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Headspace, alive and painless
Weightless and almost sane
I close my eyes, I become the sky...
- I Mother Earth, "One More Astronaut"
In hindsight, there was no way Tali could have known.
After all, Shepard never really talked about her—well, what happened when the old Normandy went down. Even with that...incident...on Alchera, there hadn't been much reason for anyone to think about exactly how she had...gone. No reason for them to think that she hadn't been caught up in the explosion, quick and tidy. Though perhaps that should be 'quick and messy'; explosions rarely left behind pretty corpses.
So it was perfectly reasonable for Tali to ask her to help her on an Extra-Vehicular Activity before the jump through the Omega-4 relay.
During last-minute diagnostics to make sure that the IFF had fully integrated with the Normandy's systems, EDI had found an issue with one of the emitters for the fancy new kinetic barriers. It was something minor, something that could be ignored under normal circumstances. Both EDI and Tali agreed that passing through the Omega-4 relay to go to the center of the galaxy in what everyone constantly referred to as a 'suicide mission' probably did not count as normal circumstances.
No, they didn't need a drydock; just a quick EVA was sufficient to correct the issue, which was probably for the best because she wasn't particularly eager to expend more of T'Loak's goodwill than necessary—particularly since they'd probably need extended use of a drydock for when (not if, but when) they returned from the Collector's homeworld...base...well, whatever was past that relay.
Although Lieutenant-Commander Joan Shepard (service no. 5923-AC-2826) didn't have much experience in engineering outside of combat applications (and the occasional prank), she didn't exactly need experience in engineering to act as lookout and hold things for Chief Engineer Tali'Zorah vas Normandy nar Rayya. With Daniels and Donnelly—not currently available (she preferred not to think about the Collectors invading her ship, kidnapping her crew—she wasn't sure at what point it'd shifted away from 'the Cerberus crew'—because if she started thinking about it, the rat in her brain started doing cartwheels somewhere in there, and to lose focus now...) and Legion busy with various duties down in Engineering, she was probably the best choice for the job: she'd had nearly a decade of experience with EVA and had been on a spacewalk with Tali before, acting as lookout, though that had been—Before. On the old Normandy. Just like old times.
Anyways, she was over it. She'd had eight months—probably closer to nine now, she'd lost track at some point—for the grey matter (and the metal bits holding the grey matter together, according to the files she'd dug up on the Lazarus Project, something that raised disquieting ship-of-Theseus questions) to accumulate enough dust that the shock of realizing that yes, she'd died suffocating in the vacuum of space didn't explode into her head at the most inconvenient moments.
So when Tali asks her for her help, she does what any reasonable, definitely-not-terrified-at-the-mere-idea-of-a-spacewalk person in her situation would do: she agrees.
Shepard goes up to her cabin to suit up. Turns on some rock 'n' roll, loud enough to cause a minor earthquake in her room. (Although she reprogrammed every bug she found in her cabin to broadcast an endless loop of "Somebody's Watching Me" or random flatulence sounds to whoever was listening at the other end, best to be on the safe side.) Today, it's Fully Completely. Part of her wanted to listen to Dark Side of the Moon, but seeing as that was the last album she'd listened to before the old Normandy went down (actually sort of Thematically Appropriate if she thinks about it too much)...well, she didn't consider herself a superstitious person, but no reason to go around tempting fate.
She cleans the dead fish out of her tank as Downie sings about pissing in motel rooms. Gives her space hamster, Trent Reznor, some extra food to thank him for putting up with her; hopefully it isn't his last meal, but the Collectors had forced her to push her schedule ahead and forgo her plan to hand him off to Liara before jumping through the Omega-4 relay—no reason to bring an innocent space hamster along on a damn suicide mission. After a few moments, she decides that his current name doesn't really suit him and renames him to Marc Bolan.
Then she suits up. Part of her half-considers showing up on the bridge wearing the Collector armour, but then she remembers Tali's weapon of choice is a shotgun and decides against it. So it's just her standard outfit: no ceramic plates for now, just the underlying ballistic pressure suit, so it only takes a few minutes to slip into it. She pulls the safety harness on over the suit. Checks her oxygen seals as Downie sings about exhuming his corpse. (Maybe Fully Completely wasn't the best choice.) Double-checks them. Triple-checks them, for good measure. Quadruple-checks. By the time she's done her fifth check, Downie's singing about dumping bodies in a swamp. (She should've put on Abbey Road instead.) Finally, she figures she's checked enough damn times and that she's just putting off the inevitable/inescapable/inevasible/etc etc.
