And Miles to Go [Mass Effect]
Title: And Miles to Go
Characters: Femshep/Liara
Rating: T
Summary: The bed feels wrong without the weight of another in it.
Eight weeks since the Reapers have been destroyed; Liara opens the door to Shepard’s cabin, for the first time since, for the last.
There’s dust on everything she touches.
She breathes the dust in, deeply, slowly, as if she could absorb everything in the room by doing so, by diffusion, by memory. There are coffee stains on the desk, old papers, the bed is made (that familiar bed, she remembers it, the shape of Shepard’s body beneath her own, the feel of her hair, her skin, her breath, her name) and the ship models are where they’ve always been.
There’s dust on everything she touches, and the smell of loneliness, it clings to the walls as surely as it clung to Shepard’s lips. Liara licks her own to taste it there.
She sits on the familiar bed. It creaks beneath her weight; the cabin is otherwise silent. She sits and stares, breathing slowly.
Eight weeks since her world ended, eight since the death of many she loved, didn’t love, never knew. She keeps her hands busy with work, helping Thessia resurrect itself from its mangled grave. Her work as the Shadow Broker has helped, but it will take decades before real progress is seen. She might be alive to see it. Liara isn’t certain.
She runs her fingers across the blankets, cold from disuse, soft as ever. She nearly smiles but doesn’t have the energy to. The bed feels wrong without the weight of another in it.
She rises, approaching the table Shepard kept her odds and ends on. A hairbrush, the disemboweled remains of a pistol, a credit chit.
A book.
An old book - with shaking fingers, Liara opens it, its spine crackling. It’s a satisfying, shuddering crack that comes only from books well-read, treasured beyond the stars. Liara knows the sound well.
The pages are yellowed, stained with the remnants of coffee, blots of ink, age. It’s written in a human language she barely knows to read. She flips a few pages, carefully, tenderly.
It’s a book of Earth poems, she realizes. She recognizes a few names, a few titles, knows bits and parts of a few poems.
Liara turns another page. Stops breathing.
Robert Frost. He was Shepard’s favorite human poet. She wasn’t one for sentimentality or the soft human ideals of love; titanium ran through her veins as ore through a mountain - but she found beauty in certain things, and the things she found beauty in were rarer than anything.
Liara blushes. That’s what Shepard used to call her: Beautiful. Just that, beautiful, one word, spoken in the eves between their kisses, on the nape of her neck when they were alone, in the hiss of her clothes falling to the floor -
Liara bites the inside of her cheek. Looking down at the open book, she knows the poem in a second.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
The poem unravels itself beneath her fingertips, alien words springing up in her mind as she reads it, one long, slow syllable at a time, savoring the taste of it in her mouth, the way it feels against her teeth. Bitter. Cold. Sweet.
But at the end, scrawling down towards the corner, Shepard added a line:
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles
And miles
And miles…
Liara shuts the book and simply holds it, fingernails digging into the cover, knuckles turning pale. There’s the dreaded tightness in her throat, the burning, clawing itch crawling up her belly from some cold, dark place within, the verge of awful tears. She refuses to cry. She refuses, because if she starts, she’ll never stop.
.
.
.
.
.
She does anyway
And she was right.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s been three days since she entered Shepard’s cabin. Liara works through the tiring days and long nights, pausing only to eat or sleep at unscheduled intervals, only when she can spare them. She wears fatigue as clearly as her own skin.
Tonight, Liara works until her sight begins to smudge around the edges, unfading, no matter how many times she rubs her eyes. She sighs. It rattles through every rung of her ribcage. The computers are turned off, her omnitool set to silent, and heavily, hesitantly, Liara pulls the blankets away from her (empty) bed.
The book lies, unopened, on her bedside table.
Liara turns, blankets around her shoulders, starlight glimmering blues and silvers on her face.
