It's been a while, I know. The Real Life monster keeps getting in the way. Thanks for sticking it out!
Aethyta
Aethyta took another slow pull from the flask and contemplated the datapad in her hands. The letter was brief, the words comprising it clumsy, and perhaps even terse, but they'd do, for now. Her girls knew better than to expect eloquence. That had always been the domain of their fathers. An astronomer, an architect, an entrepreneur and, if she was counting Benezia, a politician; they'd all had a way with words that she'd lacked. In her more self-aware moments, she'd sometimes wondered if, maybe, she needed someone like that, to balance her out.
She was debating adding anything about Benezia to the message when a flicker of movement over the top of the pad caught her eye. She ducked to the side just in time to watch the rhevosi ball fly past her head and slam into the wall of the cargo container behind her. She winced at the clang, and felt her stomach churn again at the sudden movement, but fought it down with the aid of long practice. Instead, she slipped the flask back into the pocket of her jacket and, fighting another unwelcome bout of nausea, scooped up the ball as it rolled to a stop at her feet.
Her little group of wannabe fighters had grown to twelve capable of evading the matrons charged with minding them, dragging a number of younger sisters along for the ride. The littlest ones she'd safely occupied with some packing boxes she'd taken from stores at the same time she'd liberated the flask and current contents thereof; the older girls she'd introduced to rhevosi.
Like most asari sports, rhevosi was fast-paced and biotically-dependant, and had a high injury rate as a result. Even unweighted, the ball alone could do serious damage to someone without barriers when backed by a decent throw, and an unlucky blow to the head or biotic detonation could kill. You still got it, sometimes, on the outlying colonies, but it had fallen out of favour in most of the Republics well before Aethyta had been born. It was in part due to the dangerous nature of the game, and in part because it was more competitive than it was cooperative, but rather more, Aethyta suspected, because their people were slowly forgetting how you were actually supposed to teach biotics: not in some sterile, controlled classroom, but through hard, lived-in experience. That, and the unruly scrums it tended to produce weren't half as spectacular to watch as a game of skyball.
Imilda, the girl with the hard grey eyes, was the first to reach her and the ball, breathless from running and flushed with exertion in the pale afternoon sun.
"Well, someone owes me a penalty," Aethyta said, holding out the ball. "Was it you?"
"You're supposed to be watching!" the girl complained, snatching it from her.
"You all know the rules. Shouldn't need me to police you."
"That's not the point."
"Gimme a break, kid. You're lucky I'm out here at all today," she said, with feeling.
The past few days were a blur, to the point that she wasn't entirely sure how many of them there had been. The only thing she was sure about was that she hadn't had hangover this bad in at least a century.
She'd come around again sometime in the middle of this morning, and had made it to the side of the bed just in time to be sick into the rubbish bin some thoughtful soul - Benezia, she guessed - had left there for just that purpose. The bottles at her bedside were empty, and she couldn't find the energy to make it out of said bed any further than the ship's small head. But there had still been water, in the galley, a couple of pills she hadn't bothered to examine in any great detail before taking them, and then she'd been falling back into bed for more of what could charitably be called 'sleep'. When she'd come to for the second time, to be sick for the second time, she'd lain in bed wishing in vain for death for another hour before eventually finding the wherewithal to haul her extremely sorry ass out of bed and to the showers, to wash away the full-body stink of cheap booze, vomit and sour sweat.
When she'd emerged, blinking and cursing into another overcast and miserable day, it had been to find that the camp was buzzing like a gilfly hive on fire. She hadn't cared enough to investigate and nobody had paid her any mind when she'd stood under the shower head for a full half hour beyond her allotment, or even when she'd helped herself to two of their almost exhausted supply of ration packs. No one, that was, except for this little brat and her gang of bratty sidekicks, who'd turned up like magic, wanting to know why she hadn't been at their agreed upon meeting place for 'training' the past few days.
Aethyta had been on the verge of telling them to fuck off, but had reminded herself that a deal was a deal, and that they'd upheld their end of the bargain so far. And she'd figured that they might help her take her mind off of, maybe not the krogan wailing on her skull with a powerhammer, but the reason why she'd wound up in that state in the first place.
It hadn't really worked.
"If you're out, you're out, and you can sit down and shut up. If you're not, you can get your little purple ass back out there and send over whoever did put the ball out of bounds."
Imilda sent the ball hurting back to the playing oval with the hint of a biotic throw and decidedly poor grace, then dropped down on the crate beside Aethyta.
"You're supposed to be teaching us fighting," she whined.
"And I am."
"But-"
"We made a deal, right? Trust me to hold up my end of it."
When the girl's scowl didn't ease, Aethyta sighed and rolled her eyes skyward.
"You see... whatsername... Jally over there?" Aethyta said, pointing at one of the youngest players. "She was pretty fuc- She wasn't all that great when we were trying out pulls the other day, was she?"
"She couldn't even move the stone," Imilda said, more than a hint of smug superiority colouring her tone. "Even Yirun could do that, and she's practically a baby."
"Yeah, well, watch her next time she gets the ball."
It took a few minutes, as Jally's team had lost possession, but eventually she came out of the scrum with the ball again. She glanced around for her teammates, spotted one behind her and sent the ball gently drifting up into the air above her head. The other girl put a clumsy throw into it, just enough to send it over the heads of the other team. It bounced off the edge of the box serving as a goal basket, to a collective groan from Jally's team, and was immediately set upon by players from the other two.
"Leaning things doesn't have to be serious business and hard work, you know," Aethyta said, as if she wasn't secretly hoping that the game would wear them all out enough today that they wouldn't bother her tomorrow - or ever again.
"Oh."
"And learning how to think on your feet and use the skills of the people around you is even more important than knowing how to hit someone without hurting yourself. Games like this might be games, but they'll help you with that sorta thing too. The more you play, the more you learn."
"Oh."