Still, she checks the seals again as the elevator makes its sluggish way down to the CIC. Just to be on the safe side.
Exiting the elevator, Routine has her nod at Kelly Chambers—except that Kelly isn't actually here. Under other circumstances, ones in which her crew hadn't been kidnapped by fucking alien bugs from hell, some small, selfish part of her would be relieved at this, because as much as she tried to hide her storm clouds from everybody, she simply could not hide them from Kelly Chambers, and then it was another round of questions and 'mindfulness exercises' that sometimes-not-always worked and wondering just how much of this was getting back to the Illusive Man. And her storm clouds were definitely encroaching now—had been for a while, the delicate sound of thunder looming somewhere in the distance.
(Okay, maybe some small, selfish part of her was relieved that Kelly Chambers wasn't currently here, but that part was far outstripped by the part of her that was outraged that she'd been kidnapped by fucking alien bugs from hell. Or from beyond the Omega-4 relay, but the two of them were probably at least a bit synonymous. And there was also the part of her that just wanted to get Kelly Chambers back, even if the yeoman was a bit too cheerful and flirty most of the time.)
And then she veers left, towards the armoury—because that was how the pre-mission Routine always went: go upstairs to her cabin to equip her armour, head down to the CIC, nod at Kelly Chambers, then head to the armoury to fetch Lex Parsimoniae and Murphy. Maybe something heavier-ordinance if the situation called for it. Usually the Arc Projector. Sometimes the M-622 Avalanche or the Collector beam gun. Or the M-920 Cain, though the damn thing always sent her flying backwards through the air. Then it was either to the shuttle bay or the airlock. And somehow, it almost feels wrong being suited up and walking to the airlock without Lex Parsimoniae on her back or Murphy on her hip. Almost naked.
Even though this is just another mission. Just not one that involved shooting things. Or blowing them up. Or talking to them in some effort to avoid having to shoot or blow them up. Just a simple spacewalk, like she's been on plenty of times before...well, Before. Just like old times. Old times before she died suffocating in the vacuum of space.
She orders the rat in her brain to shut up.
Tali's waiting for her on the bridge; she's talking to Joker, and although their voices are hushed enough that Shepard can't quite hear what they're saying, every inch of Tali's body language screamed annoyance/frustration/anger/etc etc.
"What's going on?" Shepard asked, and both of them jumped in surprise.
"Jeez, Commander," Joker looks at her, "d'you always have to sneak up on us like that?"
"Tali asked me to meet her on the bridge in half an hour." Shepard tilted her head, her forehead wrinkling a bit behind the helmet. "It's been 34 minutes."
Judging from Joker raising his hands in mock-surrender and Tali's exasperated huff of breath, that was not the answer they were expecting.
"Everything okay?" she asks, because Tali still has that look of annoyance/frustration/anger/etc etc coming off of her, which isn't...usual. It's worrying, because the last time she'd seen Tali with that particular look of annoyance/frustration/anger/etc etc, she'd been pointing a pistol at a certain geth platform.
Joker exhales slowly. "Daniels and Donnelly."
Tali turns to face her, eyes bright behind her mask, voice surprisingly quiet for all the fury seething in it. "The Collectors need to die."
And Shepard understands. Because where the two engineers had become something more than just 'the Cerberus crew' for her, they had also become something more than just 'the Cerberus engineers' for Tali: they were Tali's engineers, Tali's friends. Kidnapped by fucking alien bugs from hell.
"We'll get them back, Tali." She reaches over and gives Tali's arm a quick squeeze. She'd stake her—well, 'life' didn't really make much sense, because she'd already been brought back once. But she'd stake her sniper rifle on it. And her rock 'n' roll. "And we'll deal with the Collectors. 'As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.'"
(Though, if she thinks about it a bit, she realizes she's not quite sure how geographically accurate that is, but...artistic license, right?)
Both Joker and Tali give her a Look that she has become very familiar with; it's a Look that manages to universally translate across the differing facial structures of multiple alien species. Though she's always a bit impressed that Tali can pull it off, what with the mask getting in the way.
EDI's blue hologram pops up next to Joker. "Commander, if I may ask a question?"
"Oh no," Joker mutters under his breath. "EDI, don't ask—"
"Did you just quote—"
"INXS," Shepard says before EDI can finish her sentence.
