Chapter Text
Moya woke up, not panicked and then panicking about not being panicked because ‘panic’ had been the flavor of everything for a while, as ‘festive’ as his mother’s casserole toppings.
His mother.
Oh, God.
What had happened?
He looked around his familiar-but-should-not-be-right-now-how-did-I-get-here surroundings. He was under blankets, next to his sleeping wife, in the Normandy’s cabin. His eyes swerved to Grace’s crib, the Mass Effect mobile sparkling above. Panic was joined by a swirl of cagey fear. This looks good. Maybe don't ask too many questions. Maybe don't ask any.
He sat up and lifted a hand to shove it through his hair in a general expression of ‘what the fuck?’ and then stared at his hand.
There were sparks of light along his skin in silver and green glints.
Karin’s colors.
Karin.
KARIN.
Existential questions aside, his last conscious moments had been spent focusing on how she was a miracle and that seemed a much better use of his time than his usual what-the-fucking.
He added more silver to his hand by stroking her hair back. She was so beautiful and somehow polished in her sleep. He enjoyed mussing the hell out of her sleek hair but right now she looked unmussed and he needed to fix that. Whatever was going on, she was the important part of it, he was sure.
I'm either dead or… something else, but I’m going to check out the ‘Heaven’ potential right now.
He leaned down to kiss his sleeping beauty and her sudden gasp of breath and lurch up smashed their foreheads together.
“Easy, Karin.”
She looked as wild as he’d ever seen her, reflected panic in her eyes. She stared at him and said “Easy? Where…?”
“The Normandy cabin.”
“I was in the Med Bay. Garrus and Thane were…”
“Injured. Yeah.”
Her eyes narrowed “Why are you glowing green?”
“And silver.”
“Yes, and silver, yet I do not find that aspect significant. It is the glowing -”
“It’s VERY significant, Karin. They’re your colors.”
“What does that mean and why… are we here?”
He kissed her and she protested, struggling slightly, likely trying to get to her Med Bay and her charges.
“Karin. Listen. I don’t know everything but listen to what I do know. I made it to the Crucible.”
“Then how -?”
He kissed her again because he could, and he saw her eyes stray to the crib where Grace was sleeping. “Karin. Listen to the glowy guy. Give me… five minutes. Okay?” She settled tentatively as he said “Look. This is crazy. I mean more crazy than usual, even for me. There was a… thing… at the Crucible. It looked like my mother. It told me I could Control the Reapers, I could Destroy the Reapers or I could mush everything together, organic and synthetic and make a new batch of beings.”
“Cherie, that is insane.”
“I TOLD you that. How many insane things have we encountered?”
“Fair point.”
“I didn’t like those choices. I thought of an alternative. Look, I’d ask you to stop looking at me like I’m crazy, but that seems unreasonable at the moment. Karin, I thought the damned thing was crazy and alone and needed a real life. In my defense, I was kinda desperate and it looked like mom.”
There was a sudden cry from near the desk, behind the glass displays and the model ship collection.
A baby’s cry.
Not Grace.
Karin was pretty damned fast, she rushed over to Grace’s crib to check, Moya right behind her. RIGHT behind her much faster than anticipated. He nearly body checked her into the crib but did manage to stop in time.
So… that happened. She hadn’t seen.
So… this might be cool as hell.
He swerved and was suddenly into the alcove where there was…
Yeah. He had some explaining to do.
Another crib.
With another baby in it.
Well.
Karin arrived a few steps behind him, having apparently seen a green and silver streak that was her husband get there much faster than humanly possible.
He was grinning as she raised her eyes to his.
Well, this was terrible.
And awesome.
Her brow raised.
He was pretty sure she’d give him time to explain now. He said “Not sure I can really explain.”
She blinked.
“But for the beautiful lady, I’ll try. I think the thing at the Crucible could read my thoughts. No other explanation for the crazy. It took the form of my mom and that reminded me of family and how my mother was so very screwed up but I still loved her. How I’m so very screwed up but you love me.”
Despite herself she half smiled, but then looked pointedly back at the… baby... who looked absolutely normal, not glowing at all. Not ghostly or anything else one might expect from a…
Well, a God.
He explained quietly, picking up the baby and thinking it was human and male and probably about to cry some more… “And I thought… at it… that maybe it was tired of being a God and might want to be a part of a family. And I particularly thought that it would enjoy being part of your family.”
Her jaw jutted as she said “Cherie, and I call you that out of respect and yet a bit of terror… then why are YOU glowing and IT looks… helpless? What if that… God… decided to take the place of my husband?”
He stuttered “Dear GOD, Karin, you’re sneaky. Holy crap.”
She pressed her lips together despite herself, reassured even though there were obvious reasons why she shouldn’t be. “Well, that probably proves I’m not a God. I’m still not that smart. But… Karin… I love you. I don’t think I could be that… thing. Yeah, I’ve probably gotten some upgrades. Probably the… um… God… there… figured I’d need to protect him. He knows I will. It was in my head, Karin. I meant it. Can’t kill a baby. Given a chance to save the galaxy, this is how I proposed saving it.”
“Not being willing to slaughter the innocent is a distinction that separates you from that… thing…”
“It had the power to change the entire galaxy, Karin. I think, from what it showed me before everything went suddenly whoosh… the galaxy is the same as it was, mostly. Now there just aren’t any Reapers remaining and nobody will remember them. I imagine he didn’t want the story told and to be, well, helpless and blamed. The Reapers are destroyed except for one - this one - and the main synthesis is in this little guy right here wanting to start over, and the control is probably… well, I’m glowing and I’m a lot faster. Maybe there’s other stuff I can do.”
“If I was supposed to be such a phenomenal mother, why am I not glowing?”
