The Citadel, 2161.
Of all the muscles in her body, the one Lamia thought she could do most easily without was her heart. Foolish, faithless muscle; she'd wasted its strength on someone undeserving for the last time. A matron now these past four centuries, and still she gave of herself as freely as a maiden of thirty summers.
Matron or not, her heart still ached. The real thing, not just the metaphorical heart that had been ever so efficiently broken by —
No, she told herself. Don't say her name. Don't even think it. Sit up straight and put on a smile. You're an asari on the Citadel. You have no reason not to smile.
The Citadel was her race's playground, whether one's favorite game was commerce, fashion, politics, or — she shuddered, delicately, and her smile slipped for a tiny instant — affairs of the heart. She would find a distraction, and chase away all memories of her bruised, tender heart, until it healed. Until she was, once more, herself complete: Lamia Odrade, matron, instructrix, a sealed room in a high tower.
Lamia's good intentions lasted until she stepped off the elevator onto the Presidium, only to be greeted by a low, earthy, growl of a laugh that took her straight back to humid, lazy mornings with Shiala —
Oh, damn. She ducked to the side of the elevator and leaned against the wall, one hand over her heart. Ridiculous! she scolded herself. Childish! You weren't bonded. Forty years is nothing at all, especially at your age.
Forty years certainly hadn't been enough, just a handful of sweet mornings and sweeter dusks, sharing all, holding nothing back. She had given so much of herself, in love and trust, and now she held her reward: a long march of bruises banding her sore heart. And all because of Shiala — beautiful Shiala, Shiala with skin smooth and cool as a seashell, Shiala of the dirty laugh and dirtier jokes. Had the melds not been true? Was there a discordant note in their music that only Shiala could hear — or, worse yet, that Lamia herself had ignored, swept away instead by the ocean within Shiala? The music had been sweet enough for Lamia, sweet enough for her to consider risking the censure of their fellows, and asking Shiala to begin a family. What children they would have made, strong and kind, listeners as well as leaders.
And sweet enough to consider the other dream, of a little school, clinging to a cliffside in the north of Thessia. She'd even picked out the site, and been on the verge of putting in a bid — all depending, of course, on the answer Shiala would give her, when she finally screwed up the courage to ask.
But then the great Lady Benezia had crooked her little finger, and Shiala ran to answer the call, with hardly a backward look. She had found a family she preferred to the dream of one shared with Lamia.
Family. More than three hundred years of the best etiquette training on Thessia couldn't force Lamia to hold back her sneer. What a crude joke. How Shiala must be laughing now with her fellow acolytes, laughing at her narrow escape from the trap of pureblood children.
A bitter surge of rage rushed up Lamia's throat. It caught her off-guard so thoroughly that her biotics pushed aside her control for a moment, and her corona flared around her. The breach shocked Lamia breathless. She hadn't lost control since before her commando days, and never in public. She drew the energy back into herself, soothing it with mental fingers, and buried her head in her hands. Oh, Goddess, the shame. Forgive my unkind thoughts, forgive my hateful heart. I am sorry.
Such bitterness and anger were beneath her. What was it her own mother had said, when she pouted and whined as a long-ago child? Seek to provide the joy of others, and you will find you have lessened your own darkness. Would she ignore those words, spoken by one she loved, and one so much wiser than her in all things?
Lamia stood up straight, her posture like armor. No one seemed to have noticed her outburst, though it would be gross flattery to tell herself that it had been completely missed. At least no one commented, and for that she was grateful. She tested her control, and found it solid once more. There would be no more flares, no more reckless displays of emotion. She smoothed the lines of her coat, and found herself startled into a smile when her fingers ran over the telltale lump of an OSD.
A proposal lay coded within the thin disc — and a reminder that not all her dreams had died, though it seemed she would have to give up the austere little cliff-clinging school. Human military ships lacked so much elegance, though they certainly made up for it in adaptability.
She adjusted the collar of her coat to better frame her face, and counted to twenty. When she stepped back into the rush of Presidium foot traffic, she looked like nothing more than a pretty, mature asari, who smiled as if her heart had never been broken.
"Oh, god, Steven, calm down, it's nothing." Hannah shook Hackett's hand and stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, refusing to acknowledge how badly she wanted to laugh at his horrified face. "Just a bruise. I'm fine."
