Whole, Part 2 (a Mass Effect fanfiction)

Best Friends

After the email from Kai Leng, any chance that Shepard might have been able to get some sleep, already vanishingly small, had disappeared. She left her quarters, not wanting to be alone right now, and headed down the elevator to check on Liara.

She knocked lightly on the asari's door and it slid open for her. Liara was huddled on her bed, her face buried in her drawn-up knees, but Shepard heard her voice clearly. "I've studied Protheans my entire life. If I'd been shown the beacon on Thessia earlier ..."

Before Shepard could reply, EDI's voice echoed through the room. Clearly the two had already been in the midst of a conversation. "You would have needed Shepard's cipher to comprehend the beacon's message," the AI pointed out.

Liara turned her face up to the ceiling, frowning. "I still could have learned from it! Instead, my mother hid the galaxy's most important archaeological find from me. It must have been such a joke to her when I became a Prothean researcher," she added bitterly.

"The penalties for withholding Prothean technology are among the harshest in Council space," EDI replied. "Your mother's motives may have been simply to shield you."

There was a moment's silence while Liara digested this new perspective, and then she sighed. "Perhaps. I had not considered that. Thank you, EDI."

"Of course." The AI's speaker clicked off, and Liara looked at Shepard.

"How did this happen, Shepard? Did I just assume the asari would be ready? That the Council would protect them? Or was I so busy with the Catalyst that I ignored my own people?"

In Shepard's opinion, it was the Council that had ignored the asari, and the entire Reaper threat, but that was well-covered territory and wouldn't make Liara feel better in the slightest. Still, she hated to see her friend blaming herself. "Liara, you had nothing to do with the attack on Thessia."

"Nothing to do with it? I told those people on Thessia we'd save them! How many asari died because I demanded their help?"

Shepard leaned across the bed toward her, uttering a single word, meaning it. "None."

"You know that's not true."

"Yes, it is. You've been warning your people for four years, Liara. There's not a damn thing you should feel guilty about." Possibly this was as much about Shepard's own guilt as it was Liara's, but that didn't make it any less true. "Look at it this way—if we move fast enough, they'll have a chance to survive this. To start again. We lost Thessia, just as we lost Earth, and Palaven ... but we haven't lost the asari yet, any more than we've lost the humans or the turians."

Liara's eyes opened wider, her face sharpening and losing its defeated look as she took in Shepard's words. "That's something I can do—help the refugees. It's something I owe them." She climbed off the bed and hurried to her bank of computers, beginning to type rapidly.

Shepard smiled. "I knew you'd think of something."

"Yes. Thank you." As Shepard turned to leave, Liara called her name. "I ... owe Javik an apology. I think perhaps I've been ... arrogant, judging an entire species on what little time I've had to get to know its sole survivor. He was hardly responsible for the skewed view I had of his people."

"It's hard to consider that everything you thought you knew was only one piece of the puzzle."

Liara nodded in agreement. "It was naïve of me to think of them all as benevolent scientists. I can't let that naivete stop me from learning more. I ... wonder if Javik would be interested in writing a book with me. Someday, when all this is over."

Shepard was glad to hear her friend looking ahead to a time after the war. She wasn't sure she was ready to do that, but if they all considered the war the last thing they would ever do, the galaxy was doomed.

Seeing that Liara was lost in her work, she let herself out.

Garrus was puttering around the kitchen, heating up a portion of dextro rations. "Hey, Shepard. How you doing?"

"Better." It was the truth, if barely. "You? Any word from your family?"

He nodded. "They made it off Palaven. It was tight, but they're okay."

"I'm so glad. We can use every scrap of good news we can get."

"Wish I had more."

"Don't we all. Anything in specific?"

Garrus ripped open the rations packet and squeezed the contents into a bowl, not looking at Shepard as he said, "I just had to make a tough call with the primarch. He said our fleets are being decimated. So I advised him to cease all offensive operations against the Reapers."

"A full retreat?" Shepard was saddened, if not surprised. Retreat went against everything the turians stood for.

"It's the only way to save Palaven—hold our ships back for the Crucible. But if I'm wrong ... then a lot of other families won't be as lucky as mine."

Shepard sighed. "If it means anything, I would have given the primarch the same advice."

"Yeah, there's that ruthless calculus of war again." Garrus stuck a spoon in his rations, tasted them, made a face, and put the spoon back in the bowl. "Shepard. You going to make it?"

"I ... I don't know." She wasn't sure if she would have admitted that to anyone else. "There's only so much fight in a person, only so much death you can take before ..."

Putting his bowl down, Garrus came to Shepard and put an arm around her shoulders. "Before your best friend picks you up, dusts you off, and tells you you're the best damned soldier he's ever met. We'll get through this."

"I'm going to take your word for it."

"Good. Now go upstairs and get some sleep while I try to choke down these rations."

"Is that an order, Vakarian?"

"Damn right it is, Shepard."