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There was a defunct Geth in her AI core.
A giant hole in what would be its chest if it were organic and its headlight not even flickering; it lay still through the entire journey from Hawking ETA to the Hourglass nebula. Still, somehow, the presence of a Geth on her ship is not at all the most bizarre thing about the state of her affairs.
The trip to Hourglass was a gratuitous stop. Shepard, of course, knew this. She suspected her squad of rag tag whatever-the-fucks with guns also knew this. She didn’t care.
With a slow hiss, the Normandy SR2’s shuttle docked with one of various entry points to Hagalaz’ only ship and Shepard stepped out alone into the quietly humming hall. Liara knew she was there – would have detected the Normandy’s presence even before the shuttle docked – but Shepard walked slowly, trailing the lines of the wall with her gaze. A storm had been brewing steadily for weeks now. Months, maybe. One she could not, under any circumstances, take with her through the relay if she hoped to come out of it alive.
Two years.
It has been two whole earth years and then some since she'd died. She was definitely dead, and yet here she was, very much controversially alive. Every minute since she'd awoken from her two-year-long nap, she'd been running from it. From the simple fact that she, through some batshit crazy lab experiment, had been necromancied back to life by a terrorist organization and its attractive yet secretive second in command.
It was easy enough at first not to think about it. To go on with life as though nothing had happened; to jump from system to system recruiting new and old members for her suicide mission. Slowly, though, the group had coalesced from a dossier of strangers into an honest to god squad; each one of them needing closure before their suicide mission.
It was only as she’d jumped back aboard the Normandy, Geth in hand, wondering against all reason whether they should wake it, only once the Geth had been remanded into EDI’s custody, only once she’d realized that with the IFF installed they would be jumping through the relay that the absurdity of it all had hit her at full speed.
She had died.
Worse yet, her lover had given her body over to a terrorist organisation.
A terrorist organization she now worked for. An organization whose cause she was now willing to die for. Again.
"Shepard?"
Liara’s familiar voice snapped her out of her thoughts. The Asari had come to greet her in the hallway, a small, hesitant smile plastered plainly on her face.
"Liara."
They hadn’t seen each other since that quiet night aboard the Normandy. Liara in her dress, Shepard just happy to have her back; happy to feel the familiar warmth of her scaly blue skin under her fingertips.
Shepard stopped in her tracks. In the split second she was caught off guard, Liara’s arms had found their way around her neck and she slid her own around her waist in return as though it were the most natural thing in the galaxy.
She had come here for comfort. Even if she wouldn’t admit it outright to her crew, she needed it desperately. She had done them all risky favors, though, and figured it was her turn to ‘make peace' or whatever Thane had said. It was one matter to die saving Joker’s life in an unexpected turn of a routine mission and another thing entirely to walk yourself to the gallows for a greater cause.
Shepard was both Charon and his quiet passenger floating slowly towards the Omega 4 relay.
"It’s good to see you." Liara said quietly, arms wrapped strongly around her frame, clinging somehow tighter than the time before.
Shepard smiled back. It was a tense smile, as though the corners of her lips moved against her will. "You too."
She tried earnestly to believe it. To simply exist and feel the steady pressure of Liara's embrace; the familiar warmth radiating through her unfamiliar Cerberus attire.
Eventually, though, the silk thin illusion broke away and Liara stepped back, though her hand lingered against Shepard's arm as though faintly recognizing the distance and trying in vain to close it.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Hagalaz ship, past the old broker’s atrium, Liara had set up a small bedroom for herself. Inside the room was a comfortable mess; a cot with an old, standard issue Alliance blanket, a faintly heart-shaped bleach stain etched into the otherwise blue corner. Her desk was strewn with several datapads, and various glasses of mostly finished beverages. The centerpiece – other than the massive window looking out at the Hagalaz storm – was a large painting of Ilos scenery. Green and bushy, the painting was reminiscent of one she had in her Illium apartment save for a small detail. A tiny icon of the Normandy flying overhead, far up in the sky and clearly painted in as an afterthought by someone else.
The sight of it brought Shepard’s thoughts into sharper focus.
The Broker vessel was quiet around them though hardly silent. The distant hum of machinery buried somewhere behind the walls, the faint vibration of drives and processors and countless streams of information moving through systems Shepard would never fully understand. But compared to the Normandy, compared to the endless noise of prep and calibration and people trying very hard not to think about where they would soon be going, it felt almost peaceful.
