The med bay door hissed open, and Liara didn't move. She didn't stir, didn't flinch at the sound—didn't do anything except keep her forehead pressed against the edge of Shepard's mattress, her fingers slack around Shepard's hand, her breathing slow and deep in a way it hadn't been since before the war.
Garrus's footsteps stopped mid-stride.
He stood in the doorway, rifle still slung across his back, his cracked visor casting a fractured amber glow across the floor. For three full seconds he didn't move either—just watched the slow rise and fall of Liara's shoulders, the way her head was tilted at an angle that would leave her neck screaming when she woke, the way her hand had gone loose around Shepard's like she'd finally run out of the strength to hold on.
The med bay smelled like antiseptic and blood. The quiet beep of the heart monitor filled the space between the ventilator's rhythmic hiss. Shepard lay motionless beneath a thin white sheet, her face pale, her auburn hair still matted with dried blood that Chakwas hadn't had time to wash out. The chest tube snaked from beneath her ribs, collecting fluid in a chamber that Liara had been watching for hours before she finally—finally—lost the battle with her own body.
Garrus crossed to the biobed. His boots made no sound on the deck plating—turian training, old habits, the kind of thing that stuck even when the war was over. He stopped beside Liara's chair and set his hand on her arm.
Gentle. Firm. The same hand that had helped lift a beam off Shepard's chest.
Liara jerked awake with a sharp inhale, her whole body snapping upright, her violet eyes wide and wild until they found Shepard's face—still there, still breathing, still alive—and the panic bled out of her shoulders in a single shuddering exhale.
"Easy," Garrus said. His voice was low, rough, the sound of someone who'd been hoarse for weeks and stopped noticing. "It's just me."
Liara blinked at him, her mind still catching up. Her hand was still wrapped around Shepard's, her fingers cold and stiff from hours of holding the same position. She didn't let go.
"How long was I—"
"I don't know. I just got here." Garrus pulled a chair from the corner—metal frame, thin cushion, the kind of furniture that existed to be ignored—and sat down heavily on her other side. He set his rifle across his knees, his mandibles tight, his amber eyes fixed on Shepard's face. "Chakwas said you haven't eaten in two days. Or slept."
"I've slept."
"Slumping over doesn't count."
Liara's jaw tightened. She looked back at Shepard—at the slow rise of her chest, the faint flutter of her pulse beneath the pale skin of her throat. "I can't leave her."
"I'm not asking you to leave her." Garrus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His visor caught the med bay's fluorescent light, the crack running diagonally across the display. "I'm asking you to stay alive long enough for her to wake up."
The words hung in the air between them. Liara's hand tightened around Shepard's, and she felt it—that faint pressure back, the same reflexive grip Shepard had shown hours ago, unconscious but present. A confirmation. A promise.
I'm still here.
Liara's throat closed. She pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling, willing the tears not to fall, because if she started she wasn't sure she'd be able to stop.
"I have the ring," she said quietly.
Garrus went still.
She hadn't meant to say it. The words came out like water through a cracked dam, unstoppable, and now they hung in the sterile air of the med bay alongside the beeping monitors and the ventilator's rhythm.
"I've been carrying it for months." Liara's voice was barely a whisper. "I was going to give it to her after the final push. I had it planned—a quiet spot on the Normandy, somewhere with a view of the stars. I was going to tell her that I didn't care if we had a ceremony or a party or anything official. I just wanted her to be mine. Officially. Legally. In every way that mattered."
She laughed—a broken sound, barely there. "I rehearsed it so many times. And then the battle started, and I thought—I thought I'd never get to say it at all."
Garrus didn't speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice was rougher than before. "She knows."
"I told her when she was unconscious. I don't think that counts."
"She knows," he repeated. "She's always known, Liara. The woman flew a dreadnought into a Collector base for you. You think she doesn't know you want to marry her?"
A wet laugh escaped Liara's throat. "When you put it that way."
"I'm just saying." Garrus leaned back in his chair, his mandibles shifting into something approaching a smile. "You could probably propose with a grocery store receipt and she'd say yes."
"I will not be proposing with a grocery store receipt."
"Missing the point."
Liara shook her head, but there was warmth in it—a flicker of something that felt almost like normalcy, like the old days when they'd sit in the forward battery and trade barbs while Shepard watched them both with that stupid fond grin. She looked down at Shepard's hand in hers, at the N7 gauntlet still cracked and smoking, at the dried blood caked in the joints.
"I need to clean her up," she said abruptly. "She's been lying in the same blood for hours. She'd hate that."
Garrus's brow plates rose. "You want to give her a bath."
"I want to make her comfortable." Liara's voice was steadier now, the scientist in her surfacing, latching onto something concrete. "The chest tube is stable. Chakwas said her vitals are improving. If I'm careful—"
"Liara."
"—I can wash her hair, change the sheets, get her into something clean—"
"Liara." He reached out and caught her arm again, gentle but insistent. "You can barely stand."
