A/N: Time jump! I want the girls to be older because I'm dying to make them talk! ^_^ Also. Floss people. Seriously. Floss. Listerine. Brush. Those are your new best friends.
Chapter 41
"Happy birthday, my Little Ones," Shepard said, holding the skycar door open for her daughters.
Both of them squealed when they saw where their father had taken them, and excitedly held out their arms while they waited for their daddy to help them out of their car seats. As soon as their little feet hit the ground, they were off and running, darting for the water as fast as their little blue legs could carry them. Halfway to the water they stripped their dresses and sandals and tossed them unceremoniously to the ground as they ran.
"Girls don't ruin your dre-! oh why do I bother?" Shepard rolled her eyes, but smiled anyway. Her Little Ones could do no wrong as far as she was concerned. Chuckling, Shepard opened Liara's door as well, then grabbed their beach bag full of food and toys.
"Their dresses will wash, Love," Liara said with a grin and kissed Shepard's cheek. "And it's only sand. Better they rid themselves of their dresses now then leave them on when they get in the water."
Shepard's grin turned wicked as she ran her hand down Liara's back. She lowered it until it was resting over her wife's shapely ass then gave it a firm squeeze. "You're impossibly sexy when you're being all logical. Better be careful, T'Soni. We're in public, but if you keep it up I won't be able to keep my hands off you."
Liara squeaked and swatted the human away with a shy giggle. Shepard smirked unapologetically and scooped up the fallen dresses, shaking them off before stuffing them in the beach bag.
As they made their way to the water, Shepard laced her fingers in Liara's and absorbed the beautiful sight before them. She could hardly believe her little girls were already three years old, nor could she believe how much happiness they had brought her since their conception. Every day she saw them grow, saw the wonder in their eyes when they learned something new, saw their first steps, heard their first words, felt their unconditional love every time they accidentally melded. Sometimes emotion would close her throat in those moments, and it took all her considerable N7 training not to just break down and cry. It was easy to think one could be stoic in the face of such blind, unconditional, young love, but the truth of the matter was, it would take a person with no soul to feel that kind of love and not cry. She was beginning to see why the asari were such a communal, close race of people.
The sight of multiple other families scattering the beach made Shepard's heart swell with happiness. In the four years since the war, Thessia had made remarkable progress toward rebuilding, more than Shepard could have ever hoped for. The fact that people were relaxing, vacationing, and spending free time with their families was a testament to the strength of the asari. Thessia's nude beaches took Shepard a bit of getting used to, but being surrounded by asari on a daily basis had taken away quite a lot of her prudish human habits.
She laid a beach towel on the warm sand for Liara, then put their cooler beneath an umbrella to protect it from the blazing sun. Liara stripped her bikini top and wrap-around skirt, then lay on the towel Shepard provided and stretched out like a cat. Shepard purred in appreciation while she watched her wife stretch out under the warmth of the sun. Not a single cloud littered the bright sky, and the pale blue sand seemed to stretch on forever. Nope. She definitely didn't have a problem with nude beaches anymore.
Shepard eventually pulled her eyes from her wife to check up on their daughters. Every time the waves swelled toward the shore, Naiala and Elaria screeched and ran away from the cool water, then when it receded, they ran back after it giggling all the way. Shepard kicked off her cargo shorts and sandals, but left on her black N7 bikini. She certainly didn't mind that Liara preferred to tan in the nude, but Shepard was still a little shy about nakedness. Grabbing a couple of small buckets and shovels, Shepard made her way over to where her twins were now squealing and splashing around in the shallows.
"Wanna learn how to build a sand castle?" Shepard called, plopping down in the warm sand. They immediately scurried over to her and tackled her the ground. "Gah! Not fair! Who taught you how to double-team your daddy? Ruffians, the lot of you!"
They giggled and giggled at her apparently hilarious choice of words. "You taugh' us how tuh dubba-team, Daddy!" Elaria exclaimed around giggles.
