Work Text:
A dead end.
Liara threw one last shockwave against the far wall, desperate for anything to give and reveal an exit. The door behind them echoed with the rounds being fired into it. It was the only thing standing behind the two and a fire team.
<Normandy to shore party: I’m reading a lot of heat. What’s your status?>
Over the comm, Liara heard the busy daylife of the Normandy, voices humming in the background and laughter bubbling to fill the silence. Shepard must have been checking in on the way to the CIC.
“Alive,” Wrex barked. A half-truth: they were alive, for now.
“I may have a problem.” Tali’s voice warbled, from the connection or because of what she was about to say, Liara didn’t know.
The tech expert had headed towards the computer hub on a different route than Liara and Wrex in the company of a gap-toothed marine named Buchwalters. The pairs had maintained radio silence ever since the marine had warned them their signal was being tracked. This was the first time she had heard Tali’s voice since they disembarked the Mako.
“Tali,” she breathed into the comm, whispering as if her voice might carry through the racket of the assault and give their position away. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Well, no. Alive, but we were stopped before we reached the kill switch.”
Liara and Wrex shared a wary look, Liara’s tired and Wrex’s foul.
“We can do it.” Wrex’s answer surprised everyone to varying degrees. Shepard laughed, and Tali and Liara shared a variation of what, though Tali had a more colorful version than Liara’s soft exclamation.
“The hatchling and I can do it,” he said again. His red eyes settled on her, and in an instant, he sized her up. He had long ago cataloged her faults and weaknesses - had done his best to make up for them, but there was a glimmer to his scrutiny that suggested he found something new in her. Liara wasn’t sure what that could be and wondered if she wanted to find out.
“We are trapped,” she pointed out, both for the benefit of those who couldn’t see and Wrex, who had apparently forgotten.
“They seem to think so.” His massive head rolled towards the door. The piece of metal that had been keeping them alive.
She shook her head, exasperated with his cryptic answer. Before she could point out that there was no other exit, Tali said, “If you can get there, I can walk you through shutting it down.” A brief pause before she added, “It’s relatively easy.”
<Liara?> There was quiet from the Normandy now. Shepard was in the CIC, or maybe the bridge.
“Yes, Shepard?”
<Can you do it?>
Wrex growled but didn’t say anything, though the retort was evident in his stooped shoulders and bared teeth: I just said we could, he wanted to snap. Crass and blunt, even he knew that Liara was green, scared, and over her head. Whether or not they could do it depended on whether or not she thought she could.
Breath, she told herself. Think. She evaluated their options. If she couldn’t, then the entire excursion would be a waste. A potentially deadly one if they couldn’t be pulled out, and even that was a risk. Could they get to the evac point, the four of them? If she could make it to the evac point, it meant she could get out of this room. If she could get out of the room, it was worth it to keep with the plan. If she couldn’t get to the evac point, then what matter was it whether she died in here or out there?
She caught Wrex’s gaze and set her mouth in a thin line, the marks on her forehead knitting together in a mockingly human gesture. “Yes,” she confirmed. “We can do it.”
It was no secret that Liara was out of her depth on the Normandy.
Shepard had come to her for help with her mother, and for a time that had been Liara’s duty on the ship. Her days and nights - the two felt inseparable on board a vessel, segmented into awake and asleep - were spent tracking her mother’s movements. Where had Benezia been the last few years? When had she met Saren, when had it gone wrong for her mother? Liara was determined to find the root of it all, to reach past the horrible things her mother was said to have done and pull back the woman in yellow who had kissed her forehead each night before bed.
She failed.
No one said it, least of all Shepard who prepared a near ceaseless deluge of check-ins and platitudes that fell on deaf ears. Liara failed herself, and her mother, and that was the truth whether or not anyone would say so to her face.
Her time since felt aimless, and so when Shepard proposed that a small team investigate the distress signal from a nearby mining planet and asked for volunteers, she raised her hand. Not every mission was important enough for the first human Spectre, not when there was so much at stake, but this was important to Liara; a chance to be someone on the team.
Tactful as always, Shepard agreed to let the party leave the ship. A fast and quickly corrected brow twitch was the only indication that Liara’s insistence on accompanying was considered odd.
Wrex was less tactful. “I’ll go with the hatchling,” he grumbled from where he stood away from the rest of the gathered party. “Someone has to protect her.”
