Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We’ve failed, Tali’Zorah vas Normandy thinks, as she stared out of the Normandy’s viewscreen and sees the Reaper floating in front of the ship.

Since their flight from the Crucible’s blast, and their subsequent crash-landing on an uncharted world, they’ve been out of contact with the rest of the galaxy. Between EDI’s intimate knowledge of the ship’s inner workings, and the expertise of her own repair team, the necessary repairs to get back to earth hadn’t taken more than a couple of days – followed by the week or so spent jetting back to Earth – but those days had felt like years. Everyone had known that the Crucible had done been docked with the Citadel, and that it had done something. They’d also known that Shepard had been up there when it had fired. But, with all communications severed – even the intricate quantum entanglement setup – that was all that they had known. They hadn’t known how things had turned out. Had the blast worked? Had the Reapers won? Was it all over? Their time in FTL had been short and quiet, each member of the crew hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

Now, Tali can’t help but wonder if she prefers the tortured ignorance of the previous days to the grim truth that lies before them.

The Reaper stretches out its appendages, as if to ensnare the Normandy in its grasp. The Normandy, of course, refuses to go quietly. Joker frantically swipes at the screen in front of him and the ship dives, screaming through space in a manoeuvre that has the crew off-balance in the CIC, even with inertia dampeners taking the brunt of the blow. For her part, Tali clings frantically onto Joker’s seat, trying to ignore the pain from her wounds. Taking a Reaper blast back in London had, as Shepard would have phrased it, knocked her body and immune system ‘for six’. She had been up and walking as soon as physically possible, but that had been more due to her desperation to ensure the ship stayed in one peace long enough to get her back to Shepard than anything else, and it had been against Chakwas’ recommendation. She hisses as pain flares up in her arms and chest, her helmet’s modulator morphing the sound into something akin to a door sliding open.

Tali can’t hear the roar of the Normandy’s well-used Thanix cannons, but she can see the shots blast into the Reaper. She can also see how little effect they have. Further out in space, beyond their ship and the enemy in front of them, she can see Earth, surrounded on all sides by fleets. Turian, Quarian, Geth… and Reaper. Is the battle still raging? Surely one side should have destroyed the other by now.

Joker mutters something under his breath as he all but punches the Normandy’s controls, but then, a ping. Someone’s messaging them.

“Is someone really trying to call us now?” Joker sounds close to hysterics as he weaves the Normandy away from the Reaper before doing an about turn. Again, the Normandy’s primary cannon fires, and again, it’s totally ineffective.

“It is Admiral Hackett,” says EDI. There is obvious, genuine confusion in the AI’s voice, and it makes Tali uncomfortable – EDI may be her friend, but Tali grew up in a society that feared and despised smart AIs on principle, and she knows it will take a lifetime for her to unlearn what she has been taught. “His call is highest priority.”

“Patch it through,” Tali orders before Joker can say anything. The comm crackles, and the deep rasp of Admiral Hackett fills the CIC.

“-ormandy, stand down!” The admiral is almost shouting. Tali doesn’t think she’s ever heard him sound so frantic before. “That’s an order!”

Joker forces a laugh that sounds more like a cry. “What the hell does he mean, stand down?”

“Could he be indoctrinated?” Tali asks, feeling her heart sink at the prospect. What have we missed?

“The Rea… are no longer a t-reat,” the admiral continues, words cut and spliced by a bad connection. “-war is over. Cease fire.”

The clank of armoured footsteps alerts Tali to Garrus’ arrival on the bridge. The Turian, who has taken unofficial command of the ship in Shepard’s absence, muscles forward until he’s standing behind Joker. When she turns to look at him, she can still see smears of blood and grime on his face from their ground battle in London. She thinks that he’s been working himself too hard, but she hasn’t been brave enough to tell him that yet.

“EDI, Traynor, clean up this connection,” he orders, his voice carrying through the ship. Then, he turns to face the console. “Say again, sir?”

“The wa-r -s over,”, Hackett repeats.

Tali has never considered Garrus a particularly emotive person, but she sees his jaw drop now. Joker’s hands fly, and the Normandy stops dead. The Reaper is still floating in front of them – and only now does Tali realise that it is making no move to attack.

“If it’s over,” Garrus says, slowly, “then why the hell is a Reaper the first thing we see when we drop out of FTL?”

Tali hears Hackett sigh over the scratchy static of their barely-working comms.

“We’re still figuring that part out- -or ourselves. When the crucible fired, it- -d something to the Reapers and their forces. We don’t know what, but ever since it went off, the Reapers haven’t fired a single shot. More than th- -their forces have begun to retreat from Earth.”

“You’re kidding me,” mutters Joker, still staring at the Reaper in front of them. “The Crucible doesn’t kill the Reapers, but make them…” he gestures, helplessly, at the war machine in front of them. “…like that?”

“We were never sure of the Crucible’s function,” EDI reminds them, ever the pragmatist. “This is as likely a scenario as any other.”

Joker tightly clutches the arms of his chair. “I mean, I prefer it to the Reapers killing us all,” he reasons, “but this is so far beyond weird. They’re really not doing anything?”

“I’m afraid it gets weirder.” Hackett sounds so- so uncertain. It scares Tali. She’d never known the old human admiral well, not like Shepard, or even like other Alliance members such as Joker or Chakwas. But the few times she’s interacted with him, he’s always come across as one-hundred-percent calculated and in control. The fact that he sounds as if he barely knows what he’s talking about fills her with worry.

Joker snorts. “Hit us,” he remarks.

“As you - -or may not know, the Mass Relays were destroyed by the blast of energy that came from the Crucible.” Hackett explains. Tali nods, even though Hackett can’t see her. They hadn’t known, but they’d figured - once EDI and engineering had gotten the Normandy’s instruments back working, they’d realised that none of the Mass Relays were appearing on any of their instruments or scanners. It was only through the luck of crash-landing on a planet near the Sol system that the ship arrived back at Earth in days, and not in weeks or months or years.

“We know,” Garrus confirms. “Or, at least, we figured.”

“Maybe an hour after the crucible fired, and the Reapers pulled back, they began to fly over to the Charon relay,” continues Hackett. “And they started to fix the damn thing.”

“Charon relay?” asks Garrus, seemingly for clarification, as if which relay the Reapers are fixing is more important than the fact that the Reapers are fixing the relays.

“You’ll know it as Sol,” explains Hackett, priorities seemingly aligning with Garrus’. Tali shares a bewildered look with Joker as the two talk. “Semantics aside, it’s the relay closest to Earth.”

“Sir,” EDI interrupts with a strained air to her voice, “perhaps my systems are still damaged from the firefight over London, but I cannot ascertain any logical reasoning behind the Reapers’ actions.”

Neither can Tali. Perhaps it makes sense for the Reapers to want the relays functioning, given that they use them for FTL the same way that everyone else does – but they wouldn’t break off their attack just to fix them. That can’t be it.

Joker nods frantically. “Yeah, I’m with EDI on this one. This doesn’t make any sense!”

Hackett’s voice crackles over the comms. “On that, we can agree.”

Tali stares up at the Reaper again. It’s eyes, if she can call them that – and were the eyes of a Reaper always so hauntingly blue? – stare, unblinking, at the Normandy.

“If they’re fixing the relay,” she says, “then what’s this one doing here?”

“Damndest thing,” Hackett grunts. “It broke off from its repairs a few minutes ago and jumped to this location. No indication that it was about to move, and no clear reason as to why it did. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was greeting you.”

The crew on the bridge stare silently up at the unmoving monstrosity before them. Garrus’ scarred mandible twitches in silent contemplation. EDI’s gaze is calculating and unbroken. Tali doesn’t think she’s felt so sick since their last day of shore leave.

“Fuck,” breathes Joker.

-

Days pass, and the mystery of what exactly the Crucible did to the Reapers comes no closer to being solved. The Normandy docks at what must be the last remaining intact spaceport in London, and her battered crew disperse to gather their bearings and stretch their legs. Traynor disappears for hours to contact her surviving family; Garrus does the same. Kaidan spends at least a whole day just sitting on a broken veranda, overlooking the destroyed city they’ve landed in and sipping on beer – he keeps one bottle off to the side, like he’s saving it for someone, and everyone pretends as though they don’t know who the gesture is dedicated to. Liara hides away in her room, with Glyph and her terminals and her information network. Donnelley and Daniels and Adams work in shifts to finish their repairs, and close that world of distance between ‘working’ and ‘no problems at all’. In a similar vein, Cortez works himself to the bone, touching up the Kodiak and then taking odd job after odd job around the ship until James bullies him into take a break.

Meanwhile, Tali spends the days laid up in the medbay, running a fever, sending messages to Auntie Raan and the rest of the admiralty board, staring at the ceiling and tuning out whatever medical advice Chakwas is giving her as she waits for news of Shepard. She doesn’t feel as sad as she knows she should – in fact, she doesn’t really react to anything at all. It’s like she’s in a fugue state, somewhere between asleep and awake, simply existing as she waits for news.

She won’t claim to be alone in her wait – in fact, just about the entire crew seems to be waiting on news of Shepard. (And why wouldn’t they be?) But they receive nothing. The Citadel is reclaimed, and a search begins, but there’s so much chaos to sort through, and so many dead bodies to identify, that finding the commander could take years.

After six days, they find the bodies of both Admiral Anderson and the Illusive Man, as well as Shepard’s blood on the floor. But there is no sign of Shepard himself. Tali wants to cry.

But she doesn’t. Not yet.

After seven days, Tali is deemed well enough to be dismissed from the infirmary, with a warning to not strain herself. She is greeted by bone-crushing hug from Urdnot Wrex, who’s crossed the city to visit the Normandy, that almost sends her right back into medical care. A laugh is forced out of her, and she hugs him back as best she can. She spies Liara, and Garrus, and Kaidan on the periphery of their vision, and tries to enjoy the sensation of being back together with almost all the members of the original Normandy’s ground team. Tries to ignore the sting in her heart at the absence of not only Ashley, but Shepard as well.

“Look at you!” Wrex booms. “Up and at ‘em after only a week’s worth of bed rest.” The words have a sarcastic edge that Tali picks up on, but at the same time, there’s an earnestness in Wrex’s tone that stops her from calling it out.

“Chakwas wanted it to be closer to a month,” she admits, wriggling out of his grasp before he can squeeze her again. She prefers her suit un-punctured, if at all possible. “But I couldn’t just sit there while everyone else was busy.”

Wrex nods. He respects her decision. “True enough. This past week, you’ve probably been the only thing on this planet not working.”

Chakwas speaks up. “As a matter of fact,” she says in her usual clipped tone, “Tali’s body has been working very hard to fight off infection and disease, as it is wont to do in the case of multiple suit ruptures on a filthy battlefield.” Her attention shifts from Wrex to the rest of the gathered crew, who up until now have been silently watching the interaction. “While she is no longer in mortal peril, I don’t want anyone to presume that she’s fully fit for duty just because she’s spent so much time lying down.”

Tali opens her mouth to protest, but then closes it. She knows her limits, and Chakwas isn’t wrong. As if having a tank explode on her in the middle of a warzone hadn’t been bad enough, those days she’d spent working on the Normandy instead of resting had pushed her to her brink. It had been foolish, reckless behaviour, and she’s lucky that this is all she’s coming away with.

“Right,” she nods. “I’ll- I’ll be in engineering.” It’s automatic – an instinct to retreat to where she’s most comfortable – and she regrets it the second Chakwas folds her arms and glares sternly at her. “I won’t be doing anything strenuous!” she protests. “Just- you know, diagnostics, or something. To make sure that Donnelley and Daniels haven’t messed anything up without me.” Her attempt at humour comes out as too genuine, and falls flat, and she turns and walks away before anyone can say anything else. On her periphery, she hears Wrex ask about Shepard.

She walks faster.

-

After eight days, the Normandy’s crew is sent in for an urgent meeting with Admiral Hackett. Tali makes a conscious effort to not get her hopes up.

“What’s the situation, admiral?” Garrus asks as the crew settle into their chairs – Kaidan may technically be the Normandy’s XO, but Garrus is the voice of the ship and the crew. He’s the one that they look to now that Shepard’s not here.

(“I think that’s how it should be,” Kaidan had said before the end of the war, when Tali had asked him about it. “Garrus- Garrus was with him through thick and thin. He never gave up on Shepard, not even for a second. And we- most of us, but especially me, we didn’t give Shepard the time of day when he came back. We had stuff to do, or we just…” he’d trailed off. “But Garrus would always just drop everything to support Shepard. And maybe that was a luxury the rest of us didn’t have. But he did it anyway. No-one’s proved their loyalty to Shepard more than him.”)

“Unchanged,” say Hackett, steepling his arms. The old human looks almost as tired as Shepard had by the end of the war, which is saying something. Tali wonders if there’s any part of the human fleet that doesn’t fall under his direct responsibility at this point. It weighs on him, visibly, and Tali’s heart goes out to him as she remembers her own agonies of leadership.

“We are still alive,” Javik says from the corner, “but the Reapers are still here.”

Javik has been taking the situation… poorly. As far as he is concerned, it is an elaborate trick – a ploy by the Reapers to get everyone’s guard down before springing back into action and crushing them all in one fell swoop. His conviction is such that, at least according to scuttlebutt, he’s spent the week hunting down and destroying any Reaper ground forces that haven’t left Earth yet. She doubts he’s the only one.

For her part, Tali may not agree with his assessment, but she can understand his fear. When she’d stepped off the Normandy after being set free from the medbay, and had seen the Reapers looming in Earth’s skies, her pulse rate had quickened and she’d reached for the pistol at her hip before restraining herself.

She doesn’t suspect that that fear is going to leave her any time soon.

“Correct,” Hackett says. “They’re still busy fixing up the Mass Relay, and they’re making ridiculously good progress. At the rate they’re going, the relay will be usable again in days.”

“Does that have something to do with this meeting, or what?” James butts in, coming close enough to cutting Hackett off that Tali clenches her jaw. Thankfully, however, Hackett either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about one soldier’s almost-insubordination.

“In a way.” Says Hackett. “The fact of the matter is, we’ve still made no progress in determining why the Reapers are behaving the way that they are. Obviously, it has something to do with the Crucible, but that doesn’t exactly narrow it down, and it’d put a lot of minds at ease if we could actually figure out what we’re working with, here.” He pauses to take a breath, and this time, Joker is the one who cuts in.

“Sir,” he snaps, “you can’t be serious.”

“I know it sounds like a tall order-” Hackett tries to regain control of the conversation, but by now, Joker has the reigns, and he is guiding them like the expert pilot he is.

“Forget ‘tall order’, it sounds insane. I know that suicide missions are our specialty, but this?”

