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“How did we get here?”
Vetra glanced up from the datapad she had been reading to pass the time, glancing at her wife who was wringing her hands a little nervously. “I’m pretty sure we used the tram,” the turian said, earning a small smile from Sam.
“Not that, smart ass,” Sam rolled her eyes, “I mean here, right now, like this. After everything that we went through, everything that we lost and sacrificed and risked… And I wouldn’t change a second of it because it led to this moment. It led me to Andromeda, to the Tempest, to you…”
“Really? You wouldn’t change anything?” Vetra hummed.
“I’d die a lot less if I had the choice,” Sam shrugged, “But I mean it, everything was worth it.”
Vetra looked at her for a moment, wrapping an arm around her smaller frame to hold her close, “I feel the same.”
They looked up when the door to the waiting room opened and a smiling salarian greeted them with a nod, “Are you two ready?”
They glanced at each other and they both nodded. Sam was first to her feet, clutching tight to Vetra’s hand, “Ready as we’ll ever be.”
He led them out of the waiting room and along a few winding corridors before opening a side door and showing them into a new room. The room was small but lit by the natural Meridian light filtering in from outside, highlighting the soft yellow colour of the walls, decorated with trees and animals from a range of Milky Way planets. Tucked under the window was a crib.
“Can we…?” Sam asked, earning an approving nod from the salarian.
Still holding tight to Vetra’s hand, the pair walked closer to the crib, looking down at the asari baby inside.
“She’s so tiny,” Sam whispered, already feeling tears well up at the back of her throat.
“She’s a perfectly healthy size for her age, don’t worry,” the salarian assured her, “She’s a fighter, this one. She was just a newborn when the Leusinia was attacked.”
“What was a newborn doing on an ark?” Vetra asked.
“No one’s sure, but the paper trail looks like her mother slipped enough creds to the right people to look the other way. Unfortunately, her mother died in the attack. The child escaped with the other children and was cared for on the Nexus with the others until we set up this facility here on Meridian.”
“And the other parent?”
“According to the asari who knew her mother, she never spoke of another parent. They said it was likely someone back in the Milky Way. There was no one on her files listed as a partner or significant other… This little one is all alone.”
“Can I hold her?” Sam asked, not even taking her eyes off of the baby.
“Of course,” the salarian nodded, supervising slightly how the Pathfinder scooped the child up into her arms, cradling her safe across her chest. He gave a small, approving smile, “I’ll give you a moment.”
He left the room, and Vetra stepped up behind Sam, “What do you think?”
“I think I love her already,” Sam told her, “She’s perfect.”
Vetra felt a warmth in her chest swell; the same swell she felt when she saw her wife holding their nephew Dian, seeing the ease of which motherhood came to her. Had their bodies been compatible, there was no doubt that they would have started trying for a child of their own by now, but whilst babies for same sex couples were now very easily created through science like Scott and Gil’s son, cross species children still weren’t viable. Not that that had stopped them. Neither of them had a second doubt about adopting a child that neither of them had biologically mothered. They may have saved Heleus from the kett, but there had still been victims that had left behind children of all species.
So they had filled out the applications as soon as the agency opened, and less than a month later, here they stood, looking down at the baby that could soon be theirs.
Vetra got a proper look at her then as she began to squirm and settle into Sam’s embrace, yawning and opening her eyes to look up at the two people she had never seen before. Her blue skin was tinged indigo in the sunlight, a small smattering of freckles already across her tiny nose. As her eyes flickered open, Vetra saw that they were the colour of storm clouds.
“Hey baby girl,” the turian said softly, reaching a talon down to tickle at her stomach, but she quickly stopped when the baby caught hold of the talon, holding it tight in her small grasp. Vetra’s breath caught in her chest and she had to hold back tears of her own.
“I don’t think she’s letting us leave without her,” Sam said.
“Good, because I think I’m already ready to take on all of Andromeda for her,” Vetra admitted, earning a tearful laugh from Sam.
“She’s known us all of two minutes and she’s already got us wrapped around her little finger.”
“She’s our daughter, it’s her job.”
A wide smile broke across Sam’s face, “Our daughter.” She tested the words in her mouth, and as she looked down at the baby, and at Vetra, she truly believed everything that she had been saying before. Everything had been worth it; for this moment right here.
***
Bo’lecia Nyx was officially adopted by Pathfinder Samantha Nyx and Vetra Nyx two days after the year anniversary of Landing Day. She is doted upon by every member of her family, which stretched around the cluster. She was soon called solely by her nickname ‘Bo’, and grew up happily on Meridian with her cousins Dian and Meri-Ellen Brodie, and her brother who was adopted two years after her, a timid Krogan boy they called Patrik.