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Description
On the Normandy by Woodelf71
Mass Effect
Garrus/femshep
disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect nor its characters and I don't make a profit of my FF

6. THE POWER OF LIFE

She heard a loud buzzing, an insupportable shrill whistle. Opening her eyes, she saw only a large, white, blurred spot. She realized that she was lying down, but it was not her bed she touched with her hands.  Then, into the buzz, she started to distinguish words, and in the middle of the white patch she saw what could be a face.

"Oh, hello Shepard, back with us?" she heard a familiar voice asking.

"Mordin. Who...What...happened?  Where am I?"

"Infirmary. Found lying in third floor corridor, brought here. Indeed, first to my lab, now here."

Robin tried to focus on him, but kept seeing a light brown blur instead. "In your lab?  Why?"

Mordin was more frenzied than usual, talking faster than his usual machine-gun bursts.
"Why?  Had to take advantage of this opportunity for medical check from hair to toenails, no longer possible after. For too long, didn't like your looks."

Robin now could see with greater acuity, and had the impression that Professor Solus' face was that of someone likely to explode from the desire to say something. But if it was a brain tumor, or the like, he wouldn't have been in this secretive, excitable  mood, like the cat that ate the canary. Or at least that was what she hoped...

"Mordin, can you just tell me what you have to tell me before you explode?" She wasn't afraid of the answer anymore; she now knew she had let herself become paranoid for nothing.

"Where to begin? Well, that you were woman of impossible missions was well known, but this left everyone speechless."
Dr. Solus gave her a smile seemingly larger than his own face.

"Mordin!"

"Ah, yes, ok, sorry, fine, cut short." His face wrinkled with a myriad of lines of various depths and lengths.

"You're two months pregnant, actually almost three."

Robin had the urge to throttle him.

"But, Mordin!...you told me that...the chromosomes, the amino acids, and I don't remember what else...well, wasn't it impossible?"

Why did she keep listening to that salarian?

"If asked three hours ago, would have said same things.
But science must surrender in front of evidence, even at cost of revising consolidated theories, years of study. Allowed myself to get a small sampling of amniotic fluid, began to study DNA of child. Have to say, if I don't win Nobel Prize this time, or, better, its  salarian counterpart, thanks to you, I'll die without it."

Mordin continued. "Technically, species with different numbers of chromosomes cannot interbreed, with few exceptions, such as mule--to posit familiar example, you being earthborn. Turians have much greater number of chromosomes than humans. In theory, during cross-over, followed by gene recombination, many  chromosomes would not have homolog with which to pair.  But turians--special case Evolved on Palaven, planet on which sun has enormous mutagenic power. Life there forced to utilize genome-repair systems far more effective than life born on planets with lesser gamma irradiation. Also includes the ability of the chromosomes lacking their counterpart, to replicate themselves, filling the holes. In short, he'll look far more like his father than you. Indeed, fetus will be dextro amino acid-based. Fear that rejection due to incompatibility will be inevitable. In short, spontaneous abortion. Ah, I forgot, it's a boy." Mordin sent her a conspiratorial and reassuring smile.

Robin was suddenly struck by the resemblance of the professor to a baked apple, and had a strong impulse to shake his shriveled head by the neck.

"Mordin! How can you say that? It's my baby, and you talk as if he were just a scientific experiment!"

"Quiet, this salarian scientist not as cynical as you think.  Brain very quick to develop solutions to problems. Within ten days, hope to adapt Grunt's gestation tank to welcome your little hybrid." Now she wanted to kiss him, but restrained herself from doing it.

"Mordin, you're a genius! But...will it work?"

He began to walk back and forth along the study like an overwound mechanical toy, staring at his feet as he spoke.

"Must work. Simulations will confirm or disprove. Not many changes to be made. Enrich liquid with..."

Robin stopped listening. She had developed a headache, as always happened when speaking for more than ten minutes with Mordin. In only three hours, the good doctor had managed to perform an ultrasound scan on her, to sample her amniotic fluid, to amplify the sample's DNA and characterize the genetic information of her son, to find a solution to the problem of spontaneous abortion, and to formulate a tank-breeding simulation. Now she understood why salarians lived, on average, only forty years long!