“Someone has to do it, flight lieutenant,” Hackett thunders, “and we haven’t exactly been swamped with requests.”

“Yeah, wasn’t that a tactic they used during the Earth invasion?” Joker spits. “Asking people to go inside them for negotiations, and then indoctrinating them?” It’s clear he doesn’t intend to budge on the matter; and that’s important. Joker is their pilot. If he doesn’t want to cooperate, the Normandy may as well be grounded.

Tali stares at the floor and plays with her hands. Making contact with the Reapers… it seems insane. But then again, Reapers peacefully existing beside organics seemed insane as well, only a week ago.

“It’s worth investigating,” Liara offers, speaking up for the first time. “After all, for all our research, there’s still so much we don’t know about the Crucible, and how it works. Perhaps it has some way to actually destroy the Reapers, rather than simply neutralising them. Or perhaps its pacification of the Reapers is only temporary.”

“In which case, we’d be on borrowed time without even knowing it,” Hackett agrees.

“How are we supposed to figure it out, though?” James asks. “Talk to them? I mean, the Reapers have a hell of a CV as far as wiping out all life in the galaxy goes, but I never figured that any of them were big into conversation. Conversation with us puny mortals, anyway.”

It’s Kaidan who speaks up. “We’ve seen them communicate with people before. Sovereign talked to us on Virmire.”

Tali shudders as she remembers their first meeting with the Reapers’ advance guard. “Your Words Are As Empty As Your Future,” Sovereign had told them. “I Am The Vanguard Of Your Destruction.” If they have to talk to a Reaper again, she hopes that the next one won’t be quite as existentially horrifying.

“Not to mention,” Garrus adds, “Shepard told us about how he spoke to Harbinger after he sent the asteroid towards the Alpha Relay.”

Tali remembers that too. Indirectly, of course – she hadn’t been there – but Shepard had mentioned it to her during one of the nights he’d spent sleepless, wracked with guilt over all the lives he’d ended for the sake of delaying the Reapers’ arrival. (Without his gift for words, there was nothing that she’d been able to say to him to make it all better; she’d settled for taking him into her arms and holding him close.)

(What she would give to hold him, now.)

Hackett nods. Garrus speaks up again.

“Sir, we know it’s possible. But you have to admit, the idea of going up there to talk with one… it’s not something that any of us are comfortable with.”

“I’d be surprised if it was.” Hackett sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can refuse,” he admits. “If any ship and her crew have earnt that right, it’s all of you. But this is a critical assignment, and it’d probably give just about the whole galaxy some comfort to see the Normandy, of all ships, carry it out.” He pulls his hand away from his face, and makes a conscious effort to straighten up. “At least think about it.”

All Tali intends to do is think about it, but then James – of all people – speaks.

“We should do it,” he says.

Everyone turns to look at him, but he doesn’t balk under the attention. If anything, he perks up. His next words are louder. More impassioned.

“Not that I’m looking forward to it, but Hackett’s got a point. Is there anyone we’d trust other than ourselves to get this done?”

James’ words strike a chord in Tali, and it’s clear by the gazes and mutters that she’s not the only one. From where he’s been standing against the wall in the corner, Javik straightens up.

“I am still not convinced that this is not a trick by the Reapers,” he voices, prompting at least one eye-roll from the rest of the assembled crew. He holds out his hand. “And if it is a trick, then I would like nothing more than to make them pay for it myself.” His fist clenches. Clearly, it’ll take more than the apparent end of the war for him to let go of his mantle as the avatar of vengeance.

Garrus nods, silently. Joker, seeing which way the wind is blowing, loudly groans.

“Alright, fine.” He begins to manoeuvre himself out of his seat, waving his hand dismissively when EDI reaches out to assist him. “But I didn’t survive through the whole of this stupid war just to be killed by a last-gasp Reaper trap. If the Normandy gets destroyed again, I’m haunting you all.”

After sparing Joker a glance, Garrus turns back to Hackett.

“We’ll get it done, sir,” he declares. Kaidan and James nod in sync behind him, a sight that brings the ghost of a smile to Tali’s lips behind the mask.

Hackett narrows his eyes.

“Of course you will,” he agrees. He makes to rise, and Tali realises that there’s something that no-one seems willing to talk about.

“What about Shepard?” She asks.

Mentioning Shepard is like setting off some kind of anti-bomb in the meeting room. All noise and activity seems to be sucked out of the air, leaving everyone standing still and silent, waiting for someone else to respond.

Hackett responds first. “What about him?” He asks her, tone questioning but not accusatory. Her hands begin to fidget all the same.

“I just…” she knows what she wants to say, but doesn’t know how to say it. Now that she’s opened her mouth, it seems like a selfish and childish wish. “I would have thought… I wanted… the Normandy’s first mission after we finished repairs…” she trails off. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Garrus’ gaze soften, sympathetic. She hates it. The sympathy is appreciated, of course, especially from a friend as dear to her as Garrus, but she hates it all the same.

“Miss Vas Normandy,” Hackett says in a voice that is soft by his standards, and she turns her attention back to him. “After this mission, I’ll ensure that you and your crew have all necessary permissions to look for Shepard for as long as you need.”

Tali nods respectfully, on autopilot and running on instinct drilled into her through growing up with her father and the other admirals. Someone – probably Garrus, if the number of fingers is any indication – takes her arm and leads her out of the meeting room. She tries to ignore the way Hackett had phrased his permission.

She gets the sense that he doesn’t expect them to find anything.

-

The Normandy ascends back into the stars the next day. As well as the full compliment of available crew, two extra souls are on board: Urdnot Grunt, and Zaeed Massani.

Grunt, as he had explained when he’d arrived, was sent by Wrex as a representative of the Krogan and clan Urdnot.

“The old man wants to come himself, but he’s too busy coordinating our forces here,” he’d said. “So he sent me. Not like I’ve got anything else important to do now that Aralakh Company is gone.” Tali had winced as his words, remembering the terrifying mission to rescue the Rachni Queen and the loss of an entire elite krogan unit, but Grunt hadn’t seemed to be disturbed by the memory. (She envied him – she still saw those little spider swarmers in her nightmares sometimes.)

Garrus had asked him what he’d thought of the situation, and he’d responded by cackling and slamming his fists together. “I hope it’s some kind of trick by the Reapers,” he’d growled with a worrying amount of enthusiasm. “I want to rip them apart with my bare hands.”

Quietly, Tali had begun to wonder how much of Javik’s confrontational nature was his own personality, and how much of it was due to whatever evolutionary energy he was absorbing through living in Grunt’s old quarters.

As for Zaeed, the veteran merc had showed up right before the Normandy had been due to take off. Tali had greeted him cordially – she’d never been very close to him, foul-tempered old man that he was, but he’d still been crew – but he hadn’t actually given a reason for his presence, instead simply insisting that he join their mission. He’s standing by her side at that moment, watching from the one of the windows on the crew deck as Earth becomes smaller and smaller amongst the stars.

“How’d you find the Normandy?” she asks, breaking the contemplative silence as she turns to Zaeed.

He shrugs. “She’s a hard ship to miss, especially with a good communications tap. And I was in the area anyway. Figured I’d drop by.”

Tali isn’t sure what to make of his presence. For all that his demeanour had left to be desired, Zaeed had been a reliable member of the Normandy’s crew during their mission through the Omega-4 Relay, but when the crew had disbanded after Shepard’s arrest, he’d left with no indication that he would return.

“Why?” She cannot help but ask him.

Zaeed shrugs again. “Heard about your mission,” he says. “I told Shepard I’d gut the bastards. Figured it was in my best interests to know whether there were still bastards to gut.”

She still isn’t sure what to make of him, but she won’t complain about the extra help, so she leaves the conversation there. That, and the mention of Shepard has her stomach feeling as though it’s been tied up in knots.

The ship rumbles. She heads up to the CIC. Whatever’s going on, she wants to see for herself.

Joker spares her a quick greeting as she reaches the Normandy’s cockpit. EDI is there, as are Liara and James.

“A Reaper’s broken off from the relay repairs to meet us again,” Liara explains. Tali stares out of the viewscreen and sees the behemoth racing through space towards them at an uncomfortable speed. With the Normandy cruising towards it in kind, it feels as though they’re on a collision course.

Joker scoffs. “Bet you it’s the same one from last week. That’s the kind of weird I’m expecting.”

James shakes his head. “Ain’t no way I’m taking you up on that bet.”

“Vega!” Joker spins around in his chair, spreading his arms wide. “You’re finally getting used to our brand of crazy!”

Vega laughs. “You kidding? Pretty sure I checked out after we fought Shepard’s clone on the Citadel. I’ve been taking everything that’s been thrown our way in stride since then – embrace the weirdness, you know? This is just me agreeing that yeah, it makes sense for the same Reaper to single us out twice.”

Liara shakes her head a little. “There is no reason why it wouldn’t be the same Reaper, but there is no reason why it would be the same Reaper, either.”

“Liara is correct,” adds EDI. Joker rolls his eyes.

“Yeah yeah, way to spoil our fun,” he chides as their ship approaches the Reaper. Tali sees it grows closer. And closer. And closer. She tenses up as she watches, a prisoner to the instinctive fear that the war has drilled into her.

Joker must be on a similar wavelength to her; he abruptly stops the ship, parking it in space as the Reaper gets closer. And closer. And closer still. She sees Joker lean back in his chair, and EDI lean forward in hers. Tali keeps watching. At the rate its approaching them, its tentacles could envelop the Normandy in seconds.

It’s too close, she thinks, but before she can say anything, the Reaper finally – finally – stops. It shudders to a halt with a silent groan, and Tali breathes a sigh of relief.

“Jesus”, hisses James.

For a few moments, they wait for something to happen. Nothing does. They stare at the Reaper, and the Reaper stares at them. At least, Tali thinks it’s staring. Nothing she sees indicates that it’s really looking at them, but she feels it all the same. The sensation chills her. To use a human saying – one that Shepard was always fond of – it feels like someone has walked over her grave.

She sees Joker reach up and adjust his hat.

“Hey, EDI,” he says, reaching out to his controls, “bear with me. I want to try something.”

“There is a chance you are thinking the same thing as me, Jeff,” responds EDI, bringing up her own set of controls in kind. Under their careful guidance, the Normandy begins to bank to one side. Slowly, at first, and slowly accelerating in speed, although never going too fast. For a moment, Tali wonders what they’re doing, and whether or not they’ve both lost their minds, but then she looks up and sees what’s going on. As they move faster and faster to the side, the Reaper mirrors their movements. It’s tracking them, never coming any closer to the ship but always positioning itself so that it’s directly in front of them.

Tali feels sick again.

“Alright,” Joker says abruptly, taking his hands off of the controls. “That’s that theory tested. And proven. Unfortunately.”

“This is makin’ me feel uncomfortable,” James grumbles, folding his arms.

“Yeah, you and me both, pal,” responds Joker.

They are silenced by a ping from the Normandy’s comm systems. For a moment, everyone stares. Then, Liara slowly reaches over and opens the channel.

For a moment, there is nothing. Then, there is a voice like a whisper and a shout at the same time, mechanised and modulated.

“Enter.”

As the voice speaks, the Reaper moves. It adjusts its angle, tilting upwards so it’s facing away from them. As it does that, it’s tentacles flare open, and Tali sees some sort of doorway open up where the machine’s ‘mouth’ ought to be. It takes a moment for her to register the connotations, and understand that the Reaper is asking them to venture inside of it. But when she does, she reels.

“…We’re not actually going in there, right?” Asks James. When no-one else speaks up to assuage his fears, he mutters something to himself and performs a gesture that Tali remembers seeing Ashley do once or twice – the human religious ritual where they tap their head and chest and shoulders in turn.

“We’ve gone into a Reaper before,” points out Tali, trying to calm herself as much as she’s trying to calm anyone else.

It doesn’t seem to work. “Yeah, a derelict Reaper that had been out of commission for – how many millions of years was it, EDI?” asks Joker.

“Thirty-seven,” EDI confirms.

Joker nods, point seemingly proven. “That many. The point is, it was dead in the ether, not alive and beckoning.”

Liara looks torn between repulsion and fascination. “This is important,” she tells them, stepping forward and pressing a hand against the viewscreen like she’s trying to make contact with the Reaper from inside the ship. “The crucible, the Reapers being pacified – nothing like this could have ever happened in galactic history before. This is uncharted territory.”

“I’d feel a lot better about it if we weren’t the ones plotting the course,” Joker responds, as glib as ever.

Tali laughs a little. She hasn’t always been appreciated Joker and his sense of humour, but she ais grateful for it now. “You say that, but you’re not the one who’s actually going to be going inside that thing.”

“You talk as if you are,” Joker jokes, but she can see the smile fade off of his face as the moments pass without her replying. “Wait, you-?”

“Someone has to,” says Tali, finding her conviction as she says it out loud. She’s scared – so scared she can barely think straight. But someone has to do it, and Shepard still isn’t here, and she is Tali’Zorah Vas Normandy. She’s gone toe-to-toe with Geth and Krogan and Collectors. She helped kill Sovereign and Saren. She’s survived a suicide mission, and a Reaper on Rannoch, and a ground war in London. What’s this, compared to all of that?

This is different, a voice that sounds too much like her own tells her. This is a total unknown – you’ve never encountered anything like it before. And it’s a fool’s hope to take a Reaper at its word instead of either running or blasting it.

She ignores the voice. Aboard the Normandy, it’s always been do or die. That’s not going to stop just because the war’s supposed to be over.

James whistles. “Damn,” he mutters, “you’re as loco as Shepard.”

She tries her best to take it as a compliment.

Chapter Text

In the end, six of them – plus Cortez, piloting the shuttle – venture onboard the not-so-derelict Reaper. Garrus, Liara, Javik, Grunt, Zaeed, and Tali herself. (James and Kaidan have remained behind in case they need an armed extraction, although James isn’t happy about essentially being stuck on standby – stuck on ‘the bench’, as he’d phrased it.) Garrus is taking point and commanding the squad, Liara is here due to necessity and curiosity in equal parts, and the other three are all here because they’re spoiling for a fight. Tali wants to point out that if this is supposed to be a negotiation, having half their team so eager to start shooting isn’t a good idea, but she lets this particular thought remain unvoiced. She doesn’t think she’d be able to make herself see this mission through without so much heavily-armed backup.

(She also doesn’t think about why she’s here. She just knows that she’d rather be here than not be here, and leaves it at that.)

“Alright,” says Cortez as they touch down on the first piece of solid metal they can find. “Good luck.”

Garrus nods in thanks. “If we don’t return in-” he tries to say, but Cortez holds out a hand to stop him.

