The Citadel | Widow Nebula | 2180

Aria yawns. Lycoris mimics her, her tiny tongue scraping across Aria's scales. The antique wall-mounted chrono tells her that it's morning, but that fact can damn well stay outside the bedroom where it belongs.

Hungry. It's an awareness, not really a thought-like it always is for newborns-but it hits hard. Tiny fingers drag against her breast, the meld Ly's using widens and Aria pushes back her regret that thosearen't the breasts she wants.

"Breakfast time for you and me both, little one. Let's see what your mother got up to."

Curling her arm around Lycoris' swaddled shape-she is so tiny-and nestling her in her elbow, Aria climbs out of the pillows and silks and waves her hand at the robe on the hooks inside the door, calling hers to her.

"Silly me," she whispers to Lycoris, draping her house-robe over one of the Nos Astra doublebar's anchors and retrieving Tevos' robe instead. She lets the smell of cream-based scale oil-hand stirred, because of course Miss Perfect Councilor stirs her own skincare products, switching fruits week-to-week-and a jungle's worth of Thessian crops fill her lungs. Ly pulls the loose end of the upper sash into her fingers and then her mouth, gumming happily at the familiar smell.

Aria sends a ripple of biotics against the lock and it clicks open. The back half of the house is dark-those bedrooms, the small parlors, kitchen and study are Liselle's little den-but a lack of panties, bras, shed armor modules and lube bottles scattered along the hallway suggests that the party she thought Aria didn't know she was planning with Tevos' extranet accounts got postponed. Time to talk to Tevos about a rush order of contraceptives. Liselle is that age, but she's smart enough not to take them non-stop when she's not active, because the social-hormone buzz that tells her she's already bonded and blended-no need to make a second kid-also leads to a false sense of security and over-trusting. She's also smart enough to make sure that any asari partner takes them if she wants to spend more than ten seconds in bed...hopefully.

She pats back another yawn.

"Your big sister is smart," Aria chuckles, watching Ly lift her tiny hand to her own mouth and stare up in puzzlement when it doesn't magically make her yawn. "Like your mom."

"I'll put you on her pillow later and you can tap her on the crests if she's not awake in a few hours," Aria suggests. Lycoris looks up at her with blue, blue, blue eyes-how can Tevos not see herself in them?-and she could swear the agreeable little half-thought she gets back through the mother's meld means she understood and is looking forward to her first-ever little sister prank.

Kid's going to be spooky smart. She's Tevos' daughter. Hopefully she'll be a student like Tevos was, not like Aria was. Her tutors did well, but they had to beat knowledge into her half the time, repeating and repeating until she couldn't ignore them and accepting that doing the lesson was the best way to make them leave. Surprises her that she can pull something fancy out of her brain to get some jumped-up clanless out of her face at one of Tevos' boring galas.

Aria leans into the kitchen only to find an auto-oven twinkling with yellow warning lights, half a cremated loaf of cream-and-berry bread in the sink and a jam-smeared knife beside it. Goddess, she was in a hurry. She ate the other half of that catastrophe. She fires up her omni-tool and taps out an order for actual breakfast and fires off a message to Griff and Mylei to do their turian playboy and asari floozy routine at the street-visible entrance downstairs.

Note to self, figure out how to poach Mylei and her squad from Eclipse...she'd be a good Archon and the team could be House Guard.

Even if she herself can never admit to being Arikolai T'Amal, her daughters are damn well going to wear T'Loak with pride as a truly titled name before she goes. Between Tevos' old friends, stacks of favors she never remembers to use, Aethyta voting yes just to piss people off, and two or three who'd rather not see what Aria's like pissed, she's sure they could get the ennobling vote through The Thirty and as for what she's accomplished to warrant inclusion, they should ask when the last time was that two thousand systems that share nothing submitted to anyone when tax day or inspections rolled around?

She switches her omni-tool to the channel she uses for her family and taps out a warning about the incoming breakfast. Something blinks in a recently delivered crate leaned against her office door-pirate queens do not office, thank you very much-and a quick scan with her omni reveals three omni-tool modules, one the miniature form typical for children.

She lifts the package to eye level and looks at the card.

"Baby's first omni-tool? Fancy one, too! Daro'Xen, huh? Some quarian wire-head, probably."

She glances at Lycoris, who is scowling at the box trying to make the energy she feels around her behave itself. Make the universe do to things because she wants it to.