As though she'd been waiting for this occasion, Liara brought out a tall, thin bottle of human wine, something seemingly French.
As the volume of dark red liquid warmed Shepard's insides, she sat still and listened. Liara spoke about contracts and intelligence networks and political disputes on worlds Shepard had never heard of.
There was a certain something that hung in the air like a corpse on a noose that neither of them were used to. A stiff sort of terse little thing.
Their ‘relationship’ – if Shepard even dared to call it that – was forged in far more pressing times. Quick conversation before, during, and after various life threatening missions. She had helped Liara kill her own mother for God's sake. There was nothing ‘standard’ or ‘simple’ about them. This discomfort, though? The unwillingness to confront head on the very thought that had brought her here was an unfamiliar one. The fear of acknowledging something so pressing, so urgent, so acrid it had eaten away at her for months now was only doubled by the prospect of losing Liara for good.
And yet, she needed answers.
Answers she’d been denied by the Illusive Man, who seemed to want to dick around with her just long enough to see if she’d survive the jump through the Omega-4 relay. Answers Miranda Lawson wouldn’t provide out of some remaining sense of loyalty to Cerberus’ cause. Or perhaps it was that she couldn’t, because, really, she had only been doing her job. She wasn’t the alien that had collected her body from the wreckage and delivered it, against any and all reasonable thought, to a xenophobic terrorist organisation.
That was Liara’s doing. Her Liara had been the cause of the thick blue scars lining her war-torn body. And with every night she had managed any sort of sleep and every morning she had spent massaging the tingling skin that just didn’t sit quite right on her frame she wondered why.
Nevertheless, Shepard couldn't shoot her way out of this question so instead, she sat still and nodded along, trying hard to find it in her to ask outright. Occasionally, she offered a comment, though for the most part she found herself staring through the viewport instead. A storm churned endlessly beyond the glass and she found herself watching it whenever conversation lapsed. Watching the violence unfold at a safe distance.
Every time she drifted too far into thought, Liara would gently pull her back. A question or a touch to her wrist followed by a soft yet still-hesitant smile barely concealing the concern written plainly in the slight downturn of her freckled brow.
It seems she, too, was hesitant to address the fact of Shepard’s presence on the ship and what it may entail. Their last encounter had left Liara in something of a spiral, the conclusion to which was the sole realization that she was, in fact, with Shepard until the end. And if that just meant sitting together in her nook aboard the Hagalaz ship without addressing the broader circumstances that plagued them both, so be it.
Still, Liara’s concern brought about an unexpected stab of guilt. In one final attempt to shake it off, Shepard spoke up.
"I missed you," she said quietly. This was true, of course; not something she would lie about. Still it was only half the sentiment.
With a small smile, Liara took the easy in and shifted closer, bowing her head to meet Shepard’s eye. Their knees touching, she caressed her hand with blue fingertips, gently tracing her thickest scar; a pale line that glowed faintly straight up her arm to her elbow junction.
"And I, you."
Maybe Shepard had managed to hide the thoughts racing through her mind better than she thought, or perhaps Liara had misunderstood her sentimentality for a deeper want. Either way, when Liara leaned in for a kiss, she didn’t pull back. Their lips met in the sort of tender embrace that would normally accompany a teenager’s first kiss, as though they hadn’t known each other before.
The chastity didn’t last long, though, and soon enough Liara was straddling her lap, arms wrapped around Shepard’s neck, one palm pressed to the small of her back beneath the newly undone Cerberus uniform.
The zipper had slid further down than the last time they’d done this; just past the faint glow of the first horizontal scar cutting in a jagged V across her breasts. It had stopped just short all those months ago, when they’d just killed the yagh shadowbroker. At the time she had winced under Liara’s touch, the bright blue scars sitting wrong on her frame, looking wrong on her skin. The asari had taken it in stride without question, content simply to hold her. Now that she’d had some time to get used to the appearance and the ever present tingling, she had no objections.
Worse yet, it felt good.
Reborn under Liara’s touch; any resolve she may have had to bring up what had been slowly swelling within her – pressing her heart into her ribcage – had dissolved. Light as a feather, Shepard pressed her own hands to scaly blue skin, pulled the asari in by the waist, slid her fingers up to her rib where she knew a faint line of symmetrical white markings cradled the soft curve of her breast.
It was blissful; it was wrong.
Even as Liara’s lips found the skin of her neck Shepard knew it, recognized her own behavior.
"Goddess I missed you" Liara whispered into her ear between soft kisses.