Liara wrinkled her nose but tempered her response. That he called her a hatchling was funny to the humans - a baby at 112, imagine! - and Shepard rewarded his comment with an affirmative nod. “Tali, Buchwalters, Wrex, and Liara. What a team.” Was it humor or worry that colored the commander’s voice?
They were dismissed and told to report for transport in an hour.
Liara headed for the armory, trailing after Wrex. The humans gave him a wide berth as he lumbered towards the elevator, though whether it was respect or fear that kept them out of his path, she didn’t know. She scrutinized their posture as they passed. Eyes straight ahead, nods, shoulders high. A mixture of both then.
“Why are you coming along?” Wrex asked as they stood together in the elevator.
Liara had prepared a response: “I’m part of this team, too.”
He laughed, not unkindly but at her expense none-the-less. His laugh reminded her of a machine she used at digs, an old-fashioned contraption that sorted through rocks by throwing them all together in a rolling barrel, smashing together over and over again until all that remained was dust. The process left behind anything made of stronger stuff than the porous rock it might have been hidden in, and it was cheap enough for novices and underfunded projects.
“You’ve experienced few battles,” he said matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a question, so Liara said nothing.
The two rode in silence after that, the elevator creeping down from the CIC to the armory. It was a running joke among the crew that the elevator ride was slow, but Liara had never noticed it before. It was only now, with the weight of expectations pushing against her, that she noticed its inching pace.
“You use a pistol?” he spoke into the silence.
Liara cleared her throat and offered a weak affirmative hum. The stiletto was holstered and strapped to her tactical backpack, a provision by the commander who wanted her to get accustomed to the weight and feel of the weapon. She had fumbled using it before, her hesitance leading to a shootout. Wrex had been the one shot, her lips too numb to announce the approach of an enemy, her fingers too clumsy to pull the weapon out in time. Since then, she wore it around the ship, safety on, and practiced removing it from the unfamiliar backpack - a tacbac, Tali had told her.
The elevator gently coasted to a stop and the doors slid open, the mercifully open space of the armory in front of them. It was nearly empty, a pair of soldiers in one corner sparring on mats, Garrus under the Mako making a racket. Before she could escape, Wrex growled, “Follow me.”
He led her to the weapons bench where Tali was already posted. She had taken the stairs while they had crowded the elevator. Evidently, it had allowed her time enough to dissemble her weapon; her shotgun lay dissected, pieces sprawled across the table in organized chaos, the quarian cleaning exposed sections with nimble fingers. She looked up as the two odd bedfellows approached, her eyes luminescent behind the mask.
“Check this out,” Tali said to Wrex. She ran a hand over one of the larger sections of her shotgun - the barrel, Liara realized. Disassembled, it was difficult to tell the individual pieces, but the barrel was easy enough to spot. The business end, Garrus pointed out when he handed her the pistol.
Wrex grunted and ambled closer to the table. She hardly gave him a chance to look before she boasted, “Hurricane line, from ERCS. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to grab one from - “ Tali stopped herself short, and the silence that followed stung. Tali’s hands fluttered to her mask, a sign of embarrassment across many cultures. Even with her face obscured, the instinct to hide was deep rooted.
Liara forced herself to maintain eye contact and smile. “It’s okay,” she assured her. “You picked it up on Noveria.” Off the body of a commando protecting my mother, she didn’t add. She didn’t need to; Tali had been about to say it herself.
“I’m sorry,” Tali stammered. “I didn’t think - “
Liara opened her mouth to reassure Tali again, to shutter the distress she felt at the reminder of her mother’s crimes and how readily she had been made to pay for them at the hands of a spectre and quarian tech specialist. Her time aboard the Normandy had always been about one or the other; apologizing for her mother, hiding her sorrow about her mother.
Wrex cut Tali off first. “That’s not impressive.” He lumbered towards his locker, removed a squat, heavy piece of weaponry Liara had never seen before.
Tali must have because she gasped and rushed forward. “Where did you get that?” she demanded. “That’s impossible! They don’t make those anymore.”
He ignored her outstretched hands and returned the weapon to his locker, exchanging it for a longer gun. “I have my ways,” was all he said as he pushed past her.
