Prompt #2 for N7 Day! :D I’m going to try to do one more before bed tonight, and a couple more tomorrow. This one is totally SFW. :D
“Dad, is it supposed to look like human blood?”
Shepard sighed. Diana had always been a picky eater, but this had to be one of her most off-putting comments yet. “No more action vids for a little while,” she said, leaning back in her chair. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to get the chance to start her own meal for several minutes. “And I told you, the sauce comes from a red plant called a tomato. It isn’t anything like blood.”
“It tastes good,” Athena said, “but it’s kind of hard to eat without making a mess.” She focused intently on her plate, twirling the pasta around and around on her fork. Small bits of sauce spattered across the kitchen table whenever the strands looped over themselves.
Shepard started to correct her technique, but a loud screech distracted her. Benezia was enjoying her pasta as well—so much that she had decided to dump the entire bowl down her shirt. “Shit!” Shepard hissed, diving to catch the bowl before it fell. Unfortunately, she grabbed it upside down, and the rest of the noodles spilled across the floor. “Nezzie, no! You’re supposed to eat dinner, not wear it.”
Benezia gurgled happily, smearing her pudgy hands through the sauce on her face. “Shih!”
“Great,” Shepard muttered. “Your mom’s going to kill me.” She set the bowl back on the table and struggled to remove her youngest daughter from her high-chair. If she didn’t rinse Benezia off first, the mess would continue to spread. Tomato sauce and stray noodles squished through her fingers, and she found herself feeling more sympathy for Diana’s opinion.
“Mom says we’re not allowed to swear,” Athena said, still twirling her fork with intense concentration. “She says we’re not allowed to repeat any words Aunt Jack and Uncle Wrex and Grandma Aethyta say unless we already know what they mean.”
“Your Mom’s right,” Shepard said as she stripped off Benezia’s ruined onesie.
A soft tug at her sleeve interrupted her. “Dad, I don’t want this,” Diana complained, pointing at her untouched bowl. “It looks even more like human blood now. Or guts. Or intestines.”
“What the heck has your grandma been letting you watch?” Shepard groaned. “I’m pretty sure none of the vids I put on when you’re around have intestines in them.”
“I’ll eat hers,” Athena offered. Unfortunately, the large swirl of pasta on her fork chose that moment to slide off and plop directly on top of the table. “But it might take me a while.”
“Take it,” Diana said, shoving her bowl in Athena’s direction. “Can I have crackers, Dad? Or fish sticks?”
“No fish sticks,” Shepard called back as she carried Benezia over to the sink. “I think that’s all you’ve eaten for the past two days. You’re going to turn into a fish if you’re not careful.”
“No.” Diana’s face screwed up in a pout, and her lower lip trembled. “I’m gonna be a commando. The best, bravest commando ever.”
Benezia shrieked in agreement, splashing and kicking. Water sloshed over the sides of the sink, and Shepard watched mournfully as it ran onto the counter. Great. More of a mess to clean up. “You know the rules, Diana. You have to try at least three bites of a new food before you say you don’t like it. Otherwise, no dessert, and no playtime before bed.”
Diana eyed the bowl she had pushed away warily, unable to decide whether trying the pasta was worth an entire wasted evening.
“You know,” Shepard said, “sometimes real soldiers have to eat whatever they can find. What would you do if you were a commando on an alien world and your ship crashed, or your rations went bad?”
“That doesn’t happen,” Diana insisted, but her expression didn’t look so confident. “…Right? Have you ever had to do that, Dad?”
“Are you kidding?” Shepard laughed. She propped Benezia on her hip and carried her back over to the table. “After the Reaper war ended, Earth was a wreck. We ate whatever we could get our hands on.”
Athena set down her fork and pulled a face, but Diana’s eyes widened with interest. “Really? The commandos, too?”
“Especially the commandos. They needed plenty of fuel for their biotics.”
Diana leaned further forward, clearly in awe. “They didn’t eat the humans, did they?” she whispered.
Shepard shook her head. “No, but eating from the garbage wasn’t out of the question, and expiration dates became ‘guidelines’.”
“I don’t believe you,” Athena said. “Garbage? That’s too disgusting to be true.”
“Ask your grandma if you don’t believe me,” Shepard told her. She continued watching Diana out of the corner of her eye, fighting not to smile as her daughter pulled the bowl back. “Things weren’t much different on Thessia.”
Finally, after a long hesitation, Diana speared a glob of pasta with her fork. She wrinkled her nose and studied it closely before shoving it into her mouth all at once. Shepard watched her chew, waiting patiently for the verdict. “Ish okeh,” Diana mumbled, one cheek still stuffed full. “Doesnh taste likh blooh.”
Shepard grinned. “Congratulations, Captain T'Soni. You and your squad are no longer going to starve.”
Before she could relish her victory, however, a gasp came from the other side of the room. Shepard turned, and her smile fell when she saw Liara standing in the doorway, surveying the kitchen with a shocked expression. “Goddess, Shepard, what happened?”
“Uh…” Shepard’s eyes moved from the giant puddle of pasta on the floor, to Benezia’s ruined outfit, to the bits of tomato dripping down Diana’s chin. “Guess that means I’ll be doing clean-up in addition to cooking, huh?”