Pinned under her weight, Shepard’s hand slid further up her back feeling every v-shaped ridge lining her spine until she found herself interlocked in a tight hug, each slowing inhale smelling of Hagalaz’ metallic dust mixed with the intimately familiar smell of Armali bluegrass and freshly laundered thermals.
Liara’s frame shook. Barely noticeable at first, Shepard felt her unravel slowly under her grasp. As she pulled away – her face noticeably wet – her brilliant blue eyes searched Shepard’s face for something more. Some cosmic hint that things were okay, or that they soon would be.
Pulling her hand from beneath Shepard’s shirt, Liara cupped her face with the tenderness of a woman holding her world in the palm of her hand and pulled her into a slow yet desperate kiss.
"Goddess, please" she whispered into Shepard’s open mouth, "don’t leave me again…"
This stopped Shepard’s wandering hands.
"I didn’t… Liara, I didn’t leave you."
The asari pressed her forehead to Shepard’s, forcing her breath to steady.
"I died –"
"You did. You did but you’re here now –"
"Am I?" Shepard's firm grip relented and she shifted back to look Liara in the eyes. "Am I here?"
"Shepard –"
"Shepard died, Liara."
Her head spun from the mixture of alcohol and avoidance as Liara slipped off her lap, kneeling in the gap between her knees.
Thoughts spun through her head in the slow, clunky rhythm of the old laundromat she'd taken refuge in as a child back on earth. When things were simpler, and the bad guys were those shooting at her and her band of street kids.
"Shepard…"
She dropped her head into her hands, Copper hair draping over her eyes, hiding her from the rest of the world just enough. Long-gone were those simpler days. From the return of the Geth to the fight with Saren and the reaper threat nothing at all was simple. Not even this.
"I can’t even remember it."
Liara, patient as always, looked at Shepard with such unfiltered care it became immediately difficult for her to be angry, to remember exactly why it is she was here. But she was angry and it spilled out of her nonetheless.
"Why give my body to Cerberus. Why, Liara?"
The asari’s patient blue gaze dropped, morphing into something far closer to shame. "I couldn’t let you go."
"What, that’s it? You… you let Cerberus experiment on my body – on me because you couldn’t let me go?"
"You were dead!"
"You hoped they’d bring me back!"
"Stop this Shepard! I am sorry! I am so sorry for this," Liara gestured at the glowing scarring still visible under her unzipped shirt, "but I will not apologize for the fact that you’re alive!"
"For this?!" Shepard stood abruptly, muscles wound tight beneath her ill-fitting skin. With a violent pull, the zipper of her Cerberus shirt came undone fully.
She was pale beneath it, white as a sheet of paper. Another V shaped scar ran beneath her ribcage as though an arrow pointed up at her sternum, thick, blue and surgically precise. Recent as they were, the valleys of the cuts were still bracketed in angry, reddish skin.
"Look at this Liara. Look at me… You let Cerberus violate my corpse!"
But Liara couldn’t look. Wouldn’t look down at the scars like she knew Shepard wanted her to. Her gaze stayed fixed firmly on the woman’s face.
"It was them or the collectors –"
"No! It wasn’t! You could have held a funeral! Cremated the body!" She spoke of herself as though it were someone else. As though the body to be cremated was not her own. "You had other options, you were selfish."
Voice full of desperation Liara retorted; "Selfish?! If I am selfish for wanting my lover alive then YES! Okay I confess! I am selfish! I wanted you alive, Shepard. I needed you –"
"You don’t understand Liara." she was yelling now, green eyes somehow brightened by the fire of her conviction. "Your Shepard died with the first Normandy, this Shepard cost Cerberus five billion credits to rebuild from scratch."
Voice nearly hoarse, she slapped herself across the face. Hard. An angry red mark materialized slowly, brightening her blue scars in contrast.
With a look bordering on angered concern, Liara grabbed at Shepard’s wrist, matching her in volume but not in tone; "SHEPARD. I’ll live long enough not to remember your face. I’ll live long enough to forget the sound of your voice."
Their eyes met; Shepard’s flaming hot gaze softening under Liara’s cool blue. "And I still love you. I love those scars. Even if they’re Cerberus’ marks because they’re you. You’re you."
"Am I…?"
Liara nods once, chalk full of conviction.
For a second that’s almost enough to convince Shepard entirely. Almost enough for her to melt right back into those gentle arms.