EDI's hologram pauses for a moment, half lit-up, and although the hologram is just a weird blue globey thing, Shepard can't help but think that it looks like her mouth is hung open in confusion. After a pregnant pause, she speaks again. "That was—"
"—a joke, EDI," Joker says, rolling his eyes. Tali probably does the same, although she can't tell. (Actually, she isn't sure if quarians can roll their eyes. She could probably find pictures of unmasked quarians on certain parts of the extranet...or just ask Joker if he has any in that huge porn stash of his, though that would be an Extremely Awkward way to satisfy her curiosity over what she considers to be a purely academic question. Best to leave it.)
"Right," Shepard says, checking that the tether was properly clipped onto her safety harness. "Ready to head out, vas Normandy?"
A bit of a silly question, admittedly, because Tali was already here waiting for her. She should have said 'let's head out, vas Normandy' instead, but then that would mean she was ready to step into the airlock, and to wait for the airlock to depressurize, and then the airlock would be open to the vacuum of space, and then she would have to go out of the airlock, and then—
And then she realizes Tali had already entered the airlock, and giving her another Look, though somehow it seems different than the one she usually gets. She takes a slow breath, shakes the dust from her head. Lifts her left foot, puts it in front of her. Lifts her right foot, puts it in front of her. And again. And again, until she's inside the airlock and the inner airlock door is slowly closing behind her and the shakes start up in her right hand.
Just another mission, she tells herself. She's aware of Tali watching her, and she taps some vague rhythm against her thigh in an attempt to hide the shakes of her traitor hand. The airlock starts to depressurize, and the outer airlock doors start to open—slowly, so that they don't get yanked out into the void of space, even though their magboots are already latched to the airlock's floor.
"Tali," she says, and she wonders how much the rasp of her own uneven breathing comes over the helmet's tinny comms.
"Yes, Shepard?" That's Tali's voice, although it sounds a bit different coming over the comms than through the little speakers on her mask, because sound doesn't travel through the vacuum of space that she's about to step out into once the outer airlock doors open fully—
Just tell her, you idiot. And some part of her wants to, knows that Tali wouldn't think any less of her for not wanting to go on a spacewalk, not after—not after—not after—
But she is over it. Over it. Because if she tells Tali that means Tali will realize that things were Not Right with her and since Tali is a nice person she will suggest that perhaps somebody else can help her and then she'll fucking back out of this (because although she doesn't consider herself a coward she's damned terrified at the prospect of suffocating in the vacuum of space) and then if she goes back inside that means somebody else has to suit up and come out here to act as lookout and that is wasted time they could not afford with her crew kidnapped and gone and she wasn't going to let this become another Mindoir/Akuze/Alchera/etc etc because she was sick and tired of losing the people around her and she didn't want to lose them again and she would not let it happen and that meant she had to do this. She could do this. She had to do this, because she is over it.
"What—" Shepard has to force the words out. Speaking is difficult at times like these, when the rat in her brain is spinning full force on its wheel and sending all the thoughts bouncing around her skull and exploding like fireworks and confetti. "What are you fixing?"
And Tali immediately launches into one of her half-Khelish, half-English explanations of the Cyclonic Barrier Technology they had installed onto the Normandy: something something patrol fleet something something incoming kinetic energy something something emitters—bless her heart, Tali doesn't seem to realize that she's talking at a level far above what her bosh'tet captain is even capable of understanding. But Shepard doesn't break the news to her, just stands there and nods every so often and lets herself concentrate on the gentle accent—something something sensors something something voltages something something field bleed something something capacitors (the gist of it seems to be that under a set of Very Specific Circumstances, the fancy spinning barriers may stop spinning—or they may overload and suffer a Catastrophic Failure, leaving a large section of the Normandy's portside exposed to attacks, which probably would not be a good thing)—and her brain settles down a bit and the thoughts in there stop whiplashing around so violently and even the shakes in her traitor hand seem to calm down a bit.
And she prods at it a bit, like her tongue had kept prodding at the spaces where her molars had been after her first visit with the Alliance Dental Corps: yes, you're going out into the vacuum of space, but this time she just feels...calm. Just another mission. She has safety tether and her training and a quarian who'd been doing spacewalks as long as she had (and three hundred years of living on starships probably inscribed this kind of thing into their genetic code).
She'd be fine.
Of course, all her calm seems to fall away the moment she's actually facing the open airlock door, looking out into those distant flecks of light. If she shot at one of them with Lex Parsimoniae...well, the shots wouldn't actually hit the star, because the light she was seeing in this present moment was actually from years and years ago, but they would just keep going and going and going since there wasn't any gravity or friction to slow them down, and then maybe years and years down the line (by which point the three shots that Lexie gave off would probably be scattered thousands of light-years apart) they would hit something, but space was really empty so maybe they'd just keep hurtling towards the edge of the universe until thermodynamic equilibrium inevitably had its way (and in some weird way, Shepard found a small comfort in this, because even the damn Reapers were ultimately powerless against Entropy.)
