Earth
Approximately 1 year post-First Contact War
"You know, Benezia said that you were 'pretty unusual' as far as asari went, but this isn't exactly what I pictured when she said that. Do you have any idea how awkward this is going to make things around town?"
Hannah Shepard's life had changed a lot over the last half-year or so. She had lost her husband, gained a wider view of the universe, and received accolades and rewards aplenty for her stubborn defense of Shanxi until she was forced to withdraw, followed by her (entirely against regulations and functionally criminal) tweaks to her ship and its engines in order to carry intel back to the gathering Second Joint Fleet as they prepared to retake the system. The days of being Lieutenant Commander Hannah Shepard, one such officer of hundreds in the Systems Alliance Navy, were long gone.
She was famous across the width and breadth of not just human space, but that of the Citadel as well. The brilliant naval commander whose unusual, archaic tactics, stubborn resilience, and reckless daring had saved Mankind. Military pundits spent hours dissecting every decision, talking heads spend days talking about her influence on the diplomacy, ministers and atheists alike discussing her faith and the influence that it had on her.
And reporters of all shapes and sizes stalking her. Her, her family, her friends, her coworkers, her commanding officers, the base she had trained at, even the supermarket she shopped at the most. For God's sake, her parents-in-law were thinking about moving out into the colonies to get away from the constant agony of having microphones shoved into their faces by insensitive pricks asking how they felt about their only son's death in battle.
And then one enterprising young idiot had tried to follow her five-year-old daughter three days ago on her way to her gymnastics class, only to find himself on the receiving end of a flawless ambush by a group of Asari commandoes. Very stern, less-than-pleased Asari commandoes, who had sat on the little shit until the local LEOs had shown up to take him into hand, before helping to escort her daughter home.
Which brought her to this moment, sitting on her couch in her living room, staring across her coffee table at the exasperated Benezia, sheepish-looking commando captain, and distinctly unruffled Matriarch Aethyta, her question hanging in the air between the four of them. The muffled sounds of two children playing echoed from the next room, the music of some insipid cartoon chiming away in the background.
"I don't know why you're unhappy about it, really. That little stalker-with-a-camera was following your daughter around, my girls nabbed him and gave him a bit of correction, chatted with your police, and brought her home. I imagine it will be quite some time before one of his little friends tries something like that again, if they ever get the collective guts to give it a go, and my girls didn't even hurt him too badly. No fuss, no muss, problem solved." The erstwhile Matriarch replied with a distinctly laisses-faire shrug, her posture what could only be described as a casual lounge, compared to Benezia's proper, decorous upright position. Honestly, the two women couldn't be more different if they tried, and she had to wonder if that was why their relationship had fallen apart.
Not that she officially knew that they had once been together, of course, but she could read between the lines of their interactions with one another, the familiar deference the commandos had shown Benezia before Aethyta had arrived, and the way that Benezia had spoken of Aethyta in the past. Rather similarly to the way that Hannah herself talked about Faolan, actually. A deep and painful loss, one that had never truly been recovered from. Despite their split, however, the love they had for one another was still plenty obvious to her.
"Besides, I can't say I'm too impressed with your LEOs. It's not like there are a lot of Asari in human space, and my girls still went virtually unnoticed by anyone and everyone with little more than some makeup and a few hoods. Don't think we can count on them to keep you and your girl safe from anyone unsavory." The rogue matriarch added after a moment of thoughtful silence, and Hannah saw a couple of the commandoes nod unconsciously in agreement before catching themselves, and she frowned. Not at the commandoes, but at Aethyta's words.
Despite her annoyance with the (much) older woman, and instinctual desire to stick up for the security assigned to her family, she couldn't entirely disagree with her conclusion or her statement. Freedom of the press or not, the little bastard never should have been able to follow Cassie, never mind get so close to her, without someone intervening. The fact that he had was less than pleasing, and she certainly wasn't willing to risk the possibility of someone with more malicious intentions performing a repeat. God knew that her daughter would make a good target for any number of dangerous and unpleasant people.
She glanced over at Benezia, a question in her eyes, and her (tentative) friend's brow furrowed as she considered the silent question for a long moment.
"Aethyta's methods certainly leave something to be desired, but I would never doubt her dedication to protecting a child, and I certainly wouldn't doubt the skill or the dedication of her acolytes. Cassie would be one of the safest people in the galaxy with them looking after her." The Matriarch of House T'Soni spoke slowly when she finally responded, but with a firmness that spoke volumes of her faith in her ex(?) wife. Something that, Hannah noticed with a flutter of amusement and contemplation, seemed to mean a great deal to Aethyta, judging by the small, almost soft smile that fleeted across her lips for a heartbeat before control smoothed it away again. Benezia hesitated for a moment before continuing. "And, honestly Hannah, you and I are due to visit the Citadel soon with Ambassador Goyle. I think we would both agree that leaving Liara and Cassandra behind would be best, and if we're going to do that…"
"We want to make sure that they are as safe as possible." Hannah finished for her, nodding firmly in agreement. While she hated to leave her daughter behind, and she knew Benezia felt the same about Liara, their upcoming visit to the seat of the Council was guaranteed to be a security nightmare and a twelve-ring circus. Bringing two kids into that bordered on the unfathomable, and in the face of the nightmares that could result, leaving them home with her in-laws, Aethyta, and a group of highly-trained, centuries-old asari was highly preferable indeed.
