Shepard was used to running. She'd done plenty of it, usually towards the gunfire as others retreated away. Day in and day out, she had stared down pitiful odds and the impossible, daring to tempt fate just one more time. It had caught up with her on occasion, like the day she'd died along with the Normandy SR-1, but with all the running towards the eye of the storm she'd done, it had been inevitable. Running away from something, though, that wasn't Shepard's usual forte. Running to cover or running backwards to pull a fallen comrade out of the flames that licked them a little too close: she'd done countless times. Running away? That was new.

She'd fallen asleep in the room she and Garrus shared, not entirely brave enough to flee the home entirely. That would probably be one step too far into the territory in which Garrus wouldn't be able to forgive her for—and despite what she'd earlier preached to him, about finding someone else, someone more suited, Shepard wasn't yet ready to burn every bridge behind her. Still, though, it had hurt when she'd woken up alone, the space of empty bed beside her left untouched. Even if it was what she'd asked and pushed for, the truth of what her words the night before actually meant was a pain she was unequipped to contend with.

For the longest time after sleep no longer called to her, Shepard laid in bed listening to the sounds of Palaven. It reminded her of Earth more so than anywhere else, those months after she'd turned herself in for the crimes she'd been forced to commit without any other path to take. Even now, with all the planets that had been found habitable and thriving with life, Earth was one of the most robust. But listening to the local wildlife interrupt the silence with their chirps and mating calls, she was certain Palaven wasn't far behind. For all the differences she and Garrus had, she always found how remarkable it was that so many things were exactly the same.

Mustering up the energy to start one of the few days in her life that didn't come with a wake up call, Shepard dressed, and with great hesitation ventured back out in to the rest of the home. It was empty. And quiet, save for a cooing that led her towards the main living quarters where Solana sat with her child up against her shoulder and cowl. She eyed Shepard with a careful glance.

"My brother's not here," and though it could have been said with malice, there was a reassurance in her tone. "Went to see our father since he's too busy to come out here himself, but he'll be back soon."

Like the day before on the shore, Shepard felt the part of an intruder. She nodded and kept to the outskirts of the room like a scared and heavily wounded varren when a predator lurked nearby.

"You know, Shepard," Solana said, her attention turning back to her son as he whined for attention. "When the dust settled and everyone's losses had been counted, after Victus stepped in as Councilor and my father was promoted to Primarch, the military asked Garrus to come back. To be a General. It's a great honor to ever be granted a promotion like that, especially when he hadn't been a true part of the military for years. He would've been one of the youngest in our history."

Shepard swallowed hard, nearly feeling the pavement under her feet as her legs begged for her just to start running again. She didn't, though, her eyes caught on the mother and son, the way Solana's mandibles flexed and clicked and through some miracle, the boy at just over a week old imitated what he'd seen and heard from the woman that had given him life.

"I didn't know. When… when did they ask him?"

"Just before you started walking again."

She couldn't watch Solana anymore, feeling like a voyeur at witnessing the intimate exchange between parent and child. It wasn't just that, though, but the guilt that weighed her down heavier than her hardsuit ever had. Another twenty pounds to add to the crushing burden she already felt in regards to him. "He should've taken it."

Solana was enraptured with her son, shifting him down to the cradle of her arm much like Shepard had done the night before when Necalli had begun to cry after she'd raised her voice. His mother traced a gentle talon along the length of his skinny arm, serenity woven into the plates of her face for a moment. The expression was still there when she finally looked to the Commander. "No, he shouldn't have. My brother… I don't think he could have lived with himself if he wasn't there to see you through it all." She glanced back to her son and dropped her forehead down against his. "It was where he needed to be."

Shepard left the new mother to her privacy afterwards, closing herself outside on that same small rectangle of porch she and Garrus had found themselves on the night before. "EDI?" She asked, drawing up the omni-tool on her arm.

"Yes, Commander?" The AI answered through the comm link.

"I need you to patch me in to Liara."

"Of course, Shepard. As she is currently aboard the Shadow Broker's ship, it is a secure and scrambled line."

She waited, and with a moment passed, Liara sounded through the omni-tool.

"Shepard," Liara said in that same warm and dreamy tone she always seemed to use, even full of bullet holes and with a Banshee breathing down her neck. "I'd heard you were on Palaven, I thought you'd be far too busy with Garrus' nephew to make any calls."