She used to love the stars.
"I'll go first," Tali says through the comm. She peels away from Shepard's side, steps across the airlock with such an ease that it was difficult to tell she was even using magboots, steps out the airlock, and—disappears. And although the logic center of her brain knows that her quarian friend is just outside, there's still a strange pang of fear. And aloneness. She hadn't wanted to die alone—
She doesn't want to die alone—
Shepard takes a step forward. Tries to take a step forward; her body suddenly isn't cooperating. In a choice between Fight or Flight, her stupid brain instead chose to Freeze. She curses to herself—near-silently, so that the comms don't pick it up—and takes a slow breath. Tries to imagine herself walking over to the edge of the airlock, grabbing the bar, swinging up onto the hull. Something she's done dozens of times before, something that went back to those giant water tanks they kept on earth for basic Alliance zero-gee training (because while moving around in water was an imperfect simulacrum of actually moving around in zero-gee, it helped to get used to the Otherness of having to actively think of every movement, and if things went sideways it was easier to fish someone out of the tank then it was to retrieve them if they drifted off into space).
"Shepard," came Tali's voice through the comm. "Are you coming?"
Just another mission.
"On my way." The words don't sound like they're coming from herself. They sound far too calm, far too composed. She's already aware of the shakes starting back up in her traitor hand, and she has to force her foot off the ground. Right foot, left foot, right foot—
Until she's standing at the edge, back to the stars, clinging onto the grip bar to pull herself onto the Normandy's hull.
And then she's faced with the thought of stepping off the edge, the electromagnets in her boots unlatching from the floor and her grip on that fragile metal bar the only thing that kept her from slipping away into the void, never to be found again, alone until she ran out of oxygen and died all alone and she didn't want to die alone again—
It's the fear of heights, but not of gravity, but the lack of gravity, and the lack of air, and the silence, the suffocating silence pressing in on her but then a clap of thunder as her eardrums burst, saliva fizzling on her tongue, pressure on her chest—
(If things go terribly wrong, she has fifteen seconds of useful consciousness. Even if it feels like a lot longer.)
can't do this—
have to do this—
HAVE TO DO THIS—
And she unlatches her magboots, and pulls herself upwards, and for just the briefest moment she remembers how much she used to enjoy the feeling of zero-gee, and she thinks of Major Tom floating in a most peculiar way, but then she remembers his fate, and maybe he just was just a damn junkie, but some part of her thinks that perhaps once he had slipped the surly bonds of earth he just didn't want to come back down, flying too close to the sun and melting wings and Entropy taking everything—
And then she forgets one of the most important rules of zero-gee, think before moving, and differences between weight and mass and inertia and having to move slowly, and instead of her feet landing neatly on the hull like they were supposed to, they swing outwards instead and then upwards, and then her traitor hand is shaking so hard that she loses her grip on the bar and suddenly everything is oriented the wrong way, because she's oriented the wrong way, with your feet in the air and your head on the ground, and her shoulder slams against something, and it's weird to have her shoulder slam against something but not actually hear it, but she also kind of can hear it, because the sound conducted through her bones—
(In EVA, there is no such thing as a 'small mistake.')
And before her brain can stop it, her left hand lets go of the bar, to reach for the air hose at the back of her neck (fifteen seconds), even though it's tucked safely inside the pressure suit, not exposed where it could be knocked loose like it had last time.
She begins to drift away from the Normandy.
The only thought in her head is: Well, this isn't good.
In fact, it would be very bad—if it wasn't for the three-fingered hand wrapped tight around her wrist, pulling her back in.
"Magboots," Tali says once Shepard's feet are safely on the Normandy's hull, and Shepard activates them. She's glad enough to let the quarian take charge for now.
"You'd best take the lead for now." Shepard keeps her tone Deliberately Neutral, not letting anything leak through (partly because she doesn't want Tali to lose confidence, partly because she doesn't want herself to lose confidence). She's glad that she doesn't have that stubborn pride that prevented some people from being unable to admit that things were Not Right with them and that they should step aside and let someone else take charge of a mission.
Even if her choice of words is careful, even if she doesn't want to outright admit it (because she knows that Tali is still blaming herself for the massacre of her team on Haestrom, even though that had mostly been due to extenuating circumstances rather than any particular qualities in her leadership), Tali'Zorah is in charge of this mission now. She had been, from the moment that she stepped out of the airlock ahead of Shepard.
