Surprisingly, Jane wakes later than normal in the morning with not a single sound to be heard from the twins tearing down the house. She has no idea what made the planets align to bring about such a unbelievable situation, but she can't find any reason to complain to getting to wake by her own accord. Well, her one complaint might involve the fact that, when she rolls onto her belly and reaches out to her bed partner, her hand merely flops onto the vacant side of the bed.

"Just fan-fucking-tastic," she mumbles into her pillow before cracking an eye open and finding a giant spot of missing turian on her mate's side of the bed. She groans at the chill from where he left the blankets pulled down and presses her face completely into the pillow, giving herself a moment to pout into the soft cloth before pushing herself up to start the day.

Of course he'd be up. How else would the kids be under control?

She huffs a laugh at a memory of when the twins were still in their most destructive phases and too much for a single parent to handle, despite their best efforts - and a bit of praying to whatever deity around that would listen. On one occasion, Garrus had insisted she lay down and try to rest, but it only ended in her waking up to the sound of the shelves in their pantry crashing down and Garrus dressed in clothes that looked like the victims of a rabid varren attack. How either of those outrageous - and, up until that point, unimagined - messes happened is still a mystery to even the man awake and there for it all, but Jane's own eyes weren't lying.

Jane sighs and she raises her arms up, twisting until her shoulders pop and stretching her back until she hears the dull snap of her spine. Something about that action always holds a finality that the - sometimes - rest that her body needs. Her dreams may still be tumultuous and full of horrors, but she has Garrus for that and she can't expect everything to be healed after the hell they all went through during war. She can push away bad thoughts, but she wouldn't be able to truly function if her body decided to throw in the towel.

Plus, that'd be an awfully dull life sitting around and fermenting. Give her a fight - whether with guns or against to unruly nightmare children - any day.

Standing and grabbing for her panties, she stumbles to put them on thanks to the last vestiges of sleep still clinging to her. Luckily, she doesn't make a fool of herself by greeting the morning with a wonderful meeting of face and floor, managing to pull them up with a final snap of the elastic around her hips. Next is a tank - too lazy to grab a shirt needing a bra and extra effort before her morning cup of tea - and the pair of loose pants she threw haphazardly at their desk in a failed attempt to land it in the clothes hamper. She didn't happen to knock over all of Garrus' things, but his pristine organization might need some repair.

The desk could be in worse condition, she considers as she shrugs and heads into the bathroom to try and control her mane and brush her teeth. Again, any real work on taming her hair will have to wait until she's done with her tea, so she just uses her fingers to comb through the worst of it before wrapping a band loosely around it. It's not like her family would really notice her rat's nest needs work. Well, maybe Cassia would with all her practice on her myriad of dolls, but Jane could care less. Her twins have seen their mother's morning face enough to no longer be scared shitless. With a rinse of her mouth and flick of brush to tap off the water, she shuts off the sink and heads out.

It's shocking to find the living room empty and vidscreen silent of any weird show the twins have found to confuse their parents with. She hasn't really checked the time yet, so it's safe to assume that the two are still eating whatever their father has managed to make without - as the lack of smoke would indicate - burning to an unrecognizable crisp. Shocking, to say the least, but it's either that or the twins are eating another bowl of that disgusting, overly sugary cereal they've loved since they could demand it. She isn't all that surprised to find the twins at the table with bowls of that very thing set out before them. Garrus isn't that great of a cook, so perhaps it's for the best that he give them something familiar and lacking any possibility of tasting like charcoal.

She walks up to where Garrus stands at the counter, pouring himself a bowl of that shit that she can't believe he likes. With his back to her, he doesn't see her coming, but she's sure he hears her as he always does, because she's able to wrap her arms around his waist without startling that panicky thing left deep in the dark recesses of him thanks to all the shit they've seen and lived through. Though not exactly the same for turians as humans, PTSD can still be a bitch. They both feel that festering wound, live in companionship in the wastes it often leaves behind.

She hums as she lays her cheek against his clothed back, nuzzling him and feeling his rumbling chuckle vibrate against her. In response, she squeezes him and smiles. "I can't believe you can eat that shit," she says softly, devoid of any real disgust as she relaxes her arms enough to splay her hands across the plates resting just above his sensitive waist.

