It was peaceful inside the cave, which took Shepard slightly aback despite the matriarch's previous words. Her only real experience with childbirth so far, if you could call it that, was limited to emergencies on vessels she'd served on, her own field medic's training and the odd vid. They'd all rather led to her expect chaos and shouting and harsh lights in pristine medical facilities, not the gentle lapping of the sea against stone and sand, the murmur of conversation and the golden-pink light of the rising sun.
She could feel the age of the place all around her, older yet again than the cavern outside. The carvings adorning the walls and ceiling were cruder here and worn down to the point of illegibility in places, the floor polished smooth by the passage of thousands of feet. There were, however, a few sops to modernity, hidden here and there. She spied a communications console carefully set into a wall so as to not disturb the natural flow and line of it. So, too, to her relief, was there modern medical equipment, including a current-generation portable scanner, all of it clean and well-maintained.
Honouring tradition, as Liara had told her, did not have to mean taking unnecessary risks.
It was warmer here, too, than outside and much, much more humid, enough that Shepard was actively sweating after a handful of steps and almost relieved when she was directed to strip down. At least more than a decade's worth of barracks living and communal showers had cured her of any body-shyness. That admittedly hadn't stopped the rather casual treatment of nudity on Thessia from coming as something of a shock when she'd relocated here, but had made the eventual adaptation easier; she didn't bat an eyelid when Wisthre removed her own gown and set it neatly aside.
"Follow me, Commander, and remember what I said. Be their strength."
She felt the thrill of fear rise again as she was led around the low natural wall separating the two parts of the cave, and Liara and the others came into view. She wasn't ready for this. Christ! She'd never even held a baby before. She honestly hadn't seen the appeal of them before Liara came along.
There was a murmur of conversation from the small group. She heard her name mentioned and froze, closing her eyes as the panic seized her heart again.
What kind of a parent could she be, anyway? Liara was the builder; she, Shepard, was a killer, stone cold, far more at home at taking life than making it. It was in her bones, in her blood, in her brain. Hell, she'd snatched up her gun tonight before anything else, body primed for a fight that wasn't going to come. She'd been fighting for as long as she could remember, from her first hazy memories of the streets and slums right through to the unending hunt for Cerberus cells and other unfortunate relics of the Extinction War. She'd lost count of the number of people that she'd killed, somewhere along the line, knowing only that it was somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. It didn't matter how rosily history viewed her actions, or even why she'd done them in the first place - how did you explain to your kid that you were a mass murderer, that you'd blown up an entire star system once because you thought that the end justified the means?
And she had enemies too. A lot of them, some powerful, some unpredictable, some patient, some not. She was an old war machine without a proper war to fight, and the vultures were circling, testing the waters, waiting for the battered beast to stumble at last. Her daughter would be a target, because of her. They'd already tried against her, against Liara. What kind of a life was that?
But... she was still here, despite everything. Older, wiser, more cunning, scarred in more ways than one. Still fighting the good fight, even if half of her battles these days were in finding ways of using her clout with the masses to sell the shape in which her friends were rebuilding the galaxy. And, whenever she'd faltered, wanted to shove a podium right up some politician's twisted backside, wanted to give in, she'd remember, remember the day she'd been beaten and robbed of her meagre possessions, left for dead in the muddy, grey slush they called snow.
They'd taken from her because they could. They'd beaten her because they could. She'd been all of nine, maybe, ten at the most, and they'd left her to die, cold and frightened and alone.
She didn't want to live in a galaxy where people took things from you because they were stronger than you were. She didn't want her daughter to live in a galaxy like that. That was why she'd become a Marine in the first place, so she didn't have to stand helplessly by while other people took and took and took. Her daughter would be beautiful and smart and funny and headstrong and compassionate, like her mother, and deserved better. Damnit, she would havebetter. Shepard would make the universe a better place for her. Her daughter wouldn't have to live in fear, but would grow happy and strong, free to find her own way in the world.