---

It was evening on the Normandy, and Robin sat at her desk in front of her PC. She did not know how to tell Garrus the news; she had started to write many times describing the events of that day, but every time she ended up erasing the words. How would he take it? Would he be happy? They had never taken precautions, believing it an impossible event. He had said many times that he dreamed of a large family, but certainly he did not expect to start now, not in their situation. And surely he had been thinking of war orphans to be adopted.

In the end, she only wrote "I'm pregnant" and pressed 'Enter'.  But she had received no answer, not even at the time when he usually wrote all the other nights, never missing an appointment. At midnight she forced it out of her mind; at least she knew he hadn't jumped in joy at the news, for sure. They would meet two days later in any case; another month had passed since his previous visit, and he had gained another day of leave.

His e-mail finally arrived the next day.

"Robin,
I perceived you were very distant, detached, absent, the last time I came to see you on the Normandy. You seemed lost in another world, a dimension I couldn't enter, in a way that never happened with us before. But I didn't want to make anything out of it at first...I trusted you. The same thing can't happen twice in a row, I thought. Evidently I was wrong. I'd rather have lost you in another way, anything but this...Didn't I deserve to hear it personally from you? Maybe with some small explanation, after what there has been between us, and after what I gave you?
I wish you well, and I want you to know that you can still count on me for the mission and the credits.
I think I'll go get drunk.
--Garrus."

"No, not that!" Robin was left gasping for a few seconds, motionless like a landed cod, her eyes fixed on the monitor.

"Oh no Garrus, no!" She began to write, frantically tapping the touch-screen as fast as she could, telling him of how she had been convinced she was about to die, of Mordin and his scientific explanations. She tried to tell him about everything, hurrying before he ventured out and succeeded in ruining his liver, hating her in front of an unspecified number of shots.

But the tears that blurred her sight did not help her, and when she reread what she had written, it was full of spelling errors.
And the letter was far from being finished. She stopped mid-sentence, being hit by a wave of anger and despair. How dare he think such a thing about me?

She wrote in capital letters 'I HATE YOU' at the bottom of that mess of an e-mail. For all she had tried to hurry, twenty minutes had already passed, and Garrus had to be gone by now.
How could he think such a thing? If she had only thought of it, she could have sent one of the many long, thoroughly explanatory letters that she had written...but of course she had deleted all of them.

"But who do you think I am?" she cried, slamming a palm on the desk. The backlash was such that she accidentally sent the e-mail.

"Great!" she shouted, grabbing the PC and knocking it to the ground.

Robin had not succumbed to a flood of tears since the colony where she had lived with her family was attacked by slavers, sixteen years earlier. She had seen both her parents, her brother, and her boyfriend killed. That day, she had saved the lives of hundreds of other settlers. She had thrown herself headfirst into battle, hoping to die, and instead had overwhelmed scores of batarians, getting only slightly wounded.
She had come out with two small scars, one on the upper lip, and one bisecting the left eyebrow, and with the title of 'War Hero'. It was the fury caused by the immense pain of this fateful battle which had turned her into a bloody and invincible warrior, able to stand up to dozens of enemies for hours until help arrived.

Now, however, she was crouching on the floor choking with sobs.  She thought that even Jack could hear her from the hold, three floors below; she couldn't care less.

She awoke several hours later, and realized she was back on Mordin's couch, staring at the white ceiling of the infirmary.
She felt the surgical sutures pulling at the skin of her abdomen. Touching the area, she felt spikes of stiff wire sticking out like bristly hairs. She understood immediately.

Robin raised her head to see if she was alone, and saw Dr. Chakwas enter the room at that moment. Seeing her awake, the doctor ran towards her patient. "My dear, are you all right?  We just put your baby into Grunt's tank. He's barely alive, but the transfer was successful. Thank goodness EDI warned Dr. Solus."  Robin had always suspected that EDI had ears in every room of the ship, and thought back on certain moments during which she would have preferred not to be observed. But EDI was only a computer, albeit a more sophisticated one than most. She consoled herself with that thought.

Dr. Chakwas sat next to her and started to stroke her hair, "We wrote to the father of the child; he should be here this evening."

Robin said nothing. She thought back to her mail, and laughed. She was no longer angry with him; after all, they had heard Mordin repeating for months that it was impossible. They had also done research on the extranet, and all sites spoke of a human/turian hybrid as a virtually insurmountable challenge for scientists and researchers. Even the most adventurous were still light-years away from a result, and maintained that it would have been impossible even in the future, if not by IVF.  They had also accidentally stumbled across the unpleasant sites of zealots, racial purists who deprecated the thought of breeding with "inferior" races such as humans, defining an eventual hybrid as an 'abomination of nature'. It had been an unpleasant experience for both.

