Chapter 49: The Long Wait
Elijah
September 17 came, and he and Linianus, Telinus, and Dara all went for a run in the woods just off-base. Linianus and Telinus were sandbagging, of course, and Dara had already adapted to her gene mods, so Eli was the one who found himself huffing and puffing, even though he'd done all the same cardio drills as every one of his handball teammates. He'd just been more sedentary during actual games, relying on agility and leaping abilities. "I'm going to have to ask Lantar and my mom about gene mods," he said, when they got done with their twenty kilometers, and he'd been forced to walk the last two miles.
"They're a pain in the ass," Dara told him. "Valuable, yeah, but if you want my advice, take them slowly. One at a time. Might draw it out more, but I did all of mine at once, and spent three weeks puking up my guts." She thought about that. "I've done a lot of that this year."
Linianus grinned at her. "Means you've been working hard."
"Oh, go sprint already. You're not hungry yet, right?"
He shook his head. "We'll circle around and catch back up with you," he told them, the two turian boys headed off down one of the muddy paths that the spring thaw had caused to reappear in the past week or two.
Alone, for the moment, Eli wiped his forehead off with his shirt, knowing his clanpaint had already dripped down onto his chest. "Okay. So what's the deal?"
"With what?"
"Siara. She's gone from not talking to me to begging me to tell you that she's sorry, but she won't tell me what she's sorry about." Eli sighed. "Frankly, I wasn't even going to answer her call the first time, but she was very persistent about it."
Dara got a set look to her face. "Okay. So, you probably know why Rel and I got into trouble over our contract?" She looked embarrassed. "Come on, let's at least keep walking. I want to get back to base and get some time on the climbing wall or in the pool today before range practice."
Eli snorted as they picked up the pace. "I've picked up the gist of what happened here and there, yeah. Siara said she'd agreed not to go up to your room in Odessa."
"Yeah. She agreed to that in exchange for my memories of Kella."
Eli's head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. "She wasn't supposed to be doing maieolo-anything at that point." He was angry. He knew what he'd very narrowly avoided with Siara months ago, and he did not want his friend to have been exposed to that.
"Does maieolo mean 'share'?" Dara asked, lips pulling down at the corners. "Which, by the way? Seriously overused word."
"They're very specific about it in their language. Lots of different ways to share. It all just collapses down into one word in English." He squinted at her. "So, in Odessa. . . ?"
"No. Two days ago, she called in her debt. Said she was clear of her biotic cold or whatever the hell it was."
"News to me," Eli said, and his jaw was very tight. "So what happened?"
Dara glared off into the mid-distance, at some inoffensive trees just starting to leaf out. "At first, she just skimmed through Kella's memories. Brought back stuff I didn't even consciously remember. It was weird. Then she started digging other places. Stuff about you, actually." She gave Eli a sidelong glance, and he shook his head. "Apparently, she thought you still had a thing for me, because you came to the hospital for me. I told her to look inside your head if she was so damned worried about that."
"She has, or at least, she did, a while ago."
That got him several seconds of dead silence. He let it stretch out, then added, "She didn't see anything more than what pretty much every guy thinks, Dara. You're my friend, Rel's my friend, and that's pretty much it, except, you know. . . " He shrugged. "I'm a guy." He wasn't going to apologize for it. He kind of felt he'd done enough apologizing for being who and what he was to Siara so far. Dara, being human, if a female one, should be able to at least grasp this.
Dara, other than a faint flush under the paint, didn't pursue it. "Okay. Fair enough. The main thing was, she started digging into my memories of Rel and, well, me."
Eli stopped in his tracks, mud squelching up alongside his shoes. "Wait. What?"
Dara looked at him, clearly not expecting quite this much reaction. "I blocked her before she saw much. I have no idea how. I think she caught basically a glimpse, and the next thing I knew, she'd dropped out of my mind." She paused. "I had to explain to Allardus last night why I was looking for a new xenobiology supervisor for my project, and Garrus was there at dinner, and Garrus said that Commander Shepard's been able to block asari the same way."
"When Lantar was in the link that was supposed to help her get better," Eli said, through his teeth, "she said she blundered into a part of his mind that scared the living shit out of her. How turians mate among themselves. Estrus, she meant. I guess. Think that might have been part of it?" He looked down and away. He had absorbed a certain amount of bluntness from his various turian friends, but in mid-sentence, he'd remembered that under the face-paint, Dara was human.
She didn't react, except to look away, herself. "Yeah," Dara said. "Garrus said that Shepard's not sure exactly why it works. It's not like asari and turians haven't, well, you know."
Eli thought about it, and while he didn't really want to apply it to Dara and Rel specifically. . . or to his mom and Lantar, for that matter! . . . he could understand why it would affect an asari that way. From all his association with Kella and Siara, direct connection with their minds, he understood asari in general pretty well now. Their emotions were, like their lives, on long-duration cycles, the amplitudes between each oscillation of high and low tamped down, muted. While they were capable of great anger and great love, these were slow-burning emotions for them. The passion of a shorter-lived species could trigger similar emotions in them. . . for a time. . . and then, like ripples in a pond, they would fade. Two different sets of intense emotions at the same time probably was something of a whammy. And that was as far as he could make his mind reach around the subject.
They'd been walking for a while now in silence, and Dara said, tentatively, "I wasn't going to bring it up with you unless you asked, Eli. I'm not trying to make trouble between you and her."
Eli shook his head. "She already brought the trouble. I was pretty much done before today. Now. . . " he shook his head, wondering why his teeth hurt, not realizing that in between sentences, he was clenching his jaw. "I—and a lot of other people—did a lot to try to help her. And then she turns around and does almost exactly the same thing to you, as was done to her." Not quite, but close enough. Talk about people repeating cycles. "You already told Azala about this?"
"Sort of. I told her I couldn't work with Siara anymore, and that I was sorry, but that I couldn't be under the same roof with her. Apologized for sounding childish, and asked her if she could transfer me to someone else in the xenobiology team. Turns out, since my father-in-law is the head of the team, he's taken me on. Why?"
"'Cause you should have your head checked by a biotic, preferably an asari. Siara's got stuff in her head that can cause problems for people who share with her." His expression tightened. "I'll call Azala for you, if you like."