"It's good." She snorts at his defense and he lays a hand over hers. "And, besides, some of what you eat looks like it crawled out of something at some point."

Chuckling, she looks towards the twins with every intention to bring them in at her defense of her strange food, but quiets as she sees them. Their bowls are almost entirely untouched - which is so, frighteningly unlike them - and Cassia merely pushes the soggy lumps of cereal around in her bowl as Damocles sits with head down and arms limp at his sides. It's a sobering sight as Jane drops her hands from Garrus, only to tug his shirt as she frowns.

"What's wrong?" she asks him softly, unable to look away from the horror of seeing two imposters where her lively, rambunctious children should be. "Did something happen?"

Her mate makes a curious noise as he turns. "Hm? Oh, the twins?" She nods and finally breaks away to look up to him, hoping to be able to tell the severity of the situation from his own expression. Instead of the worry she expects, he gives her a tenuous smile and shrugs. "It's a normal thing for their age. They'll just be under the weather, as you say."

"So… they're sick?"

"Well, not really." He hums and looks away, squinting as if in thought. "They feel bad, but they aren't sick." He shrugs again and Jane starts to get annoyed with just how nonchalantly he's explaining. "They're just at that age."

"'That age'?"

Garrus snorts and chuckles, though not too loud for the twins to hear. "Puberty? You know, becoming adults?"

Jane raises a brow, secretly cursing for not actually looking at the information on turian puberty because she had every intention to just wing it like she does everything else or rely on Garrus' knowledge. "And, what, they'll be like this until they're adults." She crosses her arms. "Seems highly unlikely."

"Well, no. They'll just feel bad for about a week every so often as they grow in spurts instead of gradually like they've been doing." He smiles and leans down to press his forehead to hers. "I'm sure they'd appreciate the worry, but let's not make too big a deal? It isn't really fun to go through." Leaning up, he looks over to them and rumbles. "At least mine wasn't too pleasant."

Jane follows his eyes and sighs, leaning her hip on the counter and crossing her arms. "What can I do to help?" She narrows her eyes. "And if you tell me to read those pamphlets Dr Solus gave us on this, I'm going to do some very creative things with that cereal you love so much."

He laughs and, as if she can't see, pushes the bowl further down the counter and out of her reach. "I was going to, but then I thought about just how much attention you'd give to them-"

"None."

"Exactly," he agrees with a grin and mirrors her posture before jerking his chin towards the nearest stairs. "How about you grab some fresh clothes? I took them out to the water to try and ease some of the aches."

Calling on her very lackluster knowledge of anything medical, she remembers the term 'saline' as salt water hospitals and medics use all the time for pretty much anything. Other than the fact that it's basically salt water, she can't really come up with anything else about it, but figures Garrus knows what the hell he's talking about. So long as they aren't drinking it, she trusts him when he says it'll help them feel even a tiny bit better.

"Yeah, sure," she responds, nodding and standing up. "Oh, wait." Stopping on her way to her task, she motions a thumb towards the living room and looks to the kids. "How about you two lay down for today and just watch vids all day?" When they look to her, a question in their eyes, she smiles and nods. "No practice, training, or school today. Dad and I'll pamper you all day."

That actually manages to get a bit of joy out of them and she can swear she hears at least one chirp come from their direction. She'll take whatever reaction they might have given, but grins at the fact that they find her plans not only acceptable, but something to let a glimmer of happiness shine through the body aches. She may not know how shitty they feel today, but she can draw on her own days of feeling like hell warmed over. It's not good memories, but she might have some ideas to distract from the pain.

If she could make any of the same sounds her family could, she'd be purring with joy as she smiles warmly. "Alright. That's what we'll do. I'll bring pillows and blankets down too."

With a curt nod to her mate and given a matching signal of agreement back in his warm grin, Jane makes her way up the stairs to the twin's rooms. Cassia's was first on the list as Jane stepped in and found her bed surprisingly unmade. Their daughter takes after their dad in that she is very particular about the setup of her space, but she must really be in the pits if she didn't at least pull her blanket back up over her pillows. On the other hand, leaving the bed messy makes it easier for Jane to pull off the blanket and grab a pillow to use downstairs.