"'Oh' is right. Now, be a good kid and go fill up my canteen, will ya?" she said, pulling the container in question out from between them. "And if you run into any of those humans I saw wandering around, see if you can't get a couple of 'em to come over here, and maybe I'll show you something new."
The girl gave her another scowl, but it had less heat and more resignation behind it and she snatched up the canteen and set off at a run towards the heart of the camp and the pumps. Aethyta watched her go until she vanished between two cargo containers, then fished the flask back out of her pocket. Another mouthful and it was empty, much to her disgust; batarian rum was usually a bit too sour for her tastes, but it was better than nothing.
She almost threw the empty flask away, but thought better of it at the last moment. It was a nice little thing, brushed aluminium and just the right size to carry on a person discretely. She slipped it back into her pocket instead, leaned back against her container's side, let her eyes fall closed, and tried not to think about all the times she'd played rhevosi and other, old games with her daughters and granddaughters. With Zara, who'd always protested beforehand that she hated getting dirty and sweaty and smelly, but could, equally invariably, soon be found out there in the dust or mud or synthaturf with the rest of them, having a blast.
She must have dozed off, for a few minutes, with the datapad and her letter clasped to her chest, because she was started back to Thessia by another clang of a ball hitting the container. It was fucking embarrassing - nodding off in the middle of afternoon was something only babies and dried-up, decrepit old take-me-out-back-and-shoot-me matriarchs did. Her only saving grace was that no-one appeared to have noticed. Instead, she handed out another penalty and had another conversation with a too-serious child, this one afraid she was going to have to become a matron straight away when she grew up so she could take care of her little sister. Aethyta sent her back into the game a few minutes later, reassured and substantially better educated about asari biology. What the hell were they teaching kids these days?
A third penalty and a third child followed not long after. This one who told the ground, the sky, the crate - anything but Aethyta, in fact - about her aunt, who'd kept her and her cousin safe for a week while she tried to find a way to get them out of the city, and who'd died at the hands of a marauder just inches from their hiding places. The cousin, who'd refused to come when she'd decided to run and was still missing.
It was obviously a 'Tell Aethyta Your Problems Day', like she got when she worked bars sometimes. Every new face a sob story looking for sympathy or advice, or just a semi-anonymous ear. Only here, the usual platitudes, measured dispensations of common sense, occasional knuckle sandwiches and pointed 'grow a quad and talk to her/it/him'sprobably wouldn't help much. Much in the same way they hadn't worked with Benezia.
Goddess, if this was any indication, but the next generation was going to be royally fucked up. She could only hope that she wouldn't need to have these kinds of talks with her own grandkids.
If she ever got to see them again.
If they were all still alive.
Aethyta did her best, which she didn't think was all that great, to assure the girl that she wasn't a bad person for running, and that's what her family - all of her family - would have wanted her to do. But she was more than a little bit relieved when Imilda returned with a full canteen and a pack of five humans at her heels. Two females and three males, all in fatigues over skinsuits, rebreathers which covered their faces but that left their hair and sides of their heads exposed, which would do rather nicely for her purposes. There were groups of them wandering all through the camp, from some Alliance ship that had apparently landed while she'd been out of it.
She whistled the rest of the rhevosi players back over and stood, a move that nearly cost her lunch and set her head spinning. She fought her way through it, though, planting her feet solidly on the ground and affixing her most winning smile on her face.
"Hey, thanks for coming over," Aethyta said, extending her hand for a human-style handshake to the one with a sergeant's stripes and a name badge reading 'Digeser'.
"It's my pleasure, Matriarch" Digeser said, accepting her hand cautiously. His grip was firm and steady, and she matched it exactly, watching the surprise in his brown eyes.
"Eh, don't bother with all of that 'matriarch' crap," she said, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder before releasing his hand. "'name's Aethyta, and that'll do for me."
He smiled tentatively back at her in that toothy way humans did when they were trying to be friendly.
"I'm Sergeant Digeser, and this is my squad: Madoff, Pinelli, Duckworth and Ahmed." Each of the named soldiers nodded or held up a hand in greeting; evidently none of them had ever been through a basic cultural awareness course. Humans. "Our Captain has ordered us to help out where we can while we're dirtside. What can we do for you?"
"To tell the truth, Sergeant, I really just wanted the kids to have a chance to meet you, and maybe talk to you all a little bit," Aethyta said, waving vague in the direction of the sweaty, dirt-stained group. "I don't think half of them have seen a human in person before."
"Well, I don't think any of us have ever met an asari matriarch in person before."
His smile this time was more genuine and relaxed, and she matched it.
"Heh, well, you probably wouldn't have now, would you? We don't leave asari space much, and there aren't that many of us to begin with. I'm happy to answer any questions you've got, if you wanna stick around for a bit."
Digeser nodded to his squad, who checked weapon safeties before stepping over to the small group. Reaction from the children was mixed, some letting curiosity outweigh caution, others, the reverse, but soon the four privates and specialists were being swarmed over by small horde of chattering blue and purple children, poking at exposed skin, tugging at uniform, weapons and armor and asking questions in high-pitched voices.
"So, uh, if it's not rude of me to ask-"
She turned back to Digeser.
"Babe, believe me when I say it's damn near impossible to offend me. Whatdaya want to know?"
"How old are you, exactly? I've heard that asari can live for a thousand years."
"It's still 2186, right? So..." She did a quick bit of mental math, "a thousand and fourteen. I think. I kind of stopped paying attention when I hit a thousand."
"You're more than a thousand years old?" He whistled, low. "Jesus."
"Yeah. You're supposed to get an official letter for every decade past the big one-triple-oh, like it's some kind of special achievement or something, but I never saw one. Dad was a krogan who fought in the Rachni Wars. Mom was commando, fought in the Krogan Rebellions. Caused some problems in the end, as you can expect."
