Post Extended Cut update:

Well, the EC doesn't really impact much of what I've written so far. This story could probably be considered to have occurred after the events of the EC destroy ending with only a few minor contradictions. I'm not going to change anything to bring it in line, however. If you're willing to ignore a few minor things here and there in this story you can easily "headcanon" your way into concordance with the EC. EDI has a small part in a few paragraphs, but you could just as easily imagine her role going to some other character. You might want to set the events of this story forward a few more years too, to account for an optimistic repairing of the Relays. But, hey, this is fan fiction, use your imagination! Going forward, I won't write in anything else that contradicts anything seen in the EC destroy ending.

Author's Note:

This is the first piece of fiction I've ever written, so I hope that you will bear with me through any rough spots. Feedback is appreciated.

This is a fanfic set in the Mass Effect universe, after the events of Mass Effect 3, which focuses on the relationship between FemShep(Paragon, Spacer, War Hero, Kate Shepard) and Liara T'Soni. It's a bit of an AU, as I have chosen to imagine a happier conclusion for the couple. The war was ended by the crucible, however, The Mass Relays, EDI, and the Geth were not destroyed. The galaxy still suffered heavy losses (something I'll go into more detail about in later chapters) and there were personal losses for Shepard and Liara too. I should also note that I am writing this before the Extended Cut that Bioware has announced, so I have no idea what that will entail either or how it might contradict anything I've written here.

I don't know much about the fan fiction community, but I believe that this work could safely be filed under the category, "Fluff." That said, I think that these first few chapters are not entirely representative of the whole, in that they are considerably more "fluffy" than the rest. I've broken the rule that states that an author should open up with an action packed beginning to grab your attention. Oh well, I'm new to this. In any case, expect there to be a higher action to fluff ratio later in the story when Liara and Shepard begin to independently work on their own separate projects to try to extend the human lifespan, and end up undermining each other's progress. I would encourage anybody who might be bored with these first few chapters to stay tuned until after Liara's delivery (Chapter 6), where the pace picks up.

I also want to note that I borrowed the word "damis" from a FemShep/Liara fanfic called "Unity" written by Awska. You can find that here: fanfiction dot net /s/8078346/1/Mass_Effect_4_Unity

The author describes damis as being little furry animals that live in trees in some of Thessia's warmer climates... and taste like chicken.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer:

Bioware owns the rights to the Mass Effect universe and characters... I just took them out for a spin in my imagination mobile (No offers of free candy were involved; I promise.). Also, since this takes place after the events of ME3, it contains spoilers for the entire series (O RLY?). Consider yourself duly warned.

Chapter 01: Arrival

"Your bondmate is insane," Aethyta finally said to Liara.

The two of them were standing in the front yard watching Shepard, who had just landed the skycar on the small parking space in the front yard, prepare to take off yet again for another trip. This would be the third trip from the T'Soni estate to the local hospital that she had made, intent on memorizing every landmark on the rout, so that she could fly the skycar on instinct should the need arise.

"You won't even be going to the hospital in the first place," Aethyta continued.

"Shepard just likes to be well prepared," Liara said flatly. "Human pregnancies are fraught with considerably more danger than asari pregnancies, so she's nervous."

Aethyta muttered something about a "bag of dicks" which Liara chose to ignore.

Shepard did, in fact, like to be prepared. It was one of the traits that had no doubt kept her alive during the war with the Reapers. But now, in peace time, the former commander's driven personality had found a new outlet, her pregnant wife. When they had decided to conceive Shepard had loaded her datapad full of every book she could find on asari pregnancy, the developmental rates of asari children, and the cultural practices surrounding the birth. In the few short decades that humans had been part of galactic society a voluminous catalog of books had been written for human bondmates seeking to understand what child rearing with their asari partner would mean. Shepard must have read nearly all of them.

"She doesn't even have a license to operate that thing on Thessia," Aethyta complained.

