No Light, No Light | Post-ME3 drabble
He just couldn't take it anymore. Being trapped in this house. It was late almost 0300 already and he couldn't sleep again. Grabbing what little stuff he wanted. The photo of his father, sister, and himself when they were little and a photo of him and Jayce as teenagers he was gone.
Major followed him to the door, with one pat on the bulldog's head he was gone into the London night. His plan was to be out of the city by morning, before anyone would be awake. He knew Kahlee would be up soon to feed the twins, he could hear the little ones cry from his room every night.
Liam knew this was stupid and he shouldn't leave just like this, leaving everything behind his family and friends, but that part of his mind wasn't working anymore. No matter what anyone said he couldn't fight away the guilt that ate at him. This was the only way.
It didn't take him long to get to port even with his bad leg, with one last look over the broken city of London he slipped into the shuttle. His name still got him something every now and then. He would be in Ireland before Anderson was even awake to enjoy his morning coffee.
Leaving the shuttle at the Dublin space port hours later Liam finally stepped foot on Irish soil. The last time he had been to Dublin he was in college, god that felt like years ago to him now. This is where his new life would begin, here in the streets where he had lived as a college student. In the city where he and his sister were born.
But, the commander, no former commander now, knew they would come looking for him here. So, he would leave. It wouldn't stay quiet long that the great Commander John William Shepard Junior was missing. He hopped on the first shuttle to the southern part of the country. They needed people everywhere. It was the least he could do.
---
The locals had taken to calling him, Sruth, the lonely drifter. He never stayed in one place long and normally out of sight when there were Alliance officers around. He saw Anderson once, in the town of Waterford. The old man was showing a holo of Liam, asking people if they had seen him, he looked older than Liam had last seen him.
He had been gone for almost four months now. His hair was longer and no longer the light blonde that it had been in his Alliance days. The beard had thrown a lot of people off. He had lost weight since he started living from town to town. Did more walking than anything. He left Waterford that night trying to put miles between him and Anderson.
He made it to the town of Cork before anyone picked up on who he was. Someone had asked him if he had hated living like a wanted felon, Liam just shook his head and moved on. After another two months he had finally made it to Lucan, Ireland.
On his father's file for the Alliance this was where his father was from. Where his family had lived for the last hundred years. With no living family now in the village, Liam was sure that Anderson had already checked the village.
Pulling the hood over his head he ducked inside the first church he saw. it was warmer and gave him a place to rest. He sat and prayed for the first time since he could remember. Liam was never a God fearing man, more of a Reaper fearing one, but the Reapers were gone now. Standing up he looked around, finding a woman staring at him. He couldn't place her face, but from the way she moved across the church she could place his.
"You look just like him," it must have been her way of greeting people. "Just like your father. I haven't seen you since you were a tot, Liam."
She knew him. She knew his father.
She knew him.
---
He stayed with her for a few days, the woman who he learned was named Grace. She had grown up with his father and lived down the road from the Shepard house. That's what threw Liam that there was a house. A house that was his father's, a house that had belonged to his father's family.
Grace, had kept the Alliance away from the house, saying that it was private property, they had no right to be on the land of a dead war hero. The land that for the last thirty years had belonged to the man's hero of a son.
A few days later Liam walked down the road to the house. Grace had given him the key, the house hadn't been upgraded to any of what most people used. Carefully walking about the house he found on the second story two bedrooms. One blue and the other a purple. Each door bore the name of the child who the room belonged too. Running his fingers along Jayce's name plate he walked further down the hall. He found another bedroom, a spare he guessed, before he stopped at the last room.
It was the master bedroom. Like the rest of the house it was frozen in time. For the man who had owned it left for a war to never return. The dresser of the room was filled with old holos of the man and his son, even ones of the twins when they were rarely together.
A creak had alerted the former solider to another living being in the home, hiding behind the door Liam waited watching between the crack. It was two people, not just one. His blue eyes narrowed. Anderson and Hackett walked up the old stairs.
"I can't go back without him, Steven." Anderson sighed sticking his hands into his jean pockets. "Jayce needs to see him."
The older man looked around the hallway his eyes settling on the door to the master bedroom. "You know as well as I do, if Liam doesn't want to be found, you're not going to find him." He gave David a pat on the shoulder before going to look in on a few rooms down the hall.
Anderson moved to stand in the door way of Liam's childhood bedroom. "You have to come home, kid." He muttered to the air. "We need you to come home." The admiral turned and walked down the stairs looking defeated.
Before Liam could moved from his hiding spot Hackett came back. The man looked angry, far more angry than Liam had ever seen him. "You're killing them, ya know." He spoke directly to Liam's spot. "Not just Jayce and Anderson. All of them." Hackett sighed. "Don't do this, kid, come home. Please." The man who now had the burden of the whole Alliance on his shoulders looked sad. "Just come home, Liam."
He waited till he heard the old front door click shut before sliding down to the floor. There he cried. Cried for the life that he was cheated out of, the life with his father, and the life that the war had thrown apart. For the first time in months, since he had woken up in the field hospital he felt the warmth from his biotics warp around him like a blanket.