"Why did you use these things? Are we out of medigel, too?" she asked, touching the spikes of hard wire that emerged from the skin of her belly.

"I'm afraid so. We put it on the list of things to buy, maybe it was ordered, but...I'm sorry. If we will be able to get the dermal regenerator, the scar will disappear."

Robin had renounced the dermal regenerator, which would have erased the scars from her face. 50,000 platinum was needed to activate it, and she had given priority to upgrades for the ship, armor and weapons. And anyway, the scars would fade of their own accord, given time.

"What time is it?" she asked.

She could hardly wait for Garrus to arrive, and fell asleep, hoping to be awakened by him.

She woke up a couple of hours later, feeling a hand stroking her hair. "Garrus," she said, before even opening her eyes.

"No, it's still me. He's out here, and has already been a subject of study by Dr. Solus, upon seeing your little boy," said the doctor, smiling with a squeak of excitement. "When he came here, you were sleeping so well that he did not want to wake you. You should have seen the expression on his face as he stared at his son...Anyway, now I'll let him in and leave you two alone."

Dr Chakwas opened the door admitting a very embarrassed turian with a bouquet of white roses in his hand, and went out, locking the door behind her. Garrus stood motionless looking at Shepard.

"Garrus, do I have to come and get you, or do you think you'll be able to walk here by yourself?" She smiled. "What beautiful roses...they're perfuming the air around the room. Garrus, come here, please," she said, smiling again.

He regained the use of his legs and approached the bed where Robin lay. He knelt beside her, and after an unspecified time he regained his brain-tongue coordination.

"Robin, I owe you an apology, but also an explanation, because I never thought badly of you. I did not want to humiliate you, even though I realize that's exactly what I did."

He looked mortified, and gently handed her the beautiful roses with disheveled but still-graceful petals. He stared at her for a while, she was so beautiful...then continued.

"You see, when you're young, you're convinced to be destined for happiness, for great deeds. You live from day to day knowing that destiny will guide you to the good things that have been created for you, feeling as though you are important in the world. But then one day, you happen to find that you can be betrayed and thrown away like a used rag...dreams, hopes, your whole being can be thrown away as if it hadn't the slightest value. It has happened far too many times to me, in my family, in love, in war. And this idea is a thin blast of icy air that creeps inside you and permeates you, cell by cell, until you consider your life, your dreams and your hopes, of little or no importance. You're left with the impression that the world may very well be better off without you."

Garrus stopped talking.

But then his eyes lit up suddenly.

"I saw our boy...he's tiny, but you can already see a sort of turian fringe. He'll be handsome, like his dad," he said, smiling. At last, he was himself again.

"Now I must return to the Citadel. I don't know how I'll last another month without you--actually, without the two of you. I hope the time will pass quickly."

He arose, but was unable to move away from the couch on which she lay.

"Robin, I wanted to say thank you...thank you because you don't hate me after what I said, and after what you've been through because of me and my hopeless stupidity, and thanks for not saying a word about it. I will try every day to be worthy of the beautiful creature you are, and of your love."

"You already are, Garrus. You just have to believe it."

7. THANE VAKARIAN

Another month passed without much news. With some of the money recovered from the recycled salaries, Robin bought some probes for mineral scanning, a new cache of food, supplies for the infirmary, and a small gift of thanks for each member of her wonderful crew. The majority of the credits, however, remained in the account to make Garrus' working period at C-Sec the shortest possible.

Mordin had had to shut his lab, defining times for visits, because during the last month there had been continuous coming and going of people who wanted to see the progress of the little hurian, and he could not concentrate on his work.

Robin went to visit her son in the hours the lab was 'closed to the public'. In the last month, he had more than doubled his size, increasing from the two-inch-long little bean to what now resembled a hairless mouse. The shape of the limbs could now be clearly distinguished:  three fingers on each hand, two on each foot. But it seemed so much to Robin that his little face, apart from the fringe, was fully human. She could not see breaks in the continuity of the skin, and his mouth looked identical to hers, a little pouty, with the upper lip more fleshy, more protruding than the lower.