She could laugh about it, now, the stupidity of it all: at dad and his blasted honour, mom and her goddess-damned secrets and the both of them and their fucked up mutual destruction pact. It had taken centuries, but she could laugh about it now, and have a quiet drink to their memory on the anniversary of their bonding instead of going out and getting wasted the date of their deaths. Time, and a promise to herself that she'd never leave her own kids in the lurch like that. It was a promise, she knew, that's she'd ultimately failed to keep, with Liara, allowing the matriarchy to tie her hands and forbid formal contact if it meant keeping her safe from them.
With Zara.
Oblivious to her thoughts, Digeser shook his head in amazement, and she had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. A thousand years must seem like an eternity to a species that saw, if they were lucky, a hundred and fifty, but when she looked back on it, it seemed to have flown by. Only yesterday, it seemed, that she'd brought Zara home-
Sickness roiled in her gut that had nothing to do with alcohol.
"I can't imagine living that long."
"It's got its ups and downs, like anything else. On one hand, you meet a lot of interesting people. On the other, you get to watch 'em all die. And you get to see a lotta war."
"Anything like this?"
They surveyed the camp in silence for a moment, and the ruined spires of the city visible over the walls.
"No. And I don't think you'd find anything like this in our whole history. We don't fight wars this way."
"We've never really seen anything like it either. Earth, I mean. We've had some really big and nasty internal wars, but we've never tried to make entire planets uninhabitable."
The two of them watched as one of the female soldiers laughed and knelt down to let a couple of the girls touch her hair, while another, a male, handed out what looked to be pieces of brightly-coloured candy.
Her nails dug hard into her palms.
"You got family, Sergeant?"
"Some. My parents split up when I was a little kid. Dad died when the Reapers hit the colony on Demeter," he said with a shrug, as if the news mattered little to him. "My mom, my step-dad and my half-sister were doing colony prep-work out in the Matano system. Wasn't worth the Reaper's time so they just kind of sat out everything. Took in some refugees. And then, you know, cousins and stuff, I guess."
"Got somebody special?"
"Hasn't really been time. The war kicked off not long after I go out of boot, and after that I was too busy fighting to worry about stuff like that. I think I'd like to settle down somewhere now, though, when I get out. Find a girl. Have a family."
They'd need a baby boom, in the long run, her people. At least if they were going to hold on to half of their colony worlds. And, from what she'd seen so far, there was a good chance they'd get one. A lot of, if not romance, then sex happening about the place.
Were they going have a generation maidens who decided to make the change young? Give it a decade and they'd probably have built things back up enough to supply the necessary hormonal triggers. Would her own youngest be one of them, if they did? The way Liara had talked about Shepard, sometimes, in the early stages of the war, had made Aethyta wonder if she wasn't going to do something that stupid, even then. Liara was way too young to even be thinking about kids. But then, Liara was also way too young to be doing the work she was doing.
"You know, there's gotta be at least two dozen matrons in the market for a cute young thing like you, " she said, looking him over from top to tail, "and more maidens dying for a good fuck than you can shake a stick at if you just want to blow off some steam. Play your cards right, and I'm sure you can get one of 'em to pop your heatsink. Maybe more than one. We're a sharing kind of species," she added with a wink, and laughed when he caught her meaning and coloured.
"I, uh-" He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. "I don't mean to sound rude, but, um, asari aren't really my, uh, thing."
"Humans aren't really mine either, to be honest," she shrugged. "Close, but not close enough, if you get my drift, and the hair thing's a bit of a turn-off. Never into quarians that much either, now that I think about it."
"They have hair?" He paused and blinked. "You've seen a quarian? Without a suit?"
"And you haven't? There's a little thing called Fleet and Flotilla you know. It's pretty tame for the most part, but it did kick off that series of porno spoofs – what were they called? Fleet and Fellatio or something just as stupid. Had some pretty hot turian-on-quarian action, though, if you're into that kinda thing."
Digeser's eyes bugged out, and he blushed so hard his ears turned red. Aethyta rolled her eyes. Humans. For a species that had given the galaxy fifteen separate editions of Fornax, its individual members could be incredibly prudish.
"But, anyway, kid, I've gotta admit that I had kind of an ulterior motive for calling you over here. Would and your squad be up for a quick little self-defence lesson? I've been teaching the kids a thing or two today, to make 'em feel a little bit safer and all that. Most don't have any family left to look out for 'em."
"I don't see why not," he replied, visibly relieved by the change of topic. "What would we need to do?"
"Oh, nothing, really, except stand there. One male and one female'd do. It'd probably be less of a defence lesson and more of a, well, anatomy lesson."
A couple of minutes and a quick couple of conversations later, and she had two willing subjects. She started with the female, Pinelli, as she stood at ease before the group.
"So," Aethyta began, addressing her students, jostling each other for a good view, "humans, like all of the other species except the hanar, have two sexes, and they're made up a bit differently, so you have to think about dealing with 'em in different ways. The good news is that the females are a lot like us, for the most part. They've got most of the same vulnerabilities as we do. You remember what they are?"
She got a chorus of replies on the themes of 'instep', 'eyes' and 'knees', and nodded approvingly until her hangover made itself known again, and she had to close her eyes to make the world stop spinning.
"Pretty much. Eyes and nose are always a good bet, and any joints you can reach."
"What about the ears?" Imilda asked, staring at the woman with a disconcerting intensity. "They kind of stick out a bit."
"It hurts, but not as much as you'd think," Pinelli herself replied, grabbing her ears and twisting them around in what looked like an eye-watering fashion. "It's mainly cartilage and not a lot of nerves. We even put holes through them, sometimes, and wear jewellery," she added, to a new chorus, this one comprised entirely of 'ews'. "You're better off going for the eyes."
"What about your hair?" another girl asked.
"It hurts a bit when you pull on it, but that's part of the reason why a lot of us keep it too short to get a grip on."
"And if you pull too hard, it comes out," Duckworth, the other volunteer, chimed in, reaching up and yanking a couple of short strands out. His proclamation and action was met with another chorus of childish disgust, which set the rest of his squad to laughing.