Dara stopped on the path now. "It's that important?" She hesitated. "If so. . . I'd really prefer that Sky look in there. Really prefer."
"I dunno if Sky would know what he's looking for, but I can't blame you." Eli shoved his hands into his pockets. "So, yeah, it's important. It's why I haven't. . . anything. . . with her. And now, I probably won't."
"Don't . . . I mean, not because of me." Dara sounded absolutely wretched now.
He shook his head. "Partially because of you, partially because of me. Mostly, because of her." Eli shrugged. "I get why she has trust issues. I can accept that and deal with that on my own. Dragging one of my friends into it? No. Forcing maieolo'saeo to become maieolo'loa. . .full mental openness, even if it's without the physical? That's abuse. And that's a no-no."
They kept walking now. "You're going to be a good cop someday, Eli."
He grinned after a moment. "As good as your dad or Lantar?"
"We'll see. You've got the justice-anger down pat, though." She threw him a quick smile. "Rel's right. You really do look like Lantar when you get mad."
"Minus the blue flush in the crest, I hope."
By now, they'd reached the base, and Linianus and Telinus had circled around and caught back up with them, so the topic was dropped. They spent the rest of the morning working their way up and down the rock climbing wall in the gym, Eli and Dara easily racing up to the top the first time, then slowly working their way back down, trying to help the turian boys understand where to put their feet for maximum effectiveness. They finished off with a swim lesson for the two boys, and while the turians slowly practiced backstroke, the two humans took up lanes of their own for a few laps. Eli was shaking by the end of the session, and needed food just as badly as if he were a turian himself.
At the house, there was a surprise. Lantar was out in front, talking with a turian male that none of them recognized. "Gothis colony paint," Linianus muttered. Eli nodded, recognizing the dark green swirls.
"Ah, here they are," Lantar said, and made a hurry-up gesture that got all four of them moving faster up the drive. "Lycus Provian, this is my son, Elijah. His friend, Dara Velnaran, and their friends Linianus Pellarian and Telinus Karpavian."
The strange male turned, and Eli got an impression of grief and weariness, heavily masked. "Glad to meet you all," the turian said, and they each got wrist-clasps—even Eli and Dara, though Eli could see how carefully the male was assessing their faces—most of the paint had, after running all morning and then swimming, worn off—as well as the wedding knife on Dara's wrist. He could see that the male was wearing two wrist sheathes, both with knives, and suddenly understood. Widower, and a recent one, too. He's carrying his wife's blade. They carry them for what, six months, and then break the knife, if I remember correctly. Unless it's a very special blade.
"Come on in, everyone. Dara here was sick at the same time as your wife, Lycus."
Eli saw the male's head snap towards Dara, and a sigh raised his shoulders for a moment. "I take it that you were eating the damn food, too, then?"
Ah, hell. He had a human wife. Eli glanced at Lantar, got a look from his father that he interpreted as 'act normal,' and did exactly that, telling Lin and Tel to grab chairs and that he'd get them food. His mom came into the room then, carrying a basket of laundry, and had to be introduced, too. Lycus gave her a very correct bow of the head, appropriate to a woman married to someone who outranked him, socially, and looked back at Dara, waiting for her answer.
Dara nodded. "Yeah. I'd cooked dinner for myself, the aunt of my husband, who's pregnant, and her two hybrid kids that night. All four of us got sick." She sounded deeply sympathetic, and Eli knew she'd read the same signs he had, as she went on, "Your wife?"
Lycus shook his head, and Lin and Tel growled, a soft, sympathetic noise. "Fiona was so damned worried about our son, I don't think she even knew she was sick. I could smell something wrong on her skin, but. . . I just thought it was stress." There was a rasp of controlled anguish in that voice that made the hair on the backs of Eli's arms stand on end. "We were at the hospital, and she stepped out of the room, and the nurses found her in the bathroom, choking on her own vomit." He looked out the nearest window. "She didn't make it."
"I'm so sorry," Eli's mom murmured, putting a hand on his shoulder. Human gesture; sympathy and bonding through touch. Not a turian gesture at all, and Eli could see the male tense under his mom's fingers. He glanced at Lantar, who of course wasn't moving. Lantar knew humans too well to take offense at his mate touching another male in such a fashion. How can he see this, but someone like Siara can't? The helpless rush of frustration surged through him, and then Eli let it go. It wasn't going to be his problem anymore.
Dara paused for a moment, then offered a tal'mae phrase that Eli couldn't translate. Lycus looked up, sharply, and said, "Thank you. I'm sure her spirit will join with mine. If she can find it. I don't even know where I am, right now."
Lantar cleared his throat. "A safe place. For both you and the young one."
Caelia took that moment to come pattering out after Lucy, the cat, and Lycus looked down at her, his face visibly softening. "It's good to hear that, Sidonis. I just wish I knew what to do with him."
"You have a child?" That was Eli's mother, busy now getting out leftover talashae roast from last night for Lin and Tel. "How old?"
"Three months. He's up at the clinic on the mountain right now. That was our first stop, before your husband brought me down here." That was protection-anger, and Eli moved quickly now, helping his mother find plates and cups for everyone. He'd really rather sprawl someplace quietly and recover for a few minutes, but he was first-son in this house. He had responsibilities. "They're trying to work out some kind of formula for him," the male added, sounding helpless and even more angry because of it.
Lantar pushed out a chair for Lycus, and the male took the seat now. "Dara," Lantar said, "would you mind logging on to the clinic and seeing what's going on with Julian Provian? I'm sure it will give his father some peace of mind, while we get food into all of you."
"Not a problem," Dara said, going over to the main house terminal in the living room, reflexively warding off Caelia's inquisitive fingers from the keys, and then logging on, using her clinic badge, which she always carried around her neck now. "Here we go. He's in the nursery. I can even get vid feed up, if you like."
Eli came over as Dara pulled up the image on the aerogel screen. "Hey, his feathers aren't whitish-gray, like Caelia's were," he blurted, and the turians in the room behind him chuckled. They were, instead, almost black.
