Chapter 36: Tangents

Author's note:For anyone wondering where the heck the plot has gone, I swear, it's coming back in. Soon. Additionally, Sam did some mental math, and told me I was an idiot, not remembering that his wife died in early June of 2190, and that, since it's currently May 2191, that I obviously can't count, either. Slight edit to chapter 35 as a result. :-P

Dara

And yet again, the schedule changed. Dara knew that the Normandy had landed because Garrus was in the house for breakfast, much to the twins' delight. She chuckled, said, "Welcome back. I guess my dad's at our place, then?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll come back for my travelcase after clinic work, then." She paused. "I guess Sunday dinner and stuff is back on today. . . should we have stuff ready for you and the twins?" She shifted uncomfortably. "I mean, you probably want to stay home and spend some time, and I know she can't really go anywhere right now, and. . ." The patient look got to her. Dara put a hand over her face and said, somewhat muffled, "Okay. Just shoot me and get it over with."

Garrus laughed at her. "Relax. I'll put in an appearance. Might even drop the twins off for the afternoon, if you guys don't mind looking after them for a while."

Dara grinned. "Sky will be happy. He likes them and Caelia." She looked at the clock. "Crud. If I don't leave now, no treadmill time before clinic. Excuse me, please."

It was just too damned snowy on base right now to run outdoors. While the main walkways and vehicle paths were all cleared, they had a nasty tendency to ice over. The result was a lot of sprained ankles at the clinic, but also, not a lot in the way of actual work, so she was able to complete her first set of extranet queries on xenobiology and xenobstetrics after Dr. Solus told her to start a research project, and tried to read the first abstract. And stopped after a few lines, wondering, Okay, is the translation just bad, or . . . no. Written in quarian and translated by the original researchers into salarian, so, the VI has two languages to pick from to get it right, and . . . yeah. In order to understand this, I'm going to need to look up turian obstetrics and quarian obstretrics, I guess, get a feel for what's normal for each, and then backtrack to this. . . "Well. . . that was a few more search results than I wanted," she muttered, looking at fifty some pages of semi-relevant links. "Let's narrow this down to academic, peer-reviewed journals." And on she went.

By the time she got her travelcase back to her dad's house, he and Kasumi had obviously been up for a while, and were getting dinner ready. "That smells like chili," Dara said, popping her head into the kitchen.

"It is."

"You brought back real peppers?"

"And avocadoes. And limes." Her dad gave her a sly grin. "I figured I'd ask Allardus for a little room in the xenobiology greenhouses, see if we can't grow some of this stuff here. Hate to have to borrow the keys to the Normandy every time I get a hankering for something with a little kick to it."

She sniffed what was in the pot approvingly. "So, that's for the levo folks. Although how Sky is going to eat this, I have no idea."

"I figure, worst comes to worst, we borrow one of the twins' little toy shovels, and Sky goes to town."

Dara whooped with laughter, managing to ask, between giggles, "What's for dextro?"

"Figured I'd leave that to you." Dara gave him a look, and her dad just chuckled. "Hey, one of you two kids is gonna to have to learn to cook. All things considered, it should probably be the one bucking for the medical degree, right?"

"Thanks," she said. "Great, what did I stock in here, anyway. . ." She looked in the cryounit and spent some time with her lists, and finally hit on shepherd's pie, on the grounds that there was no possible wrong way to make that particular dish, potatoes were on the 'mildly allergenic list,' as were carrots, and they had ground apaterae and lamb shanks that she'd thought of using for a stew at some point.

"You could probably use the bones from the lamb shanks as a kind of garnish," her dad told her, dryly. "Garrus and Lantar never told me that they munch on bones for calcium. Dropped by Solanna and Allardus' this morning while you were at work, and Rel had just finished a damn marathon, so he was chowing down on a three or four pound roast, bone and all." Her dad gave her a look as she started browning the apaterae and diced lamb together. "You knew they did that?"

"He was pretty embarrassed about it when I found out. I think they're taught to conceal a lot of what they are from other species. They're really the only pure predator species in Council space, or were, for a long time. Asari, krogan, salarian, quarian, drell, humans—all omnivores. Elcor are herbivores. It's pretty debatable what volus eat, except that it's not edible by anyone else. Rachni are . . . debatably, predators. Vorcha are scavengers." She shrugged. "He thought I'd freak out, I guess." Something else was bothering her, though. "Why would he need to eat that much? The calorie count alone. . ." Dara squinted. "You said a marathon."

"Your boy said forty kilometers."

She sighed. "He's been sandbagging with me, then." She drained the meat, added the carrots and a green turian vegetable called phasela, as well as thyme, and a turian spice called luteus, which had an odd yellow color to it. As she worked, she commented, a little crossly, "I have to be able to do all of that, too. And I can't yet."

"He's not patronizing you, sweetie." Her dad looked at her. "I think he's trying to keep the prep work more or less fun for you. That makes it fun for him, too, I guess."

"I guess so." Dara looked up, surprised. That had sounded almost like her dad had taken Rel's side, which made her grin.

"You've also got three or four more months than he has to prepare. Let the gene mods finish kicking in, and ramp up gradually. No sense trying to go three ways at once, and wind up hurting yourself."

She nodded, and poured the meat and vegetable mix into a glass dish, and opened a bag of ready-made mashed potatoes for the topping. Once that was in place, she could put shredded cheese on top of that, and stick it back in the cryo unit until it was dinner time, and then just warm it up in the stove. "Cheater," her dad told her, grinning.

"I've got homework to do still before everyone else comes over. And Dr. Solus assigned me a research paper today because I asked a question."