Picking up the book laying open against the second pillow, Jane folds over the page to keep Cassia's spot before setting it down on the enormous pile of books on her daughter's nightstand. She isn't all that surprised to know Cassia probably fell asleep reading again because it's not often one sees the girl without some kind of book in hand, whether downloaded onto a datapad or as a physical copy. Maybe, when she's feeling a bit better, she'll want to pick back up where she left off on this one. Taking that into consideration, Jane tucks the book under her arm to save her or anyone else the trip upstairs in case that change for the better happens later in the day.

She pats the blanket into a more manageable pile on top of the pillow before wedging them under her opposite arm and heading out into the hall that stretches across to Damocles' bedroom. There is a banister where the walkway looks out over the open dining and living rooms, and she spots Garrus' large shadow cross the far end of the floor as he moves about the kitchen. She then looks over the edge of the banister to make sure nothing too valuable is below before lifting the blanket and pillow over and dropping it, seeing no reason to walk all the way down the steps to drop them off only to have to go back up and repeat the same action multiple times to get everything she needs.

There's a soft thump as everything lands and Garrus must have heard because Jane sees him walk into the dining room to investigate. Quirking a brow plate, he looks up at her and she greets him with a grin. "Pretty smart, right?" He snorts and sets his bowl down on the dining table before heading over. "Your breakfast is going to get soggy," she says with a smirk and leans on the banister. "What? The floor's clean."

"Doesn't mean I want to give the twins this idea." He chuckles as he grabs both items in one hand and looks up to her. "Just don't drop anything heavier than blankets and pillows? Or at least give me a heads up first."

She gives him a scoff of mock insult in answer before chuckling and holding the book over the railing in threat. Her mate obviously isn't convinced as he stands his ground and shakes his head, giving her a moment to change her mind before moving to the couch to deposit his haul.

"You should really fear me," she jokes as she sets the book at the tops of the stairs to pick up on her way down. "I don't usually joke around with things."

She hears a snort. "Since when?"

Chuckling, she doesn't hear if he has anything else to say before she heads into Cassia's room to find some comfortable clothes. She settles for an oversized shirt from Garrus that had become too small for him after his most recent change in training alongside Damocles. It seems to be one of Cassia's favorites by the wear and tear of it in some places in the form of some paint spots and small holes from any number of countless times their daughter uses it to play around the house. Jane pairs it with a pair of loose shorts before heading back out and setting them beside the book. Next is Damocles' room that never ceases to look like the victim of a rampaging army of yahg, but, luckily for them all, lacks the smell Jane once heard of human boys his age.

One good thing about turian children.

She can't push the door past just enough space to squeeze through thanks to some blockage refusing to budge under her strength, but manages to get in none too gracefully as she stumbles over a discarded pile of clothes. "Jesus christ, kid," she says to herself as she looks around the room with a sigh. "We're going to need to train you to keep your room clean past twenty-four hours."

Heading to the closet first, Jane grabs a pair of loose pants and tosses them out into the hall to free her hands for the trek to Damocles' bed. She can't believe her mate would let this place get this bad without having an aneurysm, but figures he's probably given up long ago on ever getting their son to tame his wild bedroom mess. At least, she figures, Damocles keeps his most valuable possessions - his training rifle and weighted, faux armor - well kept and in the small alcove that miraculously appears clean like a single beacon in a massive storm.

The contrast actually makes Jane laugh softly as she steps lightly down the small path in the mess to his bed. She once thought - and was constantly reminded of - her own disorganization was bad, but Damocles definitely has her beat. Where she can find what she needs in her personal mess, she doubts Damocles would even survive an exploration of the shit pile in his room.

"Definitely need to clean this when he feels better." Pushing aside a pile of toys that seem to be taken apart off his blankets and to the far edge of his bed, she grabs the pillow in one hand and blanket in the other with every intention to just get the hell out of this hell before something jumps out of the mess. Feet hidden by the dragging blanket, Jane trips over something and curses when she hears a snap. "Well, that's definitely broken."

