"Shepard, I don't think that I'm up for this," Liara replied, feeling faint.
"There is nothing wrong with my driving!"
"I still have nightmares about Nos Astra," Garrus supplied, sticking his head in the driver's side door. Liara shuddered with the shared recollection.
"That was a high-speed car chase! What were you expecting?"
"Yes, but you were laughingthe entire time."
"Not the wholetime!"
"Ilos," Liara responded before her bondmate could draw further breath. "You made a Krogan Battlemasterill."
"Really?" Aethyta said and whistled, low.
"In case you've forgotten, we were racing to stop a Reaper invasion dear," Shepard said sourly.
"And the Citadel?" Tali interjected. "You just... let go of the controls and opened the door!"
"That Leng fucker was trying to kill us!"
"What's your excuse for the Mako then?"
"The Mako's a tank!"
"Shepard, I hate to break it to you, but tanks aren't meant to fly."
Liara opened her mouth to provide another rejoinder as Shepard began to protest anew, when her breath was taken by another intense burst of pain, this one accompanied by a strange, twisting sensation, deep inside, and a flurry of movement from her daughter.
"I- oh, Goddess," she groaned, feeling her calm start to slip away from her in a flash of fear. That didn't feel like anything she could remember reading about. Her head fell back against the seat, hands coming to rest over her stomach, feeling the movement from outside as well as from within.
"Deep breaths, kid." That was her father's voice, and then one of her heavy hands atop hers and the tingle of a quick meld. "It's ok, she's just turning. Nothing to worry about."
That did not sound at all reassuring. The last set of scans had shown that her daughter was already in the correct position. If she turned again, now, she could end up presenting incorrectly so that the nubs of her undeveloped crest caught-
"Really? But-"
"My second did the same. She turned back an hour later, with a little encouragement. Here."
She felt the tingle of a meld again and, to her surprise, realised that Aethyta was offering her a memory. She took it with curiosity - her father had never done so before - and was suddenly in another place, in another body, up to her bared breasts in warm, soothing water, feeling the burn and tremble of fatigue and secretly wishing that the whole damned business was over already. Nonetheless, she shouldered the feeling aside to reach out for the spark of life within her, and, as the matriarch had shown her from her own memories, encouraged, gently. After a few seconds, she was rewarded by the strange twisting sensation and a flurry of movement.
When Liara opened her eyes again, the connection fading, she realised that the rest of the car's occupants were watching her with concern and a dash of puzzlement, Shepard most of all.
"Are you-" she began.
"I'm fine, Shepard. Let's just go. Garrus, get in. Please."
"Liara," Tali hissed in her ear, "do you want to die young? Think of your daughter!"
"Look, if you really want, I can let Garrus-" That was Shepard, already starting to unbuckle herself.
"Just... let's just go," she reiterated, praying that she wouldn't regret it. She could trust Shepard with her life, couldn't she? With their daughter's? What was the point if not? Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tali checking against all expectation that the back seat included a proper point harness. Garrus, up front, was contriving to brace himself against the dashboard. "Just get us there in one piece."
There was a long, breathless silence as the car lifted up off of the lawn, flanked by the other two cars in the convoy. Liara closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. What she couldn't see obviously wasn't happening. It would be her mantra for the trip. And, well, at least Shepard's unique driving style meant that the trip would be short.
After a few minutes of such meditation, however, it began to dawn on her that something was wrong. Very wrong. The car wasn't jolting or swerving or falling nearly enough for Shepard to be the one at the controls.
"Goddess damnit, Shepard. It's called an 'accelerator'. Either put your foot down or pull over and let the turian drive. My old granny could outrun this thing, and she's been dead nine hundred hundred years."
Liara risked opening her eyes as her father spoke, and glanced out the right-hand window. The cityscape passed by at a crawl. The same could not be said for the traffic in the other lanes, however, which zoomed by, occupants occasionally taking the trouble to hurl obscene gestures their way. A glance out the rear window showed a rapidly growing line of angry traffic behind them.
"What? You said 'in one piece'. I'm being careful," Shepard huffed as Liara groaned. Why was nothing they did together ever simple?
"Garrus, put the damn camera away," Shepard snapped, momentarily pausing in her frenetic pacing.
"I thought you wanted to, oh, what was it? Capture the 'joyous sharing experience'," he replied, grinning evilly at Shepard's poorly concealed wince and flash of embarrassment. It wasn't often that you got to see the Great Commander Shepard, Scourge of the Reapers, Saviour of the Galaxy and general, all-round hard-ass completely discombobulated, and he was determined to milk it for all it was worth. Behind him, he heard Tali snicker.