And miles
And miles
And miles…
Her throat clogs with something - maybe her heart - and Liara turns to the other side, staring resolutely at the wall. She shuts her eyes. She breathes in. Again. Again. Again. She sleeps. She dreams.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Of Shepard, beautiful Shepard
Gone.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And she wakes with her name tangled on her tongue, an oath she’s not ready to break. Her face is slick with tears and snot, pillows a mess. Her breathing is the only thing she hears. The surrounding darkness spears her with sudden fear - Liara’s fingers work clumsily at her bedside lamp, click, and blessed light opens the darkness before her.
She brings her hand down. It rests on the book. The cover is textured beneath her fingertips, foreign letters emblazoned upon its surface. She closes her eyes. Breathes in. Again. Again. Again -
“I need to know you’re always coming back.”
Shepard’s smile, warm hands, gentle breath, beautiful Shepard, standing before her in the shadows, hair a halo of light -
“I’m always coming back.”
Liara rips her hand away to cradle it against her chest, curling into herself, biting back the name in her throat.
She’s a little girl again, waking in the dead of night, weeping. Not the Liara Shepard carved away with patient hands and the smell of gunsmoke, not the Liara war has hollowed with the sight of death. She feels like an impostor in her own skin.
The book sits, unopened, on her bedside table.
It remains that way come morning.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Shepard lied.
It’s the only thing Liara hates her for.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Five days later, after another night working to rebuild lives for everyone but herself, Liara opens the book.
It still crackles. The pages are the same. The words are still unknown. It still smells like Shepard.
She turns the page. She breathes in. Again. Again. Again -
“Do you feel ready, Shepard?”
She scoffs in that way of hers, hair over her eyes, unreadable.
“You first.”
Liara lied. She wasn’t ready - never was, never would be, not even now. Especially not for this.
The page turns.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Liara fixes her eyes on the very last letter, not allowing her gaze to drift any lower, lest the tears come again. She hates crying. Not like before, when she fainted at the first signs of battle or the sight of blood, any blood. Shepard changed her in all the right ways. They all did.
She slams the book shut with more force than wanted, setting it back on the table. Turns away from it. Turns out the lights. She sleeps. She dreams.
Only to wake again, the book still there, incomplete. She turns on the lamp.
Liara opens the book.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And adds another line.
Sleep, Shepard.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Liara closes the book.
Characters: Femshep/Liara
Rating: T
Summary: The bed feels wrong without the weight of another in it.
Eight weeks since the Reapers have been destroyed; Liara opens the door to Shepard’s cabin, for the first time since, for the last.
There’s dust on everything she touches.
She breathes the dust in, deeply, slowly, as if she could absorb everything in the room by doing so, by diffusion, by memory. There are coffee stains on the desk, old papers, the bed is made (that familiar bed, she remembers it, the shape of Shepard’s body beneath her own, the feel of her hair, her skin, her breath, her name) and the ship models are where they’ve always been.
There’s dust on everything she touches, and the smell of loneliness, it clings to the walls as surely as it clung to Shepard’s lips. Liara licks her own to taste it there.
She sits on the familiar bed. It creaks beneath her weight; the cabin is otherwise silent. She sits and stares, breathing slowly.
Eight weeks since her world ended, eight since the death of many she loved, didn’t love, never knew. She keeps her hands busy with work, helping Thessia resurrect itself from its mangled grave. Her work as the Shadow Broker has helped, but it will take decades before real progress is seen. She might be alive to see it. Liara isn’t certain.
She runs her fingers across the blankets, cold from disuse, soft as ever. She nearly smiles but doesn’t have the energy to. The bed feels wrong without the weight of another in it.
She rises, approaching the table Shepard kept her odds and ends on. A hairbrush, the disemboweled remains of a pistol, a credit chit.
A book.
An old book - with shaking fingers, Liara opens it, its spine crackling. It’s a satisfying, shuddering crack that comes only from books well-read, treasured beyond the stars. Liara knows the sound well.
The pages are yellowed, stained with the remnants of coffee, blots of ink, age. It’s written in a human language she barely knows to read. She flips a few pages, carefully, tenderly.
It’s a book of Earth poems, she realizes. She recognizes a few names, a few titles, knows bits and parts of a few poems.
Liara turns another page. Stops breathing.