For what it was worth, Shepard smiled just barely at the sound of her friend's voice. "You could ignore the data that comes through on the people you know, Liara. I never have anything to talk about when we see each other."

Liara laughed, and even without seeing her, Shepard could imagine the way her cheeks rose and eyes squinted. "I can always pretend otherwise. But that's not why you're calling, is it? I can hear it in your voice. What's wrong?"

"Do you know where I can find Miranda? I figured you'd have the best idea on where to find her this week."

"Mmm," she replied from the back of her throat, a familiar sound she let out whenever she'd begun to work on a new task. "Did Garrus finally talk you into letting her have a look at that knee of yours?"

"You been talking to Garrus?"

"I do have friends other than you. But, no, that's from another source. Ah—here it is. She's visiting Oriana, arrived yesterday. I have no information from today, but I would assume she's staying for awhile. She's been staying in places longer and longer lately. I suppose without Cerberus breathing down her neck any longer she's able to now. I've forwarded the information to your omni-tool and EDI as well."

"Thank you Liara, I'll—"

"What's really going on? I know it's all water under the bridge for you and Miranda, but you and her have never exactly been ones to have a little girl talk. Frankly, I'm a little jealous if that's what this is."

How she missed Liara. It had been months since they'd seen one another, since she'd seen almost any of her old crew in fact. James, he'd gone on to train towards becoming an N7 as soon as the military had reopened its training program. Cortez, he was somewhere in the fleet, serving a job far more befitting someone of his skills than becoming a lowly chauffeur on the Normandy. The others, they'd returned to their homeworlds to help with restoration. Wrex—well, she heard from him once a week—and he was ever the proud father, a few times over by now. She hadn't seen them all together again in one space since the day she'd finally been allowed to leave the hospital, the same day the Alliance had held a ceremony to commend the Normandy, its crew, and her for the bravery they'd shown.

"Sometimes," Shepard confessed, her voice low, "I think maybe it would have been better for Garrus if I had died on the Citadel. He could have started over like everyone else."

There was silence from the omni-tool, and Shepard had to check to make sure the transmission was still coming through. It was, and after a painfully long minute, there was a strained tone of voice on the other end.

"Shepard," Liara admonished, the light and life she'd had before temporarily gone, "you did die that day. Everyone watched the Citadel get torn apart along with the Reapers. The last thing anyone saw of you, you'd reached that beam and gone up. Hackett said he spoke to you while you were there, but that was it. Maybe you weren't really dead, Shepard. To this day no one knows how you got back down to Earth or what even happened while you were up there, but to everyone else, you were dead."

She'd always assumed as much, but had never asked. When she'd woken, weeks had already passed, and there had been far more critical things on everyone's mind than informing her of the temporary grief they'd all suffered from when they'd feared her to be dead.

"And if you had any idea the kind of pain we all went through that day, especially Garrus… if you saw him grieve for you… Goddess, Shepard, you'd regret saying you wished you hadn't survived. If I live to be a thousand years, I'll never forget it."

Shepard's stomach settled in with a painful ache. Sitting down, she leaned forward at the middle. One elbow rested upon her knee while her warm palm pressed across her forehead and eyes, applying pressure to drown out everything else. She sucked in a trembling breath. "I've got to go, Liara. I'll uh… I'll call you later." She disconnected the line immediately. "EDI, put me through to the connection Liara sent you. And use my recognition code so they know who's calling."

"Right away."

The connection went unanswered for far longer this time, but eventually came through.

"Commander Shepard?"

It was a familiar voice, but didn't belong to the one she was looking for. "Oriana, hello. Is your sister there?"

Though the sisters sounded similar enough, there was a lightness to the younger Lawson that wasn't shared by Miranda. Shepard was glad for it as it was the reason Miranda had fought so hard to keep Oriana safe: to give her the chance to be normal that she'd never had. "I'll put her on."

"Shepard?"

"Miranda."

"I know better than to ask how you know where I am. What can I do for you? Cybernetic acting up again?"

Despite the curt tones the old friends shared—and yes, Shepard would dare to call Miranda a friend these days—there was only warmth between them. Albeit, their own version of it where no nonsense was required, but it was warmth nonetheless. "If you've got a few minutes, I was hoping to talk about something with you. About me."