It went on in that vein for a while with Pinelli, before they turned their attention to Duckworth, who bore the questions, scrutiny and even the occasional poke with equal good humour.
"The big difference, though," Aethyta said, finishing up her comparative anatomy lesson, "is that humans males have their primarily genitals on the outside, like the krogan and batarian males do. It makes 'em all vulnerable in pretty much the same way. A kick, punch, or a knee to the crotch can pretty much lay one out for a few minutes if you do it right. But it's not as far back on humans as it is on krogan. Here, I'll show you."
Duckworth's eyes widened at her words, and he dropped into a protective crouch as she moved into position.
"Aethyta, wait-" Digeser said urgently, starting forward.
"'course, half the time just the threat's enough," she conceded, stepping away with a grin and a wink towards the sergeant, before turning back to her class. "And I think that's enough for today anyway. Go on and hit the showers, and then get some chow. And don't go practicing all this stuff on any humans without their permission!"
The last was delivered at a shout towards a dozen rapidly retreating backs. Another round of handshakes and 'thank you's got rid of the humans, who wandered off, chattering and laughing, in the direction of their ship. That left Aethyta blessedly alone, with only her resurgent hangover for company. She sat heavily back down on the crate, tilted her head up towards the sky and closed her eyes. It was, for a lovely moment, almost peaceful.
A lovely moment, but not a long one.
"Matriarch? Matriarch Aethyta, isn't it?"
Fuck her life.
She cracked an eye open to glare at the intruder. A matron with spiralling white tattoos that were probably meant to make her look older and made her nose look pinched instead smiled down at her.
"Maybe. Who wants to know?"
"Cearra Ce'Molla, Republics Galactic Journal. Would you be able to answer some questions for our viewers?"
Aethyta opened her other eye and focused properly on the matron standing in front of her. Teal skin beneath those stupid tattoos, threatening to drown out what would otherwise be some quite nice natural blue markings. Nice shoes. Good but muddy pants, dress shirt and jacket, much cleaner. No belt. Full gloves, omni on her left wrist, datapad in the same hand. Unarmed - unless you counted the camera hovering over her shoulder.
A reporter. Great. Just... great. Exactly what she needed on a day like today.
"No," she said, closing her eyes.
There was a pause but not, to Aethyta's complete lack of surprise, the sound of retreating feet.
Human reporters were by far the worst of the breed – nosy, impatient, and zero respect for privacy. The turian and batarian presses were state-run propaganda machines more than anything else, and the salarians, by and large, gossiped way too much to need to pay people to find and publish news. The hanar, meanwhile, were too polite to really get anywhere half the time, the drell didn't really care about galatic events while the even the most doggest volus could usually be bought off. The elcor, well… OK, so maybe the humans weren't the worst, but they were a close second.
Asari reporters, though, were patient. They'd quietly dig and dig and dig in the background, picking at you and waiting and watching until they finally found something they could nail you with, and nail you with hard.
"Matriarch," a pause, an audible sniff. "Matriarch, have you been drinking?"
"Look, just fuck off, will you? I'm not in the mood for games."
"Speaking of games, what was that the children were playing earlier? It looked a great deal like rhevosi , but I thought that had been banned on Thessia for anyone under one hundred. Teaching children a dangerous game? While under the influence?" The matron tisk'd. "I wonder, where did you get the alcohol from?"
Gritting her teeth, Aethyta refused to bite.
"As far as I'm aware, liquor is being kept under strict lock and key by the quartermasters. Did you bring it with you? Or did you come to some sort of an 'agreement' with one of the stockists?"
A pause, just long enough to get Aethyta's hopes up, only to dash them again, just as quickly.
"And what was that with the humans. It looked like you were attacking one of them. Are you aware that the humans are our allies?"
Athame's ass. She really wasn't going to leave it alone, was she? Aethyta opened her eyes and affixed the reporter with her most withering stare. It had centuries of practice and the full force of her hangover behind it, and it could usually clear a bar or bring a pack of vorcha to heel. It did not, unfortunately, have the usual effect: Ce'Molla took only a single step backwards before rallying herself and squaring her shoulders.
"What we had just then," Aethyta began in her patented 'talking to people too dumb to live' voice, "was a was a practical examination and in-depth analysis of some of our older traditions, followed by a self-defence lesson that the members of Sergeant Digeser's squad happily volunteered for. Ask 'em yourself if you want to. You're never too young to learn the basics of self-defence against any species.
"Now, what do you want?"
The matron's smile took on a hungry edge that immediately made Aethyta uncomfortable. Still, she was unprepared for the question when it came:
"What is the exact nature of your relationship with Matriarch Benezia?"
She responded instinctively, the shock flowing through her skin like she'd been doused in ice water.
"It's none of your goddess-damned business is what it is."
Shit. Could she have said anything that sounded more defensive? Her sinking feeling was quickly justified when Ce'Molla smile broadened in a decidedly predatory manner.
"My sources say that you, Aethyta Argyris, are, in fact, Benezia T'Soni's former bondmate, and the father of Doctor Liara T'Soni, one of the so-called heroes of the Reaper War."
Shit.
She kept her mouth shut this time. Hell, she should never have opened it to begin with. Still the 'so-called heroes' jibe grated. Liara'd done more to end the war than anyone.
"Other Armali residents have commented that you spend a great deal of time in Matriach Benezia's company, and that the two of you share sleeping quarters."
Her hands balled themselves into fists again, but she remained silent.
"Are you renewing your bond? After all this time? There was always a bit of speculation as to who Benezia's bondmate was." She paused and sniffed. "If it was you, I can understand why it was kept so quiet."
That bit too, deeper than it should have. She thought she'd understood, at the time, what it meant for the two of them to keep things quiet. Benezia's career had been at a delicate point back then, and bonding to another asari, let alone one from the lower decks with no name, no money and a dirty past could have scuttled it. But it started hurting, somewhere along the line, that Nezzy wouldn't talk about her except to close friends, couldn't be seen in some places with her.