And she would have sisters. They'd play rough and tumble games together in the gardens of their grandmother, dig holes and build forts and scream and laugh in the warm sun. They'd grow wide-eyed at Garrus' outrageously exaggerated stories of heroism, hack systems with Tali, wheedle fake IDs from Jack and undergo the Rite on Tuchanka, taking their rightful place as blood sisters of Clan Urdnot. Miranda would be an ear to confide in and shoulder to cry on in the wake of first love lost. Vega could be the big brother they'd never have, chasing off suitors with those muscles and that scowl and a shotgun. Samara would teach them the history and lore of their people; Ash, the culture and beauty of their father's world. Liara, their mother would show them how to think for themselves, how to learn from the past to find the future, how to see the forest in the pattern of the trees. She, Shepard, would teach them to fight, not just for themselves but for others as well. And she and Liara, together, would kill anyone who even thoughtto threaten that future.
But, Liara, their daughter - they would never been more vulnerable than they were now. And here she was, dithering like an idiot.
When she opened her eyes, Wisthre was watching her again, expression inscrutable. The old asari's grey eyes followed her silently as she returned to where she'd left her clothes, retrieved her pistol from the neat pile, and started back. The matriarch nodded in seeming approval, a smile touching her eyes.
"May I show you something, Commander?" she asked when the human stood before her again. "It was shown to me by my own dear teacher, several centuries ago."
Shepard glanced back towards Liara.
"Shouldn't-"
"There is time enough for this." Wisthre held out her boney hand and, after a second of hesitation, Shepard took it. She felt the light pressure against her mind as the matriarch's eyes flashed to black, different from Liara, different even from what she remembered of Shiala, and then she was falling backwards through time, fleeting impressions of a long succession of bodies/places/people/feelings/thoughts flickering past so quickly and that she started to feel slightly nauseous. And then-
She crouched beside her mate in the sand, the spear a reassuring weight in her hand as she scanned the shoreline carefully. She wished, again, that she had not followed the lure of the stars and strayed so far from home; she'd seen large, strange beasts moving about ponderously last dusk. Mylan'i, her mate's tribe called them. They were good to eat, but it took at least five of their huntresses to bring one down, and then with difficulty. She was but one and a newcomer, one who did not know all of their ways yet. She would feel better with her own tribe around her, her sisters at her side.The wise woman clucked her tongue at her in warning, and she remembered herself, even as her mate reached out to touch her mind, seeking reassurance through the pain of bringing forth their child. She gave without hesitation: she would kill a whole pack of Mylan'i, if that was what it took to keep them safe-
"The tradition is lost in modern times save for memory," Wisthre said as the connection broke, leaving Shepard breathless and more than slightly awestruck, "but the role of the bondmate in the birth was once that of protector: to drive the beasts and jealous rivals away."
"When was that from?" Shepard asked, shaking her head slightly to clear it. The memory of memory had an odd, fuzzy, quality to it, as though it was not only coming from very far away, but as if it were somehow slightly alien to the asari herself.
"It is difficult to say with certainty. My teacher's teacher once showed it to anthropologists and archaeologists in the Guildhall. Perhaps seventy, eighty thousand years. Before our recorded history begins."
Shepard shook her head again, this time with amazement. God - imagine having access to some of the memories of your ancestors, going right the way back to the dawn of time! No wonder the loss of so many matriarchs during the war had brought the Republic so near to collapse afterwards. So much knowledge, so much history, gone forever.
"We will recover," the matriarch said, catching the touch of sadness in her expression. "The old ones may be lost, but you will live to make new memories for your daughters and granddaughters." She tilted her head back towards Liara and smiled gently. "Go."
Shepard did as bidden, picking her way quickly across the smooth, slightly slick floor.
"Hey," she said, a little awkwardly, to announce her presence. "Hope I'm not too late."
Four heads jerked around as she spoke, but she only had eyes for one of them. Liara half-turned to look back and up at her, her face melting into a relieved smile that went straight to Shepard's heart and played it like a finely-tuned violin.
"Shepard!"
Liara reclined against the pale stone of the circular pool's walls, up to her bare breasts in the gently rolling water. Her skin shone with sweat, flushed almost purple above the waterline and occasionally flaring with wisps of biotic energy. One either side of her sat her aunt and her father, her cousin further off to left, the three of them a relaxed counterpoint to her tense and trembling body.
"See, I told you the old bat'd talk her down," Aethyta said, winking at Shepard as she rose, gesturing for the human to take her place. There was a cough from Nalla that sounded suspiciously like repressed laughter, and Celaniza sighed.