"I was drunk, ok? People say all kinds of stupid things when they're drunk." She resumed her pacing, running her hands through her increasingly wild hair. "But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be in there. What if she needs me?"
"If she needs you, I'm sure they'll send for you," Tali assured her, trying and failing to keep her amusement from her voice.
"But what if-"
"Everything will be fine, Shepard."
"But-"
"Butyou promised you'd let her do this her way," Garrus interrupted reminded her. "Twice."
"But I didn't think that would mean that I'd be stuck out here!" Shepard all but wailed, coming to a halt once again, this time outside of the door leading to the birthing room. The pair of commandos guarding it glanced at each other, looking distinctly uneasy in the presence of their lady's brooding bondmate. It probably didn't help in the slightest that said bondmate was a near mythical figure who had also demonstrated, in previous sparring matches, that she was more than capable of putting them both down on their asses in a heartbeat if they even so much as looked at her wrong. "What if something goes wrong? I was reading up about it on the extranet. There wasn't a lot about asari labour, actually, they seem to be oddly cagey about it, but-"
"Shepard, all of the scans were perfect. Liara is healthy, and the baby is healthy. Everything will be fine."
"But she's so young! For an asari, anyway," Shepard amended hastily.
"And Matriarch Wisthre is older than any asari I've ever met and has been delivering babies for eight hundred years. Everyone says she's the best. Keelah!" she exclaimed as Shepard threw up her hands and started pacing again. "What has gotten into you?"
"In case you haven't noticed, I'm having a baby!"
"Shepard, Liara is having a baby. You're just having a heart attack."
"You know what I mean!"
Garrus rolled his eyes as Tali and Shepard continued to argue. Doctor Liara T'Soni, considered at a mere one hundred and thirteen to be one of the Asari Republic's biggest movers and shakers and its most respected (or, depending on who you talked to, despised) futurist, had proven to be a staunch traditionalist in one area of her life: the birthing of her first daughter. Not only had she decreed that said offspring would be born in the place in which all T'Sonis of her line had been born, but that she would be brought into the world in the manner in which Liara herself had been, and her mother before her, and her mother's mother and so on down the line.
That all had led them here, to an ancient temple of Athame set on cliffs by the sea at the outskirts of Armali rather than, as he'd expected, a hospital or similar. Liara and her entourage - which, he realised, probably included him (the Primarch trailing after an asari - oh, that was going to play well with the pundits back home) - had been taken from the ruined entrance and down into the very oldest parts of the temple, buried deep underground. Graceful steel arches and echoing marble floors gave way to masonry, and then to the carved stone walls of a long but narrow cavern, resonating with the sound of flowing water: the sea.
However, that was as far as the aliens - meaning himself, Tali and Shepard - had gotten. Asari tradition dictated that first-time mothers be attended to by but a handful of people: a senior midwife, a matriarch and a matron close to her age from her house, and her parents, if both were asari, or simply her mother if not. Unfortunately for Shepard and her desire to 'share the experience', the 'father' of the child turned out to be an entirely optional extra, especially if they weren't asari themselves. As it happened, Matriarch Wishthre had taken one look at her, declared her far too emotionally volatile and barred her from proceedings altogether. Liara had been whisked away, without another word, and their attempt to follow met with a closed door that became a closed, locked and guardeddoor after Shepard's subsequent attempts to gain entry.
"I just..." Shepard was saying, staring at her feet, seeming oddly deflated, even defeated. "I just worry, you know? This past year, these past two, everything has just gone so right, what with the new council and the treaties being signed and Tuchanka and Liara and the baby and everything. It just doesn't seem, I don't know, real, somehow. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And there's so muchabout this that can go wrong, and there's nothing I can do-"
"Oh, Shepard," Tali said, echoing Garrus' own thoughts. She pulled the human into her embrace, even as he walked over to lay a hand on each of their shoulders.
"You are allowed to be happy, you know," he told his best friend, startled to realise that she was actually tearing up. "You're the big hero. You get to ride off into the sunset with the pretty girl and then live happily ever after. I'm pretty sure it's in your contract somewhere."
"Heroes get contracts now?" Shepard sniffed, wiping awkwardly at her eyes.
"Well, I certainly did. The standard 'fame, fortune and a political nightmare the size an elcor battalion' deal." He paused theatrically. "You know, thinking about that last one, maybe I should look at getting a new agent."
