at least conjure me up dry clothes, or do you intend for me to stay wet?"
"Stay wet until we walk back to your home," Lucy shrugged mischievously. "I've committed every detail to memory. Every tile, every light in the city. No people or cars. True peace in the city. It'll be a more enjoyable walk home."
"You just want to watch me shiver and tease me for what I'm looking forward to in the elevator again."
"You know me so well."
"Lucy Fair, true to her name indeed."
"Now you're getting it," the soldier chuckled heinously.
Right, there was going to have to be some care and precaution taken in brutally honest introspection. Liara gave a skeptical look and crossed her arms when Lucy rose to standing and offered her hand. They were far away from the water, but this was Shepard's playground. She could throw the asari to the moon if she wanted to.
Then there was a whisper of good intentions, of desire poking shyly - an image of the baby pyjak with beady eyes resurfaced in her mind. She smiled when Lucy scoffed.
"Don't you dare. I will kill that fucking monkey if you bring it here. I'm not above traumatizing you."
"How comforting to hear," Liara chuckled. She took the soldier's hand, and the beach around them disappeared. They were in the middle of the city, some details blurry, and the ground raced beneath their feet to close the distance to her apartment so much faster, even when they walked at a normal pace. Her throat tightened with reminiscence and a yearning for normalcy upon seeing her apartment building.
Fingers tightened around hers, and Lucy's steady voice became a rock. "We'll get to see it again one day, I promise. After we stop Saren, this is the place I want to return to."
The imagery changed before they could walk through, the settings fuzzing out. Instead of the trip up the elevator, they'd suddenly found themselves in her living room. It was as she remembered before it was tainted by malicious experiments, melted precious sieves, and projections of a mind-numbing show. She looked down at herself upon feeling dry, rolling her eyes when she recognized the Alliance military uniform on her.
"You have a very active imagination, I'm beginning to fear what's in store for me here." Liara teased under her breath. She had to get it out of her system, and likewise, so did the soldier when she chuckled.
"I didn't think I'd take to it as well as I thought I would - and the best part? I don't have to worry about being poisoned here."
Liara crossed her arms with a gentle scoff. She melted when the soldier had procured a bottle of wine and poured two glasses for them, taking another look at her apartment. Everything was exactly the way she remembered it, and the attention to detail was impeccable. The one light dimmed, for it was dying out compared to the others. The crooked painting. She didn't think those would ever matter.
"It does to me. It stands out like a sore thumb," Lucy explained, heading to the one painting. "Do you have any idea how hard it was not to do this? You really tested my discipline." She fixed the painting so that it sat straight on the wall, and Liara laughed.
"Well, now I know what's going to happen when we return to my apartment. I'll see the horde of VIs that you tried to sell me, and you with a toolbelt to fix everything," the archaeologist teased. She accepted the glass of wine, but gestured to it. "We can't necessarily get drunk in your consciousness, Shepard." Lucy. "It doesn't work that way."
"We'll rectify that when we return to the Normandy. I just wanted to try - see if I could, see if you'd hug me again the way that you did that night, and called me by my name for the first time."
A jolt of anxiety coursed through Liara, and it was a strange sensation. It belonged to her, and at the same time, it didn't. She had to retain her focus to keep their experiences separate before this meld intertwined their neural systems too deeply together. She was surprised to see a fuzzy image of herself bleat in and out of existence, flickering before her eyes. It was a weak transition to the memory, but she could feel Lucy's focus to try to make it more clear. She'd gotten to see things the way the soldier did that night, blushing with embarrassment over her drunken antics as she watched herself. Her humiliation melted away upon getting intimate access to the way Lucy thought and felt in those moments.
"Someone like me doesn't have a chance. It would be like dating a geth, for her."
A finger poked her cheek.
"You look so... I don't know," Liara murmured, drilling the tip of her finger in just a bit. "Are you going to try to sleep tonight?"
"That's come out of nowhere."
Shepard glanced over as she leaned on the railing, swirling her wine in her glass with a defeated shrug.