She leaves that for another day and steps out into the hallway, ready to toss this bundle over the railing. After she drops the pillow and shifts to lift up the blanket, however, something falls out of the folds of it and lands on the ground at her feet. Initially, she ignores it and simply drops the blanket down to Garrus waiting below, but a glance at it catches her attention.

She had, at first, expected a piece of clothing by the lack of clatter when it fell that would tell her of something more solid, but what she finds is something she can't quite place. It's loose and moves like fabric, but it isn't shaped like any sort of clothing or bedding. More like a tattered piece of something bigger, it's light when Jane picks it up to get a better look.

"Hey, Garrus?" she calls, holding the piece up to see the light partially filter through this strange fabric that feels more like fine sandpaper than cloth. "Do you know what this is?"

As she holds it over the banister for him to see, she hears him hum before looking at it, sure to easily explain it without even seeing what she holds like he's some damn psychic. He flattens out the blankets and pillow onto the opposite couch before looking up. It's then that his expression changes from curious to fluttering mandibles and a slack jawed, very elegant, 'uh…'.

"Uh?" Jane lifts a brow and looks at the thing in her hand, turning it around and tilting her head at the small spattering of the occasional blemish and nick in its smoothness. "It looks kinda weird. You know like when I peel that weird quarian vegetable? The one that looks like corn?"

Garrus rumbles and scratches his scarred mandible, slowly jerking the other in his 'thinking face'. "Well, I guess I could see that relation." He looks down as the twins pass and speaks to them. "As bad as you two feel, let's remember to clean up your plates when they peel off."

Jane immediately stills, not sure she just heard right. "I'm sorry. What?" She looks away from the thing in her hand that's starting to sound a lot less like a piece of fabric. "I found this in Damocles' bed."

Damocles looks from the offending object to his father, but Garrus shakes his head softly. "That's on me. Just clean them up from now on." Receiving a nod in return from both children, Garrus looks back up to Jane leaning over the second floor railing. "Just how much did you read up on turian puberty?"

"Would you believe it if I said all of it?"

"From that look on your face? No," he responds with a chuckle and smile, motioning the object with his hand. "That's a molted plate. You know, the outer layer of a plate that's peeled off because it's been replaced with newer, living plate?"

It's a slow progression as the idea takes root in her mind as something actually natural for a sapient species capable of space flight, living her uterus for a short period of time in the past, and constantly spending a good portion of time locked in her cunt at least once a day. "Wait…" Just to be sure, she goes over what he said in her head. "So you mean turians shed their plates like snakes and lizards?"

"If reptiles on earth are like those on Palaven, then yes."

"Gross," is all she can really say as she moves from holding the dead plate from her full hold to a simple grasp of finger and thumb.

Garrus snorts from below her as the twins turn on the vidscreen to drown their parents out. "And bleeding from your vagina without actually being injured isn't?"

"Doesn't count," she retorts, dropping the piece with a shake of her hand.

"How does it not count? This is as natural as that is for you." He chuckles as she throws him an incredulous look over the banister and he crosses his arms. "How about humans shedding flakes of skin every moment of every day? How is that not the same?"

"Because, up until now, that's what the twins were doing too, shedding small, tiny, invisible flakes of plate." She hears a muffle of some response. "What?"

"Nothing." The mock innocence doesn't fool her, but she'll get down to it when she gets back downstairs. "I'll explain once you get down here."

Grabbing the shed plate and tossing it in the trash just within Damocles' door, Jane collects the clothes and book from the top of the stairs and climbs down. She's joined by Garrus as he drops off his bowl in the sink after rinsing it and he takes the clothes from her on their way into the living room.

"Why don't you two get into something softer and looser than what you're wearing," he offers as he separates Damocles' from Cassia's clothes. "You can use our room to change." He jerks a chin towards the Master bedroom. "We'll be out here."

"Okay," Cassia says softly, her discomfort and overall crummy mood obvious as she hefts herself up and drags her feet into the bedroom. Damocles merely grunts as he follows with his own clothes in hand.