“No one should have anything from Jormangund Tech,” Tali whispered. The company was unfamiliar to Liara, but evidently, they produced enviable equipment.
Before she could process what was happening, Wrex was holding the new weapon out to her. “Take this,” he growled when she made no move to accept the gift.
“B-but,” she stammered, trying to grasp what she was expected to do with another weapon she couldn’t handle, “I don’t know - “
“We have an hour.” Without waiting for further backtalk, Wrex headed towards the open middle of the cargo bay that unofficially served as a training floor.
Tali and Liara exchanged a look of worry - or so far as Liara could tell - but she knew better than to ignore a command from Wrex. Mute, she followed him once again.
“You can’t aim.” He reached around her and removed the pistol from her tacbac. The weapon was dwarfed in his hand, almost comical in comparison. “This is better.” He magnetized the pistol to his own tacbac and raised his empty arms as if he still had the weapon. Liara did as he did and hefted the assault rifle in her arms. She felt clumsy holding it, her elbows splayed wide as she rested it against her shoulder.
“Like this,” he grunted. He stepped close and grasped her arm in an iron gripped pinch. She grimaced and pressed her lips together, willing herself not to cry out in pain. His talons were sharper than her fingers, and even through his gloves and the sleeve of her suit, she could feel her flesh divot from the force. His grip softened, his sharp fingers and sharper eyes relenting to the pain written across her features. Softly, he readjusted her elbow.
“Like this,” she acknowledged. He grunted his approval and stepped away.
“This has more kick when you pull the trigger, but it sprays a burst of bullets. You can be less precise and do more damage.” He laughed and added, “If you can hit anything.”
She practiced aiming, adjusting what little she had learned about her pistol to compensate for the difference.
The two soldiers had finished sparring and stood just out of sight, shoulder to shoulder and talking in a hushed voice. They were smiling as they watched her fumble, and when she tried to attach the rifle to her tacbac and nearly dropped the gun, only one managed to hide his laugh behind a hand. The flag of shame unfurled in her belly, the feeling making her hot and itchy all over. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled sharply through her nose. She wouldn’t let them -
Wrex laid a hand on her arm, a brief and sudden gesture that only lasted a second. Liara opened her eyes to find narrowed, unflinching red ones gazing back at her. He didn’t look away from her as he called out, “You two busy?”
After a moment, one of the soldiers cleared his throat. “Just finishin’ up. We - “
“Get over here. I have something I want to show the hatchling.”
The air around Liara went cold and quiet. She shook her head, once, imperceptibly, begging Wrex with her eyes. Whatever he wanted to show her she would only fail. It had been a mistake to volunteer, she saw that now. Without Shepard to protect her, she would be a burden to the team. Wrex wouldn’t be slowed down, and Tali and Buchwalters could only do so much to make up for Liara’s lack of power.
One human stepped closer, something close to apprehension clouding his eyes. “I’m a pretty good shot,” he said and motioned to the rifle Liara held limply in one hand. “I’m sure I could - “
Before he could finish, he was wreathed in blue light with his feet dangling off the ground. Wrex showed his sharp teeth in a smile and looked at Liara. “Ready?” he asked.
“You don’t mean for me to - to shoot him?” she asked, horrified. The human in question cried out in protest, and his friend rushed Wrex. Without thinking, Liara pushed back against the mobile human, sending him sprawling with a well-placed barrier a few feet away from Wrex.
Wrex’s laughter boomed through the cargo bay. “Your instincts are good, even if you’re shit at knowing what to do with them.” He directed his attention at the humans, setting his captured prey down with enough force that he struggled to find his footing. “You two care for a match?”
The one she had knocked back glared up at her from the ground. His ears and nose were bright red, and she wondered if they were hot to the touch. Humans had strange biology. “It’s not a fair fight,” he complained. “Even if there were four of us against a krogan, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“A rookie and a krogan,” Wrex corrected. “Unless you’re worried she’s going to kick your squishy ass.” Now it was Liara’s turn to heat up, though the flush she knew sprawled across her shoulders, chest, and neck was concealed.
The two looked at each other, wordless communication charging the air between them. She meant to speak up, convince Wrex that she didn’t need any additional training when one of them stepped forward. “You’re on,” he said between clenched teeth.
The krogan turned toward Liara and boomed “This will be fun” as he clapped his meaty hands together.