"That's the principle way you can tell boys from girls at birth," Dara told him, absently, "other than opening the abdominal slit and looking. That's generally only done by the attending physician at the hospital, just to check for deformities, and then gets sealed back up again."
"And you know that how?" Eli muttered to her. A year ago, she'd squealed when she'd seen Caelia in her baby feathers for the first time.
"I've been babysitting Amara and Kaius and helping Aunt Lilu with her pregnancy for two months. I've picked up a few things." Dara grinned at him, but kept her words quiet, in deference to the grieving male in the kitchen. "Besides, one of these days, Rel and I are going to have kids. I've been reading up on it a bit."
"In spite of all. . . this crap that's been going on, you still think that?" Eli wondered what the male in the kitchen would think. Little that was good, doubtless. He himself was worried about his mom and Caelia, hell, even Lantar, even though every scrap of food in the house was tested now.
"Yeah." She shrugged. "This s'kak isn't going to go on forever." Louder now, she called back into the kitchen, "They're mixing talashae paste in with regular human formula, looks like. Just a little at a time. And I know the stocks are safe. It's what I've been eating to maintain my dextro immunities."
The baby on screen was receiving a feeding at the moment, actually, held by one of the turian nurses. Lycus looked up at the screen, with an expression of hope, and then glanced sharply at Dara. "You're still eating mixed? Even after nearly dying?" He sounded horrified, and Eli figured he had a right to be.
"Yeah," she replied, turning towards him. "I have to."
"So am I. So's Caelia," his mom said, quietly, getting out fresh meat for Lycus and Lantar, and handing a loaf of bread to Eli, who started cutting it now for sandwiches for the levo and mixed people in the house.
"You must be mad!"
Dara shook her head, looking determined. "In thirty-four days or so, I'll be on Palaven, meeting my husband after he finishes boot camp. And seven days after that, I'll be starting my own term there. I can't afford not to eat mixed."
Lycus snorted. "You're attending turian boot camp." It wasn't really a question, but it wasn't a statement, either. His voice rose a little in incredulity, as Dara just nodded. "You are mad."
Lantar chuckled. "Her father's a Spectre." As if it explained everything. Then again, it kind of did.
Eli put a plate with a sandwich on it in front of Dara—turkey and sliced apaterae meat on sourdough, and she nodded gratefully and started eating. Then he could finally stop playing host and good first-son, and start tearing into his own food. In between bites, he offered, "I'll be going next year, with Lin and Tel here. Hopefully, I'll stand just as good a chance of succeeding as Dara."
"Your dad's a Spectre, too," Dara reminded him.
Eli grinned at Lantar. "Yeah, but while Rel keeps telling me I've got my dad's spirit, I don't have the genes. You do." He caught a glimpse of an enormous smile suddenly crossing Lantar's face, quickly hidden as his step-dad reached down, caught Caelia, and settled her on his lap at the table, giving her bites to eat off his plate.
The next day, he called Siara's house, and spoke with Azala. "No, I'm not calling for Siara," he said, as the older female started to turn away to get her daughter.
One fine brow went up. "Oh?"
"Yes. Dara told me something a little disturbing. I think you may need to check her mind." Eli sighed, and explained the whole mess. Azala's expression went tight and drawn.
"I wondered why she had so suddenly withdrawn from the house the other day, and terminated what had been a productive working relationship with me," Azala muttered at last. "Of course I will see Dara. If she will let me."
"I think she will. She still likes you." Eli sighed. "Okay, that being said, is it more appropriate that I say what I have to say to Siara in person or on the comm?"
"And what do you have to say to her?"
Eli couldn't even come up with the words in English. After a long moment's struggle, he found the words in high-tongue. "I would have had her for my more-than-fair, but fairness is a matter of mind as well as flesh, of trust as well as love. She has hurt one dear to me. And did so, being unable to trust me."
"And you cannot forgive?" It was a gentle question, not a judgmental one. Azala was all gentleness.
"It is not a question of forgiveness. It is a question of tolerance. I cannot tolerate harm to my dear ones." It was too soft in high-tongue, and Eli shifted to English for a little more emphasis. "If she can't trust me, then she'll just keep doing this, over and over, and I can't trust her because of that. I can't keep doing this." He shrugged. "So, must I say these words to her, face-to-face?" He really didn't want to. But he figured he should be enough of an adult to do so.
"She has already heard your words, fair and just as they are. It is best for you not to come to us, but you can say your farewells now."
Oh, shit. That was a real down-elevator feeling in the pit of his stomach. Thanks for letting me know she was listening, Azala. That's what you might call helpful.
Azala paused. "Someday, she will be whole again, Elijah. I do believe that. And it will be because you tried to help her. Even in this, you are helping her. There must always be boundaries." She looked off-screen. "Siara? Come here." It was a surprisingly steely command from the woman, and after a moment, Siara shuffled onto the screen, looking down.
"I heard," she said, forestalling anything he could say. "You're right. I can't do anything more ot make it right besides tell Dara, again, that I'm sorry."
Eli shook his head. "Those are just words, Siara."
She paused. "I know." Siara looked up. "Tell me what to do to fix it, and I'll do it."
"Tell her you're sorry. And then leave her the hell alone. Don't talk to her or about her or anything else. Just let it rest."
"And you?"
That was the hard one. "Leave me alone, too."
She shut down the comm channel, and Eli stared at the blank screen for a moment, feeling empty. So, technically, I just broke up with an asari. Why do I have a feeling that every human male on Bastion, if they knew this, would want to kick me? Then again, none of those men could possibly know how complicated Siara was, or how much she made his head hurt. Not to mention everywhere else.
Dara
"Settle down, little one. I can only make your food so fast." Dara was at the clinic, helping with Julian Provian Sunday morning. She knew that human and turian babies both had a tendency to squall their damn heads off when hungry, faces turning red (or blue, appropriately) with rage at being denied, but Julian in particular was an angry baby. "Okay, here we go. Two tablespoons of talashae paste in formula, warmed to human body temperature, coming right up." They actually had to use a blender for this; rice cereal mixed in formula, to feed a human baby with extra nutritional needs, would have dissolved instantly, but talashae paste was quite a bit thicker.