"Aethyta, my dear, I do sometimes wonder what my sister saw in you."
"Yeah, I got that a lot," Aethyta half-shrugged and then grinned evilly, turning back to Liara. "Truth of the matter was I was just really good in bed. Your mother was a screamer, kid-"
There was another burst of 'coughing' from Nalla.
"I am not," Liara said between pants, "hearing this. I do not needto hear this. Ever again."
Shepard didn't really need to hear it either, she decided as she stepped carefully down into the pool. Aethyta could make Joker blush, and Liara had confided to Shepard before that she found it very difficult to imagine her parents together, let alone for any length of time. From what Shepard had heard of Benezia, universally described as 'nice' and 'refined' and 'considerate' (described, at least, before the whole, sad affair with Saren), she had to agree.
The water, let in and out from the ocean beyond by long, narrow channels, was warm and slightly salty, with an almost silken feel to it from dissolved eezo. The seas of Thessia, she remembered, were kinder and gentler than those of Earth, lacking a moon to drive them with such force. It was theorised that the asari had returned to the ocean at some point in their evolutionary history, an idea supported by a scattered fossil record and a few physiological holdovers. Liara, for example, could hold her breath for a staggering amount of time compared to a human, a talent that had come in handy on more than one mission.
"How are you doing?" she asked as she took up her place beside her wife, laying the carnifex Mordin had given her, so long ago, carefully on the pool's lip. Liara took her hand and squeezed it gently; Shepard could feel her lover's biotics flare at the contact, and the slight tickle of her presence in the back of her mind. Not a meld itself, just the vague, comforting awareness of her that sometimes arose before a meld proper.
"Ok, I think," Liara laughed, and there was a slight, almost unnoticeable note of hysteria underlying it. "I've never done this before!"
"You're doing really well," Nalla assured her. "Much better than I did. Goddess, I was terrified! I don't know what I would have done if Mother hadn't been there."
"You would have been fine," Celaniza said and smiled at her youngest daughter.
"I know that now, but then?" Nalla shrugged. "You've been so calm, Li. I can't believe that Commander Shepardwas the one - oh, what's the human phrase? Having cubs?"
"Kittens. And, yeah, well," Shepard allowed, rubbing the back of her neck as her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "This is a little outside my usual area of expertise."
"I thought it was cute. Sweet, even," Liara said, turning her head slightly to kiss her cheek. "Well, up until a point."
Shepard's nose was suddenly full of the smell of her, the salt and the sweat and the spicy sweetness that was uniquely Liara. The awareness of her in the back of her mind changed subtly, calling up the memory of the ancient huntress. Liara. Her mate. Her mate's tribe. Soon, her daughter. She reached out with her free hand and let her fingers brush her gun, reassuring herself that it was still within easy reach.
"And what point was that, exactly?"
"...perhaps I'd better not say."
"It was the car, wasn't it? Well, it'll make a great story for the kid, anyway."
"I'm sure. I-"
Not for the first time that morning, Liara's sentence was cut off by a gasp and a groaned 'goddess!', her hand tightening convulsively around Shepard's as her body went rigid. The groan became a whimper, Liara's face contorting in pain and the pressure of her grip increasing so much that Shepard was sure that, if it had been a stock-standard human hand instead of a largely synthetic replacement, it would have been crushed. After the whimper came a scream between gritted teeth, and then Wisthre was there as Liara fell back against the smooth stone, gasping.
The old asari touched a scanner briefly to Liara's belly, nodding her approval at the readout, then replaced it with her hand, eyes flashing black. She smiled and laid the scanner aside.
"Good. We're ready to begin."
"Begin?" Liara, breathing hard, looked up at her with a horror that would probably have been funny in any other situation. "What have I been doing until now?"
"Preparing," Aethyta supplied, not without sympathy. "This is the hard bit."
"Yeah," chimed in Nala, slipping around the pool to be closer to the group. "But it'll be worth it."
"Indeed." Celaniza smiled at her daughter again. "Just remember what we showed you and you'll be fine."
Liara looked from them, up to Wisthre and then over to Shepard, who forced herself to relax again. She never liked to hear Liara scream.