When Aethyta remained silent, the matron stepped forward, close, too close to her, her camera moving in with her for a better shot.
"Were you part of the conspiracy to hide her survival?"
She was trapped, her back literally up against a wall. The only way out would be forward.
"I was as surprised as anyone to find out that she was alive," she said through gritted teeth. "You want details on the 'conspiracy'," she raised her hands to form the quotation marks of human punctuation, popularised in recent times by Councillor Sparatus to indicate sarcasm, "talk to Commander Shepard. Was her idea, 'far as I can tell."
"And why do you think the Commander hid the survival of a known traitor and murderer instead of bringing her in for justice?"
Her head was pounding in time with her pulse, quicker by the second.
"Benezia's not a killer. And she's no traitor either."
"There is irrefutable evidence that Benezia T'Soni was working with the disgraced turian Spectre Saren Arterius to help bring back the Reapers. She helped plan attacks on human colonies that cost thousands of lives, to say nothing of the attack on the Citadel in 2183 and all of the lives that have been lost since this war began."
Her fisted hands clenched, hard enough that her nails cut into her palms.
"Yeah, but it wasn't her fault." Either the matron was fucking dense or she was out to cause trouble. "She was indoctrinated."
"Indoctrination? Reaper 'mind control'? Forgive me if I find that all to be a little far-fetched. It seems far more likely that Commander Shepard didn't want to be responsible for the death of her supposed lover's mother?"
Anger was an old, old friend, hot, liberating, soothing away the aches of her body.
"Athame's ass!" she snarled. "Didn't you read anything High Command put out during the war? It's a real. Fucking, Thing. It got in people's heads and made them do things they'd never want to do."
"Real or not you have to admit that it's a remarkably convenient explanation," the matron persisted, smiling that damn smile. "'The Reapers made me do it'. Should we use that as an excuse for every atrocity committed before and during the war?"
Aethyta found that she'd gotten to her feet at some point during the conversation, her fists still clenched hard at her sides. Purple was starting to creep into the edges of her vision.
"No," she said, her voice icy with barely restrained anger, "just for the ones where it's true."
"And how do we know which ones are true? Take Matriarch Benezia. Right now, all we have to go on that she's innocent is the word of her daughter, and you - her former lover. Both of you can hardly be called objective. And by all accounts she'd shown little contrition-"
The punch was simple but sweet, just raw muscle power backed by tendon and bone, but it was enough to drive the breath from the matron's lungs in a single explosion of air. Diaphragm. Damn, she'd forgotten to show the kids about that one.
Aethyta leaned in close to the reporter's ear as she doubled over, panting and wheezing and struggling to regain her breath.
"I don't know what the hell your agenda is, babe, and I don't really care. But if you come within five feet of me again, you're gonna find my boot so far up your ass that you'll be licking leather. And," she added, letting her voice fall further still, into a menacing purr that was almost seductive, "if I find out that you've tried spinning facts to turn this whole thing into a beat-up on Benezia T'Soni, your feet won't fucking touch the ground. No contrition? What happened before the war's been tearing her to damn pieces. It's bad enough she has to deal with that without your brand of varrenshit on top of it all."
Aethyta didn't ask for confirmation that the matron had understood her, and she didn't look for it either before landing her second blow, a neat and equally satisfying hook that laid the reporter out cold and sent her, spinning, to land on her side in the mud. Aethyta stared down at her for a long moment, trying to get her breathing - and her temper - back under control. It was only after she'd bent to make sure that she hadn't done any permanent damage to the reporter and saw the shadow falling over them both that she remembered the camera.
"Fuck."
It wasn't long after sunset that Aethyta, in a properly foul mood, returned to their little cabin on the freighter.
She'd wiped the camera clean and smashed it for good measure – goddess but that had been satisfying - but it had turned out that the blasted matron had the equipment - and the sense - to live-stream copies of her footage to a backup site in Cianna. Given time and the right tools she might've been able to break into it to remotely wipe the drives clean of anything incriminating, but there was a distinct lack of both at the moment.
Fucking reporters.
She'd gone to the dining hall after that failed attempt, in search of something, preferably greasy, to line her stomach with before she found something else, preferably at least 90% proof, capable of returning her to blessed insensibility for a while. Instead she'd found the hall full of matrons arguing heatedly - and, more to the point, loudly - about something the kid had done or said or not said or something the other day. She'd turned on her heel and walked back out not even five seconds after first setting foot inside.
Her second attempt to find food, hitting the storehouses directly, had proven just as much of a bust. Not only were the containers locked up tighter than a volus' ass against the coming night, but there were too many people around to risk breaking in. It was one thing to take two ration packs from the mess when you'd missed breakfast, or to bribe a clerk for a couple of bottles of shitty rum, but just the other day someone had been caught stealing from stores after dark. She'd been lucky too - a month of shunning instead of outright exile. Luckier still that it'd been a storekeeper and not the fucking Justicar that'd caught her, or she'd probably be out on her ass and missing a hand.
Tired, hungry, hung-over and increasingly, depressingly sober, she'd remembered her secret for-really-serious-emergencies emergency bottle of ryncol. It tasted horrible and felt worse, but half a bottle was enough to put even her under, especially on an empty stomach. Only her secret hiding place evidentially wasn't all that secret as it turned out, because all that remained in it was a note from the kid apologising for giving the bottle to her pet Urdnot. The passive-aggressive little post-script about the damage the drink did to asari livers wasn't quite the final straw, though it was close.