"I can stand."
"You fell asleep with your face on a mattress."
"That's not the same as—"
"It's exactly the same." Garrus held her gaze. His amber eyes were tired—the same exhaustion that had lived in all of them for weeks, the kind that sleep couldn't fix because the rest came from somewhere deeper, somewhere grief had carved out. "You're no good to her if you're dead on your feet."
Liara's jaw set. The stubborn line of it was pure Shepard, and Garrus almost smiled at the sight.
"I know you're right," she said quietly. "I hate it, but I know you're right."
"That's the first sensible thing you've said in three days."
"Don't push your luck."
They sat in silence for a moment, the monitors beeping their steady rhythm, the Normandy humming around them. Somewhere above, Joker was guiding them through the mass relay corridor, putting distance between them and the wreckage of the Citadel. They were safe. They were underway. Shepard was alive.
And Liara was still holding her hand, unable to let go.
"She needs you strong," Garrus said finally. "When she wakes up—and she will wake up—she's going to need you to be there. Not a version of you that collapsed from exhaustion the day before."
Liara's fingers tightened around Shepard's. "What if she doesn't wake up?"
The question came out smaller than she'd intended, younger, the voice of the woman who'd lost her mother, her home, her future, and now stood on the edge of losing the only person who made any of it worth surviving.
Garrus didn't offer false reassurance. He didn't say "she will" or "don't think like that." He just sat there, solid and present, the way he had for every dark moment since they'd met.
"Then you'll need to be even stronger," he said. "Because you'll have to carry her memory. And that takes more strength than I've got."
Liara looked at him—really looked, past the scars and the cracked visor and the gravel voice. She saw the turian who'd spent three weeks organizing search parties, who'd flown into a collapsing station without hesitation, who'd helped lift a beam off Shepard's chest and never once complained about the weight. She saw the friend Shepard had called her right hand, the one who'd never given up.
"Thank you," she said. "For not telling me everything's going to be fine."
"Wouldn't believe me if I did."
"No. I wouldn't."
She turned back to Shepard, studying the pale face, the closed eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw even in unconsciousness. With her free hand, she reached up and brushed a strand of auburn hair from Shepard's forehead, tucking it behind her ear. The dried blood flaked against her fingers.
"I'm going to clean her up," Liara said, her voice quiet but firm. "Not a full bath. Just—her face. Her hands. She'd want to be clean when she wakes up."
Garrus nodded slowly. "I'll get warm water and cloths. But you let me help."
Liara opened her mouth to argue.
"Not negotiable," he said. "You're not doing it alone, and I'm not leaving you to collapse in the middle of it."
She closed her mouth. After a moment, she nodded.
Garrus rose, his joints creaking in a way that reminded her he'd been through the same war, the same exhaustion, the same grief. He paused at the door and looked back at her, his silhouette framed against the dim light of the corridor.
"She's going to wake up, Liara." His voice was softer now, carrying something that might have been hope, or faith, or the stubborn refusal to accept anything else. "And when she does, you're going to be right here. Holding her hand. Just like you promised."
He was gone before she could answer, the door hissing shut behind him.
Liara sat alone with Shepard, the monitors beeping their steady rhythm, the ventilator rising and falling like a mechanical heartbeat. She raised Shepard's hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, feeling the warmth of her skin, the faint pulse beneath.
"I'll be right here," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere."
Shepard's fingers twitched. A response. A reflex. Or maybe something more.
Liara closed her eyes and let herself believe it was the last one.
She didn't know how long she sat there with her eyes closed, her forehead resting against Shepard's hand, the warmth of her skin seeping through the cracks in Liara's own. Time had stopped meaning anything in the med bay—the hours bled together, marked only by the ventilator's rhythm and the slow drip of the IV, the occasional beep of a monitor adjusting to some shift in Shepard's vitals that Chakwas would note with quiet efficiency.
The door hissed open again, and Liara lifted her head.
Garrus returned with a basin of warm water, a stack of clean cloths, and a small bottle of something that smelled like antiseptic and lavender. He set them on the counter beside the biobed without a word, then pulled the chair closer and sat down across from her, on the other side of Shepard's bed.
"I found the lavender stuff in Chakwas's cabinet," he said, his voice low. "Figured Shepard would prefer smelling like a garden instead of a hospital."
Liara's mouth curved—barely, but it was there. "She'd complain either way. Too floral, she'd say. She likes the cheap soap from the Citadel market."
"The one that smells like industrial cleaner?"
"That's the one."
Garrus shook his head, a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any air behind it. "I'll never understand human preferences."
Liara dipped a cloth into the warm water, wrung it out, and turned back to Shepard's face. She started at her forehead, gentle strokes that traced the lines of her brow, the curve of her cheekbone, the scar that ran from her temple to her jaw—a memento from the first time she'd died, the one that had brought them together in ways neither of them had expected.
