#eb-n-flo

You’ll barely even notice that she’s there, they said. 

It’ll be fuuuun, they said. 

Please, Ash, this is important, they said.

Where Sun and Garrus got the idea that their newest addition to the family was anything but chaos in turian form, she didn’t know. Sun had promised that she’d listen to her well enough, and that she’d behave herself. That was apparently before she realized that she was a biotic, and Ashley felt a little bit like she’d been left alone with a kid who just started puberty. 

Except instead of puberty it’s discovering that you can levitate shit with your mind. And instead of being upset or scared, the kid is just having fun trying to move things across the room, no matter how many times she asked her to please not break anything.

“Relax,” she’d said, watching a very breakable vase levitate a few inches off the ground. “I’ll be careful.”

CRASH.

“Uh. I’ll clean it up.”

Luckily, Ashley wasn’t alone in her efforts—or at least, she didn’t have to be alone in her efforts. James would show up if she called him, she knew, but as far as the little hellraiser of an apparently biotic turian that was Nox Vakarian-Shepard was concerned (who at 11 was already almost the same height as Ashley herself) she had a feeling she’d have to call in the big leagues.

Wrex laughed when he answered the phone.

“Having problems, Williams?”

She sighed heavily. “I can handle human kids. I can handle asari. I can’t handle turians, apparently.”

“And what makes you think I can handle a turian any better? Especially since I have so many kids of my own now aft—”

“—yeah, I know, Wrex, but I’m not a biotic and you are.”

“…what does that have to do with anything?”

“Nox, apparently, has just discovered that she has biotic abilities. I don’t know how to deal with this. Please help.”

Wrex laughed again. “Alright, I’ll come over. Getting tired of sitting through meetings anyway. You think you can handle watching my daughter while I talk with the kid?”

A throbbing headache was starting to pound behind Ashley’s eyes as another bang resounded from somewhere deeper in the house, followed by a panicked sounding, “I’m okay!”

“I’ll manage,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Just hurry, please.”

Wrex’s child was much, much easier to take care of, to Ashley’s utter relief. 

She was actually much smaller than she’d been expecting, having not actually seen a baby krogan before. She fit in one of Wrex’s hands, wearing a little pink onesie and taking in her surroundings with wide, red eyes just like Wrex’s. 

He smiled at her as he ducked down to walk through the door, bouncing his arm a little to make the baby giggle delightedly.

“Where’s the little ass-kicker?” he rumbled, looking around the room curiously.

“In her room, I think. I knocked when I heard something fall but she wouldn’t open the door.” She sighed. “I asked her if she was okay with you coming over, and she said, ‘Thank you,’ so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.”

He snorted. “Hm. I’ll see what I can do. Here, take Mordin,” he said, handing the round little krogan to her and smirking when she balked a little at how much she weighed. Such a small baby, and she already had to weigh almost 20 pounds.

Wrex wandered off down the hall then, leaving Ashley and Mordin (Ashley wondered why that name sounded familiar, and why it sounded distinctly not krogan) alone in the living room. The baby seemed to have finally noticed that Ashley was present, one tiny hand reaching up and landing on her cheek with a gentle pap.

She smiled as Mordin reached up to touch her other cheek, and the baby smiled back, giggling as Ashley swayed on the spot.

“Cutie,” Ash murmured, just as Wrex and Nox reappeared in the hallway.

“We’re going outside to minimize damage,” Wrex announced as Nox pointedly avoided looking at Ashley. “Mordin should be almost ready for a nap. If you want to walk her around a bit, she should go right to sleep. You know where to find me if you need anything.” He patted Nox on her back reassuringly. “C’mon, kid.”

And that was that, and Ash was left in the quiet house alone, still holding Mordin.

Walk her around, Wrex had said. She could do that.

She wandered off towards the hallway, pausing here and there to let Mordin take in the sights. Garrus and Sun kept a very comfortable home—lots of warm colors and open space for their little seaside cottage. Wandering into the hallway, where sunlight streamed in from the window at one end, she paused in front of a little cubby-like indent in the wall.

She and Mordin took in the shrine she knew Sun kept there, with the pictures of Sun’s parents and a female turian who could only be Garrus’s mother in the very center. There were some other things laying here and there—an old piece of N7 armor caught her eye, just as Mordin reached for a jar full of seashells sitting on one of the upper shelves.

She was about to tell the baby no, when her omni-tool started ringing. Loudly.

Wincing as the baby frowned, but didn’t cry, she struggled to hit the answer button on the display on her arm.

“Hello?”

“Ash, I am so sorry,” came Sun’s worried voice. “I’ll pay you extra for this, I swear.”

“Wha—how did you—?”

“Wrex messaged us,” replied Garrus. “We’re going to cut our holiday short, but the earliest flight we could get back to Palaven is tomorrow morning.”

“Is it normal for turian biotics to discover their powers this young?” Ashley asked curiously, carefully opening the jar and pulling out a seashell to hand to Mordin.

“No,” Garrus sounded concerned. “No, it’s highly unusual, actually. Turian biotics actually typically discover that they’re biotic much later in life than other species.”

Ashley hummed. “Wrex’s baby likes the seashells you have on this shrine in the hallway.”

Sun laughed. “Is it Mordin you’ve got with you?”

“…how did you know that?”

“Mordin’s named after a friend of ours. A salarian—he’s the one that cured the genophage.”

Something tickled the back of her mind. “Was he the salarian you had with you on Horizon that one time?”

“That’s him. Yeah, he—he died on Tuchanka. He was planning to retire after the war. Live somewhere warm and tropical and collect seashells. His last words to me were, Would have liked to run tests on the seashells, so I’m not surprised the baby likes the seashells.”

“So it’s okay for her to play with them?”

“Ash, look out the window. If I need more seashells, I can just walk outside and get more seashells.”

“…that’s fair.”

Sun laughed again, and Ashley could almost see her shaking her head. “Call us if anything else happens, okay? I’ll call later tonight to talk to Nox.”

“We really appreciate you taking care of her, Ash,” Garrus added.

“Anytime, Vakarian.”

Garrus laughed. “It’s Vakarian-Shepard now, Williams.”

“Right, right,” she chuckled, readjusting her grip on Mordin as she reached for another seashell. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”

“Bye, Ash.”

The line cut there, and Ashley looked at the baby in her arms curiously, almost as if she were expecting her to suddenly turn into a salarian or something. I’m not surprised the baby likes the seashells, Sun had said, almost like she’d been expecting it.

Suddenly, standing in front of this shrine of lost loved ones, Ashley felt a little more somber. She almost felt like saying a prayer, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say, so instead she just turned to the baby in her arms and smiled. Propping Mordin up on her hip as best she could, she pulled the jar of shells down and headed back to the living room to spread them out on the carpet and let the baby play while she waited for Wrex to come back inside.

uhhh idk i guess the Spell is Nox’s biotics and the Pray For Me part is from the shrine?? my friend suggested “Wrex’s first babby and Ashley” so i had to