The Citadel | Widow Nebula | 2180
(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)
A large hand lands an unkind swat on her ass and she wakes with a start.
"Tev, get...up."
Aria rolls over, clearly bothered at the interruption but not so bothered as to break their sleeping-clasp. She winds her longer legs around Tevos' ankles to keep her own half of the siame meld as Tevos reaches for the dish on her side of the spatter of massive, supple cushions that to Aria is a 'bed' and uses it to cover the blinking light of her omni-tool long enough to let her bondmate go back to sleep.
Lycoris' coos grow louder for a few moments, making Tevos' entire body go taut. Comfort your child! A gentle halo of sea-blue and salt-white light wraps around the little one and draws her from her sleeping cushion over to Aria's arms, where she immediately quiets...and the most ruthless asari in ages chuckles happily as the newborn murmurs nonsense into her ainthar's skin.
"Better if you deal with whoever's calling than me," Aria whispers, her biotics yanking a small pillow from who-knows-where in this varren's den of a bedroom and swatting Tevos with it. "Sleep..." she murmurs, bringing her lips to Lycoris' crests. "Sleep little scholar, sleep little warrior, sleep little shadow."
Aria is perceptive, cunning, lustful, merciless to enemies, plays with her food if she thinks the threat is minor, and seems bemused by the idea that she could be unseated. If the Malari Queens of old and their honor guard of Ardat-Yakshis ever wrote a how-to-scare-asari manual, that's the summary of it.
She's also masterful with a fussing infant and has Lycoris on her hip or sleeping crests-to-chest for the mother's meld nearly as much as Tevos despite the fact that Tevos nurses her.
No one else gets to see her like this. I don't always get to, Tevos muses to herself, tapping delay before covering the omni with her palm and letting herself sink into the memories that led a rule-obsessed clerk for the Republic's embassies into Aria's bed and how finding herself there changed everything.
Over time, in exchange for bits of herself, Aria shared six pieces of herself with Tevos: Warrior, Charmer, Ruler, Schemer, Protector, and Mother.
Warrior. A warlord two and a half centuries her senior-well into her matronhood-lifting Tevos' chin with boot-tip and asking why such a promising diplomat was on Omega, of all places. Such an oddity. Worth explaining over a drink and a meal, didn't she think? Tevos had taken asari lovers and relished them for their slow, melting, patient, dripping sex as unhurried as their long lives. That was not Aria. Aria fucked her fast and messy and powerful-like a tempest broiling over the Cold Sea, eventually literally, after hour upon hour of Aria's biotics drew eezo dust from the mines and wrapped them in a thunderstorm. Left Tevos sore where she wanted to be, tender in places she'd never considered someone taking pleasure in her, and responsive to Aria's lightest touch. A fingertip tracing her scales anywhereand a click of the tongue, and she'd spread her legs without hesitation. She was soaked the instant whispers of the words 'pureblood', 'slut', or 'pet' ghosted across her aurals. She came around Aria's fingers, her toys, and thrashed and sagged and melted and sobbed around pure biotic energy had Aria gently formed deep in her azure, spreading her from the inside that made Tevos' vision white. A trick that Aria could maintain for hours and did, over a long dinner in Purgatory with more minor criminals, with her bodyguard between them-no hope of melding and finally coming-as Tevos' fingers clung to the table and she shook and mewled. A leaf in the storm.
Charmer. While Aria made her wait to be heard, Tevos watched.
She held court on that couch in Purgatory with enough calm that the ordinary dared approach, but a glance at her guards made would-be krogan warlords shudder. Her motions were explosive when frustrated, amused, or aroused, and still when she wished to give nothing away, and slow, icy, and small when someone had gone beyond her bounds. There was warmth to being in her presence-like standing almost too close to a flame-a bright light when under her grin, always a sense that a nod and an opening of the arm to wrap around a companion was an invitation to secret, forbidden places.
She also eschewed armor, though her biotics hit the skin of any nearby asari like a desert wind. She was a killer, but dressed as a dandy and spoke like someone used to smiling their way past anyone they didn't want to kill. Tevos was not surprised she was fashionable, her clothes cut between dangerous and tempting-rachni-silk in blood-red, ravion-calf leather boots, a corset cut out from a huntress' kit, and a jacket of ravion leather that looked like it was soft as cream. All of her looked slick, literally so, as if anywhere her partner put a hand, it would slide off.
And she made Tevos wait, knowing damn well-the Armali City Guard to either side of Tevos was a clue-who she was, who she represented, and what she offered...she made her wait.
