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Chapter Text

Doctor Liara T'Soni gasped sharply and came awake, pale blue eyes flying open to stare blankly at the vaulted ceiling. Beside her, her bondmate murmured fretfully and rolled over, draping a muscled arm across her chest. She couldn't help but smile indulgently when Shepard's hand found her breast, tender to the touch though it was at this late stage of proceedings, and cupped it gently. Some things, it seemed, never changed, not even in sleep.

She sighed and settled back against the pillows again, willing sleep to return but uncertain as to what had awoken her in the first place. Simple discomfort, most like. It had been getting more and more difficult to drift off these past few months, barred, as she was, from her preferred sleeping positions on her side and stomach. But if she didn't get a restful night tonight, Shepard would almost certainly pick up on it in the morning, as she had on previous such occasions. She never said anything - Shepard was a do-er, not a talker - but the signs were there, the worry and the frustration coming out in sparring matches and the odd (and typically disastrous) attempt at breakfast in bed. Liara hated to see it: Shepard had been through so very much pain and suffering that she felt that the human was owed at least a few years of pure, unadulterated happiness.

She was just starting to drift back off again when pain flared, bursting out from her lower reaches and spiralling upwards along her spine, only to fade away as abruptly as it had arrived. Hands flying to her swollen belly, she held her breath and waited, silently counting. After another few minutes, just at the point where she'd almost convinced herself that she was imagining things, the pain flared anew, slightly stronger.

Oh.

Liara let out her breath slowly and looked down at herself over the swell of her breasts, grown larger yet again as her figure made the change from maiden to matronly, and felt a thrill of mingled excitement and terror. She was going to have a baby. She glanced over at her slumbering bondmate. She was going to have Shepard's baby.

With that thought came a strange, almost surreal calm, settling over her like a blanket. She'd become the Shadow Broker, fought Cerberus, killed Reapers and shaken the foundations of asari politics to their very core, all for Shepard, for their future together. This would simply be another item to add to that list. No need to be afraid. No need to fuss. She'd just better get on with it, as she had everything else.

She gently extricated herself from her bondmate's embrace and slipped out of bed, padding over to where she'd laid out her gear in preparation for this eventuality. She donned the traditional, soft brown birthing robe and did up the lacings loosely, as she'd been shown, slipping her feet into matching sandals. Into her small, pre-packed carry bag went her personal datapad and, after checking the clip, the sidearm she used on missions calling for discretion.

Strange, really. It wasn't so very long ago at all that she only knew how to fire a gun in theory; now she felt naked without one within easy reach. On the other hand, a few assassination attempts in recent years had made it seem a more than prudent habit.

Only when so dressed, packed and armed did she return to their bed, sitting down on it beside her lover's sleeping form.

"Shepard?"

"Hmm?"

"Shepard, it's time."

"dunno. 'bout three, four, maybe," her bondmate groused and rolled over again, reaching for a pillow and pulling it over her head. "too early."

She sighed, slightly. Another strangeness: on the Normandy, Shepard invariably went from deep sleep to total alertness all but instantly, at the slightest provocation, regardless of the hour. Here, now, in their bed, she clung to slumber like a hyfeani waiting out the long winter.

"I meant that our daughter is coming."

"'s'nice."

Liara idly stroked her bondmate's arm as she waited for her words to properly register, as she was sure they would. Even more than half-asleep, Shepard had certain well-honed survival instincts. Indeed, it was only a few seconds later that she sat bolt upright in bed and stared at her, eyes as wild as her short hair.

"What? The baby? Now?!"

"I believe so."

"Shit!" Shepard exclaimed, reaching out for her swollen belly and then snatching her hands abruptly back, as though she'd been burnt. "Are you ok?"

"I am fine, for now. But we should get moving soon."

"Moving. Right! Let's go!"

Shepard all but tumbled out of bed, snatched up her own pistol from the nightstand and made straight for the door. When she reached it, she stopped and spun back to face Liara, who'd made no effort to move from her seat. The human's face carried a clear expression of worry.

"What’s wrong? Aren't you coming?"

Liara hesitated.

"Shepard, it's not that I don't appreciate your body, but..." she trailed off, looking over her bondmate meaningfully. Her lover followed her gaze down and blushed as her eyes met only bare skin.

"Shit!"

"Get dressed," she said with another indulgent smile. "I will wake the others."

Liara left her swearing bondmate riffling through the contents of her wardrobe and made her way out into the common room. From there, pausing once while another sweet lance of pain spiked through her body, she slipped into the communal guest room set aside for asari visitors to find her father. Unlike her lover, Matriarch Aethyta woke instantly at her touch, brown eyes taking in everything in one quick glance.

"Time, is it?" she said quietly

"I believe so," Liara whispered back.

"Well, let's just be sure about that before we get all worked up." Aethyta sat up, stretched slowly and then reached out to place one hand lightly upon Liara's stomach, the other to her temple. The matriarch frowned in concentration, eyes dipping momentarily to black. Liara could feel the quick meld, a tickle in the back of her mind, even though it wasn't directed at her - not exactly. "Huh. Yeah, I'd say you're right. She's eager too. This is probably going to be a quick one."

Liara had reached out to touch their daughter's mind before, several times in these last few months of her pregnancy. There were never any discrete thoughts from her daughter, just a ball of vague impressions and primitive emotions, tangled together. She'd sent back in kind, as gently as she could manage, conveying her love, awed that such a blank slate was hers to write upon. Hers and Shepard's.

The urge to meld, to touch that forming mind again, rose abruptly, taking her aback with its strength and urgency. She gave into it almost immediately, gathered her focus and started to reach out, only for her father to drop the hand at her temple to her arm, pinching hard enough to break her concentration. Liara scowled at her and rubbed the spot.

