Landing on Therum, volatile-atmosphere volcano that it was, wasn't the most pleasant experience for anyone involved. Especially not the people in the second Mako -procured from the squadron that had responded to Feros to retrieve the colonists, take the Exo-Geni staff into custody, and ensure that the Thorian was well and truly dead-, who found themselves landing a little bit roughly because it turned out that Kaiden Alenko was an extremely talented gunner and a competent driver…but a very poor pilot. Fortunately for him, and everyone else involved, the onboard VI was capable of doing most of the heavy lifting when it came to controlling the retro-jets required to keep the landing 'rough' instead of 'unsafe'.
But having that second Mako, and the extra team-members that it could carry, ended up paying heavy dividends the first time they came across one of the fortified geth camps and the turrets that guarded them. Alone, a single Mako would have been hard-pressed, forced to fire on the move and rely on volume of fire to do what accuracy and timing ought, but with two of them dividing the attention off the geth defenses, the turrets and larger geth units found themselves quickly and meticulously picked apart. And with little damage to the two APCs as well, which meant less maintenance and down time between this mission and the next.
Time was a valuable resource, after all, and it oughtn't be wasted when a bit of extra effort and creativity could solve any issues. Which was another side benefit of having two Mako's deployed, or perhaps a consequence of their ability to fight more effectively: it allowed the Normandy strike team to reach the mining complex/dig site that Liara T'soni had holed up in with the survivors of the Eldfell-Ashland mining team present on-world in no more than a third of the time it would have otherwise.
Of course, that still meant that they would have to contend with whatever enemy forces were present while in the tight, underground confines of a volcanic mountain chain, which was less than ideal. Especially for Vakarian, who'd been forced to leave his sniper rifle behind entirely and make do with a standard assault rifle. Which wasn't exactly his particular preference or expertise, but he was a perfectly capable rifleman and his other option was staying behind. Something he didn't particularly want to do, and so he'd sucked it up and left 'his baby' behind.
"Alright, we'll go in with staggered pairs, one biotic to a pair for barriers. Ash, you and me first, then Wrex and Garrus. Tali and Kaiden will bring up the rear. In larger areas, where the tunnels open up, middle takes left and rear takes right. Watch for ambushes and booby-traps, tight quarters like this could make them devastating."
"Geth aren't known for booby-traps, Commander. They consider them inefficient. I don't think we need to worry about that." Tali piped up helpfully, and Cassandra flashed her a smile that was not at all condescending despite the fact that it was paired with a headshake of refutation.
"That's good to know, but I'm not worried about the geth." she responded, though she didn't elaborate at the somewhat-confused looks she got from everyone but Wrex, who was simply standing there and grunting in laughter. The squad exchanged glances and collectively, whether physically, mentally, or both, shrugged and decided to just keep their eyes open.
The team moved into the mine shaft exactly as ordered, weapons at the ready, each step measured and careful. The temperature rose noticeably as they descended, the volcanic activity beneath them creating an oppressive heat that had them all adjusting their environmental controls.
They hadn't gone more than a quarter-mile of twists and turns when the tunnel opened into a wider chamber, one that had obviously started smaller and had been widened by mechanical means. Scattered across the rocky terrain lay the mangled remains of at least a dozen geth platforms. Limbs torn from torsos, synthetic fluid splattered across the walls, head units crushed beyond recognition, scorch marks liberally scattered…if they were any sort of organic species, it would have been a scene fit for a horror movie. As it was, it just made it blatantly, unambiguously clear that the miners were still kicking.
"I guess this is what happens when you follow a bunch of explosive experts into the tunnels that they created, huh?" Kaiden chuckled, shaking his head with an air of something very much like awe, as he stepped further out of the column and started to move towards some of the wreckage. "Kind of wonder what they hit them with…"
His words, and his movements, came to an abrupt halt as purple-black light wrapped around his body, holding him in place. The squad turned to look at Kassandra and her outstretched, biotic-wreathed hand, surprise and concern on all of their faces. All save, once again, Wrex, who instead carefully moved forward to stand beside Kaiden, where his large fingers found the near-invisible string the young man had been about to break.
"Hmph. She's gotten better at hiding them. That would have been a nasty surprise." he grunted, following the string carefully to it's termination point inside of an overturned crate. A few moments of careful work later, and he was holding on a large block of industrial blasting explosive, covered in what looked like ball-bearings and bolts of some kind, and he chuckled heartily. "Very nasty, would have been lucky to just lose a leg or two to this. Go ahead and let him go, Shepard."