"Was it a good question?" Kasumi asked, coming into the kitchen behind them.

Dara turned to grin at her. "It must have been. He couldn't answer it, and I think the whole paper thing is his revenge."

The little woman laughed. "Come on back in a minute, Dara. I brought omiage with me, and yours is still in my travelcase." Omiage were the little souvenirs that every Japanese traveler brought home for family, friends, and bosses. Usually inexpensive, but always very thoughtful. Dara's father had made sure she brought hostess gifts for Kasumi when she stayed with her, until Kasumi had finally protested that they were, in fact, spending fifty percent of their time at her house, and that meant that they could really, honestly, truly stop.

"Thank you," Dara said, smiling. "You didn't need to."

"I know, but I like to hold to some of the old traditions. The fun ones, anyway." Kasumi turned to head back deeper into the house, and Dara tapped her dad's arm on her way out of the kitchen, mouthing, Did you ask her yet? and nodding in the little woman's direction.

Sam grinned, and said quietly, "I'm biding my time."

Dara sighed. She was almost bursting to talk to Kasumi about it, but obviously, she'd have to keep the secret a little longer. Back in her dad's bedroom, where he and Kasumi had evidently spent the night, Kasumi dug in the travelcase, finally coming up with a little box, carefully wrapped. "Am I supposed to open this right away, or is this one of the ones I'm supposed to wait to open?" Dara asked. The cultural nuances still tripped her up constantly; it was kind of funny, she supposed, that turian culture was easier for her to navigate than Kasumi's.

"Open it now," Kasumi told her, smiling.

Inside, was a tiny bottle of perfume labeled Zen. Dara opened it, and sniffed cautiously. "It's nice and light," she said, pleased. She looked at Kasumi, and smiled. "Guess I should try it out today and find out if it's going to knock turians across the room, huh?"

Kasumi laughed outright. "That was sort of the plan, yes. It was the lightest I could find that was still good quality."

Dara gave her a quick hug, and another thank-you, and headed off to her room to try to cram a few hours of homework in before everyone showed up. As she did, she could hear her dad, exclaiming irritably into the comm terminal, "Commander, with all due respect, the woman's unstable, and not even a part of either of the squads. Why would you—" He paused, obviously listening to something, and then replied, a good deal more dubiously, "All right. So long as Garrus will be here for part of the evening to ride herd on her." He signed off, and, glancing to where Dara was hovering on the stairs, told her, "We're having someone new to dinner tonight. Woman Shepard and Garrus worked with in the old days. I've read her file. Hard life. Not real pleasant to be around. Try to be polite, and if you're uncomfortable with her at all, come find me, y'hear?"

Dara nodded, puzzled, and went upstairs. It was promising to be an interesting evening, all things considered.

By 16:30, things were in full swing. Lantar's family was there, Garrus and the twins were there, Sky was in the living room, Gris was poking at the chili in the kitchen, and rumbling humorous comments about the peppers not actually being all that hot. "Next time I go to Earth, I'll bring back a ghost pepper from India," she could hear her father tell him, laughing. "That should burn even a krogan tongue but good."

A stranger walked in—a human woman, with more ink on her body than empty skin and a shaved head. She could see Eli's head turn, and she could understand why; the woman wore only a leather vest and low-cut leather pants, as well as combat boots, as if the ink were covering enough. Yeah, but ink's not going to keep you very warm, Dara thought, and shuddered at the notion of walking through the snow outdoors in that sort of get-up.

Dara noticed that the various Spectres around the room shifted to watch her. Garrus stood up, and she got the impression that he was more or less putting on his work clothes, at least in his head. He stopped being relaxed, anyway, and she knew turian body language well enough by now to see that as soon as Garrus tensed, so did Lantar. Probably unconscious. Just the subtle dynamics of body-language.

"Jack," Garrus said to the newcomer. "This is Sam's home, but he's back in the kitchen right now, making sure we all get fed, so I'll play host and introduce you around." Gris stepped out of the kitchen, looking a little wary. "This is Urdnot Gris. Part of Grunt and Wrex's clan. You've met Cohort." The geth nodded from the door of the kitchen, where he stood beside Gris. "Sings-to-the-Sky is the big rachni in the living room."

Sky sent a wave of blue-green acknowledgement, but Dara caught faint gray undertones. Ambivalence, or worry. The brood warrior added, in his silent song, Greetings. Have you come to make harmony, or dissonance, Rage-singer?

The woman's eyes went wide. "What the f—" She stopped herself, glancing down at the various children in the room, but it was clear she was deeply rattled. "Stay the hell out of my mind, bug!"

Dara's hands stopped on the piano, and she decided she did not like this woman.

I do not touch your mind, Rage-Singer, Sky replied, composedly. I only listen to what you sing. You sing very loudly. Yellow fear, black despair, red anger. I do not threaten you. Let there be harmony between us. He did, however, Dara noticed, scoot his forelegs protectively around Kaius, Amara, and Caelia, who were laughing and playing under his big body anyway, treating him like a sort of mobile tent. Little singer, continue playing, Sky told Dara, and her lips curled up in a smile, and her fingers began to move once more. She liked his name for her, for some reason.

Garrus cleared his throat, and he jerked a thumb at Sidonis. "This is my old friend, Lantar Sidonis. Elijah out in the living room is his son, and the lady over there, setting the big table in the dining room is Ellie, Lantar's wife."

The woman laughed. "Kid's kind of lacking in scales." Her voice was sharp, and there was an edge there that Dara pulled back from. Guess Dad was right about her having had a hard life.