"Too soon, kiddo. You'll wear yourself out. Save it for later, when it's needed," Aethyta yawned unapologetically, getting to her feet, and stretching again, joints popping. "Athame's ass! Why does it always have to start at three in the fucking morning? Some of us need our beauty sleep."

"Next time I'll try to arrange thing to better suit your schedule," she replied sourly.

"You do that." The matriarch unceremoniously shucked off her sleeping gown and rummaged around in her wardrobe for her own formal robe, dark green in colour. "Who else are we taking again?"

"Aunt Celaniza, cousin Nalla, Tali and Garrus."
"Right. And a couple of the commandos too. Don't look at me like that - you're both going to be preoccupied. You see to the aliens, I'll get the others up and-"

"Liara?"

The lights in the room abruptly flashed on at full power, blinding them both and waking the other occupants of the room. There was a renewed bout of swearing, not all of it emanating from Aethyta, and a torrent of sleepy, discontented mumbling. As her vision cleared, a blinking Liara could see her bondmate, face a mask of unguarded concern, stepping quickly towards her.

"Are you ok? Do I need to get you anything?" Shepard asked breathlessly, seemingly oblivious to the roomful of naked and half-naked asari, some getting blearily out of bed, others just simply glaring at her in profound annoyance. "Just say the word. Also, I've got someone bringing the car around to the back so you won't have to walk as far. Do you want me to take your bag? It looks heavy-"

It all came out in rather a rush, and Liara found herself staring, bemused, at the human. This was completely unlike the Shepard she knew, a woman who tended to assume that people knew their own limitations better than she did and whose complete unflappability was the stuff of legends. After a few seconds of this, she glanced back at her father, who shrugged and went back to lacing up her robe. It was a gesture that eloquently conveyed an attitude of 'don't look at me kid, I usually only deal with them when they're drunk'.

"Shepard, my gun's in there," she said eventually, turning back.

"Oh. Right." A thoughtful pause. "Should you really be carrying-"

"Why don't you go and get Tali and Garrus?" she interrupted hastily, aiming to head things off before Shepard could say something that Liara was certain she'd regret later.

"Tali and Garrus. Right."

As quickly as she'd burst into the room, Shepard was gone, bellowing for the two aliens with her parade-ground voice, the one that cut through every manner of soundproofing ever invented. Liara winced - that would be the entire estate unnecessarily awoken now, thank you Shepard - and turned apologetically back to her guests. By and large they were family, fortunately: the paltry handful of surviving T'Sonis.

Well, make that the paltry handful of surviving trustworthy T'Sonis. Her mother's older sister and the only surviving matriarch from their house, her two daughters, a scattering of other cousins of varying degrees and their children - what had once been a tribe of over two thousand, reduced to less than twenty. And to think that they'd gotten off lightly compared to some other, once notable houses! At least their name still existed.

Little wonder then that they'd all heeded the call of ancient tradition, returning to Armali for the birth of their first post-war baby. It had been nice to reconnect with them and renew bonds of blood, even if she only remembered most as vague figures from her early childhood. And even if their slowly swelling ranks, loitering around the estate, had made Shepard jumpy.

"I apologise for my bondmate," she told the room. "She is, perhaps, a little-"

"Insane," Aethyta said, sotto voce.

"-over-excited," Liara concluded, glaring at her father, who rolled her eyes.

"Not to worry, child," her aunt said, gliding over. Celaniza shared Benezia's skin tone and facial markings, but little else, being slighter of figure, breathier of voice and an engineer by trade. It was a badly-needed skill at the moment, and Liara had tasked her with managing several important aspects of the recovery effort as soon as she’d discovered that the matriarch was still alive. "It takes some this way. Go on ahead. Nalla and I will be along shortly."

It wasn't long at all after that that Liara found herself making her way down the short flight of stairs to the gardens at the rear of the estate. Shepard was at her side the entire way, supporting her arm and alternating between assuring her that everything was going to be ok and asking questions about how she was currently feeling that went clearly counter to such assurances. It was... sweet , Liara supposed, but also rather unnerving coming from Shepard.  From the looks Garrus and Tali kept exchanging, she wasn't the only one to think so.

Distracted by another sharp bite of pain, strong enough that her knees went weak with it, she allowed herself to be helped into the back of their armoured skycar and belted in, Aethyta on one side of her and Tali on the other. She didn't notice until it was almost too late that Hylene, her usual driver, was standing off to one side, well away from the car, and that someone else entirely was settling into the driver's seat.

Tali had the realisation at exactly the same time as she did.

"Keelah!"

"Oh, Goddess," she moaned, closing her eyes. She'd fought Cerberus abominations, played cat and mouse with the Shadow Broker and faced Reapers on foot but nothing, nothing filled her with quite as much dread as the prospect of this. "Not today. Please."

"What?" Shepard said sounding wounded as she checked the display settings and adjusted the seat.

Chapter Text

"Shepard, I don't think that I'm up for this," Liara replied, feeling faint.

"There is nothing wrong with my driving!"

"I still have nightmares about Nos Astra," Garrus supplied, sticking his head in the driver's side door. Liara shuddered with the shared recollection.

"That was a high-speed car chase! What were you expecting?"

"Yes, but you were laughing the entire time."

"Not the whole time!"

"Ilos," Liara responded before her bondmate could draw further breath. "You made a Krogan Battlemaster ill."

"Really?" Aethyta said and whistled, low.

"In case you've forgotten, we were racing to stop a Reaper invasion dear," Shepard said sourly.

