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Sláine Shepard had never wanted kids. At least not biological ones. She saw enough abandoned children in the streets to vaguely think that if she ever went that road, she'd adopt. But she didn't want that – she wanted to be a soldier, first and foremost, and didn't think it was fair to combine it with parenthood.
Even when she fell in love with Kaidan that resolution stood. They were both marines, both in active service, and talk of weddings and babies and forever never felt relevant.
And then she died and came back too late to keep him, and the point was moot. She couldn't let herself think about him, or their relationship, during the mission to stop the collector attacks. He hadn't listened to her when they met on Horizon (but oh, it had felt good to hold him in her arms, even if just for a moment, the first time her new body had felt like hers), and had walked away from her, angry.
Maybe, after, she could try to find him and have that discussion he was half-heartedly promising in his message. Maybe. But she wasn't thinking about that now. She was thinking about not ever wanting children.
So why did she feel absurdly proud when her krogan baby learned new things? Ever since Chambers referred to Grunt as “baby krogan”, that's how she thought of him. She'd never say it out loud, naturally, but... he was so new to everything, like a toddler learning about the world and wrecking it in the process.
She loved her charge, felt proud to have been trusted with his care, even if that wasn't what the crazy old krogan had intended for his project.
She had always liked Wrex, her first krogan companion, and having known him helped her in dealing with Grunt. While the other crew members seemed to fear him at times, she just knew that's what travelling with a krogan was like.
She hadn't expected to become a mother of a teenager as fast as that, though, but Grunt's discomfort made sense when Wrex (a clan leader! Ha! She'd known he had it in him!) explained what was going on. Her baby was growing up and facing the changes in his body as a result. Sure, she could deal with that, she'd had to in her own life, too.
She did not explain that comparison to Grunt, though, seeing that his puberty had more to do with homicidal rage than bleeding from the crotch and growing boobs. Then again, she had experienced her own bouts of the rage, too, so maybe he would understand.
So when the krogan shaman explained the tests which were part of the rites every krogan had to go through if they wished to become full members of a clan, she was proud to face the tests with her krogan baby, honoured by Grunt's trust in her as part of his krantt.
And after he became Urdnot Grunt and was invited to stay on Tuchanka, he still chose to go with her. “Shepard is my Battle Master.” She honestly couldn't have been happier if he had called her “mother.”