"There's more to kinship than blood," Lantar said, laconic as always, and walked across the living room to sit beside Elijah. Dara almost laughed. Rel's right—look at them! They've both crossed their arms, squared their shoulders, jaws clenched. . . identical expressions. Oh, how I wish he were here to see this!

Garrus was in a hurry now. "You've met my twins, Amara and Kaius. The little one is Caelia Sidonis, Lantar's little girl." He glanced around. "Dara, at the piano, is Sam's daughter. And the young man watching in the doorway over there, that's Rellus, my nephew." He shook his head. "Full house tonight."

Dara's head turned, and she grinned when she saw Rel, sure enough, framed in the doorway. "Sorry I'm late," he apologized, walking in and taking a seat beside Dara at the piano, facing opposite of her, stretching his long legs into the room, before leaning in to her and muttering in her ear, "Looks like I arrived just in time for the show."

"You know what's going on?" she whispered back. "Who is she?"

He shook his head. "Not a clue. Just know she worked with them back in the old days."

Eli came over to the piano, and sat down on the bench next to her, facing out into the room, mirroring Rel's position; she was flanked by them now. "Just to let you both know," he said, quietly, "Ylara's going to be here tonight. She's bringing Azala and Siara."

Dara almost missed a note, caught herself, and kept playing. This is shaping up to be one big mess of an evening. I hope we made enough food. "Sorry, Sky," she told the rachni.

Even mistakes make their own harmony, sometimes, Sky told her, graciously.

"Any particular reason?" she asked Eli, a little tightly. Any time she saw Ylara, she couldn't help the guilt that welled up in her, for not having been able to save Kella. And while Azala was nice, Siara was, well, Siara.

Eli grimaced. "I can't talk about all of it. They're trying to get Siara a little, um, healthier, I guess would be the right word."

Dara kept her eyes on the keys. "She's sick? Must be a weird disease, that you don't go to the clinic for, but go to someone's house for dinner." She couldn't help the dislike in her voice, and knew she'd lose points with Eli for it. But she was not about to pretend.

Eli put a hand on her shoulder, startling her, and this time she did miss a note. "Lots of ways to be sick," he told her, and his eyes were actually a little sad. "You're the one who wants to be a doctor. Isn't the first oath something like 'first, do no harm?'"

Dara's eyes narrowed. It gave her, had she known it, more of a look of her father than she usually had. "That's actually nowhere in the oath. The first promise of the modern oath is to respect knowledge and share it freely, actually."

Eli sighed. "Okay, but somewhere there's something that says 'fix things, or at the very least don't break them,' right? And, well, you're probably going to marry a turian."

Dara tried to concentrate on playing. "What does one have to do with the other?"

Rel put his hand on her other shoulder, and said, quietly, "You can be sick in your spirit, can't you?"

She flicked him a glance, realizing two things. First, Lantar was listening to them; he could hardly not be, turian hearing being what it was. Second, Rel knew what Eli was talking about. And neither of them will just come out and tell me. She took her hands off the keyboard, turning towards Rel with a slight frown. "Is it something I did? Does it have to do with Kella?"

He shook his head. "No."

She thought about that. It wasn't as if the concept of circles of trust was a new one to her; it irritated her not to be included, since they were asking a shift in behavior of her without a good reason given, but Dara also understood that sometimes, you can't tell someone something, when it's not yours to tell. "Okay then. I don't need to know anymore." She grimaced. "I'll be polite because she's a guest in my dad's house, but other than that, I'm not talking to her and I won't be around her." I'm sure as hell going to ask my dad if he invited them, or if someone else did. She was mad, and didn't care if they knew it. Turians aren't the only ones allowed to show their anger, damnit.

Eli made an irritated gesture, double-flicking the fingers of both hands. Turian body-language for complete exasperation. "Gah. This would be so much easier to explain if I could just tell you, but I can't."

Sky whispered, very quietly, and Dara had the impression that he was speaking to her, alone, Little singer, your friend wishes healing songs for sake of his friend. She suffered an injury that made her dissonant, but now they strive to make her sing once more in tune.

Dara thought about that for a moment. "Sky," she said out loud, with a bit of a smile, but only loudly enough for the boys flanking her to hear, "That probably makes perfect sense to you, since you can hear what's in Eli's head, but it's about as clear as mud from where I sit. No! Don't show me. If it's private, it's private." But I don't like it.

Right around then, there was another knock at the door. Eli leaped up, and, rather than going to answer it, made his way quickly to the back door. Her dad came out of the kitchen, heading to answer the door instead, and Dara shook her head and went back to playing. Ylara came in first, greeting her fellow Spectres with a reserved smile and a few hugs here and there; Azala next, and Siara behind them, looking at the floor. After a bit of confused bustling and some introductions here and there, Azala came into the living room, and smiled when she heard the piano. "So this is what you learned to play on, then, Dara? And no reela tonight?"

"I keep that down at Kasumi's," Dara told her. She liked Azala. It was hard not to, actually. "That way, no matter where I am, I can practice if I want to."

After a moment, Rel leaned in again and made a great show of sniffing the air around her. "Sorry, Sky, Azala, everyone, music is going to have to wait," he said loudly, and lifted her hand off the piano, snuffling along from wrist to elbow, making Dara laugh and blush, forgetting her irritation. "Aha. Found the source. Obviously, someone has attacked you with flowers. Don't worry; I'll defend you. First, we'll need a barricade." He stood up, pulling her away from the piano. "Once we're sure that the perimeter is clear, Sky, I'll have her back and playing for you again. But for the next thirty minutes, she's mine." Rellus bared his teeth at the rachni, and Sky sent waves of blue-green amusement their direction, and Lantar laughed outright on the couch. And then Rel hustled her upstairs with him.