"And the Citadel?" Tali interjected. "You just... let go of the controls and opened the door!"

"That Leng fucker was trying to kill us!"

"What's your excuse for the Mako then?"

"The Mako's a tank!"

"Shepard, I hate to break it to you, but tanks aren't meant to fly."

Liara opened her mouth to provide another rejoinder as Shepard began to protest anew, when her breath was taken by another intense burst of pain, this one accompanied by a strange, twisting sensation, deep inside, and a flurry of movement from her daughter.

"I- oh, Goddess," she groaned, feeling her calm start to slip away from her in a flash of fear. That didn't feel like anything she could remember reading about. Her head fell back against the seat, hands coming to rest over her stomach, feeling the movement from outside as well as from within.

"Deep breaths, kid." That was her father's voice, and then one of her heavy hands atop hers and the tingle of a quick meld. "It's ok, she's just turning. Nothing to worry about."

That did not sound at all reassuring. The last set of scans had shown that her daughter was already in the correct position. If she turned again, now, she could end up presenting incorrectly so that the nubs of her undeveloped crest caught-

"Really? But-"

"My second did the same. She turned back an hour later, with a little encouragement. Here."

She felt the tingle of a meld again and, to her surprise, realised that Aethyta was offering her a memory. She took it with curiosity - her father had never done so before - and was suddenly in another place, in another body, up to her bared breasts in warm, soothing water, feeling the burn and tremble of fatigue and secretly wishing that the whole damned business was over already. Nonetheless, she shouldered the feeling aside to reach out for the spark of life within her, and, as the matriarch had shown her from her own memories, encouraged, gently. After a few seconds, she was rewarded by the strange twisting sensation and a flurry of movement.

When Liara opened her eyes again, the connection fading, she realised that the rest of the car's occupants were watching her with concern and a dash of puzzlement, Shepard most of all.

"Are you-" she began.

"I'm fine, Shepard. Let's just go. Garrus, get in. Please."

"Liara," Tali hissed in her ear, "do you want to die young? Think of your daughter!"

"Look, if you really want, I can let Garrus-" That was Shepard, already starting to unbuckle herself.

"Just... let's just go," she reiterated, praying that she wouldn't regret it. She could trust Shepard with her life, couldn't she? With their daughter's? What was the point if not? Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tali checking against all expectation that the back seat included a proper point harness. Garrus, up front, was contriving to brace himself against the dashboard. "Just get us there in one piece."

There was a long, breathless silence as the car lifted up off of the lawn, flanked by the other two cars in the convoy. Liara closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. What she couldn't see obviously wasn't happening. It would be her mantra for the trip. And, well, at least Shepard's unique driving style meant that the trip would be short.

After a few minutes of such meditation, however, it began to dawn on her that something was wrong. Very wrong. The car wasn't jolting or swerving or falling nearly enough for Shepard to be the one at the controls.

"Goddess damnit, Shepard. It's called an 'accelerator'. Either put your foot down or pull over and let the turian drive. My old granny could outrun this thing, and she's been dead nine hundred hundred years."

Liara risked opening her eyes as her father spoke, and glanced out the right-hand window. The cityscape passed by at a crawl. The same could not be said for the traffic in the other lanes, however, which zoomed by, occupants occasionally taking the trouble to hurl obscene gestures their way. A glance out the rear window showed a rapidly growing line of angry traffic behind them.

"What? You said 'in one piece'.  I’m being careful," Shepard huffed as Liara groaned. Why was nothing they did together ever simple?

"Garrus, put the damn camera away," Shepard snapped, momentarily pausing in her frenetic pacing.

"I thought you wanted to, oh, what was it? Capture the 'joyous sharing experience'," he replied, grinning evilly at Shepard's poorly concealed wince and flash of embarrassment. It wasn't often that you got to see the Great Commander Shepard, Scourge of the Reapers, Saviour of the Galaxy and general, all-round hard-ass completely discombobulated, and he was determined to milk it for all it was worth. Behind him, he heard Tali snicker.

"I was drunk, ok? People say all kinds of stupid things when they're drunk." She resumed her pacing, running her hands through her increasingly wild hair. "But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be in there. What if she needs me?"

"If she needs you, I'm sure they'll send for you," Tali assured her, trying and failing to keep her amusement from her voice.

"But what if-"

"Everything will be fine, Shepard."

"But-"

"But you promised you'd let her do this her way," Garrus interrupted reminded her. "Twice."

"But I didn't think that would mean that I'd be stuck out here!" Shepard all but wailed, coming to a halt once again, this time outside of the door leading to the birthing room. The pair of commandos guarding it glanced at each other, looking distinctly uneasy in the presence of their lady's brooding bondmate. It probably didn’t help in the slightest that said bondmate was a near mythical figure who had also demonstrated, in previous sparring matches, that she was more than capable of putting them both down on their asses in a heartbeat if they even so much as looked at her wrong. "What if something goes wrong? I was reading up about it on the extranet. There wasn't a lot about asari labour, actually, they seem to be oddly cagey about it, but-"

"Shepard, all of the scans were perfect. Liara is healthy, and the baby is healthy. Everything will be fine."

"But she's so young! For an asari, anyway," Shepard amended hastily.

"And Matriarch Wisthre is older than any asari I've ever met and has been delivering babies for eight hundred years. Everyone says she's the best. Keelah!" she exclaimed as Shepard threw up her hands and started pacing again. "What has gotten into you?"

"In case you haven’t noticed, I'm having a baby!"

"Shepard, Liara is having a baby. You're just having a heart attack."

"You know what I mean!"