She awkwardly lifted the boy out of his crib and sat down with him in the clinic's nursery. He fell silent on belatedly realizing a bottle had been inserted into his mouth, and greedily started sucking. He was very warm in her arms, and she knew she'd have to check his temperature before settling him back into the crib. He had a history of the wild temperature swings that Amara and Kaius had, but that Caelia had not. No one really knew why the hypothalamus regulated correctly in some hybrids, and not in others. Something to ask Dr. Solus about, Dara thought, a little drowsily. The warmth really was lulling, and the nursery was quiet now, as the other nurses took care of hanar fry in their tank and changed a newborn drell girl's diaper.
After a while, Julian finished the bottle, essentially falling asleep in her arms. She couldn't put him over her shoulder to burp him, but it was just as necessary to clear the crop of air bubbles as it was to clear a human baby's stomach. The method just differed; she put him flat on his back in her lap, and rubbed his tummy until the crop muscles began to work, and he gave a resounding belch in his sleep—much too large-sounding for that tiny body. Then she checked his temperature (105.5º F/ 40.8º C), which was high, swaddled him up, made a note on his chart about the temperature and his feeding time, and told the lead nursery attendant about the temperature before getting ready to leave. "Poor thing's going to need a nanny," the drell nurse told her.
"I know. Either that, or his father's going to be staying home with him all the time."
"Everyone needs a break sometimes. The more so when the kid has problems. And all the hybrids do." The drell female blinked her enormous eyes at Dara. "No offense, of course."
"None taken. It's true." Dara grinned at her. "I'm hoping that when I get around to it, the technology will be better."
"I hope your words please Arashu, goddess of mothers."
"Me too," Dara replied lightly, and went over to peek in the incubator at Dr. Solus' little egg. It was still about twenty to twenty-four days from hatching, but she could see movement inside its translucent outer coating now. And what about you, little female? Are you going to live past the age of ten? Or are you too inbred, like your mothers and grandmothers before you? She knew that Dr. Solus had been up and down the egg's genome, and had fixed a number of issues already. Still, would it be enough?
Salarian females had, historically, laid their eggs in small ponds. Then they had stayed with the eggs to guard them until they hatched, and their extended family of males (a 'harem' in the literature) would bring the females food to eat. Since the female never exited the pool, her wastes actually formed the environment around the eggs, adding nitrates, nitrites, salts, and altering the pH. Hence, in an incubator environment, all these things had to be checked and regulated for the health of the semi-permeable egg and its cargo. Dara checked the pH and the salinity and the potassium levels, and, putting on a glove, carefully turned the egg over in the water, making notes on the chart to let the nurses know that it had been done.
Then it was time to go follow Dr. Solus on rounds. He had two regular interns, in their twenties, scurrying around, answering questions, but occasionally fired one or two queries at Dara, which always made her freeze like a deer in the headlights, and then the answer would fall out of her mouth, usually without any conscious volition. How does he keep track of where I am in my studies to know that I'd even know this yet?
By 11:00, Dara was just about ready to go home, but Commander Shepard had another prenatal appointment, and Dr. Solus tended to want her there for those. "Hey there, Dara," Shepard told her, leaning back against the table, which Dara hurried over to raise a little further for her. "Haven't seen you in a week or so."
They got to talking—and Dara was much more comfortable with 'Aunt Lilu' at this point than she had been even three months ago. "So, I heard from Garrus that you had a run-in with an asari girl this past week. You talk to your dad about that?"
Dara winced. "Talked to Kasumi first. Then my dad. Mostly so I wouldn't get the 'why don't you trust me?' lecture again."
"You're getting a little old for lectures. Once you pass through the gates of a turian bootcamp, you'll be a legal adult in the Hierarchy."
"Dad's not going to see me as an adult even when I'm old and gray and walking with a cane."
Shepard snorted with laughter, then went thoughtful for a moment. "Garrus said you managed to block her."
"Yeah." Dara shifted, uncomfortably. "She tried to get at the simulation memories first. Managed to convince her that it wasn't relevant to what she was looking for. Then she went diving after . . . I don't know, really." She shook her head. "Whatever it is about me that makes, well, specific people like me. It's not like I'm popular." The turians like me because I'm Rel's, and they like Rel. The human boys at school tolerate me because I'm Eli's friend, and they like Eli. The human girls? Mostly can't stand me. She shrugged, banishing the thoughts. "Anyhow, she wanted to know about Eli and me, and then she went in after Rel and me, together, and then she dropped right out of my mind."
Shepard's eyes crinkled, indicating that she was smiling behind the breather, but when she spoke, her tone was rueful. "It's good to know it works for other people. I thought it might be because the damn Prothean beacon broke my mind, or because of, well, being dead for six months and rebuilt had changed something in me. The way I figure it, is this. Asari aren't female, Dara. They look female to dual-gendered species like ours, and we use feminine-gendered pronouns for them because 'it' and 'its' sound rude in English. Hell, I saw a memo floated from the diplomatic corps five years ago that suggested referring to asari by a new pronoun, to preserve accuracy while retaining respect. The linguists behind the proposed change wanted to use 'shi' and 'hir'. The rest of the community came back with the comment that the pronouns didn't sound any different, and that the only change would be in print, where it would just be man-hours spent changing documentation for the sake of political correctness. And that every other language that the documents got translated into would have to find their own new pronouns, too."
Dara laughed, and Shepard shook her head, still seeming a little rueful. "Given all that, the mind of a human female is probably as close to their own as they can get. Maybe a drell female might be closer. Asari aren't mammals, although they nurse their young. They have an amphibious past, but they aren't amphibians or reptiles, either. They're also herbivores who became omnivores, not predators who became omnivores. They're their own thing."
"Yeah, the xenobiology texts aren't quite sure how to categorize them," Dara agreed.
"So, given that they've popped into the mind of someone who's like them, but unlike them, that sets up a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. That's okay. They're trained for it. Some of them like it. Some of them go cruising for emotional highs and lows—shorter-lived species experience higher peaks and valleys than the asari do. When you realize that a 'whirlwind romance' for them lasts fifty years, you'll understand why." Shepard shrugged. "So, some of them like to dip in, taste what they don't necessarily have themselves, and move on. But when they're in an alien mind, and when I—and, apparently, when you, too, Dara—focus on, well. . ."
