"Okay, my turn again. Gimme gimme gimme."

Liara laughed as the Commander outstretched her arms and wiggled her fingers impatiently at Tali, who was currently holding the baby.

"Oh, Shepard," Tali seemed to be pouting behind her mask. "Just a little longer."

"I tell you what,"Shepard said "next time, you provide the military class spaceship and then you can hog the baby all your want Zorah." The glowing lights behind Tali's visor narrowed as she handed her old friend the infant. In her arms, the baby Asari was very small, very cute and very very blue. The sparkling sapphire eyes seemed far too large for such a tiny face, and as Shepard looked into them she felt a soft coo escape her throat in defiance of her warrior reputation. Beside her, Kaidan chuckled.

"Careful human," Javik frowned, slipping back into the old habit of referring to others by their species. "Do not forget to support the head- she cannot do so herself at this age."

"She knows, Javik." Liara laughed to see the one time 'Avatar of the Vengeance of the Prothean People' fussing so over his daughter. He no longer had to worry about galactic extinction, but he found plenty of other things to get worked up about; just two days before, she had witnessed him throw several blankets off the balcony of their apartment, shouting as he did so. "This material is far too rough for a child's skin! How dare they sell this as an infant blanket. In my cycle we would have choked the manufacturer with his own coarse fibres." Liara smiled and sat down beside him, winding her arm around his. Javik gave a quiet sub-vocal hum of approval that only she could hear and continued to assess Shepard's handling of his daughter.

"Some poor sucker is going to end up with Javik as a father in law." Opined Garrus, amused by the Prothean's over-protectiveness.

Joker snorted. "Yeah, can you imagine? Hi sir, I'm here to take your daughter to prom- no wait! Not the airlock! Please!"

"Jeff, is it true that it is common for organics to feel intimidated by the parents of their spouses?" EDI asked, through her new lips. The activation of the crucible had rendered her old mobile platform useless, but EDI herself had been saved by her presence and backups in The Normandy's AI Core. Her new body had taken a while to make and wasn't quite as lethal as the original Cerberus model, but was, if anything, even more adored by The Normandy's pilot.

"Yeah, I guess that's true…" Joker was clearly wondering where she was heading with this.

"Although I do not have a father in the biological sense," EDI continued. "The closest analogous figure would be The Illusive Man." Her silver lips smiled wickedly.

"Not funny EDI," Joker shuddered. "Seriously."

"So Liara," said Kaidan, his arm around Shepard as she held the baby. "When is this little one going to get a name?"

"Actually…" Liara turned to Javik. "We think we've chosen."

They all stared at her.

"Well…?" said Joker.

"Spit it out T'soni!" said Garrus exasperatedly.

"Janiri" Liara said at last.

"Janiri," Tali repeated softly, "Like the guide of the Goddess Athame?"

"Yes," she smiled. "It seemed appropriate, now that we know that Janiri-"

"Was Prothean." Javik concluded.

"It's perfect," Shepard smiled, eyes fixed on Janiri.

"Beautiful," Kaidan agreed.

"Isn't there an Asari festival dedicated to her?" Tali asked as Shepard finally surrendered the baby back to her hands.

"It's called 'Janiris'," said Garrus. "There are a lot of flowers involved as I recall."

"A foolish custom," Javik assessed. This earned a frown from Liara and soon after he added. "But not entirely unpleasant.

The visitors exchanged looks of surprise and raised eyebrows following this apparent evidence of Javik's domestication. But this wasn't the most startling behaviour he had exhibited since they'd been there; when Liara had greeted them at the door to the apartment and welcomed them inside, Javik had been sat on their sofa holding Janiri in front of him so that their faces were level. The taciturn Prothean was opening and closing each of his four eyes independently of the others in wild patterns to elicit a bubbling torrent of giggles from his daughter. Shepard had struggled to reconcile the overwhelming cuteness of the scene with Javik's character, and when he too let out a laugh- his deep and rumbling where hers was high and melodic- she gave up on making sense of it entirely.

The war had changed all of them. Each of them had lost things they'd hoped never to loose and gained things they'd never dreamed of finding- but, as Shepard took in the reality of this wondrously unlikely, inter-species, cross-cycle family, the memory of what they had endured was at last a little easier to accept.