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starlit--dreams · 7 years

Text

What’s Bred in the Bone: Part III

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Jaal x Sara Ryder

A 600 year nap and a 2.5 million light-year journey to find out the answer: are humans and angara genetically compatible?

Rated M for strong language, some sexuality and violence. Alien-human pregnancy fic.

Spoilers for Jaal's romance and loyalty mission, and end of game.

Part III of ??? - Part I - Part II - Part IV - Part V

“She will be in good hands, brother,” Jaal’s sister Teviint snapped at him, her hand on his shoulder and practically shoving him out the door. Sara could see it did nothing for his anxiousness.

“Teviint -- “

“Jaal,” she responded back, exasperation laced through her voice. “You know as well as I do that Evfra will be very angry if you don’t make it in time. Go, brother. She is family now, and I won’t allow her to come to harm.”

Jaal looked Teviint squarely in the face. Unspoken words hung heavy in the air, and Jaal opened his mouth to say something.

“I trust her,” Sara said, injecting herself between Jaal and Teviint. And added very quietly: “She won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Jaal looked between his new wife and his sister, whose face was still set.

“Alright,” he relented, and bent his head down to place a warm kiss on Sara’s lips. Both of his hands found hers for a tender squeeze and he murmured softly in her ear. “There’s a pistol under the bed if you need it.”

“Go,” she sighed good-naturedly. It was surprisingly quiet (as far as dangers went) at the Ama Darav home; Sara doubted she would need it. And she did trust Teviint’s word.

The two of them still did not get along very well. Teviint usually avoided eye contact or stared at her, depending. Sara found it best to ignore it. When her pregnancy was announced to the family and the marriage was decided on, Teviint did voice her concerns. Often. And loudly.

But if it was one thing that Sara learned about angara was that family was everything. And Teviint, having had shot her own brother, had a lot to prove to the family. What better way than to protect the newest -- and pregnant -- addition? Especially when that one was disliked and alien?

Jaal gave her one last parting kiss before going to check her gear. Teviint stalked off back to the house, and Sara was left alone, watching the others climb into the shuttle.

“You okay?” Scott said, coming up beside her. He was in armor, ready to head out in her place. Her stomach twisted and she looked down.

“Yeah,” she answered dejectedly.

“Cheer up,” he said. “At least you can stay here and relax. We have to go and get dirty.”

“I loved getting dirty,” Sara mock-whined.

“Hey, you had your adventures. You kicked the Archon’s ass. It’s my turn now,” Scott said, putting an arm around his twin’s shoulders.

“Yeah, the Archon and Roekaar are totally equivalent,” she teased back. “I did all the hard work.”

“Ohohoh, excuse me, big sis, whose mind was being violated at Meridian again?”

“Uh, who has died like three times already? And also has to pee about a hundred times a day? And has heartburn that would put Elaadin to shame? And --”

“Alright, you two, this isn’t a pissing contest,” Vetra called over to them. “Spirits, I feel bad for your mother.”

“Remember what Mom used to say when we would give her trouble?” Scott said fondly, his voice low. “‘One day, you two will pay for your raising.’ Think your twins will give you as much trouble?”

“I’m just trying to get through this pregnancy without a nervous breakdown, I haven’t even thought about that. If they’re as bad as we were, I am so glad they’ll have such a big family and many mothers.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, shaking his head. “I still don’t quite get angaran families. Many mothers -- but they’re generally monogamous?”

“I think they embody the phrase, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ As far as I can tell, some of it has to do with how the translators were originally calibrated. They have several different words for brother and/or sister, depending on birth order or which mother they come from. Whoever did the translations just lumped it all under ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ but Jaal has been teaching me the subtleties. Also, there are thousands and thousands of dialects -- ”

“You are such a fucking nerd,” Scott deadpanned.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sara sighed. “And get everyone home safe.”

Sara’s melancholy came back by the time she set foot in the house. Watching the shuttle take off without her was more difficult every time. Even more difficult was the thought of going with them again and leaving the twins behind.

One day, she would do that. She wondered how Sahuna or her father did it, time after time.

“Hey, Sara,” a voice broke her thoughts, and she was startled to see Teviint waving her over.

“Hey,” she said uncertainly, taking a seat next to the angara woman.