"Likely not."
The memory fluttered, fuzzed, information disjointed as words crashed in all at once. She saw the most important images - important to Lucy - as she watched her slack body bump into the soldier's, their shoulders pressed, her neck bending to rest the side of her head against Lucy's. Liara could feel the tension, the cry for space, but a yearning to tough it out, to see what would happen, and the conclusion of getting used to the weight. She blushed again when she could feel the twinges of annoyance with the way she kept pushing Lucy to try to sleep, oblivious to the implications at the time.
And still...
"This is yet another happy memory she is helping me create," Shepard reflected contentedly.
A random conversation, biotic equivalents of jellyfish and whales. The way the soldier focused on her eyes as she rambled. The way she took Lucy by the wrist and led her back into the apartment, and then she felt the sensations the soldier had as heavy puffs of breaths seeped into her neck, below her 'ear'.
"L-Liara?"
"You look so tired," Liara mumbled sleepily. "I'm worried about you, Luce."
Shepard froze.
"What did she just say?"
More images flicked by. A noiseless snore, and Liara was carried up to bed. She smiled when she could feel the soldier's twinges of annoyance again, calling her a 'demanding asari'. She'd learned what that annoyance entailed, had been on the receiving side of it so often that it was impossible not to see where it stemmed from. It made warmth swell in her chest as she watched herself sleep through the soldier's eyes, and how long Lucy had done so, before she returned to the balcony to finish their wine.
"Here's to us lone wolves," Shepard toasted to no one in particular. She looked over her shoulder when she finished her glass, rattled by the thought she was having often, recently.
"I don't want to be one anymore - not that I have much of a choice with her around. I have a feeling she's not going to ever leave me alone."
She sighed as she turned her gaze to the night sky, a smile growing as she reached for the stars.
"You're so demanding, Liara..."
She wasn't angry about the slip-up. She was unhinged, yes, that much was very true with the way the disruption could be felt so clearly. But there was a small curiosity that bloomed in that moment, before it was buried. A small hope. To be able to feel Lucy this way, to see how she worked and how she automatically suppressed her emotions without thought had become one of the greatest insights of all. She could work with this, she could understand this, she could be better adept at slowly luring all of that out in a far more safe manner than what she'd attempted at the cafeteria with the batarians.
"Careful, I can hear all your plans about how to save me from myself," Lucy chuckled wryly.
Liara was shook out the memory, standing in front of the couch as the soldier idly sipped wine on it. "Are you opposed to it?"
Thoughts mulled with a swirl of wine around the glass. Track after track, hundreds of musings swam along. Lucy's lips pressed into a thin frown. "You can feel it, even if I try to hide it. I'm beginning to see the disadvantages of this - of what I had wanted to avoid."
"Focus on the advantages," Liara urged pleadingly. "You're not opposed, but you don't believe you can."
"Sometimes things are too damaged to be repaired. I'm like a... A broken vase. All the pieces shattered. Even if you glue all the pieces back together, it won't take me much to crumble again - and it's such a fucking pain to put all the pieces together in the first place. I've given up a long time ago, made my peace with the pieces I could."
However fruitless, Liara grabbed her own wine glass and sat on the couch. "You're doing that thing again, Shepard." Lucy. "That tiny voice, the optimist inside of you, is protesting."
"I've been hearing what you're actually calling me all this time," Lucy sighed. "It's getting harder to do this, Liara. Can we go through the visions now? I don't know how long I can concentrate for, and I feel like I'm slipping. I'll exhaust you, resist you, and then-"
Liara took their glasses away and set it on the coffee table, taking it upon herself to straddle the soldier's hips as she framed Lucy's jaw. The asari kissed with a sense of urgency burning inside of her, though her bravado wavered when hands cupped her rump and pulled her even closer. She faltered completely when her shirt was pulled off of her, exposing her in her bra.
"Now it's even, we both feel vulnerable," Lucy murmured. "You want to hide, don't you?"
"I... Yes."