"Wuffians! Wuffians! Elaria izzuh wuffians!" Naiala chanted.
Shepard rolled over on her stomach, successfully pinning her little girls beneath her and blew a loud gas noise on both their bare little stomachs. Both of them screeched and squealed and squirmed and laughed so hard they cried. When she had thoroughly exhausted her little ruffians, she sat up and looked them over with her hands on her hips and a mock-stern look on her face. "Look at the pair of you," she declared. "In naught but your birthday suites and giggling like a pair of little babies."
"But it is our birfday, Daddy!" Elaria valiantly defended them.
"An' we is babies!" Naiala added indignantly.
Shepard put a thoughtful index finger to her chin. "Huh. I suppose you are. Funny old world, isn't it? Now let's build a sand castle!"
"Wussa cassle, Daddy?" Naiala asked, plopping her little butt down next to Shepard.
"Yeah, wussa cassle?" Elaria echoed.
"A castle is a magical place back on Earth. It's an ancient stone building that used to house kings and queens and princes and princesses and dragons and unicorns and knights."
"Wussa king an' queen an' dagonz an' unicones?" Elaria asked, plopping down next to Naiala.
"Kings and queens rule the land, princes and princesses are the next in line for the throne, unicorns are magical beasts of burdens with a giant sword thingy on their heads, and dragons will SWOOP out of the sky and eat you all gone!" As she finished her dragon explanation, she hoisted Elaria off the ground and flew her around like said "swooping dragon." She finished by throwing Elaria as high as she possibly could in the air, eliciting another fit of helpless giggling. When Shepard caught her, she planted a slew of kisses all over her little face.
"I wanna be swooped by dagonz!" Naiala said excitedly, holding out her little blue hands to her father. After carefully setting Elaria back on the ground, Shepard moved to Naiala and did the same.
"Oh no! The big nasty dragon is gonna eat you all gone too! Whatever shall we do? We need the Magical Blue Fairy Princess Liara to come save us!" Shepard hooted, then threw Naiala high into the air as she had with Elaria. When she set Naiala back down, her twins rolled on the ground, clutching to each other and giggling until they were probably close to hyperventilating. Shepard cast a playful glance at Liara and grinned, offering her wife her opening to defeat the "evil dragon."
Liara gave her a very pleased smile filled with love and approval. She rose from the sand in one smooth motion, making her look like a blue goddess of grace and seduction. As she moved to Shepard, their daughters went silent in awe and wonder of their mother, and both gasped when Liara began glowing blue. She built up biotic power until she was literally floating across the ground, then tackled Shepard to the ground, making sure to ease their descent with the aid of a biotic lift.
"Magical Blue Fairy Princess?" Liara said in a dangerously seductive voice and Shepard suddenly noticed their faces were much closer than she remembered them being a second ago.
"I know. I'm terrible with names. It's why you named our daughters, because the best I could come up with was Bob." Shepard mentally congratulated herself for forming such a complete, coherent sentence. A very naked Liara was on top of her, and that was more than a little distracting.
Naiala and Elaria burst the moment when they began prancing around them and chanting, "Da Blue Fairy defeated da dagonz! Da Blue Fairy defeated da dagonz!"
The smile Liara gave Shepard made her melt into a puddle on the sand it was filled with so much warmth and endless love. Liara surprised her by initiating a shallow mind meld.
'Oh Shepard. My Nicole Shepard. Thank you for giving me two beautiful, wonderful daughters.'
'I feel as though I'm the one who should be thanking you. They've brought me more happiness than I . . . during that last battle, you know what kept me going?'
Their lips met in a chaste kiss, and for a moment it felt as though time slowed around them.
'Them,' Shepard continued. 'You. Knowing you were pregnant, knowing I was going to be a daddy. Even then, even when they were little more than a collection of cells, I already loved them so much. I wanted to be there. I wanted to love them, I wanted to see them grow. I wanted to love you.'