“Listen,” Teviint started, eyeing her with distaste. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me -- “

“I like you just fine,” Sara interrupted. Teviint seemed genuinely taken aback by that. “I don’t expect you to like me, though. That’s okay. You may never like me, and that’s okay too. But… but I’d like us to at least be able to respect each other enough to work together. For the babies, at least. And Jaal.”

Teviint seemed to let go of some of the tension her body had been holding. “Yeah. I think I can do that. And… thank you. For trusting me.”

“You deserved the chance,” Sara said simply. She hoped it was the first step in gaining Teviint’s trust in return.

“Okay. Well, just… don’t wander off. I don’t want to drag you out of some predator’s teeth.”

Sara laughed at that. “I’d prefer not to have the bite marks anyways, so deal. Although it might be worth it to see how Sahuna would react -- “

The sound Teviint made in her throat was somewhere between an alarmed squeak and a warning growl. It made Sara laugh even harder.

“Watch that left flank!” Scott ordered into the comm, and Jaal dashed out from cover. The Roekaar’s gun tracked him, but uselessly fired only after he hit cover again. Akksul’s recruits were noticeably less well trained than before, and it only took Jaal a glance out to identify the best method of attack before executing it. The Roekaar was no more after that.

The battle raged on around him. It was a large one, and the din was almost deafening, but he could still hear Drack’s gleeful laughs over it.

It made him wince.

However wrong the Roekaar were, however misguided their views, and however much Jaal would defend himself and his Tempest crew with his dying breath, he still hated to fight his fellow angara.

He didn’t blame the old krogan for taking pleasure in battle. It was just his way, he had long ago learned. He just wished it wasn’t against people he once called comrades.

But this mission was too important to be distracted. Regardless of it all, the only thing mattered was getting to the command center, and hoped that Evfra’s intel was solid.

Ducking around a corner, he cloaked himself, reaching for his knife. With four great strides, and sliding over a fallen pillar, it was buried in the chink of the armor of his next target, and a second, before a third could even defend herself.

“Keep pushing!” Cora’s voice came over the comm, followed by a huge biotic explosion, above and to the right of Jaal. It distracted his opponent long enough for him to get a few good shots in, and she was gone as well.

He ducked down again, pausing to take a breath and check his ammo. Still good. He caught his second wind, and lept up over the cover into battle once more.

It was thirty more minutes before the Roekaar force broke and scattered. The command center was left undefended, and the team regrouped at the door, where Scott and SAM were hacking the door together.

“Hope this is the end of it,” Scott panted to Jaal. “She didn’t suspect anything, did she? Before we left in the shuttle?”

“No,” Jaal replied. “Unless you noticed something?”

“No. She was just… sad she couldn’t go with us.”

“In time, it will be the reverse.”

“Yeah. Okay, I think we’re through,” Scott said.

Cora nodded. “Okay. Drack, Vetra, you stand guard out here. Peebee, Liam, can you get up on the roof and give them some cover?”

She got affirmatives, and the team spread out. Scott, Jaal and Cora, however, readied their weapons and opened the door.

The command center was dark; the only lights came from the backup power to the consoles.

“Scans indicate no life signs in the room. It is abandoned,” SAM intoned. This puzzled Jaal. Abandoned, systems only on backup power… and he got a bad feeling in his chest.

A light flickered at a terminal nearby.

“I think… we’re getting a phone call,” Scott murmured. “What in the hell…”

“Do we… do we answer?” Cora asked incredulously.

“Perhaps we should answer… then be ready to run,” Jaal growled. The others agreed, and he punched the button.

Akksul’s face appeared on the screen.

“Jaal. I must thank you,” the other man started unceremoniously. “Those monstrosities you’ve sired have opened the floodgates for me. Where once the Roekaar were nearly fractured, now our resolve and our numbers are stronger than ever. Our people are starting to wake up to the fact that these vesagara are a danger to our way of life. First they move into our cluster, lay claim to worlds that should be ours by rights, and now… now they aim to dominate us by corrupting the very purity of us.”

“Akksul,” Jaal’s voice was very dangerous. “I warn you -- “

“No, old friend. I warn you. Mark my words very carefully: those things are abominations, ones I intend to rectify.”

“Why are you telling us your evil plan? We’ll just stop you,” Scott interrupted.

“A matter of honor, human. If you even understand the concept,” Akksul sneered.

