More than anything at the moment, Caius missed his home. Gone for not even a day and he already longed for the smell, the feel, the warmth, and the memories brought with it. There was that particularly rickety stairway that led from the back deck down the hillside to the cove below, wooden steps that had worn for years, decades, and that he and his sisters had both earned their share of splinters from. Then there was the memory of that beach in particular, the waves lapping at the shore and licking his ankles, the feel of the cool water around him as he first learned to swim in the safety of his mother's arms. When it came to the home, as far as they now were from it he could still almost smell the lingering spicy scent of dinner cooked the night before, even as a cross-breeze of fresh air cut through the opened doors and windows. And someone, without fail, was always busy filling the house with a gentle hum, a reminder to the lives lived under that roof. Those, and a million memories more, did he absolutely already miss.

That morning he'd awoken in his room on Earth, the space that had been his since his parents had brought him home and called him theirs, and tonight… tonight he was on Palaven, across the galaxy and in a rented room that smelled like sterilizers and industrial strength laundry soap—and not the kind his parents used, something foreign and more prominent among the people of that planet. It was a far cry from home, and in his chest did he feel the stinging uncertainty of not knowing when he would see it again.

"You should be asleep," his mother said from the opposite end of the living room, standing in the doorway that connected his parent's bedroom to the main space of the hotel suite. Her arms crossed as she shifted her weight to one foot, shoulder leant up into the doorframe. "Got a big day tomorrow."

Caius' eyes rose immediately from the omni-tool swallowing his arm, and without a second glance at the orange glow, he powered it down, returning the light of the room back to just the fluorescence of the dimmed overhead ceiling lamp. "I'll go in a minute," he answered from his seat on the couch.

"How's it treating you?"

"Good," he said, lifting his arm for only half a second before replacing it where it had come to rest against his thigh. His mandibles flicked rapidly. "Alice is still jealous."

"Well, like I told her," finally straightening and abandoning her post behind, she headed in his direction, "you needed it for service. When Trouble goes off to school or does whatever it is she's planning for herself, we'll make sure she's prepared for it. But until then…"

His mother wasn't a tiny woman by human standards, and as a child he could recall distinctly the muscle memory of watching her from his smaller height, head tilted back as he followed her every move. Growing up, he had been her shadow, and though it was often said that children remembered very little from their early years, Caius had an uncanny ability to remember specific moments, days, details. Like how large she seemed to him when he was just a year old and barely more than knee high, how strong her arms had been around him when she picked him up and cradled him to her.

As he watched her cross the room, body shapeless and lost in a sleep-shirt and shorts a size too big, the memories were caught in contrast with the reality of her now. She still seemed just as strong even at her age, but she was small compared to him and his father and even his sisters that had a few inches on the family matriarch. Small, but still fearless—or that was how others always had described her—and a force to be reckoned with.

The couch cushion he occupied sank at the addition of her weight, and though at fifteen he knew the common mentality was to abhor every second of close proximity to one's parents, Caius leaned into his mother, head to her shoulder. She touched a hand to his exposed cheek and mandible, finger tips tracing along the pointed and distinct edge as she turned her head into his and laid a kiss across the plate of his forehead.

"It's okay to be scared," she whispered, and Caius knew her well enough to understand that she spoke softly with purpose. Thoughts like that bared no shame when said at such a low volume.

He felt a prickling in the back of his throat, the urge to make involuntary sounds of strife and struggle where a human might've cried. In only a few words, she had brought up every concern he'd tried to tamp down and away, out of sight and mind. He wasn't supposed to be frightened, not at his age and on the eve of becoming an adult—at least by his species' standards—but that didn't change the reality that deep inside he was terrified. Caius was scared beyond words and his body shook softly in an embarrassing sign of the truth.

She hushed him softly and twisted towards him, wrapping his larger chest and carapace with her arms like she'd done for the preceding fifteen years when he wasn't full grown and it was a much easier feat. "Everyone is," she said, her voice and equal giveaway in her precarious state. "Even if they say otherwise."

