Strange, out of sorts, yet all oddly familiar. Liara reserved her thoughts and emotions as she continued to observe for any critical details, for even the slightest thing amiss in her former lover. Her dealings with Cerberus - where she had hunted down then relinquished custody of Shepard's body to them - did not leave her with a favourable impression, nor had it inspired a good-natured leap of faith that they would have not seized their years-long opportunity to manipulate Shepard in some manner. Just because they had not altered her athleticism to be of the finest human specimen had meant little, when Sylvia was beloved and far more valuable in other ways. Unfortunately, Liara could not truly claim she knew the engineer right down to the molecular level - but she had her strategies in place in order to attain that kind of valuable information.

First off, it was made abundantly clear that Sylvia's social confidence mirrored that of a curious pyjak, getting grabby with hands, soon to take off running to hide soon after.

The next step was to see that her brain was fully intact and resiliently restless.

They entered the regal restaurant, and Liara watched her former lover from the corner of her eyes, scrutinizing every tense muscle that screamed both in body language and the plethora of facial expressions - more specifically, pitiful eyes that were shot over at her as if pleading for help. She mustered a reassuring smile and gestured to be followed as they walked alongside the long lineup, heading straight for the hostess.

"Reservation for two under the name Liara T'Soni," she announced. She nearly had to grab the engineer's hand when Sylvia remained stuck in place just for them being let through.

Selfishly, a lot of this was mostly for amusement as well.

"Does she think they would deny us if I have a reservation in place? That is what the service is there for."

"Ah, welcome, Ms. T'Soni," the hostess greeted with a pleasant smile, "It's wonderful to see you this evening. Would you like the usual spot?"

"Yes, please, if available."

"Of course. Follow me this way."

They were led along, and Liara had to slow her pace so that she ensured to be walking beside Shepard the entire way. She found it endearing to watch how the blue-gray orbs lit up with nervous excitement, a flurry of hair whipping about in it's caged ponytail as the restaurant was absorbed in all it's glory. She smiled when there was a look of awe that landed on her, next, and she assumed it to be the same reason as when Sylvia had taken in the apartment's view.

She was dead wrong, apparently.

Crimson red swiftly flushed the engineer's nose as she grinned that grin when she thought she was being a fool. "You're the most gorgeous part about this place."

Caught off guard, Liara stared blankly, for a moment. She set her former lover's mind at ease as she reeled in a cool smile, ignoring the war inside of her for a second as she gave a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Shepard. You look very nice in your dress as well - your measurements haven't changed since..."

That died swiftly before she allowed it to venture on and tempt the darkness lurking in the corners of her mind. She derailed somewhat awkwardly and thanked the hostess for being her saviour from such a goddess-awful memory, chuckling softly when the engineer had bumbled in her rush to go pull Liara's chair out first - and unknowingly left the hostess stranded as the asari seemed stumped when one of her duties was stripped from her so crudely.

"Nothing against you," Liara reassured quickly, "She's new here and doesn't quite yet know how your restaurant works."

"Ah," the hostess eased, relieved she wouldn't be hearing a client complaint later. She continued on as she pulled out Sylvia's chair, where the engineer quietly took her seat with a guilty look, soon replaced by excitement when their menues were placed on the table. "Your server will be with you shortly to take your order for your drinks. I hope you both enjoy this lovely evening, please do let anybody on the staff here know if you require anything specifically, Ms. T'Soni."

"Thank you," Liara nodded. As soon as they were left alone, she engaged her omni-tool and swiped under the table to check for any planted bugs. She held out her hand and smirked when Sylvia looked utterly lost, staring for a moment before she slipped her hand in the broker's. She almost pulled away, that inner war reignited, forcing herself to focus and maintain observation. She chuckled as she shook her head. "No. Turn your omni-tool on."

"Wha... Why? Is it a fancy restaurant thing?"

"You could say that."

Adorably bewildered, the poor puzzled engineer complied nonetheless. She frowned at her omni-tool when a warning came up on her screen as soon as Liara initiated and asked for permission to access it. She briefly held up her finger to her lips and gave a steady look, smiling when permission was granted.