"You're going to do that early, aren't you?" Aria groans. "Going to have your mom's flourish, I bet. Swoopy, silly, swirly biotics, eh? Take up air painting and dancing? Make all the maidens drool in a century or two?"

The look she gets back is one hundred percent Tevos-it's the furrowed brow-and somehow also fifty percent herself.

Aria chuckles.

"Taking after your dad? I'll have to talk to the insurance people first."

The door to Tevos' office cracks open.

"Ria?" she whispers.

No, babe, it's Kalros, the Mother of all Thresher Maws...

But she leaves the joke unsaid. Tevos sounds spent. Whatever the message that woke her, she didn't come back to bed. That's unusual-she knows what the wake-up rewards are for not leaving Aria lonely after a ping that crosses the top-priority filter-and from the croak in her voice, clearly it's either bad news or worse, confusing news. And nothing makes her bondmate spin out every terrible possibility of all the infinite possibilities than confusing news.

"Yeah, Tev. You all right?"

"No," she admits, the word halfway to a hiccup.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah."

Seeing Lycoris brightens Tevos, her smile making her exhausted face look smoother, maternal pride manifesting in biotics dancing across her crest scales, sloughing those her insomnia ruined. Mother and daughter reach out across the gap.

"Hello, little one. Let's see abo-Oh. You have your father's manners."

Smirking, Aria looks down at Lycoris, who is flailing her fingers against Tevos' breast like she could scare the milk out. Tevos crooks her arm, bringing them together and Aria leans against the door to watch.

"What?" Tevos demands.

"Motherhood. Looks natural on you. Haven't seen you this way in a century or two, Tev. Actually, maybe not sin-"

Tevos clears her throat and nods at the child, her eyes narrowed and face glowing just the slightest in the dark. Making that face is less than effective scolding in Aria's opinion, given that Tevos going feral on her is how they got Lycoris but she doesn't push the issue.

"Easy there, mama malyk. Just saying that both our first night and our first kid seem to make you glow."

"Possibilities," Tevos replies, pushing her chair back and turning towards the screens.

"What even is this?" Aria murmurs. "Kids' science vids? I mean, I know Ly's gonna be smart, but maybe let her start talking, first?"

Tevos looks at her detached omni, then to Aria, then back. That little bite of the lip and side-to-side glance that on good days means I'm not wearing panties, mistress but can also mean I'm not sure you should know this on the bad days.

"That sort of information, huh?"

"Yes, but unofficial. We...the Rep...I will need your help with this, Aria. As might the asari in general."

Aria pushes off the door and draws both bondmate and daughter into the circle of her arms.

"Tev." She drops a long, wet kiss onto her crests. "Every step."

"It's the top message. Can't make sense of it."

"Councilor Tevos! Ah, greetings. Asari Republics well, presumably. Eezo prices, batarian slave raids inversely correl-"

Aria breaks out laughing-Goddessdamnit, giggling-at the voice.

"You know him?"

She nods, tries to swallow her next laugh, and gives up. Tevos looks unamused. Galactically so. Last time Aria saw that, it was on a vid of her scolding the batarian's semi-formal ambassador.

"I'm waiting..."

"Ex-STG. Dr. Mordin Solus. Ran a clinic in the bad parts and I mean the worst parts of Omega. Took anybody with any injury. Never asked questions. Ran off anybody who thought they could finish the kill at his place. He talks like that, all the time."

"Goddess. It would drive me mad."

"He also did a community theater drive...five years ago. Funniest damn thing, watching Blue Suns and Eclipse doing musical numbers. Loves singing."

"Sounds like you spent time with him."

Aria shrugs. "He had great stories, and..." she sighs. "He wanted to do better. I think he came to me for a matriarch's opinion. He just didn't know it. His first major project for STG was retooling the genophage so they wouldn't get fully resistant."

Tevos nods.

"And no matter how much he told himself it was the right thing..."

"Yeah. He was wondering. Bray said he and his assistant Daniel left the station about three weeks ago."

"Message confidential. Release to incorrect parties disastrous. Skittersnake disastrous."

"Not surprising that he knows a bit of low-security classified intel, Tev. Just a codename. Everyone's got a term for 'the world goes to shit'."

Tevos swats Aria's hands away and hits play again.

"Details encoded under SFT, Season 3, Episode 6, time index 538.0"

"Clever little sh-Hmm."

Aria clears her throat.

"Clever little fellow. He hosted this show called Science Fun Today..."