Then she nodded to the couch next to her, indicating that Thessia could have its turn.
She took the datapad with the treaty, glanced at it then leaned back on the couch, rolled her head lazily to face Tevos, and asked if it might be better for the Republics if they discussed this elsewhere. It tickled her curiosity that Aria spoke like someone well-tutored-her accent that of an Armali-native and her diction as expensive and exclusive as Tevos' own-and scattered obscure stories and references in her ancedotes. This was no thug.
Ruler. Since Tevos had to wait, she watched. "When they are not speaking to you, my daughter, you can learn far more." Clearly Aria was unafraid. Not desperate to acknowledge the Republics-no need to scurry and bend the knee to mighty Thessia. But the files were off, Tevos realized: The files had no information on Aria on her throne, only in warzones. Unlike the picture the files drew, Aria was no reckless fool eager to make enemies. She had idiots dragged off but she listened to others, offering what she could afford, and in so doing, collected favors.
From the corner she had been made to stand in like an unruly pupil, Tevos could see the supplicants well: A parade of batarian smugglers, turians in pirate-clan markings, glassy-eyed salarians who were probably cultists, and a quarian captain trembling like a leaf who Aria whispered her price to. He retreated, bowing and never turning his back. Tevos wonders what it cost him.
Aria doled out largess to the vorcha on the station to keep the restive, short-lived species content, praised a merchant for the lovely couch, joked with her men about the new weapon they'd invented. Good, generous and gentle government, or what passes for it on Omega.
Some asari merc who played a recorded message from the Batarian Hegemony and their slavers got a bullet mid-sentence. She had just handed over the unlock codes for the collars, giving away her only leverage against Aria. The terrified maidens she'd brought as 'gifts' were taken to the dancer's room. "Not earning any tips wearing those," Aria sniffed. The brutal, untouchable queen once more.
The slaver was last, so her audience was the memorable one. For everyone but those she'd helped, the impression left was Aria's control and cruelty, not her charity.
She beckoned to Tevos before she'd even snapped her fingers to have the body taken. Thessia could wait, but Thessia would be heard and engaged with, if and when it suited Aria...Perhaps, with four centuries' hindsight...Aria called her last because she wanted Tevos to still be on the station for dinner.
Schemer. Tevos was four hundred fifty, recently cooled from maidenhood and strangely lonely about it. She had melded more sparingly and with fewer than most, knowing that going to bed early and alone would save time for studies and career and wanting to hold off motherhood until she was a matriarch for her career's sake. She'd spent nearly a century and had gone into debt trying to hire an akero who could treat her so casually-you're a good enough fuck for a cheap treaty-without it feeling shameful, but liberating as it had been in a thrown-together playroom in a mining camp's ruins. Aria was burned into her, she finally accepted. She didn't just need someone to steer her through a meld, grab her consciousness and put it where her akero wanted it. She wanted Aria to do it. If Aria ever came back to her, she would be as good as taken.
That night hadn't left her imagination for more than a few days.
Then one day, the Citadel was abuzz. Aria T'Loak was coming. Somehow she chose to go to the Asari Consulate's Department of Documents and Records-the least sexy and impressive of sub-basements-and knock on Tevos' office door. Aria remembered that single night, remembered Tevos' fuck-drunk ramblings and daydreams of political excellence which she had despairingly written off as post-orgasmic delusions of grandeur. Aria had set her sights on something. And no power in the galaxy has yet stopped her from getting what she wants.
Protector. A whirlwind of sex-mind-melting to reward her for successes, tender and slow when she needed to sob out her setbacks-and giggling, maiden-like talks in the moments after, or at the back tables of well-bribed and mob-aligned restaurants steeled Tevos as she climbed the ladder. Aria opened the Citadel to her.
Aria fucked her tenderly some nights, no matter how much she begged for a mauling, saying without a word or a meldspace hint that you are precious and valuable to me. She loves water and especiallyfucking in water. She pulls Tevos into the shower, the Citadel's simulated rain, towering northern waves back home with lunatic glee. She is a storm, and Tevos knows that Aria doesn't fear them, nor should she fear them while encircled in her arms. Their biotics tangle and her bondmate's body crashes over hers in time with sprays and waves and sheets of rain. Aria is the fire that keeps her warm, and Tevos clings to her, unsure what will shake her to pieces first: The pleasure, the tempestuous beast atop her, or the mingling tears that splash their skin.
Bonding with Aria nearly destroyed her career, as she knew it might. Association with Aria brought her halfway to defeat in her re-election. But she always felt she owed half of it to Aria, anyway.
