Thirteen: "They said there would be light..."

[Benezia]

She felt them coming. A surge of despair and grief rolled over her when she felt the familiar biotic tug on her senses; Liara was with them. Despite a decade or more without contact, Benezia still knew the force of her daughter's abilities, just as she remembered each scale on her crest, each toddling step and baby kiss she'd ever received from her only child. She wept and railed, but Sovereign's pressure on her mind kept her body from displaying her anguish. She did not falter as she tore through the rachni queen's mind like wildfire.

She was not gentle. Even as she worked, biotic fire crackling along her hands, the queen sang discordantly in her mind.

You sing mourning dirges even as you pillage our melodies, asari-mother-thief, the queen shot at her, ancient and beautiful. Your young comes for you, to set the measure of things right.

"Quiet, beast," she snarled, her voice heartless. Inside, she begged with her true voice to apologize, beg forgiveness to this impossibly old and wise creature that she abused. Her cries went unanswered. The counter-chord the reaper sang to her own melody gagged her free will with rancid, salty fingers.

The queen responded to her command by attacking, drowing Benezia in memories fringed in searing heat:

She climbs the many steps of Athame's temple, yellow dress fluttering in the summer breeze. "Come Liara, I have a special place for us to visit," she said, looking down in love at her tiny blue daughter.

"Is it very old, mother? I like old things, you know," Liara stated matter-of-fact and precocious as always.

"It's quite old and precious to our people, Little Wing."

"You can't keep spouting off such nonsense, Aethyta," she scolds the upstart matriarch, though she herself isn't much older in years. "We can't build our own relays; we just don't have the tech-"

Aethyta cuts her off, acid in her voice. "We would if we didn't let our young waste their time getting laid from the moment they know how to meld with something other than themselves." She crosses her arms over her chest, proud and confident in her scruples.

She sighs, knowing this argument's grooves and planes well. "Putting maidens to work before they are mature enough to understand responsibility is against everything the Maiden's Journey stands for!"

Aethyta glares at her, violet eyes furious and defiant. "I disagree; I think it's the perfect time to teach them what it means to work the blue off their asses and earn a place in society, and not have it handed to them the moment they decide to slow down. That is, of course, if a sucking chest wound doesn't tell them ahead of time!"

She glares right back. "I seem to remember you shaking your ass right beside me in that dive bar on Omega, Aethyta. Back when we were friends."

"Yeah. At least I learned something out of being a piece of meat for turians and the like to ogle. How is that turian plaything of yours, anyway? Arduous, Artery, what was his name again?"

"If you do not remember his name, then we really have fallen out," she says, cold and distant as the void.

Benezia shut her eyes against the old scorns, shoving the rachni back under her mental grip. Oh, Aethyta, she thought, I should have listened to you. Should have been as studious as my Liara. She's not stripping, she's a doctor. Maybe if I had been like her, I could have resisted all this.

Complete your task, asari.

The tide of pain came with the compulsion as it always did, along with the sickly sweet, cloying pleasure she received as a reward when she complied. She transferred the data she ripped from the queen's shrieking sing-song mind and transmits it to Saren. She sagged under the weight of it, her body weakening under the indoctrination's ugly melody. Benezia coughed, a small spatter of pinkish blood spattering against her hand. She brushed the blood away. She closed her eyes and centered herself, like she was taught many centuries before, and regains tentative control of her faculties.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the small OSD sitting on the desk. It was an innocent thing, some innocuous piece of Binary Helix-branded promotional kitsch, but the plan that spawned, fully feathered, in her mind gave her a dizzying taste of freedom that she swooned at the thought. She grabbed the disk, slammed it into the console, and copied the transmitted data. Benezia could leave a small legacy for her daughter after all. Provided her daughter survived the coming confrontation.

Please don't make me kill her, she begged the angry buzzing in her mind.

The rachni queen chose her moment of silent prayer as a launch pad for another attack. Benezia slipped under the fog of memories again:

Saren Arterius' taloned fingers slips into her hand, raises it to his forehead in the turian equivalent of kissing a dignitary's ring. "Lady T'soni, it is an honor to finally meet you," he says, his face and eyes clear of implants, handsome and silver against his black Spectre uniform. He is so young compared to her, but she still feels the thrumming tide of infatuation as she returns the greeting.

"Spectre Arterius, the pleasure is all mine. Please, join me; I've some interesting opportunities to show you regarding the research samples you sent me from the old ship..."

Years later, he growls in the dimmed light of her personal chamber. He gestures wildly as she rubs soothing circles on his silvery chestplate. "How dare they ask for what should be given!" he growls. "Humans are barely out of the primordial slop and they beg for scraps at our feet like kleishrae," he says, fuming and disgruntled.

She comforts him the best she can, her head resting between his shoulder and her pillow, which still holds the scent of their union. "Saren, love, patience. You are certainly skilled enough to prevent this from happening if you do not wish it." She slithers atop him as he listens to her plans, punctuated by caresses and soft breaths designed to soothe-

She shoved the memories of their old passions behind her, lashing out at the queen as she severed the connection. Again, she was not gentle. Benezia turned to the sample destruction protocol, preparing it to cleanse the rachni queen's presence from the galaxy permanently.

She didn't get more than a few screens in when she heard the lab's airlock cycle open. Booted footsteps clamber into the chamber, and Liara's presence is stronger than it has been in decades.

"Mother!"

Benezia froze. NO! She shrieked, beating against the inside of her mental prison. Not now! I will not kill her! She wept and raged, clawing at the compulsion to hurt, to maim, to destroy.

Complete your task, asari.

She complied.

When it ended, her brave commandos fallen and broken under Shepard's assault, her own body ripped and beaten by biotics and bullets, Benezia used her last reserves to warn her daughter, to warn Shepard. She saw strength in the human's scar-crossed gaze. This was a woman to be feared, followed into the hells and back.

I wish I had met her before this happened. I am glad Liara has found a place in this woman's crew.

As she felt the compulsion return, this time with crushing force, she begged Shepard and Liara to leave before she could hurt them further. As she did, she sent a last tendril of free thought to her daughter.

Liara! Lovely little wing, I-

Mother! Hang on, let me save you-

There's no time, love. I cannot-

She caught Liara's anguish full forced, the bladed edge scouring at the last reserves she had to fight the compulsion. It came with memories, of course. Liara never could avoid sharing herself in times of emotional stress-

We walk in the garden, blossoms thick and heavy, talking about the types of plants we see and where they come from. She/I stumble, scrape our knee on something, and there is pain, and she/I wipes my tears and kisses it better. "There there," mother/I say, "It will all mend in time, little wing."

The compulsion crashed over again, flaring her biotics one last time. "Shepard, please!" Benezia cried. "I cannot fight this..."

Shepard's eyes, brown and warm like Armali's soil, are cold but compassionate. "I am sorry," the human whispers, then pulls the trigger on her pistol. The shot is true, and Benezia felt the life begin to rush from her body at last.

She felt cold, the shock making her feel the first true fear of the whole ordeal. "Where is the light?" Benezia, Matriarch of Armali, Lady T'Soni, gasped, her last breath rough with blood and tears. "They said there would be light..."