The final straw, in fact, was finding that the thieving, conniving little whelp wasn't even on board to receive the piece of mind Aethyta had begun preparing for her from the moment she'd pulled out a note and not a bottle. She'd stood there, before the dark, looming monitors in the silent cargo bay, fists clenched and biotics flaring, wanting to scream or shout or smash something or someone. But what good would it do? Smashing up the monitors and terminals wasn't going to bring her daughter back. She could drink until she blacked out again, but the world was still going to be there, waiting for her, when she woke up. Finding a fight, a good barroom brawl against some really hard bastards might get her blood pumping a bit but it wouldn't change anything for the people she'd failed. Sure as hell wouldn't fix the promises she'd broken. Zara. Mel and Khy and the grandkids. Liara. Even Benezia-
Fuck.
The sickness from the morning came back, in full force as the memory did, roiling in her gut, burning in her lungs. She'd managed to avoid thinking about that all damn day. Advancing on her. Shaking her until she could see the whites of her eyes. Going to hit her. She'd always been a bit rough, sure, because they both had a taste for it, but there were limits, boundaries they'd agreed on. She'd never – only scum laid their hands on someone they loved in anger.
And, goddess, now she had to remember kissing her, too, kissing her as if that could somehow make what she'd done better in any way at all. Make everything like it used to be. And admitting, in that moment, to herself, if no-one else, that she still loved Benezia T'Soni, somewhere deep down in the crooked depths of her soul. Loved her enough to want to fix whatever was broken in her. Maybe even loved her enough to forgive her for breaking her damn heart. If Nezzy'd want to have anything to do with her at all after the other night.
Fuck.
Benezia was mercifully already abed and asleep when Aethyta slipped into the cabin; abed, but in the cot by the door rather than the more permanent fixture that dominated the tiny compartment. Aethyta stopped just inside the doorway to watch her for a long moment, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. Benezia used to, well, not sprawl, exactly, because you just didn't use a word like that when describing someone like Benezia, but she'd always take up as much space as she could in their bed. Aethyta'd woken more than once to find herself balancing precariously on the very edge, her blankets and pillows stolen in the night.
Tonight Benezia was curled up tight upon the cot, buried so far beneath the blankets that only the top of her head and crests were really visible. Her brows were drawn in a frown, but her breathing was slow and steady, which Aethyta hoped meant that she was getting some proper sleep for once. Too often of late she just seemed to lie there, dead-eyed and staring, drifting off for a few minutes only to snap awake again.
She caught herself just as she began to reach out, down towards Benezia to do... Well, she wasn't exactly sure what she wanted to do, try to ease the frown away or feel the texture of her skin again or something. Wasn't it bad enough that she was standing here and staring at her like some sort of pathetic stalker with a doomed crush?
She let her hand drop back to her side and edged carefully around the cot towards the bed. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily as the smell of dirty linen and sour sweat hit her, and she quickly realised why Benezia had opted for the cot, for all that it was the smaller and considerably less comfortable of the two options. But it wasn't as if Aethyta hadn't slept in worse places over the course of her life. Far worse places.
She stripped off boots and shucked off clothes as quietly as she could manage and climbed into the bed, burrowing beneath the blankets, trying and failing to get comfortable on the human-style furniture.
Aethyta had always prided herself on her ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, during anything. It was a skill she'd picked up during her merc days, one that had served her well over the course of her life. But tonight, for whatever reason, she could just not settle down, even when she found a position that didn't make her neck ache. Her scalp itched. When she relieved that particular discomfort, it transferred itself to her nose, then her leg. Her crests wouldn't sit right against the human-style pillows, which had no allowance for such things, even when laying on her side. Her head pounded. Her mouth was dry with thirst, and her stomach periodically decided to remind her of the dinner she'd missed. And her heart ached, too, a weight on her chest and sickness in her gut every time her thoughts returned to her family.
You could build up a lot of regrets over a thousand years.
She was rolling over onto her stomach for the umpteenth time, trying to remember that meditation technique Admiral Kessol, the stiff-necked old tart, had taught her, when she heard the rustle of blankets from the direction of the cot. Seconds later, Benezia began to speak, her voice whisper-soft and urgent, almost pleading in tone. It was all but gibberish, Aethyta realised, even as she sat up in her own bed, straining to hear. She could follow a bit of it, here and there, if she really tried - something about geth and codes and danger - but the bursts of coherence were brief and often contradictory, as if she were arguing with herself.
It couldn't have lasted more than a minute, all told, if that. Then came a sharp intake of breath, followed by the long, slow exhalation of someone realising that what had just come before had been a dream - but who wasn't entirely reassured by the fact.
"Nezzy?" she hazarded after a long, silent minute.
"A dream."
The reply was soft but instant.
"Yeah, I gathered that."
"I'm sorry. I did not mean to wake you."
Aethyta shrugged, unseen in the darkness, and allowed herself to settle back down against the pillows.
"Don't worry about it. I wasn't exactly sleeping."
There was another rustle of blankets, and another slow, measured, exhalation, and then a third. Aethyta could practically see Benezia, in her mind's eye, forcing herself to relax, inch by inch, the way she would after particularly stressful or frustrating day at or on the Forum, or in council, or even after a particularly heated argument with Aethyta. When Aethyta's own temper had cooled enough to go looking for her then-bondmate, she'd usually find Benezia meditating out in her favourite garden, weather permitting, or in the quiet of the household shrine if not.
Benezia hadn't really meditated at all, since coming back, had she? She hadn't made any devotions either, now that Aethyta thought about it. Ok, so Nezzy, for all her reputation and prominence in that arena, had always been remarkably restrained in her faith, quietly letting it inform her life without trying to win converts, but she had always been devout. It came out in little ways, day to day and month to month. A morning's prayer. An evening's meditation. Paper lanterns, covered in elaborate, exquisite calligraphy. Scented, sacred oils after bathing, aromas that Aethyta had never been able to associate with anyone but her since. The odd piece of jewellery and the cut and choice of some of her clothes. Feast days and fasting. Tending the gardens. Teaching. Song. Charity.
Even if you made allowances for the shitty circumstances they'd found themselves in, there should have been something of that. What did it mean if there wasn't any?