"You haven't done this in a while, have you."
A half-question, half-statement, and for some reason Tali says it in English. Although Shepard can't quite pin down the inflection in her voice, she has a feeling that it's also meant to be Deliberately Neutral.
Shepard doesn't answer at first; instead, she crouches down and begins to unloop the length of tether from her belt. She doesn't bother to hide the shakes in her traitor hand, because now she has a decent enough reason for them to even be present in the first place. But somehow, the fact that she doesn't have to hide it anymore is enough to calm it down. Funny thing, that.
And once the heavy electromagnet at the end of her tether is attached to the Normandy's hull, once she has that thick white cable that's her umbilical cord to the ship, the knot of anxiety/fear/unease/etc etc in her chest and stomach begins to untwist itself—but it doesn't fully go away. She gathers up the length of extra tether, straightens herself to her feet. Each movement slow and precise.
"Shepard?" Through the thin layers of her pressure suit, she can feel Tali place a hand on her back; she nearly jerks away from the touch (because she dislikes being touched without any warning), but then think before moving pounds into her head and she doesn't.
She turns and looks at Tali. The stars are reflecting off her mask, and she can just faintly see the bright spots of her eyes.
Tali withdraws her hand. "Will you be all right? I can get"—here, she pauses just long enough —"Legion to help me."
(And Shepard can't help but notice that, and be proud of Tali for that, because not more than a week ago, Legion had been "that thing.")
She knows that she's supposed to answer Tali's question, but she doesn't. Instead, she looks up at the stars. Out come the stars—pinholes of light in a moth eaten blanket held over the night. In space, with no atmosphere to send the light scattering about and make them twinkle, their light shines steady. Even if the stars are burned out or faded away, their light is still there years and years and years later.
But hanging ominous against the backdrop of those pinholes of light is the Omega-4 relay. Far enough away to almost mistake it for a star itself—except for that foreboding red glow from its core. (Was that red glow meant to be an Ominous Warning? Some byproduct of the damn relay pointing straight to the middle of the galaxy? Or somebody losing a shipment of red sand nearby?)
And beyond the relay is her crew, and she had failed them, she thought she was being so clever when EDI told her about the fake distress call, thought she was being so clever bringing the entire team on the shuttle and leaving the Normandy safely tucked behind another relay but defenseless, and she had failed them—
"Shepard." Tali's tone of voice is no longer Deliberately Neutral; it's shifted into the kind of frustrated/concerned/worried/etc etc tone that usually comes accompanied with a Look, but if Tali is giving her one she can't see it past all the star-reflections. "I need you to tell me if you're okay."
And although Shepard wants to snap back that she's fine, that this is just another mission (that her been her constant mantra throughout this entire ordeal, and the words were beginning to gain that quality where they were just a loose amalgamation of sounds rather than actual words; if she tried to say them, she'd probably end up tripping over the words and mucking up the pronunciation), she doesn't, because it wouldn't be fair to snap at Tali and because the rat in her brain seemed dead-set in trying to prove to her that this wasn't just another mission. Not for her, at least.
She considers her choices.
Choice 1: She admits that she's terrified to be out here. Tali sends her back inside and gets Legion to help; that would leave nobody in Engineering, but EDI could probably manage things herself. It's a perfectly reasonable choice: Tali wouldn't think any less of her for being terrified of this after suffocating to death in the vacuum of space. Hell, it wasn't even standard procedure for the CO of a ship to participate in EVAs anyways.
Choice 2: She tells Tali she's okay. She finishes the spacewalk without any further incident.
Shepard isn't even sure what the definition of 'okay' is anymore. Had she ever been 'okay' to begin with? Even Before, just like old times, when the three-headed dog didn't have her on an ever-tightening chain, when her storm clouds didn't loom quite as close?
But she knows this much: If she goes back inside, she'll never be able to work up the nerve to do a spacewalk again.
"Still shaking off the rust, vas Normandy." She straightens her spine. "Let's not waste any more time."
There had been a time when Shepard had loved the stars.
It had been in one of her Befores, in that unpleasant in-between time bordered on one end by Mindoir and the other by the Systems Alliance Navy recruitment office in Turonno/Tronna/Chrawnna/etc etc. One year, eight months, and 22 days, though there were a few days missing here and there (and not all of them at the hands of the batarians). A time when her main defense against the Quality People that the foster care system thrust her at had been a wall of silence, a time when her only reprieve against the loneliness had been climbing out a window and up onto a rooftop with a transistor radio (a device that had become so increasingly obsolete and difficult-to-sell that the store owner hadn't even cared about its absence) to watch the stars, even though light pollution and space junk made a mess of the night skies.
