Apprehension gripped Liara for a moment, but only for a moment. She collected herself and granted access to the one at her door, requesting to meet her. It had been some time since she's met with the Normandy Commander last, and here was hoping that the human wasn't here just to stir up old pains from how things ended between them.
That callous coldness was challenged the second the doors opened, and she schooled her surprised that Shepard waltzed in with a measure of brisk business. Liara gestured to her seat at the office table and mustered a professional smile. "Commander, it's good to see-"
"I remember you said you were looking for the Shadow Broker, and Cerberus gave me data on where to find him." A datapad was crudely tossed without a care onto the desk. Shepard crossed her arms and cocked her head, her eyebrow arched, unable to mask her feelings a second longer as annoyed grievances settled in at home. "Interested?"
Without thought, trepidation seized Liara and she shot up from her desk as she rushed to collect the datapad. "Absolutely! Let's see what you've got here."
Disjointed audio burst into life with images of an agent, and an interstellar map. A leaked transmission of a Shadow Broker operative and their mission. She hadn't known she'd held her breath until it rushed out upon seeing a picture of Feron at the end of the transmission.
"He's... Feron's still alive...? After two years..."
Shepard cocked her head to be seen around the corner of the datapad. "So? Intel's good? Can I go now?"
"Is the intel good? Does she even know what this is? Does she care?" There was a twinge of annoyance nestled deep in Liara. A deadpan look swept over her face as she looked up at the callous human. "The intel's good. I never asked you to stay."
For a second, Shepard's mouth opened as if to retort, pain flashing by her eyes. She thankfully thought against it, it seemed, as she instead turned to leave.
Then she lingered at the door.
"Goddess," Liara inwardly groaned, "Just go. It'll end our pain."
Silence pervaded the office, though neither rushed to break it. There were hundreds of things Liara wanted to say, millions more of what she was feeling. Though it was tempting to push away, there was a tiny voice that whispered to stay. Perhaps the same plagued Shepard. The human wasn't brave enough to meet eyes and sighed quietly, mussing up her dishevelled ponytail. She succumbed to whatever plagued her inside.
"What's your next step? Can I help you?"
Liara frowned slightly, though it turned into a halfhearted chuckle. "You don't even know what this is about, or how you could help."
"So that means I can help?"
How the engineer's mind broached these conclusions were beyond Liara, sometimes. She stared blankly at the datapad and shook her head. She remedied her stance when Shepard sighed again and the doors hissed open for her to leave.
"Wait. I... I don't know, yet. I've spent two years plotting revenge on the Shadow Broker." She gestured lamely with the datapad. "I have a chance to make it a rescue now."
"A rescue?"
"Yes, if you cared to ask, earlier, you would've-" Liara viciously silenced the thought. A war brewed once more inside of her, conflicted on her feelings and if she could even trust this version of Shepard at all. She simply nodded, her gaze meandering over to the dog tags that sat on her desk. "Yes. A friend who helped me rescue your body from the Shadow Broker, and sacrificed himself to save you and me when we were caught in our escape."
The doors hissed again. She couldn't bring herself to look to confirm if she was alone now. She hadn't known she was holding her breath again, until it seeped out of her upon hearing footsteps hesitantly approach her - with a far more tentative hand resting upon her shoulder.
"Any friend of yours is a friend of mine, Liara. Let me help you. What can I do?"
Contact tensed the asari. She couldn't help but step back to break the connection, her gaze riveted to the dog tags as the war renewed it's efforts to torment her. She absentmindedly chewed on the corner of her lip. "I don't know. Just... I need time to think of a plan." She reluctantly grabbed the case that protected the dog tags, though kept the contents hidden from Shepard's view as she covered it with the datapad. "I need to go back to my apartment."
"Let me come with you."
Teeth grit harshly. Liara backed away for space when the engineer approached again. She regretted looking up and seeing the pain in Shepard's eyes now. "Commander... I..."
"I won't pester about us anymore." Shepard crossed her hand over her heart. "Council poster girl's honour. Don't do this on your own. I can see that you're rattled, at least let me... Let me come with you to your apartment? I won't come inside if you don't want me to. Or I'll be a fly on the wall, you won't even know I'm there and-"
"Alright, alright!" Liara conceded, having taken a deep breath as if she was doing all the talking. She suppressed a roll of her eyes with how elated Shepard looked.
