I've said it before and I will say it again, I love writing Ashley's dialogue. It's conversational, it's fun, and just a little crass. She's definitely the character I've taken the most liberties with in terms of characterization. I fully acknowledge that my interpretation of Ash is very different from the games. I generally pride myself on authentically capturing each character's voice from the games while still expanding on their characters. But having replayed them all recently, I have to say that Bioware did her so dirty. In ME2 she gets sidelined and in her only appearance she's a downright asshole. Then in ME3, once she and Shepard squash their beef, her whole storyline just becomes how much she loves her family. We never get to see her growth as a person in terms of becoming less ignorant or overcoming being blacklisted by the Alliance. Therefore, I like to think that I am simply giving this character the arc she deserved.
This is going to be one of the bigger structural overhauls in the story. In the first edition, Shepard comes to the realization that she has feelings long before Liara does. I'm reversing that here in the second edition because it makes more sense for these two. Liara really is quite perceptive and Shepard… well… as Ashley points out in "The Lost Weeks," our girl's got the game of a sixteen-year-old. So, not great. Also, as fun as Shepard being all dramatic about her feelings is, I don't think any of us want to sit through seven chapters of it.
As a side note, the Kaidan-Shepard-Liara love triangle is honestly so funny because only one person in the triangle even recognizes that it exists for the longest time, and he's not even really in it. It's the two putting in zero effort because they are so oblivious that end up together. The phrase sub specie aeternitatis is so perfect for Shepard and Liara because it really does feel like their love is a matter of unmovable and unchangeable fact. Even those two couldn't mess it up.
The Crush
Liara sat having lunch in the mess hall with Ashley, having a typical conversation about the latest ground mission. The asari had lost track of time and missed the window to join Shepard for lunch, but was pleasantly surprised when the gunnery chief had invited her to sit with her. Chief Williams had been one of the most openly cold to Liara when she had first joined the Normandy. She'd made no secret of watching the asari closely, ready to pounce at any sign that Liara would betray them to Benezia. But just as Shepard had said, it didn't take too long for that ice to thaw and for Ashley to begin treating Liara like any other crew member. They'd done a few missions together and Ashley's demeanor had shifted. It also seemed that Shepard was having a positive influence on Ashley's overall outlook on life.
The marine sat facing the back of the ship, where the sleeper pods were stored, and Liara sat across from her. About halfway through their conversation, Ashley suddenly began staring past Liara and an amused grin spread across her lips. Liara didn't know what to make of the odd expression, so she decided to ignore it and continue speaking. After a few minutes, Ashley interrupted her by saying in a low, conspiratorial whisper, "Alenko is definitely crushing on the commander. He's so goddamn obvious."
Liara tilted her head, and taking a cue from Ashley to keep her voice low, asked, "What does that mean? Crushing?"
The dark-haired woman thought for a moment before saying, "It means he's attracted to her. You know, like he wants to get in her pants."
Although Liara was not familiar with the expression, she was able to easily deduce the meaning. This news came as a shock to the asari because she had never thought that Kaidan's behavior towards Shepard was unusual. "Why do you say that?" she asked.
"She's over there chatting with him now, and he's giving her the look."
"The look?"
"Yeah, the look." Her tone suggested that it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy. "You know, that look people give when they have the hots for someone."
Liara did not know, and she turned in her chair to look back at the lieutenant and the commander. Shepard was standing with her arms crossed, smiling and nodding at something Kaidan said. He was talking animatedly with his hands, his eyes intent on her face. Though Liara wasn't sure what she should be looking for, she did notice that the expression on his face was a little strange. There was a look of intense interest and he seemed to be thriving off the fact the commander was giving him her undivided attention.
"What are you doing?" Ashley hissed. "Don't look! They'll know we're talking about them." Liara quickly turned back around in her seat and sat still. Ashley shook her head and went on, "Anyway, even if he wasn't giving her the look, he's so obvious about it. The way he talks about her and always wants to be around her. He's got it bad."
Liara was still lost. She knew that the lieutenant thought highly of the commander. But nothing he had ever said felt unwarranted or overly flattering. In fact, Liara found herself agreeing with him most of the time. Shepard was smart. She was kind. She was a remarkable woman. Those were just facts as far as Liara could tell. Even his expressions of opinion seemed valid. He'd said to Liara before that he felt lucky that he was able to be on this mission with Shepard. And Liara agreed, even though she certainly hadn't felt lucky at the start. The way she saw it, if Saren was going to go rogue regardless, then she was glad it had been Shepard in the position to respond. Liara suspected that her time aboard the Normandy would not have been half as pleasant if someone else had been in charge. Shepard made Liara feel welcome and safe despite the constant danger they found themselves in.