"Of course, just let me—" There was the sound of footsteps, a door shutting, Miranda presumably moving somewhere more private and isolated. "—Much better. Now what was your question?"

"Listen," Shepard coughed out of a nervous habit rather than a tickling at the back of her throat. She straightened where she sat, drawing on the kind of focus and dedication she'd been beaten with during her months in basic training. "I just want you to be straight with me. I don't bullshit you, I never have, and neither have you, so don't start now just because something might be difficult to say."

"…Right."

"When you brought me back, when Cerberus did—" She stopped and took a breath, when she spoke again, she felt more like the Commander than she had in recent months. "I need to know what you know about my reproductive system. Does it work? Were you ordered to sterilize me? Give me the full sit-rep."

Just as Shepard had assumed the role of Commander once again, Miranda became the Operative she'd once been. "First and foremost, Cerberus didn't have you sterilized. We did, however, implant a hormonal chip to prevent pregnancy and regular menstruation. The exact model isn't on the market because someone high up wasn't comfortable with the possible risks, but it's similar to the one the Alliance issues to all female service members. I—" Miranda went quiet for a moment. "It's something I probably should have told you about before, Shepard, but I figured you'd want to continue enjoying the benefits. Things have changed, I suppose…?"

Shepard didn't respond to the question. "It can't be that simple. Nothing ever is. I was dead."

"No, of course. You're right. I'm surprised you never asked about this before—"

The balcony door beside Shepard opened up. Garrus was waiting.

"—I'll call you back," she answered quickly, cutting Miranda off. Just as she'd done to Liara, she ended the call.

"Catching up?" Garrus asked, the plate above his eye raised in a curious question.

What Shepard needed was for him to acknowledge the night before, to bring it out into the open. But she was happy just the same, when he didn't.

"We should be getting back to the Normandy," he said, arms crossing in a physical stance of defiance towards her. A sign that he'd made his choice, at least for now.

She nodded and stepped back inside, pausing for a second as she passed him by. "Are you sure?"

His hand raised to touch her, but at the last second he hesitated, unsure of himself. His lengthy limbs dropped back to his side. "Yes. But there's somewhere I want to stop on the way back."

They bid their farewells, as hard as they were, especially when it came time to say goodbye to the newest member of the Vakarian clan. Necalli, he'd be who knew how much bigger by time they got to see him again. The videos and photographs that Solana promised to send… well, they'd have to be enough for the time being. Shepard kissed the boy's brow and breathed in the scent of him, that just like human newborns, was unique and calming. When it came time for Garrus to offer his goodbye, he held him close, recessed eyes shutting tight as he nuzzled his good mandible against his nephew's small one. Shepard couldn't tear herself away from the scene even if there'd been a damn Reaper on her back.

Though she was unfamiliar with Palaven as a whole, Shepard knew the way Garrus took the transport was not the way they'd come the two days before. There'd been landmarks—some destroyed, some damaged, and some in remarkably pristine condition—that she recalled, even some natural flora she didn't recognize on their new course. In another time and place, she would have raised her voice, demanded an answer out of him, but Shepard only maintained the silence, even as the vehicle finally came to a stop.

Wordlessly, Garrus got out of the car, and the only sign that he expected her to join him was the extra moment he lingered around the hood. He started walking and this time, unlike all the other times before, Shepard followed him, a few feet behind and on his six. Fields of grass, or Palaven's equivalent, spread out as far as the eye could see, and as they neared the wide open space, Shepard was made aware that it wasn't just greenery beneath their feet. Flush with the earth, rows of stone and metal were arranged in a tight knit grid. At a distance, they'd been hard to notice at all, especially with some of the overgrowth, but as Garrus led her straight through the middle of the field, Shepard did her best to be mindful of not stepping on any of the markings. This was, she realized, a Turian cemetery.

Where he eventually stopped, Shepard came to pause as well, staring down at the carved plaque made of metal bonded to a stone layer beneath. Unlike human graves, this was far more minimal and organic, with every grave marking a variation on each other. Though she couldn't read the script worn into the stone, she knew what it said.

"Tell me about her," Shepard pleaded quietly, and let her hand seek out his, her digits intertwining with his thicker ones. There was the distinct sound of hesitation, not from his vocal cords, but from his mandibles.