The soldier smiled sadly. "That's how I feel every time you try to save me, Liara. I still haven't figured out what to do with this feeling."
"Does it make you doubt placing your trust in me?"
"Yes. Very much so."
Okay, those words hurt.
"I'm sorry," Lucy sighed, "I'm just... It's just..." Another sigh. She took it upon herself to work the shirt back on the archaeologist. "I don't want to admit it, but it's scary. Not many things do. I'd rather be in a fox hole surrounded by batarians, or geth, or husks. I don't know what to do here, what to do with this feeling, what will happen if I confront it. I don't like not knowing. There are too many unknown variables, too much at stake here." She chuckled bitterly, sarcastically. "It feels that way, anyways. In retrospect, is there a lot at stake, compared to what we're fighting? I'm supposed to be stopping an extinction cycle, and here I am, more afraid of you than any of that. More afraid of hurting you than anything else."
Liara digested, reflected, tried not to let her own thoughts circulate too much on it so that Lucy could stop possessing this advantage over her.
"Told you it's a disadvantage," Lucy quipped.
"It's not," the archaeologist stubbornly insisted. "It's a very strong advantage."
"Is it?"
Liara closed her eyes. Composed herself. When her resolve returned, she opened her eyes and peered deeply into Lucy Fair Shepard's.
"Uh oh, my whole name - I'm in trouble."
This mischief was a distraction. Liara smirked when the soldier had.
"You know what I'm feeling, Lucy. You know what I'm thinking." She drew the human's hands under her shirt and placed it over her heart, the warmth and cold of organic and synthetic pressed hard to her skin. "I'm afraid too, of the unknown, of what's at stake, of what we're fighting, of hurting you. But I'm going to keep trying, keep fighting, no matter how hard it is, no matter how painful it gets. You taught me that, without meaning to. A compilation of our experiences, our conversations, of my observations. This, between us? This connection? It spells disaster, were we to lose it. But can you feel it?" She pressed her hands in harder against her chest, leaning down to touch foreheads. "Can you hear it?"
"You go through it anyways, you fight anyways..."
Lucy's voice died suddenly, and even when it returned, the words shook.
"Because it hurts just as much as it's worth."
Her eyes broke away. She looked off in the direction of the balcony, where the image threatened to disappear. The sky was pure nothingness, and the structure was phasing in and out. She closed her eyes and sighed. For the fleetest second, there was a burst of emotion that was promptly locked in a cage with the key tossed away. Lucy suddenly hugged the archaeologist, however awkward their positions, causing Liara's cheeks to flame with a face stuffed in her chest. The way she was held on for dear life threatened to make her own emotions burst uncontrollably, and she was trying to hang on desperately so as not to overwhelm the soldier.
It was impossible.
"Fuck, Liara." A beat. More emotions punched down. "We're seriously getting sidetracked. Prothean visions. Now."
Whether she wanted to or not, time and choices were rapidly depleting, and Liara could do nothing as the human strained to summon the images to her mind. They flickered again before the asari's eyes, weak and obscure at first, before beating harder and harder with a sense of urgency with the same image focused on.
Fear consumed her at the first grotesque image, a mouth sewn shut, forcing itself open in a scream of pain. Machinery, tubes, burrowed in flesh, interspersed with Protheans fleeing and flailing as these tubes burrowed into them. Synthetics grafted to skin, system rejecting, impulses and movement denied no matter how hard one worked, fiery lava searing the nerves still left behind with every effort to move. The acid melted everything, left behind a broken and useless husk.
A Prothean bound upside down, maybe embedded to a wall, fleshless face, tubes in it's chest as it screamed. Blinded by agony, acid spittle tearing through the helmet's visor. A scream burning deep within the lungs, throat raw, begging and pleading for mercy as the others melted away into the earth.
A Reaper hovering in the sky above them, shuttles descending rapidly as beings scattered in fear, locked in chains and herded like cattle to be branded, wires installed. Those that resisted were melted. Those that resist always die, and nothing would ever be left of them. The hatred towards the enemy, the dread in the face of destruction and defeat, the stubbornness to fight to the last breath - the visions were so complexly tangled with trauma, the similarities and reminders too painful to bear.