Especially if something went wrong. She might trust and respect Benezia, even like her, but she was entirely unwilling to trust The Council. She might not take it as far as some, who strayed into the realm of xenophobia, but any government willing to force a species to live in ship-borne exile for three centuries and commit slow genocide via genetic plagues against another (after using them as living weapons against an enemy for three-hundred years) was one that she fully agreed should be kept at arm's length. God knew she was probably going to be in quarantine for weeks after she got back, to make sure the Salarians hadn't slipped her something unpleasant.
"Alright, then. Aethyta and her commandoes will stay with the girls and my in-laws." She vocalized her decision after another long moment of thought, glancing into the next room at a particularly loud exclamation from her daughter, followed by peals of laughter from Liara, a soft smile creasing her lips. The women around and before her nodded in acknowledgement, Aethyta looking a little surprised and plenty flattered at her decision. She could imagine that it would seem sudden, strange, to an outsider, her willingness to entrust the safety of her sole remaining family to an unknown from a race of unknowns that belonged to a government she regarded with deep suspicion, but Hannah Shepard was no fool. Liara was Cassie's best friend, Aethyta was Benezia's former wife (or husband, she supposed, though the vagaries of Asari marriage and relationship customs were still far beyond her. Benezia certainly seemed the more feminine of the two, so that description would work for the time being), and if protecting their daughter meant protecting her own…well, Hannah knew when to make an educated leap of faith, and this was one of those times.
And, quite frankly, she didn't have any better options. Besides Faolan's parents, there was no one she could entrust her daughter to (never mind Benezia's) that she could genuinely believe didn't have some kind of ulterior motive. She would simply have to trust that Aethyta's pragmatism and desire to protect Liara would continue to carry over to Cassandra.
"Don't worry about our girls, Shepard. I wouldn't have come all the way here from Ilium, and I wouldn't have had my girls watching your little one, if I hadn't been determined to keep her just as safe and happy as Liara. I don't like vultures as it is, and I damn well wouldn't let them harass you and that kid. You didn't ask for this and you don't need it in your life, not after what you've lost, what you've been through."
There was a long moment of silence before Hannah looked over at Benezia, who seemed to be giving her fellow Matriarch a look that mingled pride and wonder, and Hannah asked herself once again how their relationship could possible have fallen apart. The feelings they held for one another were painfully obvious, even after what had to be many long years of separation.
She shook her head with a weary mental sigh. She couldn't dedicate mental or emotional bandwidth to their relationship right now. Not when she was going into the belly of the beast as one of humanity's representatives. Whatever this was, she would think about dealing with it when she got back.
It never crossed her mind not to see if she could lend a hand in bridging the gap between the two obviously in-love women, no more than if they had been a pair of humans. It would be quite some time for the remarkable nature of that fact to be made clear to her, and even then it would only be at the direction of a third party.
It never occurred to her simply because that was the sort of thing that one did for friends.
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To say that Aethyta had been surprised to find herself assigned to semi-guardianship (if in a purely physical sense) of her unaware daughter and her fascinating little human friend would be something of an understatement. A welcome surprise, certainly, but a significant surprise all the same.
Especially the strong, vocal, if rather exasperated support of her estranged bond-mate. She had hoped to avoid running into Benezia, hoped only to introduce herself to little Cassandra and Hannah and offer what admittedly extensive advice she had to share that was pertinent to the way their lives had changed, find some decent human mercenaries to act as her agents in Earth Alliance space, and return to Ilium before too much notice was taken of her absence. Instead, due to that little gremlin of a stalker (who she would be checking on further. He might genuinely just be a newsy with bigger dreams than brains, but she wasn't willing to bet on that for more than half a heartbeat) she and her girls had been forced into the open rather earlier than planned.
Yet her love, despite being annoyed with her (an emotion that was common for Benezia in regards to her, she knew) had not hesitated for a moment to assure Shepard that both of their daughters would be safe in her care. She still had emotional whiplash from that moment, to be perfectly frank. After decades of only being able to watch over her child from afar, never known to her Little Wing, she was finally in the same building. Able to see her, touch her, hold her, hear her voice without a speaker in the way.