Now, a decade-and-a-half later and some thousands of light years away, with no light pollution or space junk in the way, she can almost remember that feeling.
Almost.
She and Tali pick their way across the curved hull of the Normandy, pausing every so often to re-attach their tethers to a new point. Then she watches Tali for a while as the quarian gets on her knees and deftly pries open one of the Normandy's armoured panels, revealing an array of electronic thingamajigs. The knot of anxiety/fear/unease/etc etc is starting to return to her abdomen, and she tries to focus on something else. Anything else.
Tali reaches for something on her toolbelt—a screwdriver. It slips free from her grasp, begins floating away. Tali lets out a Khelish word that Shepard suspects isn't in the translator's dictionary. Shepard catches it and gives it back to her. Tali gives a quick nod of thanks and gets back to work on her repairs.
Shepard almost asks her to say something—anything. Anything to break the silence.
But she doesn't.
Tali pulls something free from the Normandy, one of the electronic thingamajigs, and passes it up to Shepard to hold for her. Shepard examines it, the delicate filaments of circuitry and the transparent parts that look like glass (but she doesn't think it's actually glass, because somehow it seems like a bad idea to use such a breakable material). Even after reading the series of letters and numbers in tiny print on the bottom, she fails to identify the thingamajig, and starts to distract herself from the knot of anxiety/fear/unease/etc etc by releasing it from her hand and watching it float in zero-gee, trying to see if she can make it stay perfectly still. But no matter how careful she is, it always begins to slowly drift away in some direction or another.
"Careful, Shepard." Shepard snatches the thingamajig back into her hand, but Tali sounds more amused than annoyed. "That sensor costs more than you make in a year."
Made in a year, when she was still Alliance. She refuses a salary from Cerberus, as much as the Illusive Man tried to pressure her into taking one, and although it's pointless, from both a pragmatic standpoint and as a token of protest, she does it anyways. Completely pointless, because they see her as an investment, and she's being stupid to think that the three-headed dog will just let her walk away once this mission is over—
And for just a brief moment, she wants to fling the thingamajig—the sensor (she files the definition away into her mind) into space, fling it so fast that she won't be able to grab it, so that they'd have to get it replaced and get the Illusive Man to pay for the damn thing and put an ever-so-tiny dent in his seemingly limitless bank account. And she almost does—her arm stretches backwards, the muscles in her arms bunching in anticipation—
—and then she doesn't. Because getting a new sensor would cost more than money. They'd have to order it, and that would take time, and that time may very well cost the lives of her crew.
If they're even still alive—
Tali stretches her hand upward; Shepard hands back the sensor, and Tali puts it back into the Normandy.
(She can't help but notice that the strange conglomerate of anger/despair/disgust/etc etc she felt at forever being trapped in a rusty cage as one of Cerberus's lackeys was enough to just briefly make her forget her fear about suffocating in the vacuum of space. She can't decide whether it's preferable.)
Shepard's fingers begin to tap a vague rhythm against her thigh again, but she can't hear a thing, not even conduction through her bones. She hums quietly to herself, a tune that snags at the edge of her mind and refuses to leave. She tries to place it, but can't.
Tali lifts her head and looks at her, but it doesn't seem to be a Look. Shepard had forgotten that her comm channel's open.
"Sorry," Shepard says.
"It's okay," Tali says. She looks at Shepard for a moment longer, but then falls back into her repairs.
Shepard doesn't hum again, but the song still plays somewhere inside her head. She can recognize it now, and the logical part of her mind—the part that looked through her sniper rifle's scope and factored together a thousand variables to determine just where her bullet would end up—automatically starts to categorize it: 1990s. Alternative rock. Grunge. CanCon. The rest of her scoffs at this. Rock 'n' roll isn't just a genre, something to box into neat little categories. Rock 'n' roll is a feeling.
Silently, careful not to let a single breath of sound escape, her lips move along: "One more astronaut, in black skin universe..."
But she can't remember the rest of the words. She doesn't think she's heard that song since—Before.
Before.
Before she suffocated in the vacuum of space.
She checks her tether again. It's properly clipped onto her safety harness. She tugs on it a bit; the electromagnet holds fast to the Normandy's hull. No risk—okay, minuscule risk—of her floating off again.
The silence presses in on her again. All she can hear is the sound of blood pumping through her head and her own breathing.