As for wanting to be around the commander, Liara understood that too. Shepard had a way of making things better. No matter what Liara's mood was just minutes before, when Shepard stopped to speak with her, she instantly felt happier. She laughed easier, felt freer to express her opinion, unafraid that it would be misconstrued or held against her, and she felt understood. She didn't understand how any of that would indicate that Kaidan was attracted to Shepard. But maybe Ashley had more concrete evidence than she was letting on.
"So, are you saying that Shepard and Kaidan are… seeing one another?" Liara asked, perplexed.
Ashley laughed loudly. Then she abruptly stopped and cast a look over towards where Shepard and Kaidan were standing; no doubt they had turned at the sound of her laughter. She waited a bit until they turned their attention away, and then, lowering her voice again, said, "Hell no! That is never going to happen. Kaidan may be all over the commander, but she is oblivious to it. I haven't quite figured out what her deal is yet, but she's given no indication that she has noticed anything. Besides, I wouldn't say she's married to the book, but it wouldn't surprise me if she slept with it under her pillow."
"The book?"
"Shorthand for the rules and regulations for Alliance soldiers," Ashley said with a wave of her hand. "What I mean is that it is against the rules for Alliance soldiers to date anyone they serve with, and especially anyone under their command. There's no way Shepard would break the rules for LT." Ashley leaned back in her chair and nodded her head in thought. "Anyway, Alenko is barking up the wrong tree with Shepard. I get how she's kinda hot in a 'I could kill you if I wanted to' sort of way, but he's just asking to have her stomp on his heart."
Liara shook her head, not sure what to make of Ashley's observations. She still couldn't see whatever the chief was seeing. "I do not understand. How do you know these things?"
Ashley shrugged. "I have three sisters. This kind of thing is like half of what we talk about." Ashley rose to her feet and picked up her empty plate and cup. "Well, I should get back to it. Just keep an eye out for it. You might pick up on something." She winked and then left the mess.
Liara lingered for a bit, mulling over what the gunnery chief had said. She couldn't figure out if it was just idle gossip, if Ashley had been playing some trick on her, or if there really was something going on with the lieutenant that she was oblivious to. At the end of the day, she supposed it didn't matter, it wasn't any of her business, but she couldn't get it out of her head.
As she was clearing her place in the mess, she moved slowly and snuck a glance at Kaidan and Shepard who were still talking. She studied his body language, trying to decide if there was anything odd about it. He seemed to lean in towards the commander, hanging on her every word. There was an eagerness in his expression: a sense that he was absorbing every ounce of her attention.
But was that really strange? Liara knew what it felt like to desire Shepard's attention. Each time Shepard smiled at her or laughed with her, it sent a small thrill through Liara. And even though it had long become unnecessary, Liara still valued the time she spent with Shepard during meals. Liara had been fully integrated into the crew at this point, but neither of them had suggested that they deviate from their shared schedule. Liara especially looked forward to those early morning hours when they were alone and able to converse in private. As time had gone on, she felt more and more connected to Shepard. Liara had never really felt comfortable around other people, but with Shepard it felt like there was nothing she could say or do that the commander would not accept.
Liara continued to think as she returned to her office. If Ashley thought that Kaidan's behavior was odd, did that make Liara's odd as well? And then, finally, the thought occurred to her: if Kaidan's behavior signaled that he was attracted to the commander, did that mean that Liara was attracted to Shepard too?
She sat at her desk pondering the question, feeling slightly panicked. She could fully admit that Shepard was attractive, but it wasn't as if she had never been around attractive people before. She wasn't the type of person to lose her head over someone just because they were beautiful. Yet, when she thought about Shepard in that way her pulse quickened, and her stomach did a somersault. For the briefest moment, she imagined kissing Shepard and feeling her body pressed against hers. The thought was exhilarating and terrifying and overwhelming.
Liara also thought about the time they had joined minds, and she wondered what it would be like to join with Shepard on a deeper level. She remembered the pull she had felt to do just that, and the thought made her face feel hot. There was an undeniable draw to the other woman. Liara normally found other people draining. It didn't matter if she enjoyed their company; over time, she inevitably felt like she needed a break. But with Shepard, that feeling never came. Instead, she felt a draw to be with the commander and learn more about her. The thought of joining with the commander, of feeling truly connected to her in that way, sent a shiver through Liara.