Robert Frost. He was Shepard’s favorite human poet. She wasn’t one for sentimentality or the soft human ideals of love; titanium ran through her veins as ore through a mountain - but she found beauty in certain things, and the things she found beauty in were rarer than anything.
Liara blushes. That’s what Shepard used to call her: Beautiful. Just that, beautiful, one word, spoken in the eves between their kisses, on the nape of her neck when they were alone, in the hiss of her clothes falling to the floor -
Liara bites the inside of her cheek. Looking down at the open book, she knows the poem in a second.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
The poem unravels itself beneath her fingertips, alien words springing up in her mind as she reads it, one long, slow syllable at a time, savoring the taste of it in her mouth, the way it feels against her teeth. Bitter. Cold. Sweet.
But at the end, scrawling down towards the corner, Shepard added a line:
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles
And miles
And miles…
Liara shuts the book and simply holds it, fingernails digging into the cover, knuckles turning pale. There’s the dreaded tightness in her throat, the burning, clawing itch crawling up her belly from some cold, dark place within, the verge of awful tears. She refuses to cry. She refuses, because if she starts, she’ll never stop.
.
.
.
.
.
She does anyway
And she was right.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s been three days since she entered Shepard’s cabin. Liara works through the tiring days and long nights, pausing only to eat or sleep at unscheduled intervals, only when she can spare them. She wears fatigue as clearly as her own skin.
Tonight, Liara works until her sight begins to smudge around the edges, unfading, no matter how many times she rubs her eyes. She sighs. It rattles through every rung of her ribcage. The computers are turned off, her omnitool set to silent, and heavily, hesitantly, Liara pulls the blankets away from her (empty) bed.
The book lies, unopened, on her bedside table.
Liara turns, blankets around her shoulders, starlight glimmering blues and silvers on her face.
And miles
And miles
And miles…
Her throat clogs with something - maybe her heart - and Liara turns to the other side, staring resolutely at the wall. She shuts her eyes. She breathes in. Again. Again. Again. She sleeps. She dreams.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Of Shepard, beautiful Shepard
Gone.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And she wakes with her name tangled on her tongue, an oath she’s not ready to break. Her face is slick with tears and snot, pillows a mess. Her breathing is the only thing she hears. The surrounding darkness spears her with sudden fear - Liara’s fingers work clumsily at her bedside lamp, click, and blessed light opens the darkness before her.
She brings her hand down. It rests on the book. The cover is textured beneath her fingertips, foreign letters emblazoned upon its surface. She closes her eyes. Breathes in. Again. Again. Again -
“I need to know you’re always coming back.”
Shepard’s smile, warm hands, gentle breath, beautiful Shepard, standing before her in the shadows, hair a halo of light -
“I’m always coming back.”
Liara rips her hand away to cradle it against her chest, curling into herself, biting back the name in her throat.
She’s a little girl again, waking in the dead of night, weeping. Not the Liara Shepard carved away with patient hands and the smell of gunsmoke, not the Liara war has hollowed with the sight of death. She feels like an impostor in her own skin.
The book sits, unopened, on her bedside table.
It remains that way come morning.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Shepard lied.
It’s the only thing Liara hates her for.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Five days later, after another night working to rebuild lives for everyone but herself, Liara opens the book.
It still crackles. The pages are the same. The words are still unknown. It still smells like Shepard.
She turns the page. She breathes in. Again. Again. Again -
“Do you feel ready, Shepard?”
She scoffs in that way of hers, hair over her eyes, unreadable.
“You first.”
Liara lied. She wasn’t ready - never was, never would be, not even now. Especially not for this.
The page turns.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Liara fixes her eyes on the very last letter, not allowing her gaze to drift any lower, lest the tears come again. She hates crying. Not like before, when she fainted at the first signs of battle or the sight of blood, any blood. Shepard changed her in all the right ways. They all did.
She slams the book shut with more force than wanted, setting it back on the table. Turns away from it. Turns out the lights. She sleeps. She dreams.
Only to wake again, the book still there, incomplete. She turns on the lamp.
Liara opens the book.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
And adds another line.
Sleep, Shepard.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Liara closes the book.