Garrus rolled his eyes as Tali and Shepard continued to argue. Doctor Liara T'Soni, considered at a mere one hundred and thirteen to be one of the Asari Republic's biggest movers and shakers and its most respected (or, depending on who you talked to, despised) futurist, had proven to be a staunch traditionalist in one area of her life: the birthing of her first daughter. Not only had she decreed that said offspring would be born in the place in which all T'Sonis of her line had been born, but that she would be brought into the world in the manner in which Liara herself had been, and her mother before her, and her mother's mother and so on down the line.

That all had led them here, to an ancient temple of Athame set on cliffs by the sea at the outskirts of Armali rather than, as he'd expected, a hospital or similar. Liara and her entourage - which, he realised, probably included him (the Primarch trailing after an asari - oh, that was going to play well with the pundits back home) - had been taken from the ruined entrance and down into the very oldest parts of the temple, buried deep underground. Graceful steel arches and echoing marble floors gave way to masonry, and then to the carved stone walls of a long but narrow cavern, resonating with the sound of flowing water: the sea.

However, that was as far as the aliens - meaning himself, Tali and Shepard - had gotten. Asari tradition dictated that first-time mothers be attended to by but a handful of people: a senior midwife, a matriarch and a matron close to her age from her house, and her parents, if both were asari, or simply her mother if not. Unfortunately for Shepard and her desire to 'share the experience', the 'father' of the child turned out to be an entirely optional extra, especially if they weren't asari themselves. As it happened, Matriarch Wishthre had taken one look at her, declared her far too emotionally volatile and barred her from proceedings altogether. Liara had been whisked away, without another word, and their attempt to follow met with a closed door that became a closed, locked and guarded door after Shepard's subsequent attempts to gain entry.

"I just..." Shepard was saying, staring at her feet, seeming oddly deflated, even defeated. "I just worry, you know? This past year, these past two, everything has just gone so right, what with the new council and the treaties being signed and Tuchanka and Liara and the baby and everything. It just doesn't seem, I don't know, real, somehow. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there's so much about this that can go wrong, and there’s nothing I can do-"

"Oh, Shepard," Tali said, echoing Garrus' own thoughts. She pulled the human into her embrace, even as he walked over to lay a hand on each of their shoulders.

"You are allowed to be happy, you know," he told his best friend, startled to realise that she was actually tearing up. "You're the big hero. You get to ride off into the sunset with the pretty girl and then live happily ever after. I'm pretty sure it's in your contract somewhere."

"Heroes get contracts now?" Shepard sniffed, wiping awkwardly at her eyes.

"Well, I certainly did. The standard 'fame, fortune and a political nightmare the size an elcor battalion' deal." He paused theatrically. "You know, thinking about that last one, maybe I should look at getting a new agent."

Shepard laughed weakly and punched his arm.

"What did I do to deserve you two?"

"Now that," Tali smiled, releasing the human, "is a very good question."

"Well, I seem to recall-"

Whatever Shepard had been planning on saying was abruptly cut off by a pained scream emanating from nearby. Garrus sighed as Shepard's head snapped up and around to zero in on the door.

He sighed.  Excellent timing as usual, T'Soni.

"Shepard, wait!" he began as the human started for the door. “Don’t do something you’ll regret later. "

"That's my wife and daughter in there, Garrus! I want to know what the hell is going on," Shepard growled, rounding on the two commandos. "Move or I will make you."

"Commander, I'm sorry but we can't let you pass," the senior-most of the pair, who looked for all the world as though wished she'd taken up art instead of an assault rifle, said. "The Matriarch-"

"The Matriarch can kiss my ass. You swore to Liara, Raethe, not to her."

"Doctor T'Soni said we were to obey the Matriarch’s orders," volunteered the second commando timidly.

An odd expression crossed Shepard's face, one Garrus had never seen before, which then faded into the strangely blank mask she wore when she had passed beyond anger, through rage and clean out the other side, into the strange, calm waters beyond. He hadn't seen her use that one in years, not since the war had ended, not since the old Council, its primary instigator, has been disbanded. He glanced over at Tali, who shrugged and then joined him in moving to back Shepard up.  If Shepard wanted in, he’d damn well make sure she got in.

"I see," the human replied after a beat, voice aggressively reasonable. "And what about my orders?"

Raethe wet her lips nervously and swallowed.

"Your name... did not come up, Commander. I'm sorry."

"So am I."

Fortunately for the unfortunate pair, the door clicked and slid open just as Shepard started to tense to strike.

"Your devotion to your family does you honour, Commander," the matriarch in question said, emerging smoothly from the room beyond and positioning herself in front of the two commandos.

"You. You tell me what the hell is going on right now or I swear I will gut you where you stand. I heard-"

"There is no life without some pain, Commander. Bringing forth new life is no exception," Wisthre said softly, unmoved. Clad in a diaphanous purple robe and leaving wet footprints on the stone floor, she was every bit as old as Tali had said. Firm cobalt skin had given way, at long last, to fine wrinkles, crests fading to the very palest of pastel blues at their tips and her once soft contours lost to delicate bone and wiry muscle. She tilted her head slightly, as if conceding some unknown point. "It progresses well, without incident. Little more than an hour remains."

"Can I-"

"No. Not yet."

"Like you're going to stop me."

Wisthre reached out with one skinny arm to lay her hand on Shepard's shoulder as the human made to push past her.

"Would you welcome your daughter into the world with fear in your heart, Commander? Would her first memory of you be one of anger?"

Shepard stopped dead.

"What?"

"I fear it has not been well explained to you. The fault is mine. Your mate is very young, works far too hard and lost her own mother too soon. I should have taken a more active hand. Even the wisest of us are imperfect, and I... allowed myself to be swayed by your reputations," Wisthre sighed. "There is a reason for our tradition, Commander. Did you not think it odd that three matriarchs are in attendance today? That there is but one matron, her own firstborn a mere six years old?"