The dried blood came away in dark smears against the white cloth. Liara rinsed and repeated, working in silence, her movements careful and deliberate. She cleaned around the chest tube, avoiding the bandages, tracing the edge of the bruise that spread across Shepard's ribs like a storm cloud.
"She has new scars," Liara said quietly. "From the beam. There's going to be a mark across her chest, right where—" She stopped, her voice catching. "Right where I found her."
Garrus watched her hands move. "She'll wear it like she wears the others."
"I know." Liara dipped the cloth again, watching the water turn pink. "I just wish she didn't have to collect so many."
She moved to Shepard's hands next, lifting each one carefully, cradling it in her palm as she worked the cloth between the fingers, along the palm, around the cracked edges of the N7 gauntlet. The armor was beyond repair—the light strip dead, the plating warped from heat and pressure. But beneath it, Shepard's hand was intact. Warm. Alive.
Liara pressed her thumb into the center of Shepard's palm, feeling the calluses, the ridges of old scars, the familiar geography of a hand she'd held a thousand times.
"I remember the first time she held my hand," she said, not looking up. "It was on the Citadel, after we'd stopped Saren. She found me in my office, surrounded by data pads, and she just—reached out. Took my hand. Like it was the most natural thing in the world."
Garrus was quiet, letting her speak.
"I'd never held hands with anyone before. Asari don't really do that—we have melding, which is so much more intimate. But this was different. It was simple. Human. She was telling me she was there, that she wasn't going anywhere, without saying a single word." Liara's voice dropped. "I think that's when I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That I was going to love her for the rest of my life."
The words hung in the air, fragile and raw. Liara lifted Shepard's hand to her lips again, pressing a kiss to the palm, then the inside of her wrist where the pulse beat faint and steady against her mouth.
"She's going to wake up," Garrus said. Not a question. Not a hope. A statement, flat and certain, the same tone he used when calling a shot through a sniper scope.
Liara looked at him. His amber eyes held hers, unblinking, and she saw the same exhaustion she felt, the same grief, the same stubborn refusal to accept the alternative.
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Because she's Shepard." He said it like it was the only answer that mattered. "And Shepard doesn't quit."
Liara's chest ached. She looked down at the woman in the bed—pale, scarred, broken—and she wanted to believe. She wanted to believe with the same ferocity that burned in Garrus's eyes, the same faith that had carried them through a war that should have ended everything.
She wanted to believe that Jane Shepard would open her eyes again, look at her, and say her name in that low, rough voice that made everything feel possible.
The monitor beeped. Steady. Alive.
Liara reached for a fresh cloth, dipped it in the warm water, and went back to work. She cleaned the blood from Shepard's neck, from the hollow of her throat, from the edges of the scar that ran along her collarbone. She worked slowly, methodically, the way she'd once catalogued Prothean artifacts—with patience, with reverence, with the quiet knowledge that she was touching something irreplaceable.
When she was done, the water in the basin was dark red. She set the cloth aside and sat back, studying her work.
Shepard looked cleaner. Not better—the pallor was still there, the bruising still vivid, the chest tube still draining fluid into its chamber. But she looked cared for. She looked like someone was waiting for her.
"I should change the sheets," Liara said. "They're stained."
Garrus stood. "I'll help you lift her. Carefully."
They worked together, moving Shepard with the same coordinated caution they'd used to lift the beam off her chest. Liara supported her head, her neck, while Garrus took her shoulders and hips, his movements precise despite the bulk of his turian frame. They laid her on a clean sheet, then another, folding the soiled one beneath and pulling it free.
By the time they were done, Liara was breathing hard, her arms trembling from the effort. She sank back into her chair, her hand finding Shepard's again, her fingers intertwining with the ones that had held her through so much.
Garrus gathered the soiled linens and the basin, stacking them by the door. He paused, looking back at the two of them—Liara slumped in her chair, Shepard pale and still, their hands joined like a lifeline.
"I'll be in the forward battery if you need me," he said. "Try to eat something. There's ration bars in the mess."
"I will."
"You won't."
Liara looked up, a ghost of a smile on her lips. "I'll try."
Garrus nodded once, then turned and left, the door hissing shut behind him.
Liara sat alone with Shepard, the clean sheets crisp beneath her, the faint smell of lavender hanging in the air. She raised their joined hands and pressed Shepard's knuckles to her cheek, feeling the warmth of her skin, the steady pulse that refused to fade.
"I'm going to tell you a story," she whispered. "About the first time I realized I loved you. It was on Illium, after you found me working for the Shadow Broker. You were so angry—furious, actually—and I thought you were going to yell at me. But instead, you just stood there, looking at me with those green eyes, and you said—"
She stopped, her voice breaking.
"You said, 'I thought I lost you.' And I realized, in that moment, that I'd been lost long before you found me. And that I didn't want to be found by anyone else."
The monitor beeped. Steady. Alive.
Liara pressed her lips to Shepard's knuckles and closed her eyes, letting the rhythm of the machines and the warmth of the hand in hers carry her toward something that felt, for the first time in weeks, like hope.