“‘If’ nothing,” he tells them. “Doesn’t matter how long it takes, or who else orders me otherwise. I’m not leaving this thing without you.”

“Thank you, Cortez,” Liara says with a nod of her head before Garrus can argue.

Cortez scratches at his stubble. “Yeah, well,” he mutters, “I don’t wanna lose anyone else.”

Tali likes to think that she’s gotten better at handling the sting in her chest that flares up whenever someone mentions or references Shepard, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. Worse, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Liara glance at her with some measure of sympathy.

“None of us do,” she mutters softly.

The shuttle opens its doors, and it says something that Tali is almost glad to step out and onto-stroke-into a Reaper.

Her first thought is that it isn’t all that different from the derelict Reaper they boarded as a precursor to their suicide mission. (Has it really only been less than a year since then?) Her second thought, however, is oh, this is much worse.

There had been an aura to the derelict Reaper. An ambient chill, a cold shiver down the back of the spine, a subconscious sense of hopelessness and impending doom. But what she can feel now is something else entirely. There is an energy to this place. It pulses under her feet as she takes her first tentative steps forward, and she feels it hit her in waves. Everything feels wrong, off-kilter- she looks down at the ground to make sure that it isn’t swaying under her, but it seems straight enough. She takes another step, and almost staggers. Her head and her stomach are both aching. Another pulse of energy hits her. Then another. It takes her only a few moments to realise that this energy is flowing in a pattern, and only a few more to realise what pattern that is. But the fact that the entire Reaper is pulsing to the rhythm of a heartbeat does nothing to comfort her.

Behind her, the rest of the crew disembarks, noticing the same sensations as her. Zaeed grimaces. Liara pulls her arms close to herself as she stares up at the roof of the structure, far above them. Grunt angrily waves his shotgun at the ground they walk on like he wants to shoot it, but for all his bloodlust, he isn’t stupid. Instead, he sheaths the weapon and paces over to Tali with fists clenched.

“Where are we going?” he asks her. She shrugs, still struggling to get her bearings. She doesn’t know why he’s asking her that, of all people.

“Where else?” It’s Garrus who answers, tone grim. Tali turns to see him adjust something on the side of his sniper, before lifting his head back up and staring ahead of them. “Into the belly of the beast.”

Liara groans. “Please don’t phrase it like that.”

Javik hefts his rifle and squares his shoulders. The Prothean is putting on a brave front, but Tali can tell that he’s struggling with the atmosphere as much as she is. Perhaps more, she realises suddenly – he has that ability to read the environment, after all. She can’t imagine what this must feel like to someone with senses as advanced as his.

“Do we really have to go further in?” Grunt sounds less like a grizzled Krogan warrior and more like a petulant child. Still, considering he’s technically little more than a year old, Tali won’t hold it against him.

Liara brings out her omni-tool and uses it to scan their immediate location. “I can’t see anything that would function as a communication device,” she says.

Zaeed rolls his mismatched eyes. “If this thing wanted to chat with us over comms, it would have already. It used our ship to get us to come over here in the first place.”

“So,” Garrus fills in, “we’re here for something specific.”

Of course they are. Things never can be simple, can they?

“Tali,” he continues, looking at her through his visor in a way that makes her feel like she’s a specimen in a lab, “we’ve been on one of these things before, but my memory’s a little rusty. Any locales you remember from last time that you think are worth investigating?” He’s obviously trying to keep things light, or at least routine, despite the circumstances. Privately, she doesn’t think it’s anything other than a losing battle, but she respects him for trying all the same.

“When we were getting the IFF?” She thinks. Ironically enough, she doesn’t remember a lot from that mission. Most of her attention had been focused on Legion – on a rogue Geth that had saved their lives, spoken actual words, and had then been the subject of a desperate rescue from swarms of husks and abominations. That, she recalls, had taken most of her attention over the Reaper’s interior architecture. But there is one location that she remembers.

“The core of the Reaper,” she tells the group. “This one should have a core, too. Maybe we’re supposed to go there.”

“Why is the Reaper directing us to its heart?” Javik asks in a voice like steel.

“Perhaps it’s some sort of gesture of trust,” suggests Liara, always the optimist. “Its core would be vulnerable, after all. Perhaps this is some part of negotiation with them.”

“Or maybe it’s a trap.” Spits out Zaeed. He says nothing else, but the venom in the gaze says everything he doesn’t use words for. Stupid naïve Asari, you really think that’s what this thing’s up to? Liara glares right back at him – as a crew member on the SR1, and a witness to the fall of Thessia, she is more aware than most of the horrors that the Reapers can inflict. Tali knows that she doesn’t make her suggestions out of misplaced naivete.

“Whatever the reason,” Garrus cuts through the tension between Liara and Zaeed like butter, his own authoritive tone making it clear that infighting here and now, of all times and places, isn’t something he’s going to humour, “we’re not going to find out just standing here.” That said, he clutches tightly onto his rifle, and begins to march into the Reaper as though he’s not put off at all by whatever energy is flowing out of its centre and over them. Tali follows him, shotgun at the ready, and she sees Grunt mirror her movements.

The tubing that constitutes most of the hallways glows a low blue, with large segments of dark metal cut off by vivid aqua rings of light. They’re thrumming, moving, pulsating like blood vessels, and the sight makes Tali feel nauseous. Enormous canisters shoot by on rail lines as though they’re blood cells. The heartbeat-like vibrations become more pronounced the further towards the Reaper’s centre they go.

Tali knows that the Reapers are based of living creatures – she was part of the team that had been to 2181 Despoina, and had seen the immediate aftermath of Shepard’s contact with Leviathan. On a detached, technical level, it makes sense that their internal functions mimic those of organics. Mimicking their creators seems to be a common trait with AI – the Geth, after all, were built in the images of their creators, from the three fingers and bent legs to the hooded helm that had serendipitously mimicked the helmets that the Quarians would come to wear. But the knowledge does nothing to ease her discomfort at the situation.

“Did Shepard ever tell you about Project Overlord?” Zaeed’s voice is low as they walk, each of them unabashedly staring at the inner workings of a very-much-alive Reaper.

Tali thinks she hears Garrus mutter ‘spirits’, but can’t say for sure. “Project Overlord?” The name is familiar, but the details are not. “I don’t remember that, no. Was it… anything like this?”

“Nothing at all.” Zaeed scoffs, gritting his teeth. “Cerberus project gone wrong. Some smart-alek scientist thought it’d be a good idea to hook his autistic brother up to a VI interface in an attempt to control the Geth.”

Tali shudders. There are a lot of things in that sentence that make her uncomfortable – Cerberus, the Geth, and the idea of someone forcefully controlling the Geth after all they’ve already been through under the control of the Reapers. “What does ‘autistic’ mean?” she asks, focusing on the unfamiliar term above everything else. “I’ve never heard of that before. Is it a human thing?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Zaeed grunts. “Basically means that your brain’s all backwards, metaphorically. Autistic humans are good at things other humans are bad at, but then bad at things that other humans are good at. They can solve some complicated fucking maths problems, but God help ‘em if they have to order food for themselves at a restaurant.” The old mercenary smirks as though he’s recalling a fond memory. It’s a novel sight for Tali, who wasn’t aware that Zaeed had any fond memories.

“You had a point?” She asks. Zaeed nods and sniffs.

“Yeah, yeah, Overlord. Anyway, we find the poor bastard, and it turns out he was ‘hooked up’ to the interface in a more literal way than we’d assumed.” He snaps back a mechanism on his rifle, anger seeping into his tone. “Hooks around his eyes to hold them open. Tubes shoved down his throat. Control rods impaled through his arms-”

“Stop, stop!” Tali fights off a fresh wave of nausea at the imagery Zaeed’s words conjure up. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Stop interrupting me, and maybe I’ll be able to get to my point.” Zaeed grumbles. “Anyway- seeing that shit when we dealt with Overlord, I didn’t bat an eye, because merc work has a habit of numbing you to sights like that. And I’m telling you that because I need you to believe me when I tell you, in all seriousness-” he gestures to their surroundings – to the wires pulsating like veins, the sickly blue glows, and the cavern made of black metal – “-that this is the most fucking disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”

Tali, while having nothing good to say about Zaeed’s delivery, cannot help but agree with his sentiment.

They keep walking. The heartbeat feels like it’s getting faster – on the outset, it had been paced quite sluggishly, but now, it was speeding up, sounding more and more like the strong and healthy heartbeat that Tali would listen to as she pressed her head against Shepard’s chest. The memory upsets her, which upsets her more on principle. Was every memory she’d shared with Shepard now going to be tainted by her fear and sadness? Was this how it was going to be until he was found, or else declared dead? Or would the feeling last for longer than that?

She tries to remember what she’d overheard Kolyat Krios say at Thane’s wake: ‘in time, it will be a good memory’. Perhaps that’s how she should see it. Over time, she will find her answers, and the scars will fade, and her memories of Shepard will be good again. It seems so faraway a hope now, but she clings onto it all the same. It’s all she has.

The veins keep pulsing. Their group keeps walking.

“No sign of ground forces,” Javik says in a low tone. Tali doesn’t think his eyes have left the scope of his rifle since they began their trek. “The trap has not yet been sprung.”

“We don’t know that it’s a trap,” Garrus says diplomatically.

Javik scoffs. “What else could it be?”

Grunt huffs as he plods along. “Don’t like this.”

Wonderful, thinks Tali. It can’t possibly be a bad sign if the Krogan who thought fighting a Thresher Maw on foot was a good idea feels like something’s wrong.

“Of course you don’t like this,” Tali jokes, “there aren’t any Reaper forces throwing themselves into your shotgun.”

She can see her quip defuse a little tension, as Grunt smirks. “I wouldn’t want them throwing themselves onto my shotgun,” he tells her. “It’d be too easy to kill them. There’s no satisfaction in that.”

“Satisfaction should not be a priority.” Javik’s voice is clipped as he butts in, obviously unimpressed with Grunt’s view of battle. “If your enemies are making your life easier in any way, you take the advantage. It is always them or you.”

Grunt’s lip curls in a Krogan sneer. “Maybe in your cycle, Prothean,” he rumbles. “But in this cycle, some of us appreciate the difference between a good fight and a slaughter.”

Javik narrows his eyes at Grunt. “There is no difference,” he says. His voice is dark.

To Tali’s relief, Grunt offers up no retort, instead muttering something illegible to himself before turning back around to re-focus his attention on their surroundings. Remembering where they are, Tali quickly does the same. It won’t do for her to let her guard down here of all places, and now of all times.

The group keeps walking.

They are getting closer to the core – to the heart. Tali can feel it. It is an electric current in the air that hums, even through the nullification provided by her suit. Many times, she has cursed how insular the suit is, and how much it cuts her off from the rest of the galaxy. Today, however, she thanks it for being as thorough a shield against her surroundings as she could ask for. Even if it doesn’t really make her any safer, it helps put her mind just a little bit at ease.

If she can feel it through her suit, she wonders how the others must be feeling, with their skin and flesh exposed to the open air. She hopes they’ll be alright.

To her side, Grunt’s grip on his massive claymore is tight as he swings it back and forth, looking for targets. She recognises the nervous energy that must be flowing through him right now. Zaeed is more collected, experience staying his hand, but she can see the nerves in him too. His finger twitches near the trigger of his rifle. Meanwhile, Javik is so stiff she’d mistake him for a statue were it not for the fact that he was still walking – his head remains completely straight, laser-focused on the path ahead of them, and there is barely a tremor in his arms. Liara somehow looks amazed and sick at the same time, which Tali considers an appropriate reaction to what they’re seeing, and what they’re walking into. And as for Garrus? He’s up at the front, leading them – she can’t see his face from this angle. But he has his sniper out and his head held high, as always.

It’s a comforting sight, thinks Tali as they keep moving forward. No matter how much the galaxy might change, some things will stay the same no matter what.

Eventually, the group clambers up a small flight of stairs, and just like that, there it is – the Reaper’s centre. The core that she’d visited previously was suspended over what had looked like a bottomless pit, but this one is connected to cables at every angle. Rather than hanging slack, they are stretched taut and tense. And, rather than only occasionally opening up to release energy, this one is releasing a constant stream of energy, its blue glow filling the room and bathing the squad in an otherworldly light. A rumble fills the air that Tali feels more than she hears.

Garrus looks back at her. “The Reaper’s core?” He asks. She isn’t sure why he’s asking – he was on the derelict Reaper, too. Maybe he just wants a second opinion. She doesn’t blame him. Not trusting her words, she nods.

Liara steps forward, eyes full of repulsed wonder. “Not its core,” she breathes. “Its heart.”

The heart pulses. Blue energy sweeps through the room, racing up and down the cables and outwards, away from the group, presumably coursing through every part of the Reaper. Tali stares at it again. It glimmers and vibrates, writhing and whirring as though it’s alive. She can feel its power washing over all of them in waves of energy, rhythmic and continuous. It is very clear to her that they only reason they are not dead or indoctrinated is because of some manner of restraint on the Reaper’s part.

Shepard had once showed her footage of the atom bombs that had been invented on Earth, when the two had been trying to learn more about one another’s species and customs. The footage of humans setting off this enormous experimental bomb had been awful on principle, given the weapon’s destructive power, but there had also been a majesty and beauty to the sight that had stayed with Tali long after the footage had ended. This, she decides, is like staring at a condensed nuclear bomb. It is terrible, but it is also beautiful.

They all stare.

“Now what?”

It’s Grunt who voices the sentiment, but it’s clear that Zaeed and Javik feel the same way; the former nods his head ever so slightly, and the latter narrows his eyes.

“Now…” Garrus begins, before trailing off. “I’m not sure. We have more experience than most, but we haven’t exactly made conversation with Reapers, Sovereign notwithstanding.”

“Don’t forget that Reaper on Rannoch,” adds Tali. “It spoke to us. Well, to Shepard.” She pauses, considering. That encounter had ultimately been rather like the conversation with Sovereign – brief and existential. The only difference was that the Rannoch Reaper had at least had the decency to itself die after threatening them with total extinction.

“Did Shepard say anything about Harbinger?” Liara asks. “Or Leviathan?”

Tali shudders as she remembers their encounter with Leviathan, and it’s clear that Garrus is disturbed by the memory too. “Aside from it always being scary as hell when he actually spoke to one?” The words are light, but Garrus’ voice is heavy. He’s not hiding how terrified he feels. “The one common thread I can think of is that it was always the Reapers initiating the conversation.”

Liara looks around. “Then why hasn’t this one talked to us yet?”

Javik bares his teeth in a snarl. “It is a trap,” he insists as he raises his rifle.

The heart almost constricts, twisting in its restraints. The buzz intensifies. Tali yells as her shotgun sparks in her hands. “Bosh’tet!”