"Mordin," she said in a thoughtful and worried mood, "he's practically a turian, but have you seen his face? I often wonder what he'll look like...I'm terrified he'll turn out to be a monster, neither fish nor fowl. I know people will call him 'the mutant baby' anyway, and I don't like it at all. I don't want to give birth to a miserable, an...outcast. I hope, at least, he'll look good."

Dr. Solus widened his face into a smile that made the corners of his mouth disappear behind his head. Robin thought that, ugly though her son might be, it would have been hard for him to look worse than a salarian.

"Waited days for this question. Took trouble to do genetic projection of adult individual. Here is result."

He showed her what seemed, to all effects, a photo on the screen of his PC.
Robin saw a young man with a pinkish-gray skin, a strong square jaw that framed a face with fully human features, straight nose, fuller upper lip.  His dark green eyes appeared only slightly sunken, with dark marks in the suborbital area, which gave further appeal to his gaze.

The skin of the face had shallow grooves following the typical lines of the turian cheek plates, but they were only superficial lines that didn't separate the skin of his cheeks from that of the rest of the face.

Robin stared, fascinated by that great vision of a young man the little wet mouse would one day become, and was struck by the thought that he could have very well been the son of Samara and Thane Krios: the human face with fringe made him look like an asari, while the color of his skin was identical to Samara's, and the skin grooves made him look like the drell. Also the small, straight nose and the fleshy mouth were very similar to those of the late Thane.

"Mordin, that 'poete maudit' look, and that intense gaze...those are your own inventions, right? If he will actually look like this, I can sleep serenely from now on."  Robin was very charmed by the fellow in the image.

"All made by software, Shepard. With genetic projections, can identify individual's attitude; not conscience though, that still eludes science. Boy will be up to parents, I guarantee."

That handsome boy was missing only one thing: a name. She and Garrus had continued to make lists on lists of male names coming from the cultures of the whole galaxy, but they had failed so far to find one that appealed to both of them. But seeing that genetic projection, Robin was hit by a name: Thane. A dear friend that she had loved a lot-- and it would be a worthy tribute to a lost teammate...

"Thane Vakarian," she murmured aloud.  Yeah, sounds good! She couldn't wait to tell Garrus, who would arrive within a few hours.

Description
On the Normandy by Woodelf71
Mass Effect
Garrus/femshep
disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect nor its characters and I don't make a profit of my FF

6. THE POWER OF LIFE

She heard a loud buzzing, an insupportable shrill whistle. Opening her eyes, she saw only a large, white, blurred spot. She realized that she was lying down, but it was not her bed she touched with her hands.  Then, into the buzz, she started to distinguish words, and in the middle of the white patch she saw what could be a face.

"Oh, hello Shepard, back with us?" she heard a familiar voice asking.

"Mordin. Who...What...happened?  Where am I?"

"Infirmary. Found lying in third floor corridor, brought here. Indeed, first to my lab, now here."

Robin tried to focus on him, but kept seeing a light brown blur instead. "In your lab?  Why?"

Mordin was more frenzied than usual, talking faster than his usual machine-gun bursts.
"Why?  Had to take advantage of this opportunity for medical check from hair to toenails, no longer possible after. For too long, didn't like your looks."

Robin now could see with greater acuity, and had the impression that Professor Solus' face was that of someone likely to explode from the desire to say something. But if it was a brain tumor, or the like, he wouldn't have been in this secretive, excitable  mood, like the cat that ate the canary. Or at least that was what she hoped...

"Mordin, can you just tell me what you have to tell me before you explode?" She wasn't afraid of the answer anymore; she now knew she had let herself become paranoid for nothing.

"Where to begin? Well, that you were woman of impossible missions was well known, but this left everyone speechless."
Dr. Solus gave her a smile seemingly larger than his own face.

"Mordin!"

"Ah, yes, ok, sorry, fine, cut short." His face wrinkled with a myriad of lines of various depths and lengths.

"You're two months pregnant, actually almost three."

Robin had the urge to throttle him.

"But, Mordin!...you told me that...the chromosomes, the amino acids, and I don't remember what else...well, wasn't it impossible?"

Why did she keep listening to that salarian?

"If asked three hours ago, would have said same things.
But science must surrender in front of evidence, even at cost of revising consolidated theories, years of study. Allowed myself to get a small sampling of amniotic fluid, began to study DNA of child. Have to say, if I don't win Nobel Prize this time, or, better, its  salarian counterpart, thanks to you, I'll die without it."

