A/N: For even Ahern is human.
"Dinner is ready, dear."
Tradius Ahern grunted as he shut off the haptic screen on his desk, rubbing his eyes as he came to his feet. The pale-white walls of their home in the Presidium of the Citadel was just the right shade of white to irritate his eyes, it seemed.
He walked down the wide corridor that led from his office and omni-forge down into the main living area. His wife Ana was setting out three places at the glass and silver dining table – a sixty-thousand credit monstrosity he'd been gifted by Thana T'Armal fifteen years ago, along with a big ass gun and a seashell on a belt buckle.
He smirked to himself, and slid close to his wife to kiss her as he passed. "Jenna still coming over?"
Ana Ahern, a tall, slender woman with long black hair down to her waist and amused blue eyes, smiled. "Yes. She just got into the Presidium proper and will be here in a few minutes – the steak needs to cool anyway." She didn't stop setting out dishes as she spoke, although her motions were slower than they used to be.
He watched his wife carefully, wishing the disease that robbed her of her vitality was something he could fight and kill like an enemy. "...and are you feeling up to all of this?"
Her voice was edged with amusement. "For all the times you've screamed at others to avoid self-pitying wailing, I'm surprised you think I would ever engage in such." She pushed back a lock of her hair, wearing that almost wicked grin that had blown his mind and stolen his will years ago. "The treatments are working better than expected. I thought you would have figured that out from last night."
Ahern coughed back laughter. "If you're that frisky, Tela told me to ask you- "
Ana burst out laughing, almost dropping a bowl of salad, and then shook her head ruefully. "She's never going to let that go, is she?"
Tradius dropped into a seat at the head of the table, taking the bowl from her and setting it on the table. "She's just jealous of me."
"Yes, of course. The very light of Sol revolves around your swollen ego – I am truly blessed to be bathed in its glory." She moved back into the kitchen that curved into the corner of the large room that served as a mix of living area and dining room, bending over to pull out her hand-cooked steak.
Most people went with food preparation units, but humans would not surrender the joys of traditional cooking or barbecue, although the latter required a permit on the Citadel. As he watched Ana place garnishes around the steak on the wide platter it was going to be served from, he thought sourly that a lot of things on the Citadel required permits.
Still, he couldn't complain. He was in given control of a mostly broken up fleet, which gave him the opportunity to finally build out an entire SA strike force the way he always thought it should have been done. He personally trained captains, marines, bridge officers and tactical officers himself, and morale was high.
His wife was recovering somewhat, his niece had just passed her N4 test, and best of all that asshat Branson had run afoul of the Addison Administration and was not in favor, which kept the little jackass quiet.
He got up as he heard the entry chime sound, waving at Ana. "I'll get it."
He walked through the living area and into the reception room, shaking his head again at the very idea of having a room used for no other purpose than to greet people. The entire suite of rooms had been decorated mostly by his wife – his idea of décor, after all, was rather lacking – and the entry room was no exception, with leather couches flanked by tall salarian blue-vines in ceramic pots flanking the door and Ahern's shadow box of commendations, awards, and honors set high on the far wall.
He opened the door using the controls, and smiled as his only niece flung herself into his arms with a cry of "Uncle Tad!" He let the girl crush his ribs for a second before holding her out to get a good look at her, since it had been three years since they saw each other in person.
Jenna Ahern looked like her father – both she and Tradius shared the Ahern gray eyes, square jaw and hard lines to the face, but on Jenna it made her look sternly beautiful instead of menacing. Her hair was drawn back in the SA bun, and her uniform was immaculate, along with the new insignia of a marine captain on her shoulders.
Her nickname for him, Uncle Tad, came from her youth, when as a small child she'd mispronounced his name as 'Tadius.'. Her father had laughed and Tradius had sourly said that "Tadius sounds like some goddamned Eurochina trash wannabe intellectual in a sweater".
She'd never let that go, and he smirked as he saw the life in her eyes. "You've grown up a lot, girl. How's Valance?"
She wriggled free, walking behind him as he headed back into the main living area. "Dad is fine, although pissed about having to have cybernetic replacements for his legs. The physical therapy helped, but he's still unhappy the guy who had the accident isn't going to jail."