Forget. Forget. Forget. Or the pain would come back. The limbs weren't going to come back either. She saw it, saw it with her own eyes as they disintegrated into the earth, just like Jack and Aaron and Enrique and Simone. They weren't coming back. Was that Simone's hand? It was still holding a grenade. Had to get it, had to keep fighting. One last maw. It was coming for her, she could feel the vibrations. She pulled the pin, crawling and crawling. She made peace with her coming death.
She deserved it.
The thresher maw exploded through the ground, roared in her face, saliva flying instead of acid. No more acid? Did it run out? The pin was pulled, but she couldn't throw it, her arm half-mangled by the acid that had chewed through. The maw descended, and she sacrificed her arm to shove the grenade in it's mouth as her free hand thrust her knife deep into one of it's snouts. Pain exploded as she could feel bones crushed and sinew ripping away when it's mouth closed upon her arm, throwing away her half-dead carcass as the maw burrowed back into the earth for safety.
Never before had she felt such vicious joy when she heard the explosion, the pained dying wails.
Let it hurt, let it hurt for eternity in agony after what it did to her unit, what it made her do to her unit, what it took away from her. She crawled, crawled through the graveyard of dismembered limbs, of steaming puddles of acid eradicating any evidence that a human once stood there. She crawled for the landing zone, dry-heaving, throat tightening as the strained oxygen in the atmosphere burned her lungs. She could barely see, could only make it to the bright red fuzzy circle that would bleat a godawful high-pitched whine.
Somebody activated a beacon, an emergency extraction, against her orders - she ordered to fight, and now, like a coward, she was taking advantage of her dead unit's beacon. She didn't deserve it. She deserved to die.
But she was scared.
Another vibration, but not beneath the earth. It was in the arm she'd lost. It buzzed harder, but she knew it wasn't there, a figment of her imagination. Her eyes burned, searing hotter as tears felt like it was breeding poison in her eye sockets. She was half-dead. She needed to stop crawling, finish the job, die with her unit, the way she deserved.
But she was scared.
The vibration turned into noise, one that rumbled lowly. Were the shuttles approaching? It turned louder. Turned into a beeping.
Darkness abruptly fell, the world disappeared. Liara gasped as her eyes snapped open, the sensations that wracked her leaving suddenly. She doubled over and fell on the ground when warm vomit crawled up and forced out her throat. Her skin was cloaked in sweat, clammy palms searching for security as she had fumbled about to get away from the wretched puke. She heaved tiredly, the crawl to the wall half a meter away from her had felt like a marathon. She twisted and slammed unceremoniously against it, hands clawing at her throat and chest as she struggled to catch her breath.
Steady hands came on her shoulders, a voice tried to break through the darkness, but the words were muffled. Her heart felt like it was going to rip out her chest. Her senses began to calm when a cold wet cloth was draped behind her neck. More voices entered the world, voices she hadn't recognized, and she blinked furiously as she tried to make sense of this spinning world.
Muted green eyes came back in her vision, blonde hair swayed, a stoic expression watching her with eyes like a hawk, behind glasses. There was no emotion in those eyes. The lips moved, but the gaze seemed to dart down. Liara followed it and saw that Lucy had her omni-tool activated, and seemed to be talking to someone through it. A deep voice, accented.
"Who is it?" Liara mumbled, being shushed by the soldier's shake of the head: don't talk.
Lucy stood up and strode with purpose about the room, and the archaeologist's gaze lazily followed along, though felt as if she were drunk and lagging behind. She numbly observed as the soldier had disappeared into the hallway, returning with some kind of bottle, dumping some of it on the splatters of blood on the carpet from back when the intruder was stabbed. The blood fizzed up. Lucy disappeared again, her mouth always moving as she talked to whomever was on her omni-tool. She came back with a towel, tossing it over the puddle of vomit.
