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It should not be possible, this world without Shepard.
It should not be possible to wake up each morning in an empty bed, her hand still reaching for someone no longer there. It should not be possible to feel grief as a sleeping avalanche, ready to bury her beneath its weight.
Grief becomes no easier with practice.
She has nightmares, sometimes. That Shepard’s dying, still. Atom by atom, dispersing into the vast and endless void. That Shepard’s last breath is wrapped around her throat.
Sometimes she wakes up, and that’s even worse.
The reality drags her bones, making her sag against the gravity of her own flesh.
But Liara cannot wallow in self-pity. It is an indulgence, and one she can ill afford.
Shepard taught her that.
. . .
“How did you survive?” Liara had asked, long ago. Not long by asari standards, perhaps, but Liara has learned that time is relative. It was less than a year, but more than a lifetime. Before they had fought for the Citadel. Before they had fallen in love.
Shepard cocked her head, grinning. She had—has—a scar along one cheek, curving into her lips. It makes her smile look larger than life. “What do you mean?”
“I read your profile. You were on Mindoir, when—”
Shepard’s face clamped down, and silence stretched between them. A field of razor wire, ready for a misstep.
“I lost my family. And everyone I knew. Is that what you mean?”
Liara’s throat tightened. “I apologize. The question was thoughtless.”
Shepard’s jaw softened, her eyes distant as she let out a long huff. Finally, her voice dreamy, drifting, she said, “But the mountains will survive.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s something my mother would say, if something bad happened. Like when I broke my arm or failed a test. ‘The mountains will survive.’ Meaning that we’re transient, we’re all transient. But the mountains will go on forever.” Shepard laughed, gesturing to a screen on her omnitool. “Like this, see?”
Liara sidled closer, trying to remember human personal space—humans are so much less touch-oriented than asari, after all. But Shepard did not shy away as Liara’s shoulder bumped hers, and Liara examined the screen. It held a painting, a style she vaguely recognized as Earth-human in origin, all endless mountains done in inks that fade into mist and clouds.
“And that’s comforting?” Liara asked, keenly aware of her body next to Shepard’s. Shepard’s breath against her cheek. The herbal tingle of Shepard’s soap, warm off her skin.
“Sometimes. It’s good to remember that the world is bigger than we are.”
. . .
Liara has never felt smaller than in the wake of Shepard’s death.
She had always expected to outlive Shepard, yes, but not like this.
Perhaps she had expected Shepard to be her mountain.
. . .
The thing is, mountains don’t last.
Liara is no geologist, but any archaeologist must learn how environment shapes history. Mountains erode, erupt, change.
And she is many years gone from the little girl who believed that the mountains of Palaven went on forever.
Shepard’s body is in a stasis pod. Likely dead.
But if Cerberus can truly bring her back...
. . .
Liara wakes from a dream of peaches, their skin still warm with summer sun. Luscious, fragrant—immortality in flesh, Shepard once told her. They came from the garden of a goddess, and to eat them would give eternal life.
Except—in the dream—that first bite was icy, numbing her mouth and tongue. Her teeth scraped the jagged pit, rimed with memory and loss.
Oh—Shepard. Shepard. Shepard.
. . .
These are not the mountains that she knows.
Until she recognizes this path, those tiered ranges and the mist dripping from the pines. The way the fog winds through the mountains so that the peaks look like islands amidst the clouds, the way that sky and water all seem to draw the eye towards the heart of the mountains, a tiny shrine built in a style that was already old long before humans found their way to the stars. A lonesome bird trills somewhere out of sight, barely audible over the soft roar of many waterfalls.
This is the painting from Shepard’s screensaver.
Liara buckles to her knees, biting her thumb to keep her ragged, sudden surge of laughter from spilling into tears. Her breath is a rip of paper in the cool air.
She knows enough to know that this is a dream. This is not her memory, but Shepard’s. Maybe.
This is not a place she knows, but she’ll walk through Shepard’s memory of this place until they can walk side-by-side.
. . .
Cerberus has Shepard—or Shepard’s body—and the Shadow Broker has Feron.
Liara has few friends.
Her habit of isolation on remote digs has not helped, and neither has her insistence on the Reapers’ existence.
Her mother had been a great believer in the virtues of meditation, believing that deep work could only be accomplished with a certain amount of willful isolation. Except that Liara is not sure her own thoughts are so deep.
She wishes she had a friend. Selfishly so, for her own soothing. Not just because she wishes Feron were free, not just because she wishes her mother had never joined Saren...
She wishes she had a mother, someone to hold her in their arms and remind her that she does not have to be alone in her grief. Perhaps someone who could give her a sense of scale, of consolation.
Perhaps her passion for Shepard wouldn’t burn so bright if they had the normal length of time in which to grow. They barely had enough time to fall in love, and never had the chance to annoy each other with morning breath or misplaced socks or dirty dishes or the thousand and one friendly squabbles and comfortable irritations that seed a long-term bonding. Perhaps, given time, Liara could have had the chance to go from a blaze to warm glow, something that could sustain her rather than burn her.
. . .
Miranda Lawson lets her know that the Illusive Man is...optimistic, on Shepard’s chances.