Ahern nodded. His brother had nearly been killed in an aircar accident almost six months ago and was slated for leg replacement as he would otherwise be paralyzed from the waist down. Having had his own leg partially replaced by cyberware, he could understand the reluctance. He'd never understood the lunatics who cut off their own limbs for combat advantage.
Ana brightened when Jenna came into the room, and was swept into an equally crushing hug that had her squeal. She and Jenna chatted quietly as they finished setting the table, then fell silent as the three of them began to eat.
As usual, the food was delicious. Tradius didn't fool himself – half the reason he'd married Ana was her looks and that wicked grin, and half had to be her wonderful cooking. It wasn't that he wasn't romantic – in fact, he was, a secret he would have killed to keep from getting into the open – but he was also honest with himself.
Food was more important than looks in his mind. He ate the steak, thinking back to the other times he'd celebrated with such an expensive food item – before things had gone to hell back in his days on Earth, after the clusterfuck that was Dalthos, on learning Rachel was pregnant with Michael's kid...
He broke off that line of thinking, thinking of how Rachel and said kid had both ended up. He understood why Rachel went bad. Politics and bullshit had fucked her relationship with Mike up to the point where she couldn't even acknowledge her son as hers, and that shit with the turian...
He shook his head, putting a forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth and trying to listen to Jenna describe the eerie deadness of Rio. He'd been to Brazil, of course, before the First Contact War – seen the cities, all reduced to rubble, the forest burned back for hundreds of miles, the huge mass graves – the eerie and creepy giant statue of Jesus looking over the memorial to the dead and the tomb of Dishonor where they put Ardiente.
Brazil was a dead land, and would remain dead for all eternity, a reminder to humanity where unchecked leadership and vile aggression would lead.
"Uncle?" He looked up at Jenna's voice, realizing he'd been lost in thought.
"Sorry, Jenna. Thinking about old times. What is it?"
She picked at the salad. "I was thinking about my career. What I want to do. And … about the whole noble thing." She looked up. "Why didn't you want to take the title yourself? You did all the work, bled, saved us all time and time again – "
He smiled gently. "For the best of reasons, hon." He set down his fork. "I'm … old. I've seen too much bloodshed. I've lost too much to turians, seen the very worse of the asari, and know enough sick facts about the salarians to see them in a neutral light. I've said things publicly that make people nervous."
He kept her gaze focused on him. "To be a leader is a lot different than being a military commander, Jenna. You have to take positions you don't agree with, support things you don't like, compromise who and what you are and what you believe in every day for the greater good. And at the end of the day, I'm a petty, bitter old idiot. I can't change who I am, or what I think."
He looked down, cut a bite of steak, and ate it, swallowing before speaking again. "It comes down to doing the right thing, instead of the thing that makes you feel good or look good. Most of my closest, oldest friends are dead. Preston. Mikey. Rachel. Theo. Even that whispery … " he paused, choosing a different word under Ana's amused glance "...person, Kai. Most of the people I built my life around disappointed me."
He exhaled. "I decided I wouldn't be a good noble. And if I can't be good at it, there's not much point in me doing it. You? You're a lot more flexible than I am, in your beliefs and in your willingness to see the other side of things."
She nodded, almost reluctantly. "Is that a good thing? You were … kinda upset about Sanias."
Ahern snorted. "I wasn't upset you were sleeping with an asari. I was upset you were thinking with your gonads and not realizing she was using you. I saw what an asari really in love with a human looked like when I trained Liara T'Soni – she'd have happily killed herself or anybody else just to get a smile out of Sara. Sanias, on the other hand, used you."
He folded his arms. "But that's not what I meant. You don't have a lifetime of memories of hate, of suffering from the First Contact War, or worse, the Days of Iron. You never had to kill radcats just to find something to eat and wonder if eating it would kill you. You never had to watch one of your friends die slowly because he wanted to be a damned hero instead of just a bloody killer."
Ana's voice was soft. "You are more innocent than Tradius is, love. And more willing to to accept that sometimes...justice is not served. That the scales do not balance." Her voice trembled and hardened. "That revenge is not going to be granted, no matter how outrageous the crime."
Jenna nodded slowly. "...but that doesn't mean I'm worthy of the title. I haven't experienced those things, so maybe I am more open minded – but should I be? You always told me the aliens were just people, but that all people were dangerous. And … like you said, I've been played for a fool before."
