@hcretics sent: ‘I feared I’d never get to hold you again' — Benezia.
Words that play at the back of her mind, insist on being repeated; yet Liara is at a standstill—little reaction permitted from her body. Her throat is dry, her mind ailed by the memory of blurs and blood—how Benezia had been granted death at the hands of her, and Commander Shepard. It cannot be. It is a wave of denial that insists on existence—the doubt of her mother surviving the impact of a bullet; Benezia’s words continue to send shivers up her spin—but the hopeful youth recollects one thing: I will see you again, with the dawn.
It was—is a cruel fate—Liara’s mind firing an attempt at a warning, and the Asari is prompted to push away—coming face-to-face with the woman that boldly proclaims herself as Benezia. Despite the child of her heart, Liara faces her counterpart with screaming—no matter how much she yearns to accept it. I watched her die. It is repeated, vocally, brazen in such declaration—bold to acknowledge that Benezia, was dead. “I saw you die.” That memory, holds much more, than the passing of her mother—how she held the lifeless corpse against her small form, eyes brimmed with tears; the ugly sobbing, armour coated with sanguine fluid, her blood, and Benezia’s blood. How Shepard had to ease the oncoming of grief, just for the sake of escaping—how Liara felt the construction of a cage, to protect her feelings, her own heart from the pain that soon followed.
“They would not let us, take you,” Liara refers to Benezia’s body—left to extinguish on Noveria. She does not know the truth of it, only assertive words that offered condolences and promises of proper rites—but not this, not this. Part of Liara bears shame; knowing how she should have taken Benezia back to Thessia, to host a proper vigil—but how? She turned away from the planet, from its people, and above all her mother. With her own choices made, Liara decided to see this mission through—to seek the retribution of Saren, not only for her mother, but for the entire Galaxy.
“How can this be you—I do not understand.” But is Liara willing to?
There’s a part of Benezia that’s afraid of seeing her daughter again, a terrible, cowardly part of her that she tries to quell with that iron will that has served her so well. But there’s so little of it left after her time with Saren, after she used every last shred of it to keep Sovereign at bay in the prison that her own mind had become. She longs to see her with everything she is, but the things she’s done weigh heavily on her shoulders. She’s caused so much suffering, and she almost killed her own daughter, and seeing Liara again means confronting those memories.
None of that fear seems to matter, once she lays eyes on her again. So much has changed in the two years she’s been gone. Liara holds herself differently, and there’s something in her eyes that speaks of the kind of horrors Benezia always hoped to protect her from. And yet she sounds so terribly, impossibly young when she says those words, when she looks at her with such confusion, and all Benezia wants to do is gather Liara into her arms and hold her again. But she doesn’t, not yet, because Liara seems to be genuinely doubting that she’s there at all. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she says, ‘I... I did die, or I almost died’. She’s still not sure which, exactly. She tugs at the collar of her shirt to expose the scar from the shot that almost killed her, because perhaps the physical confirmation of what Liara saw will help her. ‘But Cerberus brought me back. They wanted to understand how I was able to resist indoctrination for so long’. She glances towards Shepard, standing quietly by the door. ‘Commander Shepard found me in one of their bases only recently’.
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