"How... How are you feeling?"
Benezia's hesitant voice cut through her thoughts like an amorous elcor on a dancefloor.
"I think that's supposed to be my line," she managed.
"You have asked it often enough of late. Am I not allowed to worry about you as well?"
Was she allowed? Benezia hadn't worried about her at all, this past century. If she had, she'd've done more than send the occasional vid of their kid.
The thought arose instantly at Benezia's words, but Aethyta just couldn't find any anger to go with it. Maybe she'd used it all up last night. Maybe there was something to forgiveness. Or, at least, acceptance.
She'd evidently been silent for too long, because Benezia was speaking again.
"I am... so sorry about Zara. Truly."
"Yeah, well, me too. But I guess I got off light compared to most. I still have Mel and Khy... and Liara. They're still counting heads, but most of the grandkids seem to have come out ok too."
"Still, I imagine it does little to soothe the loss."
"No. It doesn't."
She felt the damned tears pricking at her eyes again, and cast about desperately for a new topic of conversation. Unfortunately, her net didn't fall very far away.
"Look, about the other night- I'm sorry."
"It is alright."
"No, it's not 'alright'. I tried to hurt you," she insisted, and felt a fresh surge of shame at the memory. "That wasn't right, no matter how you try to spin it."
"It is forgiven, then."
"But-"
"What took place was not right, Aethyta, no, but you were in extremis. I don't believe that you could have changed so much in these past hundred years that a repeat would be likely. With that in my heart, I wish now that you take my forgiveness for what it is: sincere."
Benezia's voice was soft and gentle but insistent. It didn't really make her feel a great deal better.
"And, um, what came after?" Aethyta wet her lips in unconscious recollection. "The, uh, kiss-?"
There was a short, uncomfortable pause.
"In times of stress and turmoil," Benezia began, with that note of caution in her voice that meant she was trying to convince herself of something along with her audience, "we seek comfort in the familiar. There is no shame in it. You know this as well as I."
"Yeah," Aethtya sighed.
It was true enough, in its way. When things went to shit, you turned to the things - and the people - that'd served you well in the past. Failing that, you found a bottle and whatever arms were willing to hold you for a night or two. Hell, the bender she'd gone on when Benezia had left her-
"Nezzy?"
"Yes?"
"Why'd you leave me?"
The words were out of her before she could rethink or second-guess them, and hung heavy in the dark, still air. There was a long, drawn-out moment of near-silence, the room filled only with the sounds of their breathing and the slight rustle of blankets. It dragged on for so long that Aethyta began to wonder if she would actually get an answer, or if Benezia would feign sleep until the real thing came for them both. The whispered reply, therefore, took her almost by surprise.
"Why did you let me go?"
"Let you go?" Aethyta repeated at the ceiling dully, and then more heatedly, as some of the old anger, the old hurt returned. "Let you go? That's what it was, some kind of varrenshit test? And I failed it?"
"No! Goddess, no!"
Aethyta could hear Benezia sitting up quickly in the cot, but closed her own eyes rather than sit up herself to face her.
"I meant that- Goddess, I didn't phrase that very well at all, did I?"
"I'll say," she groused, forcing the anger back down again. It was easier, somehow, not having to look at her. And Benezia sounded genuinely upset by the notion. "So, what was it then?"
The cot creaked as Benezia lowered herself back down onto it with a sigh, and was silent again for a while.
"It was the right decision at the time," she said eventually, slowly, carefully. "I was not happy and, neither were you. Not truly."
"I knew you'd been unhappy," Aethyta replied, equally carefully. And she had known. It'd been hard to miss, really, toward the end. "But, you know, I thought back then that it was just stress and hormones. Hormones can be a real bitch."
"As I discovered, to my detriment." Eyes closed, Aethyta could imagine her smile, wry and fleeting. "True, that was a part of it. But..." Another sigh. "Why do you think I left as I did?"
"Honestly?"
Aethyta found herself staring at the ceiling once more, remembering all the times she'd asked herself something very similar to that question. They'd fought a lot; that was true enough. They'd argue, the two of them, about whatever came to mind, Aethyta often taking a deliberately antagonistic stance because Benezia enjoyed being challenged and because Aethyta had always found getting the typically even-tempered Nezzy all riled up to be one hell of a turn-on. And so they'd end up in bed, or something close to it, each trying to reduce the other to a shuddering mess as quickly as possible so they could get the last word in and claim victory. It was usually a close thing: Aethyta had more experience but Benezia had better focus, and they were both more stubborn than Ishahi herself when they wanted to be.
But then they'd fight about something personal, and that'd end the same way too, only without the laughter. Closer to fucking than making love, sometimes. And then, after Benezia had fallen pregnant, even that had stopped. Things started to… fester.
The actual final straw, she'd thought, had been less than a month before Aethyta had come home to an empty house. She'd spent another frustrating day trying, unsuccessfully, to shout some sense into the hidebound idiots that supposedly kept the wheels of their 'great democracy' turning. It had been a bad enough day that she'd ended up trying to knock some damn sense into one of them too, in the literal sense. She'd stormed home early, wanting to do nothing more than have a stiff drink and a good vent to a sympathetic ear.
And that had been the other pattern, hadn't it? She'd go out and try to make a difference, and run headlong into a wall of stupidity and wilful blindness that infuriated her, sometimes past the point of reason. She'd lose her temper with someone, give them a piece of her mind or a meeting with her fists, and come home to Benezia. Nezzy would be sympathetic, counselling patience while she made a few calls to soothe some bruised egos and head off lawsuits over busted heads. And then, months or years later, when the fuss had died down, she'd put whatever point Aethyta'd been trying to make through that big brain of hers and spit out some beautiful piece of oratory that'd win everyone around to their side, and present that to Aethyta as a victory.
And it was a victory, of a sort.
And Aethyta had been thankful for it.
More or less.
