AN: Hi, guys. Sorry it took me so long to put this back up! This is the second version of 'Now And Again', the sequel to 'For Now And Always'. Like the first story, it will incorporate some dialogue from the games, although I'm trying to add a lot more original material than last time. It will rely heavily on flashbacks, although not in every chapter, and not always in order. Some of the material from the original version will make a reappearance - for example, the first section of this chapter. I'm hoping that by jumping back and forth between the past, where Liara rescues Shepard's body, and the present, where she has to confront what bringing her lover back from the dead actually means to her, I will be able to show her emotions in a very intense context. Expect updates on Wednesdays (or Thursdays sometimes).

. . .

Now And Again

. . .

Chapter One:

She was running again. Running through the ship as it shook and lurched around her. Loose wires sparked, and fire rained down from the ceiling. Everything was burning. The floor, the walls, even the people. She could hear screams over the dull wail of the warning sirens, could see shadows running through the thick smoke and flickering lights. Some of them fell, but there was no time to stop and check.

A loud boom tore through her skull, through the roof above her. The Normandy shuddered, and she lost her balance. Stumbled. Fell to one side. When she braced herself against the metal wall, she could feel heat even through her armor. Another blast nearly made her drop her helmet, but she managed to clutch it tight to her side. She pushed off the wall and sprinted around a burst of fire, nearly tripping over another corpse. Bodies were everywhere. Human, but as far as she could see, none of them belonged to Shepard. Shepard, who had left her with a kiss and a promise to be back from the mission before she even woke up. And after Saren's defeat, Liara had actually started to believe those promises…

She sped up the stairs and down the walkway, ignoring the sharp burn in her lungs. Smoke filled her mouth, and she coughed to get it out, desperately trying to take in fresh air. But there was none to be found. Only the taste of fire. And then, at last, a familiar figure. She knew that armor. It had come charging out of nowhere to save her so many times, always surrounded by waves of blue. Now, the air around it glowed red. "Shepard!"

Shepard pulled a helmet over her head and turned around just in time to meet her. "The distress beacon is ready for launch."

She hurried to put her own helmet on. She could not keep breathing without it. Her chest already ached with the effort. "Will the Alliance get here in time?"

The ship rocked beneath them, and she threw her hands out, clutching at Shepard's shoulders as she tried to regain her balance. Shepard remained steady and helped her to straighten up again. "The Alliance won't abandon us," she said, darting one side to grab for one of the fire extinguishers near the weapons locker. "We just need to hold on. Get everyone on the escape shuttle!"

The fire extinguisher flew toward her. Somehow, she managed to catch it. Her hands shook as she pulled it against her chest. She had no idea what she was doing. She could not put out an entire ship with one extinguisher… but perhaps she could clear a path so that they could make it to the shuttle… She turned her back to Shepard, spraying down the wall of fire rushing towards them. Even after the flames at her feet died down, the wave of heat was unbearable. She still couldn't breathe.

Then, Liara remembered the reason she had gone this way to look for Shepard in the first place. "Joker's still in the cockpit. He won't evacuate." She looked back over her shoulder, but Shepard refused to turn around. She was elbow-deep in some kind of emergency fuse box, pulling at wires. Liara's eyes stung, and she knew it was not from the smoke. "I'm not leaving you…"

"I need you to get the crew to the evac shuttle. I'll take care of Joker." Before she could say a word, Shepard turned and started toward the cockpit, grabbing the fire extinguisher from her hands.

"Shepard!"

"Liara, go! Now."

She froze. Even though the Normandy was falling apart around her, she could not force her legs to move. Every fiber of her being called for her to reach out, to pull Shepard back and drag her away from the fire. She could not even see the cockpit through the oily clouds smoke. The only thing in that direction was a large smear of black and grey dotted with flickering sparks of fire. She could not let Shepard go that way alone.

But then Shepard looked at her. Liara could not see her face through the dark visor of her helmet, but she could picture her lover's expression perfectly. The strong jaw, set with determination. The hard eyes. She had seen Shepard at her most vulnerable, her most human, but in moments like this, she became something far greater. Something more like a god than a mortal being. She was an unstoppable force.

She knew she would not change Shepard's mind. This was who she was. What she was. She lifted her shaking arm and threw a salute. "Aye aye."

. . .