They had returned to Thessia to have the birth at the traditional temple where Liara, and generations of T'Sonis, had been born. Had she not been the most famous member of the T'Soni family she probably would have considered simply having the child in the human fashion. She had never had any problem adopting her bondmate's customs, and even enjoyed learning about them, but certain things were expected of the daughter of a Matriarch, and she was probably the most famous daughter of a Matriarch on all of Thessia after the Reaper war. Snubbing the T'Soni family would be perceived as snubbing all of Thessia, and there was really no good reason to needlessly engender such hostility. For better or for worse, she and her bondmate were political figures now; her mother would have been pleased at least.

"She's still technically a Spectre. She doesn't need a license. Not that she could get one anyway," Liara admitted.

Shepard flicked a few switches on the dashboard and the skycar ascended above the T'Soni estate. Liara and Aethyta watched as it took off in the direction of the hospital.

"If she keeps acting this nervous, Kalina won't allow her into the birthing chamber," Aethyta said.

"I'll find some way to calm her down," Liara said with a hint of exasperation.

But rather than devise ways to calm her devoted wife and bondmate, Liara's mind searched out what she knew of Matriarch Kalina instead. Her work as the Shadow Broker had left her with an extensive knowledge of many of galaxy's most important figures, but it was her investigation into her own father's background that drew a potentiality useful connection in her mind now.

"You know Matriarch Kalina?" She asked, though not really asking.

"I used to know her, back in her matron days... she was wild back then, like a maiden... such a damn prude now though. Shame with that amazing rack and ass."

"Do you think you could discretely make your opinion of my bondmate known to her, when she arrives tomorrow?"

Emphasis on the word 'discreetly,' Liara thought to herself.

"Don't know if it will do much good, but sure, I'll put in a good word. Your bondmate may be crazy, but at least she's crazy about you... She's actually a pretty good catch," Aethyta confessed. "How did you get her so smitten with you in the first place?" Aethyta began to smile a wicked smile, her mind mulling over the possibilities. "Did ya..."

"I simply told her I thought she was fascinating," Liara quickly blurted out, heading off whatever embarrassing remark her father had been about to make. "And she told me she found me intriguing as well."

Aethyta burst out laughing, "Oh to be young... Well, don't worry, you'll get practice at luring them in with your other assets someday. You'll have the next one eating out of your hand just as devotedly as this one, once they get a good look at those..."

"Father!" Liara exclaimed, irritated. "First off, I do not have Shepard eating out of my hand..."

Liara trailed off.

"And second?" Aethyta asked, sensing her daughter's hesitation.

Liara glanced down at her feat. "Second, it's inappropriate to talk about about some hypothetical future lover while my bondmate is alive and well and faithfully doting over her pregnant wife."

The matriarch sensed the apprehension present in Liara's voice.

"Hey, don't tell me you haven't had the lifespan talk with her," she said with concern.

"I've had the lifespan talk," Liara responded impatiently.

Aethyta sighed. "The first one is always the hardest, kid. But you'll get used to it. You're too young to appreciate how long life really is. Someday you're gonna be Matriarch Liara and you'll look back at her fondly as the just the first of many lovers."

Liara tensed up and turned away from the matriarch. "I don't want to think about it really," she declared matter-of-factly and started up the crushed stone path that led toward the back of the house.

"Hey," Aethyta called after her, trying to rectify the reaction her words had spurred in her daughter. "You know you'll always have your little girl to remind you of her."

Liara stopped and rested her hands on her extended belly, conscious of the tiny life stirring within. "You're right," she said finally, turning back to the matriarch and forcing a smile for her sake.

"She's young in any case. How long do they live for anyway?" The matriarch asked closing the distance between them.

"The average human lifespan is around 120 years but a healthy lifestyle can increase that by..."

"That long!" the matriarch exclaimed. "I once dated a salarian. He didn't make it much past 45. I swear it was like he was here, then the next day he was gone. He was a horny little toad though. Wouldn't expect that from a salarian, right? But he would do this thing with his tongue where he..."

"I'm not sure I want to hear about this."

The two started up the path together.

Shepard had just set the skycar down in the hospital parking lot, convinced that she had the route thoroughly memorized, when her omnitool signaled that she had an incoming call, real-time over the extranet.