Dara grinned. Commander Shepard, hero of the galaxy, got just as tongue-tied as any other human when talking about intimacy. "I find these conversations go easier in turian," she said, and got out the blood pressure cuff. She might as well get the baseline test results for Dr. Solus, who seemed to be running late.
"Spirits, yes, they do." Shepard switched languages in a tone of absolute relief, and explained, clinically, "When a turian male takes his mate, usually it is in complete dominance. It has to be that way, for his protection and for hers. That is alien to an asari, where everything is sharing. He's also a predator. The human involved has a more predatory past than the asari as well. There's a lot in us that likes the aggression. Doesn't just accept it as unusual or interesting or a quirk of the species. We like it. So there are his instincts at work, and then there are the human female's instincts at play, too."
She paused, and Dara filled in the blanks for her, nodding. She'd been trying very hard not to think about this stuff for the past eighty days or so. Thinking about it only made her miss Rel more. Now it all rushed back to mind, and she looked down and away for a moment, controlling her face. Submitting, finding delight in being taken, finding pleasure as well as pain in the control-bite."One twenty-seven over seventy-five," she said, reading the numbers on the digital readout. "That's a little high."
Shepard coughed a bit. "Yeah, take it again in five minutes, okay?"
Dara laughed, a little guiltily, and Shepard laughed as well, adding, "So, that's two levels of alien instincts, but filtered through a mind that's like theirs, but not like theirs.As far as I can tell, it causes moderate to severe cognitive dissonance for them, and it snaps them right out of your mind. Doesn't work on all of them. Don't ever try it on an ardat-yaksi. They feed on emotional highs and lows."
"An ardat-what?"
"You should be able to look it up in the base databanks. I really don't like thinking about them." Shepard shuddered.
"Well, don't think about them for the next couple of minutes, or that blood-pressure reading is going to spike, and Dr. Solus is going to cluck at you when he gets in here." Dara folded her arms across her chest as she spoke, pragmatically.
Shepard chuckled. She was 194 days into the gestational cycle now, and was probably going to have a c-section in mid-January, around day 315. Dara would still be in boot camp, and would miss the delivery, which, she was surprised to realize, annoyed her. She'd put a lot of effort into seeing Shepard and these children healthy, and she wouldn't even be able to hold them, even wearing a mask and gloves. "You have any plans besides study, study, study, run, run, run, and spar, spar, spar, before you leave?" she asked, changing the subject.
"In a couple of weeks, when the allora trees bloom, I'm going to go up to Rel's and my favorite spot in the mountains." Dara shrugged. "Will be the last time I get to ride a horse for a long time, probably. Figured I'd say goodbye to it."
Shepard smiled for a moment. "The giant allora trees, up to the northeast of base?"
"Yeah," Dara said, ducking her head for a moment, then grinning. I guess she really does know every place on this base. "I don't ever want to see that place developed or anything else."
"Oh, hell no. It would be a crime."
Eventually, Dr. Solus bustled in, and pronounced Lilitu healthy. "Wish to try weaning off of cyanolimus and going back onto tacilimus?" he asked her. "Would take about two weeks, but then breather precautions not as necessary."
"God, yes," Shepard said, fervently. "So long as food still tastes somewhat decent, I'll do whatever it takes to get out of the damned breather. Last time, I didn't have two walking petrie dishes in the house, of course. And since I was confined to bed from six months on, everyone who came to me was decontaminated. So no breather then. This has been a pain in the ass this time."
"Better than bedrest. No continuous IV drip. Some improvements," Dr. Solus told her.
"Some, yeah. Still not perfect."
"Pregnancies are never perfect." Dr. Solus blinked at her, solemnly. "We try to make them, at least, less hazardous. Viviparous species invest heavily in their offspring."
Dara walked out of the room, and was very ready to get out of her scrubs, when the front desk paged her. What now? she thought, and headed up to the desk, to find Azala waiting for her. "This seemed as good a place for a checkup as any," the asari woman told her. "Can we find a room for a moment?"
Dara winced, and saw Azala wince, in turn, at her expression. "Sorry. Sure. Come on back." Dara found an unoccupied room that had been recently cleaned, and sat down on the table. "Are you going to feel my lymph nodes and take my temperature?"
Azala tried to smile, but it wasn't much of one. "No. Just a light touch. A little pressure on your mind."
Dara reminded herself that if worst came to worst, she now had Commander Shepard's patented method for blocking asari in hand, and took a deep breath, trying to relax.
It was mercifully impersonal. Being read, like a book, or a data crystal being touched by a computer's laser. Because of that, Dara was able to relax. "Good," Azala said, after a moment. "I don't sense any lingering memories here. She didn't really share; she only took." From the expression on Azala's face, Dara got the feeling that this was also somehow not quite right for asari, but at the moment, she didn't really care enough to explore the xenopsychological aspects.
"Okay, glad to hear it. Thank you for checking on me." Dara slid off the exam table. "I've got two final reports waiting for me back at the house, and my dad's having a get-together tonight."
"I know. Gris asked me to come along." Azala lowered her head. "I shouldn't go."
Dara looked at her. It would be difficult to look at Azala in quite the same way, but then again, Azala hadn't done it. "Don't be silly. If Gris wants you there, you're more than welcome. But. . ."
"Yes. Siara will remain at home." Azala looked at her, steadily. "Do you want her punished in any way?"
Dara looked off into the mid-distance for a moment. "I want her to leave me and my friends alone. Past that, whatever asari do for stuff like this, is fine with me." I'm off of Mindoir in a little over thirty days. She probably can't do much more to me. But I don't want to hear about anything else while I'm gone.
Azala nodded. "Done." Her lips tightened. "In the absence of asari law, I thought I might have Gris discipline her. She apparently needs a strong figure in her life."
Dara tried, very hard, not to smile, and almost succeeded. After a moment, she said, "That sounds fair to me."