Liara woke with a hard jerk, gasping as she reached out for someone who was no longer there. She was alone, as always. There was no more fire, only the safe darkness of her bedroom. The sheets were twisted around her legs, and they were soaked through with sweat. She shivered as the cold air touched her slick, overheated skin, struggling to catch her breath. Even though she knew she wasn't in any real danger, the memory was reluctant to relinquish its hold on her. She could still feel the kiss of the fire, could still see Shepard's ghostly face fading away past the smoke shot through with sparks.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to her surroundings, and the shadows around her took on clearer forms. She had lived in this apartment for over a year now, but it did not feel like home. Home was the small room behind the Normandy's medical bay, the Captain's cabin, the safety of Shepard's arms. The outlines of the furniture here were still unfamiliar, and the smell, while clean, was all wrong. It was all too obvious that Shepard had never lived here - and that she did not really want to live here without her. Even her bedroom was depressingly sterile despite the Prothean artifacts she had brought in to make herself feel more comfortable.

She kicked the covers the rest of the way off, freeing her legs so that she could turn toward her nightstand. The picture of the Normandy was there, just as it always was. She had looked to it for comfort more times than she could count. She had thought of putting Shepard's picture in its place, but couldn't bring herself to keep her missing lover's face so close. Especially not now that she was alive again.

In some ways, the fact that Shepard was awake, wandering the galaxy and fighting the good fight without her, was almost more painful than searching for her body, or even waiting and wondering if Cerberus would be able to bring her back to life. She had possessed some measure of control then, and she had been able to focus on clear, obvious goals: Retrieve Shepard's corpse. Get her to Cerberus. Search for Feron. Prepare for the return of the Reapers.

But no matter how hard she pushed herself, she couldn't forget. Her memories kept her awake for days at a time, and when her body finally reached the point of exhaustion, she could not fight it. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, and she swallowed hard, certain she could still taste smoke. She blinked until she no longer saw columns of fire eating away at the walls. That was the reason she didn't sleep anymore. Whenever her mind slipped into unconsciousness, her last moments with Shepard replayed in her head, and they were far worse than any nightmare.

She sighed and climbed out of bed, still shaking from the surge of adrenaline that had woken her up. There would be no going back to sleep now. Carefully, she set the picture of the Normandy back on her nightstand. It was comforting to see it like that, drifting peacefully through space. Sometimes, she could even imagine that she and Shepard were still aboard, back before everything had fallen apart.

Reluctantly, she turned her head away from the picture. Dwelling on the past wouldn't do her any good. The present was confusing enough. Instead, she reached for the robe hanging on the back of the closet door and hurried for the stairs as quickly as her exhausted body would let her. She spent as little time as possible in her bedroom these days. It was a painful reminder of what she had lost. Even though she and Shepard had only spent a few peaceful months together after the end of the war, she had grown used to sharing a bed.

The downstairs rooms of her apartment were only slightly more bearable than the loft where she slept. It was too large, too empty, too clean. She hardly spent any time here, and some nights, she even preferred to sleep in her office. Her work was the only fragment of peace she had managed to claim for herself since everything went wrong. She padded into the kitchen, and her face fell when she saw the numbers on the clock. Only two in the morning. It was still far too early for her to leave her apartment. She would have to stay here a few more hours at least.

Determined to do something with herself now that she was awake, Liara took a seat at the kitchen table. Her eyes drifted toward the tea maker sitting on the counter by the sink, but she decided against it and activated her Omnitool instead. She wasn't surprised to see an alert blinking at her from the glowing orange screen. Sometimes, Nyxeris stayed up working almost as late as she did. But when she opened it, her chest tightened with surprise. The message scrolling across her screen was not from her assistant.

The name-of-sender field was blank, and the message itself was only two words long: She's coming. A string of numbers followed, and Liara immediately recognized them as a date and time. Three days. Shepard would be arriving on Illium in three days.

"She's coming," Liara whispered under her breath, terrified that if she spoke the words too loudly, they would disappear from her screen. "She's coming here." But the words did not vanish. They stayed there, hovering before her. She swiped at her stinging eyes even though her tears stubbornly refused to fall. She had not felt this way since Agent Lawson's very first update on Shepard's status. That message had also only contained two words: She's alive.

She lowered her shaking hands back down into her lap and stared at the wall, not truly seeing anything in front of her. A slow smile pulled at her lips, and the tight coil of tension in her chest, the one that normally choked her heart, finally began to loosen. She had waited what felt like a lifetime for this moment. Part of her was afraid that her joy was premature, but she couldn't help herself. It had been two years since she had been in the same room as Shepard while she was alive. Two years since she had held her. Two years since she had heard her name spoken in Shepard's loving, familiar voice. And, of course, two years since she had kissed her.

"That's what I'll do first," Liara decided. No matter what else happened, she needed another kiss. Proof that everything she had done, everything she had sacrificed, all of the pain she had endured was worth it. Proof that Shepard was truly back from the dead.