"You know I'd never let anything happen to you," she whispered, drawing Liara's head around and her mouth to hers to share a brief kiss, pleased when some of the tension left Liara's body. "Or her," she added, laying her hand atop her wife's swollen belly.
Liara smiled back at her, her own free hand coming to rest atop Shepard's there.
"I know."
With that, Liara took in a deep breath and let it out, slowly, allowing her aunt and the midwife to help her shift forward and around on the rounded stone ledge slightly so that her body was reclining back at a steeper angle, legs further apart. No sooner had she settled back into the new position that she groaned again, body tensed and straining, grip tightening around Shepard's hand once more.
"Reach for her," Wishtre instructed. Shepard glanced up at her momentarily, only to realise that the instruction was directed towards Liara. Her lover's expression turned inwards, blue eyes darkening to swirling black, her biotics flaring brilliantly. Shepard had only a moment to register the sight before her mind was seized, none too gently, and drawn in towards Liara's. Startled by the sudden, forceful intrusion, she fought back instinctively, resisting until spots flashed before her eyes and she felt the meld start to waver.
"Don't fight it," Aethyta said urgently, suddenly at her side, hand on her arm. "Let her in."
This was Liara, Shepard reminded herself, trying, yet again, to force herself to relax. Liara had been inside her head plenty of times before, and wouldn't hurt her. Hell, she'd probably be very apologetic afterwards - she always was if she got a bit caught up when they were having sex and didn't provide a verbal warning before starting the Joining, even though she knew Shepard usually didn't really care by that point.
Liara had spoken, before, of the different types of melds, noting, with some distaste, that most other species tended to think that melding automatically equalled sex. There was the Knowledge or Memory meld, which took practice and could be quite draining, but allowed for the controlled sharing of thoughts and memories. It was what Liara had used to try to help make sense of Shepard's visions from the Prothean beacon, way back when they'd first met, what Shiala had used to gift her the Cipher and, presumably, how the matriarch had shown her the ancient memory.
Then there was the mating meld, of course, or the Joining, which was the deepest and most powerful - but least controllable - allowing sexual partners to explore each other fully, not just thoughts and memories but feeling as well, a true physical and emotional union. It was also, quite coincidentally, the type that Shepard had the most experience with. Finally, Liara had said that there was a kind of meld between mothers and daughters, similar, apparently, to the Memory meld, but different at the same time. It had a name that didn't translate well into any other known language; the closest approximation Liara had been able to come up with was the Guiding or Bonding meld. It was the easiest of the types to instigate and sat somewhere between the other two in terms of the depth of connection it allowed, but the ability gradually faded away, disappearing around the time the child reached puberty.
This, however, was different, both what she'd experienced and what Liara had described. For one, she realised as she let the connection establish itself, she wasn't the focus of it. The bulk of Liara's attention was elsewhere, on someone that was strange bundle of something that wasn't quite confusion and not exactly anticipation or urgency. The presence was strong, but equally raw, unformed and primal.
Our daughtershe realised with a shock of awe.
Yes. Here.Liara's thought came to her with the memory of a smile, drawing her deeper into the meld. Together they dipped down to touch the tangled ball of feelings and felt it flare in response, first with fear, and then with something akin to curiosity when Liara sent back a wave of calming reassurance and love. Their daughter reached out then, through Liara, to touch Shepard's own mind, brushing against the edges of it like a cat circling around her ankles.
Shepard felt her heart swell as they made contact for the first time. Her daughter. God, she was so bright and beautiful, full of so much life and undefined potential...
Hey thereshe sent weakly, unable to think of anything else, startled when the thought sent their daughter skidding away behind their mother's metaphorical coattails.
No thoughts yet. Too young Liara returned with a hint of sadness, pulling the two of them still further apart. Soon.
She felt Liara's attention shift away from her again with that, and opened her own eyes, surprised to realise that she was still clearly aware of their surroundings despite being tied into the meld. That was a second big difference: she'd always lost all sense of time and place before, either to the memory being shared or to the sheer overwhelmingness of Liara's presence. Here, now, while she could feel the faintest echo of Liara's body and the distant whisper of her thoughts, her mind, her body remained her own.
Shepard was further startled to realise that she was blinking tears away for the second time that day. She never cried, damnit. Aethyta caught her eye and smiled as she wiped at them with the back of her hand, only succeeding in further dampening her face with the salty water; there was no mockery in it.