Cassandra released her biotic hold on Kaiden, who stumbled forward a step before catching himself and turning to stare at the improvised explosive device with wide eyes. "Jesus!" he breathed, running a hand through his hair. "Thanks, Commander. I owe you one."
"Just doing my job and keeping my people in one piece, don't worry about it." she responded absently, taking the IED from her honorary great-uncle and inspecting it carefully, smiling faintly. "You're right, Wrex, she has gotten a lot better. Wonder if this was all her, or if those miners had something to say about it?"
"Oh, they probably helped with placing them, and they definitely had input on the charge size, but the rest of it? All her." he responded promptly, chuckling again and swinging his head around to cast a scrutinizing gaze across the rest of the room. "Probably a few more tucked away. If she wasn't dealing with geth, I'd say that the bodies themselves would be booby-trapped, but she knows that geth wouldn't bother trying to search or recover their dead."
"I'm sorry, you guys keep saying 'she' like you know what's going on. Who, exactly, is going around booby-trapping this place?" Ashley asked, eyeing the explosives that her Commander was holding with a distinct air of trepidation, and Cassandra glanced over at her with a wry grin.
"Who else? This is Liara's handywork."
"Liara T'soni?" the question was asked with incredulity, and Cassandra nodded. "The asari we're here to rescue." another nod. "The archaeologist."
"Archaeology can be a very dangerous profession, Ash. Lia learned how to protect herself pretty young, just like I did." Cassandra's tone was so normal it was obvious she was teasing a bit, and the brunette marine visibly resisted rolling her eyes in response.
"Learning how to protect yourself and learning how to make IEDs and booby-traps are on different parts of the spectrum, don't you think? A bit widely separated on the scale?" she drawled, and the grinning pair grinned wider.
"Maybe for most people, sure. But might I remind you this particular archaeologist was raised by Matriarch Aethyta? You know, the founder and head of Eclipse? How do you think Auntie A reacted to Mindoir and Anhur when it came to the two of us?" Cassandra pointed out, getting soft 'oh's of understanding from her audience, several heads bobbing in time. "Liara and I have a lot of 'extracurricular knowledge'." she looked back at the object in her hands. "Seems like she's picked up a few things, like Wrex said. You been paying her a visit, old man?"
"A few. Couldn't drop by on you as often as I might have liked, but no one is going to try and keep me off of your girl's digs. So I kept her company on occasion, made an impression on the rest of the team, ran off a few unsavory types." he confirmed with a casual shrug, still scanning the room. "I've spotted a couple more, and I can guarantee that there are a few that I haven't spotted. Let's deal with them and get baby blue out of here, before she blows up the whole damn mountain."
They spent the next twenty minutes methodically clearing the chamber of Liara's improvised security system. True to Wrex's prediction, there were seven more devices scattered throughout the room, each one just as cleverly concealed and deadly as the others, and the looks of horrified fascination on their squadmates' collective faces probably shouldn't have been nearly as funny as it was.
"Remind me never to get on the doc's bad side." Ashley found herself muttering to Garrus, who was in that moment standing closest to her, and he could only nod in solemn agreement as the two of them stared at the pile of explosives. Which would, they were quite sure, be able to sink a frigate like the Normandy -or, perhaps, even a heavy cruiser- if it was set off in the right places. Hell, it was entirely possible that this much explosive material didn't need to be set off in a 'right place' to deal critical damage.
"It's certainly…impressive." Tali hedged, wringing her hands a bit as she kept a wary eye on the pile from a good dozen feet away, the closest that she had gotten to any of them the entire time. Understandably, of course, above and beyond even what the others might have felt, given the state of her immune system. A breach in her suit could prove fatal in a way that any of the others might survive. "Shouldn't we be moving on, though? This is a lot of geth, and I doubt it's all of them."
"You're probably right about that." Cassandra sighed, turning away from the pile of traps and casting an eye further down the tunnel. "I'm going to assume that we'll run into more of these on the way, so stay behind me and try not to touch anything without checking it very, very carefully first. The last thing I need is my girlfriend accidentally blowing one of my squad mate's up, please and thank you."
Chuckling despite themselves, the team reformed their column and headed deeper into the complex, with the air growing thicker, hotter, and by God more acrid with every step, and it wasn't long before everyone except Wrex -and Tali, for obvious reasons- were forced to put on emergency rebreathers to keep their breathing proper. A potent reminder of the fact that, for all that this was an archeological site and a mining facility, this was still a volcano on a volcanic world.