With a bracelet on her wrist, and three hundred years to grow their love, Aria admitted she had one last secret to share.
That was when Tevos got the last piece of the puzzle.
Mother. Mother Aria that made all the rest click into place. All the others existed to make Mother possible at all. The skills of someone who could protect her daughter from anything, teach her anything and pay for what she could not teach herself, and leave her an empire second only to The Thirty themselves.
She needed the Seventh Oath first-fidelity of the soul-because unlike all their others, this secret made Aria weak. Tevos re-swore the oath to remove any doubt. And then the glimmering gold-and-black armor of elite Eclipse mercs broke ranks and out stepped Liselle T'Loak, a lanky taele of sixty-three with the strongest resemblance Tevos had ever seen between mother and daughter, and a tiny bandage around her neck.
"Cerberus' best swordsman wasn't very good," Liselle joked, her voice hoarse but her smirk as sharp as her mother's. She handed Aria some scrap of blue metal-proof of her kill, most likely-and Aria nodded curtly, pleased with her heir's lethality.
Then she waved away the guards before launching herself at Liselle, embracing her tight and fussing over her head to toe looking for other wounds.
Liselle strolled around the apartment, declared an unused bedroom was now hers, and started to unpack.
Tevos has no doubt that Lycoris was conceived that night. She dove into the meld like she was trying to drink the seas, swam and swam and swam down into Aria's mind, desperate for that strength for their daughter, desperate to feel a tiny mind unfurling in her belly, reaching out to her mother in the womb-meld. It took them three days to recognize their own appearances in the mirror after they left so much inside each other. Aria's ferocious love and Tevos' patience and tolerance-she is bonded to Aria T'Loak, Goddess' sake-became perfect little Lycoris. Precocious little Lycoris, who she could feel in the womb-meld so early she fled to her doctor in a panic, certain the pregnancy was dangerously accelerated.
She lets herself watch the brutal queen clutch her babe to her breast and fall into a matching, gentle breathing pattern with her big hands cradling Lycoris's crests to give her as much meld as the greedy infant might desire.
Goddess, but she looks like Aria. As much as Liselle. Absolutely nothing about Lycoris looks like Tevos carried her. Her skin, dark purple like an ajahe fruit's core, darker even than Aria's. If her ability to get into trouble before she can walk gives any indication, she'll get Aria's height and restlessness, too. Even the patterns on her crests are the knife-sharp lines of Aria's, closer to tattoos or inked razor scars than naturally stained scales. They are paler, though, and numerous, so Tevos can hope that by maidenhood, at least the colors will be her mother's.
The omni blinks again, brighter this time. The message is priority but unlabeled, so it's encrypted. It could be any of the Council races' spy agencies, or any of dozens of her own contacts. She clicks the body onto the circuit tattoo laced around her right wrist and forces some of her energy to dance down her skin, powering it up fully and authenticating using her biotic signature before snagging one of Goddess knows how many slick satin blankets-the Queen of Omega sleeps like a hedonist warlord-and wrapping her omni up in it to hide the light.
Opting not to retrieve a robe-Aria is so warm to sleep against, and she wants a lure to go back to-Tevos pads from pitch dark bedroom to equally dark hallway.
She blunders into the wall and topples backwards. Reflex kicks in and her biotics suspend her before she hits, but it's not a graceful save. In the Chambers, finding her way from nearly sprawled on her ass back to her feet would be about as embarrassing as actually falling, although the latter would no doubt prompt rumors-Are the councilor's biotics failing? Read here!-that no one wants or needs.
A sinewy arm appears in the light her biotics cast. Liselle wraps her hand in a tight grip and pulls her up easily.
"Sorry, mom."
"I walked into you, Liselle."
"And I'm flattered," she shoots back, entirely jokingly in Tevos' case. "As you should be." It's banter between them, but aimed at any other asari be they maiden, matron, matriarch, happily bonded or thrill-seeking...Tevos reminds herself to ask their doctor about getting high-grade contraceptives for Liselle and her bedmates. First thing in the morning.
Mother and daughter regard each other for a silent moment. 'Lissi' is the product of an intense fling with two turian cabalists on Omega, one of whom still visits. By her age, she was conceived when Tevos and Aria were talking about the ceremony in rough outlines and laying plans to announce it to enough people to keep Tevos from being called a traitor but not so many it became the only topic of discussion in asari space.