"Liara said that there can be a lot of melding involved. You can guide her through some bits of it..?"

"Yes. We matriarchs bring experience, guidance and calm. But we can so easily forget what it is like to be young and uncertain, so Nalla brings the empathy and compassion of a new mother. You, however, would bring fear.

"If you go to your mate now, she will try to draw you into any meld she shares with your daughter. She will be unable to help it: you are a part of her soul, and she longs for you to be with her in all things. But your fear will become her fear, and, through her, your daughter's. She would panic, Liara would panic, and it would feed in upon itself. The outcome would... not be good."

Shepard seemed to deflate again.

"Oh."

"But if you can put your fear aside," Wisthre continued, "you can give them your strength instead, and the reassurance of your love." She paused. "You love them, do you not?"

Shepard's head jerked back up.

"What kind of a question is that? Of course I love them!"

"You have hopes for them? Dreams? Fond memories?"

The matriarch studied Shepard's face intensely as she closed her eyes in thought, seemed to relax, and then opened them again.

"Yes."

"Good. Focus on those, and come."

Garrus and Tali watched the door close behind the pair, leaving them alone in the echoing chamber with two asari commandos who appeared to be on the verge of passing out from relief.

"You know," he said to the room at large after a long, drawn-out silence, "I bet this is all a hell of a lot easier with salarians."

Chapter Text

It was peaceful inside the cave, which took Shepard slightly aback despite the matriarch's previous words. Her only real experience with childbirth so far, if you could call it that, was limited to emergencies on vessels she'd served on, her own field medic's training and the odd vid. They'd all rather led to her expect chaos and shouting and harsh lights in pristine medical facilities, not the gentle lapping of the sea against stone and sand, the murmur of conversation and the golden-pink light of the rising sun.

She could feel the age of the place all around her, older yet again than the cavern outside. The carvings adorning the walls and ceiling were cruder here and worn down to the point of illegibility in places, the floor polished smooth by the passage of thousands of feet. There were, however, a few sops to modernity, hidden here and there. She spied a communications console carefully set into a wall so as to not disturb the natural flow and line of it. So, too, to her relief, was there modern medical equipment, including a current-generation portable scanner, all of it clean and well-maintained.

Honouring tradition, as Liara had told her, did not have to mean taking unnecessary risks.

It was warmer here, too, than outside and much, much more humid, enough that Shepard was actively sweating after a handful of steps and almost relieved when she was directed to strip down. At least more than a decade's worth of barracks living and communal showers had cured her of any body-shyness. That admittedly hadn't stopped the rather casual treatment of nudity on Thessia from coming as something of a shock when she'd relocated here, but had made the eventual adaptation easier; she didn't bat an eyelid when Wisthre removed her own gown and set it neatly aside.

"Follow me, Commander, and remember what I said. Be their strength."

She felt the thrill of fear rise again as she was led around the low natural wall separating the two parts of the cave, and Liara and the others came into view. She wasn't ready for this. Christ! She'd never even held a baby before. She honestly hadn't seen the appeal of them before Liara came along.

There was a murmur of conversation from the small group. She heard her name mentioned and froze, closing her eyes as the panic seized her heart again.

What kind of a parent could she be, anyway? Liara was the builder; she, Shepard, was a killer, stone cold, far more at home at taking life than making it. It was in her bones, in her blood, in her brain. Hell, she'd snatched up her gun tonight before anything else, body primed for a fight that wasn't going to come. She'd been fighting for as long as she could remember, from her first hazy memories of the streets and slums right through to the unending hunt for Cerberus cells and other unfortunate relics of the Extinction War. She'd lost count of the number of people that she'd killed, somewhere along the line, knowing only that it was somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. It didn't matter how rosily history viewed her actions, or even why she'd done them in the first place - how did you explain to your kid that you were a mass murderer, that you’d blown up an entire star system once because you thought that the end justified the means?

And she had enemies too. A lot of them, some powerful, some unpredictable, some patient, some not. She was an old war machine without a proper war to fight, and the vultures were circling, testing the waters, waiting for the battered beast to stumble at last. Her daughter would be a target, because of her. They’d already tried against her, against Liara.  What kind of a life was that?

But... she was still here, despite everything. Older, wiser, more cunning, scarred in more ways than one. Still fighting the good fight, even if half of her battles these days were in finding ways of using her clout with the masses to sell the shape in which her friends were rebuilding the galaxy. And, whenever she'd faltered, wanted to shove a podium right up some politician's twisted backside, wanted to give in, she'd remember, remember the day she'd been beaten and robbed of her meagre possessions, left for dead in the muddy, grey slush they called snow.

They'd taken from her because they could. They'd beaten her because they could. She'd been all of nine, maybe, ten at the most, and they'd left her to die, cold and frightened and alone.

She didn't want to live in a galaxy where people took things from you because they were stronger than you were. She didn't want her daughter to live in a galaxy like that. That was why she'd become a Marine in the first place, so she didn't have to stand helplessly by while other people took and took and took. Her daughter would be beautiful and smart and funny and headstrong and compassionate, like her mother, and deserved better. Damnit, she would have better. Shepard would make the universe a better place for her. Her daughter wouldn't have to live in fear, but would grow happy and strong, free to find her own way in the world.

