fandomtownies | The Beach, Sunday Morning

Kaidan had received the text so after his pre-dawn run made a little less pre-dawn by the time theft, he headed back down the beach to meet up with Liam.

"Hey," he greeted, coming to a slow jog and then stop and taking a drink from his water bottle.

“Hey,” Liam nodded, from where he was currently perched on a rock. “Good run?”

Kaidan mopped his face with the hem of his shirt and shrugged, "Not bad. Short one today. So.. how are you doing?"

You were on the emo beach, Liam. Not yet chucking rocks but the day was young.

“Better than I was on Wednesday,” Liam acknowledged. Despite his face apparently telling a different story, yes. Beau had really done a number on him.

“You have anything on you that’s actively transmitting?” he checked.

Kaidan tilted his head a little at the question. O..kay. They were on an island full of voyeur squirrel-shaped spies but his phone and comm were a problem. Sure. Okay.

"EDI, phone and comm off, please?" Kaidan asked. There was a faint buzz from his pocket when the phone powered down.

"Not anymore," he told Liam.

He saw the face, yes. But he also listened to the radio and he'd had some experience with the pile of hyperbole that was Nina. He was able to put 'Beau' and 'Liam' and 'strop' together and do all that math just on his own.

He also had some experience knowing what it felt like to need a knock-down drag-out bare knucks spar. Kaidan, after all, was used to Jack.

Liam gave a little half-shrug, reaching up behind his ear to turn on the jammer. Any squirrels nearby wouldn’t be able to make out what was being said either.

“Signal jammer. Didn’t want anyone on the other end to get freaked out if they suddenly got nothing but white noise,” he explained. “Squirrels won’t hear us either. At least, they won’t hear anything they can make sense of.”

[ooc: deets of conversation from here NFB, dear squirrels!]

Kaidan nodded slowly. "Yeah, thanks for the warning. My comm cuts out abruptly and EDI'd ping Jack with my last known coordinates and you'd have more guests than you wanted on the beach right now."

“Definitely prefer to avoid that,” Liam said. And then sighed, because there was only so long he could delay this actual conversation.

“My father’s species, the Kimera, they... were energy-based. Didn’t have corporeal forms of their own,” he began. “But they were celestial anthropologists. In order to live amongst other races undetected, they had the ability to copy the DNA of another life form.” He paused, mostly to give himself a chance to collect his own thoughts, figure out how to explain how that connected to what had happened in Baltimore.

"We have a species that do something similar," Kaidan mused, "Though they're not energy based. They reproduce by Joining with another sentient. Their minds, I mean, and in so doing they learn everything about a person down to their cellular level. They're able to absorb the .. essence, if you will, of the DNA and add it to their own to produce a child. The children aren't half-anything, they're essentially clones of their parent who've had the letters of their DNA swapped around a little so they have characteristics of the other parent. Not.. physical characteristics."

He thought about what he knew of the Asari. "I think they choose their second parents by finding some virtue they want to pass on. Not that strength or valor or kindness are encoded in the DNA but.." Kaidan lifted a shoulder, "It's how they grow their species. If they didn't Join with others to bring in new characteristics, they'd all still be clones of the first. Instead, it's a whole species of very individual people. It's become something of cultural anathema for one of them to breed with another of their own kind."

“That’s what the Kimera would consider a Joining as well,” Liam nodded. “But simply becoming Kimera-within, it’s more like borrowing. The host body is left unconscious, preserved, until the Kimera takes on another. But two-thirds of me is human, this body has always been my own, at least, until I died, near the end of my third year.

My body was destroyed, but my mind existed in a state called Shahariah, in human terms, a sort of universal consciousness. I was brought back when, well. The universe decided to let me go.” He smiled, aware that that probably sounded a little strange.

Kaidan had heard stranger. Shepard's entire return story was weird.

"Ok, so. You're saying there's not someone who looks like you laying unconscious somewhere," Kaidan parsed. Maybe. "And you died but then returned. Where's this going, Liam? Are you worried another Kimera's going to borrow your body?"