Zaeed curses as the ground shakes under their feet. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Vakarian,” he calls to Garrus, who nods and raises his rifle. His line of sight is clear, and the Reaper’s heart is in his crosshairs.

“I’m popping smoke on the mission,” he declares over the increasingly unbearable whine of the behemoth’s engines. “This was a bad idea from the start-”

“No, wait!” Liara rushes to his side and grabs his arm, trying to wrestle his gun down. “We don’t know what’s going on, we don’t know what this is!”

“We don’t!” Agrees Garrus, wrenching himself away. “And I’m not about to risk all our lives on it!”

Wow, Tali thinks as she watches him, he really is a bad Turian.

The energy intensifies further, and Tali reaches out to adjust her audio receptors, but then, suddenly, it dies down. Garrus and Liara turn away from each other to stare back at the heart. Zaeed lowers his gun ever so slightly.

Then, a voice speaks.

“Connection Established.”

The voice booms through the room, seeming almost to rattle through the ancient machinery. It feels all-powerful. It rings in Tali’s ears like Sovereign all over again. But she isn’t afraid. Surprised, definitely. Confused, absolutely. But afraid? No.

She recognises the voice, and she could never be afraid.

“…Shepard?” Liara breathes.

Chapter Text

For a moment, nobody moves. Nobody even seems to breath. With one sentence, everything has changed all over again.

Javik is the first to come to his senses. “It could still be a trick,” he points out, though there is doubt in his tone that definitely wasn’t there before.

“It’s a cruel one,” Garrus growls, “even for the Reapers.”

Grunt hefts his claymore. “If they think we’ll let them get away with stealing Shepard’s voice, they must be even dumber than they look.”

The control terminal near the Reaper’s heart flashes. Then, a light flickers, and a hologram of a man is slowly constructed, standing to attention in front of them with its arms clasped behind its back like a soldier.

If appearances are anything to go by, the man is close to death. He is clad in black armour so badly damaged it looks like melted plastic, sloughing off of his form like candle wax. What parts of him aren’t covered by the armour are coated with blood, and there’s an especially large amount of the stuff pooled around an injury on the left of his stomach. There is a large abrasion under his left eye, and red streams coming from his mouth and both of his nostrils, as well as other flesh wounds on his face. But, even under all the mess and gore, Tali recognises him.

“Shepard.”

Out on what feels like the farthest reaches of her periphery, she hears Liara whisper “Oh, Goddess”. A clattering sound echoes out across the room, and it takes a moment for her to realise that her shotgun has slipped through her fingers. Because, after so many days of worry and not knowing, it’s Shepard. There. Right there. Standing in front of her.

Except, it’s not him, because it’s a projection.

The projection, otherwise remaining entirely still, opens its mouth to speak.

“I Am Not Commander Shepard.” It says.

“Then where is he?” Tali asks, before any of the rest of the squad can say anything. She wants to know. She has to know.

Shepard would have turned to look her in the eyes. Even before he was her lover, he was a considerate man, and a good captain. Whenever they’d talked, he’d used all the strange human gestures she’d had to decipher to indicate that he was giving her his full attention.

The projection that is wearing his face and using his voice does not turn to look at her as it answers her question.

“Commander Shepard Is Gone.” It says.

‘Gone’ is too vague a word, too unspecific. Tali wants to scream.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” she asks instead, surprising herself at how steady her voice manages to remain.

“Commander Shepard Has Been Disintegrated On A Molecular Level.” The projection says, and suddenly, Tali wishes that she had settled for an answer that was vague and nebulous. There was room for hope in ‘gone’. There is far less room for hope now.

She wants to speak up again – to ask it more questions, to ask what, and how, and why – but something stops her. Her jaw clamps shut like a vice, and she realises that it is trembling. She also realises, through the blurring of her vision, that her eyes are watering.

It had to happen, a part of her reasons. He’s been gone too long for there to be any other outcome. You’re finally accepting that he’s-

Even that part of her, however, seems unable to say or think the word itself.

Javik’s voice hitches. “Damn Reapers,” he growls.

“Then why do you look like him?” Garrus sounds- Garrus sounds angry. Scarily so. Tali can pick up the subvocals under his tone as he stares the projection down. The projection doesn’t react beyond answering his question.

“I Was Created From Commander Shepard.”

“Lies! All lies!” Javik raises his rifle and fires a beam of energy at the Reaper’s heart before anyone can stop him. The heart shudders, and metal plates slide from seemingly out of nowhere, cocooning the heart and protecting it from any further shots. Tali remembers the defence mechanism from the derelict Reaper, and knows that those plates will defend it from any handheld projectile, but that doesn’t stop Javik from firing another blast at the heart.

“Javik,” says the projection, and Tali’s breath hitches, because there is a hint of exasperation in the projection’s tone that makes it sound so much like Shepard (and how can a projection be exasperated, for that matter?), “Please Stop Shooting.”

Javik wheels around to glare daggers at the projection. “Scared, Reaper?” he spits.

The projection actually blinks at him. “Not For Myself. I Control Every Reaper, And Destroying This One Would Do Nothing To Harm Me. But If This Platform Is Destroyed, You’ll All Be Killed. That Is Something I Hope To Avoid.”

Tali blinks and forces back her tears – there will be time to mourn later, she suspects – and looks at the projection again. This time, she does not look at it as a grieving young woman, but as a keen-eyed engineer. And she realises that for all it resembles the VI interfaces that she’s seen across the galaxy, its vocal inflections closer resemble those of EDI, or Legion. Whatever this thing is, it might be more ‘alive’ than she had initially assumed.

“Just to clarify,” rasps Garrus, still eying the projection with completely undisguised hostility. “The part you hope to avoid would be us dying, right? Not this Reaper being destroyed?”

The projection takes its time to answer – another small piece of evidence that Tali mentally stores away. “There Would Be Tragedy In This Reaper’s Destruction, Too.” It eventually says. “It Is All That Remains Of An Entire Race. If It Were To Be Destroyed, All Viable Information About Them – Their Cultures, Their Societies, Their Lives – Would Be Rendered Irretrievable. This Is Undesirable. But Your Deaths Would Be Greater Tragedies Still. This Reaper Is A Repository Of Knowledge And Life, But It Is Not Alive. You Are Still Alive, And My Purpose Is The Preservation And The Protection Of Life. Your Deaths Would Be My Failure.” It pauses as though it’s considering its words before it speaks again. “In Addition, You Were Shepard’s Crew.”

Everyone stands stock-still, waiting for the projection to elaborate further, but it does not.

“So, let me try and get this straight,” Garrus chimes in. “You don’t want us to die because we’re alive, and you want to keep us alive.” They are technically questions, although he doesn’t say them as though they are.

“Yes.”

“And you don’t want us to die because we were Shepard’s crew.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds as though you have a vested interest in keeping us alive, specifically.”

The projection hesitates. “I Was Created From Commander Shepard. You Were Commander Shepard’s Crew.” It sounds as though it’s repeating its own logic to itself, trying to find a new solution out of information that it has already processed. It reminds Tali of another conversation, from another time, that Shepard had relayed to her with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

(“That doesn’t explain why you used my armour to fix yourself.”

“…There was a hole.”

“But why didn’t you fix it sooner? Or with something else?”

“……No data available.”)

“Keeping You Alive Is One Of My Most Significant Prerogatives.” The Projection eventually says, conclusively.

“Why?” Garrus doesn’t sound satisfied. His voice has a pained tone to it now.

“Because I Was Created From Commander Shepard.” The projection says again. “When He Died, His Desires Were Passed On To Me.” It stops, then continues, displaying that strange thoughtfulness again. “Commander Shepard Wanted To Save The Galaxy From The Reapers. From The Harvest. He Wanted A Future Where The Many Have Hope, And A Voice. He Wanted Me To Protect And Sustain Life; To Act As A Guardian For The Many.”

Tali listens as the projection rattles off ideals. The projection that was apparently ‘created from’ Shepard, whatever that means. Those goals certainly seem to align with the man knows, although she can’t remember his ambitions being so lofty. His focus has been less on ‘future and hope for the galaxy’ and more ‘defeat the Reapers before they kill us all’ – though, she has to admit, that was probably influenced by the Reapers being an ever-present threat over the time that she’d known him.

The projection, however, isn’t done.

“He Also Wanted Me To Watch Over The Ones Who Carry The Memory Of The Man He Once Was.” It says. “To Ensure Their Safety And Their Futures.”

It almost hurts more to realise that the projection is more than that. That it is an echo of Shepard in some way. Seeing his protectiveness within this thing’s programming just makes her miss him more. Makes her wish that he was here to reassure them, and tell them that everything was going to be okay. Oh, Shepard…

“But why create you?” Liara’s restraint has apparently reached its limits – now, her curiosity and her desperation burst forth in equal measure. “How did he create you? Did it have something to do with the catalyst?”

“And why,” adds Garrus, “did he have to die for it?”

“How have the Reapers done this?” Javik points his rifle at the projection, now, and Liara turns around.

“Javik!” She scolds him. “Please refrain from shooting anything until we can figure out what’s going on!”

Javik looks as though he wants to say more, but Grunt marches past him, purposefully bodychecking him and almost knocking him to the ground.

“If this is a Reaper trick,” Grunt booms, “then we’ll destroy them. But we’d be stupid to not hear Shepard out, or whatever this thing is supposed to be.” He waves a hand at the projection disdainfully.

Javik bares his teeth. “You are naïve,” he warns. “We cannot risk the Reapers killing us all. Whatever this thing is, we should destroy it now. Or, after all we have seen, do none of you yet understand that a Reaper wearing the face of a fallen loved one is one of their oldest tricks?” He eyes the projection in disgust. “Either the Reapers have stolen Shepard’s form, or they have made him one of their tools. Either way, it is not worth listening to.”

Tali winces at Javik’s tirade. She’d assumed that months spent aboard the Normandy had softened some of Javik’s rougher edges, and made him more open-minded, but here he is, acting as though he hasn’t changed at all. She supposes, grimly, that she can’t really blame him. His goal was nothing less than the destruction of the Reapers. Whatever this grey area is, it’s clearly not something he’s ever considered before. She’s having trouble wrapping her head around it, and she never devoted her entire life to fighting the Reapers in the same way that he has.

Grunt turns back to face Javik, glaring at him with his piercing blue eyes. “Watch your tongue, Javik” he says in a growl. “Shepard is my battlemaster – the strongest warrior I know. You may think you’re hot shit because you’re a Prothean, but I’m not going to lick your boots like some Hanar, and I’m not going to let you insinuate that he was weak enough to be made a Reaper puppet.”

Javik takes a step forwards, getting right up in Grunt’s face. “You are the tank-bred,” he says without preamble. “You are descended from warriors and warlords. Battle runs in your veins. And yet now you cower?”

Grunt nods. “I am descended from warlords, yes. Warlords such as Kredak and Shiagur, who thought that it would be a good idea to battle all the other races of the galaxy at once. Since being released from my tank, I’ve met Krogan such as Uvenk, who died because he was too stubborn to accept change, and The Patriarch, who suffered for hundreds of years as a trophy after losing a fight to a conniving Asari. We Krogan may be warriors, but we also pick a lot of bad fights.” He huffs, snorting air out from his nose like a warhorse. “I’m better than that. I’m stronger than that. If you want to pick a bad fight and die, I won’t stop you, but if you try and drag me down with you, I’ll tear you apart myself.”

“You can try.” Javik’s biotics flare up, and Grunt hefts his claymore, but before either of them can do anything, a gunshot rings out. Tali jumps and turns to see Garrus with his sniper rifle smoking and held high in the air.

“Knock it off,” he commands in a voice that leaves no room for argument.

Javik is still glaring daggers at Grunt, but steps back nevertheless, his respect for command seemingly overcoming his anger. Grunt, meanwhile, kicks at the ground he’s standing on before stomping over to the other side of the room, near where Tali and Zaeed are standing.

“Damn turian,” he mutters under his breath, “getting in the way of a good fight.”

Tali can help neither overhearing his words, nor making an observation.

“You just criticized him for picking a stupid fight,” he says, “and you’re annoyed that Garrus didn’t give you a chance to do the same?”

Grunt snorts. “The tank never showed me how to kill a Prothean. Far as I know, no Krogan ever has. I’d be a pioneer.”

Tali pulls a face – not that anyone can see it. “Maybe save trying to kill our squadmates for after the mission.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Grunt shakes his head from side to side like a varren before settling down and stowing his weapon away.

With that particular altercation out of the way, Garrus and Liara both turn back to the projection, which has been wordlessly watching the scene unfold without any sign of intervention. Before either of them can say anything, however, Zaeed – of all people – speaks up.

“This is all getting too confusing, too quickly,” he rasps. His half-blind gaze swivels from one member of their squad to the next. “Let’s keep it chronological. When’s the last time any of you saw Shepard?”

Everyone exchanges a glance. The last time any of them saw Shepard…

Garrus answers. (Tali doesn’t feel brave enough to speak.) “We were taking off in the Normandy – getting evac’d after we were injured by an exploding tank during Hammer’s dash to the beam in London. Shepard saw us off, and then kept running for the beam. That was the last time we saw him. Hackett said something about him making it to the Citadel, but…” he trailed off, helplessly. Tali knew where his doubts came from. For all of Hackett’s faith in Shepard, there was no proof that it was him who’d actually made it up there. Perhaps Admiral Anderson had been the one to set off the crucible, in the end?

Except, of course, the entity that controlled the Reapers had taken Shepard’s form, and had apparently been made in his image. It was clear now that Shepard had done something.

Zaeed nodded at Garrus before turning to the projection. “What happened after that?”

The projection shifts as though it’s straightening itself out. “Commander Shepard Was Injured By A Blast From Harbinger, But Made It Through The Beam And To The Citadel.”

A blast from Harbinger? Tali reels. “Is that why…” her words fail, but she lifts her hand and points to the projection. Was the blast the source of the horrific injuries that the projection now mimics?

The projection, thankfully, seems to pick up on her meaning. “My Appearance Is Based On How Commander Shepard Looked When He Died, And Created Me.” Its face softens for the first time. “Do You Find This Form Distressing?”

Tali nods.

In a flash, its form is changed. The injuries are gone, the armour is repaired, and the projection is suddenly the spitting image of Shepard as Tali remembers him the last time she saw him alive – healthy and determined. She sees him in her minds eye, yelling at her and Garrus to go before turning around and sprinting back towards the beam without a second look.

“Do You Find This Form Preferable?” asks the projection.

Tali silently nods again. The sight of the projection standing there, wearing a facsimile of Shepard’s face and speaking with an estimation of his voice, still breaks her heart – but it no longer turns her stomach.