Jealousy never came into it for Tevos. Aria couldn't even remember the name of the male cabalist but she'd remembered Tevos' pillow talk nearly verbatim, carrying it for a century. Sweet, soft-spoken Nyreen isn't Liselle's ainthar, they finally discovered, but she's a good influence and a welcome addition to the family. Like most cabalists, she's a patriot treated poorly for biotics she never asked for and that no turian would choose if they could. She pays them long visits to teach Lissi turian-style military biotics and recipes for Mekar desert stews and roasts, or they play rockball in a gym's simulated mountain range. All to distract Nyreen from her next duty to the turian people. Soon, Ree must marry from a list of other turian biotics and produce at least three cubs. "Thank the Spirits,", Nyreen joked when she saw Tevos' appalled face. "That the list is so long. By the time I've read it, one of them will have wooed me!" The state's interest in keeping a pool of turian bloodlines that can become biotic outweighs Nyreen's wishes.
"Are you all right? You're a bit deeper in thought than usual."
"Yes, Lissi. Thank you."
She finds her feet and reaches out but her daughter holds up her hand.
"You've got something," she teases. "Right there," she adds, waving her hands over her own hips.
Tevos glances in a full-length mirror. Goddess. She came home tired and too stressed to sleep. As always Aria fucked her into a haze and held her as she drifted off. The synthcock came out of the toybox at some point-she swears it was modeled on a krogan, no matter the color and style-and when Tevos fell asleep, Aria must have finished her own pleasure and wiped the last of dribbles of her come on her skin.
"I'm sure my mother's asked you not to eat salads in bed. Dressing everywhere," Lissi teases. "You menace."
After a roll of Tevos' eyes, they lean back in for a nuzzle of cheeks and crests.
"Mark it read and go back to bed, mother. Even Valern will notice if you don't start sleeping."
Liselle presses a kiss to her cheek, and a blast of pure affection cut with a maiden's exasperation at her silly old mother flickers through the mother's meld she forms.
"Good night."
She strolls away, paper book split open between long fingers, and a waveball designed to exercise fine-control biotics suspended over her other hand. She's towering for a maiden, more even than Aria was. By matriarch, Liselle's bondmate might need a ladder.
Both Aria and Liselle remind Tevos of the polar malyks that haunt the forests and islands around her family estate in the far northern republic of Anerzesa. Polars are the largest of the malyks, and central to T'Reve's mythology and sigils. The massive cats are long-limbed, sleek and low-slung, with lush fur the shiny purple of the underside of an iceberg, their backs splashed with midnight blue and rust red in broad, ragged spots the size of the beach rocks, a protection they've kept even after the extinction of the eezo drake. They leap into shark-filled waters without a trace of fear and are second only to the asari themselves in their biotic ability and senses in the water.
The laziness is what makes the resemblance work as much as Aria and Liselle's scales, gait, or build. Her girls get bored, pour themselves onto any padded surface, pull the nearest scrap of thick fabric over themselves, and drift off. All that separates those apex predators of land and sea from her beloved apex predators are the leather jackets. If either her bondmate or her daughter lock their crimson-flecked eyes on her and stare at her too long before speaking or giving her a greeting meld, the resemblance to a malyk's eyes peering between the pines is too much. Tevos can't help but shudder.
"Usual team in the morning," Tevos whispers after Liselle's shadow, pushing the air along with her biotics.
"Of course it is...long as Griff doesn't bring that damn hat."
For detailed entries on all, see the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex ( tinyurl dot com slash me-codex-hum )
ainthar - An asari term from pre-first contact era's non-gendered languages, meaning 'inspiration' and the most contextually correct term for an asari child's non-carrying parent. For obvious reasons, mostly relevant in asari-asari pairings where which parent carried the child is not immediately clear.
ake'min, akero, akertira - Mistakenly oversimplified as 'asari BDSM' and confused for and derided by the truly misinformed as 'teacher/student' play, ake'min is the practice of using power differentials in physical sex and meldspace to enhance the experience. The akero (teacher) leads the meld's intensity, breadth and focus, and the akertira (student) is the one restrained, experiencing as much or as little as the akero allows and existing in the imagined space or memories they choose.
See "Ake'min Sexual Practices" under "Articles" in the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
varren - Semi-reptilian pack predator from Tuchanka that is similar in behavior and hunting style to an Earth wolf. Wild varren can reach six hundred kilograms and four meters in length, depending on diet. Routinely domesticated by krogan as beasts of hunting, war, or for varren-fight gambling and also kept as pets some by biotic humans, especially the eezo-tainted 'biotic varren' who are most often abandoned by their handlers.