And she would have sisters. They'd play rough and tumble games together in the gardens of their grandmother, dig holes and build forts and scream and laugh in the warm sun. They'd grow wide-eyed at Garrus' outrageously exaggerated stories of heroism, hack systems with Tali, wheedle fake IDs from Jack and undergo the Rite on Tuchanka, taking their rightful place as blood sisters of Clan Urdnot. Miranda would be an ear to confide in and shoulder to cry on in the wake of first love lost. Vega could be the big brother they’d never have, chasing off suitors with those muscles and that scowl and a shotgun. Samara would teach them the history and lore of their people; Ash, the culture and beauty of their father’s world. Liara, their mother would show them how to think for themselves, how to learn from the past to find the future, how to see the forest in the pattern of the trees. She, Shepard, would teach them to fight, not just for themselves but for others as well. And she and Liara, together, would kill anyone who even thought to threaten that future.

But, Liara, their daughter - they would never been more vulnerable than they were now. And here she was, dithering like an idiot.

When she opened her eyes, Wisthre was watching her again, expression inscrutable. The old asari's grey eyes followed her silently as she returned to where she'd left her clothes, retrieved her pistol from the neat pile, and started back. The matriarch nodded in seeming approval, a smile touching her eyes.

"May I show you something, Commander?" she asked when the human stood before her again. "It was shown to me by my own dear teacher, several centuries ago."

Shepard glanced back towards Liara.

"Shouldn't-"

"There is time enough for this." Wisthre held out her boney hand and, after a second of hesitation, Shepard took it. She felt the light pressure against her mind as the matriarch's eyes flashed to black, different from Liara, different even from what she remembered of Shiala, and then she was falling backwards through time, fleeting impressions of a long succession of bodies/places/people/feelings/thoughts flickering past so quickly and that she started to feel slightly nauseous. And then-

She crouched beside her mate in the sand, the spear a reassuring weight in her hand as she scanned the shoreline carefully. She wished, again, that she had not followed the lure of the stars and strayed so far from home; she'd seen large, strange beasts moving about ponderously last dusk. Mylan'i, her mate's tribe called them. They were good to eat, but it took at least five of their huntresses to bring one down, and then with difficulty. She was but one and a newcomer, one who did not know all of their ways yet. She would feel better with her own tribe around her, her sisters at her side.

The wise woman clucked her tongue at her in warning, and she remembered herself, even as her mate reached out to touch her mind, seeking reassurance through the pain of bringing forth their child. She gave without hesitation: she would kill a whole pack of Mylan'i, if that was what it took to keep them safe-

"The tradition is lost in modern times save for memory," Wisthre said as the connection broke, leaving Shepard breathless and more than slightly awestruck, "but the role of the bondmate in the birth was once that of protector: to drive the beasts and jealous rivals away."

"When was that from?" Shepard asked, shaking her head slightly to clear it. The memory of memory had an odd, fuzzy, quality to it, as though it was not only coming from very far away, but as if it were somehow slightly alien to the asari herself.

"It is difficult to say with certainty. My teacher's teacher once showed it to anthropologists and archaeologists in the Guildhall. Perhaps seventy, eighty thousand years. Before our recorded history begins."

Shepard shook her head again, this time with amazement. God - imagine having access to some of the memories of your ancestors, going right the way back to the dawn of time! No wonder the loss of so many matriarchs during the war had brought the Republic so near to collapse afterwards. So much knowledge, so much history, gone forever.

"We will recover," the matriarch said, catching the touch of sadness in her expression. "The old ones may be lost, but you will live to make new memories for your daughters and granddaughters." She tilted her head back towards Liara and smiled gently. "Go."

Shepard did as bidden, picking her way quickly across the smooth, slightly slick floor.

"Hey," she said, a little awkwardly, to announce her presence. "Hope I'm not too late."

Four heads jerked around as she spoke, but she only had eyes for one of them. Liara half-turned to look back and up at her, her face melting into a relieved smile that went straight to Shepard's heart and played it like a finely-tuned violin.

"Shepard!"

Liara reclined against the pale stone of the circular pool's walls, up to her bare breasts in the gently rolling water. Her skin shone with sweat, flushed almost purple above the waterline and occasionally flaring with wisps of biotic energy. One either side of her sat her aunt and her father, her cousin further off to left, the three of them a relaxed counterpoint to her tense and trembling body.

"See, I told you the old bat'd talk her down," Aethyta said, winking at Shepard as she rose, gesturing for the human to take her place. There was a cough from Nalla that sounded suspiciously like repressed laughter, and Celaniza sighed.

"Aethyta, my dear, I do sometimes wonder what my sister saw in you."

"Yeah, I got that a lot," Aethyta half-shrugged and then grinned evilly, turning back to Liara. "Truth of the matter was I was just really good in bed. Your mother was a screamer, kid-"

There was another burst of 'coughing' from Nalla.

"I am not," Liara said between pants, "hearing this. I do not need to hear this. Ever again."

Shepard didn't really need to hear it either, she decided as she stepped carefully down into the pool. Aethyta could make Joker blush, and Liara had confided to Shepard before that she found it very difficult to imagine her parents together, let alone for any length of time. From what Shepard had heard of Benezia, universally described as 'nice' and 'refined' and 'considerate' (described, at least, before the whole, sad affair with Saren), she had to agree.

The water, let in and out from the ocean beyond by long, narrow channels, was warm and slightly salty, with an almost silken feel to it from dissolved eezo. The seas of Thessia, she remembered, were kinder and gentler than those of Earth, lacking a moon to drive them with such force. It was theorised that the asari had returned to the ocean at some point in their evolutionary history, an idea supported by a scattered fossil record and a few physiological holdovers. Liara, for example, could hold her breath for a staggering amount of time compared to a human, a talent that had come in handy on more than one mission.