"Their clothes are bond to still have some salt water in them. This'll feel better," Garrus explains as Jane watches her children shamble into the other room. "Now," he starts, getting her attention.

When she looks up, he's smirking, and she scowls. "Don't act so smug. It's still not the same."

Chuckling, he shakes his head and leans a hip on the back of the couch at his side. "Maybe not. Maybe this is much more understandable for a species." She narrows her eyes and he laughs.

"Why don't you actually explain some of this so I'm not flying blind here? Just how much of that shit is going to come off them?"

"Well, all of their plates need to harden, so all of them will molt." He stops when she drops her mouth and rumbles. "What? You think it's really going to be easy to grow when their plates are hard?"

"They don't do that now!" She waves a hand towards the bedroom. "Why does it have to start peeling off in sheets now?"

"Because their plates weren't hardened like they will be as adults?" When she doesn't show any sign of understanding, he sighs. "It's puberty, Jane. Hormones and stuff, you know? I don't know the exact science, just that their plates are getting hard like mine, so they can't just flake away gradually as they grow like before."

She snorts, trying to imagine what the end result of this whole molting fiasco will look like and having absolutely zero clue about her how her husband became an adult male. This situation is proving to show her just how little she still knows about turians, but, then again, she's sure Garrus knows just as little about humans. Only thing is that she looks bad because her kids just so happen to be going through this type of puberty while Garrus will never have to pull on his human knowledge anytime soon. She's at a disadvantage and definitely showing it.

"Okay. So how many of these damn things-"

"Molts."

"Molts do they have? You can't just tell me they wake up tomorrow and are as tall as you," she says, crossing her arms and lifting a brow.

"Well, no. That'd be horrifically painful to grow that fast." He hums and looks at the ground between them. "I can't quite remember how many I had, but it's at least once a year depending on their final height."

Jane glances over towards the bedroom, considering how short the two are for their ages right now. "I sure hope they sprout up like fucking beanstalks, because I sure as hell don't want them as short as me." When she looks back to him to get any kind of reassurance, she sees the dumbfounded look on his face and exhales an amused breath as some tension eases. "It means they'll grow really tall, really fast. It's a fantasy story about a plant that grows into the sky overnight. Hence the saying."

"Oh." Instead of most likely questioning humans and their weird sayings for the umptenth time, he smiles and purrs. "You know, I was pretty short for my age for a while there." She finds it hard for her over seven foot tall turian husband to have ever been considered 'small' and chuckles. "What? It's true. I was shorter than my classmates until I hit my final growth spurt at fourteen." He huffs and shakes his head once as he looks at the bedroom. "I hope they grow faster than that. It didn't feel all that great."

"I bet you felt like shit on hot concrete."

He stops and wrinkles his nose plates. "That's the worst example."

Chuckling, she shrugs. "But it works, right? You imagined something really bad, admit it." He doesn't get to respond as the door opens and the twins trudge back to the couches, laying down with vocal groans and whines. "Damn, you two look like hell warmed over," she says as she heads over and kneels before Cassia as her couch is closest. "Can I get you anything?"

"Can I have some water?"

"I'll get it," Garrus answers, standing straight from his lean against the couch. "You want anything, son?" Damocles shakes his head and Garrus leaves the room, calling back. "I already contacted Dr Solus to see if he has any oil for the peeling."

Jane isn't sure who exactly he intends to answer, but she speaks back to him as she tucks their daughter's blankets tighter around her. "Okay? Will that help with pain?"

Damocles and Cassia both look hopeful at that, but they only seem to sag in relief when their dad answers. "A bit, yeah. With some salt water soaks and the oil scrubs, the pain should ease back to a dull pain. I'm sure I can also teach you how to massage the plates while they're still soft, Jane." He returns with a bottle of water in hand and offers it to Cassia as Jane tucks in Damocles. "With everything my mom taught me as a kid, we should be able to stave away nearly all the pain."

"Good," Jane agrees as she sits on the free end of Damocles' couch and Garrus takes the same spot on Cassia's couch. "Now, what shall we watch?"