Of course, things might be a bit awkward with Shepard's in-laws when they arrived, and she wasn't allowed to tell Liara that she was her father (which she knew ought to have enraged her, and she certainly wasn't happy about it, but this was already incredible progress. She could make a concession or two under these circumstances), yet despite those facts and limitations she was incredible excited.
The next couple of days, she had been tartly informed by a still-somewhat-miffed Benezia, would be spent acclimating to the children and getting them used to her presence. An understandable decision, and she couldn't even be offended or annoyed by that fact. Goddess knew that if circumstances were reversed, she would want her daughter to have some time to get used to her temporary caretakers before she was left alone with them. Indeed, in all fairness, that had somewhat happened already, over the course of Benezia and Liara's many and extended visits, which had led to her child being quite comfortable with the elder Shepards.
Of course, there would be a bit of involvement with the other humans in the area as well. It certainly hadn't been long enough for them to have grown entirely used even to Benezia's frequent presence, and now she was here with another couple of dozen commandoes for the foreseeable future. Oh, she doubted anyone would dare cause issues, even the more xenophobic locals, but that was no reason to be unreasonable or flagrantly rude. Causing trouble for Cassandra's family wasn't going to endear her to the humans or to her own family and, even if that hadn't been the case, she wasn't that much of a problematic cunt.
She did have to say, though, that she liked Earth, mostly. Better than Thessia, even, though she had to admit that it probably wasn't a fair comparison. After all, Earth didn't have a bunch of stuck-up manipulative bitches with egos bigger than The Citadel's eezo core that wanted to use sex-diplomacy to take over the galaxy from the shadows. Oh, and just so happened to be concealing a Prothean beacon repository from the rest of the galaxy, in direct contravention to a law they themselves had created, in order to maintain Asari superiority and preeminence over the rest of the galaxy.
She would never understand why someone as smart and kind and warm as Benezia would keep working with people like the rest of The Council of Matriarchs. People that didn't care about the rest of the galaxy and it's people, didn't care about their ostensible allies, didn't even really care about asari-kind as a whole. Only supporting their advancement and strength for their own sake, rather than for the good of their species. She knew that Benezia was too good a person to be so apathetic, and she damn well wasn't an Asari supremacist either, yet she still worked her diplomatic magic on their behalf.
Aethyta shook her head with a sigh, pushing herself away from a mental path that she had trod many, many times over the last several decades. More times that she cared to admit, honestly, but it was one that she wasn't going to pretend wasn't real despite the great discomfort it caused her. What she needed to focus on instead was making a good impression on Liara and Cassandra.
Her lips quirked as a spike of amusement swept through her at the thought. She hadn't tried to make a good impression on anyone in a century or two, and she hadn't done it particularly often before then either. As far as she had always been concerned, people could take her or leave her as she was. That was one of the things that had drawn her to…
She shook her head again, mentally cursing at herself for allowing her thoughts to drift into the negative again. She hadn't been this introspective in years!
"Hello. Are you Lia's Daddy?" a soft voice asked, and she jolted upright in shock, turning wide eyes to meet the emerald gaze of the small human that had apparently snuck up on her while she was entirely absorbed in her own thoughts.
"What…" the word tumbled from her lips without any input whatsoever on her part, a verbal fumble that would have had her cursing her lapse in control if she had had the wherewithal to even recognize it. The stillness of the house seemed crushing, a weight unnaturally heavy rest on her shoulders, the silence deafening in an instant that stretched for an eternity, before it was shattered by an excited cry as Liara came racing over.
"You're my father?" her Little Wing asked, eyes shining with excitement, and Aethyta couldn't help the mildly-panicked look she shot at the other adults in the room. Shepard was staring at Cassandra, probably wondering how the hell her kid had figured that not-so-little secret out. Her captain, Menora, was fastidiously examining the framed photographs on the mantle with a posture that screamed discomfort. Benezia…well, Benezia seemed to have petrified in place, frozen with a look that…honestly, Aethyta struggled to define it. It wasn't horror, it wasn't shock, it wasn't fear or confusion, it was just…well. Needless to say, it seemed Benny had been temporarily broken and would be of no help at all with this situation. Which meant it was up to her to figure out an answer that wouldn't piss Benezia off or break Liara's heart.
When in doubt, question the accuser.
"What makes you say that, kiddo?" she asked Cassandra, who tilted her head in an oddly bird-like gesture and scrutinized her. There was something about those eyes, something intelligent. More intelligent than a child Cassandra's age, even one as smart as she was, should reasonably be. A sense of knowing, of seeing, of understanding, and she felt a tingle of frost roll up and down her spine.
"You care about Lia a lot, I can tell. An' she looks like you and Miss Benezia put together. An' Miss Benezia got a funny look when she saw you, like Mommy used to look at Daddy sometimes. An' you get a Daddy look when you look at Lia." Cassandra listed her reasons with the characteristic bluntness possible only for children, the socially-unaware, or the… undiplomatic.