This had 'bad idea' written all over.
"But you better stay true to your word," Liara stated seriously. "I need to focus, to formulate my plan and-"
She was dragged out her office without another coherent word.
That part about being a fly on the wall?
Lies.
All lies.
"So this Feron guy, he, uh, you two are like... Close?"
"No." Liara droned over from her terminal, keeping one aural out as she listened to the noises in the kitchen. She massaged her temples as she combed through her list of contacts to find whom was good at compiling data with interstellar maps. The salarian Sekat had the best skill set for the job, and she begun to start a transfer of credits in advance as payment. There was a throb in her head and a bug-like skitter crawling in her skin upon hearing a familiar sigh.
"I should have known she could not do the impossible."
The past that which would not stop being so noisy, a brain that was never born with the capability to breathe.
"We're just friends, Shepard."
"Yeah but like, what kind of friends?" A brief hissing cuss, followed by a clatter of what sounded like a cup hitting the sink. "Fuck, that's hot..." She rose her voice. "Like friends with benefits?"
Shepard certainly found a whole lot of confidence somewhere to be asking these sorts of audacious questions.
"No," Liara droned again. She sent the datapad's information to Sekat to decipher the transmission's location, asking for him to vid-call her as soon as he was able to. It was going to be a painful waiting game now. She grimaced and her head fell back in her hands when there was another clatter. "Shepard, please stop breaking things over there."
"Not breaking, fixing. Trying to fix your bloody coffee machine."
"You're - what? Don't touch that!" Liara rushed over to the kitchen, swatting and shooing away at the grubby hands getting too intimate with her coffee machine's parts. "I just got it back and I paid a hefty price for it to get fixed!"
"If you called me I would've fixed it for free," Shepard huffed with a grumble. "Friends with benefits, right?"
"That's not what we are," Liara breathed incredulously, her mouth agape as she stared at the engineer, hesitant to ask the question. "Do you know what that means?"
"Of course I do! It means I'm your handywoman friend, so that instead of calling for a mechanic or whatever, you call me 'cause I design shit in my spare time so it's just the most logical reason to-"
"That's not even remotely close to what it means," Liara deadpanned. "You must be joking right now. I can't even tell."
"Well if you called me around more often you would."
"Oh my good Goddess!" A groan reverberated strongly in the back of her throat. She couldn't take this sulking anymore and she faced Shepard, grabbing her by the shoulders with half a mind to shake her. "You're doing everything you told me you wouldn't. You're pestering about us-" she rushed a finger over the engineer's chatty lips to silence her. "Don't deny it. You are doing so in a roundabout way. And you are the galaxy's worst fly on the wall."
"Can you blame me?" Shepard took a step forward, clasping the asari by her elbows and pulling her in. She held tight so there was no escape. "Only one of us has the guts to say what's on her mind," she challenged, leaning close as her wild eyes flared with a myriad of emotions - whether good or bad. "I know I mean as much to you as a fly on the wall because of how much time has passed for you, but you still mean so fucking much to me. Let me back in. Let me try to get close to you again. You keep pushing me away. Why? What are you so afraid of if-"
"Losing you again," Liara seethed through clenched teeth. "I'm well aware that Cerberus has you off prepping for a suicide mission. They've already contacted me back when they had asked me for intel on Thane and Samara, because they were already prepping for you to have closure so that you can be focused. That's all they care for. The mission. They expect me to say goodbye to you again, after sucking me in the promise of bringing you back. How kind of them that they're giving me another chance to dirty my hands for them in order to get Feron back - if only to rip him away from me too, I'm certain."
Slack-jawed, the engineer stared, stunned. Her eyes melted into the kind of empathy that brought tears to Liara instead, and she whirled around to grab her coffee machine as finality to the argument - and to try to suffocate the emotions that were bubbling hot on the surface now. She was losing focus. She viciously rolled her shoulder as soon as she felt tentative fingertips brush it.
"Liara," Shepard whispered frailly, "I'm..."