"You're bad," Dara told Rel as the door closed behind them, still blushing.

Rellus smiled down at her, and said, in her ear. "With this many people here, making this much noise . . . you can probably make all the little prey-sounds that you want, amatra." He leaned down and nipped playfully at her throat. "No one's going to hear."

Dara gasped and pulled away, laughing. "You do realize that Sky can probably hear us, right?"

He tilted his head to the side. "I can open the door and yell down the stairs for him to stop listening, if you like."

"No!"

He grinned. "So, either he's going to be polite, and not listen, or he'll have to listen very carefully to pick us out of all the other songs in his head." He nipped her again, and again, almost chidingly.

Dara began to laugh. "Are you disciplining me? It feels like a herding dog nipping at the sheep to get them back where they're supposed to be."

Rel grinned. "Yeah. A little." He swung her around and pushed her to sit on the edge of her bed, growling softly, putting pressure on her arms until she leaned back, giving him access to throat and shoulders, and she felt her back touch the mattress. After a moment, he lifted his head, and muttered, "S'kak. I almost forgot. I needed to ask you about something." He dug around in his pockets, frowning. "Oh, there it is. Your dad came by this morning." Rel lay down on the bed next to her, feet still on the ground. It was the only way he could lay on his back without his spurs getting caught on the quilt or pressed uncomfortably into the bed.

"Yeah, he mentioned that. After you ran forty kilometers and had to eat three or four pounds of meat to make up the energy loss." She rolled to an elbow to frown down at him. "You should've told me I was that far behind."

"You'll catch up. I don't want the runs to be painful for you. It's much harder work for you than it is for me." Rel reached up and caught a piece of hair with his talons. "If it helps, I'm probably always going to need your help with swimming." He unfolded his other hand now, revealing a small box. "Your dad said this was your mom's, and that he wanted me to give it to you. I'm a little unclear if there's some sort of a ceremony that goes with this." He frowned. "He also said it should probably be re-set. Something easier to get your hands into gloves with."

Dara opened the box with one fingertip, and felt as if her heart stopped for a moment. "That's my mom's ring. It was my great-grandma's, too." On the one hand, it almost hurt to see it again. A reminder that her mother wasn't here anymore. And yet, joy, too; Rel's intentions had been very clear for a while now, and he'd made them apparent in a very turian fashion. But this was part of her culture, and it meant a lot more to her than she'd thought it would. Bitter and sweet, all at once.

She looked up at him, and he looked worried for a moment. "Mellis, are you supposed to be crying?"

"Yes. Absolutely." Dara mopped at her face.

"Isn't that usually a bad thing?"

"Sometimes we cry when we're happy, too."

"Oh, spirits of my ancestors, no."

She started to laugh at his expression, still sniffling a bit. "It won't last two or three days, I promise," she told him, and leaned over to wrap her arms as far around him as they could go.

He stroked her hair lightly. "So, is there some ritual associated with this?"

"You already did the important part. Well, I think you did, anyway." She frowned. "Somewhere in all that negotiating, I'm pretty sure you asked me to marry you."

"Yes. That was when we both signed the contract."

"Okay. Totally missed that." She paused. "The cliché is, the male gets down on his knees and asks—"

"Isn't that human body language for begging?"

"Yeah. I think it's pretty stupid, myself. So you can skip that part." She paused. "Then I say yes, which I apparently did when I signed something I couldn't read at the time. . . " Rellus laughed, and she finished, "and then you put it on the correct finger for me." Dara waved her fingers at him, and Rel eyed them warily.

"Right, and that one is. . . ?"

She pointed, he placed, and the ring promptly spun around the wrong direction, being much too loose. Dara chuckled. "We'll make it fit." It wasn't a bad metaphor for their entire relationship. She wrapped the band itself with some first-aid tape, padding it, making it a little thicker, as a stopgap measure, and put it back on. It felt. . . weird, actually. "So how much of our half hour is left?"

"Twenty minutes."

"And you know that without even looking at the clock." She meant it as a joke, but his eyes had gone predatory now.

His speed always came as a surprise; in a flash, she'd been returned to her back on the bed, and Rel offered her his mouth, letting her kiss him. He always had a slightly bemused expression when they tried this, so it never lasted long before she'd bite at his jaw instead. She could feel the tension in his muscles now, the urgency that he was very carefully leashing. "You okay?" she whispered. "We didn't, I mean, last night. . . " The words in English stopped in her throat. They'd laughed and played last night, and it had been warm and comfortable and intimate, but they hadn't touched in this way since last weekend.

"Yeah." He shifted languages. "Want you with me all the time. Nights like last night, just laughter and companionship. But I ran well this morning, I ate, and then I really wanted my mate with me. It's normal."

"Long runs. . . adrenaline again?" She gasped. That had been a much harder bite.

"Yes." He sounded a little dazed, and clearly had to focus on the words. "Old instincts. Hunt, eat, bring the food to your mate. Receive her . . . gratitude." He groaned a little as her hands moved down. Hands were allowed now. "Instincts say, rub blood of my kill on my mate so she knows the smell comes from me, lick it off her skin, mark her, take her, then rest until we're hungry again." The soft rasp of his voice painted a picture in her mind, and she couldn't help the sound that caught in her throat at the thought. Prey-noise.

