Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2016-02-21
Words:
1,054
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
22
Kudos:
295
Bookmarks:
28
Hits:
3,688

Awake

Summary:

Post-Game: "Liara is on Thessia when she gets the call."

Notes:

Prompt: 19. "What do I get if I win?"

Also available to read here.

Work Text:

Liara is on Thessia when she gets the call.

Relief efforts are slow going; her people are thinned and her home world ravaged, and there is only so much that the Shadow Broker can do with 70% of her agents offline. She takes her terminals with her, on a ship half the size of what she has become accustomed to. She does not leave her screen for the next thirteen hours, even when the ship hits a newly-repaired relay with enough force to send her desk bending out of the bolts that keep it fixed to the floor.

The evening meal comes and goes, and Liara chews through a protein bar, barely aware of her own hunger. She does not sleep, and when the ship lands her body is stiff with inertia, her heart rocket-fast and heavy and tired. When she stands, the world turns dark before it clears again, and Liara wonders how long she will be able to sustain herself on hope alone.

She’s awake, Miranda had said.

In what condition?

The pause that had followed lingers with her, still. It sits thick in the shuttle that carries her through the war-torn streets of London, buildings ashen and hollow, barely standing but for the great metal carcasses that sit intermittently between, offering just enough structural support to keep the city from falling into itself.

Earth is half-buried in bodies, still, an open grave – Liara’s stomach barely churns as she takes it in.

The hospital is cleaner than she remembers; new walls have been erected, old patients moved from the makeshift beds that had lined every corridor, warm with disease. Now, the smell of antiseptic and a chill from the working air-con, and yet it feels just as rancid at the back of Liara’s throat as the first time she had been here, shaking and sick with fear.

A nurse directs her to Shepard’s room, past security, and the failsafe door that opens only at the touch of his hand. I’ll set that up for you, he says, and Liara avoids the look on his face – does not ask when this new precaution had been put in place, or why.

Holding her breath, she enters.

The room is bright, lit artificially with the shutters down at every window. Liara keeps the bed in her peripheral, focuses on the small med station nearby, on the half-full glass of water suggesting that Miranda is still close. The beeping machinery on the other side of the room is steady and constant, as Liara remembers it.

If she keeps her head craned away from the bed, she can imagine Shepard there, awake and waiting. A smirk on her lips. It takes too much effort to turn her head, and the breath thickens in her lungs as it does every time she takes Shepard in. Liara’s throat closes, starves her of air for several seconds, and then relieves her again.

There’s more of her now, Liara sees, and yet less to look at.

Skin has been stretched tight over each exposure – her right eye has been cleaned and reconstructed. Liara imagines the exact model of ocular cybernetics needed to match Shepard’s natural colour, and she does not doubt that it’s under there, safe beneath the new eyelid. Miranda is, if nothing else, a perfectionist.

To look at her, Liara could convince herself that those earlier memories were fabricated – that Shepard had never been soft and fleshy and barely distinguishable outside of the armour that had held her together. She wants to, and yet looking at her, now, Liara is filled with new horror.

It crawls up her skin like it had on Illium, only this time it does not come with a rushed kiss and two strong hands in her own. Will she be the same, this time, Liara wonders? And how many more times will she have to endure this – how much more can they do for her before it’s only a perfectly-constructed AI wearing her lover’s face?

She chokes on the thought, and Liara lets herself – has to get this moment out now, because Miranda had said she’s awake, and Liara does not doubt her. Cannot have Shepard seeing her like this – cannot add to the doubt and fear and confusion that she might already be feeling.

She gives herself a moment, and then she presses her hands to her face, pushes the tears and a waiting scream back in, and breathes. Outside of her squeezed-shut eyelids, the heartrate monitor continues to beep steadily, and Liara lets it calm her.

When she takes in Shepard, again, it’s easier to look at the places that had been hollow or missing or nightmarishly exposed. This is recovery, Liara tells herself, this is good. She pulls up a waiting chair, next, takes Shepard’s bedside with growing hope.

She’s awake, Miranda had said, and when Liara reaches out to take her hand, Shepard is warm.

The first few minutes are passed with distraction. Liara focuses on calming herself down, so sure that Shepard will wake any moment and find her like this, and yet… she doesn’t. Liara is content to wait, at first, but waiting turns to worrying, and Shepard still does not open her eyes.

Finally, Liara lifts Shepard’s hand up from the bed, takes it in both of her own, and rubs her thumbs along reformed knuckles. She presses her mouth to the skin there, soft and clean, and tells it, “I know you can open your eyes.” She closes her own. “I know you’re still in there. You’re doing this on purpose – it isn’t funny.”

She threads her fingers through Shepard’s. She squeezes too hard.

“Open your eyes, then. That’s all you have to do. Just—prove to me that you can.”

She holds her breath and thinks, if she has to wait another minute, she will go mad. She will wake Shepard by the sound of her own crying, or else she will take her by the shoulders and demand that she wake up right now, that she give her this, that she has waited months for this moment and she will not wait a second longer. That you have slept too long already, come back!

On the bed, the skin around Shepard’s mouth pinches against a new scar.

“What do I get if I do?”