Time began to pass in earnest now. Instead of playing piano on off-nights, Dara continued to spar, just with her dad, trying to absorb everything he had to teach her. "Turians like to kick, and they really like those high kicks. I tend to think of that as a gift from god," he told her one night. "There's just so much you can do when someone's been stupid enough to hand you one of their weapons, and unbalance themselves at the same time. Same basic weakness as tae kwon do; and there's a weakness to every system, sweetie. Now, a lot of them are good enough and fast enough to make it work anyway. Garrus is. Rel is. Allardus and Lantar both are, but they're not the tall, fast types. . . which is why they actually like grappling more, which is kind of unusual for turians. Here's what you do with the ones who aren't fast enough or good enough." And he started to show her how to catch and redirect the force of a kick, to bend the knee and send the person flying, to lift the leg out of the way, step in, and slam the opposite, supporting leg at the knee or ankle. "Here's what I want you to think about. Don't kick high. Sure, you can kick someone in the head, but why risk opening yourself up like that, when you can knock 'em down by destabilizing ankles and knees, with nothing more than your own leg?"
Another lesson, this time with Allardus as the dummy, was in finding nerve points on turians. Dara knew where they were from her anatomy textbook, but now she had to learn to feel where they were, engrain it into muscle memory. "You barely reacted, pada'amu," Dara told Allardus after one strike. "How can you say that was a good hit?"
Allardus grinned. "Part of the reason we had Rel sparring constantly was to desensitize him to pain, fila. I've spent half my life working pretty hard on that, myself. Most of the recruits you'll be fighting will feel what you just did."
Her dad nodded. "Same thing with neck chokes and ankle cranks and everything else. You have it done to you often enough, and you just plain don't feel it as much anymore. Well, up until something gets strained and you don't let it heal right. Then you feel it every damned time till you damned well let it heal."
Allardus chuckled at her dad's words, and then they were off again.
Another lesson, another night. "Grab my wrist and close your eyes."
Warily, Dara did just that. "Now, what you have to work on is feeling where someone's body is, what they're doing. That way, you're not looking and trying to figure out what to do; you just feel it, and your body reacts. When I move this way," and his arm shifted one direction. . . "it feels different than when I move this way, right?" This time, his arm really torqued, and her body moved with it.
"Yeah. Lot more powerful that time, but I didn't hear your feet move."
"They didn't. First time, all I moved was my arm. Second time, I moved my hips. There's only so many ways bones and muscles connect in a humanoid body, sweetie. Turians and humans both power most of their fighting through the hips. They focus more on legs, obviously, but all the power comes from turning the hips." Sam demonstrated a few more times. "Now, as people are in motion, I've told you before to think about triangles. Their feet are under them are two points of the triangle. The triangular point, to either side of them, is their dead space. Move them towards it, and they'll fall. Where's my dead space right now—and don't open your eyes. Just push."
It took a while, but all of a sudden, it clicked for her. "Good. This is something it's going to take years to develop, sweetie, but that's what I teach. When you get really good at it, which will take three, maybe four years, you won't have any problems, and you'll never get hung up, waiting for the chance to use the perfect move on the perfect setup. . . because bad guys never give you the courtesy of starting off and letting you use a set move for a set situation."
She got a long letter from Rel on September 30, and read it at the dinner table for her in-laws, her dad, and Kasumi on October 1—leaving out the husband-to-wife teasing, of course. Solanna made an annoyed sound under her breath at the mention of the bite wound to his arm. "Sounds like this Lintorum has no honor."
Sam looked up. "Is he likely to be at the same center next session?"
Allardus nodded. "Yes. He'll have had five weeks to recover. More than enough time for surgery, medigel, and rehabilitation to have done the job. And Dara's slated for the Dacian center as well."
"Shit." Sam looked down the table at the younger kids. "Sorry, kids, you didn't hear me say that."
Solanna grimaced. "It might come to nothing. They'll probably be aware of the potential issue and keep him in a barracks that, mathematically, is unlikely to join with yours at any point, Dara."
"Even after they rearrange the squads at the halfway mark?" Dara asked, feeling her heart sink a little.
"Don't borrow trouble," Kasumi told her.
"And we'll make sure you're ready, in case there is trouble," Allardus told her, and then turned the conversation to which hotel they would need to stay at. Her dad and Kasumi had found one called Caupona, on the outskirts of the city of Dacia, which catered to aliens; no windows in any rooms, but it had fire escapes at the end of each hall, however. It had human/asari-style beds in some of the rooms, a volus section in the basement, thick, stone walls, and a lead-lined roof. "They guarantee less than three millirems of exposure a day in one of the interior rooms," Kasumi read off her omnitool after dinner."
"Book us two," her dad told her. "I'll be leaving for work soon, but I should be back by then."
Kasumi shook her head. "I'll make it three. Lantar said he wanted to take Eli with him there, so Eli could see what the boot camp facility looks like, before he turns in paperwork and starts gene mods and all that."
Sam snorted. "Yeah. When Dara finishes, Eli's pride isn't gonna let him back down." Dara noticed the word when there, instead of the if, and she looked down, smiling a little at her father's support and pride.
Sparring went up several degrees in intensity after that evening, however, she noticed. But on, October 1, her dad, Lantar, Garrus, and most of the other Spectres had to leave. "We should be back in time for me to go with you to Palaven," her dad reminded her, packing his kit.
"It's okay, Dad," she told him, leaning against the doorframe. "We'll say goodbye now, just in case. But I won't blame you if you don't make it." Dara grinned. "At least this time, when you leave, I don't have to start packing at the same time. It's nice having Kasumi here."
"I kind of think so, myself." His voice was very amused, and Dara started to giggle.
"Oh, so now I'm a convenience?" Kasumi said, with mock-ire behind Dara, in the hall.
Sam leaned down and gave Dara a kiss. "Be good," he told her, as he had on every 'business trip' he'd ever taken, and then gave her a tight hug. Then he looked at Kasumi, and just grinned. "Why, darlin' I do find it much more convenient to find you in my bed every morning. For one thing, you sure do keep the sheets nice and warm."
Dara put her face in her hands, blushing and laughing at the same time as Sam slung his kit over his shoulder, went over, and gave Kasumi a kiss. From the dull clank she heard, followed by an ouch from Kasumi, she could guess that the little woman had tried to kick him in his armored shins. "You're going to pay for that, Sam Jaworski," Kasumi threatened, not at all seriously.