"What happened?" Hackett sat down as Hannah unbuttoned her jacket and handed it off to a waiting attendant. "You look —"
"Like I just went a few rounds with a krogan?" She took her seat with an appreciative glance around the restaurant, and whistled quietly. "I didn't think your message was serious. I mean, Carvassial's? A bit too-too for us Alliance types, isn't it?"
Hackett didn't shrug. Hannah had never seen the man make such a gesture, and never would. A shrug meant admitting uncertainty, and Steven Hackett and uncertainty were mutually exclusive concepts. "It seemed fitting, given the nature of the meeting."
Hannah raised an eyebrow as a salarian waiter placed a glass of sky-blue wine in front of her. "Yes, the meeting. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?" Before she could stop herself, she added, "I had plans with Eliza, you know. She wanted to see the krogan memorial."
Immune to uncertainty he might have been, but even Steven Hackett was vulnerable to guilt. Hannah didn't think anyone else in the restaurant would recognize the subtle, there-and-gone downturn at the corners of his mouth, but she did. Twenty-five years of friendship meant she knew when she had Hackett cornered by the way he shifted, almost imperceptibly, and let go of the urge to keep pricking at him.
"Or is it a surprise?" she said, coy enough to make him narrow his eyes at her. "Do I get twenty guesses? Is it larger or smaller than a breadbox? Does it smell worse than varren —"
"You're a horrible person," Hackett said, with the tiniest hint of a smile. "Have I told you that?"
"Not this conversation," she replied, and took a sip of her wine. Too sweet, too thick, and too expensive.
"Where is Eliza?"
Hannah swallowed a second careful sip, then set her wineglass down. Too strong, too; two glasses and she'd be telling stories from basic. Must be asari wine. "She's with Lieutenant Forbes and her kids, down at that big park down on the edge of Tayseri Ward. We can see the memorial later."
A companionable silence stretched out between them. Hannah idly considered other questions as the time passed — is it explosive? Does it talk? When will we see a menu? — but didn't push for conversation. If Anderson had been sitting across the table, she might have felt pressed to find something to say, but Hackett appreciated silence. After the buzz and rattle of climbing through the wards, Hannah appreciated silence too.
"That bruise," Hackett said at last. "A run-in with Eliza's biotics, right?"
Hannah nodded, then rolled her sleeves up past her elbow. "And these," she said, brandishing two forearms covered in dark bruises, "are from when Eliza had a nightmare night before last, and threw her bookcase across the room. I walked right into it when I heard her yell." She grinned at Hackett's expression, which couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be amused or horrified. "It's okay, Steven, you can laugh. Remember the old saying? Comedy is tragedy plus time." She rolled her sleeves down before any of her fellow diners — all better dressed than her — could see the bruises. "Time to see if an amp will help. We're meeting with a specialist tomorrow morning at Huerta."
Hackett frowned. The scar at his mouth twisted and whitened, fading as he spoke. "Are you sure? She's awfully young."
"Seven this past month." Hannah sighed and cast a longing glance at her wine, wishing it was beer. If she'd been down on Zakera Ward with Eliza and the Forbeses, like she had planned, she would've had beer. And a burger, with greasy fries and too much ketchup, and goddammit, why had Hackett asked her here? She was starving, and they hadn't seen a real menu yet. "But it's at the point where the cons have outweighed the pros. She's got no control. The second she gets upset or stressed, her corona flares, and then it's game over. It's a good thing most of my equipment stays down in the lab or the armory, because she builds up a hell of a lot of static."
"Seven seems a little young," Hackett ventured, still frowning. He picked up his wine glass, long fingers gripping the stem, but set the glass back down without taking a drink. "BaaT doesn't implant their students until they're ten."
"BaaT? That Conatix nightmare waiting to happen?" At Hackett's nod, Hannah scoffed and fell back in her seat. The salarians and turians at the next table sent her sharp glances — one didn'tscoff in Carvassial's — but she ignored them to turn a glare on Hackett. "Not to be rude —"
"Which means you're about to be," said Hackett, deadpan.