Tali stood enraptured behind the workbench, her work forgotten. Garrus’ foot bobbed in rhythm to a turian pop band, his head and mind lost beneath the Mako.
What humans might call biotic training, asari called an education, and asari of all ages and skills honed their natural talents daily, just as they cultivated a healthy body and mind. Liara knew she was talented by most metrics, but she had never been interested in using her biotics in ways that caused others harm. Her training was basic, showroom martial skills, and her mindset ineffective. In her household, time was spent reading, or gardening in fair weather, learning philosophy and theology, and her local training ended with mediation.
Her mother had shown her a trick during one nightly commune. Typically, the two would kneel face to face, their foreheads pressed together, their hands folded neatly in their laps. A shimmering aura of biotics would form, pressing against them, sliding between their clothes and against their skin, keeping them apart and yet pushing them together.
“You see, my little light,” her mother would say as the wave surrounded them, “it’s in everything. Nothing on this planet, in this galaxy, is untouched by this energy. That’s why we can pull it against us so easily. It’s like peeling the flesh of a ripe amris from the pit.”
Liara, only a child, watched as the blue around them began to push out. Even as she felt it against her skin, she could see the edges of its mass expanding, undulating, washing over everything in the room. She looked across at her mother and felt a potent mix of marvel and dread.
“You can control it,” Benezia said, and she thrust her hand into the air. The room seemed to move against them, and Liara struggled to stay upright as a swirl of biotic energy whipped through the room. Her mother looked down at her, her lips pulled tight against her white teeth as she told her daughter, “If you can find it, you can control it.”
Nearly 100 years later, lightyears away from home and separated from her mother by the pitiless barrier of life, Liara looked for it.
“We’ll let you know when we’re there,” Wrex said to Tali. Shepard had cut the connection soon after Liara agreed to finish the mission, but she knew that their commander had only severed it one way - the Normandy was above them, and Shepard was listening.
“Just try not to get yourself killed,” Tali said. “Buchwalters and I are fine here, don’t worry about us.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“Humph.” Wrex’s eyes rolled to Liara, then settled on the door. The din of assault had quieted, but they both knew a kill team was waiting. They had likely figured out the duo was trapped and were bidding time.
“I - “ Liara halted and took a deep breath audibly through her nose. She searched for the feel of the energy, felt its uninterested and powerful presence like a sentient force. It was like finding the thread that kept the stitches all together, the central cord that ran through everything. It was like finding gravity.
“You’re ready,” Wrex finished for her.
Rather than answer, she strode towards the door. This close she could almost sense them, but more importantly, she could hear them. The door wasn’t air-tight. She dropped to a knee, placed two hands on the wall a few steps away from the door, and pushed.
Nothing noticeable happened on her side, but she felt the vibration of energy as it seeped around the group of humans. Her mother had been right; it was everywhere, and she took control of it in the space between their legs, in the treads of their shoes, the imperceptible distance between their weapons and hands.
Wrex sensed the power, or something close to the raw force of energy that Liara was holding. The skin between her shoulders was pulled tight, aching with the effort, but she maintained composure. “Now!” she commanded, and without any hesitation Wrex charged forward, his body aglow with a biotic charge. The door was locked, but it didn’t matter, and the krogan slammed through it.
Liara felt his weight as he slammed against her sea of energy and she arched her back in pain as she redirected the power. Still, she maintained composure and kept the dark energy tightly woven.
When Wrex landed in the center of the group, Liara kept them in place, and the humans had nowhere to go. Their bodies had no way to dilute the shock of the blow, and for a fraction of a second, their internal organs and cells and atoms ricocheted between a wall of energy and a wall of force. And then there was nothing.
“My goddess!” Liara let loose her control, let her hands catch her as she slumped forward. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t turn away. Where there had been humans before, now there were only the clumpy, wet remains of shredded meat.
“Nice work.” Wrex didn’t give Liara a moment of rest but helped her to her feet with as gentle a hand as he could manage. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen that.” He took in this scene with a lopsided and wicked smile. One side of his face was a shock of red, and bits of human stuck to his armor.
“I didn’t - I didn’t know… I had no idea it would…” Liara felt sick. Her disturbing sense of curiosity sated, she turned away and covered her face with her hands. “Goddess,” was all she could muster.