"Garrus! To what do I owe the pleasure?" she exclaimed, answering the call.

"Do I really need to give you a reason? I thought you'd just be happy to see my handsome face."

"Hmm... well, maybe before you tried to use it as a blast shield against that rocket... I might have."

"Fair enough. You and the missus have arrived on Thessia without trouble, I take it?"

"Worried about us, Garrus?" Shepard replied, mockingly.

"Me? No," the turian lied. "I'm confident that you can handle anything that life throws at you. It was Tali, really, who asked me to check in on you. She just wanted to make sure that you and Liara had arrived with no complications."

"We arrived this morning and got Liara settled in just fine."

"Good, good," Garrus replied.

"You're not going to believe this estate her mother left her," Shepard said.

"About that, do you know when you'll be needing us for the interview?"

"Not yet; I should find out tomorrow."

"What does this interview entail anyway?" he asked.

"Apparently, it's some kind of way for the attending matriarch to determine if I'm worthy enough to be present at my own daughter's birth," Shepard responded, irritated by the thought.

"They doubt your worthiness?"

"I know, crazy, right? But I guess 'worthiness' isn't the right word. She's going to be assessing my character. Although, what she'll be looking for is a mystery to me. I'll contact you tomorrow, when I have more details..." She paused and amended, "we both really appreciate what you're doing for us."

"Please, Shepard. Don't get all sentimental on me now that you're going to be a mo... uh... dad. It's the least we can do."

"Well you know, they say that parenthood changes people like that."

"Knowing you, you'll end up changing parenthood instead."

"I might just have a go at that," Shepard joked. "Well look, I better be heading back to the estate, before Liara starts worrying that I've crashed the skycar."

"I'm surprised she even let you out in that thing."

"I think I traumatized her permanently, what with the Mako, and that time on Illium."

"Don't forget that time on the citadel, you know, when you actually stepped out of the vehicle and left her in charge of the controls."

"Right, I forgot that one," Shepard said, rubbing the back of her neck.

"That poor woman." Garrus shook his head in mock disapproval.

"Alright, well, I'll call you tomorrow, after the meeting with Kalina."

"Take care," Garrus said, disconnecting the call.

Take care? Shepard thought, rolling her eyes. He's treating me like I'm the pregnant one. And at that thought she chuckled, as she brought the skycar off of the parking surface and pointed it back toward the T'Soni estate.

Liara, Shepard, and Aethyta were seated for dinner at the small circular table in the kitchen of the T'Soni estate. Liara had kept up with the estate's management in the years since her mother's death by scheduling regular cleaning, maintenance, and gardening, as well as by hiring a security guard to watch over the property, all of which was made possible by the money left to her by her mother. She hadn't, however, returned to her childhood home even once during this time, and the matriarch's beautiful house had stood pristine but relatively empty.

Soon, however, the house would be busy again. Asari customs dictated that two younger T'Sonis accompany her into the birthing chamber, and come to live with her in the weeks before the birth. She had already selected two of her cousins for this role, Natana and little Wythea, and, on top of them, Shepard's character witnesses would be joining the swelling ranks of residents in the once quite home. And then, of course, there was her father too. Liara had made Aethyta promise to keep talk of any sexual innuendo absent from the dinner table this evening.

"You two come up with a name for my granddaughter yet?" Aethyta asked, as the three of them chewed on the sauteed stalks and damis which comprised the majority of the meal that Shepard had brought home from the Serrice takeout restaurant.

"Not yet," Liara admitted, somewhat embarrassed. "But we have decided on a last name. We're going to go with T'Soni."

"What the hell else would you call her?" Aethyta asked incredulously.

"We discussed 'Shepard,' or a hyphenation, as is more common in human traditions, but we decided that might bring her unwanted attention. An asari with 'Shepard' in her name would be easily identified as being our daughter."

"I see," Aethyta said, clearly unamused that they had even considered such an idea.

The three of them returned to chewing their stalks in silence until Aethyta spoke up once again.