Liara gagged just watching the soldier mop and scoop it up in the towel, her hands actually getting in there, unbothered by what must have been a ghastly feeling of slimy warmth caking her fingers.
All the evidence of any bodily fluid was erased in this room, and Lucy operated as if nothing ever happened at all. The words slowly filtered into existence as the asari focused more on them to get the context of the situation, her heart thundering back to life over what the man on the omni-tool had said.
≤I have a sniper positioned just in case if she turns violent towards others, but truthfully, I do not want to use it even as a last resort. Please, Commander, your doctor said you have experience in these matters. Could you come talk to the girl?≥
Lucy stopped as she glanced over at Liara, then back to the wall. Her shoulders rose and fell with a sigh, and she begun to don her uniform shirt, fixing her appearance to keep up with her usual strict standard. "I don't know why Dr. Chakwas said that, or what she thinks I can do if what she tried had failed, but... Okay. I'll give it a try. I should be there in about 10 to 15 minutes. Try to stall the girl in the mean time."
≤Understood, Commander. Thank you so much. See you soon.≥
"Shepard out." She took another deep breath, hand raking through her hair. She reluctantly turned around, her expression void of emotion, her steps purposeful as she approached and knelt in front of the archaeologist. "I have something of a hostage negotiation I need to attend. It's urgent. I don't want to leave you here alone, though." She offered her hand. "Come with me. You can wait on the Normandy - the situation is unfolding outside of it, I'm told. Dr. Chakwas can take a look at you."
"Situation?" Liara mumbled, feeling overwhelmed even with the simplest facts. She needed to get out of here, get fresh air. Forget.
{Forget. Forget. Forget. Or the pain would come back.}
"You don't need to worry, I'll handle it," Lucy reassured. She gently pulled the asari forward by the shoulders. "Here, I'll help you stand. Do you think you're able to?"
Liara nodded idly. She'd done the majority of it herself, after she'd been rocked forward to be on her knees, and she pushed herself up. She wobbled, had to hold onto the wall for support, her mind still spinning uncontrollably over everything she'd witnessed - felt. It was too much at once. She needed time to process, consolidate, organize the information in her own brain before she could even attempt to make sense of it for Lucy.
Pathetically, she was ushered along and manoeuvred as if she were disabled, spaced out and no longer there of mind. The feeling wasn't exactly far off. The world around her seemed to graze by her like a slow-motion movie, occasionally stuttering and skipping frames. A firm arm was wrapped around her hips, another slid under her forearm to cup her palm and have better control over where she'd turn.
"Sorry," she whispered, "That... That was..."
"A lot," Lucy finished with finality. Still no hints of any tone. "I know. It's okay. You're safe now. It's over."
Liara couldn't even begin to imagine how the soldier felt, not when she was so absorbed by her own experience - but she felt as though she had failed and betrayed Lucy. She reassured they would be safe. Reassured she'd see nothing but the visions. She should have been able to disconnect the meld and stop it from bumbling into what it became to be, the moment it was clear that the Prothean visions were separated from a different... Situation... Altogether.
Time and environments changed as if they were still in the meld. Her awareness dipped in and out, fluctuating between the images burned in her mind versus the new ones scanned with her very eyes in the present moment. Was this how traumatized soldiers felt, after seeing something harrowing? This sense of disconnect between the mind and soul, this idle drifting where they were propelled by the slightest breeze in the air?
Was this how the marines on the Normandy were feeling, with all the things they were seeing on these slave raids?
They made it back to the bridge, and what once was the longest elevator ride of Liara's life had been snap-shot down to a mere few seconds. Realization was slowly trickling in as she observed the situation unfold in front of her. The woman on the bridge, the one she paid no mind to. There Dr. Chakwas was, still standing by the airlock - now it made sense why she was there rather than inside the Normandy. She was observing the woman on the bridge, communicating with a few C-Sec officers near her.