All clear.

"I pay extra to ensure I have this table when I sit here - it's one of few that aren't bugged," Liara revealed. "I apologize for not revealing this sooner, especially with your omni-tool. Thank you for trusting me with it though. Illium is notorious for bugs."

"Even in your apartment?"

"I initially bought the drone that I had in order to keep it clean, before introducing more to it's programming, yes. But I hadn't the time to run the drone before your arrival, with preparations to make."

"Oh..." Sylvia hesitantly pulled her hand away.

Not a part of Liara wasn't screaming inside to snatch it back up in hers, but she forced herself to stay. The server swung by and she ordered a bottle of wine before the engineer got a chance to take a look at the menu - and consequently the prices. She folded her hands in front of her mouth to hide her smile as she made no move to hide her intentions of watching Sylvia, and how the human rapidly descended in her anxious awkward ways.

"So you like to come here often?" Shepard asked quietly, and the broker just simply couldn't resist to tease, echoing near-and-dear words that never felt far away in her mind.

"Yes, I like to have dinner all the time."

For a fleeting moment, the eyebrows scrunched up in concentration, and there was a confused smile that slowly rolled into vague awareness. Sylvia leaned forward and caught the broker off guard with a playful flick on the nose, her next inquiry revealing she'd finally caught on.

And it was a passed test for precious memories intact.

"How are you doing today so far, Dr. T'Soni?"

"Good, thank you. And how are you doing?"

"Good thanks and you?"

There was a brief pause, but more so for dramatic effect. There was a more obvious lilt in Liara's voice this time, egged on by indulging these precious memories. "Good, and you?"

"Good thanks."

They both smiled wildly, foolishly, and Liara became aware of her own tension hiding in her muscles when she'd relaxed in her chair significantly. She silenced logic for now and fell into temptation, scooping up the engineer's hand in her own. "Good." She decided to ramp up just a little bit of pressure - as recently requested in the apartment - and lifted Sylvia's hand, turning it over to unravel the fingers and press a kiss to the palm.

It wasn't rough or calloused by weaponry, but slender and dexterous as if one still indulged in a particular ship-model building hobby.

Unwillingly, a sigh tumbled out of her, though it was one of blissful content. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore flashes of images pulsing within the darker parts of her mind, soldering to this very real presence that sat in front of her.

"It's so strange but so good to see you again," she ascertained the fact once more. "Even stranger that you're behaving as if you've never been gone, even for a second." A bitter part triumphed in her tone. "How I wish that were true, these years."

Sylvia inhaled sharply. She pushed her hand through as she leaned forward to cup the broker's jaw. "Liara... I'm so sorry. There isn't a part of me wishing that I could have saved you from all that pain. Nobody should have to endure that. Ever."

"Well, allow me to save you time," Liara opened up her eyes and gave a stern look. "The next time you order me to go and leave you behind, I will absolutely refuse. Is that understood?"

There was a melancholic smile, a gravity of understanding in those eyes that wasn't at all in her favour. She relied on intimidation tactics as she narrowed her eyes.

"Shepard."

"I won't order you."

What the engineer seemed to have forgotten was that Liara was well-acquainted with those eyes, and how they looked like when the thinking cogs were turning. She was already brainstorming ideas on other things she could do instead, wasn't she? Stubborn and relentless, just as how she was before. Perhaps Liara needn't actually put in that call to Sylvia's mother and ascertain this was the real Shepard that they had all come to cherish - though it was deviously tempting to make the engineer sweat like that again too.

{Sylvia Noether Shepard!}

{H-How could you?}

{How could you not think to call your own mother and let her know her daughter is safe and sound?!}

"Mm... So very, very tempting." But Liara restrained herself, at least for now. There would be a much better opportunity to pull out that ace in her sleeve, someday, and it was a valiant struggle to hold herself back from asking if Sylvia had contacted her mother at all to let Hannah know that-

{It would be nice to hear from her that she is alive.}

Mm hm. Yeah.