Shaking her head, Liara thought to herself, What does it matter? Even if she was attracted to Shepard, nothing would ever come of it. Shepard probably didn't feel that way about her, and she had made clear that romantic relationships were forbidden by the Alliance. Like Ashley had said, pining after the commander was just asking to get her heart stomped on. It was better to just push those thoughts out of her head and concentrate on their mission.
Liara tried to turn her attention back to her project of narrowing down where they could look for a prothean beacon like the one on Eden Prime. She was trying to compile all the data on similar beacons found in the past to cross reference the data for any commonalities. However, as she tried to read an article about one such beacon, she found herself rereading the same paragraph over and over again without absorbing any of it. Her eyes scanned over the words without comprehending them because her thoughts were elsewhere.
She couldn't get Shepard out of her head. She wondered if there was any chance that Shepard might be attracted to her too. The most frustrating part was that normally when Liara encountered something she didn't understand, her first instinct was to ask Shepard about it. But this wasn't something she could casually mention to the commander. Liara felt unequipped to navigate these waters alone.
Liara also thought about the fact that she didn't know much about Shepard's life outside of their mission. Despite how close she felt to the commander, it had only been a few weeks since they'd first met. She knew small details, but there was no clear picture of who Shepard was outside of her position as commander of the Normandy. Who was Liara to say that she even really knew this woman?
Liara's fingers hovered uncertainly over her keyboard for a minute before typing in two search terms: Commander Shepard. In the next second her screen showed over a thousand results, links to articles, videos, databases. Sorting through the information on the extranet was a lot like uncovering artifacts at a dig site. The most recent news was on the surface – Shepard's appointment as the first human spectre, an interview she had given about the attack on Eden Prime, an article about the attack on Feros. Yet, the more layers Liara pulled away the farther back in time she saw. Before joining the spectres, Shepard's big accomplishment was earning the Star of Terra for her actions during the Skyllian Blitz. She'd heard other crew members make reference to it before, but Shepard had never mentioned it. According to news articles, Shepard single-handedly held off waves of enemy forces from reaching a colony, giving the Alliance enough time to mount a counter-offensive and decimate the raiders.
There were a lot of pictures of Shepard from around that time: stills from the news, candid shots, propaganda from the Alliance. She was younger, but her expression seemed perpetually more grim in every photo. In her official Alliance portrait wearing the Star of Terra around her neck, the commander stared ahead with eyes that seemed to hold the entire universe at once. Liara was sure that countless people over the years had probably ascribed whatever meaning suited them to her expression – a determination for revenge, pride in fulfilling her duty, a call to action for all humans. But to Liara, all she could think was that she was looking at a young woman being swallowed up by the mythology of what would become Commander Shepard. This was the moment when whoever she had been before was lost to what the galaxy wanted her to be.
Now curious about who Shepard had been before, Liara tried to dig deeper into the past. Information before The Blitz, however, was a little harder to find. There was a brief article about graduating marines of the N7 program in which Shepard's name was listed. Then Liara found a record of Shepard's enlistment in the year 2172 and her original enlistment photo. Shepard looked especially young in the picture, clearly in that period of transition from adolescence to full adulthood. Liara noticed that the scar above her right eyebrow, which had been visible in the picture taken after The Blitz, was absent. Her violet eyes held a look of relief and excitement rather than grim acceptance. Liara also saw the intelligence and creativity in those eyes that she liked so much. She recognized that this photo captured a moment in Shepard's life in which her destiny could have branched in a hundred different directions. Shepard could have done so many things, and yet she had picked the most dangerous path.
Liara dug around for a while, trying to find information before Shepard's enlistment, until she finally stumbled upon an article about an attack on a colony called Mindoir. Liara read through the entire article, which detailed the destruction and casualties of the attack, not sure what it had to do with Shepard. There were a few pictures included with the text; images of burned homes, blackened farmland, bodies covered by sheets, and fires raging out of control. It wasn't until she scrolled to the bottom that she found Shepard's name listed amongst a group of less than twenty survivors. It sat seven places down from the top of the list, small and meek between all the other names: Sophia Shepard.
Liara leaned back in her chair and stared at the screen. Although Shepard had never used her first name around Liara, she had seen it enough times in print to recognize it. Counting back from Shepard's date of enlistment with the Alliance, Liara realized that the woman would have been sixteen when the attack took place. If she had her facts about human ages straight, then sixteen was not an adult by human standards.