Shepard laughed weakly and punched his arm.
"What did I do to deserve you two?"
"Now that," Tali smiled, releasing the human, "is a very good question."
"Well, I seem to recall-"
Whatever Shepard had been planning on saying was abruptly cut off by a pained scream emanating from nearby. Garrus sighed as Shepard's head snapped up and around to zero in on the door.
He sighed. Excellent timing as usual, T'Soni.
"Shepard, wait!" he began as the human started for the door. "Don't do something you'll regret later. "
"That's my wife and daughter in there, Garrus! I want to know what the hell is going on," Shepard growled, rounding on the two commandos. "Move or I will make you."
"Commander, I'm sorry but we can't let you pass," the senior-most of the pair, who looked for all the world as though wished she'd taken up art instead of an assault rifle, said. "The Matriarch-"
"The Matriarch can kiss my ass. You swore to Liara, Raethe, not to her."
"Doctor T'Soni said we were to obey the Matriarch's orders," volunteered the second commando timidly.
An odd expression crossed Shepard's face, one Garrus had never seen before, which then faded into the strangely blank mask she wore when she had passed beyond anger, through rage and clean out the other side, into the strange, calm waters beyond. He hadn't seen her use that one in years, not since the war had ended, not since the old Council, its primary instigator, has been disbanded. He glanced over at Tali, who shrugged and then joined him in moving to back Shepard up. If Shepard wanted in, he'd damn well make sure she got in.
"I see," the human replied after a beat, voice aggressively reasonable. "And what about myorders?"
Raethe wet her lips nervously and swallowed.
"Your name... did not come up, Commander. I'm sorry."
"So am I."
Fortunately for the unfortunate pair, the door clicked and slid open just as Shepard started to tense to strike.
"Your devotion to your family does you honour, Commander," the matriarch in question said, emerging smoothly from the room beyond and positioning herself in front of the two commandos.
"You. You tell me what the hell is going on right now or I swear I will gut you where you stand. I heard-"
"There is no life without some pain, Commander. Bringing forth newlife is no exception," Wisthre said softly, unmoved. Clad in a diaphanous purple robe and leaving wet footprints on the stone floor, she was every bit as old as Tali had said. Firm cobalt skin had given way, at long last, to fine wrinkles, crests fading to the very palest of pastel blues at their tips and her once soft contours lost to delicate bone and wiry muscle. She tilted her head slightly, as if conceding some unknown point. "It progresses well, without incident. Little more than an hour remains."
"Can I-"
"No. Not yet."
"Like you're going to stop me."
Wisthre reached out with one skinny arm to lay her hand on Shepard's shoulder as the human made to push past her.
"Would you welcome your daughter into the world with fear in your heart, Commander? Would her first memory of you be one of anger?"
Shepard stopped dead.
"What?"
"I fear it has not been well explained to you. The fault is mine. Your mate is very young, works far too hard and lost her own mother too soon. I should have taken a more active hand. Even the wisest of us are imperfect, and I... allowed myself to be swayed by your reputations," Wisthre sighed. "There is a reason for our tradition, Commander. Did you not think it odd that three matriarchs are in attendance today? That there is but one matron, her own firstborn a mere six years old?"
"Liara said that there can be a lot of melding involved. You can guide her through some bits of it..?"
"Yes. We matriarchs bring experience, guidance and calm. But we can so easily forget what it is like to be young and uncertain, so Nalla brings the empathy and compassion of a new mother. You, however, would bring fear.
"If you go to your mate now, she will try to draw you into any meld she shares with your daughter. She will be unable to help it: you are a part of her soul, and she longs for you to be with her in all things. But your fear will become her fear, and, through her, your daughter's. She would panic, Liara would panic, and it would feed in upon itself. The outcome would... not be good."
Shepard seemed to deflate again.
"Oh."
"But if you can put your fear aside," Wisthre continued, "you can give them your strengthinstead, and the reassurance of your love." She paused. "You love them, do you not?"
Shepard's head jerked back up.
"What kind of a question is that? Of course I love them!"
"You have hopes for them? Dreams? Fond memories?"
The matriarch studied Shepard's face intensely as she closed her eyes in thought, seemed to relax, and then opened them again.
"Yes."
"Good. Focus on those, and come."
Garrus and Tali watched the door close behind the pair, leaving them alone in the echoing chamber with two asari commandos who appeared to be on the verge of passing out from relief.
"You know," he said to the room at large after a long, drawn-out silence, "I bet this is all a hell of a lot easier with salarians."