Shepard felt a wave of love so powerful it humbled her to the very core of her being. Sometimes it hurt in the sweetest possible way, feeling how much Liara T'Soni loved her, how incredibly capable of giving love her wife was. Suddenly she wished they were alone so she could return all that love through her actions, worship Liara's naked body with her hands and mouth, and make love to her until they passed out from exhaustion and probably dehydration.
"Da Blue Fairy'z kissin' da dagonz! Da Blue Fairy'z kissin' da dagonz!" Naiala and Elaria began chanting as they pranced, shattering the ridiculously sweet moment happening between their parents.
Shepard and Liara were helpless to do anything but laugh at their adorable daughters. Shepard grabbed them both and pretended to gobble them up, mercilessly tickling them with her mouth in the process of her gobbling motions. When her daughters could breathe again around all the giggling, Shepard sat Naiala between her legs and Elaria followed suit settling between Liara's legs. Shepard filled the little bucket with wet sand and Naiala helped with her little plastic shovel.
"Now make sure you pack it in nice and tight," Shepard instructed, "otherwise it will crumble when we start adding layers and walls."
"How many walls we gonna have, Daddy?" Naiala asked, smacking the sand in the bucket with her little hands.
"I dunno . . ." Shepard pretended to contemplate for a bit. "How many fingers are on your right hand. Do you remember?"
Naiala excitedly waved her little hand in the air. "Five hans, Daddy!" she proclaimed proudly.
"You have five hands?! Sweet goddess, my child is an alien!"
Naiala and Elaria seemed to think that was also the funniest thing in the universe. "You da alien, Daddy!" Elaria giggled, burying her face in Liara's stomach in an attempt to hide her giggles.
"Wait, I'm an alien?! Does that mean I have five hands?"
"Finners! I said finners!" Naiala said indignantly. "I have five finners!"
"Oh whew. We better count them just to make sure," Shepard replied, clasping Naiala's little hand in hers. She peeled Naiala's index finger from her little balled fist. "This little piggy went to market . . ."
"Wussa piggy?"
"Hush, I'm concentrating," Shepard said, sticking her tongue out from the side of her mouth dramatically. "This little piggy . . . wait we were counting. One little piggy went to market. Two little piggies stayed home. Three little piggies had roast beef, four little piggies had none. And five little piggies went 'wee! wee! wee!' all the way home! There how many piggies is that?"
"A melon! A melon!" Elaria exclaimed proudly.
"A million? Sweet goddess, you want to build a million castle walls?"
"I wanna build a melon cassle walls!" Naiala proclaimed.
Shepard kissed Naiala's little fingers with a smile. "Let's stick to the number of fingers on your hand. If we don't, your hand may explode from so many fingers. Wait, you still have five fingers, right?" She spread Naiala's hand on her palm and pretended to seriously scrutinize her daughter's hand. "Better count 'em just to make sure, Naiala."
Naiala used her other hand to point to her fingers as she counted aloud. "One . . . two . . . thee . . . fow . . . five! I still have five finners, Daddy!"
"Oh whew! I was worried there for a minute."
This rambling went on for quite some time before they finally managed to make something resembling a castle. Shepard felt pride well up inside her as she watched her little ones working diligently to make "the best sand castle ever." Their focus and determination was incredible for being only three years old. Granted, given their lineage, focus wasn't exactly in short supply.
When they finished, the two of them were besides themselves with pride and happiness. They cheered and whooped and wanted to name their castle the "The Castle of the Blue Fairy." It was all quite original and creative in Shepard's humble opinion. When the two of them were done prancing around, they both threw their little arms around Shepard's neck. Shepard couldn't have prepared for what they did next, no matter how many times they said it.
"I love you, Daddy," Naiala whispered.
"I love you, Daddy," Elaria echoed.
Shepard was incapable of keeping her usual stoic poise in that moment. How could she?
"Oh my sweet, precious Little Ones. Daddy loves you, too. And she always will."