Syllables croaked in and out of existence. The engineer stopped trying, falling back to silence. She sighed and bravely approached with a hand on the coffee machine. "I won't say anything else anymore. Whatever you need or want of me, you only have to say the word and I'll do it." She tapped the machine. "Would you please allow me to fix this proper, so you won't get scammed again? They intentionally have a broken part in there - probably to take more of your money after it breaks from brewing a couple cups."
Scammed? Oh, they were messing with the wrong asari, and they were going to pay for it someday. For now, though...
"I could use a decent cup of coffee right now," she mumbled, "Or tea. How soon can you get this fixed?"
"As soon as it's back in my hands. I need only a few minutes and a scrap of metal that you won't care for me melting it down. One of your bathroom fixtures needs fixing too, and-"
"You have permission to fix whatever you need to occupy you," Liara sighed, wearily tumbling back towards her terminal to see if Sekat had gotten her message yet.
"It's not just to occupy me," Shepard mumbled sullenly. "I'm not that bad."
"You are like a hamster on the wall instead."
Somehow, a chuckle bubbled out of the asari with that. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, her lips pulled in a smile against her will, listening to all the sulking in the kitchen now. She struggled not to pace before her terminal as she checked in - multiple times - to see if Sekat had received her message yet. She was losing her nerve rapidly, stopping often to close her eyes and take a deep breath to reign in her composure.
"I'm so close. This is the closest I'll ever be, I've only got one shot at this. Feron won't be left alive if I mess this up."
That his life was in her hands, and consequently the very real possibility of his death also being in her hands, threatened to rattle her. Two years of plotting revenge was now going to turn into a rescue, the culmination of work that... Wasn't really thanks to her. Once again, Cerberus was pitching forth this data, proving themselves to be both a valuable ally - and proving they'd be a terrifying adversary if they've been able to get information on the Shadow Broker without dedicated searching the way Liara had invested in.
Once again, she felt like a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Fetch Shepard. Fetch Feron. Kill the Shadow Broker. She was a chess piece on a board being moved about by the Illusive Man.
For now? It was a mutually beneficial relationship. She got what she wanted and that's all she cared for right now.
Clattering behind her had her glancing over her shoulder. Her eyes softened at the sight of Shepard puttering about in the kitchen, head bobbing with some strange music she's gotten playing on the speakers in there. Then the broker hardened her heart, turning her head back to the terminal. She was being fooled and distracted by old emotions. She still had yet to truly determine if it wasn't just a memory wearing the skin of her old lover that was toiling away in the kitchen.
Lyrics flowed and she struggled to keep her face free of a smile when she'd glance over often, catching that blissful memory in Goddess-awful dance moves as Shepard worked. Liara's heart twisted with a pang upon hearing shy singing mumbled under the breath every now and then, apart from incoherent jargon indicative of one who had yet to learn the lyrics.
"Everything thus far has been... Her. But how would she know herself if she's who she really is? Only Cerberus knows that answer."
Something Liara knew to keep to herself, for she would not wish that kind of existential torment on any soul. She was not shocked to hear Shepard confess that she tried not to think about it all too much, to joke it off as quickly as possible with the way her brain functioned, waiting to prey on her.
Suddenly, the music stopped, followed by a hesitant call. "Liara? Are you able to come here for a sec?"
"No," came the blurted rush along with a glance back at the terminal. No message. Liara sighed and reluctantly came to the kitchen, struck by sullen eyes that seemed taken aback by her initial answer - and the way they soon lit up as if realizing she was actually there.
"Something I should be feeling."
There was still this sense of something off, a lingering delay - or perhaps denial? She didn't know how to navigate this fog inside of her, this disbelief, this persistence to question the validity of the flesh and blood before her. She had to keep forcing her fingers to relax, to keep her hands by her side, almost terrified to keep touching the face of her old lover.
She didn't want to keep living on in a memory, and a refreshed one at that.
"What is it?" Liara asked curtly, hoping this would be a brief interaction so that she could get back to her terminal. She was welcome by a smell of a fresh brew of tea.
Her heart sank to her stomach upon seeing a crude improvised mug to mirror the invention that was once made for her aboard the Normandy.
"You work quickly," came a soft chuckle tumbling out against her will. She accepted the tea from one who seemed to be struggling not to smirk smugly.