She thought back to when Shepard had alluded to her mother's passing and confirmed it after Liara asked. The commander's demeanor had made clear that she didn't want to talk about her mother's death, and so Liara had not pried. Considering the fact that there were no other people with the last name Shepard on the list of survivors from Mindoir, it was safe to assume that Shepard's parents had been killed in the attack.
Liara felt a bit sick to her stomach as she realized that her estrangement from Benezia must have seemed bizarre to Shepard. The commander would never see her parents again because they had been murdered when she was a child. Meanwhile, Liara had made a deliberate choice to no longer see her mother. Putting a hand to her forehead and rubbing her temple, Liara wondered if Shepard thought it ironically cruel that Liara had voluntarily spent decades not speaking with her mother when Shepard would no doubt jump at the chance to speak with her own mother again.
"You ok there, T'Soni?" came a voice from the doorway.
Liara dropped her hand from her forehead and turned to see Shepard hovering at the edge of the room, studying Liara with her violet eyes. The asari quickly rose to her feet to greet the commander, saying, "Oh, Shepard. Yes, I am fine. I was just –" Then, thinking better of mentioning that she had been researching the commander, she asked, "Did you need something?" Liara was glad that her body was blocking the view of the terminal.
Shepard looked slightly uncomfortable and absentmindedly traced the crescent scar on the back of her right hand with her left. "I've told Joker to set a course for Noveria. We have reason to think your mother is there. And at this point, she's our only lead on Saren." There was an awkward silence between them until Shepard added, "I wanted to know what you want to do once we reach Noveria. If you want to come with me and try to talk to her or if… well, if you would rather not. I understand either way. It's your decision. I just don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position."
Liara blinked rapidly, not sure what to say. There was some small part of her that had worried Shepard would not risk bringing her close to Benezia in case she had a change of heart and switched sides. Logically, it made sense not to take the risk. But Shepard didn't seem to believe for a second that Liara would betray her. Instead, she was concerned that the encounter would be distressing. "I – Do you think I can convince her to turn on Saren?"
Shepard shrugged. "I don't know. But she's your mother and I hoped that if anyone could get through to her... Well, if you feel like you want to, I think it's worth trying. I want this to end peacefully. I honestly don't want this to end in a fight if it doesn't have to. But I don't want you to feel like a hostage or something."
The realization that someone else might have used her as a hostage against her mother sent a jolt of surprise through Liara. Her astonishment quickly turned to embarrassment that she hadn't considered the possibility on her own. It seemed obvious in retrospect. Any reasonable person would have thought of using Liara as leverage against Benezia. Saren almost certainly had. And yet, Liara couldn't even fathom Shepard threatening her safety in order to manipulate Benezia. It no doubt said something about her feelings for the commander that the possibility had not crossed her mind. It also said something about her feelings towards her mother that she wasn't sure if it would have worked anyway.
Liara felt a pang in her chest as she realized that Shepard probably thought her relationship with Benezia was better than it actually was. The commander likely could not fathom all the history between Liara and her mother. Shepard had only had her parents for sixteen years, from infancy to early adolescence. She would not have any grasp on the dynamics of Liara's relationship with Benezia which had spanned over a century. "I know this probably sounds strange, but I really have no idea how my mother would react to me, Shepard. We did not leave things in a good place. I may not be able to convince her of anything."
Shepard studied her, expression unreadable. Finally, she said, "I know she hurt you. You wouldn't have cut ties otherwise. I don't have expectations of a miracle, I just… well, I guess the only thing that matters is whether you want to try. Obviously, I want to avoid bloodshed, but the more important thing to me is that you get the opportunity to talk to her if you want it."
Liara couldn't help voicing that small bit of doubt in her heart. "And you are not afraid that she will convince me to join her?"
Those violet eyes stared at her in the way only Shepard seemed able to do; a look that seemed to pierce right through her. "No. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind."
Shepard's certainty made Liara's chest feel suddenly tight. Her heart filled with an unknown, bittersweet pain. By the Goddess, she thought. Maybe I have fallen for her. It took Liara a second to find her voice again, but when she did, she said, "I want to try. Thank you for trusting me, Shepard."
In typical fashion, Shepard just smiled and waved a hand lightheartedly. "There's nothing to thank me for, Liara. I'll send you the intel I have on Noveria in the meantime. Kind of sounds like a frozen, corporate hellhole, honestly." With a shrug of amusement, she added, "I guess by the end of this, you'll definitely be able to say I've never taken you anywhere nice. Remind me when this is all over that I owe you a nice meal and a vacation."