"How are you doing?" she asked as she took up her place beside her wife, laying the carnifex Mordin had given her, so long ago, carefully on the pool's lip. Liara took her hand and squeezed it gently; Shepard could feel her lover's biotics flare at the contact, and the slight tickle of her presence in the back of her mind. Not a meld itself, just the vague, comforting awareness of her that sometimes arose before a meld proper.

"Ok, I think," Liara laughed, and there was a slight, almost unnoticeable note of hysteria underlying it. "I've never done this before!"

"You're doing really well," Nalla assured her. "Much better than I did. Goddess, I was terrified! I don't know what I would have done if Mother hadn't been there."

"You would have been fine," Celaniza said and smiled at her youngest daughter.

"I know that now, but then?" Nalla shrugged. "You've been so calm, Li. I can't believe that Commander Shepard was the one - oh, what's the human phrase? Having cubs?"

"Kittens. And, yeah, well," Shepard allowed, rubbing the back of her neck as her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "This is a little outside my usual area of expertise."

"I thought it was cute. Sweet, even," Liara said, turning her head slightly to kiss her cheek. "Well, up until a point."

Shepard's nose was suddenly full of the smell of her, the salt and the sweat and the spicy sweetness that was uniquely Liara. The awareness of her in the back of her mind changed subtly, calling up the memory of the ancient huntress. Liara. Her mate. Her mate's tribe. Soon, her daughter. She reached out with her free hand and let her fingers brush her gun, reassuring herself that it was still within easy reach.

"And what point was that, exactly?"

"...perhaps I'd better not say."

"It was the car, wasn’t it?  Well, it'll make a great story for the kid, anyway."

"I'm sure. I-"

Not for the first time that morning, Liara's sentence was cut off by a gasp and a groaned 'goddess!', her hand tightening convulsively around Shepard's as her body went rigid. The groan became a whimper, Liara's face contorting in pain and the pressure of her grip increasing so much that Shepard was sure that, if it had been a stock-standard human hand instead of a largely synthetic replacement, it would have been crushed. After the whimper came a scream between gritted teeth, and then Wisthre was there as Liara fell back against the smooth stone, gasping.

The old asari touched a scanner briefly to Liara's belly, nodding her approval at the readout, then replaced it with her hand, eyes flashing black. She smiled and laid the scanner aside.

"Good. We're ready to begin."

"Begin?" Liara, breathing hard, looked up at her with a horror that would probably have been funny in any other situation. "What have I been doing until now?"

"Preparing," Aethyta supplied, not without sympathy. "This is the hard bit."

"Yeah," chimed in Nala, slipping around the pool to be closer to the group. "But it'll be worth it."

"Indeed." Celaniza smiled at her daughter again. "Just remember what we showed you and you'll be fine."

Liara looked from them, up to Wisthre and then over to Shepard, who forced herself to relax again. She never liked to hear Liara scream.

"You know I'd never let anything happen to you," she whispered, drawing Liara's head around and her mouth to hers to share a brief kiss, pleased when some of the tension left Liara's body. "Or her," she added, laying her hand atop her wife's swollen belly.

Liara smiled back at her, her own free hand coming to rest atop Shepard's there.

"I know."

With that, Liara took in a deep breath and let it out, slowly, allowing her aunt and the midwife to help her shift forward and around on the rounded stone ledge slightly so that her body was reclining back at a steeper angle, legs further apart. No sooner had she settled back into the new position that she groaned again, body tensed and straining, grip tightening around Shepard's hand once more.

"Reach for her," Wishtre instructed. Shepard glanced up at her momentarily, only to realise that the instruction was directed towards Liara. Her lover's expression turned inwards, blue eyes darkening to swirling black, her biotics flaring brilliantly. Shepard had only a moment to register the sight before her mind was seized, none too gently, and drawn in towards Liara's. Startled by the sudden, forceful intrusion, she fought back instinctively, resisting until spots flashed before her eyes and she felt the meld start to waver.

"Don't fight it," Aethyta said urgently, suddenly at her side, hand on her arm. "Let her in."

This was Liara, Shepard reminded herself, trying, yet again, to force herself to relax. Liara had been inside her head plenty of times before, and wouldn't hurt her. Hell, she'd probably be very apologetic afterwards - she always was if she got a bit caught up when they were having sex and didn't provide a verbal warning before starting the Joining, even though she knew Shepard usually didn’t really care by that point.

Liara had spoken, before, of the different types of melds, noting, with some distaste, that most other species tended to think that melding automatically equalled sex. There was the Knowledge or Memory meld, which took practice and could be quite draining, but allowed for the controlled sharing of thoughts and memories. It was what Liara had used to try to help make sense of Shepard's visions from the Prothean beacon, way back when they'd first met, what Shiala had used to gift her the Cipher and, presumably, how the matriarch had shown her the ancient memory.

Then there was the mating meld, of course, or the Joining, which was the deepest and most powerful - but least controllable - allowing sexual partners to explore each other fully, not just thoughts and memories but feeling as well, a true physical and emotional union. It was also, quite coincidentally, the type that Shepard had the most experience with. Finally, Liara had said that there was a kind of meld between mothers and daughters, similar, apparently, to the Memory meld, but different at the same time. It had a name that didn't translate well into any other known language; the closest approximation Liara had been able to come up with was the Guiding or Bonding meld. It was the easiest of the types to instigate and sat somewhere between the other two in terms of the depth of connection it allowed, but the ability gradually faded away, disappearing around the time the child reached puberty.

This, however, was different, both what she’d experienced and what Liara had described. For one, she realised as she let the connection establish itself, she wasn't the focus of it. The bulk of Liara's attention was elsewhere, on someone that was strange bundle of something that wasn't quite confusion and not exactly anticipation or urgency.  The presence was strong, but equally raw, unformed and primal.