"Not you," he barely managed.

"Especially me."

"When were you ever scared?"

"Plenty of times." She eased back into the couch, one arm still loosely draped around her son's middle. Her head tipped towards the bedroom she shared with her mate, and with a hint of a smile, she spoke. "Like when your Dad took a damn missile to the face."

Caius' brow plates shifted down, confused. "Is that what those scars are from?" They'd been there since before he'd been born, and rather than seeming like an alien part of the man he'd grown up calling Daddy, the scar tissue simply was just another part of the Turian's identity. His father had those and many more, just like his mother did.

Her mood was suddenly somber. "Sometimes I forget how little we actually told you kids about our lives before. We thought we were doing a good thing," she sighed, a single shoulder shrugging in defeat rather than indifference. "But maybe we should've been honest."

"I've read about it on the extranet," he admitted defensively, but still ducked his head to avoid her reprimanding gaze. "I know all about it."

She hummed deep, the kind of sound she made when she disapproved of something he or his sisters had done. "There's only so much you can get on there, very little of what we did became public record. I can promise you any story you've been told hasn't been the whole truth."

Caius fell into a short-lived silence, pondering his mother's words. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because…" she exhaled loudly, one hand waving through the air without aim or cause. "…It's hard to think about, Caius. Sometimes I feel like the life your Dad and I used to have is a dream because it just seems like it can't possibly be real compared to what I have now. You were born into a good time, just far enough away from the destruction to only see the galaxy rebuilding itself. There are still whole worlds in ruin, but the horrors of it…" His mother stopped, eyes gone glassy as she stared at the far wall, seemingly lost in a memory. "You've been spared that, and I'm glad you and your sisters will never know it."

"Do you miss being a soldier?"

"God no," she said quickly, but there was something her voice that Caius couldn't discern between longing for what was gone or pain at the recollection.

"But you were heroes," he insisted with the same kind of pride he'd always taken with him wherever he'd gone, pride that came with growing up knowing the weight of the last name he carried. Caius Shepard-Vakarian, that was the kind of name that even to this day turned heads. "You saved the galaxy! Kids used to tease me after they made that movie about you two. On every planet from here to the Terminus there's a statue or a park or a school named after you, Mom. How could you not miss it?"

When he looked to his mother's face, he had the stark realization that he'd made the wrong call a second earlier. It wasn't longing after all, it was strain. All at once he felt sorry for the enthusiasm he'd shown at such a late hour.

"Heroes," she shook her head as she fought through the memories. "I never felt like a hero back then. It wasn't like everyone says, Caius. It wasn't fun or heroic or anything they try to make you believe. More nights than not I went to bed thinking we didn't have a way out of all of it, but knew I had to try anyway because there was no one else who could. You'll never understand how many people I saw die," and that last word was a whisper, like she was afraid if she spoke it too loudly another person's breath would be pulled from their lungs a second too early. "So when you wonder why I don't miss it, think about that. Everything I have now… it's been a refuge from the past."

Caius couldn't look at his mother afterwards, guilt coming over him at the realization that it had been his words that had forced her to assess what was long buried. Her other hand, the one that wasn't around him, it was gripping the couch cushion, knuckles gone nearly white from the strength she exercised.

"I fought for the mothers out there with children, so that they could see their daughters," she released the fabric finally, and this time there was gentleness when she touched his cheek once more. It had the effect of drawing his face back in her direction. "…And sons, again. I fought for the children I didn't have, didn't ever think of having back then."

He'd heard the story of how he'd come to be theirs, a tale told in various interpretations of the truth throughout his childhood. Before he'd even understood biology well enough to question how a Turian and a Human could produce two human daughters and a Turian son, his parents had been honest with him. By blood, by DNA—Caius wasn't theirs. But by everything else that mattered, by love and family and all that was right in the galaxy, he was their son. The story of what had convinced Commander Shepard and Garrus Vakarian to settle down, though, that wasn't something he'd never been told.