There was something ominous brewing in the pits of her belly just from the way those blue-gray orbs glinted as if they had a plan in them, thinking cogs racing furiously. A new melody sparked to life and a groan immediately spilled from Liara as soon as her mug was pilfered away to set on the counter top. A hand scooped up her wrist with a timid smile that screamed one thought they were being foolish, a most damning sign.
"Shepard, I'm not-"
"We're dancing."
"No I'm not."
Though there was no effort to pull away. Liara couldn't help but laugh at the cheesy lyrics and the gaudy beat that deafened them in the kitchen. Her entire body bristled and burned, her instinct screaming at her to tear away and shield herself in darkness when Shepard had pulled her close to sway together, shyly singing in her aural.
"I remember what you said, I got you stuck in my head. Did you think I would forget the melodies we sang? Oh, when you move me like nobody moves me, you're playing my heart strings like la-da-di-da-da."
"Cease this," Liara whispered in a tiny plea, knowing she was heard when there was a subtle shake bumping against her head.
"So, sing for all the tears we cry - a song for when we say goodbye. Then every time we close our eyes, we'll hear our lovesick lullaby."
"I do not want to keep saying goodbye." T'Soni's eyes fluttered shut, and when they began to burn, she squeezed them tightly. "Once was enough to break me."
There was an abrupt change to the song with a jauntier beat, a swipe of the omni-tool skipped forward to a strange medley of tunes. A sickly thick laugh clawed out of her raw throat when the engineer's penchant for foolishness shone through with a bit more confidence - and it was unfortunately taken as encouragement for something that really needed to die.
"Ay-ee-ay-ee-ah! Got this feeling, yeah you know, where I'm losing all control, 'cause there's magic in my bones. Ay-ee-ay-"
"Stop," Liara laughed, met with a firmer shake and a smile bumping against her cheekbone now.
"Ee-ah! Got this feeling in my soul, go ahead and throw your stones, 'cause there's magic in my bones."
"You're not as charming as you think you are," the broker smirked, pulling away a little to take a look at the eyes that danced along with mischief. "You're absolutely ridiculous."
"It gets you smiling, that's all I care for. And - oh, my favourite part's coming up. I like to yell this in the observation deck room."
"Hopefully you've learned to check for any signs of life in the room, by now."
"Nope," Shepard grinned. She pulled closer again, her confidence shaken and showing in the way her singing shuddered hesitantly.
Along with it, the muscles betraying Liara's poise as she shuddered along.
"Look in the mirror of my mind, turning the pages of my life, walking the path so many paced a million times. Drown out the voices in the air, leaving the ones that never cared, picking the pieces up and building to the sky." Her voice dropped to a low husk alongside the singer, eliciting a shiver that was just barely suppressed in time. "My patience is waning, is this entertaining? My patience is waning-" her head threw back, and she proved exactly which part was her favourite as she yelled the line as if to evict all the frustration bundled up and all cozy inside of her. "Is this entertaining?!"
As the song went along, chuckles found a hearth and home in Liara's chest as they bubbled to what else was clearly Shepard's part to sing.
"There goes my mind, don't mind, there goes my mind, there it goes."
Before there was a new song compelling them to stay together, T'Soni quickly slithered out of the engineer's hold and planned to hit the tea as her alibi that it's because she wanted to drink, rather than to get away from the source of mist and fog in her life. She rolled her eyes when an even more jovially obnoxious song was selected to blare in her kitchen and shot a deadpan look, unfortunately feeding the mischief that was coaxing to get out with the comfort of time.
"Shake, shake, shake senora," Shepard started as she jut her hips about in the most positively foolish manner to date. "Shake it left and right!"
"That's enough," Liara laughed, walking away with her tea to get back to her terminal. "I have to get back to work." She smirked over her shoulder. "And so should you - it seems you've plenty around to occupy yourself."
"Have you hit your limit on how much you can take?" Shepard challenged. "And here I remember you saying you could never have enough."
There was no falling for this trick. No matter how hard the engineer would try, Liara wouldn't lose her focus on her mission at hand. It would be an insult to Feron were she to waste time dilly-dallying now - especially if his life were at stake.
"Who knows if the Shadow Broker isn't also alerted that this information has been compromised and leaked?"