"I look forward to your revenge," he told her, with aplomb. "Take care of yourself." And then he was out the door.
Dara looked at Kasumi. "Am I going to have more autopsies to look forward to after this trip?" The procedure didn't give her nightmares anymore, at least.
Kasumi shook her head, her expression bleak. "Probably not. This is more relevant to the medical issues you and Shep had last month.
Dara thought about that for a moment. "Good."
The next fifteen days were. . . odd. They both sped by and lumbered past, and the same time. She heard nothing from either her father or from Rel, of course, for quite some time.
She finished all of her finals. Turned in her reports. Received her honor's degree. Packed up the last of her room. Practiced climbing and swimming and running and rifles with Eli, Linianus, and Telinus. That left her with ten or eleven days of dead time on her hands. Plenty of time to worry, in fact. At least when Rel had been preparing to leave, they'd had the wedding, each other, and any number of other things to occupy their minds. All Dara had was her worries.
On October 10, Shepard called her up to the base. "Got a surprise for you," was the commander's cryptic message. "Come on over."
Dara passed through the decontamination chamber, and came into the Vakarians' living area. "Aunt Lilu?" she called, hesitantly.
"I'm in the bedroom. Come on in."
Dara poked her head in the door. "There you are," Shepard said. "Damn I'm glad to be back on tacilimus. No more breather for a while." She wrinkled her nose. "I was beginning to forget what things smelled like."
The younger woman chuckled. Shepard smiled for a moment. "So, I hear the Hierarchy considers you the Spectre recruit, as opposed to the Marine recruit or the Naval recruit."
"Yeah." Dara shook her head. "I think it was just product of it being a form letter, and a clerk being too lazy to type, but now they're really insisting that I bring my own armor and a radiation barrier suit for night-time, too. My dad said he was going to order me something before he left, but. . . " She shifted on her feet. It had been nine days since he left, and time was getting very short.
"Yeah, I told him not to bother."
Dara blinked. "We've got tons of radiation suits around here. You can take two with you. As to armor. . ." Shepard pushed a button, and a locker opened in the wall. "Take my old set. I've got a new one in Spectre black now." She grinned. "Not like any of it's going to fit right now, anyway, right?"
Dara stared at her, at the dark blue armor with the burgundy stripes that had been in every single vid around the galaxy, and then at Shepard again. "I. . . I couldn't."
"Nonsense. You're almost the same height as I am. Move a few buckles here and there, and it'll fit fine. We'll block out the N7 badge, because that's not you. They'll paint it boot camp gray when you get there, anyway, and then it's just another set of armor, right?" Lilitu pulled herself to her feet, and Dara reached automatically for the woman's hand, helping her to stand. "Now, I know damned well that turians have a different way of storing their gear than the Alliance does. I know that, 'cause every time Garrus looks in my locker, he growls. Do it their way for boot camp and inspections, but for the love of god, do it our way the rest of the time. They take ninety seconds to get into their gear because of the spurs and how the equipment locks together. A human takes well under a minute, if you do it right. And I'm going to teach you to do it right."
They got the armor on her the first time, just to fit it properly, and make sure that she had free range of motion, and then Dara practiced it several times, to get it right. "Both services use an elasticized suit underneath everything. Our thermal units are in that suit, though. Theirs are in the armor itself," Shepard told her. "All right, pants first."
Where turian armor needed to be segmented, to accommodate the spurs, human armor pulled on like a pair of pants. "They get a little more resilience out of their models; the seals and locks at each joint function almost like a quarian's suit. If one piece is breached, the rest lock down, and protect the wearer. We have gaskets at each joint in ours, but they're not as well-designed—in my opinion, anyway. On the other hand, we get ready for combat a hell of a lot faster than they do. Boots next."
Fortunately, these had been loose, not tight, and had adjusted with a couple of clicks on a knob on the exterior. Dara locked the seals of the boot to the plates of the greaves, and grabbed the backpack. "We adapted this from their service, actually. Forty years ago, all Alliance armor had air canisters on the outside. Water rations and liquid nutrients were loaded into the armor's frame, too. This is a little better. Rebreather, backup air, and nutrients, all in one system, and not integrated fully to the suit. Less of a chance of springing a leak." Shepard grimaced, and her eyes went distant. "Still happens, though. Get your coif up."
Dara nodded, but didn't ask what memories that statement had prompted. She buckled the harness into place, pulled the hood of the elasticized suit up over her head, slipped the chestplate-and-backplate combination, which already had shoulder plates in place, over her head, and extricated her hoses, and established positive seals between the chest and the pants; largely, this occurred at the waist, which had flexible plates for range of motion. "Get your omnitool in place, then gloves. Then helmet. Establish seals and hoses. Activate the suit. . . and you're done." Shepard grinned. "Think you can do it faster next time?"
"Yeah. This is just like getting dressed in the morning. Couple of extra steps, but it's really not bad."
"I know. Great, isn't it?" Shepard grinned. "I had them install some mods on the suit. Redundant pressure seals. First aid interface. Shock absorbers. All-purpose stuff, really. Was tempted to put in the motorized joints I like to use instead of an exoskeleton on heavy-g planets, but I thought the drill instructors might regard that as cheating." She winked.
Dara grinned at her through the helmet's visor. "I really can't thank you enough."
"Eh, we skin-and-scale couples have to stick together."
"Is that what we're called now?"
"It's the most polite version out there."
"I don't want to hear what the impolite version is, do I?"
"No, but you'll hear it anyway." Shepard patted her on the back. "I've got a chit set up for you for a rad meter and two sets of rad barrier coveralls. Go pick 'em up at the post exchange, all right?"
"Thank you. I will."
The next day, October 11, the queen egg hatched. Dara was spending every morning at the clinic now, just to have something to do besides run, shoot, climb, swim, and worry, so she was there for the emergence. The little female was in the tadpole stage now, and Dr. Solus showed signs of detached pride as she swam around her small incubation enclosure. "Good lateral undulations," he noted. "Need to supply algae and other nutrients. Larger tank enclosure also required, for the moment. Legs should start to develop in two weeks. Tail be reabsorbed by body, repurposed for nutrients."