Rellus's eyes half-closed, and he continued to talk, little pauses between the words now. "Probably. . . origin of face-painting. Instincts are powerful. . . ah, spirits. . . which is why laws need to be even stronger." Rel looked at the clock now, and sighed. "But there's not enough time for anything but marking you, sweetness." He bit her shoulder, more gently now. "Where?"

She preened his fringe softly, whispering, "I know the marking calms you, but it doesn't take the wanting-ache away." She was genuinely concerned. The turian equivalent of vasocongestion resulted in fluid build-ups inside the body cavity, where the testicles and the phallus were all normally housed. It could result in moderate to severe lower abdominal discomfort. Where a human male might complain about 'blue balls,' a turian male in similar discomfort would sometimes find that his phallus tip might have partially emerged from its cavity while unaroused, leaving him prone to injury for a while.

Rel shifted back to English, probably to force himself to focus on something else. "I'll survive. Half the point of the contract, as I told your father this morning, was to give us—me, really—time to learn control. The other half was probably intended to give us time to learn how to give each other release. At least I know what your release looks and feels and smells like now, mellis. When I'm finally, spirits willing, in you, I'll be able to tell if I'm doing it right."Rel grinned down at her. "I didn't mention that part to him."

"Well, thank god."

"Where, amatra?" Growing impatience in his voice

She offered him the back of her left wrist, where the straps of the empty knife-sheath crossed, where her mother's engagement ring glittered on her finger, and his eyes went dark, and he started breathing through his nose now, little panting breaths. Dara had known how much he'd wanted to mark her so that others could see it, but not how much. "Visible. Outside of clothes. Not in the contract."

"You gave me a ring." Dara smiled up at him. "Trumps the contract, in places. Besides, I can pull my sleeve down over it, if you really want me to."

Elijah

Siara hadn't even been at school since he'd spoken to Lantar on Wednesday. That had given Eli four days in which to worry. He'd come to the conclusion that Siara was probably going to feel betrayed by him on some level, and had been hoping, actually, to avoid any sort of meeting for oh, a month or so. Give her time to cool down. When Lantar had told him that afternoon that Ylara and Azala had decided to attend, and were bringing Siara with them. . . Eli had strongly considered pleading homework.

So, he'd put the best face on the situation that he could for Dara, but fully expected something to blow up in his face tonight. Either Dara's temper or Siara's biotics. At least he knew Siara couldn't punch worth a damn.

Ducking outside when the asari contingent arrived probably looked a bit chicken, but he justified it in his mind, because the house was crowded and overwhelming, so why not remove one source of stress? The Jaworski backyard was a featureless expanse, covered in snow. Elijah shivered a bit, wishing he'd grabbed a coat, at least, if he was going to spend any time out here. His breath hung in white clouds in front of him, and he grinned a bit. He'd never seen that happen outside of a cryo unit before, so he huffed out again, and again, watching his body's moisture rise like a plume of smoke.

"So, kid," a voice said, and his head jerked up. He hadn't realized anyone else was out here, until the tattooed woman emerged from around the side of the house. "Turian daddy, right? Funny, your mom doesn't look much like a Spectre."

Eli had no idea who this lady was, but she'd been introduced by Garrus, so she was probably okay to talk to, even if she looked like someone's experiment, or something. "She's not. She used to work on environmental systems on the Citadel and on Bastion, but she's got a job designing and building breathers and envirosuits here, now."

The woman walked closer, and he wondered how in space she could stand the cold out here, dressed as she was. He kept his eyes locked on hers, though. She looked like she might take offense if he looked anywhere else. "So, how's that all working out for you?"

Eli had no idea what she meant by that, or why she was even talking to him. "Better here than back on Bastion," he said, after a minute. "No one waits around after school here to beat me up for having a half-and-half sister. No one calls my mom a scale-skank here, either." He shrugged.

"You like your dad?" She said it as if the words were in some foreign language.

"Like him?" Eli blinked. That was like saying you liked a mountain, were friends with a cliff-face. Lantar was more there than any other person he'd ever met. Even when he wasn't there, he was there. Any time he was confused as to what to do, all he really needed to do was to think of what Lantar would say, and there was an answer. "I don't think it . . . it's not. . . He demands respect," Eli finally managed. "He gives it, and he gets it. He's a good dad."

She just stared at him for a long moment. Did I start talking in high tongue by accident again? Elijah wondered nervously as the pause stretched on. "Okay," she said, as if that closed the subject. "What about your little friend the princess and her daddy?"

Now it was Eli's turn to stare at her. Siara was the only person he could think of who could remotely be called a princess. "Siara's an asari," he said, patiently. Maybe this woman was from Earth, where Dara told him a lot of people didn't know this stuff. "She had a second-mother, but not a father."

Her lips quirked up for a moment. "My mistake," she said. "I meant the other little princess. The one that the big turian hauled upstairs a couple of minutes ago. Sitting at the piano."

Elijah started to laugh. "I'm sorry," he said, after a minute. "I guess that's just a difference in slang or something." I guess princess just means girl to her. "But it's just funny hearing anyone call Dara a princess. She hates dresses, and I've seen her helping muck out stable stalls. Which, by the way, if you've never been around horses? They're not clean animals. They stink, and their droppings aren't exactly little."

The woman's eyes had narrowed a bit, and she was staring at him, consideringly. "So, she sits there at the f—I mean, at the center of attention, and you don't consider her a spoiled little Daddy's girl?"