"I don’t remember dying. I can’t… One second we’re on the Normandy and I tell you to go, the next I’m waking up at a Cerberus research station."
For once Liara seemed lost for words. It’s one thing entirely to explain yourself, and another to empathize with those experiencing the consequences of your actions. Her grip on Shepard’s hand had turned soft as it invariably did but her gaze was avoidant as she traced circles on the palm of her hand.
"All I have are these fragmented bits," Shepard continued, "it’s like those prothean visions all over again." The thought lodged itself in her mind like a splinter.
"You could help."
Liara froze, the small circle she’d been tracing on Shepard’s skin only half complete. "No, Shepard. No."
"You did it on Therum. You did it on Virmire," Shepard pushed, her voice dropping to a low, desperate plea. She squeezed Liara’s hand, "Please, I feel like I’m walking blind here, Liara. I need to know what happened to me."
"You don’t know what you’re asking of me," Liara whispered, her voice wavering. "The meld isn’t a file directory, if I open that door, I feel what you felt. I see what you saw."
"Liara please!"
"I’m afraid, Shepard!" Liara snapped. "I watched the ship break apart! I watched you fall toward Alchera! Do you have any idea of what it took to track down what was left of you? What I had to see? What I had to do to keep the Shadow Broker from selling your remains to the collectors? I cannot go back to that. I will not."
Her fear was earnest, that much Shepard knew. Her brilliant blue eyes had gone wide, the storm behind them nearly identical to the one just outside their window.
"Right… so I’m alone with it." Shepard said at last, pulling her hand from her gentle grasp. It was a cruel thing to say, yet it was true. She’d never felt more uniquely alone than right then and right there. There was no ‘group therapy for the resurrected’ after all.
Silence filled what felt like a miles long gap between them.
"You are not," Liara said at last, reaching back for Shepard’s hand. ‘I will try. But Shepard, you must know this is… untested at best. There was a cult on Thessia many millennia ago that understood how to read the flesh-memory of the deceased but…"
"But I’m not dead."
"Yes. But you were."
"...so? What then?"
Liara held both Shepard’s hands steadily, finally meeting her head on. "One way to find out," she said quietly. "You’re sure?"
After a wordless nod, Liara cupped her face with both hands and paused. For a split second it was just the two of them. Just red and blue alone in the universe.
"Embrace eternity," Liara murmured.
The world melts away fast; just one flash of blinding light and Hagalaz is gone.
The sound of the massive ship vanishes in an instant, replaced with the absolute and total silence of space interrupted only by Shepard’s ragged breathing.
Alchera.
Somewhere far beneath her, the small blue planet rests in view, a passive observer to the silent obliteration of the Normandy SR1.
She floats further and further from the bright red circle of the launch button. Somewhere just past it, Joker’s escape pod fires.
Sorry Joker.
In this split second it is almost peaceful.
Her comms are out, and in the empty vacuum of space, the Normandy’s wreckage plays out like a silent film in front of her.
A reserve tank bursts to her left somewhere.
She’s thrown violently out, through the fractured hull, straight into open space.
The collectors fire again; once, twice, three times.
She sees the beam of light out of the corner of her eye. Watches it tear the thick metal plating of the deck she’d just been standing on, right where she’d just told Liara to leave her.
Her air line bursts.
Shit.
It takes a second for her mind to register the sound. It’s not her labored breathing, after all. A slow, spine chilling hiss emanating from somewhere just behind her. Somewhere within her suit.
The air leaks fast, precious sustenance venting into black. She tries desperately to plug the hole, fumbling with gloved hands for the back of her breathing apparatus, for any hope at all.
Hope, though, is in short supply. Any space marine worth their weight in salt knows how this ends.
Seconds pass like minutes. The pressure in her ears mounts; blood rushing through her body in the fast, thunderous pace of wild Virmire rapids.
The air is thinning fast.
Shit.
Hot, searing pain spreads through her chest, magnified tenfold by the suffocating terror.
This is it. This is the end of the line.
She feels herself expanding and contracting all at once. The need to breathe ripping her in half.
Her eyes hurt; and with a final glance at the slowly approaching vast and indifferent Alchera, she closes them.
Liara.
It’s her very final thought before what’s left of her consciousness fades. Not the Reapers, not Joker in his escape pod nor the Normandy. Liara.
The scene ends. The curtain draws. In the split second between memory and life, there she is. Just her, in the dark. Alone at the end of a fictif universe.