They encountered two more booby-trapped chambers, each full of further obliterated geth, before the tunnels began to slope more steeply downward. Each was cleared over the course of nearly fifteen minutes apiece of painstaking work, something that had Garrus muttering that he would almost prefer a vicious firefight with the geth instead. Faster, easier and, he stressed as he ran a hand over his fringe, considerably less anxiety-inducing. A quip from Wrex about his nerves not being up to C-sec had the far younger male snapping that he could handle firefights just fine, but there was a reason that he'd never signed up for EOD work, in the Legions or C-sec alike, thank you very much!
"Boys, please, we're in a warzone. Keep the competitiveness directed towards something beneficial to the situation, like seeing who can kill the largest number of geth or some such." Cassandra sighed, more fondly amused than anything else, to which both -in an eerie display of synchronicity- responded that they would be happy to, except it seemed as though Liara had already killed them all.
They all paused as the tunnel abruptly opened into a massive, cavernous space. Unlike the previous, considerably smaller chambers, this one showed signs of extensive excavation. Not the rough-hewn mining work they'd seen thus far, either, but instead the precise, careful digging of archaeological efforts. Efforts centered around what certainly appeared to be ancient Prothean ruins. Massive pillars of bluish-gray metal rose from floor to ceiling, etched with glyphs and patterns that seemed to shimmer faintly in the dim emergency lighting.
"Well, I'll be damned, Skipper." Ashley whispered, her voice carrying despite her attempt to keep it low, as she shook her head in awe. "I didn't really think there would be much to find inside a volcano, but that…that's definitely Prothean."
"I wonder why it looks so different from Feros? The Skyway and the ruins there didn't look all that different from the concrete mega-structures of the 21st century, if larger and a bit more advanced. This though, this looks properly alien." Kaiden mused in agreement, looking around with a look that said he was just as impressed as his fellow human…and, for that matter, Garrus and Tali, who seemed to be in no different a state than the marines. It wasn't as if they had a great deal of experience with intact Prothean ruins, after all, Feros notwithstanding.
"We find Lia, she'll be happy, willing, and able to answer that question for you in excruciating detail." Cassandra informed him, quite dryly, before her head twitched around, tilting sideways as if she had heard something, and the squad tensed with their weapons ready. It wasn't a threat that she was reacting too, though, or if it was, it was a very strange one, judging by the grin that bloomed on her face. "Hey babe. Thought I'd swing by to pick you up for a hot date, but I can see you've already found plenty of heat all by yourself."
"One wonders if you're referring to the lava or the geth." a cultured voice echoed through the cave, before a blue-black, biotic shrouded form floated down from a shadowy alcove halfway up the back wall. Touching down lightly, comparatively speaking, the asari that had spoken looked the gathered soldiers over with curious eyes, though she didn't stop addressing Shepard. "I would say that your sense of humor could do with some improvement, but you've been like this for twenty years, and I've long since conceded that you're a lost cause at this point."
"To be fair," Cassandra said virtuously, waving for her team to stand down, grin widening as a dozen or so miners -armed with various weapons of the manufactured or improvised kind- stepped out of various hiding places. "I was actually referring to your little surprises that were left all over the tunnels and the antechambers. You've gotten scary since I saw you last, love."
"Ah, of course. My mistake." Liara smirked faintly, stepping forward, an action mirrored by Cassandra. A moment later, the two of them were embracing with a soft, lingering kiss, leaving the more than a few members of the squad and miners both shuffling awkwardly, and several more -such as Wrex- chuckling in amusement at the display of young love. They separated after a moment, pressing their foreheads together, before stepping back to arms length. "I missed you, love, and I'm glad to see you even more than usual. You've come to evacuate us?"
"Unless there are more than thirty of you, yeah. That's the most I can probably fit in my hanger without causing issues. Won't be comfortable, but it will be survivable." Cassandra confirmed, before frowning thoughtfully. "I think I could fit more than that, but it would be really short term and I'd have to pack them in pretty tight in certain areas to make sure that the crew can still do their jobs properly. What are we looking at?"
"Just twenty-five of us, counting myself, I'm afraid. The geth hit hard and fast, nearly everyone that was outside the tunnels when they arrived was dead before they really knew what was happening. Only two of them made it in here in one piece. Lost a half-dozen more before we could get things organized to protect ourselves." Liara explained, shaking her head sadly, then smiling grimly as she looked over her shoulder at the miners. "We gave as good as we got though, didn't we? Put all that post-Mindoir training to good use."