Mordin continued. "Technically, species with different numbers of chromosomes cannot interbreed, with few exceptions, such as mule--to posit familiar example, you being earthborn. Turians have much greater number of chromosomes than humans. In theory, during cross-over, followed by gene recombination, many  chromosomes would not have homolog with which to pair.  But turians--special case Evolved on Palaven, planet on which sun has enormous mutagenic power. Life there forced to utilize genome-repair systems far more effective than life born on planets with lesser gamma irradiation. Also includes the ability of the chromosomes lacking their counterpart, to replicate themselves, filling the holes. In short, he'll look far more like his father than you. Indeed, fetus will be dextro amino acid-based. Fear that rejection due to incompatibility will be inevitable. In short, spontaneous abortion. Ah, I forgot, it's a boy." Mordin sent her a conspiratorial and reassuring smile.

Robin was suddenly struck by the resemblance of the professor to a baked apple, and had a strong impulse to shake his shriveled head by the neck.

"Mordin! How can you say that? It's my baby, and you talk as if he were just a scientific experiment!"

"Quiet, this salarian scientist not as cynical as you think.  Brain very quick to develop solutions to problems. Within ten days, hope to adapt Grunt's gestation tank to welcome your little hybrid." Now she wanted to kiss him, but restrained herself from doing it.

"Mordin, you're a genius! But...will it work?"

He began to walk back and forth along the study like an overwound mechanical toy, staring at his feet as he spoke.

"Must work. Simulations will confirm or disprove. Not many changes to be made. Enrich liquid with..."

Robin stopped listening. She had developed a headache, as always happened when speaking for more than ten minutes with Mordin. In only three hours, the good doctor had managed to perform an ultrasound scan on her, to sample her amniotic fluid, to amplify the sample's DNA and characterize the genetic information of her son, to find a solution to the problem of spontaneous abortion, and to formulate a tank-breeding simulation. Now she understood why salarians lived, on average, only forty years long!

---

It was evening on the Normandy, and Robin sat at her desk in front of her PC. She did not know how to tell Garrus the news; she had started to write many times describing the events of that day, but every time she ended up erasing the words. How would he take it? Would he be happy? They had never taken precautions, believing it an impossible event. He had said many times that he dreamed of a large family, but certainly he did not expect to start now, not in their situation. And surely he had been thinking of war orphans to be adopted.

In the end, she only wrote "I'm pregnant" and pressed 'Enter'.  But she had received no answer, not even at the time when he usually wrote all the other nights, never missing an appointment. At midnight she forced it out of her mind; at least she knew he hadn't jumped in joy at the news, for sure. They would meet two days later in any case; another month had passed since his previous visit, and he had gained another day of leave.

His e-mail finally arrived the next day.

"Robin,
I perceived you were very distant, detached, absent, the last time I came to see you on the Normandy. You seemed lost in another world, a dimension I couldn't enter, in a way that never happened with us before. But I didn't want to make anything out of it at first...I trusted you. The same thing can't happen twice in a row, I thought. Evidently I was wrong. I'd rather have lost you in another way, anything but this...Didn't I deserve to hear it personally from you? Maybe with some small explanation, after what there has been between us, and after what I gave you?
I wish you well, and I want you to know that you can still count on me for the mission and the credits.
I think I'll go get drunk.
--Garrus."

"No, not that!" Robin was left gasping for a few seconds, motionless like a landed cod, her eyes fixed on the monitor.

"Oh no Garrus, no!" She began to write, frantically tapping the touch-screen as fast as she could, telling him of how she had been convinced she was about to die, of Mordin and his scientific explanations. She tried to tell him about everything, hurrying before he ventured out and succeeded in ruining his liver, hating her in front of an unspecified number of shots.

But the tears that blurred her sight did not help her, and when she reread what she had written, it was full of spelling errors.
And the letter was far from being finished. She stopped mid-sentence, being hit by a wave of anger and despair. How dare he think such a thing about me?

She wrote in capital letters 'I HATE YOU' at the bottom of that mess of an e-mail. For all she had tried to hurry, twenty minutes had already passed, and Garrus had to be gone by now.
How could he think such a thing? If she had only thought of it, she could have sent one of the many long, thoroughly explanatory letters that she had written...but of course she had deleted all of them.