The next time Shepard’s eyes opened, she was back on the Hagalaz ship. Wincing from the residual phantom pain, her eyes readjusted to the dim interior slowly.
"That’s it?" she asked finally. "There has to be more."
Liara didn't answer.
She remained standing exactly where she'd been before the meld, but something about her posture had collapsed. Her hands trembled faintly by her side and when Shepard reached for her, she flinched.
"Liara?"
The asari swallowed hard. "There is..."
"Then show me."
Liara's expression crumpled.
"Please..." she whispered. "Please don't make me do this. I cannot watch you die twice in one afternoon." She was meek in demeanor, exhausted.
Shepard opened her mouth to argue, then stopped.
Liara lifted trembling fingers to Shepard's cheek as if reassuring herself that warm skin still existed beneath them. "You are not alone with this, Shepard. Which is precisely why I can't give you what you're asking for."
Silence settled between them.
Shepard hated it because some stubborn part of her still wanted to know. Wanted every missing second, no matter what waited inside them. But looking at Liara – the color drained from her face, the minute tremor in the hand still resting against Shepard's cheek – she couldn't bring herself to ask again.
Still, disappointment etched itself into her features clear as day.
Her omni-tool chirped.
Neither of them moved.
Shepard let out a slow breath. Finally her gaze dropped.
"Shepard. When do I get to stop losing you…?"
Her omnitool pinged again, and in the silence left behind by the question she felt it sounded louder than before.
"I should go."
The IFF was ready. It was time.
With a sigh, Shepard turned away, eyes level, facing the shuttle to the Normandy, then the Omega 4 relay, and finally, the collectors.
She reached the open door.
This was it. There she was; Orpheus at the threshold from the land of the dead.
In front of her was an uncertainty. Maybe death in a blaze of glory, maybe a glorious victory over the collectors celebrated only by herself and her tiny squad.
And behind her was Eurydice. Her faithful blue lover. The asari she may never see again.
Shepard turned for just a glimpse, one final glance at what she may forever lose only to find the asari standing mere feet behind her, reaching for her arm. She gave it willingly, watching Liara’s blue fingers grip her wrist with a sort of panicked urgency that she’d seen in military spouses as they kissed their partners goodbye before a long tour.
"Embrace eternity," Liara whispered again.
The world dissolved beneath her feet.
Shepard was expecting pain. Perhaps some sense of disembodiment. What could you remember when you die?
Instead, she is slammed into Liara’s memory.
The perspective shifts violently; Shepard is suddenly taller, lighter, looking down through Liara’s eyes at a sterile, stainless-steel operating table in an unmarked Cerberus medical bay on Minos Wasteland.
On the table lies a mass of ruin.
The person before her resembles nothing at all. Just a pile of burnt meat and shattered bone, held together by carbon-fiber webbing and ice. The face is completely unyielding, unrecognizable, skin blackened and split open down to the pale white of jawbone. The copper hair is gone. The hands are much the same as the rest of her; mangled, fused fragments.
This is all that’s left, the memory whispers through Liara’s grief. This is the Savior of the Citadel.
She feels empty.
Alongside Liara in her very being she feels nothing but grief. Heavy and quiet, it sits on her shoulders muttering into her ears about all that could have been. All the lives they would have led together. All their quiet nights, their kinder romantic evenings long after whichever war they were fighting had ended, their little blue children that would never come to be.
For a split second, a memory intrudes onto this grief. Sharp and violent in its seeming insignificance, Liara recalls the tiny, minimalist room they had stayed in together during one of the Normandy’s maintenance docks; one of many in the Citadel dedicated to Alliance personnel on extended shore leave. It was in that very room that they’d spent their first long evening together. Her head pressed to Shepard’s bare stomach, they had spoken about their lives, interests, movies they’d seen or wanted to see, the future they each wanted – a vision they both seemed to share. They’d been holed up like that for so long that eventually, just as Shepard was explaining why she had joined the Alliance, she was rudely interrupted by Liara jumping off her, startled by a sound.
It had taken Shepard five or so minutes to explain why human stomachs grumbled after which Liara had returned to her rightful spot on her pale stomach, fingers caressing Shepard’s skin in odd patterns.
Gently – mid-speech about some human custom called ‘dating’ – Shepard had wrapped the asari in their standard issue Alliance blanket, a heart-shaped bleach stain draping over her bare shoulder.
The memory of a memory fades quickly; leaving her alone in the medical bay with Shepard. Her favorite human, her very last home in the universe burnt to a heap of meat and shattered bone.