“As you were saying,” interrupts Zaeed, either not noticing Tali’s distress or not caring for it, “Shepard made it to the Citadel. Then what?”

“Commander Shepard Then Made His Way To A Terminal Through Which He Hoped To Control The Crucible. David Anderson And Jack Harper Were There.”

“Jack Harper?” Tali echoes, but Liara and Garrus, always quick on the update, blurt out in tandem:

“The Illusive Man.”

“That’s his real name?” she asks. It sounds wrong in her mouth. The Illusive Man has always been The Illusive Man – an enigma and a title wrapped up in human supremacy and delusions of grandeur. Jack Harper sounds like far too normal a man for Tali’s liking.

The projection continues talking. “Jack Harper Was Indoctrinated, And Used Influence Granted To Him By The Reapers To Make Commander Shepard Shoot Anderson. Commander Shepard Then Convinced Harper To Temporarily Break Away From Reaper Indoctrination, And Kill Himself.”

Garrus laughs, but Tali doesn’t think she’s ever heard a laugh with less genuine amusement in it in her life.

“Saren all over again,” he spits.

Tali keeps quiet. Everyone had figured that something like that had happened, given the wounds that had been on the bodies they’d found, but to hear it confirmed was still… she wasn’t sure how it even made her feel. She’d never had any love for the Illusive Man, but that didn’t mean she’d wish Reaper indoctrination on him. She wouldn’t wish it on anyone. She remembered what Matriarch Benezia had said, back on Noveria, about how it was like beating against a glass inside your own mind – it sounded horrible. And Anderson… Admiral Anderson had always seemed like a good man, as far as Tali had known him. At the very least, he had always been Shepard’s biggest supporter, which she’d definitely appreciated. The idea of Shepard killing him, even under control like that…

Oh, Shepard, she thinks to herself, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.

Zaeed folds his arms, unmoved. “Then what?”

“Commander Shepard Was Taken To The Crucible’s Interface,” the projection says, “And There He Spoke With The Catalyst.”

There is baffled silence, as the assembled group tries to put together what they’ve been told in their heads.

Liara is the first to remember herself – instead of asking any further questions, however, she instead activates her omni-tool and begins configuring it at a rate that Tali’s never seen before, free hand furiously brushing over the holographic interface as she works like an asari possessed.

“He ‘spoke with’ the catalyst? How?” Garrus is the one to put the question forward. “That can’t be right.”

“I was led to believe that the catalyst was the citadel,” adds Javik, looking for the first time like he doesn’t want to blast both the projection and the Reaper that they’re all inside into tiny pieces. “The citadel is not sentient.”

“There must have been some hidden function to the citadel – one that was only fully unlocked when combined with the crucible.” Liara keeps typing, thinking out loud as she does so. “The citadel is designed to be enigmatic, after all. So many things about it, such as the Keepers, were deliberate mysteries created by the Reapers. It’s not impossible to think that they hid something else there, as well.”

“You’re all talking too much,” Grunt butts in unhappily. Apparently, just because he’s willing to hear the projection out doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t prefer a straight fight.

Liara looks up from her omni-tool to address the projection directly. “What is the catalyst?”

The projection places its arms behind its back. “The Catalyst As You Know It, And As Shepard Knew It, Is An Artificial Intelligence That Was Stored Within The Citadel. It Embodied The Collective Knowledge, Memories, And Consciousness Of The Reapers.”

“He spoke to a Reaper rather than kill it?” Javik glares at the projection.

Liara holds out a placating hand. “Negotiation over violence has often been Shepard’s way,” she reasons. Behind her, Zaeed massages his temple like he’s nursing a headache. Tali can’t say she blames him.

“But with the Reapers?” Javik’s voice is almost a yell, echoing through the chamber they’re standing in.

Instead of responding to him directly, Liara turns back to the projection. “What did Shepard talk to the Catalyst about?” she asks.

“The Catalyst, As The Reapers, Had Been Enacting What It Perceived As A ‘Solution’ Unto The Galaxy Through The Reapers,” explains the projection. “It Regularly Harvested Organic Life To Prevent Organic Life Being Wiped Out In Conflict With Synthetics Altogether.”

Garrus nods. “That matches with what Shepard wrote in his report about Leviathan.”

“Hang on, hang on,” Zaeed waves his hand irritably. “So this thing’s way of stopping us organics killing ourselves with AI was to kill us with AI?”

“That’s the logic it used when it turned on its creators,” Garrus confirms, folding his arms. “Never said I thought it was good logic, but there we are.”

Zaeed shakes his head and looks down at the ground. “Fucking robots.”

The projection, in its first real display of emotion, narrows its eyes and tenses up its posture.

“On This, We Agree,” it said, “As Did Commander Shepard. The Catalyst Then Said That Since The Crucible And The Citadel Had Been Joined, And Shepard Was Speaking To It Directly – The First Organic To Do So – That It’s Solution Would No Longer Work, And That It Needed To Find A New Solution.”

“A new solution?” Liara takes some more notes and then looks back up at the projection. “You mean… you?”

The projection nods. “I Was The Solution That They Agreed Upon,” it explains. “The Catalyst Has Been Erased. I Now Control The Reapers.”

“And… you don’t want to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy.” Garrus infers.

There is a heartbeat. The projection nods.

“No,” it tells them, using words that seem so small to convey a change that is so very big, “I Do Not.”

It should be a relief. But there’s something that Tali needs to ask before she loses her nerve.

“And, to create you…” she fidgets on the spot. “Shepard needed to…”

The projection nods. “Commander Shepard’s Consciousness Was Scanned And Uploaded To Create Me,” it says. “This Process Completely Destroyed His Physical Form.”

Tali feels like she needs to sit down. Hearing about Shepard’s death once hurt – twice feels more tiring than anything else. Still, terrifyingly, she can’t help but look at the positives. It’s closure, of a sort. And at least now they know that the whole galaxy isn’t teetering on the brink of a surprise Reaper attack.

She’s still not crying. Is it the shock? Or does she just have no more tears left?

“Well,” Garrus croaks, “at least there’s no chance of him popping back up after another two years and scaring me half to death.”

It’s the sort of humour that Tali will appreciate in time, but for now, it just feels like an open-air wound.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” she says, quietly.

Javik steps forward.

“The commander would not have accepted such a fate,” he thunders. “He would not have died in such trust of the machines!”

“Would Not, Or Should Have Not?” the projector’s voice sounds a little colder as it replies to Javik. “You Forget, Commander Shepard Empathized With Legion, And Fought As Much For The Geth As He Did For The Quarians Once He Was Made Aware Of Their True Nature. He Did Not Write Off Machines On Principle, As You Do.”

“The commander was resourceful. And he was not stupid.” Tali almost wishes that Shepard – the real Shepard – could be here now to listen to Javik’s insistences. Certainly, as far as she’s aware, the Prothean is paying Shepard more compliments in death than he ever did in life. “He would not have accepted this. He would have found another way.”

“Other Solutions Were Discussed By Him And The Catalyst,” reveals the projection, “But I Am What They Decided Upon.”

“What were the other solutions?” demands Javik.

“Yes, I’d like to know too,” adds Liara, frowning as she speaks – probably just uncomfortable at the prospect of agreeing with Javik on something right now.

The projection nods. “The First Solution Was The Control Solution – The Solution Commander Shepard Decided On, And The Solution That Created Me. The Next Solution Was The Synthesis Solution.”

“Synthesis?” echoes Liara, beginning to take notes again even as Grunt begins to pace the room and mutter something about too many unfamiliar words.

The projection nods. “Commander Shepard Was No Longer Fully Human By The Time He Reached The Crucible, As A Result Of The Cybernetic Modifications Resultant Of His Resurrection By Cerberus. As Such, If He Had Stepped Into The Crucible’s Central Firing Mechanism, His Mind And Body Would Have Been Broken Down And His Essence Would Have Been Used To Alter The Crucible’s Blast So That It Would Have Fundamentally Altered All Life In The Universe, Fusing Organics And Synthetics In A Way That Would Enable Both To Achieve A Culmination; Organics Through Advancement, And Synthetics Through Understanding.”

Liara has stopped typing, staring at the projection in awe. “That sounds… perfect,” she breathes. “Hypothetically perfect, obviously, but perfect nonetheless.”

The projection nods. “The Catalyst Presented It As The Ideal Solution.”

Javik scoffs. “Then it is no wonder that the commander did not accept.”

“Is that the reason?” asks, Garrus, uncomfortably hefting his sniper rifle as it becomes increasingly apparent, with each passing moment, that he’s not going to be using it. “I mean, not that I enjoy the thought of being a perfect synthetic turian, but I would have figured that as the ideal solution to… all this.” He spreads a hand wide, indicating to both the gathered squad and the room – the Reaper – that they’re gathered in. “No fighting, no fear, no messy bureaucracy and people wondering what’s going on. Just technological enlightenment. Like Liara said. Objectively perfect.”

Javik folds his arms, obviously unimpressed. “If your idea of perfection involves becoming one with machines,” he tells Garrus, “then perhaps it has been a mistake to trust you.”

“Hey, I said objectively,” snaps Garrus. Zaeed rolls his eyes.

“Save it for when we’re back on the ship,” the old merc tells them. “Feels like I’ve been standing here for days already.”

“Commander Shepard Did Not Choose This Option For Multiple Reasons,” explains the projection, cutting through the squad’s bickering once again. “For One Thing, He Did Not Trust The Catalyst, And He Did Not Trust The Perfection That Synthesis Offered. He Considered It Too Big Of An Unknown For Him To Risk The Fate Of The Galaxy On. What Would Happen To Life After Synthesis? What Would Happen To Culture? To Advancement? Certainly, Few Things Would Stay The Same. Commander Shepard’s Goal Was To Save The Galaxy As It Was, Not To Create An Entirely New One.”

Liara nods in understanding. “You said he had other reasons?”

The projection nods back. “The Other Significant Reason Was That Commander Shepard Was Not Comfortable With Altering All Life, Organic And Synthetic, In Such A Way Without Their Consent. He Did Not Find It Ethical To Make That Decision On Their Behalf. He Was Keen To Avoid Playing God.”

Zaeed makes a ‘harrumph’ noise. “You say that,” he points out, “as though you’re not pretty damn close to a god yourself.”

The projection frowns. “I Am No God,” it says, sounding annoyed. “I Control The Reapers. I Am Powerful, But I Am Not Omnipotent Or Omniscient. The Power I Wield Comes From The Scale And Power Of The Reapers, Not From Myself.”

Tali, for her part, can’t get over how the projection sounds genuinely offended to be called a god. The context is entirely different, of course, but it does remind her a bit of Shepard. He’d played it off, and accepted what people said about him with as much grace as he could, but he’d never been comfortable as the hero that some corners of the galaxy revered him as, nor the monster that other corners of the galaxy whispered about. He’d always clung to the idea that he was a man and a solider – a competent and good one, but nothing fundamentally more.

Of course, Tali thinks as she observes the projection, Shepard always tried to be more tactful about it. This thing may be based on him, but it’s a lot worse at keeping its real feelings to itself.

Zaeed rolls his eyes. “Forget I asked.”

“What were the other options?” Liara butts in.

“Technically, Commander Shepard Had The Choice To Walk Away, And Let The Cycle Continue,” reveals the projection. “This, Of Course, Was Not Something That He Seriously Considered.”

“Hmm,” says Grunt. “I can see the appeal.”

Tali looks at him in surprise, and he shrugs. “It’d be demeaning to be told what to do by your enemies. Forced into a corner. I’d rather die than go out as someone else’s pawn.”

“But if Shepard had done that,” Garrus points out with a hard voice, “he’d have doomed the whole damn galaxy along with him.”

Grunt still doesn’t look fussed. “Probably why he didn’t do it,” he says.

Garrus rolls his eyes, but doesn’t disagree. “Is that all of them?” He asks the projection. The projection shakes its head.

“There Was Also The Option To Destroy – To Use The Energy Of The Catalyst To Completely Obliterate The Reapers And All Of Their Proxies.”

Everyone stands silently by the core for a moment, processing. Tali’s brain catches up with the words, and she realises-

“And he did not choose this option?” Beneath Javik’s rage, there is an undercurrent of personal offence. As far as he is concerned, this is a betrayal.

Zaeed mutters something about gods, and Garrus takes an angry step forward, clenching and unclenching his fist. Liara places a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs her off.

“Shepard better have had a damn good reason for not going with that one,” he warns. The projection looks unbothered by the veiled threat.

“The Energy Of The Crucible Would Not Discriminate. If Released In Such A Way, It Would Have Destroyed Not Only The Reapers, But All Synthetics.”

The end of Javik’s rifle dips – not out of hesitation, but because the Prothean is so annoyed by what he’s hearing that his aim is being thrown off. “Was that his reason?” he rasps angrily.

Tali, however, is beginning to put some pieces together.

“The Geth,” she says, simply, silencing the rest of the crew. “And EDI.”

“EDI,” echoes Liara, voice wrought with horror as the implications hit her in turn. Not all synthetics are their enemies, at this point in the war – some are allies, and friends. If the crucible would have destroyed all synthetics, then…

“He should not have hesitated,” insists Javik.

Zaeed shakes his head. “Stupid fucking martyr,” he says in a low voice, holstering his vindicator rifle and folding his arms. “So,” he then says in a louder voice, addressing the projection directly, “he decided that it wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice, then?”

The projection’s reply is as simple as can get. “No.”

There’s a set to Zaeed’s jaw. “Sounds like him,” he eventually admits. “Shepard was always the sort of man who’d screw you out of twenty years of revenge for the sake of a few refinery workers.” He turns to Javik. “This time, he’s screwed us out of a galaxy without Reapers for the sake of a sex bot and some walking flashlights.”

Tali resists an instinct to bristle at the derivative remark. She senses that there’s a story behind it that she’s not privy to.

“In his defence,” Liara is quick to butt in, “a pulse of energy targeted at synthetics could have wiped out much of the other technology that we use as well.”

“And the Reapers wouldn’t have been around to fix the Mass Relays,” Grunt points out in a surprising moment of insightfulness. “I know that you Turians can’t eat human food. If your fleet got stuck around Earth with no mass relays to send you back home, you’d probably all starve to death.”

Garrus hums, consideringly.

“What did he tell you on Zorya, anyway?” he asks Zaeed. Zaeed scratches at the stubble on his jaw with a gloved hand.

“Said that I’d put my own goals ahead of the mission. That I was part of a team, and that there was no way we were winning if we didn’t work together.” He sounds contemplative. “Not that I normally take kindly to getting scunted by some shiny alliance brat half my age, but that man had a tongue so silver it’s a wonder he never choked on it.”