"— but they creep me out. One of their representatives called me a few months ago, asking if I was interested in sending my child to BaaT." Hackett raised an eyebrow, and Hannah nodded. "You heard me. She's registered as a biotic, and as my dependent. It's a matter of public record, but the fact they're fishing this hard for recruits puts me off." She saw her hand creeping toward her wine glass and pulled it back. Bad Hannah, save yourself for beer. "Not to mention the fact that they didn't go to the Council before setting up at Jump Zero. I'm not a fan of going around begging the other races for help any more than we need to, but the asari have offered help, and they're experts. God, they practically start training their daughters right out of the womb."
"Not right out of the womb," said a cool, polished-marble voice from over Hackett's shoulder. "Well, womb-equivalent."
Hannah stood as Hackett did, and saw a tall, slender asari sweeping toward them, the hem of her black overcoat whispering over the floor. She had warm, nut-brown eyes, with white whorls and streaks on her brows and jawline. Her skin nearly matched the wine in Hannah and Hackett's glasses. Without a doubt, she was the loveliest woman — woman-equivalent, Hannah thought wryly — in the room. The salarians and turians at the next table couldn't seem to stop staring, and Hannah nearly winked at them before she caught herself.
"Commander Shepard, I'd like you to meet Lady Lamia Odrade. Lady Lamia, Commander Hannah Shepard."
"Oh, please, I'm no matriarch," said Lamia, without taking her eyes off Hannah's. "Just Lamia will do." She held out a fine-boned hand to Hannah. "Commander, it's a pleasure."
Hannah felt the strength — subdued, easily underestimated — in Lamia's fingers, and decided to try a smile. "Hannah, please," she said. "I take it you're part of Hackett's project, Lamia?"
Lamia beamed as she took the seat Hackett held out for her. "You could say that," she said, tilting her head to turn the force of her smile on Hackett. "Would you like to do the big reveal, Captain?"
To his credit, Hackett didn't waste time teasing or playing coy. He met Hannah's gaze, and without a trace of a smile, simply said, "Lamia has been contracted by the Alliance to design a biotics program —"
"You're a teacher?" Hannah interrupted, stunned. There's no such thing as providence, she thought, smashing down the hope as it struggled to rise. Across the table, Hackett gave her a nod.No such thing, she told herself.
Lamia gave Hannah a gentle smile, and all the polish in her manner fell away. Was it regret, or something deeper? Before Hannah had time to read Lamia's expression, the asari reached out and squeezed her wrist.
"I was," said Lamia. "And I would like to be again."
"She's too young to truly start training," Lamia said, hours later, as she watched the human girl swing by her legs from a tree. "Too much growing yet to do. She won't need the implant till she's ready to train, but the exercises I told you about should keep the flares to a minimum until then."
Hannah sighed. "She grows like a weed," she said, wistfully. "Any day now, she'll be taller than me."
"I think you have a little time left," Lamia replied. Down below them, in the park, Eliza let out a bellow and sprinted toward a small knot of children, spilling them end over end before landing in the middle. Laughter and shrieks floated up to them. Lamia couldn't quite suppress a grin. "Goddess, but she's…"
This time, Hannah laughed, her face creasing into faint, agreeable wrinkles. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
Oh, I like her, thought Lamia, smiling now with not just her face but what felt like her entire body. The human woman at her side glowed with affection, fierce, undiluted, like a low-banked fire. This Hannah Shepard and I will get along quite nicely, I think.
Perhaps she had been born for this, to always stand apart, one degree from the center. Shiala, the cliffside school — they must be put aside and mourned, for there was work to be done, and in no half-measures.
"It won't be long," she told Hannah. "The program will take time to design and implement, but by then, your daughter should be ready. Five, maybe six years, and then she can begin."
Hannah reached up and squeezed her shoulder. "Thank you," she said. "This is — well, it's a dream come true. To know Eliza will have help when she needs it."
Love came in so many forms: mother, daughter, lover, friend. Lamia had lost one, forever, like sand through a sieve, but perhaps the Goddess, in infinite mercy and with infinite humor, had seen fit to provide her with others. And all bruises healed, no matter how they were acquired.
"I'll teach her all I know," she promised Hannah. "What she does with it is up to her, but she won't lack the proper instruction."
Eliza picked herself up off the grass and set off running again, arms spread wide as wings as she shrieked toward another set of children. Oh no, a Vanguard, Lamia thought. Thank the Goddess I enjoy a challenge.