Eli was getting a little annoyed. It was cold out here, and he'd come out here to escape, not to be interrogated about his friends and his family. "No. She plays the piano so Sky can listen to music, and listen to her while she plays it, and listen to us listen to it." Eli thought about that one for a moment. He was pretty sure he'd said that right. "Her dad asks her to, and it makes Sky happy. I wouldn't call that the center of attention." He stared at her for a moment. She was intimidating, but she wasn't Lantar-mad-scary. "Weird questions."

"Maybe I'm just a weird person, huh?"

Eli's reply slid out before he could censor it. "Yeah."

She looked annoyed, but only responded with another question. "And Jaworski? You got any opinions on him?"

"Do Spectres have Internal Affairs? Is that what you are?" Eli asked, irritated. She laughed, a strident, ringing laugh. He clenched his jaw for a minute, and then said, clearly and distinctly as he could, "Yeah. Mr. Jaworski's a nice guy. He taught Dara how to shoot, which probably saved our lives in the cave during the whole kidnapping thing." He assumed the woman had watched the news at some point in the last few months. "Stood with Commander Shepard and Kasumi, blocking the mouth of the cave while the rest of us were out of our minds, keeping us safe. He's even letting Rel plight Dara, so. . . " Eli shrugged, as if all that resolved the issue in his mind.

Then the door opened behind him, and when he turned, Siara was there, looking pissed. She walked right up into his chest, and Eli backed up slightly, holding up his hands. "No biotics," he told Siara. "You can hit me, but no biotics."

Siara looked off to her left, saw the tattooed human there, then disregarded her completely, looking back at Eli. "You told them what you saw in my mind."

He winced. Well, he'd expected as much. "Yeah," Eli said, after a moment. "I didn't know what else to do. If you tell me what you'd rather I'd done, I can try to figure out a way to go back in time and fix it."

Siara ignored that. "Then, when I finally am ready to stop hiding in my room, you start hiding at the sight of me." Faint downward curve to the lips at that. "I know what you saw was bad, Eli, but it wasn't my fault."

"I didn't say it was your fault—"

"Then it is the darkness, the unclean parts, that make you hide? Is it disgust?" Asari high tongue now, imperative.

Elijah wanted to snarl in exasperation, but settled for rubbing at his forehead instead. "No, Siara, more-than-fair, I thought that you would be angry and need space and time for forgiveness."

"Angry?" Back into English for a moment. "Oh, yes, I was. Until yesterday morning, I wanted to kill you, letting your father and my mother know what had. . . what my second-mother had done—" Siara sighed, turned, and glared at the tattooed woman. "Are you just going to stand there? Or can we have some privacy here?"

The woman laughed. "You've got a mouth on you, kid." She started to walk back around the side of the house, heading for the front yard once more.

Siara waited for her to go. "Anyway, Ylara came over and she and my mom pretty much held me down and fed me Kella's memories of you, so I wouldn't just see the dark shapes I pulled out of your subconscious. Then Ylara pointed out that you probably knew I wouldn't forgive you, but acted to help me anyway. Which means either you're nobly disinterested in me, or you kind of like me a lot."

Eli shrugged. "Well, yeah. In my own defense, I have no idea why. It's not like you're ever nice to me."

"I've kissed you. That might be enough for a human male." Asperity in the tone, but there was a little smile there, too. "I'm not sure what species out there a human wouldn't—"

"Krogan," he replied, promptly. "Never seen any of their females, though. They could look completely different from the males. Hanar don't have, well, orifices. Salarians have one orifice, and everything's done externally, so, no, although I'd be willing to bet there's someone out there who'd try to figure out a way. Elcor, no, although, again, I'm sure there's someone out there who's ready to graduate from sheep. . . ."

Siara's lips were twitching now. Reluctantly, but definitely there. "And turians?"

Eli thought about that. "They're not curvy in the right places, but some of them are really beautiful."

Siara punched him in the shoulder. He grinned at her, and continued, "However, the whole biting thing? Once you've seen one of them biting through bone, the mere thought of a mouth like that getting anywhere near—"

"Oh, they don't—"

"Rational thought has nothing to do with this." He shrugged. 'That does pretty much leave normal human males with just humans, asari, and the occasional curiosity about what a quarian really looks like under the suit."

She punched him in the shoulder again, and he laughed. "Siara, you need to come to sparring practice more often. You hit like a girl." He caught her hand in his, and turned serious. "So, you're not mad at me anymore?"

Siara made a face and looked down "Actually, I need to ask your forgiveness. My mother told me that I could have forced the memories and the darkness on you, and created the same injuries in you, that I suffered."

"Oh," Eli said, blinking. "That, ah.. . that hadn't occurred to me."

"Yeah. Sorry. I didn't. . . I mean, I wouldn't have." Siara sighed, got up on tip-toes, and kissed him. He braced himself for a mental intrusion, but there was none. After a moment, he relaxed. Nothing here but warm lips, a soft body pressed into his, and Oh, I think that was a tongue. Wow. That really is nice. Especially now that I don't have to fight so hard that I can't pay attention to it.

Siara pulled back first. "That was a thank-you," she told him. "My mother told me no sharing till she's sure I'm all the way well." She frowned. "I really didn't know I could hurt you. I just wanted to. . . lose it, I guess. Even though the memories wouldn't really go away. I just . . . I don't know. Thought it would make it better, or something."

Eli shook his head, and very carefully lifted the fingers of his hand to her face. "Does 'no sharing' mean 'no talking'?"

Siara snorted a little. "No, idiot."

"Okay, the idiot thing is going to have to go. Does 'no sharing' mean 'no kissing'?"

"No sharing means no maieolo, of any sort. Not for a while, anyway." No mental touch, in essence, the kind of intimacy that asari craved more than the physical.