"That you did, quite clearly." Cassandra agreed, her eyes sweeping over the assembled miners with genuine respect, and they straightened up in pride in response. Well deserved pride, to be sure. "Looks like you've been giving them some pointers too."
One of the miners, a grizzled human with a salt-and-pepper beard, barked out a laugh. "Dr. T'soni here's been teaching us more than just how to identify Prothean artifacts, that's for damn sure. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd be rigging mining charges to take down dozens of synthetic bastards. Figured it would be the bloody four-eyes, if anything…"
"Necessity breeds adaptation, and creativity." Liara replied with a modest shrug, though there was unmistakable pride in her eyes. "And I had excellent teachers, for all that their methods were…unconventional."
Wrex rumbled approvingly, bearing his teeth in a grimace of pride. "Good to see you haven't gotten soft digging through dirt without me keeping you on your toes, kid."
"Never, Uncle Wrex." she flashed him a smile, before blinking at Ashley as she cleared her throat. "Yes…?"
"Ashley William, Gunnery Chief. Nice to meet you." the brunette said briskly, a somewhat confused look on her face. "It just, uh…well it just occured to me, but why didn't your moms leave any commandoes here with you? I would have figured, just based on their reputations…"
"Their reputations is exactly why I don't have any commandoes here with me." Liara explained once it became clear that Ashley wasn't going to pick up where she had trailed off, running a hand over her crest with a bitter, wry expression on her face. "After everything that's happened the last few decades, the possibility of someone attacking me was considered…improbable. Especially since my presence here isn't exactly common knowledge. I can only assume Saren was aware and revealed that knowledge. Having a large number of commandoes present would have drawn more attention, so it was judged that the standard security from my University and from the mining corporation would be sufficient."
"Clearly an assumption that proved false, though I'm not criticizing. We certainly weren't ready when they hit us on Eden Prime. Lost a man there myself." Cassandra said with a grimace, not really able to muster up a smile for her lover despite the reassuring squeeze Liara gave her forearm. "When we finish with this entire debacle and deal with Saren, we'll need to have a chat with your parents about upgrading your security detail."
"Please don't." Liara sighed, shaking her head in exasperation. "Mother would undoubtedly assign an entire commando unit that would follow me everywhere, including to the bathroom, and father would likely show up herself with half of Eclipse in tow. I'd never get any work done."
"Better then dead, baby blue." Wrex pointed out with a grunt, before rolling his shoulders and slamming his fists together. "Hmph. You kids can talk about this back on the boat. Let's get off this rock before my hump sweats off."
"He's right, we'll talk later. Let's get all of you out of here." Cassandra agreed, glancing back at her team. "Is there another way out of here? I have to assume that the entrance will be getting watched now, given how many geth we killed to get to it. I don't want to walk all of us right into an ambush."
"Only one that I would trust. Much as the Council might scream about it, there is a large Prothean lift, big enough for all of us, that will take us to an ancient passage way. I've only recently finished clearing it, it wasn't known to the miners or in their systems when the geth attacked, so I don't believe the enemy are aware of it." the archaeologist responded, waving deeper into the mountain.
"…well, I've already been taken on a ride by one ancient prothean relic in the last month, might as well do it with another." Cassandra quipped, grinning at her love's confusion even as her team chuckled in surprised amusement around her, before re-drawing her SMGs and advancing in the direction Liara had indicated. Nowhere to go but up, now, and nothing to do but leave.
################################################################################
An hour later, after a fight involving another twenty dead geth and three dead krogan -that Cassandra was pretty sure were clones, given how similar they looked to each other and to the krogan that her fireteam had fought in the Exo-Geni headquarters on Feros- and a somewhat-hasty evacuation from Therum before anyone else 'unpleasant' could show themselves, Cassandra had dismissed her team to their post-combat wind-down, with a debrief planned for the next morning, before locking herself and Liara in her quarters. Neither of them tried to make any excuses, well aware that they wouldn't have been believed to begin with, and neither of them wasted much time in putting their hands on each other the moment the door was closed and locked either.
The first kiss was desperate, hungry, weeks of separation and fear pouring out in the press of lips and the tangle of tongues. Liara's hands fisted in Cassandra's shirt, pulling her closer as if she could somehow merge their bodies through sheer force of will, while Cassandra's fingers gripped her lover's crest, tilting the asari's head back to deepen the kiss.