“He did have a way with words,” agrees Garrus, and Tali feels another uncomfortable pang in her chest at the way the squad are referring to Shepard in the past tense.

Come on, Garrus, she silently pleads. You were best friends. You were there for him, more than anyone. More than even I could be. You can’t give up on him now.

Of course, since Garrus isn’t a mind-reader, he doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns to the projection.

“You’re based on Shepard, or so you say,” he says. “Any idea what he would tell us now?”

“There Are Lots Of Things That Commander Shepard Would Tell You, If He Were Able.” The projection’s gaze flickers over the whole squad, and Tali tries to ignore the way it lingers on her. “In Regards To Your Direct Conversation, He Would Probably Remind You Of What He Learned With Legion, And The Geth. He Did Not Want To Condemn All Synthetics To Destruction Alongside The Reapers. It Was Not A Sacrifice He Was Willing To Make.”

Tali hears Grunt’s distinctive laugh. She turns around to see him smiling. “That’s Shepard,” he says, proudly. “Bending the Reapers to his will just to spare some of his krantt.”

“It certainly sounds like a decision that Shepard would make,” concurs Liara with a forced smile on her face.

Tali hates that she agrees. She agrees with her entire heart, because yes, that’s exactly the sort of stupid noble thing Shepard would do. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him; no matter how ugly things seemed, he never stopped trying to do right by people. It was how he’d lived, and now, it was apparently how he’d died.

Well Shepard, she thinks, resentment springing up out of seemingly nowhere, you couldn’t have had a more fitting death. I hope you’re happy.

It’s an unfair thought, and she regrets it as soon as she has it. But her frustration is deep-rooted. All her life, she’s had to deal with a father and a society constantly asking things of her. She’d done everything that her people had asked for her – give them data on the Geth, and on the original Normandy. Taken back the Alerai. Accepted the position of admiral when they’d asked her, even when they’d almost gotten her exiled months before. Even now, beyond the end of all things, she knows that the other admirals are waiting on her to show up and watch them bicker. Shepard was the first person she’d known who would go out of his way for her, rather than the other way around. He’d given her that Geth data because she’d asked. He hadn’t revealed the truth about her father to the other admirals because she’d asked. Her people had always put the greater good over her own well-being – Shepard had always found room for both. And perhaps it’s an unfair expectation for her to have had of him. Ancestors, it’s not as though she could have done any better. But…

Come back to me.

She’d asked him to return. And he hasn’t. Not really, not like she wanted.

It’s selfish of her. She doesn’t really blame him. She can’t blame him. But she’s angry all the same.

“…So…” Garrus drones, bringing her out of her thoughts. “Just to recap. You’re an AI based on Shepard, created to control the Reapers and stop them from, ah, reaping the rest of the galaxy.”

“Yes,” the projection says with a stiff military nod.

“Any name?” Garrus asks. “Anything you want us to call you?”

“I Have No Designation,” is the reply he gets.

“Alright,” says Garrus without missing a beat, “we’ll put a pin in that one. What are your long-term goals? Aside from preserving organic life.”

“The Preservation And Protection Of Organic Life Is My Primary Objective. Helping And Enfranchising Those Who Need Is My Secondary Objective. The Preservation Of The Well-Being Of Commander Sheprad’s Crew Is My Tertiary Objective.” The projection recites objectives like it’s reading off of a list. Liara begins to take notes again.

““Enfranchising”?” echoes Garrus.

The projection is quick to respond. “Lots Of Species Are Disenfranchised Within The Current Galaxy. Few Have Representation On The Council. Many Face Inequalities Or Discrimination. One Of My Objectives Is To Better Their Stations. To Speak For Those Who Cannot Speak For Themselves.”

Grunt laughs again. Tali isn’t sure whether to be excited or afraid of the implications of the entity that controls the Reapers being eager to stick its nose into galactic politics. Garrus sounds like he isn’t sure either – he hums and haws for a moment.

“I’ll let the council worry about that one,” he eventually says.

“Well, I think it’s a good thing,” says Liara, in a tone like ice. “After everything that’s happened, I think we need to re-evaluate some aspects of galactic leadership.”

Javik turns to her with a curious expression on his face. “The Asari lead the galaxy,” he points out. “You would cooperate with the Reapers to overthrow your own species?” He sounds concerned about indoctrination, and he has every right to be – what’s Liara saying? – but Liara just pinches the bridge of her nose.

“The Asari lead the galaxy because we horded Prothean secrets to ourself for centuries,” she says. “Now that I know that, I can’t just let us keep acting as though we’re a galactic superpower through our own virtues and nothing more.” Tali turns to stare; this is news to her. When was this established? She isn’t the only one caught off-guard by the revelation – Zaeed grunts in surprise, and Garrus turns to Liara.

“When did you uncover that one?” he asks.

“Thessia,” Liara responds darkly, before pausing, clearing her throat, and continuing on. “In any event, you being politically active should keep the council from getting too complacent, and sinking back into the status quo from before. If there’s one thing that this war has shown us, it’s that things need to change.”

Tali agrees, but…

“Is that really how it’s going to be?” She asks. “The council are resistant enough about other galactic races having a say. There’s no way they’ll just let the Reapers butt in.”

Liara smirks the dangerous sort of smirk that she’s picked up since becoming the Shadow Broker.

“They won’t have a choice.”

Tali has to admit, it’s hard to argue with the asari’s assessment. Everyone remains quiet for a moment, and then Garrus clears his throat. He’s still doing his best to be a ‘leader’ despite how crazy this whole mission has been, Tali notes with endearment.

“Well,” he says, “if that’s all you wanted us here for, we should probably go before you and Liara make too many detailed plans on how to overthrow every existing government in the galaxy.”

“I Anticipate No Government Overthrows,” the projection is quick to elaborate. “Such Action Would Likely Lead To A Loss Of Life. That Would Violate My Primary Prerogative.”

Javik narrows his eyes.

“This is still a risk, turian,” he tells Garrus. “I still believe that the best course of action is to destroy this machine while we are here.” He turns around, raising his rifle and eying their surrounds hesitantly. “Either before we leave, or before it indoctrinates us.”

“You’re welcome to that belief, Javik,” Garrus says in a tired tone, “and, honestly, I don’t think anyone here would actually stop you from trying. But I don’t think they’d help you, either.”

Javik looks around, but Tali suspects that Garrus is right. Zaeed’s holstered his weapons, Grunt is shaking his head at the idea of taking up arms against his battlemaster, and Liara obviously isn’t going to do anything. Tali, for her part, is definitely tempted. After everything that’s happened, and everything she’s seen… destroying a Reaper sounds cathartic beyond belief. But she trusts this AI that’s making itself look like Shepard more than she should, and it’s obvious that something’s changed based on how the Reapers are behaving now.

Ultimately, she’s just too tired to kick up more of a fuss. She settles for picking up and holstering her dropped shotgun. What else can she do, now? The Reapers are pacified, and Shepard is- Shepard is dead. She’s got her answers. Now she just wants to rest on them.

“Why’d you bring us in here, anyway?” Zaeed ventures. The projection turns to look at him as he elaborates. “Not that this doesn’t sound important, but this could have been relayed to us through comm. Any reason you wanted us inside a Reaper, wandering around in its guts?” He looks at the heart, and then back at the hallway that they arrived from. “I could have done without some of the sights in here.”

The projection clasps its arms behind its back again. “The First Reason Is That You Leaving A Reaper Unharmed Would Go A Long Way Towards Easing Suspicion Towards Reapers,” it explains. It’s a savvy bit of logic that has Tali momentarily taken aback, until she realises that if this AI is based on Shepard, then it makes sense that it would have picked up at least some of his cunning.

If Liara’s small laugh is anything to go by, she’s had the same thought.

“There Is Also The Fact,” continues the projection, “That For All My Power, I Am Not All-Powerful. Proper Connections To All Of The Reapers And Then To The Outside World Have Taken, And Will Take, Time To Establish. I Might Have Been Able To Convey This Message Over Regular Comms, But I Would Not Have Been Able To Appear In This Form.” It indicates to itself before going on. “Without It, You Would Have Been Less Willing To Accept My Recount Of What Happened To Commander Shepard.”

“Yeah,” agrees Grunt. “If I didn’t figure you really were Shepard, I’d have kicked your ass.”

Part of Tali wishes she could have seen Grunt try.

“Finally,” says the projection, shifting on the spot where it stands. “I Wanted To Talk To Commander Shepard’s Crew.” Tali notices a change in its demeanour. It loses some of its ‘confidence’, and rocks back and forth on its feet. It’s probably a stimulated display, based off of the real Shepard’s mannerisms, but it frustrates her nonetheless, because that was something her Shepard did, something the real Shepard did. This thing is… it’s not her enemy, she’ll admit that. But it’s not Shepard, either. It’s not Shepard, and it’s just close enough to hurt.

Garrus tilts his head, inviting elaboration. “We’re flattered,” he half-jokes.

The projection does not reply with a half-joke in kind – one more sign that it is a world away from the real Shepard. “The Man That I Was Gave Himself To Save You,” it says instead. “He Was Important To You, And You Were Important To Him. I Wanted To Meet You All Myself, And I Wanted To Relay His Fate To You Personally.”

It’s clear that Garrus isn’t quite sure how to respond. “Thanks,” he mutters uncertainly. Tali feels about the same way. This AI only exists because Shepard is dead, and it wears his likeness without a care in the world. However, it didn’t kill him. She can’t blame it for that.

It’s so… complicated.

Garrus catches her eye, and she can see that he’s thinking the same thing as her. He folds his arms.

“I’m beginning to hate grey,” she thinks she hears him mutter.

“In Addition,” says the projection, “Commander Shepard Had Things That He Wished To Say To All Of You. He Is No Longer Able, But I Am Privy To It All. I Wanted To Share Them With You.” A peculiar expression overcomes its face. It’s not sad – not quite. But it’s close. “I Wanted To Give You All A Chance To Say Goodbye To The Man I Was.”

Tali feels her heart sink, and turns to stare desperately at the hallway. Is it too soon, she wonders, to leave? She doesn’t want to be here for this.

Grunt steps forward.

“Alright, let’s hear it,” he says. “Figures that getting made into an AI would make you smarter. Hit me with your extranet wisdom, or however this works.” He waves a meaty hand dismissively. Tali can’t help but wonder about how casually he’s acting. Does he know that Shepard’s properly dead? That this is just an echo? Or is he just in denial?

“Grunt,” says the projection, “Commander Shepard Wanted To Talk To You About Krantt. He Wanted You To Remember-”

“What, that the strength found in my enemies will always be secondary to the strength found in my allies?” Grunt recites like a bored child. “Come on, Shepard, I’ve heard that one before. When we killed the Thresher Maw. I’m not fresh from the tank – I know what a Krantt really is.”

The projection tilts its head a little, still eying Grunt.

“He Knew You Knew,” it reveals. “No. Shepard Wanted You To Remember That Krantt Can Be Found In The Most Unlikely Of Places, Not Just Krogan. He Wanted You To Remember To Keep Your Claymore In Nothing Less Than Perfect Condition. And He Wanted You To Take Care Of Your Crest As It Grows In.”

“Hmm.” Grunt rubs at the blunt nubs over his head. The question of ‘how did he know’ goes unspoken, but Garrus picks up on it anyway.

“I overheard him and Mordin discussing it once, while we were working with Cerberus,” he offers. “Well, I say ‘discussing’. It was pretty one-sided. I’d gone into the lab to upgrade my gear, and Mordin was busy talking his ear off about Krogan growth cycles. I guess some of it stuck.”

“Hmm,” says Grunt again.

The projection nods. “Commander Shepard Also Hoped That You Would Take Care Of The Rest Of The Crew,” it says, “And Especially Of Tali’Zorah.”

As everyone else in the room turns to stare at her, Tali wants nothing more than to curl into a ball on the floor. She isn’t sure which is worse – the idea that this is something that Shepard consciously had hoped for, or the idea that this was something that Shepard had subconsciously wanted, and the AI was simply relaying it to them because it had no concept of what Shepard might have wanted to say and not say.

Grunt sighs heavily.

“That’s a lot to remember,” he complains, before adding, to Tali’s mortification: “but fine. I can do that.” He faces Tali with a leer that’s probably the krogan equivalent of an affirming glance.

Tali buries her face in her hands as best she can, covering her visor with her palms. Part of her wants to turn off her audio receptors so she doesn’t have to listen anymore and she’s stopped only by the prospect of missing something genuinely important. Ancestors, she’d gone into the Reaper expecting danger, but embarrassment wasn’t something she’d considered at all. Her face feels like it’s burning.

By the time she recollects herself, the projection has moved onto addressing another member of the squad.

“Javik,” it says. Tali can see that Javik is still wholly unimpressed with, and distrustful of, it, but he folds his arms nevertheless.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Commander Shepard Wanted You To Know,” reveals the projection, “That He Was Sorry.”

Javik blinks. It’s clearly not the message he was expecting to receive.

The projection continues. “He Did What He Believed Was Best For The Galaxy, But He Knew That It Would Not Be What Was Best For You.” There is genuine remorse in its tone. “He Regretted Denying You The Closure That You Deserve.”

It’s rare, Tali thinks, to see Javik taken aback. But that’s what she sees now. He turns away from the projection, clenching and unclenching his fists. She can tell that the grey area they find themselves in now, and the prospect of a world where Reapers still exist, is affecting him immensely. It bothers her too, of course, but at least she hasn’t spent her entire life fighting them – even if it feels like it some days.

“…I do not like it,” Javik eventually says, softly. From where she’s standing, she can barely make out the rumble of his voice. “And I probably never will.” He turns back to face the projection. “But this cycle has already shown me many things that I would never have considered in my own. And now…” he trails off, glancing at Garrus and Liara. “Now, I am not the only one who must find their way in a new world.”

Tali sees his grip tighten on his particle rifle, but then, he lowers it. “I will offer you my trust, machine,” he says, “if only because there seems to be no other choice. But if you betray that trust, and the Reapers are ever our enemy again, I will not stop fighting until each and every one of you are wiped from the face of my galaxy. Do you understand?”

The projection dips its head at him. “I Appreciate Your Trust, Javik,” it tells him. “I Have No Intention Of Breaking It, Though I Understand How Little My Word Means To You. I Simply Hope I Can Prove Myself To You Over time.”

Javik still doesn’t look impressed, but it’s clear now that most of his fight has left him. “We shall see, machine,” he says. It’s more of a concession than Tali had initially expected from him, but then again, that was Shepard; changing people’s minds wherever he went. (Even if it wasn’t really Shepard, of course.)

“Alright,” Zaeed butts in, because of course he does. “Who’s next?”