"But who do you think I am?" she cried, slamming a palm on the desk. The backlash was such that she accidentally sent the e-mail.

"Great!" she shouted, grabbing the PC and knocking it to the ground.

Robin had not succumbed to a flood of tears since the colony where she had lived with her family was attacked by slavers, sixteen years earlier. She had seen both her parents, her brother, and her boyfriend killed. That day, she had saved the lives of hundreds of other settlers. She had thrown herself headfirst into battle, hoping to die, and instead had overwhelmed scores of batarians, getting only slightly wounded.
She had come out with two small scars, one on the upper lip, and one bisecting the left eyebrow, and with the title of 'War Hero'. It was the fury caused by the immense pain of this fateful battle which had turned her into a bloody and invincible warrior, able to stand up to dozens of enemies for hours until help arrived.

Now, however, she was crouching on the floor choking with sobs.  She thought that even Jack could hear her from the hold, three floors below; she couldn't care less.

She awoke several hours later, and realized she was back on Mordin's couch, staring at the white ceiling of the infirmary.
She felt the surgical sutures pulling at the skin of her abdomen. Touching the area, she felt spikes of stiff wire sticking out like bristly hairs. She understood immediately.

Robin raised her head to see if she was alone, and saw Dr. Chakwas enter the room at that moment. Seeing her awake, the doctor ran towards her patient. "My dear, are you all right?  We just put your baby into Grunt's tank. He's barely alive, but the transfer was successful. Thank goodness EDI warned Dr. Solus."  Robin had always suspected that EDI had ears in every room of the ship, and thought back on certain moments during which she would have preferred not to be observed. But EDI was only a computer, albeit a more sophisticated one than most. She consoled herself with that thought.

Dr. Chakwas sat next to her and started to stroke her hair, "We wrote to the father of the child; he should be here this evening."

Robin said nothing. She thought back to her mail, and laughed. She was no longer angry with him; after all, they had heard Mordin repeating for months that it was impossible. They had also done research on the extranet, and all sites spoke of a human/turian hybrid as a virtually insurmountable challenge for scientists and researchers. Even the most adventurous were still light-years away from a result, and maintained that it would have been impossible even in the future, if not by IVF.  They had also accidentally stumbled across the unpleasant sites of zealots, racial purists who deprecated the thought of breeding with "inferior" races such as humans, defining an eventual hybrid as an 'abomination of nature'. It had been an unpleasant experience for both.

"Why did you use these things? Are we out of medigel, too?" she asked, touching the spikes of hard wire that emerged from the skin of her belly.

"I'm afraid so. We put it on the list of things to buy, maybe it was ordered, but...I'm sorry. If we will be able to get the dermal regenerator, the scar will disappear."

Robin had renounced the dermal regenerator, which would have erased the scars from her face. 50,000 platinum was needed to activate it, and she had given priority to upgrades for the ship, armor and weapons. And anyway, the scars would fade of their own accord, given time.

"What time is it?" she asked.

She could hardly wait for Garrus to arrive, and fell asleep, hoping to be awakened by him.

She woke up a couple of hours later, feeling a hand stroking her hair. "Garrus," she said, before even opening her eyes.

"No, it's still me. He's out here, and has already been a subject of study by Dr. Solus, upon seeing your little boy," said the doctor, smiling with a squeak of excitement. "When he came here, you were sleeping so well that he did not want to wake you. You should have seen the expression on his face as he stared at his son...Anyway, now I'll let him in and leave you two alone."

Dr Chakwas opened the door admitting a very embarrassed turian with a bouquet of white roses in his hand, and went out, locking the door behind her. Garrus stood motionless looking at Shepard.

"Garrus, do I have to come and get you, or do you think you'll be able to walk here by yourself?" She smiled. "What beautiful roses...they're perfuming the air around the room. Garrus, come here, please," she said, smiling again.

He regained the use of his legs and approached the bed where Robin lay. He knelt beside her, and after an unspecified time he regained his brain-tongue coordination.

"Robin, I owe you an apology, but also an explanation, because I never thought badly of you. I did not want to humiliate you, even though I realize that's exactly what I did."

He looked mortified, and gently handed her the beautiful roses with disheveled but still-graceful petals. He stared at her for a while, she was so beautiful...then continued.