"What changed your mind?"

She smiled, the warm and genuine kind that painted even his very oldest memories. Before she could get a word out, the two of them were no longer alone, his father casting a long shadow as he entered from the bedroom. He was still rubbing away the sleepiness from his face as his similarly flanged voice, rough with lack of use, echoed.

"Who do you think?"

Like it had always been, his mother was speaking hardly before the man's words died. "We're in London, about to finish the war for good and I'm trying not to fall to pieces talking to your Dad…"

"And I suggested," he interrupted as he stepped into the kitchenette and began to fill a glass of water from the faucet, "that when it was all over we retire somewhere warm and tropical, think about having a few kids."

Husband and wife traded a grin. His father took a long drink of water and set the glass back into the sink before joining them in the living room. The coarseness of voice was gone. "You okay?"

If it came down to who he wished had found him in his earlier scared and emotional state, Caius was glad it was his mother. It wasn't that his father had been strict and imposing and cold, nothing could have been further from the truth. But his father, well, he had gone through this rite himself decades earlier, and Caius just couldn't imagine that his Dad had wavered the night before his service began, needing comforting. Like the man who raised him, Caius wanted to be strong. And brave. Always brave.

"We're just talking," his mother said for him, and Caius was relieved she didn't give him away, even as she stroked the swell of his carapace out of her mate's view.

His father took residence upon the edge of the low lying coffee table in front of them, knees knocking with Caius' own. Soon there was another sympathetic touch, this one from his father, his open palm to his boy's thigh.

"You're going to get through this," his Dad said, locking eyes with Caius. They were blue, so deep blue just like Hannah's. Spirits, he missed his older sister, too. It had been months since he'd last seen her.

"I know," Caius whispered, although he didn't truly believe it.

From the side, his mother rested her head on his shoulder, and he felt silly in taking comfort from the gesture since it was behavior more belonging of a child to an adult.

"Maybe we should send him off with a few stories, Garrus," she suggested.

Across the gap of space, his father's facial plates shifted in consideration as he scratched his unscarred mandible. For the first time, Caius looked at the other one, the one mangled and damaged and then repaired, with an observing eye. He tried to imagine how it looked before it healed, and though he could almost see the dripping blue blood and open wound, he still couldn't fathom a single soul ever having taken a missile to the face and living to tell the tale. His father's voice pried him away from his thoughts.

"Whatever you hear here," he said, "it's not to be repeated, not even to your sisters."

"We'll tell them in time," his mother agreed, but was fast to amend. "When we know they can handle it."

Through the years, when curiosity was piqued, Caius had come to raise questions to his parents. Usually it came after a vid on the television, a history channel running a marathon on the anniversary of the war, or even the odd journalist who stumbled up to the isolated home with questions and their omni-tool's recording feature set to on. It was a wonder, he thought now, that more hadn't found them, hadn't hounded Shepard and Vakarian even now, twenty five years later.

He did remember an incident when he was younger, a sharp and painful memory pushed to the recesses of his mind, when an unknown face had shown at his school and had nearly convinced he and Alice, all of five or six years old, to come with him. His parents had intervened, arriving just in time, and he could still hear the force in his fathers voice as he threatened the stranger, the tears his mother had wept when they'd gotten home. At the time, he hadn't comprehended the gravity of the situation that had seemed innocent to his childish point of view, and it had been years since he'd last thought on it. He could understand now, left to imagine what might have become of him and Alice had they not been so lucky. His mother and father had been there early every day after that, patiently waiting for their children with watchful eyes. He never saw the man again.

Those questions he'd posed, however, had always gone unanswered from the members of his family. When you're older, they'd promised on the rare occasion they acknowledged his inquisitive mind at all. More often than not, they'd simply changed the subject, distracting him away from what he'd earlier asked. To now have carte blanche so quickly thrust upon him, Caius felt as though he was letting down that past version of himself, the eager little boy seeking out the truth. His failsafe was to turn to the biggest mystery.