"She's probably why I was such a bad Turian." Half of a breath of a laugh was released, but quelled a second later. "I never knew how she and my father got along, I still don't. I regret that she didn't pass here on Palaven, but I thought by sending her away, trying to get her treatment, she'd be able to… come back."

She squeezed his hand, a sign of solidarity. Liara's words from earlier rang true in her head. Shepard did already wish to take her sentiments back—the ones about how maybe she should have been lost that day on the Citadel—but it wasn't because she'd seen Garrus grieve for her. It was because now she was seeing him grieve, as restrained as it was, for the mother he'd lost. The one he'd tried to save, but unlike Shepard, hadn't been able to help pull through.

"It was for the best," he tried to lighten his tone, but the strain was just as evident, "good that she didn't have to live through what happened here with the Reapers. I wouldn't have been able to bury her ashes if she'd died during the attacks."

Letting go of his hand, Shepard moved down to her knees, powering through the tightness and ache she felt at doing so. Closer to the soil, her bare fingers immediately began the process at pulling out the bits of overgrowth, clearing the immediate area around the marker that indicated what remained of the woman was a few feet down. When she looked up, Garrus was watching her, mandibles held flexed just enough to not be relaxed, something she only recently knew was his expression of sorrow.

"Her mind was gone most of the time, especially at the end, but I found the time to visit her while you were awaiting trial. Her moments of clarity… they were brief. I told her about you, though."

Dirt stained hands rested on the thighs of her fatigues. "What'd you tell her about me?"

Though Turians didn't blush, the rest of their facial features were expressive enough to equate the same idea. "She knew who you were from before you died, back when she was doing better and I couldn't shut up about actually getting to work with a Spectre. Couldn't believe you came back from the dead. Made me promise to bring you around if I could."

"Did she know about us?" They hadn't been much in that time in between, at least not formally. Shepard, had, however, spent many nights in custody getting acquainted with her hand while she drew on the memories of him. The day she'd finally told him about it, he'd been pretty smug.

Garrus tipped his head in a nod. Even if he had feared Shepard would turn him away in the future, reminding him it had been a one-night ordeal and nothing more, Garrus had chosen to bare what he'd really felt for Shepard. To the dying woman that raised him, he hadn't held back.

Shepard stood, and rejoined him at his side. He forced his fingers and talons between hers, despite the dirt. "Thanks. For this."

"No," her head shook, and Shepard leaned against his arm. "Thank you for bringing me."

Normandy returned to the deep expanse of space with its Commander and Executive Officer on board. There'd been a meal down in the mess, with nearly all the crew in attendance, and for Shepard, it was a joy to get lost in the sound of the voices. Other people's business, as petty as it could be, was enough of a distraction to pull Shepard away from her own troubles, the ones that were especially loud when left to herself.

Despite what had happened at the cemetery, the peace that usually existed between she and Garrus was nowhere to be found. At dinner they'd smiled, hers especially wide as Garrus boasted proudly about his nephew. He'd even passed a few pictures around, the female members of the crew cooing at what was most likely their first sight of a Turian so very young, his features large and softer than the elders of his race. Shepard had even let it go when the one of her and Necalli had found its ways into the hands of Kenneth and Gaby. Both of which, had made sure not a soul on that ship hadn't seen the photo of their usually tough-as-nails Commander looking positively absorbed by the newborn. This time, Shepard would let it slide.

When Shepard retired to her quarters, that familiar stale smell of recycled air and metal overwhelming her, she half expected Garrus to be either waiting for her or perhaps fishing out a few of his belongings from the drawers his things occupied, intending on spending the night on that old cot down. This was a fight, wasn't it? A real, honest to God, argument that wouldn't be cured with time alone. Shepard pulled one of his drawers, checked for the easy pull of emptiness. Untold relief washed through her when she found it just as full as it always had been.

"EDI? Where's Garrus?"

"In the Lounge. Would you like me to get him for you?"

"No," Shepard said. "That'll be all right. Patch me through to Miranda again."

This time, Oriana wasn't on the other end, and judging by how fast her call was answered, Miranda had been waiting.

"I was wondering if you wanted me to forget we had that conversation at all," she said.

"No, just had some other things to attend to, Lawson. Now, walk me through everything."

"I convinced Chakwas to forward me your most recent medical records, by the way, to get a full scope of what we're dealing with here. But let me start at the beginning."