"Goddess, I thought…when the geth came, I thought I might never see you again, I was terrified of leaving you." Liara breathed against Cassandra's mouth, her voice thick with emotion and desire both.
"Hey, none of that, baby." Cassandra murmured, pressing soft kisses along the curve of Liara's jaw, down to the sensitive hollow of her throat. "I'm here. We're both here. That's all that matters right now."
Liara trembled against her, hands moving to cup Cassandra's face, blue eyes meeting green with fierce intensity. "I know. I just... when I felt you approaching, when I felt your mind brushing against mine, I nearly collapsed with relief."
Cassandra guided them toward the bed, never breaking contact. "I would have torn apart every geth in the galaxy to get to you."
Their clothes came off piece by piece, dropped carelessly to the floor, discarded physically and mentally alike the moment they were stripped. Each newly revealed patch of skin was met with reverent touches and soft kisses, and Liara's fingers traced the familiar contours of Cassandra's body, lingering over scars both old and new, not that she had many of the later. Few things penetrated her defenses that badly these days, though the geth might manage it somewhere along the line.
"I know that you would have, beloved. As I would for you." Liara confirmed lovingly, before playfully tugging on Cassandra's nipples. "Now take me to bed, and make sure the only name I can remember is yours."
Cassandra's response was immediate and physical, lifting Liara easily and laying her down on the narrow bed with rather more delicacy than their trysts often carried. Understandable, under the circumstances. The asari's skin was warm to the touch, flushed violet with desire, and Cassandra took her time mapping every familiar curve with hands and lips alike. She'd dreamed of this during the long weeks since they'd last been together, but reality was so much better than memory. Especially under these circumstances.
Liara arched beneath her, hands tangling in auburn hair as Cassandra's mouth worked lower, closer and closer to the place both of them so desperately wanted her to reach. "Cassie, please..."
"If you insist…" Cassie murmured playfully into the asari's stomach, and her next kiss was planted directly on Liara's engorged clit.
The reaction was immediate, Liara's back arching off the bed as she gasped, bowing her in a display of flexibility that few humans could even dream of managing, one hand tightening in Cassandra's hair while the other clutched at the sheets as she gave a loud, flowing moan of pleasure. Cassandra smiled against her lover's azure, as pleased as she ever was with the response she pulled from Liara's lips, before setting to work with a focused, passionate determination, alternating between broad strokes of her tongue and precise, targeted attention to the sensitive bundle of nerves.
"Goddess, please. more." Liara whimpered not a minute of cunnilingus later, her voice already taking on that slightly echoing quality that preceded a meld. Her eyes, when Cassandra glanced up, were beginning to darken, the transformation from blue to black happening in incremental stages as her control slipped.
Cassandra hummed in approval and arousal, sliding two fingers inside her lover and curling them just so, knowing exactly how to touch Liara after so many years together, knowing what she wanted and how she would react when she got it…or, as the situation might call for it, didn't. The asari's thighs trembled on either side of her head in response, her sheath tightening down around the probing digits, and Cassandra let her mind reach out to brush against Liara's own.
A familiar caress leading to a familiar flow, their souls beginning to come together in a way that even the asari, with their meld, could not hope to understand without experiencing it. A symbol of the couple's devotion to one another, an act of uttermost faith and love, one that had happened entirely by accident the first time that they had made love. An event that had led to Liara meeting her lover's 'partner', and discovering the whole truth of who and what Cassandra was becoming.
But that didn't matter right now. All that mattered in this moment was there love for another, and as a thought of desire flickered through Liara's mind, Cassandra shifted positions, mounting Liara's face and lowering her own back to the asari's soaked sex.
The meld deepened as they pleasured each other, their consciousness entwining as intimately as their bodies. Waves of pleasure flowed between them, amplified in the sharing, each sensation doubled and reflected back until it was near-impossible to tell where one mind ended and the other began…and they loved it.
Mine. Cassandra's thought whispered across their bond as she drove three fingers as deeply into Liara as they could reach, heat and hunger and a deep well-spring of emotion that no words would ever come close to properly portraying.
Yours. came Liara's reply, her mouth crying out, the vibrations on Cassandra's pussy driving the human wilder still, just as fierce in her agreement, her submission, as Cassandra had been in reclaiming her.