The projection turns to him. “Commander Shepard Knew That You Took His Chair, Zaeed,” it says, “And He Did Not Begrudge You It.”

It’s such a difference in tone to Shepard’s previous last impressions that a laugh forces its way out of Tali’s throat. She rasps, doing her best to turn it into a cough.

Zaeed shakes his head.

“How the…?” he begins, before evidently deciding he doesn’t want to know. “Ah, never mind. Guess I should have expected him to be magnanimous about it.”

“He Was Also Happy That You Found A Way To Fix Jessie,” it continues.

Zaeed narrows his eyes. “Now that’s just fucking creepy,” he mutters. Across the room, Liara, for reasons unknown to Tali, awkwardly averts her gaze from Zaeed.

“And,” finished the projection with as little flourish as Tali would expect from something not really alive, “He Hoped That You Would Enjoy Your Retirement.”

“With all this shit? We’ll see.” Zaeed begins to recline against the wall, evidently tired with standing upright and talking to the projection for so long. He’s old for a human, Tali recalls. “But… yeah, maybe I will.”

Another silence follows. Garrus, Liara and Tali all remain, and it seems as though none of them are eager to find out what Shepard wanted to tell them in his final moments.

Eventually, Garrus steps forward. Because of course he does.

“And for me?” He spreads his arms a little, trying to play what he’s doing off as if it’s no big deal. “Let me guess. In his final moments, he finally admitted that he let me win that day on the Citadel.”

Tali doesn’t know what Garrus is talking about, but the projection seems to.

“He Had No Intention Of Admitting That,” it says. Ignoring Garrus’ ‘ah-hah!’, it continues. “At The Time Of His Death, Commander Shepard Was Content In Regards To You, Garrus. He Considered You His Closest Friend, And That Was All There Was To It. But If He Could Tell You Anything Now, It Would Be That He’s Waiting For You At That Bar.”

Garrus seems to sober on the spot, running a hand over his fringe and going from looking straight at the projection to nervously averting his gaze and staring at the floor.

“Well…” he mutters. “Just as long as he remembers that I’m buying.”

The projection nods. “He Would Have Also Asked You About When He Could Expect His Canonisation.”

For a moment, Garrus doesn’t react. Then, he snorts.

“Spirits,” he quietly says, “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Canonisation?” Liara asks. Garrus shrugs.

“After getting the Geth and Quarians to play nice, I told Shepard that if he found a way to pacify the Reapers next, he ought to be made a saint,” he explains. Then, he gestures to their surroundings. “Obviously,” he continues in a sarcastic drawl, “he took my suggestion to heart.”

Grunt cackles. Tali doesn’t think it’s funny, but doesn’t say anything. She knows a coping mechanism when she sees it, and she’s not going to begrudge Garrus his.

“If nothing else,” continues Garrus, “we now for sure that this thing is based off of Shepard’s brain, or at least his memories. That conversation was between us.” He pauses. “And maybe EDI, but somehow, I doubt this is her.”

“Machines are deceptive,” Javik mutters, but no-one pays him any mind.

The projection next turns to Liara, and Tali’s stomach flips. On the one hand, it hasn’t addressed her yet, and she’s grateful for that – for all her morbid curiosity, and her yearning to hear something from Shepard, she can’t stand the thought of hearing something from him while everyone else is in the room to witness it. On the other hand, it’s likely that the projection is simply leaving her till last. And that just makes her more uncomfortable.

Liara tries to smile, but her face is grim. “And what message do you have to relay to me?” She asks, softly.

“Only That Commander Shepard Appreciated You,” the projection says, its own voice lowering in kind. It probably isn’t a genuine emotion – it’s more likely that it’s simply mimicking her – but Tali notices it nonetheless. “You Were A Good Friend To Him. He Hoped That You Would Never Lose Your Kindness.” It ‘considers’ again, adding a pause into its words, presumably to sound more natural. “And,” it eventually says, “He Felt That He Never Adequately Thanked You For Writing His Name In The Stars.”

It’s another reference to something that Tali doesn’t get. She isn’t sure how she feels, that she doesn’t understand so much of what the AI with Shepard’s face and memories is discussing with the rest of the crew. She tries to ignore the feeling. It’s entitlement – Shepard may have loved her, but he’d lived a life outside of her, too. It isn’t fair to want him to have told her about all of this.

Maybe, she thinks, grimly, he would have told me. If we’d had more time.

(“I want more time.”

“I know. Whatever happens…”

“I know.”)

Liara lowers her head. When she raises it again, silent tears are streaking down her face. Tali waits for her to speak, but she doesn’t. She just nods. Maybe, at least in her mind, no more needs to be said.

Tali wishes she felt the same way.

Then, the projection is facing her, and all the words leave her mouth and lungs. She doesn’t see the sympathy for anyone else, but she doesn’t need to. She can feel it permeating the air, like a toxin.

She wants to leave. She wants to run away. But her feet are rooted to the ground. She thinks of the Alerai, and of her father’s last instructions to her. She is, she thinks, sick and tired of the people she loves dying and leaving her messages as if they’ll do any good – as if they’ll do anything to heal the wounds that they leave behind.

“Tali,” it says, and that’s all it needs to say to break her heart all over again. She draws in a shuddering breath.

She hears a footstep. Looking up, she sees Liara- walking away from the Reaper’s heart?

“Come on,” she says to the rest of the squad. “We should probably start making our way back to the shuttle.”

Grunt gestures, clearly unhappy with the suggestion. “And just leave her alone in here?”

“The Reapers will eliminate her quickly,” Javik mutters.

A stern glare from Liara has the squad slowly filing out of the room. Tali watches, torn between not wanting to be alone and not wanting to be near anyone else. On impulse, she seizes Garrus’ arm as he makes to pass her by.

“Stay.” Her plea comes out more desperate than she had intended. Garrus looks down at her, and then nods before looking back up and gesturing, presumably to Liara. Tali, having turned back to the projection, doesn’t see what Liara does in kind, but she hears the footsteps of the rest of the group get quieter and quieter behind them.

The projection, she realised, has been silent this whole time.

She takes a shuddering breath. She’s equal parts clueless, and fully aware of what’s about to happen. She’s not ready – she never will be. But that doesn’t matter.

“I’m here,” she says.

“Tali,” says the projection again, “Shepard Loved You. He Did Not Express It Verbally, Considering His Feelings For You Ineffable, But He Loved You All The Same.”

“I know,” Tali nods. It doesn’t sting, not really. It’s true that she can’t recall a time where Shepard ever said ‘I love you’ to her face, but she’d never felt as though she’d really needed him to say it, either. They were both people of action, demonstrating their feelings without really talking about them. He’d never told her he loved her, but she’d seen it in the things he’d done. In how he’d withheld the data about her father, and shouted down the admiralty board for her sake. In how he’d accepted her back, with no hesitation, after his imprisonment on Earth had forced them to spend months apart, humour in his tone as he’d called her ‘Vas Normandy’ like she’d never left the ship. How he’d given her that piece of Rannoch when they’d arrived there together for the first time.

She liked to think that she’d demonstrated her love for him, as well, through risking her health to be with him, and comforting him after Thessia, and fussing over him after Leviathan had almost killed him. The only time she’d actually told him that she loved him out loud – well, he’d been about to fight a Reaper on foot, and she’d been terrified out of her mind. It had been an exception to a rule.

Still… it’s a small, strange comfort to hear it said out loud.

The projection takes its time to find its words again, in that weird, almost-organic sense.

“There Is…” It’s actually struggling with its words now, which is new. Tali doesn’t want to think about what the implications of that are. “He… Had Many Feelings Surrounding You,” it eventually says. She tries not to get frustrated at the vague way it phrases the sentiment. She supposes she should be flattered. Little old Tali’Zorah, flustering an all-powerful AI. Unfortunately, the context – and the tension still thick in the air – keep her from enjoying any part of this.

She nods, silently. Garrus remains a grounding presence by her side.

“He Did Want To Build A Home With You,” the projection says with minimal warning. Its voice has a mournful tone to it. “You Were The Love Of His Life, Tali’Zorah. He Never Felt Safer Than When You Were Watching His Back In The Field, And He Never Felt More At Peace Than When He Was Alone With You In His Cabin. He Valued His Time With You Immeasurably.”

As she listens, Tali feels her heart splinter piece by piece. It’s like her chest has been split by a chasm since leaving London, and now every word that this thing is saying is acting like a hammer and chisel, forcing it further and further apart.

She knows that she can’t keep listening. She knows that it will break her. but she stands still anyway, even as Garrus’ grip on her arm intensifies. She is like a woman condemned.

“And,” the projection continues, itself sounding like it can’t go on for much longer, “His Greatest Regret Upon His Death-”

This is it, she realises-

“-Was That He Could Not Fulfil Your Final Request-”

Tali falls to her knees.

“-And Return To You, As You Had Asked Him. He Wanted To Do So Very Much.”

There is a measured, almost clinical element to the sympathy that the projection emanates. It’s at odds with the way Tali arches, and lifts her head up, and wails almost animalistically, the tears finally arriving in force. Her vision blurs; the projection, and the Reaper’s heart, fade away like dying pixels on a broken monitor. She wants to throw up, but there’s nothing in her mouth other than salt and grief. Far away, she can hear Garrus swear, and she can feel his arms doing their best to support her as her body shakes and heaves from the force of her sobs, but there’s little he can do. The chasm has reached the final extent of its depths, and now nine days of tension and fear and wasted hope are pouring out of her all at once.

The galaxy is saved, and couldn’t care less. Shepard is dead, and she is alive, and in that moment, she isn’t sure which is the greater tragedy.

Chapter Text

They eventually find their way back to the shuttle. The rest of the squad is waiting for them by its open door, like they were barely restraining themselves from running back into the Reaper after them. Through the purple haze of her visor and her tears, Tali sees Liara visibly relax at the sight of them.

“We would have gone back if you hadn’t come,” she says as Garrus guides Tali into the shuttle and onto one of the seats, strapping her in. “I just… supposed that you would want to be alone.”

“You supposed correctly.” Garrus grunts as he tightens the harness, making sure that Tali isn’t going to slide out of her seat at any point during the return. Tali, for her part, barely registers the pressure across her chest. She’s still in a grief-stricken haze, and barely remembers anything between talking to the projection and arriving back at the shuttle. She and Garrus must have walked back, but it’s all a blur. It feels like she’s in another universe entirely.

Garrus turns to face the front of the shuttle. “We’re all on board, Cortez,” he calls. “Get us out of here.”

Cortez doesn’t even shoot back a characteristic ‘aye-aye’ before firing up the Kodiak’s thrusters and propelling them out of the Reaper. The shuttle rumbles underneath Tali, but she doesn’t mind. It’s helpful for keeping her as grounded as she can be. It’s a reminder that she’s still in the real world, and that all of this is actually happening.

She hears Cortez make a noise of interest from the cockpit, and, half-automatically, she perks up.

“What is it?” She hears Zaeed ask.

“The Reaper’s doing an about turn,” Cortez reports, before making a strange clicking noise with his mouth. “Damn,” he says, “I wish our ships had that kind of manoeuvrability.”

Garrus leans forward. He hasn’t sat down – instead, he’s hanging onto the ceiling of the shuttle. “Where’s it going?” he asks, authoritive.

“Based on the trajectory?” Cortez makes some swiping motions before leaning back to answer. “Probably back to the mass relay. I guess now that negotiations are over, it’s getting back to its repairs.” He pauses. “I mean, I’m assuming that’s what happened, right? Negotiations?”

There’s an uncomfortable silence following his question.

“Not really,” Zaeed eventually answers. He rubs his shoulder. “More like a statement of intent, if anything.”

Cortez nods.

“You don’t seem worried by this,” Javik observes. The Prothean is leaning forward, staring at the floor of the shuttle, supporting himself with a hand on his leg. It’s obvious that the conversation they all had with- with the AI is weighing on him. Even as he addresses Cortez, his gaze remains fixed on the metal below his feet.

“Hey, you all came back alive,” Cortez – reasonably – points out. “I figure that’s a good sign. And if you are indoctrinated, you’re pretty coherent.”

“Indoctrination is subtle”, responds Javik, seemingly determined to keep the conversation going. “By the time anything is obviously wrong, it may already be too late.”

Cortez takes the time to throw his hands up in the air. “Well, gee,” he says with the sarcastic bite that Tali’s only heard him use around James, “forgive my optimism. I don’t suppose I can at least count on a quick and relatively painless death when you all inevitably turn on me, then?”

Liara sighs a long-suffering sigh.

“We’re not indoctrinated,” she confirmed, taking a moment to glare at Javik. “At least, I highly doubt we are. And the conversation we had with the Reaper… it’ll take a long time to process, I think. But all you need to know for the moment is that they’re no longer interested in wiping us all out.”

All he needs to know? Tali feels as though that was the least important part of the whole conversation. What about everything else? What about Shepard, and the AI that controls all the Reapers? She squeezes her legs hard enough to feel the pressure through her suit.

“Well,” says Cortez, lamely, “that’s good.”

Zaeed snorts. No-one else says anything.

Tali wants to say something. She doesn’t want there to be quiet, not now. Quiet just gives her opportunity to be alone with her thoughts. And at the moment, her thoughts are all centred on Shepard. Her love. He’s gone, and he’s left behind an echo that’s enough like him that it stings every time she thinks of it. Feeling another wave of grief coming, she hastily reaches up to her helmet and adjusts her suit’s vocal filters, effectively muting herself so that she can hiccup and sob without drawing any more attention. It’s a trick that she’s used before, on the ride up to the Normandy from Haestrom – as happy as she’d been to rejoin Shepard and the crew, she’d lost almost her entire team that day, and that loss had hit her as she’d stepped onto the Cerberus-branded Kodiak. She’d turned the output from her helmet down so that she could have a quick cry without Shepard worrying about her. And now, here she is, employing the same tactic to cry about him.

Life goes in funny little circles.

The rest of the trip back to the Normandy is silent. It’s a silence that’s neither totally depressing nor totally comfortable – it’s just contemplative. On the one hand, the Reapers really aren’t going to be trying to wipe out the galaxy anymore, and that’s obviously a positive development. On the other hand, Shepard is really dead after all. And that hurts.

Still… at least now, she knows for sure. And now, she can begin the grieving process. It’s not like she’s a stranger to it, after all. This isn’t the first time that she’s had to live through Shepard’s death. She’s unfortunately familiar with the particular experience that is mourning him.

(That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt, though. It hurt so much last time.)

-

At some point, the shuttle re-enters the Normandy, and its door hisses and opens. At some point, she stands up and steps out. And at some point, she gets into the elevator and goes back up to the CIC, and to the cockpit, so that she can watch for herself the Reaper as it jets back towards the Relay to join all the others that are swarming around it like giant, tiny insects.

