Apologies for the long hiatus. RL has been getting in the way.

Aethyta

"No, no, not like that," Aethyta said, examining her daughter's stance critically. "I thought you said you played skyball."

"When I was twenty," Liara said, a note of defensiveness to her voice. "And it was only for two seasons. I wasn't very good at it."

"Should I ask?"

The kid shrugged and glanced away, evidently embarrassed.

"I'll take that as a 'no'."

Without bothering to wait for a reply, she grabbed the Liara's arm and roughly shoved it up tighter against her chest, so that her upper arm was held more or less flush against her side.

"Here. And make a fist. A fist. No, your thumb goes on the outside. Goddess, do you want to break all your fingers? You can't just clench and hope."

Aethyta held up her own hands to demonstrate the proper technique, curling her fingers up tight to present the scarred, hard knuckles that had won her more than a few brawls and barfights. She nodded her approval when the kid emulated, if slightly clumsily.

Much of this morning so far had been clumsy, as a point in fact, and not just because Liara was trying to learn and lead with her non-dominant side. Aethyta had been appalled to realise just how little hand-to-hand training her youngest had. Liara could handle a gun well enough, and when it came to biotics she was clearly Benezia's daughter, but it was becoming equally clear that she had little more than the bare basics of unarmed combat.

It was an appalling oversight, as far as Aethyta was concerned. Absolutely appalling. She'd gone out of her way to make sure that her own girls would all be able take care of themselves, no matter how their theoretical attackers chose to go after them. And Benezia had promised to make sure that Liara would have all the tools necessary to defend herself. Even if Nezzie'd never been one for close combat herself, she could have at least gotten Shiala to teach the kid more than what she had now, which was little more than the ability to break a few common holds and fall properly. And, even if Benezia hadn't evidently broken that promise along with so many others, there was no reason why 'the Great Commander Shepard' couldn't have taught her girlfriend a thing or two. Wrestling outside of the bedroom could be almost as much fun as wrestling in it.

"Good. Ok, bend your knees a little. The idea is to push up and across, not down like you tried it before. Get your legs behind it. There, like that. It's called a hip 'n shoulder for a reason. Ready? Remember, you wanna have both feet flat on the ground when you start the hit."

They started off lightly at first, just a step and a gentle bump. The kid, though, was a quick learner, and it wasn't long before she'd graduated from that to taking a few steps before applying the hit, and then on to a full-blown run. With the fifth such pass, she actually managed to knock Aethyta off her feet and onto her ass. A chorus of cheers went up from their small audience, even as she accepted Liara's hand up.

"Not too bad, kid. Not too bad at all," Aethyta said, dusting herself off and shaking the numbness from her own arm. "In another hundred years you might actually be a threat to someone other than yourself."

Liara returned her smile. With the good side of her face flushed with exertion and her pleased, slightly proud expression, she looked far closer to her actual age than Aethyta could ever remember having seen her before, outside of photos and vids. One hundred and ten. Barely even an adult. Hardly any older than the dozen girls who'd gathered to watch their session.

"If I am, it will all be thanks to my excellent teacher."

"Eh, well, we'll see if you feel that way tomorrow," she replied, waving the obvious flattery away, but pleased despite herself. "You'll be taking the hits then."

Liara's face fell slightly at her admittedly malevolent smirk, and she rubbed at her left arm, bare beneath a white tank top.

"Oh."

"Gotta be able to take the hits if you're gonna dish 'em out."

"I see." Liara's face fell even further, and it was all Aethyta could do not to laugh. "Can I at least wear my armour?"

"Nope. Kinetic barriers'll dampen the impact too much."

"Oh."

Liara would have bruises on top of bruises by the time they were done, Aethyta knew, maybe even a broken bone or two, but it was the best way to learn. It you could charge, full-force and fearlessly, at an armoured opponent while wearing little more than your skivvies, you could charge at anything. The same was true for the reverse. It was the way she'd learned to do it, from her mother, and the way she'd taught all of her other daughters.

"But if you can stand up to that," she conceded, taking a swig from her canteen, "then we'll see about starting on the biotics bit of it."

"I still do not see why we can't start with the biotics aspect of it first," Liara said sourly, even as she took the offered canteen. "It seems to me that that would be the most difficult part to master in any case."

She wasn't wrong on that account. The charge was one of the hardest techniques for any biotic to master, largely because the object you were attempting to move was yourself. Most asari found it doubly hard to use the charge in combat; their people had always felt most comfortable fighting at a distance, even when fighting amongst themselves. Aethyta was one of the rare few for whom it had come as naturally as breathing. Melania had taken to it as well, after a few false starts, but her other two daughters had struggled. Liara, she thought, could go either way. She could get herself into the right mindset, if their battle with the banshees was any indication, but it seemed to be something she had to work at.