Shepard started the process of undressing for the night, keeping herself busy as she listened.

"What the Lazarus Project did for you back then was nothing short of a miracle—"

"—Still full of yourself, Miranda, but go on."

"But even we had limits about the things we could do. Had you died in any other way, on a planet for example, I doubt that we would have been able to bring you back. At least not unless we'd gotten your body before you'd gone cold. Dying in space, Shepard, that was lucky."

"Yeah," the Commander said with a razor sharp edge, "getting my ship blown up, losing some of my crew, and tearing a fucking hole in my O2 line was real lucky. Remind me to never bet on your odds."

Aggravated, Miranda continued. "What I'm saying is that, you were preserved. Do you get that? I mean, there was tissue damage. God knows there was tissue damage. Cerberus spent a fortune trying to get your skin to repair itself. But your brain? Preserved, at least as much as we needed. The rest of you? Preserved, to some extent."

Shepard pulled her shirt off and tossed it to the couch, a reminder to pick it up the next morning when she had the patience and energy for laundry. She moved to head towards the bathroom, and at the top step of the landing above the bedroom space, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass of her fish tank. She paused, and ran an open palm over the flat of her stomach. For a second, she wondered what it would look like if there was something else in there. "Get to the point."

"When we'd repaired the most major damage, we brought your body back online—I know, not technically online, but it's the terminology. Had a machine that pumped your heart, another to circulate and filter blood, another for your lungs, I'm sure you get the idea. It was a long process, all of it, slowly repairing you little by little. Where your body failed, we used cybernetics to replace what was missing, fix what was broken. But even Cerberus with all their money to afford the best and hire the best, there are some parts of the human body that can't be so easily fixed with a screw and an artificial organ."

All of this talk, even in layman's terms, brought Shepard back to the endless months of Miranda fighting with the Alliance doctors over her care. Without Cerberus' endless pockets, not every broken piece of her could be replaced with the top of the line synthetic counterpart. It was why, she knew, her leg in particular had never felt exactly right, and without another corrective surgery and a few parts replaced, it would never be what it had been.

"Nerve cells, brain cells, for example, we can't exactly generate those out of chemical compounds in a petri dish and they don't grow back on their own. So we grew them, Shepard. We grew them from parts of you."

Shepard's brows furrowed. "What do you mean you grew them?"

"Once we got your body online, we hormonally induced ovulation as soon as we could, and harvested the eggs your ovary released. Remember how I was saying parts of you had been preserved? Your ovaries were, as well. We'd tried using donated embryonic stem cells, and while they'd worked, we knew that using your own would achieve better results with the finer parts of you, Shepard. So we fertilized your eggs, used the stem cells created—"

"Just wait a minute," Shepard said, her blood running suddenly cold. "And who volunteered for that job? If this is some twisted fucking way of telling me I'm already a mother to some bastard son of the Illusive Man, so help me God, Lawson—"

"Christ, Shepard," the other interrupted loudly. "You always were eager to jump the gun. Let me finish. For the record, while I know I may not have been the… best of humanity while serving with Cerberus, and while it may seem otherwise, I did have my own limits. I'd oversee the harvesting of your embryonic stem cells to bring you back, but I wasn't going to let it go further than that. Not after what my father did to make me. And not after Oriana. It may be hard for you to believe, Commander, but I guarded those eggs with my life."

Hand balled into a fist, Shepard leaned her bare back into the cool glass of the fishtank. Just another thing on the long list of atrocities Cerberus had committed against her and everyone else.

Miranda sighed loudly on the line. "Shepard, listen, I'm sorry. All of this, it has a point. There were a few eggs that we didn't use that I kept in cryo, privately and without Cerberus' knowledge. I knew that we might need them in the future and not have the time to harvest them anew, so I kept them. On my terms."

Wasn't that what she wanted to hear? Perhaps not in that exact way, perhaps she didn't want to know that while she'd been nothing but a vegetable with a heartbeat on a metal slab in a Cerberus facility they'd been pumping her full of hormones in a desperate attempt to find a way to save her life—or bring her back to life, was perhaps the better phrase. It was hard to digest, though, and Shepard remained still, trying to come to terms with it.

"And while I'd like to run my own tests, the information I received from Chakwas seems to be up to par. I've no idea, not from here at least, whether the eggs you currently have are viable at all. They could very well be, Shepard, and you won't know until we get the hormonal implant removed. But if they're not, there's a back-up. And even if there's too much damage to let you carry your own child, we could always use the eggs in a surrogate."