"What happened on the Citadel?"

"Not that," his mother replied before he'd even finished his question, head shaking. Caius hadn't even had the time to notice how fast his father had grasped her hand, their fingers linked and locked together. "Anything but that."

"Do you know?" He tried again persistently, this time asking his father.

"What your Mom's remembered over the years, she's told me," he said, nodding towards his spouse.

"And he's the only person who knows. Somewhere in Alliance HQ and Council records there's a report I dictated after I woke up and it only has a fragment of what your father knows. It was all I remembered at the—"

Though some of the details were more juicy, Caius was stuck on one. He was missing a part of the story. "Woke up?"

"Coma," she supplied.

"She was in bad shape after the Citadel," his father continued for her, shifting forward on the coffee table, close enough now to stroke his wife's cheek. It was more for his benefit than for hers, Caius could tell, as he was the one left with a tremor in his hand. "Worse than any civilian knew." He moved his talon to the other side of her face, the one nearest Caius, and traced a faint line of a scar that ran from her ear down her throat. Another mark Caius had grown so used to seeing that it had merely become invisible until pointed out. "Nearly cut her carotid artery open, they said. Concussion, broken bones, dislocated hip, burns. If she woke up at all, the doctors said she wouldn't be her." He stammered over the word, and his wife leaned in, eyes shut as their foreheads touched.

It was an expression of affection his parents had been showering Caius with since his birth, but when shared between the two of them, it couldn't have been more different.

"She woke up… and Spirits, she was my Shepard," he continued, struggling. "After that they said she wouldn't ever walk, too much damage."

"But you had me walking again," she responded, and while the conversation had once been for their son, it was clear that now it was for the man she'd spent the last three decades alongside. Her mouth brushed his, and Caius looked away, not out of embarrassment or anything of that sort, but because it was private and because there was too much said silently between his parents with that action that he didn't feel he had the right to know.

It was quiet after that, and though his mother was whispering something to his father, Caius couldn't make out her words nor the reply his father gave to her ear. They parted after another minute, and from the corner of his eye, Caius saw his mother wiping at her cheeks.

"Anything but the Citadel," she said, attempting to hide the pain in her voice. "Any other story and we'll tell you the truth."

"Tell me," he said, finally decided, "tell me about Saren and when you met."

By morning light, the hotel suite was as silent as the home on Earth. The Shepard-Vakarians, like the other families gathered and scattered across the pavement outside of the Toleta military training grounds on Palaven, lingered close together, savoring the last moments before another one of their brood left them behind. Shepard took her son in her arms, the engulfing feel of Garrus around them both.

"Don't do anything dumb," she said, eyes shut as she breathed in the scent of metal and pine of her youngest child. It was unfair that she should have to give him up so soon. He was a man now, fully grown and ready to serve the planet and people of his species, but that didn't make the goodbye any easier on her. Fifteen, he was only fifteen, and she had so dreaded the time as it passed, wishing for just a little more with her only son. Tears wet her eyes even while they were closed, and as she squeezed him tighter, she felt Caius return it. He'd gotten so big, so strong, and yet she could still feel him in her arms that very first time. Caius had been nothing then, so slight that a gust of wind could nearly have taken him from her.

"We didn't fight through hell just to eventually lose our son," Garrus reiterated, patting the boy's back as he eventually released Shepard and Caius. "So play and work smart."

Caius nodded in his mother's loosening hold. He would take his parents' advice to heart.

"Remember what I said last night," Shepard reminded him, pulling back though her open palm lingered against a mandible. She had his complete attention and it reminded her of him as a boy, as a baby, looking up at her from the crook of her arm. "And remember you don't owe anyone anything. Not because of your name, not because of who your parents are. I've seen too many people lost," she paused, and all she could think of was Tarquin Victus on Tuchanka, pushed too far and too unprepared for the task given to him, left to sacrifice his life to die with honor, "because of the pressure put on them. I'd rather you keep your head down and come home to me. We raised you for fifteen years, Caius, and we expect to have you for the rest of our lives."