“You don’t need it, Karin. I do. I think I got that across; you being perfect and all and me not.”
“Charming as ever, Cherie. And yet…”
“And yet, yeah. Um…”
“So now we are the parents of a… child… that destroyed the galaxy cycle after cycle, mercilessly and without any plan other than maintaining its own integrity?”
“...yes? To be fair, Karin, the other options sucked big time. They involved me dying. I didn’t like that idea.”
“Agreed there. And yet what happens when the same God that judged the galaxy as unworthy grows up and decides we are not as amusing as he had hoped?”
“Well… we’d better not do that then.”
“That is less of a plan and more of a hope.”
“Hope is all I’ve ever had, Karin.”
She closed her eyes and nodded sagely a few times, trying to absorb the completely insane. “Very well then. Cherie. I am proud of you, gratified and of course terrified.”
“Of course.”
“What shall we name… him?”
“I think him. I’m not checking right now. Assume first diaper change will confirm. Maybe he’ll have a nametag… somewhere.”
She smiled and said “Poetically perhaps, if there is no… nametag… we could name him ‘Man’ in the language of one of the oldest civilizations in human history.”
“The guys that started getting organized enough to get us into Reaping trouble in the first place?”
“Yes. ‘Lu’ means ‘man’ in Sumerian. If we name him ‘Lu is’ - we could honor ancestral ambitions as well as the hope of a God who wishes to learn what it is to be mortal.”
“Luis. See, he picked a good mom.”
“Why am I not…?”
“What?”
“Younger?”
“What?”
“If it knew you and arranged… life… into its ideal and you into its ideal, why am I not ideal?”
He snorted “Are you kidding? You already are. Look, you get to be smarter, have better plans, be more loving, gorgeous and my reason for living. You want MORE? You’re already prettier than me.”
“I begin to believe it is truly you.”
“I’m insulted, Karin. You can’t have everything your way.”
“I apologize.”
“Yeah, yeah. Luis, mommy’s occasionally dense.”
She moved to Grace’s crib and picked her up “I fear you overcompensate, Cherie.”
He shook his head “Okay, sometimes she’s dumb. Give her a break, it’s the end of the Worlds as we know it and the beginning of new ones.”
Then Luis started to cry. He grinned “Right. This we understand.”
They got on with parenting.
The Reapers really were gone.
There weren’t that many changes to the galaxy except a few idealized touches to what Moya had wanted, a few notes of transformation that made him feel his… um… son… that’s still and would always be terrifying… had arranged it to make it all doable but not all that easy.
Garrus and Thane had both been deeply injured. Now they weren’t.
Garrus did in fact get Palaven in his own way. They made him Primarch.
Moya really wished he’d made some other flippant promises, like Rakhana being habitable or Krogan not being hyper-aggressive and now poised to take over the galaxy.
But on the bright side, he was kind of a God.
That was pretty cool.
Luis behaved like a normal baby and everyone other than Karin seemed to think he was their natural-born son.
So the little guy got a few wishes of his own, it seemed. Only he and Karin seemed to know what Reapers were at all. Otherwise they’d just been on regular ‘clear out the assholes’ missions that had happened before Reapers existed.
With a few weird perks like nobody knew of anybody named Udina, ever. The name didn’t even seem to exist.
The galaxy had been transformed in subtle and stunning ways and only Karin and Moya knew the difference.
Nobody else could see that Moya glowed but Karin.
So he was Commander Shepard and the Alliance had a lot brewing to check into, slavery and Rachni stirrings and Krogan hyper-aggressive bullshit.
And yet Wrex seemed to have it under control.
And the Rachni queen managed to quell rebellion as long as the Normandy ferried her from place to place. The Rachni queen and Karin became friends, and yeah, that’s weird, but not as weird as other stuff that had happened.
Day, Javik and Thane stayed for the mayhem and there was lots and lots of that.
Liara was all Shadow Brokery, happily providing Moya with missions and info that gave him unfair advantages and he would take every last one of them.
Garrus bitched about not being able to carry a gun anymore and worried about the proficiency of his bodyguards and Moya could tell the man was having the time of his life.
David… stayed… David. Moya realized he had not wished anything in particular for David other than happiness, and between Day, Kolyat, Thane, Karin and yeah, the Rachni queen and Legion… he was happy.
Jeff didn’t have and apparently never had Vrolik’s Syndrome. He and EDI were a thing. It was adorable.
Moya kept bringing Grace on his check-in rounds. Luis was most often with mommy in the Med Bay. Right now he held Grace as they both looked out the observation deck window, watching the streaming Mass Effect energy and stars rush by.
Moya was feeling pretty smug. He wasn’t the sort of God that could make something happen directly by will, but it did seem as though the green and silver granted him hope and some magnetism that tilted his luck toward what he wanted. Every time. He still had to work at it, of course, but that’s also what he wanted.
Hope WAS his plan.
Karin was busy with research and not treatment.
Smiling at Grace he said “Daddy was right, honey. Nilafor isn’t a bad gig. I’m perfectly happy to be a Divine Fool forever, if that’s the plan. Maybe feel sorry for mommy having to deal with all that, but since I hope she’s happy too… I’m betting that’s going to come true. Now, you don’t remember and you won’t remember, but I’m going to need you to be nice to your little brother. It’s important. I’m betting… you’re going to grow up just as perfect and happy as I ever wanted. And then I’m betting you’re going to stop aging at some point. And I’m betting that at some point I’m going to figure out how to fix all the broken stuff lying around this silly galaxy. Yeah, it’s silly. That’s definitely the word. No, that’s not disrespectful, it’s just true.”
He kissed the top of her head as one of her hands gripped at his thumb and one hand reached out toward the stars with a delighted laugh.
“Yeah, honey. I can’t wait either.”