"I'm glad that you agreed with Liara's decision to have the birth here," she said, turning toward Shepard. "You being the big hero of Earth and everything, I imagine that your own people will be... disappointed," Aethyta said, laying emphasis on the word disappointed.

"Well, there is no human custom about where a birth should take place," Shepard explained patiently. "And the only people who will be upset by it already hate me for marrying your daughter and taking her as my bondmate anyway."

"You deal with a lot of those assholes?"

"Not a lot, Matriarch," Shepard responded trying to stay polite.

"Please, don't call me that."

A mischievous grin spread across the human's face. "In human tradition a spouse is encouraged to refer to her father in law as her 'dad.'"

"Don't push your luck," Aethyta chuckled, before Liara's foot found her ankle. "Well, I guess there wouldn't be any harm in it," she amended, casting a sore look at her daughter. "Liara is always going on about the importance of cross species cultural..." She waved her hand around in the air, searching for the words. "...whatever."

Liara's brow knit as she watched her father's careless arm waving.

"I was merely trying to explain to you why it only makes sense for Kate and I to share in each other's customs, in the same way that we share our bond," Liara tried to explain.

"She really is her mother's child..." Aethyta continued as if Liara hadn't spoken. "I was always saying that asari ought to learn to stand alone, but Nezzy was the diplomat."

"You need to be able to stand on your own, but having strong allies will only make you stronger," Shepard added.

"Yeah, I guess you proved that," Aethyta sighed. "Shame what happened here in the meantime though."

"FATHER!" Liara screamed, bringing her palm down on the table.

Both Shepard and Aethyta turned to her. Liara's eyes narrowed as she appraised her father's visage.

"Have you been drinking?" Liara finally asked, after a pause.

"Just the traditional Armali wine. It's not every day your daughter comes home to visit from such a distance."

"Goddess." Liara put her hand to her forehead in exasperation. "How many?"

"Three or four. Look, a good bartender doesn't drink when she's on the job... so she has to find the time to enjoy herself when she's off work."

Liara put her elbows on the table and set her head in her hands. "Are you a bartender or a spy for the asari government?" Liara asked exasperated.

"Can't it be both? You don't drink on either job, anyway."

Shepard put her hand on her wife's lap. "Your dad's just happy to have you home," she said, trying to defuse the situation.

"It's tradition," Aethyta added. "One we should introduce your bondmate to, in the name of cross species..." She trailed off, getting up from her chair and walking over to the bar.

"I'm sorry," Liara whispered.

"It's not that bad," Shepard said, putting on a smile. "She's not really that out of character anyway."

Liara managed a small laugh at that as Aethyta returned with three glasses of wine.

"We Armali asari drink this wine in celebration of homecomings," Aethyta said to Shepard, as she set the wine down in front of her.

"You're from Serrice, Father," Liara complained.

"But this is Armali," she declared, sitting down. "And you and Nezzy are from here."

"When in Rome," Shepard said, raising the glass of purple liquid to her lips.

"Where?" Aethyta asked.

"It's a human metropolis, once the political center of a powerful empire, and then a world religion," Liara began to explain, before she noticed her father's apparent boredom at her exposition of history.

Liara was just grateful that the rest of the dinner passed without incident, and, at the end of the meal, Shepard offered to clear the table. Returning from the kitchen to collect more of the dinnerware, she found that, although Liara had left the table, Aethyta was still seated in front of her plate, staring into the dark liquid of Liara's untouched wine.

"Kate," she said, addressing Shepard by her first name, her voice unusually soft. "I wanted to thank you for what you said about Benezia during that Battle Space interview... the one after the war." Shepard got the impression that that last glass of wine had loosened her tongue a bit, and brought out a more tender side of the usually course matriarch. "It changed a lot minds here on Thessia. Hell, the whole galaxy was tuned in to hear your story."

"I believe it broke records," Shepard admitted.

"Yeah well, you really set the record straight."

"I just spoke the truth."