"Are you going to take her down to the science station, where the other salarian hatchlings are?" Dara asked.
"No. Environment inappropriate. Queens raised separately. Other young sense that they are different. Females can become aggressive when crowded. Usually raised by other females. Unfortunately, not an option here." Dr. Solus blinked at her solemnly.
Dara's eyebrows rose, and she shook her head. I have no idea how you're going to pull this off, Dr. Solus. But I guess if anyone can, you will.
A day later, Kasumi told her, "Okay, one of the things your dad wanted me to show you before you left. . . mostly to prepare you. . . is the mail your old account has been receiving since Shanxi."
Dara sighed. "This is going to be one of those reality-check moments, isn't it?"
"Afraid so." Kasumi sat down next to her. "If it helps, Garrus and Shep have seen this all before. Yours may be a little more hurtful in places, because some of it is from people you actually knew, back in Texas. Your dad didn't want you to see most of this until you were ready."
And I'm ready now? Dara nodded, slowly. "All right. Let's look at it."
The letters ranged from the banal to the cruel and back again, and Dara learned a whole new vocabulary for hate. "Well, I guess not too many turians would call me a scale-whore or a scale-skank." Or a reptile-fucker or a scale-licker. They probably also wouldn't suggest that I commonly swallow dinosaur semen. "Humans are stuck on the whole scale thing, aren't they?" It was a feeble attempt at humor, at best. Dara was mostly angry, at this point, but she knew there was probably worse to follow.
Kasumi laughed. "Yeah, they are. Turians are more likely to insult Rel in those terms than you. They'll suggest that he wasn't strong enough to handle a female in estrus, and isn't male enough as a result. They'll say that he doesn't have scales, or spurs, or just plain doesn't have the teeth for anything other than a human. A turian is much more likely to call you a shit-eater."
Dara blinked. "A what?"
"Comes from the idea that an omnivore will eat anything."
"Hey, look guys, someone didn't pass basic biology. A detitrivore eats crap. Not an omnivore." Dara tossed the datapad down on the bed, and gingerly rubbed at her eyes. Paint in the eyes tended to hurt.
"Stupid people come up with some of the most common insults." Kasumi handed the pad back to her. "Let's work through these, shall we?"
Dara winced, and read the next message. "Spiteful," she finally assessed, at the end. "Apparently, I'm just looking for a way to get into the . . . royal family?" She looked at Kasumi. "That's a new take on things."
Kasumi snorted. "That one will get worse over time, especially when the kids grow up. . . the more so if they become Spectres in turn. Personally, I hope Amara and Kaius and the two that are on the way take after their grandpa Roland Shepard and their uncle Allardus, and stay nice, quiet, safe xenobiologists or engineers or doctors and live in total obscurity. Would make my job much easier. But yes. There are folks out there who see Shep and Garrus as starting a little domain of their own, outside the law, somehow in shadowy control of everything. Paranoia. So, yeah. The royal family motif has been coming up more often lately. You ready for the personal ones?"
Dara sighed. Not really. "No, but let's get this over with."
The ones from the kids at the old school in Lufkin were bad. Most of them were offended that Dara hadn't replied to their initial messages. Think you're so special, think you're so much better than we are now. "No, just busy and out of touch," she told the screen, under her breath. Then the really bad ones started. It was one thing to be called a whore or a bitch or a skank or a slag by anonymous people. It was quite another to be called the same thing by people with whom she'd grown up. "Wow," she said, after five or ten of the messages, and her voice broke. "If you and my dad were out to cure me of my faith in humanity. . . and this, even after the trip to Odessa for the rings. . . you succeeded."
Kasumi put an arm around her shoulders, and Dara leaned on the little woman's shoulder for a moment. "We wanted to show you that, individually, people are smart and kind and good. Collectively, people are stupid and far more in touch with the id than with the superego." Kasumi looked at her. "You're going to hear absolutely stupid shit, and a lot of it, for a long time. Don't let it get to you. Be turian. Don't let them see that it bothers you. Get the crying out when they can't see, and when they can see, bite back."
Dara grabbed a couple of tissues, cleaned her face up, and said, as calmly as she could, "That's really good advice, Kasumi." I just hope I can follow it. "I think the turian insults are more likely to make me laugh. The human ones. . . well. . . I won't hear a lot of those, for a while."
Kasumi nodded slowly, then added, reluctantly, "Unless you're stationed on Bastion at some point, or go there for shore leave, or . . . if you visit Earth or any human colony other than this base here on Mindoir."
She sighed. "Yeah. I kind of had that part figured out already." Dara looked at Kasumi. "Think I've seen enough?"
Kasumi nodded. "For now, yeah. Let's go get some dinner."
On the fifteenth, Dara rode up into the mountains, taking her time. Their allora meadow had a few branches down, here and there, from the snows of winter, but was as beautiful as ever. Just looking up at those white-pink blooms, pale and lovely against the blue-violet sky, made her heart ache. She wanted to be with Rel, but she didn't want to leave this place, either. She took her time there, letting the horse browse. She gathered several hundred of the tiny flowers, and took them home with her, letting them dry in her room; the fragrance was heavenly for a few days. Then she packed them up into an air-tight container, and put it with her travelcase, along with the few items she was taking with her to Palaven. Rel was going to have to look after the spirit table stuff and coins and the necklace he'd given her for a while, or they'd have to find a storage locker for it.
The night of the fifteenth of October, two things happened. First, her father came home at last, and Kasumi and she were deeply relieved. "If you want to know what we've been doing while we were gone, you'll have to watch the news," he told Dara, cryptically.
"It's public enough that it's on the extranet, but you still won't tell me?"
"It's much more fun this way, sweetie." He grinned at her. "You'll understand in the morning when the story breaks."
The second thing that happened, was that Rel sent her a brief message, saying he was back from the field, and that he needed food, sleep, and more food, in that order. Six days, amatra, he wrote. Can't wait to see you. And bite you. And everything else.
And Dara simply smiled, because now her world was back on its proper axis again.