A few presses in her omni-tool, a swift swipe down a memorized list, and Liara was just about to highlight the name that Sylvia had caught onto very quickly, laughing nervously. "I promise I won't order you, okay? You don't have to resort to such drastic measures."

What? Oh. Right, her brain wasn't quite travelling at the velocity of all the devilish ideas Liara was now capable of. She smirked at the hand that had squeezed her wrist with desperation. "Did you at least let your mother know you're alive?"

"I will, okay? Promise. I swear. Don't call her please. She will absolutely throttle me, and... And! In fact, you know, she would throttle you too, 'cause you're having dinner with me - and you stuffed me in a dress. My mom's never been able to stick a dress on me. None that stayed around long enough before being totally incinerated. She'll be super mad if she finds out I'm alive and that you're the only one who's ever been able to stick me in this... This thing. You'll never hear the end of it. Do you really want to sign yourself up to eternal doom?"

Liara laughed softly. Her gaze roved to appreciate the way the black fabric clung and accentuated Sylvia's lithe figure. "You should wear them more often. It suits you better than you think." A beat. "Except when you walk, you look as though you desire someone to drive the mako over you with the way you move in that dress. We need to practice when we return to my apartment."

"Do we have to? Can I please just have pants when we come back?"

A small sly smile pulled at the corner of her lips as a husky tease slipped out. "I can arrange leaving you with no dress, nor pants."

Unfortunately, it flew over Sylvia's head, her dislike for dresses made apparent, apparently.

"Dang, jeez... What'd I do that's making you be so mean to me? Can I have shorts, then?"

There wasn't time left to tease when the server returned with their bottle of wine, asking if they were ready to order. Liara stole the menu from the engineer and hadn't bothered to look through it herself, ordering twice of what she usually got for herself.

And a blasted appetizer of - gag - squid for Sylvia.

"Y'know, you think you're not being obvious," the engineer grinned audaciously, "But I'm on to you. Is it really so expensive here that I'll have a heart attack seeing the prices, or something? You know I'm not gonna let you pay for the full meal, right?"

"It's already paid for," Liara shrugged. She smirked victoriously at the deflated look across from her. "One of the benefits to having a tab - one you don't have access to."

"Then I'll just have to pay you back in other ways," Sylvia retorted with the kind of oblivious cheekiness that hadn't clued in to her own innuendos. She took the lead to pour their glasses of wine - and when that scarlet blush surged to her nose, Liara chuckled and squeezed her former lover's hand in reassurance.

"It's my treat, Commander. Please allow me this."

"Technically, I should be treating you since you gave me free information."

"Then you'll just have to treat me in other ways," Liara coyly teased. She thoroughly enjoyed flustering the engineer. "I cannot believe it's taken me this long. I wish I learned of this sooner, then I would've had more memories for reference."

Reference - and something to hang onto during her toughest trials and tribulations.

This dance of theirs was waning and waxing. It was becoming less about observing, validating, and more about resisting to steal Shepard away to quell this loneliness that had gripped her these years. No other could touch her nor kiss her, fearful of forgetting the sensations and letting memories fade away if she had. There was a small hole inside of her, a desperation that slowly grew the longer she'd restrained herself from reaching out to Sylvia. She just wished the engineer had enough confidence to steal her away and silence these incessant voices that thought they were being oh so logical, fact-checking the philosophical conundrum of this human's very existence.

Small talk ached, neither courageous enough to broach the topic that vividly plagued them both. Liara tried not to blink too much.

Every time she had, she'd see the memories of Shepard's corpse, cradled in her hands. Maggots in one of the eye sockets. A body flimsy and limp in her arms no matter how hard she tried to collect it and hold it, all bones broken, some penetrating through skin. It was then she had learned - in no way anyone should ever learn of their lover - that there was a small tattoo of N7 tucked just under Shepard's armpit, crooked on her ribs - as if it was a thoughtless decision made during a night out at bars.

And her hand... Her hands. They were here. One of them was amputated, the other severely crushed where bone fragments seemed to float and try to poke their way out the skin.

