Wild Roses of Tuchanka
By Velasa
A quick bout of sweetness prompted by the Mass Effect KMeme on LJ, because the best thing about Kmemes isn't the smut, it's the humor and the beautiful little inspirations that spring up and demand to be shared. Post ME3 with the happy family, because I can't accept anything but the best for the reluctant asari and her poetic krogan boy.
Ereba had never seen her life ending up this way.
She'd expected something smooth and high class, designer skycars and a tall handsome husband- human or turian, something quick and fun. Wine shared in expensive restaurants, dark eyes whispering slick promises across the table that led to long shags in penthouse apartments with wall-length windows showing off the glittering city lights spreading out into eternity below.
Well, she's gotten the tall and handsome part right. Just... not in a way she would have ever thought.
In the courtyard (as much as you had courtyards on a planet that was still scattered so heavily in rubble from wars old and new) she watched her two little girls chase each other around yelping war whoops. They laughed in fluttering carefree pitches that had never been told to straighten up and act like a lady and were much more familiar with how to get a varren to fetch or ambush the little krogans next door than the proper way to address a Dalatrass or how to walk with perfect poise. The little hellions were covered in mud from tussling through the maze of grass and concrete in their overalls. Overalls. If she'd have worn anything so uncouth at their age her mother would have skinned her alive.
Yet another reason not to listen to her mother then, if the delight in those little blue faces was anything to go off.
Their father was in the middle of the mess, his deep bellowing laughter so much a different sound than the girls but equal in purity of enjoyment at such a little thing. Happiness like he showed, she had never... there wasn't anyone like him. To think she'd almost given up on him because she didn't want to be trapped in a relationship, that she almost lost him...
One of the girls- Shepard- tripped while trying to launch herself at her sister and tumbled, but Charr caught her and hefted her up on a shoulder and smiled up at her. His idea or hers- she could never remember which one of them had picked the name. She'd dropped everything on the Citadel and raced off to Tuchanka in a panic when the call told her his krant had been found decimated, and the survivors were being treated on the homeworld. Krogan pride would have left them there to die warriors' deaths but the crew from the Alliance ship that found them had other ideas. Char was a broken mess in the ramshackle hospital when she found him but he was beaming at her and her memory at that point dissolves into laughter and tears and crushing relief, his strong arms wrapping around her even in their casts.
It was Commander Shepard who had pulled him out of that hole he thought he would die in, who patched his worst wounds and dragged him back into the sunlight. Shepard, the same human who had talked her into giving him another chance. Shepard who had destroyed the Reapers to give them the chance to raise their children in peace on a planet that was learning how to live again. So 'Shepard' one of their daughters was.
Rose, jealous of the attention her sister was getting decided to fix things- balling her little fists and barreling across the yard at a sprint to headbutt her father in the knee. She hit with enough force to bounce off him and land on her bottom but she didn't cry- she was a tougher little girl than that, tougher than Ereba had been even thirty times her age.
The pride in her husband's eyes as he turned to look down at her... it was enough to melt her heart. He crouched at the knees, picking Rose up as well and spinning both girls around on his shoulders, two disparate tones of joy echoing through the re-blooming ruins of Tuchanka.
When she'd first come to this place, she'd been... uncertain. The second time was lost in a haze of panic. But as the big krogan she loved walked over to the step she was sitting on with a beautiful tomboy daughter in splattered dirty clothes on each shoulder and settled next to her, she leaned into his warm side and knew there was nowhere else she could imagine being now.
Fin
7/22/2012 1:46 PM