And—
And—
And—
No. She's just overthinking things. That faint hissing sound is just the sound that her suit always makes. It's not the sound of her oxygen leaking out into space.
She checks her oxygen seals. They seem okay. But the hissing sound continues. She tries to remember the last mission she went in full EVA gear for, tries to remember if the hissing sound had been present then. Her mind draws a blank.
The knot of anxiety/fear/unease/etc etc in her abdomen turns icy cold.
"Commander," comes EDI's voice from somewhere and for a moment Shepard looks around to see if EDI's blue hologram had popped up on the Normandy's hull, but then she remembers it's over the comm, because one of EDI's functions is to assist with missions, and this is just another mission. "Your vital signs are rising to elevated levels. Are you well?"
She isn't well. She isn't cistern either, or aquifer, or desalination plant. Oh well.
"I am well," she says, and EDI says nothing more, and all she can hear is that awful hissing—
She can't breathe.
Some part of her is aware of EDI's voice in her ear, telling her that she is starting to hyperventilate. Hyperventilating would mean she is breathing too fast. But that doesn't make sense, she can't be breathing too fast, because she can't breathe—
"Tali," she says—tries to say, but nothing comes out. She tries again, and this time Tali looks up from her repairs.
"Yes, Shepard?"
"I think there's something wrong with my suit. A—leak."
She hadn't known it was possible for someone to move so quickly in magboots; Tali is next to her in an instant. She checks over Shepard's pressure suit.
"No breaches in your suit, Shepard."
No—that can't be right. Her suit is hissing. She can't breathe. Her heart is going too fast. She feels dizzy. Sweat drips down her forehead and into her eyes, making them sting a bit.
(But Tali would know about how to check for suit breaches, because if her suit breaches she could get sick and die, and she says there is no breach in Shepard's pressure suit—)
Tali begins to turn—so that she can go back to her repairs. Shepard nearly reaches out and grabs her arm, but stops herself the last second.
Tali pauses.
She turns towards Shepard, so that they're looking each other in the eye. Well, sort of, because Tali is taller than her, and she can barely see anything past the mask right now, just star-reflections and the distorted reflections of her own eyes—
And her own eyes look terrified.
Tali takes a step toward her, leans down a bit so that this time they actually are eye-to-eye. "Shepard? What's going on?"
"I—can't breathe—"
"The Commander's heart rate and respiration are both above normal levels," EDI interjects. "She is hyperventilating."
"Oh keelah." It's not quite the same frustrated/concerned/worried/etc etc tone as earlier, but she doesn't know how else to describe it. "Give me your omni-tool."
"Tali, I can't breathe." She's going to die out here again, just like she did before, surrounded by stars and no air and silence.
(But Tali wouldn't let her die again, she's been doing spacewalks as long as Shepard has, she knows what she's doing—)
She lifts her left arm, but even in zero-gee it feels slow and heavy, and her fingers feel tingly. Tali takes her arm, activates Lovelace; it flares bright orange, and she taps something into it.
"Wh—"
"I'm adding CO2 to your mixture." The hissing in her suit changes pitch ever-so-slightly. Tali releases Lovelace and then places her hands on Shepard's upper arms. "Shepard, look at me."
"I don't want to die." The voice is small and pleading, and she isn't even entirely sure if it belongs to her. But if not to her, who does it belong to?
"You're not going to die. Right now I need you to breathe with me."
Hadn't she been listening? "But I can't."
"I'm right here, Shepard. I won't let anything happen. Breathe in—" She pulls in a noisy breath herself and taps one finger against Shepard's pressure suit. "Slowly. Now exhale—"
Shepard's breathing hitches a few times, and then automatically slows to match Tali's. The little oxygen-carrying branches in her lungs begin to unfurl, the knot in her chest and stomach disappears, and she realizes that she can breathe, she's okay, there's no leaks in her suit, she isn't dying.
"Keelah," she says, all her muscles suddenly feeling weak.
"Come on," Tali tugs gently on her arm, pulling her along. "You can help me with the rest of the repairs."
Never mind that Lieutenant-Commander Joan Shepard (service no. 5923-AC-2826) doesn't have much experience in engineering outside of combat applications (and the occasional prank). She follows Tali over to the array of sensors and, like Tali, drops down to her knees, feeling the electromagnets there latch onto the hull. Her traitor hand is shaking again.
"Keelah," she says a second time.
Tali shows her how to remove the individual sensors surrounding the persnickety emitter. The problem seems not to be the sensors themselves, but something to do with all the circuits and electric bits underneath, because that is what Tali is checking. Every so often, she lets loose with a soft tirade of Khelish words she doesn't recognize and then replaces some of the electric bits.