"Sure, we could start with your biotics," Aethyta conceded, keeping her voice affable even as she rolled her eyes. "And then I could start explaining to your mother how I let you break your damn fool neck because I hadn't taught you the fundamentals."

Liara's face fell into a full frown, and she glanced over at the blocky alliance freighter that served as their temporary home and her 'office'. Aethyta knew the look, and the reason for it: the sun was well up and breakfast underway in the dining hall, and Nezzie was still in bed. Today would be a bad day, the second in a row.

Aethyta followed her gaze, her own frown deepening. The thing with the Justicar seemed to have knocked almost all of the remaining fight out of her ex. On good days, Benezia rose with the rest of them and tended to her own needs, but she was hard to draw into conversation, refused to speak in any detail of the nightmares that seemed to be getting worse, and was developing a marked and disturbing tendency to just sit around and wait for someone to tell her what to do. On bad days, it was a job and a half just to get her out of bed.

It hurts when I try to think Benezia had told her, what seemed like months ago. I catch myself thinking in the ways it wanted me to think, or trying not to think at all.

When her eyes found her daughter's again, she saw her own mingled worry and frustration mirrored there. Aethyta had never liked problems that she couldn't fight, lie or fuck her way out of, and that left her with few options for dealing with this sort of thing. The options that she did have were proving ineffective - even her attempts to draw Benezia into their old, favourite arguments had been met with little more than a few unenthusiastic sallies or dull-eyed apathy. In some ways, Aethyta thought it would actually have been better if she was scheming to bring back the Reapers. Benezia would have seemed more herself that way, and it would have given Aethyta something to actually fight against.

"I think I've found Shiala," Liara said abruptly. "The surviving colonists from Feros appear to have wound up on Benning, and I suspect that she is still with them. If she is, I am going to try to convince her to come out here, even if it is only for a little while. Perhaps having someone else who was there with her through it all will help."

"It's worth a shot," she shrugged, and took the canteen back. "Don't imagine it could make things any worse."

Really, at the rate things were going, anything was worth a try. And Shiala was smart, capable and compassionate, and had known Benezia for almost as long as Aethyta herself had. She'd become one of Benezia's guards five, maybe ten years after they'd gotten together, and her student in earnest a decade or so after that. Personally speaking, Aethyta could take her or leave her, but the former commando had quickly risen high in Nezzie's esteem and stayed there.

"I certainly hope not."

Personally speaking, there were people whose location and continued survival Aethyta was a lot more interested in than Shiala's, whether she could help them out here with Benezia or not.

She wet her lips, suddenly uncomfortable.

"Look, I, uh, I don't want to keep pestering you about it, but I don't suppose you've heard anything about my three, have you?"

Liara shook her head.

"No, I'm sorry. But I haven't given up yet. Many of our worlds still don't have reliable communications, so there's every possibility that they're still alive, but unable to dial out of the system. We're getting more detailed reports every day as planets and outposts come back online. My people are still looking, and I am collating all of the information available about survivors into a single public extranet database and forum. As soon as I hear something, I will let you know. I promise."

'My people' she noted, and then pushed the thought aside.

"Thanks kid."

"Don't mention it. And, anyway, my motives are somewhat selfish. I would like to meet them. I have always wanted a sister."

"Have you now?" Aethtya chuckled. "Well, honestly, if you want someone to do your nails for you or paint your face or giggle with you over vid stars, you'd probably have better luck with my grandkids. Or even the great grand-kids. They're a lot closer to you in age. Mel's pretty much a matriarch herself now, and the other two ain't far behind."

It was only when Liara glanced down at her mangled hand, a slightly pained expression crossing her face, that she realised her mistake, and winced. She had her mother's beauty, did Liara, but delicate and refined where Benezia could be stern and even haughty. The war had changed that. Even Aethyta found it hard to look at all that burned, torn skin, sometimes, and she was half krogan; it couldn't be any easier to see it in the mirror day in, day out. Or to have to clean out the wound where your eye had been.

"I find it very hard to imagine any daughter of yours being particularly interested in fashion," Liara said, and the words had a slightly brittle brightness to them, "or celebrity gossip."

"You'd be surprised. Zara's always been a bit prissy."

"Is she the half-hanar one?"

"No, her dad was a turian. We were together for, oh forty years or so. Nice gal. Great ass. And the things he could do with his tongue kid, let me tell ya-"

A different pained expression took up residence on Liara's face, and Aethyta knew that she'd made the save.

"Please, 'dad', I really do not want to know intimate details of your…" she trailed off, visibly floundering for a suitable and, knowing her, non-'tawdry' term.

"Fantastic sex life?"

"… previous liaisons. Or current ones. Or future ones, for that matter."

"Suit yourself. But take it from me: prehensile appendages are worth their weight in gold, no matter what shape they come in."