There was a new rush of urgency flooding her blood and she lengthened her stride, ignoring the eruption of loud unashamed music behind her. She saw a beeping red light at her terminal and barely registered the clanging of her tea as she dropped her mug in her run to accept the incoming vid-call, quickly programming her recording software to engage and begin. She leaned forward on the screen.
"What have you got for me, Sekat?"
"It was tricky, but you've paid for the best. I can narrow it down to a cluster, maybe even a system."
"How soon can you have it?"
"Shouldn't take long. Come to my office, Baria Frontiers, in the Dracon Trade Center... Gotta say, though, T'Soni - you're making me a little nervous. How big is the trouble that could come of this?"
"You're always paid well for the risk and it's a risk you've always agreed to in the past." There was an urge to sigh, but Liara rushed with the words. "Relax, Sekat. I'll see you in a few hours." She ended the video call and immediately made a backup of the recording for her own safety - and if Sekat was trying to set her up for legal woes in the event that the Shadow Broker was already tipped off.
"If he hasn't already planned to kill me."
Liara glanced around her apartment as she brainstormed what she'd need. Her pistol was the first to settle in her hip, heading upstairs to change into her uniform and hide her gun within her jacket. She installed a cloaking modifier onto her pistol before she stowed it away, getting to test the mod for the first time with Baria Frontiers security. There was a jitter in her nerves and surprisingly, the only thing that kept her soldered right now, was the audacious beats pounding through her floor beneath her.
Something caught notice with several passes beyond her living room window pane. She observed a sky-car from the corner of her eye as she pretended to go about her ways, picking up a datapad on her nightstand of the Normandy. She touched the ID register on the back to initiate it's programmed image of a Prothean artifact, in the event she'd ever need to leave a clue for a certain someone. She had a feeling she wouldn't get the time to call out to Shepard - at least, not without tipping off whoever was watching her from the sky-car.
With a deep breath to steel herself, Liara descended her stairs and swiftly rounded about one of the Prothean artifacts, stowing away the backup disk in it's secret compartment. She initialized it's pre-registered ID of the Commander's DNA. Her body buzzed with kinetic energy as she erected a barrier, her mind falling to a calm mantra as she quietly approached the kitchen.
"Shepard," she called out from the hallway. She knew she wasn't heard, with the engineer still foolishly dancing about, up until the Commander seemed to notice her. Were it not for the strenuous circumstances at hand, one might have found it endearing the way she scrambled to turn off her maddening songs so as to be at attention.
"What a good soldier," teased a stray wry thought.
Not knowing if her apartment was bugged, and scolding herself for not running her drone's programming still, she elected to warn in a roundabout way in hopes the random topic would be hint enough for the Commander to pick up on the underlying danger they were now in. Liara didn't need to look to know the sky-car was still there.
The question now was - who was in line with the scope?
Before she could open her mouth, Shepard's eyes widened with surprise, and then anger. Liara twisted and used her biotics to levitate one of her couches as soon as she heard her window pane crack, and she was still knocked back by the sheer force of impact of the bullet colliding with her kinetic barrier. She'd slid down the hallway, and continued to slide when hands seized momentum by cupping her shoulders and throwing her over into a corner.
"A fucking sniper in a sky-car, are you kidding me?" Shepard seethed as she began what clearly appeared to be a religiously practised routine of shipping out her pistol.
Liara groaned when a familiar yell cut through her kitchen to evict frustration once again.
"This is not entertaining!"
"Not the time, Commander."
"Well what the hell else is this?! Fuck sake..." Shepard growled as she stood up and laid suppressive fire around the corner before she rushed to switch walls, heading over to the coffee machine. Liara's heart plummeted to her stomach as she watched an omni-tool light up over her precious machine.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm fixin' this up again," the engineer grumbled.
"Wh-what?" Liara breathed incredulously, eyes widening with something that's actually managed to surprise her once again after these past two years. She furiously shook her head and reached over to grab the engineer's wrist. "Seriously not the time, Commander."
"No, not that. I can turn this into a grenade."
Before Liara could break out of her shock in time, she watched her precious machine lobbied off over to her lobby.
And her heart shattered along with her window pane.