"'We'? When did I ever say you were getting involved in this? And when did I ever say this was happening at all?"

"Shepard," Miranda bit out, patience gone. "Be happy you have this chance, whatever the circumstances may be. Some of us don't have any hope at all."

At the time, tucked in the depths of the Shadow Broker's ship, Shepard hadn't felt guilt for how far she'd intruded into the lives of her crew and those around her. It was her right to know what they were saying, who they were talking to, wasn't it? Years later, though, a pang of guilt settled on her shoulders at Miranda's words. That's right, she could recall the message she'd read that was directed towards Miranda's address, the one about her infertility. There was a lingering second of camaraderie between them before Shepard let it pass. Miranda didn't need her pity, just like Shepard didn't need hers.

"Thank you, Miranda."

"You're welcome," she said, that prior element of tension gone. "Was this Vakarian's idea?"

"No, it was both of ours."

Garrus was in their quarters by time Shepard cleared out of the shower. It had been a long one, the kind of extended stay that would have run the hot water heater empty in any normal home. As a marine, showers had always been short, tepid, and crowded, not exactly a place to get much thinking done. Private quarters had effectively reversed that notion, however, and more than any time before in her life, Shepard needed the searing hot water on her skin to pull in on herself in retrospective.

"So," Garrus said, hesitantly pacing, "how do we do this? I've seen a few of your movies, I'm supposed to…" His eyes shifted from her to the sofa. "…Sleep on the couch? Right?" He scratched at the underside of his fringe at the back of his head. "Not really sure how comfortable it'll be…"

Clutching the towel around her, Shepard couldn't help but let the corner of her mouth lift in amusement. For all his confidence in battle, he had never been very suave. "Relax," she said easily, and touched the pads of her fingers to his arm. "We already slept apart last night."

His brow plates fell in remembrance. "Right. About that, Shepard, I should've—"

"I said relax, Garrus."

His hand reached for hers, covering the back of her hand where it rested against his opposite arm. Their eyes met. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you so far."

The sincerity in his words and on his face made her eyes soften. Shepard leaned in close to him, feeling the sharp points of his arm against her skin, even through the covering of his clothing. "I meant what I said. If you want to try… this with someone else, I'll understand, Garrus."

His head shook, a rejection of her idea. "I made my choice a long time ago. And not once have I ever doubted it. Shepard, if you're trying to push me away because you don't want me here, then that's one thing. But don't—don't try to say it's for my benefit."

Tears welled, no matter how strong she tried to keep herself. Somehow, he knew exactly what she needed to hear. Shepard chose to slip her body into his hold, her forehead tucked up into the crook of his neck where his skin was exceptionally soft. This, she'd missed this. "I talked to Miranda… about things."

He wrapped her in the circle of his arms, one hand at her back, fingers slipping just barely between her skin and the damp towel, the other threading through the mop of wet hair. "Yeah?"

"If this is what you want, what you really want, there might be a chance for me to have a child. I'm not sure how good the odds are, but it's not completely a lost cause."

Garrus' arms tightened around her as he rubbed the underside of his jaw against the top of her scalp, an affectionate nuzzle of their skin together. She pulled back eventually, and though he felt the loss of contact, he relaxed just enough for her to be able to stand a little straighter, head tilted up to meet his eyes.

"I'm afraid you'll resent me for this, Garrus."

"Why would I?" He asked, incredulous. "How could I resent you for giving us children?"

"Because," she grit her teeth, muscles in her cheeks clenching as her eyes squeezed shut for a brief moment. "They'll be someone else's."

"No." And there was no question to his voice as he cupped her cheek in his hand. "They'll always be mine."

Shepard buried her face back in at his throat, savoring the feeling of home. She wondered, briefly, if this was what their children would feel when they held on to him. Around her, the Normandy hummed, the sounds of the ship's engine core and air vents, and even the bubbler of the fish tank, but all she could hear was the sound of his voice in her ear, reassuring and certain.

"Shepard, they'll be ours."

Yes, she knew, he would be a good father.

Author: I have since written two follow-up stories for this fic! 'Dad' and 'Mom' are both listed in my profile along with all my other Mass Effect fics.