"Total hybridized asari forty-three, forty Generation Five and three Generation Four, embryos presumed viable...eighteen. Nine Generation Four unaccounted for. Taking trustworthy civilian transport to next location." "Hybrids, pregnant breeders, one non-pregnant volunteer on one ship, remaining breeders and nominal security force on another ship. Expect at Citadel, Dock 312, will remain sealed. Subjects used for forced breeding need psychological, medical treatment. Hybrids require identities. Homes. None joined willingly. Widespread use of deviant asari, drugs, sleep deprivation to compel them to copulate. Psychological impact on all...problematic." "Recommend settling inside Republics or Council Space. Deviant asari traits minimal-two alleles of eleven-but present. Effect of re-used vestigial asari DNA, alien DNA on deviant traits unclear. Preliminary psychological metrics extremely promising. Asari elders' guidance essential in leading productive, noncriminal lives. Large unaligned colonies like Ilium possess too many factions who might utilize hybrids or offspring."

"Fuck," Tevos mumbles. "I know Aethyta said she was going dark for a decade or two but..."

Aria chuckles, running a thumb down Ly's crest as she snoozes.

"You said it around her, not me. Hey! Look at it this way, siame: would you want this project running without her there to watch those kids and burn it down when the time came?"

"Please don't give me nightmares," Tevos whines. "I still have that one about showing up naked to class...five hundred years has to be a record."

"But yeah. Fuck. Who...how...why, just why would the salarians pick up a pair of Ardats and think 'Science Fun Today' rather than putting them down or just locking them up? How did they even know whatthey were?"

"I doubt they really did. Otherwise, they would know the term. Dalatrasses 'spent' a couple dozen male salarians to get a rough picture, I assume."

"You're.."

Tevos returns Aria's look with one of ice and steel.

"...not joking. They really see the males like that, huh?"

"And what are we going to do with asari that upset the balance of power in the galaxy just by falling in love and having kids?" Tevos asks. She groans and scrubs her crest-roots angrily with the hand not cupping Ly to her bare chest. "And don't say what I thi-"

"Tev," Aria sighs, running her knuckles down neck-folds that stress has turned dry and stiff as broken glass. "Sounds like everyone in this mess who needs to die already has. I know when to suggest inconvenient people disappear and when not to. You know that."

Tevos sniffs.

"Sorry." She leans over and presses a kiss into Aria's arm. "I know you're not a monster."

"I'm not," Aria admits. "Not sure I'm not. Not always sure. You've been good for me, Tev. More than I can ever explain, with words or meld. After I met you, I had a lot to think about. I didn't want to make everyone scared of me just because I could. So I lashed out until I had space, then I stopped pushing. Eventually, I realized I wanted to make one asari shake when she heard my name. You."

Tevos leans up to meet a kiss she knew Aria was leaning down to brush against her crests. With haphazard flicks of the fingers, she scrolls through the text notes attached.

"Oh, Goddess. I need to contact the Monastery on Lessus. Ria, today, I need you to answer your omni in Purgatory. No matter what. Answer me, and immediately. I'm going to have to have a difficult talk with a Justicar and I want to make sure you are by my side."

"Any time."

"And don't duel them just to prove you'd win."

"You do really like how the living room's set up right now," Aria muses, tapping a finger thoughtfully on the desk. "They'll just have to make do with the last warning I sent home in a box."

"And then..." Tevos' graceful neck clenches. "Then I will do some things that are extremely unpopular with small but violent groups of people."

Aria smiles.

"That's my girl! Sounds like a blast. Hear Omega's nice this time of year..."

"Pearlhold's farther," Tevos shoots back. "And on fewer maps. And besides you, me, Griff and your team, how many know it's still inhabited? I noticed you used a batarian and vorcha work crew for the spaceport."

Aria chuckles.

"Small-time mercs. Paid them extra to go off books and divert between missions. They needed cash to arm up because on the next mission they were going after a krogan warlord named Okeer. Three thousand years old and no one's dropped him yet. Figured if they lived, I could trust them not to blather about the planet. No one heard from them again."

Tevos snatches a half-eaten pastry and wraps her robe around herself and Lycoris, who fusses at being covered up like particularly lumpy underwear.

"See?" she says with stuffed cheeks. "Perfect. We can intercept a ship with a QEC uplink to Thessia en-route."

"Fuck, Tev. There's getting breathing room and then there's hiding in a ghost town...you really think?"

"Yes."

"I'll make the call."