From there, however, things progressed quickly. Shepard largely stayed out of the way, in as much as that was possible while still seated at Liara's side. She let the four asari, talking softly and melding every now and then, guide Liara through, concentrating herself on providing a thought or feeling of reassurance whenever she felt her wife's uncertainty or pain spike. The bulk of her attention, though, remained on the cave mouth, scanning for any signs of out-of-place movement. The fuss on the estate of their pre-dawn departure would have caught the attention of the paparazzi, at the very least, and it was entirely possible that someone had worked out where they'd gone, or simply followed them, for all she'd seen no evidence of a tail on the drive over. Shepard was in no mood to deal with interlopers of any sort: any members of the press that dared intrude would get the mother of all ask-kickings; anyone else, she felt, would simply get a bullet.
But, while she thought she saw a flicker of movement every now and then, the glint of sunlight off of metal or glass, no hostiles of any sort risked an attempt. It was just as well: no sooner had the sun finished cresting the horizon did Liara gave birth to their daughter.
The young asari let go of Shepard's hand to grip the ledge tightly, back arched, body straining, letting out a cry of mingled pain, relief and triumph that echoed throughout Shepard's entire being, mind and body. Liara fell back then, breathing hard, as Wisthre came up, out of the water, cradling a small, bright purple bundle which she laid delicately on the new mother's chest, between her breasts and over her heart. The newborn mewled softly in protest and stretched, tiny hands balled into fists, eyes blinking open for the first time, their colour gradually fading from the swirling black of the meld as it broke to the pale blue of her mother.
The gun fell from Shepard's suddenly lifeless fingers, splashing into the pool.
She was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Two arms, two legs, fingers and toes all accounted for - Shepard had known from the scans that everything was correct and present, but seeing it all for herself was an unexpected relief - and the rounded, pinkish nubs at the top and back of her slightly elongated head that would eventually grow into her crests. The purple hue of her skin faded quickly as she cooled down to a solid blue, a shade or two darker than her mother's, with a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, dusting down her back. A pink tongue darted out as she yawned and stretched again, nuzzling against Liara's chest.
Shepard reached a shaking hand out to touch her and hesitated, suddenly aware of just how big and rough and strong her hands were. Her daughter's whole head would fit in the palm of her hand, a hand that, most days, was more at home stripping down an assault rifle than anything else. She'd killed with them, before, beaten and choked and crushed until all life was gone. And this life, the life she had to protect, was so very fragile-
Someone nudged her in the back. She didn't look up to see who.
"Go on. They're harder to break than you'd think. If I could manage - hell, if my dad could manage it..."
Her daughter's skin was smooth and soft under her finger, warm but damp with droplets of salt water clinging to her body. She mewled again at the touch, but Shepard's hand was prevented from withdrawing by Liara's, which closed over the top of it, holding it gently down. Shepard could feel the tiny heart racing beneath her palm, the rise and fall of a delicate chest and, through it, the quickly slowing, steadying breathing of her mate.
Shepard looked up into Liara's eyes.
"Hey."
"Hey," Liara replied weakly. She was crying. "We did it."
"I don't know about 'we'. I can't help but feel that you did most of the work."
"Only most?" Liara smiled, tentatively stroking her daughter's head. "Well, I suppose you did help make her."
"And a fine job I did too, if I do say so myself." She felt lips stretch into a smile. "She's-"
"Yes. Perfect."
Shepard leaned in for a kiss, tasting salt and sweat and blood and Liara. She was grinning widely when they pulled apart.
"So, have you kids settled on a name for her yet?" Aethyta broke in from behind them.
Shepard frowned slightly at the interruption. They must have been through every damned baby name book in the galaxy trying to find something that they both liked, especially once they'd agreed that they wouldn't be naming their firstborn after any of the fallen. How could they choose just one or two to remember like that when so many special people had given their lives to ensure that they all had a better future? They'd ultimately ended up with a 'short' list of twenty-odd names from a variety of cultures and no firm decision.
"I have," Liara said with another smile, not taking her eyes from Shepard's. The hand atop Shepard's squeezed it gently. "Elipsa. It means 'hope'."
And that, Shepard decided, was perfect too.