Her knees go weak but she stays upright.
She’d never hear that silly sound again. She’d never again see her very favorite shade of green.
Through leaden grief, she looks at what’s left.
"I’m sorry, Shepard."
Liara’s voice is barely a whisper
"I’m so sorry."
Just as a set of footsteps echo down the metallic hall somewhere, the vision jerks violently and Liara pulls them both out.
Briefly the world is black again. Still as a dead pond.
Again they’re moving, somehow deeper into Shepard. Into her very own cellular substrate; bypassing the conscious entirely, dragging them both down into the deep, instinctual subconscious – into her flesh memory.
The void vanishes, replaced by a thick, viscous warmth.
Shepard is suspended in murky, gel-like fluid.
She can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think. But her skin – her newly grafted, synthetic-hybrid skin – is screaming.
All around her frame, deep jagged incisions burn like white-hot iron. Beneath her flesh, miles of cybernetic thread, weaved networks, and micro actuators are knitting themselves into her muscle tissue. Her body – a battlefield of biological rejection and forced reconstruction – turns the murky suspension liquid bright as the scars, fresh and raw, burn a furious blue.
Through the thick, distorted glass of the stasis tank, a silhouette leans in.
Miranda Lawson.
Her face is cold, analytical, illuminated only by the faint glow emanating from Shepard’s submerged corpse. Miranda checks a datapad, taps the glass twice with a gloved knuckle, and turns away to adjust a nerve-mapping sequence.
A VI voice sounds through the thick liquid; Neural network re-establishing. Initiating second-stage therapy.
Pain shoots through Shepard’s physical body like a bolt of lightning, every newborn muscle fiber tensing as one.
The meld snapped violently.
Air rushed into Shepard’s lungs in sharp contrast to the suspension tank. With a ragged gasp that tore her throat, she reeled backward, boots slipping on the sleek deck plating of the shuttle bay threshold. The sheer, physical agony of the memory – the warm slime of the tank, the needles, tubes, and wiring plugged into every inch of her skin – was still echoing down her central nervous system like a phantom limb being severed repeatedly.
Stumbling, Shepard slammed back into the bulkhead, one hand clutching at her chest where the jagged V-scar burned beneath her uniform.
Across from her, Liara was down on her knees. The Asari was gasping, her forehead pressed to the cold metal floor, her body trembling so violently that the faint blue biotics around her fingertips flickered like a dying lightbulb.
Flesh memory.
This was evidently an exhausting feat for the young asari.
Shepard stared down at her, her own heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
A mass of ruin. Burnt meat and shattered bone.
The visceral horror of seeing her own desecrated corpse through the eyes of the woman who loved her had burnt away the last remnants of her anger. There was no room left for self-pity, no room for righteous indignation against Cerberus or the universe. There was only the realization of what it had cost Liara to pull her back from the abyss.
She’d been wrong.
She was not Orpheus, she was Eurydice – long gone to the realm of the dead.
Liara, her Orpheus, spent two years becoming a monster, trading her soul piece by piece for any chance at bringing her back from the dead.
Shepard doubled over, panting in the quiet hum of the Hagalaz ship. The blue scars crisscrossing her body felt like lead weights. The image of her wrecked face on that operating table seared permanently into her mind alongside the memory of Miranda looking at her like a broken machine waiting for spare parts.
Liara hadn't just saved her body; she had carried the ghost of Commander Shepard with her for two agonizing years while the rest of the galaxy moved on. Slowly, Shepard pushed herself off the wall. Her knees wobbled, but her steps were deliberate as she knelt in front of the Asari.
"Liara," Shepard rasped, her voice thick and raw.
Curled into a fetal position, Liara looked somewhere past her, the fresh pain they’d both endured moments earlier branded into her.
"I gave them your body because you were dust. I gave you to Cerberus because I was weak, and I was desperate, and I couldn't bear the universe without you in it." She spoke softly, as though part of her remained in the memory with Shepard’s remains. “I’m sorry.”
Shepard pulled her jacket straight, burying the glowing blue lines beneath heavy Cerberus fabric. She looked through the viewport, at the endless, chaotic storm churning outside, and then back to the asari who had held her soul in her hands and couldn't bear the weight of its loss.
Without a word she lay down next to her on the cold floor of the Hagalaz ship, wrapping an arm protectively around her abdomen, sliding the other under her head.
Everything was clear enough.
The reaper IFF would wait a bit longer.