Caius, for all the steadfastness he tried to exude, for all the courage he tried to build in himself over the last few months, choked up on his words. "I want to make you proud."

Garrus' hand found its home on his son's other cheek, both sides now occupied by the touch of his parents' hands. He offered Caius a smile, although his eyes didn't possess the kind of happiness his mouth may have tried to. "You already have, and you always will."

"Boot camp will be hard," Shepard said, "but you'll make it through. And when's all said and done, your Grandfather will find a place for you, whatever it is you want to do."

"I don't want special treatment." He shook his head. "I have to earn it."

"That's my boy," she whispered, dropping her hand just as Garrus did. "But the option's always there."

"We'll be up to see you when you've got a break."

"And we're just a vidcomm away."

"Besides," his father teasingly encouraged, a glint to his eye, "you might even meet a girl."

Shepard elbowed Garrus exaggeratedly in the abdomen, holding back her laughter all the while. "You'll find friends at the very least. I know you've been lonely on Earth, and if I could've raised you here, Caius, I would've. Sometimes I think I didn't do enough for you, and I'm sorry for it," she confessed. That had been their worry since the first day as parents to a Turian. Would he never fit in with his own kind? Would they not accept him? Were they damning their son to a life of struggle, of trying to fit in with the human children while they resided on Earth?

"I was happy at home," he insisted, desperately trying to wash away the remorse his mother carried in her voice. "I can't imagine growing up somewhere else."

She didn't let him stop her. "You'll be at home here, too. I know that."

There was a thankfulness in her eyes when she heard the voice of her eldest daughter's arrival behind them. Nineteen years old and not changing anytime soon, Hannah remained faithfully and eternally late. Shepard turned just in time to see the girl, her long hair—a color more vibrant than Shepard's own dulling shade—bound and tied in a braid, as she tossed her small duffel bag to the ground and embraced Alice. The sisters, both nearly an identical copy of one another—save for the color of their eyes and Alice's own much shorter, freshly cropped locks—said their hellos and parted all in under two breaths, and then Hannah was upon her parents, wiry arms curled about her mother's neck and then her father's cowl.

"It's not my fault," she insisted, even without letting go of Garrus. He affectionately nuzzled the top of her head, a habit with his firstborn that was unlikely to soon be forgotten. "Took forever to get a shuttle from the spaceport." Her attention turned from piling excuse after excuse on to her mother, and towards her Turian brother, launching herself into Caius' unsuspecting arms.

"Nothing stupid," she recited as if the family had rehearsed their speeches and coordinated beforehand. Hannah winked at Caius and relinquished her hold on him, palm clasping his shoulder. "I couldn't stand it if you left me alone with Alice for the rest of my life."

"Shut up," Alice retorted, slipping past her parents after having had enough of waiting for her turn.

Shepard motioned to Garrus, stepping back and out of earshot of their three grown children gathered together to say their goodbyes.

"Alice told me something this morning." She hooked her arm around his waist, content to watch over them from a distance.

Garrus slid his about her shoulder. "And?"

"She wants to join the Alliance when she's of age, hopes she can get stationed somewhere with Caius."

His mandibles clicked quietly, eyes studying the body language in view ahead of them. He'd gotten better at that over the years, and he held a pride to the fact that when something was bothering his wife or his girls, he could read the shift of muscles in their face as well as the tension they held in their body. Alice transferred her weight anxiously between her feet, fingers folding and unfolding her hands together. There had been tears in her eyes nearly every day for the last few weeks, and he knew that on the way home they would spill yet again, this time when they returned as just three instead of four. Alice would be alone in the house with them for the first time, and deep in his chest, his heart ached at the loneliness he knew she would feel.