All eyes fell on them, and Lucy gently ushered Liara to head towards Dr. Chakwas as one of the other C-Sec officers approached the soldier. The accent on the omni-tool fell into place with the weary man who fell into step with Lucy as she decisively approached the woman on the bridge as far as she could.
"What's happening? That woman... She has a gun." Liara's stomach twisted uncomfortably. "They must've been here for almost an hour now. She doesn't seem to be threatening anyone. She looks disturbed."
The only source of answers she could get now was from Dr. Chakwas, and tried to compose herself as much as she could right now so that she wouldn't be waving red flags for the doctor to sink her teeth into. Liara approached timidly and waited for eye contact, to which the C-Sec officers dispersed and returned to their group when Chakwas saw her, and politely asked them to leave.
"Dr. T'Soni," she greeted cordially, "I'm relieved you were able to get the glasses to the Commander. I'm sorry to have disturbed you two, especially if the Commander was actually taking much-needed shore leave, but this situation... It exceeds even my capabilities."
"It's alright. What's happening, though?"
Dr. Chakwas' gaze panned to Lucy, who nodded to the C-Sec officer in charge, before she stiffly walked towards the woman on the bridge.
"What I'm about to tell you is something that must be kept in confidentiality, Dr. T'Soni. Understood?"
"Y-yes, of course."
"That woman on the bridge, she... Is a victim of a slave raid. She was kidnapped and enslaved when she was 6."
Liara's blood ran cold, and her throat tightened. Her gaze snapped to Lucy in worry and her heart wanted to cry out, to wrap her in arms and steal her away from this horrible situation.
"It was a raid on Mindoir, a human farming colony in the Attican Traverse. It was one of the most 'famous' attacks in our history, and a great source of the never-ending turmoil between humans and batarians. One the Commander had survived herself, when she was 16. She's the only survivor, the only one who had not gotten captured by the batarians."
"I knew about that," Liara admitted in a hushed whisper, "About her and Mindoir, I mean. She's only just recently found out that I know, too."
Dr. Chakwas' brow arched slightly, her sharp eyes softening. Something seemed to compel her as her hand came upon the asari's shoulder and squeezed. "I'm afraid I'm not sure if that woman will be, as this is our last resort... But no matter what's about to happen, I'm certain the Commander will be fine."
"I wish I had your confidence," the archaeologist mumbled despondently. "This is horrible timing. I've opened up her wounds. How is she going to help that woman if she's hurting herself? She's just going to mute her emotions again."
Dr. Chakwas remained silent, her hand falling back to her side as she turned to observe the Commander. The doctor's lips had actually twitched in a smile.
"On the contrary, this is good timing then, Dr. T'Soni. This is a step forward to helping the Commander confront those emotions, because that woman is an echo of them."
It was insane. It was all insane, there was no confronting this, no pushing Lucy. She was going to run away, surely. Liara hated being on the sidelines, felt as though she was getting lightheaded again. Her stomach fluttered with angry glitterwings, beating fiercely in their determination to make her vomit again. Her panic rose to an all new level when Lucy was speed-walking after the woman, who had disappeared behind crates and out of everybody's line of sight. Liara watched the C-Sec officers communicate something frantically among themselves, and she swore she'd turned to ice when she had spotted an officer with a sniper rifle reposition himself.
"They're going to kill her if Lucy isn't successful? But she's the victim!"
Desperation and hope clawed at Liara and she'd itched to move, her feet onwards without her mind. A hand clasped her wrist firmly, Dr. Chakwas stopping her with a stern shake of her head.
"The Commander has to do this on her own."
"But..."
"She has to remember. She has to heal."
This was insane. Watching this was insane. Waiting for this was insane. Liara couldn't stand by, couldn't wait - especially without being able to see what was going on anymore. She heard voices in the distance, echoing, and it didn't sound like Lucy. It sounded like shouting and tears, hysteria and desperation, and she didn't know if she could take any more of this. The emotions plucked at her heart and she fought to harden herself, to remain calm the way the soldier would.