“Time enough for that shit later.” He grabbed her again and pulled her out of the room. “They won’t be alone. Can you do that again?”
Liara shook her head numbly. Already, she felt drained. Her arms were numb and there were spots at the edges of her vision. It had been too great an effort, and she had harnessed too much.
He reached around her and pulled her assault rifle free. She took it without a word, focused her strength into keeping her arms up and her fingers mobile. “Follow me.”
They took off down the hall at a brisk pace. After a few minutes, Liara found herself lagging behind. “I can’t,” she pleaded behind clenched teeth. She didn’t want to cry, but unspent tears made her eyes feel swollen. “I can’t keep up.”
Wrex backtracked, crossed the distance between them with only a few long strides. “Yes, you can.”
“I can’t! I can’t do this! This isn't like sparring in the cargo bay!” What a waste, she realized. She had felt so good, so powerful, looking the marine dead in the eyes as he rushed her, throwing him to the side. It had meant so little and had been such a laughable excuse at training. It was nothing like the real thing.
She could hear his breathing as he invaded her space and without knowing why she was so afraid, she flinched away from him. He wouldn’t let her go, and he followed the turn of her head until his frame occupied the totality of her vision. “You did that,” he said, motioning with the sharp jut of his chin to the mess behind her.
Her voice was weak and cracked. “I had to.”
“Yes, you did. And now you have to keep going.” She opened her mouth to protest again, but one look from him silenced her. “You can do a lot of things. You aren’t weak, you only think you are.”
His reassurances - if that’s what they were, if Wrex were capable of such - surprised her. She was weak, that was the problem. She always needed someone to protect her, and in trying to prove to herself that she could help, she would get herself and Wrex killed. And Tali and Buchwalters too. And all the people who would follow the signal to the derelict station and be harvested by pirates.
There was no more time for protest. Behind Wrex, Liara saw someone peak from around the corner, their head soon replaced by the muzzle of a weapon. Reinforcements had arrived.
“Look out!” Liara stepped around Wrex and threw her hands forward. The floor and walls pleated as a shockwave sought out the body hiding out of sight.
“The weak die!” Wrex shouted next to her, and he pounded a clenched fist against his chest. “The weak die!” he repeated as he rushed forward, shotgun in hand.
When Liara lost sight of him around the corner, she ran forward to catch up. Although it slowed her down, she kept her assault rifle up and her finger ready. When she turned the corner, she found the krogan waiting, three bodies at his feet.
“If you were weak, you would die,” he told her. “But you’re strong.”
She was too tired to argue, too weak to suggest anything to the contrary. Wrex sensed the ground that she was giving up, and he pushed his luck: “You can’t be a hatchling forever.”
“I am not a child!” she burst out, the offensive nickname revitalizing her with a kick of energy.
The sound of boots approaching deadened any further debate between the two, but Liara could still feel the anger rattling between her bones. She was more than just tired of being treated like a child, as a risky investment, she was angry, and Wrex’s smug face was only stoking the flame.
“I am not a child!” she repeated as a shot whizzed past her. She pointed her weapon down the hall, past Wrex, and pulled the trigger, unleashing a spray of bullets. Wrex, wisely, moved aside. She pushed forward past him, the power of her biotics itching just beneath her skin.
“On your left,” he called out behind her, and she threw another shockwave in that direction. He rushed past her, knocking back someone approaching from the right and using his shotgun to keep another at bay.
“Up ahead!” Liara called, and she stopped an approaching duo with a flick of her wrist, sending them flying. Now behind her, Wrex pumped another round from his shotgun, guarding her back while pushing her forward.
Up ahead, the green light of a door flickered invitingly. Wrex unloaded two more rounds, and she spun to match his fire with a shockwave. Three more fell to the ground, and only two remained. She lifted her palms in the air, displacing the ground beneath their feet and upending them towards the ceiling. He picked them off as they fell, his reloads fast and precise.
She was panting, and the numbness was returning to her arms, but she used the last burst of her energy to rush the room. The door slid open before she crashed into it, and she collided with a chair, causing it to tip over. Before her were three large screens, the distress signal that had lured them here playing across one monitor.
Wrex stepped beside her. “You did good, kid.”
Liara looked up at him and smiled. She had made it.