"Tali, what's the quarian word for 'stupid'?"
"'Narizy.' Though if you translated it literally it'd be closer to 'acting like a foolish child.'"
"Narizy," Shepard repeats, pushing the last sensor back into place. Her hand isn't shaking anymore. She lets out a small laugh, but it comes out sounding forced. "That's me. I'm narizy."
"You know that's not true." Tali does one last check with her omni-tool and makes sure all the sensors are in tight before she slides the panel closed. She gets back onto her feet, and helps Shepard up. "EDI, open the portside airlock. We're done out here."
Shepard's legs give way once she's back in the airlock and the a-grav takes effect. She sags backwards, letting herself slide into a weird and slightly uncomfortable half-sitting position against the wall. She reaches for her helmet so she can pull it off.
"Not now." Tali taps a finger against her wrist to get her attention, and motions towards the still-closing outer door.
Right. Removing her helmet now would lead to a rather unpleasant result. Such as suffocating in the vacuum of space.
"Narizy," she says again. Stupid. For thinking she was over it. For still going out there when it was clear she was not over it. For letting the rat in her brain take control and interfere with the mission. Stupid.
Tali gives her a Look.
She waits for the outer airlock door to close entirely and the airlock to repressurize before she finally removes her helmet. She lets it drop to the floor, and swipes her hand against her sweaty forehead. It comes away sticky and gross-feeling. When she checks Lovelace, she is a little surprised to find out it hasn't been more than 47 minutes since she stepped into the airlock.
She is aware of Tali sitting down next to her. A three-fingered hand comes over to rest on her arm, but Shepard pulls away. Part of her wonders if quarians had always been big on physical affection, or whether it was due to being stuck inside the suits.
"Are you all right?"
Shepard exhales slowly, looks down at her hand. It's shaking again.
"'One more astronaut in endless old universe'"—she isn't sure why she can remember the words now, but there they are—"'with one more second chance at wondering why he—she's here at all.'"
Lieutenant-Commander Joan Shepard (service no. 5923-AC-2826) wasn't supposed to fall apart during a mission. She sometimes fell apart after a mission—preferably in the privacy of her cabin—but never during a mission (except for that one on Alchera, the rat in her brain reminds her). Falling apart during a mission led to mistakes. Mistakes could lead to unnecessary deaths.
"It happened to me too, you know." Tali shifts a little closer to her, so that their shoulders nearly touch. "On my first spacewalk. I panicked and thought my suit's air had gone bad."
"Tali, you were a kid." A quarian kid who had spent her entire life surrounded by walls, only to be suddenly exposed to the sheer emptiness of space. Hardly the same thing.
"And that wasn't the only time. It happened again a few years ago. Just after I returned from my Pilgrimage."
It takes a few seconds for her brain to catch up with what Tali is actually trying to say: just after after the old Normandy went down.
Shepard closes her eyes.
"Tali, I—didn't die in the explosion."
There. There it was.
"I—my air hose was exposed. It got knocked loose. I couldn't reach it to put it back in." She shouldn't be talking about it. She shouldn't be putting her burdens on her crewmembers. It wasn't fair to them. "I suffocated to death in the vacuum of space. Thoroughly unpleasant way to go." Scared. Lonely. Silent.
She opens her eyes, and sees Tali looking at her.
"I already knew."
Shepard's initial response to that is "Oh."
And then, a few seconds later, "Then why the hell did you even ask me to help you in the first place?"
She intends for her tone of voice to sound annoyed/frustrated/angry/etc etc, but it doesn't really work. Instead, she sounds Deliberately Neutral.
"I thought—" Tali begins. She reaches up a hand and presses it against her facemask. "Keelah, I thought you'd be okay. You never said anything, Shepard."
Shepard tries to think of something to say, but none of the things she thinks of seem like the right thing to say, so she remains silent. Then she thinks of something to say.
"I thought I was over it." Her voice is small again, like it was when she thought she was dying. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Tali has moved, so now she's in front of Shepard again, looking her in the eyes again. "You've got nothing to be sorry about."
The words seem familiar, but she can't place them.
Tali leans forward, arms outstretched—but hesitates. Shepard is the one to close the distance, allowing the quarian to pull her into a hug.
"Tali," she says, the rough-soft fabric of Tali's hood rubbing against her cheek. "Can I ask a question?"
"Yeah, Shepard?"
"...can quarians roll their eyes?"
Tali lets out an exasperated huff of breath. "Crazy bosh'tet."