"Out of the mouths of babes." Shepard was the first to really recover, shaking her head with a wry smile, pride in her eyes, as Aethyta stared at her daughter with a mingled sense of being impressed and being embarrassed. "God save secrets from perceptive children. Come on, baby, I think Miss Benezia, Miss Aethyta, and Liara need to have a talk together now."
Cassandra peered at Aethyta for a moment longer before nodding and scampering off after her mother, Menora taking the excuse of planning with the Fox of Shanxi to abandon the vicinity with haste that bordered on the undignified, leaving the two Matriarchs and their daughter alone in privacy.
Looking at the shining eyes and eager smile of the daughter she had never been able to meet, Aethyta took a very slow, very long, very deep breath to steady herself. This was a conversation she had prayed would come some day, but now that it was finally here…
Goddess, what was she going to say?
"Yes, Liara, I'm your father." She admitted quietly, a tremulous smile creasing her lips, her hands rising slightly as her daughter lurched forward as if to hug her, only to fall as Liara's eyes darkened and she retreated a step.
"Why didn't you stay with me and mom? Why did you leave? Did you not love us anymore? Is…did you leave because I'm pureblood?" Liara asked quietly, looking down at the ground and wringing her hands anxiously, and Aethyta's hands clenched unconsciously on her thighs even as her heart ached, and she heard Benezia's sharp gasp from where the other Matriarch was sitting.
"Absolutely not! I love you and your mother more than anything in this galaxy or the next, Little Wing, and nothing will ever change that." She said firmly, struggling to keep the words from being harsh, though she couldn't restrain the somewhat-angry look she shot at the other adult in the room. Benezia looked stricken by their daughter's words, and she damn well should! Not telling Liara the 'kid friendly' version of what had happened was bad enough, but she damn well should have noticed if Liara was struggling with the prejudice of being a pureblood! "There is nothing wrong with being a pureblood, no matter what a bunch of stuck-up, arrogant, biased bi---bad and mean people have to say about it. They have no right to mistreat you or belittle you just because your mother and father were both Asari. That doesn't make you any less than them, and it doesn't mean that you don't deserve to be loved. Do you understand me?"
Liara's head bobbed in understanding, though she still didn't look up, though she did twitch as Benezia slid off of the couch to kneel beside her in a rustle of fine fabrics, her mother's large hands gently wrapping around her own small ones.
"Liara, my precious child, never imagine for a moment that anything between your father and I is your fault. We both adore you, we always will, and the day that we found out that I was pregnant was the greatest day in the lives of the both of us. We never regretted for a moment the decision to have you, and neither of us puts any sort of stock in the nonsensical bias against purebloods." She said softly but firmly, velvet over steel, the need for her daughter to hear and understand and accept her words. Liara nodded again, a little more strongly this time, before looking up and asking the inevitable follow-up question.
"Why did you leave then, Father?"
"Sweetheart…" Aethyta sighed, not sure how to say it, not interested in the least in doing any damage to the relationship between mother and child, but to her surprise Benezia verbally stepped in, lifting her eyes from Liara to meet Aethyta's own.
"Your father and I fought just before you were born, a hard fight. The both of us said some very mean things to one another in the heat of the moment, things that were cruel and hurtful and not true. Your father thought I didn't love her anymore and left, but I was too afraid and too proud to speak with her again. To fix things, to talk about things." She said lowly, and Aethyta swallowed heavily at the swirl of emotions she saw in the eyes of the woman she loved, before they moved away as Benezia pressed a kiss to the top of Liara's head. "We'll talk about this more when Miss Shepard and I get home, okay baby? I promise I'll answer all of your questions as best I can, and we'll all sit down together, okay?"
Liara nodded again, this time firmly, crossing her arms over her chest with a look on her face that was probably meant to be an emulation of Benezia's stern countenance of command, but just came across as an adorable pout instead, and Aethyta had to smother an entirely inappropriate grin at the sight.
"Then you had better finish with the Council and come back fast!" their child commanded imperiously, before something outside caught her eye and her countenance brightened. An instant later she was gone, one her way through the door to 'help' Cassandra with…some sort of human toy, Aethyta presumed, that was both brightly colored and bizarrely shaped. She couldn't even begin to guess what it was supposed to be, but Liara was clearly happy to see it.
"What now, Benny? We have chat when you get home then go back to pretending?" she asked quietly of her estranged lover, as the two of them watched the girls play, and Benezia shook her head slowly.
"No. Not anymore. I think it's time for us to be honest with each other and honest with Liara. Whatever arguments, whatever issues, that we have between us…Liara deserves better than to grow up without her father in her life. We'll figure things out, you and I, for Liara's sake.
"For Liara's sake." Aethyta murmured in agreement.
For Liara, and for us.