She added a wink for emphasis, and was rewarded with an eye-roll skywards and a sigh.

"I shall be certain to bear that in mind," Liara said, and then glanced back towards the freighter once more. " I had probably better go and see to Mother."

"Sure you don't want me to take her this morning? I thought you were going over to Cianna today."

She had to make the offer, if just to keep square with herself, but, even so, she was secretly glad when the kid refused with a shake of her head.

"Cianna is tomorrow. I wanted to ask her about it, actually. My reports indicate that Matriarch Vibianna is the de-facto head of the council there. I seem to recall Mother speaking about negotiating with her in the past. She was never particularly enthusiastic about the experience."

There was the slightly hopeful twist to her words at the last of someone fishing for more information. Vibianna, though, wasn't a name that Aethyta recognised. She had to be someone who'd come to prominence only within the last century or so, after Aethyta had written off the whole politics thing as a bad job. Oh, she still voted, when the mood took her, and even - metaphorically speaking - stood up to argue her case when some particularly idiotic new proposal pissed her off, but, by and large, she'd been more than happy to consign her brief dalliance with that aspect of asari society to the dustbin of history. She'd never had the patience for it, all that passive-aggressive sniping and back-room dealing varrenshit and endless, endless talking about how to keep their people relevant and powerful while not actually doing a damned thing about it. There was only so much stupidity a body could take.

"Can't help you there. I had my fill of politics a century ago. Nezzie might well have something for you, if you can get anything out of her today."

"I suppose I won't know until I try."

"-said the merc to the high priestess." A the kid's blank expression, she shook her head and sighed. "Get going then. I'll see you later."

Liara collected her armoured jacket from the steps of an emergency shelter where she'd left it, waved a final farewell and then vanished through the freighter's airlock. Aethyta watched her go with a shake of her head. When, exactly, had her life gotten so fucked up? The Reapers had a lot to answer for. It was almost a pity that they were all dead so she couldn't make them pay individually for it.

She was pulling on her own jacket and counting the bruises on her arm when a small voice behind her cleared its throat. She turned to find a half-dozen of kids who'd been watching their morning's practice, clumped together in a messy group behind its eldest member and apparent spokesman, a girl with pale violet skin, dimpled cheeks and hard grey eyes. She was twenty five, maybe, with a lankiness that suggested she was just entering her second major growth spurt, and a well-scrubbed look to her that was at odds with her mismatched clothing. A younger child of eight or so clung to her leg, her thumb in her mouth and a filthy plush Blasto toy trailing from her other hand. The other four were aged somewhere in between the two, a range of sizes, shapes and colours; all watched her with expectant looks.

"You're Lady Liara's other parent, right?" the spokeschild demanded.

"I'm Doctor T'Soni's dad, yeah," she corrected, having seen how her daughter tried not to wince every time someone called her 'Lady'. Aethyta couldn't blame her - she'd never liked the honorific herself. The day she was a lady was the day she hung up her shotgun for good. "What can I do for you kids? Shouldn't you be getting breakfast?"

The girl shrugged as if to say that breakfast was a very minor consideration in the grand scheme of things. She had a point.

"You can help us by teaching us how to fight, like you're teaching La- Doctor T'Soni."

"We saw you beat up that krogan the other week!" another kid chimed in. "Crack crack and then he went down!"

"It was just like a vid!" enthused a third. "And then you fought with Lady Benezia. She threw you into the wall and you just got right back up again!"

"And then-"

She had to fight down the urge to laugh as an excited chorus of assent went up from the little group, each member adding their own rather exaggerated takes on her battles of the previous weeks, including the sparring matches she'd had with Dora, Griete and a couple of the brighter Aralakh boys. She'd caught hell for each match, and for the fight, from the same sanctimonious assholes who wanted her to keep her ass in the camp. There hadn't been a lot they could do about it this time, though, other than bitch. Matriarchs were supposed to teach. It wasn't her fault that she went in for practical lessons on the subject of ass-kicking.

The noise died from the group she held up a hand for quiet.

"Yeah, I could probably teach you a thing or two, if I wanted to," she conceded. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before, though two of the group in front of her were really a bit too young for even basic biotics instruction, let alone hand to hand combat. "The question, though, is: why should I? I thought that the matrons were giving you biotics lessons. That should be enough."

"Learning biotics and learning fighting are two different things," the eldest said firmly, crossing her arms. "And, anyways, they're not really teaching us anything anyway. It's all sitting and thinking and talking and never doing anything. You do stuff. And you teach people to do stuff. We've seen you."

"Well, you have to do some of the thinking to know how to do the doing," she countered, playing devil's advocate. Theory was nice and all, but only as a supplement to actual practice. Using biotics was all about control of the body - not something you could learn sitting on your ass in a classroom learning about the exact science behind the mass effect phenomenon.