You'd asked him to look out for you not being you. That tied into this explanation in strange places, buddy.

"No," Liam shook his head. "My father was the last. I'm... all that's left." He sighed.

"Before I died, it had almost felt like I was becoming more human. My shaqarava were gone," he said, holding his palms upwards, exposing the dark-red marks there. "I'd lost the ability to tap into the Taelon Commonality. But then, suddenly, I was back, and... more in tune with my alien side than I'd ever been before. At first I attributed it to just being more at peace with being a hybrid, but now? I think I came back... different.

When we were in Baltimore, there was a fight. One moment, I'm reaching out to grab this guy, tackle him, and the next... my hand's on his face, and I can feel something in me shifting. Changing. Until I wasn't me anymore, not physically."

"You did the DNA thing?" Kaidan wondered. "Maybe you weren't wrong about being more at peace with your hybrid side, Liam. Maybe you didn't come back different but more willing to accept this whole other side of you and it opened some doors you didn't even want to acknowledge before."

He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe his face again. "Hell if I know, I'm just spitballing here."

"Maybe," he said. "But if it involves this, I don't want it," he insisted, his voice fierce. "Because it's not just his DNA. It's his thoughts, his memories."

And Robert Bullard was not a good person.

Kaidan tilted his head a little. "And now you're worried you're going to .. what.. suck other people up like a sponge? Turn into this other asshole you've suddenly got in your head? Liam. You've gone your whole life up til now not doing that. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances but judging from the word 'purge' and the way you're twitching every time Verity's name's so much as mentioned.. I think it's safe to say you were under some significant stress and pressure at the time, buddy."

"I don't know," Liam ground out, frustrated. "I can feel him in there. I can remember- things he did." He shuddered.

"And you say my 'whole life' as if that's some significant span of time but it isn't, you know? Not really."

"Half a decade isn't exactly a short period of time either, and you got to skip all the awkward growing years," Kaidan pointed out calmly.

"Liam.." Kaidan held out his hand, "Find out. It's going to drive you nuts not knowing otherwise and you've touched me before. You know nothing I've got is going to give you the screaming icks."

Ha'gel had lived for over eight million years. It's possible Liam's sense of time was slightly skewed.

And as for the offer... Verity had touched him the other night. He'd held her as they slept every night since. He knew that probably meant this would be okay, but on the other hand... Verity was Verity, and had existed in a category all her own for some time now.

"If you're sure," he said, a little dubious.

If you ended up unconscious on the beach, Kaidan, you could end up with sand in all sorts of uncomfortable places. You really want that?

"I'm sure," Kaidan said, throwing Liam a lopsided smile, "Worst that happens is I get knocked out and you get me stuck in your head for awhile until we figure out how you can put me back."

Optimism thy name is Kaidan.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd had sand in uncomfortable places and he'd get all the fun of blaming Liam for it without further explanation.

Liam reached out to clasp Kaidan's hand in his own and-

Nothing.

The crackle of energy he'd come to associate with biotics, sure, but none of the... transference... he'd felt with Robert.

Liam let out a breath he hadn't even known he'd been holding in.

Kaidan raised a brow. "I seem to still be standing. You aren't screaming and you're not bluescreening like you did the last time."

"...Bluescreening?"

"Going blank in the face while your brain goes somewhere else. Last time I triggered memories that weren't mine," Kaidan reminded him, "During the amnesia weekend."

The reference still escaped Liam, but at least he understood the implication now.

"The-" he hesitated, and shook his head, not saying the word aloud. The idea of speaking the name aloud was strange, as if he were doing something wrong, forbidden. "Never mind."

Even though those who would be angered by his speaking that name had been dead themselves for years now.

Edited 2019-03-11 03:52 (UTC)

Kaidan gave him an odd look and shrugged a shoulder, "Whatever, man. I'm just glad you came back from it on your own."

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