Tradius shrugged. "You're the last of the Aherns. We came from nothing, salvage farmers and power-line layers in old Germany, and before that we were even lower. There's nothing 'noble' about my own career. I made myself a blade for the Alliance, and I've done things I really don't like. Being rewarded for just doing the job I swore to do never appealed to me."
He looked at her. "But yes, Jenna – I do think you are worthy, and I think the flexibility is important. No matter if I like it or not, we're going to have to deal with asari, turians, salarians, batarians and all the rest in the future. We're on the Council now. We can't afford people with my kind of thinking, or we'll end up back in the Days of Iron."
He picked up his fork again. "Besides...gods above, can you actually see me in the Chamber of Lords with those limp-wristed simpering excuses for human beings, prattling on? I'd go mad in an hour."
Jenna laughed, and for a time they just ate and chatted about simple things. Later on, sprawled out on his favorite couch with Ana curled up against him, he listened as best he could to Jenna talk about her N4 experience – and the offer of immediate promotion to brevet major and possible space-side training – if she assumed noble office.
He thought quietly for several minutes before giving a slow careful sigh. "Story time, Jenna."
She laughed, sitting on the other couch, a glass of Ahern's scotch in her hands. "Yay for story time!"
Ana gave an amused snort, and Tradius grinned. "When Preston lost his entire mind at Mindoir and ran right through an orbital bombardment and being shot sixteen times to protect the GTS site, most people thought the man was some kind of god. The media went crazy worshiping him, and I swear there were women tearing their own clothes off and screaming they wanted to marry him."
He grinned wider, remembering some awkward moments and how Rachel had endlessly ribbed him about that, then shook his head. "President Capiarai put that third Star of Terra round his neck and whispered to him, right on the stage – "You simply must take the nobility offered to you, as you are the light of the Alliance now, Lion of Mindoir."
"Preston always felt that nobility had to mean something – that the people who had it were supposed to set the example to follow. Sacrifice without regret, bravery without fear, inbreeding without restraint." He said the last dryly and Ana convulsed in laughter.
He looked up, reaching for the scotch and pouring himself another glass. "But in the end, it was a conversation he had with Yonis that made him accept. He asked Yonis what it meant to be a Lord, and Yonis gave the best answer I've ever heard for why we brought it back."
He sipped the drink, smiling in remembrance. "A noble is no different than anyone else, in terms of what he is. His blood and history is nothing without deeds. It is action that separates one elevated – to never endure injustice but to act. To never simply watch the Earth die, but to react. To never surrender and never let fear overmaster the sheer pride of being chosen to show everyone – human and alien – what it means to be human. Above all else, to remember that nobility is about what you demonstrate, not what you claim."
Ahern set his glass down. "To me, its simpler, Jenna. You're a good person. God knows if not for you Ana and I would have fallen to pieces after Amanda died." He swallowed. "I, on the other hand? I don't see myself as a good person. I'm a bloody-handed killer, a tool."
"There were times I stood on my principles, and even though they were right they had a cost, and that cost was one someone else had to pay for my damned pride. There were times I refused to bend because I thought I had a rep to uphold, and again – others paid for it. Showing what you demonstrate isn't about sticking to your guns – its about doing that when it matters, and not doing it when it calls for it."
Jenna nodded. "I just...I don't know. I'd have to get married and that's going to be a problem."
Ahern shrugged. He'd never really attempted to address the fact that Jenna's sexuality was not something that really conformed to the expectations of noble society. While no one really cared about who you slept with – the Days of Iron and the First Contact War had given everyone else more important things to bitch about – nobles were expected to continue their line. There were artificial methods of doing that, of course, but those were privately sneered upon by the nobility.
He lifted his glass. "Assuming you found a blue not out to just use you, the fact that Shepard and Fordant went that road means you could to."
Ana gave Jenna a smirk. "We could always call up Tela."
Jenna laughed, blushing. "Auntie!"
Ahern shook his head. "Jesus God, no. Knowing Tela she'd try to go for a foursome, and that's just wrong."
Ana's already wicked smile widened. "Well, you just pointed out the whole inbreeding thing, dear."
Ahern stared for a full three seconds in aghast horror at his wife before she cracked up, and then shook his head again. "...whoever you marry, Jenna, make sure they aren't crazy. You see where that leads you."