Liara has seen the body, she knows the scarred face and the dark hair, and she knows the parts that aren’t so visible. She knows the birthmark below Shepard’s left rib and the crooked line of Shepard’s left pinky, an old break that never quite set the way it should. She knows the early silver amidst the black hairs on Shepard’s scalp, she knows the way that Shepard’s shoulders rock back in laughter and how Shepard’s hand flies to cover her mouth as if afraid to knock others over with the force of her merriment.
Liara has no physical keepsakes from the Normandy, and must trust only her memory.
Except memory is impermanent. Even the very act of recall can reshape it, like excavating relics from another time.
. . .
It is easier to slip from grief to mourning, from the sharp stab of pain to a dull ache. Like sutures, rather than an open wound.
Sometimes, in the open markets on Illium, Liara will catch a whiff of Shepard’s favorite drink and follow it to the Earth-Korean kiosk that sells things like packaged ramen and citron tea. The ‘tea’ is more like orange jelly in a glass jar, but Liara buys it anyway. She mixes two scoops with hot water and inhales the fragrant steam. Small curls of rind and pulp settle to the bottom of the mug, and it takes a while before it’s actually cool enough to drink, but Liara takes this time as a small luxury in remembering Shepard.
Sometimes, Liara hears the faint notes of an asari pop song, as covered by a turian singer. It’s never near, never long. A few bars from the tinny speakers of a vending machine. A brief sample from an advertisement for a new sound system. The turian’s flanging in the higher registers gives Liara a mild headache—she's never cared much for this particular singer—but this cover was one of Shepard’s favorites.
Is one of Shepard’s favorites. If Cerberus brings her back.
Liara finally breaks down and buys the song.
She does not listen to it, simply letting the digital download sit on her omnitool like a gift, an offering, a promise that she will give it to someone who will cherish it.
It’s a strange sort of immortality, but perhaps Shepard’s not truly dead until the last note of her favorite song no longer echoes on distant worlds. Until the last jar of her favorite tea is no longer sold.
. . .
“Hello, Liara.”
“You’re not her,” is Liara’s automatic response.
The air is damp with fresh pine, and an unfamiliar bird trills in the distance. She’s back in the painting, back in the memory of a place she’s never visited, on mountains she’s never climbed and a world she’s never known.
“That’s cruel, Liara.”
“You’re not her,” Liara repeats, though her tongue is slurry, the words congealing in her throat. She has spent longer missing Shepard than actually knowing her, and grief doesn’t pay the bills. Being an information broker is neither as glamorous or as lucrative as the vids make it seem, and she has an early meeting with a volus client. She already knows that she’ll need an extra dose of stimulants to manage her morning after clearing the emotional wreckage of this dream. “You’re just a memory of her.”
“Does that make me less real?”
“Please,” Liara starts, then stops. She tries again, swallowing. The words are gravel in her chest. “Please. Just let me go.”
“If I am just a memory, why can’t you let go?”
Because I love you. Because I miss you. Because if memory is all I have and you come back different, I will never know whether it’s because I misremembered or because you were never who I thought you were. Because I’m ashamed of how little I’ve grown in your absence. Because the world is so vast and we are so small.
“Because the mountains will survive,” she says instead.
Shepard blinks, her scarred smile twisting into something comical. “I’m sorry?”
“I don’t know how that brings you comfort. I don’t know how—”
“How someone from such a short-lived race can understand things on such a long scale?”
Liara flushes, and that bright surge of heat—anger, indignation, and yes, some embarrassment at having been caught so thoroughly by her own unconscious—cuts through the dream’s chill. Her toes curl within her socks, suddenly clammy, and she notes the silly detail of her shoes. Bright pink leather, with gold wings embroidered at the heels. She hasn’t worn them since she was a little girl.
“Mountains don’t survive, Shepard. They change. They erode. They drift, and to pretend they are permanent betrays an incredibly limited understanding of how the world works.”
“And you think things survive unchanged?”
Liara finally lets herself look—truly look—at Shepard.
Shepard—or at least Liara’s memory of Shepard, shaped by grief and longing and more time apart than spent together—is beautiful. Her eyes are dark, and her lashes short. Her shoulders are broad, her hands square, her nails blunt and meticulously clean and she smells of her favorite soap, the one with lemongrass and eucalyptus that leaves blue streaks in the bathroom sink. The scar that tugs one side of her face in a permanent smile is a slick pinkish-brown, and it could dominate her expressions if she let it but also—
“Everything we touch, it changes us. We go through life gathering scars and marks, tattoos and tan lines and stretch marks and stories. We still survive,” Shepard says gently, catching Liara’s hand in her own and pressing the palm between her fingers, gently, like catching a small bird and trying to calm it down. “Please, Liara. Don’t be afraid of change.”
Liara’s vision mists with tears, and she tries to smile as she quavers out a weak joke. “When did you become so wise?”
“When you started writing my dialogue. I’m just a memory, remember?” Shepard chuckles, leaning forward to kiss her on the lips. A taste of honey and citron, clean and sweet. “Wake up, Liara.”
“No, please, I miss you—”
“The Normandy has entered Illium space,” blares her awake, shattering the last few fragments of the dream. “The Normandy has entered Illium space. The Normandy has entered Illium space—”
Liara jolts awake, grabbing her omnitool. A few quick swipes and she has the docking fees handled, which should serve the dual purpose of easing Shepard’s journey and—gently—letting Shepard know that Liara’s alive and loves her and misses her and—and—
Shepard’s alive.