All that work was demolished upon witnessing the woman climb up on the crates, backing away to the edge. Lucy had calmly climbed the crates with her, hands outstretched to display she wasn't threatening. There wasn't much to see from the angle Liara was at, wishing she could see the soldier's eyes and expression.
Was she panicked? Was she hurting? Was she crumbling inside, hanging on a frayed thread of hope?
Abruptly, Lucy moved in, and Liara's mouth fell open in a silent scream. The gun the woman had was discharged, but it was wrestled away and thrown to the ground. The woman struggled, trying to break free from the soldier's grip on her wrists.
"No! She doesn't want to remember!" The woman screamed. "Leave her alone!"
That stilled when, as if a desperate last resort, Lucy embraced the woman.
Stronger than ever, Dr. Chakwas squeezed Liara's wrist to force her to remain. Her eyes burned, the world blurred. The tears flowed free and she hiccuped with them in laughter when she could faintly hear Lucy's worst possible issue in this moment.
"I know, it's like hugging a fucking boulder. I get it, okay? I'm trying. It's hard to be a blanket."
"Oh, Goddess, I truly have made her self-conscious about it. Now I know what we'll need to work on next."
The woman looked confused, her tears rolling freely. The C-Sec officers exchanged looks, some muttering, a couple inching closer to see if they were to move in. Lucy's crooked glasses and face disappeared when she had tucked it in the crevice of the woman's neck and shoulder. Liara's fight deceased the moment the woman hugged back. Dr. Chakwas let go and patted the asari's shoulder reassuringly.
"It actually worked," the older human breathed incredulously.
That earned a suspicious look from Liara. "You purposefully put Lucy through that?"
"I had strongly recommended for C-Sec to reach out to her, yes. I've noticed definitive changes in her behaviour lately, and have observed her closely," Dr. Chakwas quietly admitted. "I also know she's been spending an inordinate amount of time with you, which is a critical anomaly in her behaviour. She's never spent time alone with anyone for longer than 15 minutes. And that 15 minutes was with me, everybody else is - on average - about 2 to 3 minutes, if it's not an official meeting. I assumed you've been the one responsible for the changes in her - as evidenced now with you calling her Lucy." Dr. Chakwas smirked a little as she watched the asari from the corner of her eye. "She's also requested my help numerous times on what she should be saying to you to help you, when you were distraught over the events on Thessia. The Commander's never been willing to personally inject herself in that manner."
Yes, all well and good, great intentions. Adorable news.
But.
"You purposefully put her through that?" Liara grumbled, crossing her arms with displeasure.
"The Commander won't heal through coddling," Dr. Chakwas hit the nail on the head. "No one will." She gestured to Lucy and the woman. "That woman has a long road to recovery. What she's suffered, she now knows it was all 'real'. What the Commander suffered, she now knows she wasn't the only one. It was real. Mindoir was real, and there is no denying or hiding those emotions, no waving that trauma away as if it was just a bad dream. They both have to confront that in order to heal. They both have to remember."
There was rationale, and Liara understood. She still hated it, but she understood. She didn't sense any maliciousness from the doctor, only a common interest in both their concerns and willingness to help Lucy. But she still hated it. She kept her grumbling to herself as she looked back at Lucy and the woman, catching the way the soldier drew a circle by her hip as some kind of signal for C-Sec to move in.
They cautiously climbed back down the crates, and a new horror gripped Liara from what she saw, with the soldier finally facing front. Their torsos were stained a vibrant scarlet red. Though the woman's clothes looked like it was absorbing, Lucy's dripped and oozed, trailing down and consuming one of the legs of her pants. Her face was sheen with sweat and pale. Dr. Chakwas immediately took off running, demanding C-Sec to bring her a med-kit. Liara was paralyzed by shock, watching, waiting, helpless. The world slowed, the frames stuttered and skipped again.
{Forget. Forget. Forget.}
Never would she be able to forget the rapid way blood puddled beneath Lucy when she collapsed, crimson lines filling the grooves of tiles as it slithered down the bridge.
{She made peace with her coming death. She deserved it.}