A/N - It took me til the last playthrough (my fourth) for me to fully define my feelings towards Samara. Oh, I loved her from moment one, but I couldn't figure out how to classify her in the family that Shepard builds. It struck me on my last time that she had become a mentor, a role model, someone Shepard holds in the highest regard, so why not a mother figure? *shrug* I'm running with it.

They took her into surgery at 0600 the next morning, and Chakwas had warned Kaidan that it was likely to be a lengthy procedure. Chances of scar tissue at the implant site would complicate matters and make the surgery not necessarily more dangerous, but longer. Kaidan knew he couldn't spend the hours sitting in her room, staring at an empty bed, but he was too distracted to work, so he walked past his office to the glassed in waiting area, thinking he may find some solitude there. He had deliberately given the crew assignments that would keep them out of the hospital during the hours of the surgery, knowing that they'd suffer less with something to distract them. He wished he had that luxury.

He was so deep in thought he almost didn't see the asari justicar sitting in front of the east window in a lotus position. She appeared to be meditating, her open palms rested on her knees and a ball of energy floated between them. He turned to go, not wanting to disturb her, but she surprised him by saying, in her calm and quiet tone, "Major Alenko."

He moved further into the room, and she dispersed the glowing white ball and stood, looking out the window. He joined her there.

"You are worried." She stated simply. It wasn't a question, really, but an observation made with her typical quiet candor. He supposed if you lived nearly a thousand years you didn't find much need to question, at least not the emotions or motivations of the people around you. Still, he responded as if it had been, feeling he owed her the respect of a reply.

"Yes." He said simply.

She nodded, and looked at him then, and he felt the quiet serenity of her astonishing face flow over him. She had a way, he had noticed before, of making you feel at peace. She was always so still and calm, it was like she centered you, brought you into that quiet with her. It was one of the reasons he had always felt drawn to her. She achieved the reserve and control for which he had fought so hard seemingly without effort. He envied it.

Her gaze seemed far away now, looking at him, but not really seeing him. Although she maintained the aura of peaceful calm, he thought he detected a few cracks in the façade. He wondered if she, too, had been drawn to this quiet place to try to stave off worry.

She refocused and seeing him standing there, patiently studying her, seemed to realize she had been ignoring him. "I apologize, Major, my thoughts were in the past. You were at the monastery that day, correct? With Falere, and Rila." He heard the sadness in her voice when she spoke her daughter's names.

"Yes," he replied, patiently waiting for her to continue.

"Watching a person I held so dear die is the most painful thing I have experienced in this life. Not even my Code, comfort to me as it has been, could protect me from that agony." She smiled then, serenely, in reassurance, he thought. Her next words confirmed it. "That will not be today's outcome. I do not need the Code to tell me that. I know Shepard will win this fight, just as she has every other one she has undertaken. Tell me, Major, did she ever tell you about me? About our time on the Normandy before you were reunited?"

Kaidan shook his head. There hadn't been time, nor, did he think, even if there had been time, would Shepard reveal this woman's secrets. He knew the respect she had for the asari justicar. They had spoken of her, briefly, a few times. He had questioned her after returning to the Normandy about how she had learned Reave. That had surprised him; he himself had spent years developing the technique so to see her pop out from behind those crates on the Mars mission and throw it at the Cerberus agents below them had nearly made him drop his rifle. She had told him that she had trained and meditated with an asari justicar during her Cerberus days, and he remembered wishing he'd had that luxury himself. Then, after the Lessus mission, they had spoken briefly while cuddled in bed, mostly of Shepard's relief that Samara had seen reason and been spared. He thought, at the time, that the loss of another dear friend might prove to be a breaking point for her, and had been grateful, for his own reasons, that Samara still lived.

Samara continued after seeing his negative reply. "The day that Rila died was not the first time I had to watch a child of mine die. The first time, Shepard helped me kill Morinth, my eldest daughter."

Kaidan stared at her, shocked, sure that he couldn't have heard her correctly.

Samara nodded, acknowledging his shock. "It is true. Morinth was Ardat-Yakshi, like her sisters, but she had been unable or unwilling to resist the urges. She killed without qualm and in the most cruel ways possible for over four hundred years until Shepard helped me stop her. I have only one regret about that day, Major. I wish I had told Shepard that the pain of losing my child was tempered, just enough to matter, by the joy of finding a new daughter. When she wakes up today, I will make sure I correct that oversight."

Kaidan was touched at the thought that this quiet and reserved woman shared the depth of her bond with Shepard, solely in the interest of giving him comfort. "I know she will be honored, ma'am," he told her.

They passed the remaining hours of Shepard's surgery there together, until the doctors came to inform them that all was well.