Eli shrugged. He still wasn't really sure why he found himself liking her, in spite of everything. "I keep telling you, there's other ways to share."

"Yeah, I know." She paused. "I'm not human, Elijah. But I can try to meet you halfway." She looked down. "If you want."

"I'm already there ahead of you," he told her, with a tone of carefully-applied resignation. "I've been waiting for a while, too."

She laughed for a moment, and it sounded real. Then her smile faded a bit. "So, are they going to get done upstairs pretty soon?" They almost had to be Dara and Rellus, in context.

Eli glanced at his omnitool. "Depends on when they went up."

"About five seconds after you bolted out the door."

"I walked out twenty minutes ago. They've got ten more minutes, if I remember what little either of them have said about the current contract. Why?"

"I have some, well, some things I probably should have said to them a long time ago. My mom and Ylara tell me that part of getting better is figuring out what I'm actually responsible for, and fixing what I can." She sighed. "I'm really not looking forward to any of this."

Eli opened the door, grateful to be going back in where it was warm. "I'll go with you. It'll be okay. You'll see." He knew he didn't have any more time with Siara than he would have had with Kella. A year, maybe two, before the mismatch in life-spans took them apart, like a large cog spinning slowly against a smaller one. But Kella had taught him to focus on the now.

Inside, they eventually tracked Dara and Rellus to the kitchen, where Rel was sampling the dextro-levo concoction Dara had made, and had pronounced it 'non-toxic.' "I don't know what the second meat is, but it tastes great." The other dextro carnivores were munching in there as well, standing around the stove, watching the card game at the kitchen table, while the younger kids were being fed out at the long table in the actual dining room.

Siara looked into the big pot and frowned at the red substance bubbling in there. "What is this?" she asked, dubiously.

"Chili," Dara replied.

"Did you make it?" Siara managed, hesitantly.

"No." Dara didn't say anything more until Eli saw Rel put a foot behind her ankle, where her spur would have been, if she'd been turian. "My dad made it."

"Then can I try some?"

Dara filled a bowl with it, added cheese, and handed it to the asari girl, with a spoon and crackers.

Eli filled his own bowl, commenting, "I think the turians could practically eat this, too. It's mostly meat."

"Yeah, but there's nothing in the records on how allergenic ancho or chipotle chilis are for them." Dara herself was having a small serving of each food, and had her epi-tabs in her hand as they found seats out in the less crowded dining room. Eli's mom nodded to them, but had to get up to take Caelia off for a change. Eli watched in amusement as Siara tried the chili tentatively, and blinked. "It's. . . spicy." She hesitated. "But good."

It was almost painful to watch. Like someone who's just gotten on stage for the first time, has learned all the lines, and suddenly realizes that there's an audience out there, listening, in the darkness beyond the footlights. Eli leaned forward, like a prompter, and said, "Just say it. It won't get any easier if you wait around, and once you've said it, you don't need to say it anymore, right?"

Siara winced, then turned and looked at Rel. "Rellus, I've been very unkind to you since my mother moved here. I was. . .a little scared of you, in a way. I'm sorry, and I'd like to try again."

Eli covered his grin with a napkin. Re had an 'are you kidding me' look on his face at the moment. His turian friend probably hadn't seen himself as remotely intimidating when he was younger; his self-image was just starting to catch up with his new height. But Eli had enough of Siara's memories to realize it hadn't just been the physical that had been intimidating. It was the unconscious self-confidence and calm that did it.

After a moment, Rel cleared his throat. "Okay. Not what I was expecting to hear tonight, but all right."

Siara turned towards Dara, and evidently, this one was harder to say. "I'm sorry I said I thought you'd killed Kella."

Rel's head snapped up. Dara blinked. Oh, boy. Dara never told him about that. Rel muttered quietly, "Why didn't you say she'd attacked your honor? I'd have understood that!"

"Because it wasn't my honor that was attacked, it was my feelings." Dara replied, shrugging.

Siara pulled back at their expressions, took a breath, and plowed on, doggedly. "I'm also sorry I made fun of you when you first came here. I was. . . am. . . a little jealous of you." Dara's expression was now a match for Rel's previous one, saying, without words, how is that even possible?

Siara lifted her chin, a little combatively. "I still think Earth is provincial, though. Just so you know no one's pulling my strings here."

Dara nodded slowly. "Okay. I guess I don't know what to say to any of that, either." She looked at Rel. "You asking to start over or something?"

Siara looked down. "I don't think that's ever actually possible."

"How about," Eli said, as carefully as he could, "if we just try for everyone moving forward?" He doubted Dara would ever like Siara. But he held out hope that they could tolerate one another enough not to make hanging out painful.

Jack

She'd lingered at the corners and edges of the little gathering for longer than she'd thought she would. She wasn't a part of their little world, of course. She preferred the shadowy corners, even the icy darkness outside. She couldn't figure out for the life of her what Shepard had wanted her to see here tonight. The rachni, handing the kids back to Garrus so that the turian could take them home and take them to bed? The fact that the big bug could see inside her head as naturally breathing? Oh, that pissed her off to no end. Her mind had been her only sanctuary for years—and it wasn't much of a sanctuary, at that, filled with dark images and broken glass.

Was she supposed to look at Sidonis, forgiven, taken back into the fold, like a little lost. . . all right, like a big, toothy lamb. . . with his tiny human wife and human son and hybrid daughter?