"Liara?"

Goddess, her voice. Oh, how Liara cried and hugged the lifeless crumbling body - so close to granting Sylvia's wish in fading away into dust so that proof of her existence was wiped. She cried and cried, demanding that Shepard open her eyeless eyes and at least whisper Liara's name. At the funeral, she glared at the picture they posted of the Council's blessed poster girl, hero of Elysium awarded the Star of Terra, naming off all her military victories - they never talked about the profound effect she had on peoples' lives, the little girl she'd saved on the Citadel for repairing a broken toy ship. She cried and mourned and grieved and snapped at former teammates, warped by her grief, pushing everybody away these past few years.

Now, as if nothing ever happened, Sylvia was just... Just back. The same mannerisms. The same goofy charm, the anxious smiles and shy touches, the desperation to avoid social blunders and the irony of committing one in her mission to avoid them. The firm hands that coaxed reassurance into Liara's soul through her skin - like now, as she was being pulled out of her chair.

"Commander?" Liara croaked, somewhat dazed, ignoring the eyes that fell upon them as she was all but dragged out of the restaurant, their bottle of wine their only souvenir.

"We're going back to your place. Where do we go to hail a cab from here?" Sylvia looked around, pulling the broker along as she went to a terminal to call for one. She hadn't looked over her shoulder, betraying little of her thoughts or intentions as such. She was impatient, her palm somewhat sweaty, wrapped around Liara's wrist. The engineer glanced over, and there was a wish that she hadn't. The knowing melancholic look in her eyes said it all.

"Commander, I'm alright."

"The hell you are, Liara," Sylvia hissed, sharply turning forward when the cab came. She was somewhat aggressive - unnecessarily so with automated doors - though was gentle when she had shoved the broker into the passenger seat, her arm slung on the frame as she leaned inside to stare Liara hard in her eyes, holding her by her chin so she couldn't look away. "I grew up on starships all my life. I know those eyes when I see them, and you haven't learned how to hide them. We're going back to your place and we're talking about it. No more avoiding it. It's going to hurt and one of us is gonna cry like a baby - most likely me even though it should be you - and then we're gonna make a fort of blankets to hide inside it and cry in there and... And then I'll figure out what else from there."

Stumped, Liara stared blankly. She wasn't sure what she was nodding to, but she nodded, and it seemed satisfactory enough for Sylvia to finally get out of her face and press the button to close the cab door. She was just as aggressive with her own door, falling into her seat with a huff of finality as she tossed the bottle of wine in the back. It was incredibly awkward, the way she'd forced her hand into Liara's, fingers squeezing hard. She used her non-dominant hand to input the address and was terribly slow at it, adding to the tension in the atmosphere.

When the cab took off, she sighed, that meekness returning as her brain seemed to catch up, chipping her confidence away.

"I'm sorry for being hard like this, and probably even insensitive, but... I just... It's not right to see you hurting like this and sit there, pretending I don't see it. Dinner should be about stuffing ourselves with food, not pain." She eased up with her fingers, relinquishing her grip in favour of pacing her thumb over the jutting bone in Liara's wrist. "Talk to me, Liara. Really talk to me, please - you're so distant, and I know you don't trust me."

"I do tr-"

All Sylvia had to do was lift her hand, twisting her palm as she engaged her omni-tool. Liara guiltily looked out the window.

"Ballsy to plant shit in my omni-tool, I'll give you that. Impressive too. I wouldn't have detected it if I didn't get nosy and curious, running a more deliberate scan to see if maybe your software's missed anything. Illium is notorious for bugs, alright." Sylvia started to sigh, but halfway through it turned into a fed-up groan. "I'm tired of old faces giving me the third degree. First Kaidan, then Tali, now you? Garrus was the only one happy to see me - probably only because I saved his ass, though. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?"

That guilt needled harder, and Liara shrunk a little in her seat as she fell quiet. She rested her elbow on the window sill and pressed her fist against her mouth, tempted to bite hard on her knuckles for the pain to distract her from what she'd felt inside.