And Benezia had never minded the time she spent holding hands and offering platitudes and paying legal bills.
Right up until the point that she had.
That afternoon, she'd found the drink, but not the ear she was after. When she'd entered their suite, it had been to find her bondmate lying on a divan out on the balcony, one graceful hand resting protectively over her belly, the other holding a datapad loosely to her side. Benezia had just looked at her, looked over at her the way you looked at pet pyjak that had been cute once but was now crapping on the carpets and stealing your jewellery and making you wonder why you'd bought it in the first damn place. Then she'd raised her datapad and said around it, as mildly as you please, that she would see what she could do about the assault charges, that Kaina would expect an apology, and that she'd had one of the guest rooms made up. Aethyta had been so taken aback at that final decree and Benezia's uncharacteristic coldness that she hadn't even thought to argue about it until it was too late. And so, for the first time in over a century, they'd spent a night under the same roof in separate beds.
The next day, Nezzy had been deeply apologetic, blaming fatigue and illness and other bad news, and promised to make it up to her. The day after that, they'd had a blazing row over something so stupidly inconsequential that Aethyta couldn't even remember how it had gotten started.
Two weeks after that, Benezia had been gone.
It was only years later that Aethyta had found out, completely by accident, that Benezia'd been carefully courting Kaina for almost a decade up until that point, wanting her support for a series of healthcare reforms she was planning on introducing when the time was right. It was support that she'd ultimately never gotten.
"In the end I figured it was political," she sighed. "You always had big ambitions, Nezzy. Bigger than mine. Hell, bigger than most. And you had the brains and the sheer bloody-minded stubbornness to achieve them. I was holding you back."
And it hadn't just been Aethyta's growing desire to beat her fellow matriarchs to death with her bare hands that had done it. 'Deviant'. 'In-breeder'. 'Bluetongue'. And the ones that didn't go in for that kind of slur went more along the lines of 'desperate' or 'crazy'.
They'd never dared say any of it to Benezia's face, of course. She was too well-liked, too respected to risk a confrontation over something like that. But that had never stopped them from whispering it behind her back - and they'd certainly never cared what they said to Aethyta's face. She was a spacer brat from a long line of spacer brats; no lineage to be proud of. No great deeds to her name – none she could own up to in public, anyway. She had money, but no real wealth and, as a lot of the people Benezia worked with liked to point out, no class. She could keep a bar full of the toughest roughnecks you'd ever hope not to meet in stiches for hours, or clear it with a few choice words and a fist or two, but when it came to arguing policy online or in person, she may as well have been mute.
Benezia was supposed to have done better. Everyone knew it, except, maybe, Benezia herself.
"Yes," Benezia said quietly.
And, despite knowing for a century that this was the case, Aethyta felt the cut all the same, deep and hard and true. It was one thing to know; it was another entirely to hear it spoken aloud.
She heard Benezia sigh again, and the creak of the cot as she shifted position once more.
"You were right when you said having a child was a foolish idea," she continued, her voice cracking a little towards the end. "I had so little time to spare when it was just the two of us. I could no longer see how I could manage my work, with you and a child, who would need me even more. Something had to be sacrificed. And, vain creature that I am, I thought that our people would need me more than you."
"You know I could have stayed home with the kid, "she pointed out, the line she always thought she'd say if Nezzy raised that excuse. "'s not like I wasn't close to washing my hands of the whole damn politics thing anyway."
"Perhaps you could have, and it would have worked. And perhaps it would not. Would you have resented me for continuing on when you could not, as you already did when I put forward your ideas as my own? Would I have resented you for having time with our daughter that I could not? Thessia itself has little need of the skills you possess, but your association with me would continue to bar you from many of High Command's assignments; what would you have done when Liara was old enough to not need your constant attention? Drifted around our home until boredom drove you to seek out bar fights and strip clubs?"
The knife turned a little deeper.
"We were always very different people, Aethyta," Benezia continued sadly. "I think, over the years, that we slowly forgot that. We let too many things go unspoken between us."
"Look, you know, I can get all that," Aethyta said with effort, hating how her voice had gotten thick and rough with the tears she refused to let fall. "I might not like it, and I might not agree with it one hundred percent, but I get it. The thing I don't get was why you went like you did. You didn't even say goodbye. You may as well have not even left the damn letter."
"Really?" Benezia's surprise sounded unfeigned. "I had thought it would be obvious."
"Well, call me Commander fucking Oblivious then because I've never had a damn clue."
Another long pause, and a quiet sigh.
"You know that I always had trouble saying no to you, even when I should have known better," Benezia's voice was at once sad and fond. "If you had asked me to stay, I would have done so. And I think I would have wound up hating you for it."
"Oh."
"Yes. Or you, me."
They both lay in silence, for a time.
"Did you love me?"
"With all my heart."
And when she said like that, soft and warm with remembrance, Aethyta could believe her.
"But it wasn't enough."
"No."
"No."
Love wasn't always enough. Hell, her own parents had loved each other madly, and look at how they'd ended up. They'd loved her too, or so they'd said, but they'd left her alone with nothing but memory and their debts anyway.
"Do you still love me?"
Again, the words came tumbling out before she could second-guess them, even if, she told herself, it wasn't like the answer really mattered now, anyway. And, again, Benezia was silent for what seemed to be a very long time.
"I hardly know my own mind anymore, 'Thy," she said eventually, an odd note of wistfulness in her voice, "let alone my own heart."
"That's not a 'no'."
"It is not a 'yes, either."
"But it's not a 'no'," Aethyta insisted, feeling a slight, strange surge of something very close to relief.
Another long moment of silence fell.
"What of you?" Benezia asked abruptly.
"Me?" she blinked, and tried to settle back against the pillows more comfortably. "You know, this is not exactly the kind of conversation I like to have sober."
"That is not a 'no'."
"No," she agreed after another long silence. "I guess it's not."
And Benezia could make of that whatever she wanted.