The twins, they had always called them. It was still true.

"We can… try to work something out," he said, and already knew they would. Whatever favor could be called upon, they'd take full advantage for the sake of their children.

"What are we going to do?" Shepard asked, not louder than a whisper. "Caius will be on service, Hannah's got a few more years studying on Thessia. We'll blink our eyes, and Alice will be leaving us, too. We've got an empty nest, Garrus."

"There's always traveling. I'm sure there are a few planets even we haven't seen."

"Mm," she hummed, resting her head against his arm and shoulder, encased in the warmth of his body while Palaven's sun rained down on them. "But I'm not sure exotic planets will have the same charm if we're not shooting some Geth in the process."

"Please, Shepard, you haven't shot anything in twenty years. If those bottles do invade, I'll be the one protecting us."

"And what?" She looked up to him. "You think you're better off because you went to a target range on Palaven twice since we had Hannah?"

He huffed dramatically, but his words didn't carry the annoyance he was trying to project. "Better than nothing."

Shepard hugged herself to his side, and like always, Garrus returned the action, even kissed the crown of her head. "Garrus?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think we did right by them? By raising them so far removed from who we were, the people we used to be?"

"I think they were kids, Shepard, and we raised them like they were. They didn't need the burden. Now…" His eyes shifted off his wife to focus on their three children.

Caius, he had always been a precocious child, and even despite the fear he had now, Garrus knew he would grow into being a strong man, a good Turian. Seeing someone else with those blue stripes and markings over his face, that had been something Garrus had never thought he'd have. Having his own family hadn't ever been at the forefront of his thoughts as a younger man, and then there were the period of years beside Shepard he had come to expect that his death might result from their actions. When they'd finally been able to breathe easy, to settle down and think about children at all, he'd accepted from the start the idea that they would be human. Human, but still his. He would love them—and Spirits, had he loved his daughters in ways he didn't know possible—but Garrus wouldn't soon forget the day he'd sat his son down just after his first birthday, and painted the patient boy with the markings of their colony, their clan, their name. The day Caius had really become a Vakarian.

With Alice, he often wondered how she might have turned out if they hadn't had Caius. Would she have been just as fearless, just as strong-willed after not having to duke it out with another child so close in age? She was just like her mother and sister in so many ways, head-strong for one, and that was a trait he had long decided descended directly on the maternal line. Part of him was wound with anxiety at the thought that his daughter, halfway through her fifteenth year, wanted to join the Alliance and put herself in harm's way. She had plenty of time to change her mind between now and legal age, but somewhere inside, Garrus knew she wouldn't. He could already see her in her dress blues, arm rigid in salute, a mirror image of Shepard in her younger years. Spirits, he prayed, that they could keep his daughter and son safe.

And Hannah, Garrus thought as he watched their eldest, while Caius and Alice seemed to be carbon copies of their parents of appropriate gender and species, Hannah was the perfect blend of them both. Stubborn, but gentle when needed. Smart and resourceful. She wasn't a born fighter, much to her parents' happiness, and she reminded him so much of the people he and Shepard might have been had things been different and a war and military service not found them first. What she'd do with her life, he didn't yet know, and Garrus was certain she hadn't discovered it for herself either, content to simply learn and study while she could avoid the big decisions in life. Someone, maybe his father decades ago, would have insisted a girl of her age take a stand, make a choice, commit to something, but he and Shepard both felt contrary: this was what they fought for, so a child could grow and never have someone else or a war make that decision for them.

"Now?" Shepard prompted as her mate fell into an extended lapse of silence.

"Now… I think they'll come to us when they want to know, and we'll be ready to tell them."

Finally, we've reached the end. Thanks for the continued support/reading/comments. While this fic was a struggle for me at times, there are still a lot of plotless moments I wished to fit into this world (at various points in the timeline) but couldn't. Please check my other stories for one titled 'Earth Family Shakarian' which will be featuring all my related one-shots as I write them.