"You did more than that. You went out of your way to make her sympathetic... That Allers bitch, she tried to paint Nezzy as an unsympathetic villainess, an obstacle in the path of the great Commander Shepard's triumphant march to victory. But you turned the tables on her, talked about who Nezzy was... as a person. 'She liked to wear yellow,'" Aethyta said, quoting a line from Shepard's interview. "How the hell did you know that?"

"Liara told me... she misses her."

Aethyta's eyes began to water. "You're OK, kid," she said, and then added, "Liara has a good head on her shoulders. I should have known she'd pick a good mate."

"Thanks..." Shepard responded sincerely, her lips curling into a devious smile before she added, "Dad."

Liara smiled to herself as the sound of her bondmate and father's uproarious laughter reached her from the kitchen, and she closed the data feed on her omnitool. Kate would be angry if she knew that she was still keeping tabs on the Shadow Broker network while she was pregnant. Tomorrow she would meet with Matriarch Kalina to begin the process that would decide if Kate would be allowed to be present with her during her delivery in the birthing chamber. It would undoubtedly be a stressful day. But right now, she felt fully at peace despite herself. She was tired, and full, and the sound of her wife and father's laughter in the distance made for a kind of soothing music. She decided to close her eyes for only a minute or two, but, before she knew it, she was in Kate's arms, being carried back to the bedroom.

"Hey," she said sleepily to her bondmate, as Shepard lay her down on the bed.

"Hey yourself," Shepard responded, turning toward the dresser and beginning to undress.

Liara sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

"I'm not sleeping in this," she declared, getting up and joining her bondmate at the dresser.

Putting her arms over Shepard's shoulders she whispered in her ear. "I didn't realize how much of an effect coming back here would have on me."

"Yeah?"

"I've been thinking about her all day. Everything here has something that reminds me of her."

Shepard turned around and put her arms around Liara's waist, Liara's extended belly pressing firmly into her own.

"You feeling OK?" she asked.

"I'm fine, really, but I was thinking... I know that I originally rejected 'Benezia' as a name."

"Having second thoughts?"

"I guess so. What do you think?" Liara asked.

"I'm the one who suggested it in the first place."

"We could name her 'Hannah' too," Liara enthusiastically added.

Shepard's mother had not been among the lucky survivors of the battle of earth, her memorial service, and the memorial service for the Orizaba, were one of the many dark spots that accompanied Liara's memories of postwar Earth. She was glad to be away, really. Glad to not have to look at the squalor that so many of Shepard's people now lived in. Thessia had been hit hard too, but not for nearly as long. And the population had been forced into surrender quickly. A lot of people had been killed, but much more of the infrastructure was intact. The sad truth was that this made things much easier for the survivors on Thessia, compared to the plight of Earth or Palaven, where the battle had raged for so long.

"I told you, she needs an asari name. She's going to live for a thousand years, and I don't want her to get stuck with a name like 'Matriarch Jane.'"

Liara laughed at that.

"Besides, I think it would make your father very happy," Shepard said.

"Dad?" Liara asked.

"She's a bigger softy than you realize."

"I don't know about that."

"She just keeps it well hidden," Shepard said confidently.

"Very," Liara agreed. "I don't think anything gentle has ever come out of her."

"Well, she had a hand in making you, didn't she?"

"Flatterer," Liara teased.

"And she gave you the name 'little wing,'" Shepard added after a little thought.

Liara pulled her arms tighter and cupped the back of Shepard's head, pulling her into a long, passionate kiss.

"You're right," she said, when she finally released the human.

Shepard felt some movement transfer from her wife's swollen belly to her own.

"Hey, what was that?" She said, bending down to place her face against her wife's stomach.

"I guess little Nezzy likes her name too," Liara said.

She kept her head pressed against her wife's belly for several minutes, but the baby didn't stir again.

Liara initiated a gentle meld and Shepard could feel the simple, untroubled mind of little Nezzy, wrapped comfortably in darkness and warmth. Liara's mind was present too, and she could feel her wife positively beaming with pride and love at the two of them.

"Come on," Shepard said, standing up and facing Liara when the meld had ended. "Let's go to bed. We've got a big day tomorrow."