But she had her reasons, her justifications.

"...Justification is the true evil in this universe, I've learned."

Liara sighed quietly. "I'm sorry, Shepard. It's just... It's hard. I can't help but be on guard and be skeptical."

"Why? Do you think I'm gonna hack you? Sabotage you? I get it, yeah, I heard it all from Kaidan - can't trust me 'cause who knows what Cerberus did to me. But has anyone stopped to think as to why Cerberus would even have a personal vendetta against you people? They wouldn't spend billions just for me to screw you guys over. No offence, and I get that I'm probably saying all this crap in a million wrong ways but... The Collectors are far more important. They're the biggest threat. Cerberus wouldn't spend billions on me to bring me back, rally a squad of crazy misfits, just to inadvertently cause some havoc for old friends, or the Alliance for that matter. This isn't a soap opera show."

A deep breath was sucked in. Sylvia reigned her temper in and fell quiet herself. "Sorry... You didn't deserve any of that, venting or no. I'm not angry at you. I understand where you're coming from, understand it's painful, that it sucks to see me again after everything you've suffered and survived. It's just... It's tiring on my end. I'm holding on, trying to stay calm, keep my shit together, be supportive, just do my best to do right by the people I've come to care for. I haven't had the chance to wrap my mind around this whole thing. I've tried not to. Tried to joke about it instead, if I start to think about it - and you know what my brain is like. The least of my worries is that I'm terrified I'm gonna, I dunno, develop some variant of body dysmorphia where I start to reject all of me because this... Isn't me. Every facet of me has literally been engineered like I'm some assembled model ship. My skin, my blood, my height. The only difference is that I don't have my old scars anymore."

"Do you still have your tattoo?" Liara inquired ever so softly. She shrunk a little more in her seat when she swore the very air froze in here. The only thing that eased it was a nervous laugh, indicative of what she had suspected that was now indeed true - the tattoo wasn't a consciously sober decision.

"Do I want to know how you know that?"

"Perhaps not. At least, no story that I'd care to share. I'm not ready to."

A sharp inhale. "Liara..."

"I'm not ready to," the broker hissed through clenched teeth, somewhat. She pressed her fist harder against her mouth, muffling her words. "Just because we used to be lovers does not immediately make you privileged to my every emotion and thought. I've grieved, Shepard. I attended your funeral. I worked to move on, to keep going with my life. It took me a long time to realize that I did not die that day, with you, after all."

Something lingered. There was a sense that the engineer was onto something, perhaps knew more than she let on, somewhere. Liara tried to tune into that sensation, that instinct, but she didn't dare look over. Part of her reprimanded her harsh words, the other part validated them. She was back here again, stuck in this strange, out of sorts, yet oddly familiar place.

They arrived at their destination. Liara stepped out, and she had to force herself to turn to look at Shepard. She was relieved to see the engineer stay in her seat, her eyes glued to the destination panel, the address already put in: Illium's docks. She planned to return to the Normandy.

"Good. I need to focus on the Shadow Broker, to get revenge for Feron. I don't have time for old pains and woes."

"It was good to see you again, Liara. You take care of yourself, now," Sylvia said, but the sincerity behind those words was questioned with how weary and aggrieved she sounded. She leaned over to press the button to close the passenger door. "I'll stay in touch." Her dejected mutter squeezed out before the door shut, the cab whirring away.

"If you even want me to, anymore."

Brief AN: fanfiction seems to be working through some issues at the moment as I'm running into a LOT of miscellaneous errors, so I apologize if there are things that are off. I've run into editing errors that aren't saving properly and I usually save the bulk of them - then forget exactly where I've made all my changes when I run into the error. Please be patient as I do review my chapters several times over the course of the week (still catching things even when I return to a chapter months ago) and I try to fix pending mistakes ASAP. Also, I just wanted to reach out to you ky02 - thank you for your review! I certainly miss writing Sylvia and Liara and can't wait to get back to all that fluffy goodness once we ride out the angst.