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Shepard sometimes comes down to her cabin to talk for a few minutes. Usually, he just runs through his day — the little mundane interactions he has on the Citadel, the amusing encounters, the random thoughts that pop into his head — and she listens. The arrangement works for them, allows him to vent some of the stress (too much stress, she thought) that had been building since long before Earth was invaded, and the sound of his voice soothes her, reminds her of why exactly she’s working so hard to corral resources for the Crucible.
He doesn’t come around when he expects that he’ll be an unwelcome distraction, and she’s gotten remarkably skilled at tuning in and out of his monologues as her workload requires. They relish having normal, two-sided conversations, but it had become increasingly difficult to find moments when they were both free to just talk like a normal couple. After years of limbo, of being together, but separated by unimaginable distance, they had both come to value these rare opportunities to simply be in each other’s presence.
As Liara updates her network’s list of important Illuminated Primacy soul names, she all but ignores his story, something about using ancient krogan engineering to power a light show at some nightclub in the wards, and his voice recedes to the edge of her awareness. She ignores his words, but hears the sound of his voice, his cadence, the sound of each phoneme that leaves his lips. The work is very dull, but she knows that it’s important enough to necessitate her full attention.
Even still, as Shepard describes an impromptu poker game in the refugee sector, her mind starts to wander from her task, and she finds herself focusing more on his enunciation than on the poetry of Regards The Works of the Enkindlers in Despair’s name. She knows he’s speaking English, his native human tongue, the only language he’s really comfortable with. But Liara hears her native Asari coming out of his mouth. The words come out… not clumsily, but no asari would use her language quite in the way that he seems to. Her translation VI turns his English into very precise, formal Asari, lacking in any emotional subtlety. Even his voice is changed, altered to a higher pitch which was no doubt found to be more palatable to the average asari listener by some market research agency.
He continues to drone on, now discussing Huerta Memorial’s absurdly overstocked gift shop as she finds herself increasingly distracted from her task. Liara knows Shepard. Over the years she’s taken great pleasure in methodically exploring the peaks and valleys of his mind, searching for every nook and cranny, finding hidden depths and bringing to the fore parts of Shepard’s personality that even he can’t explain. When their minds are joined, there is no need for language, and his deepest thoughts and motivations are communicated without the need for clumsy words.
Shepard is silent now, probably preparing to head back to work, but her train of thought continues, as she glances at him briefly before setting her information brokering to the side for now. She knows his hidden emotional complexities, but still, she’s always thought of him as being somewhat blunt in his communication, never really questioning her VI’s too-perfect Asari translation.
But now Liara considers the possibility that there might be some facets to Shepard — subtle shifts in tone, turns of phrase, vocal tics — that she is not privy to. Unacceptable for the Shadow Broker. The thought that there might be some missing piece to his puzzle worms its way into her mind, and she knows herself well enough to be certain that no productive work can be accomplished while this mystery remains unresolved.
“Shepard, have you ever wondered what I actually sound like, without the translator?” she asks, getting straight to the point.
He just looks at her for a moment, somewhat surprised. After rambling for five minutes uninterrupted, he hadn’t expected to hear much from her tonight. He knows how busy she is, and that he’s probably not helping by coming into her office on the Normandy and prattling on. Still, after Alchera’s deadly silence, he can’t stand the oppressive lack of noise that permeates through the stealth warship. She doesn’t seem to mind his stories, and he loves just being in her presence.
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” he answers after a moment’s further thought. She raises a brow marking at that (a human expression, he notes, that she’s learned to put to great use) and he knows he’s said something stupid. Good boyfriends are supposed to think about these things. “Wait, I mean- “
Her impish smile interrupts him mid-apology. “Neither had I. The thought just came to my mind while you were talking. I do not know what you sound like either,” she says calmly, trying not to betray the sense of curiosity she feels building like a vessel about to overflow.
Shepard sees that familiar spark in her blue eyes as an expression crosses her face that he typically only sees when she’s in the midst of scientific inquiry: brow ever-so-slightly furrowed; an almost imperceptible smile crossing her face, complete with barely-noticeable dimples on her violet bottom lip as evidence that she’d just been biting it. He’s had too-few opportunities to see her like this lately, and he relishes the idea of indulging her. “Well, do you want to find out?” he asks with a wink.
She shuts her terminal off, taking the time to diligently secure her office against errant Normandy crew, before grabbing his hand and guiding him to the elevator. To Shepard’s cabin.
They take a seat on the sofa opposite each other, both with their omni-tools out. It takes several minutes for them to navigate the various waivers required to turn off their translation VIs, protection that the VI developers insist on, as navigating a diverse galaxy without translation assistance can be hazardous at best. Finally, the translators verbally indicate that they are disabled, and the two of them find themselves unburdened by technology.
Liara doesn’t know what to say, and Shepard also seems lost for words, for once. After a few moments of uncharacteristic silence from him, she opts to begin. “So, what do you think?” She tries to sound casual, but she feels oddly self-conscious.
Shepard’s eyes widen, but he maintains his silence. “Go on then, I’m not going to sit here and talk to myself,” she says before laughing and shaking her head at the absurdity of the situation. Instead, she raises her palm to him, a universal signal meaning continue.
He snaps out of his stupor. Her voice, her laughter, sounds so familiar, so human, yet he’d never heard a human mouth form some of the sounds she’d made in that brief… sentence. Does the Asari language have sentences? “This is so weird,” he says, shaking his head slightly. Her eyes widen in turn, and he laughs. “I know, I know. I sound like a sex god. It’s rude to stare you know.”
She can’t understand him, but his laugh somehow sounds even better without her VI. Shepard’s voice is a rich baritone (a sound that she’d never heard from her fellow asari) and his English sounds somewhat harsh for her taste. She wouldn’t be surprised to hear such sounds coming from some primitive beast on a faraway planet. Still, it’s his voice, his language, and she loves it.
The experiment — brief, as befits busy people — concluded, she points a finger at her auditory canal, hoping he would understand her intent. He nods in recognition, and after another moment’s fiddling with their omni-tools (this time with no legal disclaimers, thankfully) they can understand each other again. She can already feel that easy familiarity between them falling back into place.
“I had no idea you sounded so brutish, Shepard,” she teases with a laugh, her voice sounding to Shepard like a somewhat formal human female again.
Shepard flashes her a wicked grin before bending forward slightly and lifting her effortlessly into his lap, close enough that she can feel his breath brushing against the scales of her crest. “You know you love it, squid lady,” Liara’s translator again modulating his voice into the higher pitch she had become so familiar with.
“Yes, I suppose those primal instincts of yours do have their uses,” she says breathily as their lips brush against each other. They soon find themselves unified, returning to that sacred place where language doesn’t matter.
The next week, he isn’t surprised to find a datapad loaded with a textbook titled Asari for English Speakers on his desk. Later, he spots a suspiciously similar datapad on Liara’s desk as he enters her room to begin another one-sided conversation, taking a moment to disable his translator as he knows she already has.