Their efforts intensified, each woman knowing precisely what the other needed, from the ease of long practice and the thought-bound connection between them. As Liara's pleasure built toward its peak, Cassandra felt it as her own, the tension coiling tight at the base of her spine, spreading outward like wildfire. A flicker of psionics had a long, not-so-slender object flickering across the room from the depths of it's hiding place to slap into her hand…and just as Liara was about to cum, Cassandra rammed her favorite dildo into her lover's sex, filling her from lips to womb.
Liara didn't reach her peak, but was bodily thrown off of it, her scream of ecstasy echoed through the cabin as her entire body seized, back arching impossibly high off the bed as she clenched down on the welcome invader tightly enough that Cassandra couldn't have pulled it out if she had tried. The meld exploded with blinding intensity, consciousness shattering into a kaleidoscope of shared pleasure. Cassandra's own orgasm hit simultaneously, triggered by the feedback loop of sensation flowing between them, and for a few endless seconds, they merged on an incredible level, one mind riding the waves of pleasure together.
For them, love and sex was truly, and nigh-on-literally, a transcendental experience.
When they finally came back to themselves, both women were breathing hard, bodies slick with sweat and cum, still trembling with aftershocks from head to toe. The meld slowly dissolved, leaving them separate but still intimately connected through lingering traces of shared sensation, their minds as closely pressed together as their bodies for all the seperation that was now between them.
"Goddess," Liara whispered, her voice hoarse and still carrying that faint echo, shifting slightly as Cassandra not-so-deftly reversed position to lie behind her, pulling the asari against her chest. Liara moaned softly as one of her lover's hands dropped possessively to the replica phallus still buried inside of her, toying with it lightly and sending sparks fizzing through Liara's still-warm nerves. "Mmhh…I had forgotten how intense it could be when we haven't seen each other for a while."
Cassandra pressed a kiss to the top of Liara's crest, her own voice more than a little rough. "Worth the wait, though. Always is with you. Thought you're with me now, and I plan to keep you here, at least until all of this stuff with Saren and the Warmaster is settled."
"Using me for my brain again, are you? I should have known that you only cared for my prothean expertise." Liara fake pouted, the expression outrageous and adorable in equal measure, and Cassandra had to resist the urge to coo at it.
It would ruin her comeback is she did.
"Well, I certainly didn't take you for your body." she quipped, waiting for Liara's expression to turn to outrage before thrusting slowly with the toy that she still gripped, turning a gasp of offense into one of pleasure. "Mmh, that's my girl." she murmured, pressing a kiss to Liara's shoulder, wrist continuing to work away between Liara's legs. "I love the sounds you make for me. Anyway, I don't need your big prothean brain, baby. Let me tell you about what happened on Eden Prime…"
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the reveal that her lover/frequent domme was now -to a greater or lesser degree, and growing greater every day- a walking, talking prothean relic had results that were at first inhibitory, then bacchanalian, and the loving couple didn't emerge from their room until it was time for the debriefing with the squad and the Council.
For Ashley Williams, who was really starting to have difficulty with that whole 'denying how much she was into Cassandra Shepard' thing after being rescued by her, comforted by her, listened to by her, and fighting alongside her, seeing the glowing pair step into the briefing room had her feeling like a fist was wrapped around her heart.
That fist's grip only grew tighter as she found herself sandwiched between the two women and glanced over to see the maiden beaming at her, offering a hand to shake.
"Liara T'soni, and you must be Ashley Williams." came the soft introduction, and despite herself Ashley couldn't help but hesitate for a moment before shaking it, grimacing internally as the smile on the other girl's face faltered ever so slightly. Mustering a smile in a guilt-born effort to make up for it, Ashley firmed her grip up a bit.
"I am. I've heard alot about you, Doctor. all of it complimentary." she said, meaning every word. "You're a very lucky woman, she's amazing." Fuck, she hadn't meant to say that. But she sure as hell wasn't going to take it back now that she had. Maybe she should try to play it off…?
"She is, and I know I am. She is the most singularly spectacular person I have ever met or heard of." Liara confirmed, smile glowing again as she cast a look of deep affection in the Commander's direction, before glancing back at Ashley. "The fact that you can say that in all seriousness, and so far as I can see genuine admiration of Cassandra, rather than merely idolization of 'The Dragon', tells me that you and I shall become great friends, Ashley. I so look forward to getting to know you better."
Oh, God help me. Ashley whimpered in her mind, taking in the bright eyes, the freckles, the warm smile. She's cute.