Was she supposed to see Cohort, a fucking geth, for god's sake, looking through a sheaf of papers that Kasumi had brought back from Earth, three hundred years old, if it was a day, with watercolor sketches of birds and plants, touching them delicately, as if a robot could understand the importance of touch, history, aesthetics, any of that?

Was she supposed to look at Gris, and see anything other than a krogan? Sure, he listened a lot more than he talked, which was sort of unusual, and she'd never seen a krogan play cards before, but that just meant he was house-trained, right?

Was she supposed to notice how Kasumi and Sam pretty much already acted like a married couple, albeit one still in the happy-new-insufferably-cuddly stage? Oh, they didn't touch much, but even a brush of fingertips, and they both started smiling.

What was she supposed to take away from all this? She'd cornered one of the kids, asked questions, tried to get a read on the situation. She'd gotten a feel for kids since working in the Ascension Project. She didn't always feel like she should be hitting them now; they weren't just targets for her rage. But she was pretty sure that one couldn't lie to her. Not successfully, anyway.

And what had she gotten out of the kid with the face-paint? Nothing, really. He treated all the bizarreness around him as if it were perfectly. . . normal. He was being raised by a whole village of crazy people, killers. . . like me. . . no, not like me. The kid accepted it, accepted them. No, no, Mr. Jaworski is a good man. No, no, his daughter isn't a spoiled princess, really, she smells of horse manure. No, no, my dad isn't a traitor, he just demands respect.

Jack stood in the middle of a frozen walkway, and wanted to scream. I'm supposed to see something here. What am I supposed to see?

And what to make of how the little asari girl had accosted the boy, the fragments of conversation she'd heard? Sounded like he'd betrayed her, but she was weak enough to forgive him. She'd pay for that, again and again, until she figured out life. 'Course, some people never did figure life out.

Jack started walking again. Of course, it's not like I've got it all figured out, either. If I had, I would've gone with Zeke. Watched his back for him. Huh, come to think of it, most of the people there had been grouped off into couples. Only the krogan, the geth, and the rachni—the most alien of the aliens, in essence—had been there alone. Well, and Garrus, but he obviously had Shepard waiting for him at home. Had left early, in fact, saying he wanted to bring her up some dextro/levo pizza from Gardner's down in the valley. Anything to get her to eat properly, apparently. Hell, even the two asari were probably shacking up together.

Was that what I was supposed to see? That most of them have someone who trusts them, absolutely and completely? That somehow, that means that I can trust them, too, not to fuck me over? It didn't sound like a Shepard lesson. Shepard's lessons were usually a little more hard-nosed than that. Maybe more like 'this could be you, if you weren't such a fuck-up'? Nah, that doesn't sound like her, either.

Something clicked into place in her mind, and she found herself going through the conversations she'd overhead all night in her mind. Little asari girl, she did talk about what he'd seen in her mind, what her mother had. . . huh. Guess even asari have pervs. Doesn't surprise me somehow. So maybe I misjudged the kid. Maybe it wasn't a cycle of betrayal and hurt and betrayal and hurt. Maybe it was someone lending a hand to get another person out of that cycle.

Jack stopped again, and groaned. It was almost a physical pain, and she crouched down in the snow, letting it wash over her. I get it now. She wanted me to see them differently. She wanted me to break through the goddamn mirrored window in my way, and talk to them. Instead, I just watched. Like always. And like always, I got a distorted picture that way, didn't I?

Shepard

"Okay," she said into the comm terminal in her home office. "Sorry I can't be there in person, folks. We've got a few items of business, and then I can let you all go take care of your kids. The surveillance equipment Garrus planted in Pero's quarters on Rough Tide still show no evidence of his return. There's probably another base that he's gone to, which is what leads me to my next question. Kasumi, do we have any joy on the Thelessav, the salarian ship that left Earth orbit when you were in the ruins of Detroit?"

"Half a dozen plotted courses that took it within range of the Hourglass Nebula," Kasumi said. "Which is, of course, nowhere near the signs of batarian and Lystheni interests out in the Valhallan Threshold." She shrugged. "We can either get ships out there and scan methodically, system by system, or try to develop new information sources. I've got a call in with a lady from SATBIA on Earth this afternoon. They have some long-range reconnaissance stuff they might be willing to share. Might take a little horse-trading, though. Likewise, I have a call set up with salarian STG right after the SATBIA one."

Shepard nodded. "Okay, what's next?"

Mordin raised a finger. "New archaeological discovery on Klendagon."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "Klendagon?"

"Yes, currently, uninhabited. Struck by a mass-effect-generated attack some thirty-seven million years ago." He blinked. "Safe to say, not a Prothean world. Great Rift valley extends across most of one hemisphere. Now, new discovery. Look."

He tapped his omnitool, and projected an image. Everyone in the meeting room, Shepard could see on her screen, leaned forward, and she could hear the collective gasp. A silvery cylinder, incised with faintly-glowing runes or sigils. "Same civilization as on Junthor?" she asked, interested.

"Unknown. No megalithic structures found. Inhabitants of this world may have cannibalized old tech from Junthor civilization, as our races have done with Prothean tech." Mordin blinked. "Runes not the same as on simulator device. Have been asked to go and inspect it, analyze it. Quarian team on the way, too."

"Go," Shepard told him. "Be careful. The last one had one hell of a toy surprise inside." She lifted her hands. "Anything else?"

Head-shakes all around. "Okay. Sam, Kasumi, Lantar, Sky, and Gris, I take it you're all heading to Odessa tonight?"

Nods from the various parties.

"Okay, have fun with the kids. Stay in contact, though. I have a feeling we're about to get busy again, so enjoy break time while it lasts."