Our daughter she realised with a shock of awe.

Yes. Here. Liara's thought came to her with the memory of a smile, drawing her deeper into the meld. Together they dipped down to touch the tangled ball of feelings and felt it flare in response, first with fear, and then with something akin to curiosity when Liara sent back a wave of calming reassurance and love. Their daughter reached out then, through Liara, to touch Shepard's own mind, brushing against the edges of it like a cat circling around her ankles.

Shepard felt her heart swell as they made contact for the first time. Her daughter. God, she was so bright and beautiful, full of so much life and undefined potential...

Hey there she sent weakly, unable to think of anything else, startled when the thought sent their daughter skidding away behind their mother's metaphorical coattails.

No thoughts yet. Too young Liara returned with a hint of sadness, pulling the two of them still further apart. Soon.

She felt Liara's attention shift away from her again with that, and opened her own eyes, surprised to realise that she was still clearly aware of their surroundings despite being tied into the meld. That was a second big difference: she’d always lost all sense of time and place before, either to the memory being shared or to the sheer overwhelmingness of Liara's presence. Here, now, while she could feel the faintest echo of Liara's body and the distant whisper of her thoughts, her mind, her body remained her own.

Shepard was further startled to realise that she was blinking tears away for the second time that day. She never cried, damnit. Aethyta caught her eye and smiled as she wiped at them with the back of her hand, only succeeding in further dampening her face with the salty water; there was no mockery in it.

From there, however, things progressed quickly. Shepard largely stayed out of the way, in as much as that was possible while still seated at Liara's side. She let the four asari, talking softly and melding every now and then, guide Liara through, concentrating herself on providing a thought or feeling of reassurance whenever she felt her wife's uncertainty or pain spike. The bulk of her attention, though, remained on the cave mouth, scanning for any signs of out-of-place movement. The fuss on the estate of their pre-dawn departure would have caught the attention of the paparazzi, at the very least, and it was entirely possible that someone had worked out where they'd gone, or simply followed them, for all she'd seen no evidence of a tail on the drive over. Shepard was in no mood to deal with interlopers of any sort: any members of the press that dared intrude would get the mother of all ask-kickings; anyone else, she felt, would simply get a bullet.

But, while she thought she saw a flicker of movement every now and then, the glint of sunlight off of metal or glass, no hostiles of any sort risked an attempt. It was just as well: no sooner had the sun finished cresting the horizon did Liara gave birth to their daughter.

The young asari let go of Shepard's hand to grip the ledge tightly, back arched, body straining, letting out a cry of mingled pain, relief and triumph that echoed throughout Shepard's entire being, mind and body. Liara fell back then, breathing hard, as Wisthre came up, out of the water, cradling a small, bright purple bundle which she laid delicately on the new mother's chest, between her breasts and over her heart. The newborn mewled softly in protest and stretched, tiny hands balled into fists, eyes blinking open for the first time, their colour gradually fading from the swirling black of the meld as it broke to the pale blue of her mother.

The gun fell from Shepard's suddenly lifeless fingers, splashing into the pool.

She was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Two arms, two legs, fingers and toes all accounted for - Shepard had known from the scans that everything was correct and present, but seeing it all for herself was an unexpected relief - and the rounded, pinkish nubs at the top and back of her slightly elongated head that would eventually grow into her crests. The purple hue of her skin faded quickly as she cooled down to a solid blue, a shade or two darker than her mother's, with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, dusting down her back. A pink tongue darted out as she yawned and stretched again, nuzzling against Liara's chest.

Shepard reached a shaking hand out to touch her and hesitated, suddenly aware of just how big and rough and strong her hands were. Her daughter's whole head would fit in the palm of her hand, a hand that, most days, was more at home stripping down an assault rifle than anything else. She’d killed with them, before, beaten and choked and crushed until all life was gone. And this life, the life she had to protect, was so very fragile-

Someone nudged her in the back. She didn't look up to see who.

"Go on. They're harder to break than you'd think. If I could manage - hell, if my dad could manage it..."

Her daughter's skin was smooth and soft under her finger, warm but damp with droplets of salt water clinging to her body. She mewled again at the touch, but Shepard's hand was prevented from withdrawing by Liara's, which closed over the top of it, holding it gently down. Shepard could feel the tiny heart racing beneath her palm, the rise and fall of a delicate chest and, through it, the quickly slowing, steadying breathing of her mate.

Shepard looked up into Liara's eyes.

"Hey."

"Hey," Liara replied weakly. She was crying. "We did it."

"I don't know about 'we'. I can't help but feel that you did most of the work."

"Only most?" Liara smiled, tentatively stroking her daughter's head. "Well, I suppose you did help make her."

"And a fine job I did too, if I do say so myself." She felt lips stretch into a smile. "She's-"

"Yes. Perfect."

Shepard leaned in for a kiss, tasting salt and sweat and blood and Liara. She was grinning widely when they pulled apart.

"So, have you kids settled on a name for her yet?" Aethyta broke in from behind them.

Shepard frowned slightly at the interruption. They must have been through every damned baby name book in the galaxy trying to find something that they both liked, especially once they'd agreed that they wouldn't be naming their firstborn after any of the fallen. How could they choose just one or two to remember like that when so many special people had given their lives to ensure that they all had a better future? They'd ultimately ended up with a 'short' list of twenty-odd names from a variety of cultures and no firm decision.

"I have," Liara said with another smile, not taking her eyes from Shepard's. The hand atop Shepard’s squeezed it gently. "Elipsa. It means 'hope'."

And that, Shepard decided, was perfect too.