“You have no honor left,” Jaal spat out. “This is only pretence. If you harm my wife or children, I swear on my bloodlines you will not know rest for the few days you will have left.”

“A chance I am willing to take for the good of our people,” he said gravely. The connection cut.

Scott swore loudly.

“This is much worse than Evfra’s intel,” Cora said. “What do we do?”

“We must get back home,” Jaal said, turning and hurrying out of the room.

His heart thudded against his chest during the shuttle ride home. Only when it touched down, just as dawn was breaking, and he dashed into his familial home to his room was he assured of his wife’s health. Sara was curled up in a nest of blankets, hair messily framing her face. He could see the steady rise and fall of her chest, indicating her deep sleep. She was fine.

He was able to breathe again. A quick kiss to her temple and a stroke to her belly and he silently closed the door behind him, leaving her in peace. She got too little of it, and there would be less now.

The team gathered in the comm room of the house -- the same room where Moshae Sjefa had offered Sara her wisdom on their wedding day.

“We need to talk about this,” Scott said quietly. Most of the household was still sleeping.

“Can we get her to a place out of the reach of the Roekaar? The Nexus?” Vetra suggested.

“And straight into Tann and Addison’s crosshairs? I thought the whole reason she was staying here was to avoid them,” Cora frowned.

“Better to deal with asshole politicians than a murderous angara,” Liam countered.

“We could keep her on the Tempest,” Scott said. “We’re always on the move anyways, and there’s no place safer. Lexi can care for her, and she can still feel involved in a Pathfinder’s role.”

Jaal stayed silent. The point of Sara living here, in his home, was of cultural significance to the angara. It made a political statement, and strengthened their claims of her status as his wife and mother of his children. And he very much wanted his children to be born in the same home he was, surrounded by his family.

But the Tempest crew was their family, too. And Scott did have a point.

He growled softly in thought.

“There is no easy answer. While Akksul’s warning was serious, he was also baiting us into doing something rash. Removing her from the family home would give his claims more weight. But not moving her would give him an opening,” Jaal explained.

“Would your people really tolerate the Roekaar attacking an angaran home? An entire family?” Vetra asked.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. This situation is unprecedented and the politicians are scrambling. I would like to think Akksul is not fool enough to make his move unless things were more in his favor, but I believe he believes what he’s saying.”

“We have no choice,” Cora said. “Sara and the twins’ safety should come first, and to hell with politics. We can’t risk keeping her here. I’m sorry, Jaal.”

Jaal turned to Cora, fixing his gaze on her. “I hope you aren’t suggesting that I would not do what was best for my wife and children?”

“No, I mean -- “

“It doesn’t matter,” he cut her off. “Scott is right, the Tempest is the safest place, and that is where she should be.”

“Do you think…” Peebee started, and looked around. “I mean, she’s under enough stress. Maybe we shouldn’t even tell her about this? If she’s going to stay aboard most of the time, and have us around to protect her, does she even need to know until we’ve taken care of it? Because we are going to take care of it, aren’t we?”

“Peebee’s got a point,” Drack spoke up. “Sara’s tough, but I think she’s starting to crack. I don’t think the threat of assassination’s gunna help her any.”

“She’ll be pissed when she does find out,” Vetra said.

“And if she knows, she might be prepared incase something happens and we aren’t there,” Cora argued. “It might give her a fighting chance.”

“We just won’t leave her alone, then!” Peebee said brightly, as if it was so easy a solution.

“Jaal? It’s your call. It’s your wife and kids,” Scott said.

He hesitated. “No need to tell her for now,” he reluctantly decided. He hated hiding things from Sara, but he also didn’t want her to bear this burden. Not now, not when she had so much on her mind. She needed peace, and he would move the stars themselves to give it to her.

“Okay. So it’s agreed,” Scott finalized. “We’ll try to convince her to come back to the Tempest, and no one’s going to tell her about this assassination thing. Not until Jaal gives the go-ahead. Meanwhile, we need to find a way to stop Akksul. Think the Resistance could help us out with that?”

“Evfra was never willing to antagonize the Roekaar,” Jaal said. “But if we can get the government to see things more in our favor and accept Sara as a part of the family, perhaps Evfra would be willing to extend some protection to Sara, even if marginally. I don’t know, though.”

“We have to try.”

#jaal x sara ryder #jaal ama darav #sara ryder #rydarav #mass effect andromeda #whats bred in the bone

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