"But not all the time! And it's all baby stuff anyway, what they're teaching. Nothing useful. Nothing I can use if the Reapers come back."

Ah. She'd thought that might have been at the heart of the request.

"The Reapers aren't coming back, kiddo," she sighed, finding a seat on the steps. "They're as dead as dead can be."

Or so they all really fervently hoped.

"But what if they come back?" asked the youngest, eyes wide.

"They won't."

"But what if they do?" insisted another, slightly older girl.

"Then Commander Shepard and my daughter'll kill 'em again," she said, as if that should settle everything. She was not, however, particularly surprised when it didn't.

"But I heard one of the maidens saying that the Shepard human was dead too-"

"The Shepard human's not dead!" protested another, hotly. "She can't be! She's a hero. She killed the Reapers and she fixed the krogan and got the geth to let the quarians go home! Heroes don't die like normal people do."

"Heroes can die, kid, just like normal people do, but Shepard's not dead," Aethyta interrupted firmly to head off any further argument. "She's just hurt real bad."

Damned rumours. It was amazing how they spread, especially in a camp with such limited access to the outside world. That said, it'd be nice if Shepard finally stopped snoozing in her hospital bed and got back out into the galaxy - if only for Liara's sake. The kid didn't talk about her lover much, if at all, but the uncertainty about it all was clearly wearing on her.

"Oh."

"But the Reapers aren't all dead," another one of them interjected. "You can still hear them at night, sometimes. Some of them got in here before you came."

"Those things out there aren't really Reapers anymore. The things that were controlling them are all gone. And they'll be dead soon too. That's what the krogan are here for. Nothing's better at killing than a krogan."

"Oh. "

"So you won't teach us, then?" the spokesgirl persisted.

"I didn't say that."

She looked over the group one more time. Orphans, the lot of them, she was pretty sure. Half of the kids in the camp were. The two affecting bravado she pegged as having sisters to protect, while two of the others simply seemed afraid, and were probably looking for something that would help them feel less so. The youngest of the group was too little to have any real idea of what was going on - she was probably a sister to one of the others in the group. The eldest, on the other hand, she of the hard eyes, straight back and demanding tone, was trying a little too hard to be a lot more grown up than she really was.

"You promised you'd look out for 'em, huh?" She took care to keep her tone gentle.

"My father was a salarian who died when I was little. My sister was a commando. She's dead now too. When the Reapers came, they turned my mom into one of their monsters. She killed our neighbours, and would have killed me too if I hadn't run away." The girl's voice, when narrating the events, was calm and distant, speaking as though they'd happened to someone else entirely, and a long time ago at that. When she was done, she laid her hand atop the littlest one's head and looked Aethyta straight in the eye. "This is my family now. I won't let anyone hurt them."

Aethyta sighed. She'd suspected it was something like that. But how did you begin to deal with it?

War. What a kick in the quad.

"Ok then. Here's the deal," she said, taking care to catch the eyes of each member of the group in turn. "You're not going to be beating up krogan any time soon, but I'll teach you all a thing or two. Biotics, a bit of brawling, whatever's useful. But, in return, you're gonna do exactly what I say, when I say it. I don't want to hear any arguing, any But Aethytas or Aethyta, I don't wannas. You do what I say, when I say it, or it ends, then and there. Deal?"

She held out her hand, palm up, and waited as the group held a hurried consultation.

"Deal," their spokesgirl said solemnly, resting her hand atop Aethyta's own.

"Good," Aethyta said with a smile, letting their hands drop. "Then you can start by getting me some breakfast. I like the number eight MRE, if we've still got any left. If not, I'll have whatever's going. You should get your own while you're there."

The group, as one asari, stared at her in mute incomprehension for a second, then drew in their collective breath for protest. She quirked a finger at them in warning.

"Ah! What did we just agree to?"

The group deflated as quickly as it had inflated. The spokesgirl's mouth snapped shut with an audible clop, and the look she gave Aethyta was practically pure affronted outraged. But she forced the upset back down with commendable speed, and, when she spoke again, her voice only contained a few traces of annoyance.

"A number eight MRE. Ok. Should we bring it here?"

"Nah. I think I'll be over near where I fought the krogan by the time you're done eating," Aethyta drawled. The space was smaller and a little more private than this bit of real estate, down by the waterfront, better for working with a group. "Come find me there."

The girl nodded and, without a further word, set off for the centre of the camp and the dining hall at a trot, her little group trailing after, some casting glances back at her over their shoulders. Once they were safely out of earshot, Aethyta allowed herself a wry chuckle. Three daughters, eight granddaughters and now this lot, and that trick had never gotten old. Ok, so maybe there wasn't a lot of glory to be had in besting children in an informal contract negotiation, but some days you just had to take your victories where you could find 'em. Today, she decided, sparing one last glance back towards the freighter as she set out, was probably one of them.