"You see, when you're young, you're convinced to be destined for happiness, for great deeds. You live from day to day knowing that destiny will guide you to the good things that have been created for you, feeling as though you are important in the world. But then one day, you happen to find that you can be betrayed and thrown away like a used rag...dreams, hopes, your whole being can be thrown away as if it hadn't the slightest value. It has happened far too many times to me, in my family, in love, in war. And this idea is a thin blast of icy air that creeps inside you and permeates you, cell by cell, until you consider your life, your dreams and your hopes, of little or no importance. You're left with the impression that the world may very well be better off without you."

Garrus stopped talking.

But then his eyes lit up suddenly.

"I saw our boy...he's tiny, but you can already see a sort of turian fringe. He'll be handsome, like his dad," he said, smiling. At last, he was himself again.

"Now I must return to the Citadel. I don't know how I'll last another month without you--actually, without the two of you. I hope the time will pass quickly."

He arose, but was unable to move away from the couch on which she lay.

"Robin, I wanted to say thank you...thank you because you don't hate me after what I said, and after what you've been through because of me and my hopeless stupidity, and thanks for not saying a word about it. I will try every day to be worthy of the beautiful creature you are, and of your love."

"You already are, Garrus. You just have to believe it."

7. THANE VAKARIAN

Another month passed without much news. With some of the money recovered from the recycled salaries, Robin bought some probes for mineral scanning, a new cache of food, supplies for the infirmary, and a small gift of thanks for each member of her wonderful crew. The majority of the credits, however, remained in the account to make Garrus' working period at C-Sec the shortest possible.

Mordin had had to shut his lab, defining times for visits, because during the last month there had been continuous coming and going of people who wanted to see the progress of the little hurian, and he could not concentrate on his work.

Robin went to visit her son in the hours the lab was 'closed to the public'. In the last month, he had more than doubled his size, increasing from the two-inch-long little bean to what now resembled a hairless mouse. The shape of the limbs could now be clearly distinguished:  three fingers on each hand, two on each foot. But it seemed so much to Robin that his little face, apart from the fringe, was fully human. She could not see breaks in the continuity of the skin, and his mouth looked identical to hers, a little pouty, with the upper lip more fleshy, more protruding than the lower.

"Mordin," she said in a thoughtful and worried mood, "he's practically a turian, but have you seen his face? I often wonder what he'll look like...I'm terrified he'll turn out to be a monster, neither fish nor fowl. I know people will call him 'the mutant baby' anyway, and I don't like it at all. I don't want to give birth to a miserable, an...outcast. I hope, at least, he'll look good."

Dr. Solus widened his face into a smile that made the corners of his mouth disappear behind his head. Robin thought that, ugly though her son might be, it would have been hard for him to look worse than a salarian.

"Waited days for this question. Took trouble to do genetic projection of adult individual. Here is result."

He showed her what seemed, to all effects, a photo on the screen of his PC.
Robin saw a young man with a pinkish-gray skin, a strong square jaw that framed a face with fully human features, straight nose, fuller upper lip.  His dark green eyes appeared only slightly sunken, with dark marks in the suborbital area, which gave further appeal to his gaze.

The skin of the face had shallow grooves following the typical lines of the turian cheek plates, but they were only superficial lines that didn't separate the skin of his cheeks from that of the rest of the face.

Robin stared, fascinated by that great vision of a young man the little wet mouse would one day become, and was struck by the thought that he could have very well been the son of Samara and Thane Krios: the human face with fringe made him look like an asari, while the color of his skin was identical to Samara's, and the skin grooves made him look like the drell. Also the small, straight nose and the fleshy mouth were very similar to those of the late Thane.

"Mordin, that 'poete maudit' look, and that intense gaze...those are your own inventions, right? If he will actually look like this, I can sleep serenely from now on."  Robin was very charmed by the fellow in the image.

"All made by software, Shepard. With genetic projections, can identify individual's attitude; not conscience though, that still eludes science. Boy will be up to parents, I guarantee."

That handsome boy was missing only one thing: a name. She and Garrus had continued to make lists on lists of male names coming from the cultures of the whole galaxy, but they had failed so far to find one that appealed to both of them. But seeing that genetic projection, Robin was hit by a name: Thane. A dear friend that she had loved a lot-- and it would be a worthy tribute to a lost teammate...

"Thane Vakarian," she murmured aloud.  Yeah, sounds good! She couldn't wait to tell Garrus, who would arrive within a few hours.