“Hey,” she tells Joker and EDI. Neither of them react. They’re probably just busy watching the Reaper.

She can tell Garrus is approaching by the distinctive clank of his armoured footsteps. Joker turns around in his chair.

“Hey, Garrus-” he begins, only to do a double take when he catches sight of Tali behind him. “Tali! Why didn’t you say anything? I had no idea you were there!”

Tali folds her arms. “I said hey,” she tells him. He just stares at her.

“…What?” he asks. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Then, he leans over to EDI, and adds, sotto voce, “She is looking at me, right? Can’t tell with the helmet.”

What’s gotten into him? She turns to Garrus.

“Why’s Joker acting like that?” she asks. But Garrus doesn’t respond. He turns to meet her gaze, but he doesn’t actually say anything – he just stares expectantly.

Tali begins to feel like she’s going mad. Baffled, she raises her hand so she can rest her helmet against it, and then the answer comes to her in a flash. Her vocal filters! She hasn’t turned them back on yet. No-one can actually hear what she’s saying! Hastily, she adjusts the relevant settings on her helmet.

“Sorry,” she says, taking satisfaction from the sight of Garrus and Joker both reacting to her voice, “I turned off my vocalisers and then forgot to turn them back on again.”

“So you’ve actually been speaking the whole time? Sounds like voice calls with my friends from high school all over again.” Joker turns to EDI again, expectant. “Hey, what was she saying under there?”

Tali has no idea if EDI actually has the means to discern what Tali was saying, but the AI plays coy. “I couldn’t possibly know, Jeff.”

“I just said ‘hey’,” Tali explains. Joker looks unconvinced – it’s the truth, what more does he want? – but ultimately lets the matter drop, turning back around in his chair.

“So,” he says, obviously changing the subject, “how was your Reaper excursion-stroke-incursion? The fact that you’re standing here tells me it went well. Or maybe it went really badly, and you’re indoctrinated, and this is the part where you beat the crap out of me and EDI and then pilot the ship into the sun?”

Garrus leans against the wall of the cockpit. “As enthralling as the idea of beating you within an inch of your life is,” he jokes dryly, “it went well, for the most part. We actually got to talk with the Reaper – with what controls the Reapers, according to it. And it doesn’t want to kill us anymore.”

“I’ll take it,” Joker shrugs. “So, what happened? Was it the crucible?”

Garrus takes a moment to answer, and Tali realises that he’s avoiding talking about the intelligence they spoke to – about Shepard. She wonders why, but when she thinks she should bring it up with Joker herself, she realises.

“Something like that,” Garrus says vaguely. “It’s Reaper-stopping function wasn’t as destructive I would have liked, but it stopped them for sure. And I don’t think it’s temporary.”

“Not to nitpick, but I would have preferred a ‘I know for a fact it’s not temporary’ from you,” Joker admits, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. “We’ve come too close to dying too many times for me to be happy with giving something like this the benefit of the doubt.”

Garrus nods lightly. “You and me both,” he admits. “But, if how today went is any indication, we’ll actually have a chance to ask at some point.”

“Fair enough,” Joker sighs. “And hey, at least all of you got out alive.” He pauses, and hums consideringly. “Uh, you did all get out alive, right?”

“Yes, Joker,” says Garrus in a tone reminiscent of a consoling parent, “nobody died.”

Privately, Tali thinks that Garrus isn’t quite correct. After all, the Reaper was where they received confirmation that Shepard was…

“Good to know.” Joker leans over in his chair again so that he can actually look back at them. “Call me a cynic, but it’s honestly more than I was expecting.”

“…Yeah,” says Garrus, thickly. Evidently, he’s now thinking the same thing as Tali. She, for her part, doesn’t say anything.

Joker isn’t always the best at reading the room, but he can sense the mood well enough now. He pauses, considering. “And… Shepard?” he ventures.

Tali senses more than sees Garrus opening his mouth, and quickly gives her head a little shake before he can say anything. She sees Joker’s jaw tighten. He bows his head, his cap obscuring his eyes from her.

“I see.”

He takes it with much more grace than Tali had – but then again, maybe he’d spent the days leading up to this assuming the worst, instead of letting himself get his hopes up. That was her mistake, she thinks, grimly. Nevertheless, she can see a tremble in his hands as he turns back to face the controls.

EDI frowns as she looks over at him from the co-pilot’s chair. “Jeff-” she begins.

“Not now, EDI,” he quietly but firmly responds. “Maybe… maybe later.”

EDI is motionless for a moment. Then, she nods.

“Alright,” she says, voice almost a whisper as she turns back to her own readings. “Maybe later.”

Tali and Garrus exchange a glance.

“Not interested in knowing whatever else happened in there?” Garrus ventures, but Tali can see the minute shake of Joker’s head, even from behind his chair.

“No,” he says, simply, and Tali understands.

A new set of foosteps. She turns around to see Javik has joined them at a bridge. The sight of him is a surprise – normally, he stays in his room on the engineering deck. Tali isn’t sure she’s ever actually seen him out of it, now that she thinks about it. (Of course, she never leaves engineering much either.)

“Javik.” Garrus greets him in a neutral tone. Javik ignores him, stalking close to the edge of the Normandy’s cockpit until he’s all but in front of Joker.

“Is it truly leaving?” He asks.

Joker waves, irritated. “Get outta my field of view,” he scolds. Tali can’t help but admire how willing he is to backtalk to Javik – the last Prothean, and a honed killing machine – but she supposes that he’s spent so long piloting the Normandy and its eccentric crews that he’s grown accustomed to such things by now.

Javik ignores their pilot, instead staring intently at the Reaper as it jets back towards the relay. It’s small in their viewscreen, now, and barely distinguishable from the stars. He stares, silently, for a long time – long enough for Garrus to turn, give Tali a curt nod, and then stride away from the cockpit. Tali isn’t sure where he’s going. Maybe back to the forward battery, and his beloved big guns.

Ultimately, she doesn’t dwell on it.

Eventually, Javik leans back. ‘Satisfied’ probably isn’t the word to describe how he’s feeling, but he seems willing to accept that the Reaper is, at least, leaving. Then, he turns back to Joker.

“The seeds of indoctrination could have been planted while we were inside,” he cautions. “You would do well to not trust the words out of our mouths from now on.”

Joker roles his eyes. “I feel like the fact that you’re bringing up the possibility at all is a point in your favour. Unless whatever the Crucible did also taught the Reapers how to use reverse psychology?”

Javik glares. Joker remains impressively nonplussed.

“Hey,” he ventures, “just to check, what these guys said happened actually happened, right?”

Javik glances over at Tali, who hasn’t moved from her position near the front of the hallway leading up to the cockpit. “What did they say?” he asks.

“That you went in and talked to a Reaper,” elaborates Joker, adjusting his cap. “And that Shepard’s…”

Javik gives a small nod. “He is dead.”

Perhaps it’s just the sting of the reminder, but Tali speaks up, unable to keep a dryness out of her voice. “You went from not trusting a word that thing said to accepting it at its word that Shepard’s dead?”

Javik rounds on her. “Either it was using him and his face to break your defences, or it was telling the truth. Either way, Shepard is no more.”

“Hold on-” Joker holds up a hand. “Using his face? Wait, what happened in there?”

Tali folds her arms, squeezing her biceps so hard it hurts. “What we talked to was, according to it, the AI that controls the Reapers,” she explains. “The old one was the one commanding them to wipe out all organics. The new one, which was created by the crucible and based off of Shepard, doesn’t want that.”

Joker’s silent for a moment, evidently processing everything he’s just learnt.

Tali means to elaborate further – to talk about how the AI confirmed Shepard’s death – but she can’t bring herself to do it.

Mercifully, Javik takes over. “The machine claimed that Shepard died to create it,” he says.

Joker gives a little hum of acknowledgement. “I guess… I guess it’d know.”

From her seat to the side, EDI watches the conversation sadly.

“So,” says Joker, in a desperate attempt to change the subject, “a new non-genocidal AI? Think that’ll be interesting, EDI?”

EDI, however, shakes her head.

“As you said, Jeff,” she says in a soft voice, “maybe later.”

Joker stares at her for a moment, before sinking hopelessly back into his chair. “Shit.”

For a little while, they all stand and sit in silence as a group, watching the Reaper disappear into the endless horizon, as the Normandy hovers in space.

“Hmmph,” says Javik eventually. “It is good to see that your wellspring of japes has a bottom.”

Joker frowns. “Uh, dude, Shepard’s dead. And this time, there isn’t a terrorist organisation waiting in the wings with four billion credits to spend on bringing him back.” He idly flicks through systems notifications from the Normandy. “Hell, at this point, I doubt four billion credits is in anyone’s budget, least of all Cerberus’. All the planets that were destroyed… we’re probably looking at a hell of a financial crash in the not-so-distant future, huh?”

Joker’s talk of finances makes Tali feel as though she’s being roused from a deep sleep. Finance. What will her people do to make a living, now that the war’s over? They have a planet now – will that come with a formal economy? What will they to for profit? They’ve spent centuries as mechanists and scrappers; how are they supposed to run an actual world?

The possibilities fly through her mind. As far as she knows, nobody has been nominated as her people’s ambassador to the Citadel in her place. (And, while the Citadel is no longer habitable, the need for ambassadors probably remains.) Concerns like this are – might be – should be – her job. She delicately places a hand to the side of her helmet. Ancestors, she thinks, I’m spiralling. Shepard’s gone, and here I am standing here and thinking about economics. She needs to rest.

Her putting a halt to her thoughts alerts her to the fact that Joker is now saying something else.

“-was a Reaper AI, I’m surprised you actually went along with it, Javik,” he’s commenting. “You hate AIs, and you especially hate Reapers. I would have thought that you’d have gone in there like ‘kill all Reapers’, guns blazing, no matter who tried to stop you.” He pauses and scratches his chin. “I mean, not that I’m against the idea.”

“It would be wise to not threaten the cessation of hostilities,” EDI chimes in from the side. Joker rolls his eyes.

“Thank you, captain buzzkill,” he sighs. Ignoring EDI’s interjection of “I am not the Normandy’s captain”, he turns back to Javik. “So…?” he prompts.

Javik’s lips twitch like he finds Joker mildly amusing but doesn’t want to show it. “I was very tempted, as you say, to be ‘guns blazing’.”

‘Very tempted’ is an understatement, Tali thinks, given that he’d actually shot at the heart of the Reaper while they’d all been there. But she doesn’t mention it now. She has no great need to be pedantic.

Javik, meanwhile, takes a deep breath and stares back out the screen, at their Reaper-free view of all the lights in the heavens. His voice takes on a tone that is simultaneously mournful and… and something else. Some other tone that Tali can’t name. “But,” he says, “there will still be a tomorrow.”

Joke raises an eyebrow – it’s clear he doesn’t understand the statement. Tali isn’t sure she does either. But Javik seems to find comfort in it, and so she lets it lie.

“There will be,” she instead agrees out loud, leaning against the bulkhead and feeling the cool metal against her back – at least, as best she can through the suit. It’s not a philosophy that she’d expected from Javik, but the more she lets it sit, the more she appreciates it.

Maybe, she thinks to herself, tomorrow won’t hurt so much. It’s a low bar, but right now? It feels as though it’s all she has. Maybe it’s all she really does have. Some vain, meandering wish for things to just all get better with a night’s sleep. Part of her – a large part of her – thinks it’s a stupid idea. But some small part of her… part of her feels lighter, now that she knows for sure that Shepard is gone for good. And part of her appreciates that she’s here, standing in her namesake ship, still alive, and watching Javik, of all people, look to the future with the smallest glimmer of optimism in his eyes.

Seriously. It’s Javik.

“Pilot,” Javik orders in a stern voice, knocking his hand against Joker’s shoulder authoratively while taking care to not make contact with the sensory ends of his fingers, “take us back to Earth.” He gives the order like they’re still at war – in his mind, Tali supposes, they still are.

“Hey!” Joker whines, even as his hands begin to dance over his controls again. “Was whacking pilots the done thing in the Prothean Empire, or what?”

A grin forces its way across Javik’s face. “No,” he says, not without humour, “that privilege is yours alone.”

Joker shakes his head and begins to mutter bitterly to himself. (“Sure, sure, manhandle the guy with the glass bones who also flies the ship that you’re currently on. Yeah, nothing could possibly go wrong there, could it?”) Javik leans against the wall of the cockpit. And Tali realises that she has no idea where to go now.

And then, she has an idea.

It’s probably a bad one. It’ll definitely hurt. And yet, she turns around, and walks through the CIC, and gets into the elevator. And after only a moment’s hesitation, her fingers skim over the interface as she presses the button to take her to Deck 1. The captain’s cabin.

Maybe the worst part is that it’s still all how he left it. There was never any war in this room – never any disruption, or destruction. So instead of the chaos and death that’s all but everywhere else, she just sees ship models, and a tank full of fish, and a locker full of discarded armour pieces. She takes a few steps forward, past the monitors and the hamster in its enclosure and the husk head that Shepard and James looted from Bryson’s lab. She walks down the steps, and sees the holographic chess board, and the battered helmet that Shepard had been wearing when the original Normandy had been destroyed. She sees the picture of herself that she’d left for him, still in its frame by his side of the bed.

The picture had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Shepard had wandered off to do some administration-related stuff, leaving her alone on that cliff edge on Rannoch. She’d watched him go, and had realised that her heart belonged to him in its entirety, and had immediately gone up to Raan (who had been talking, agitated, with that Geth Prime that had greeted them after Legion’s sacrifice) and roped her into taking a picture. In the moment, however, she’d sort of frozen up – unsure what expression to make – and had ended up photographing herself making a rather blank face that Shepard, to her equal parts delight and mortification, had showered with affectionate praise anyway. Because of course he had.

Silently, she sits down on Shepard’s side of the bed, and picks up the picture, still nestled safely in its frame. And then, on the frame, she sees the faintest marks of fingerprints near where she’s holding it now. Shepard’s fingerprints. And she’s seized with the urge to cry again.

There is still a tomorrow, she thinks to herself again, biting her lip as more tears pool in her eyes. There has to be.

There has to be something better than this.

-

Tali spends minutes that feel like hours in Shepard’s cabin. Why she stays, she can’t say. It doesn’t make sense – she wants to sleep, or to at least calm her nerves, and yet here she is, sitting and stewing in a grief-driven stupor. But, then again, emotions that run this deep never seem to adhere to any sort of sensibility.

Eventually, she decides that the best course of action is to leave, and head down to engineering. If her brain won’t let her rest, at lest she can be productive. And, if she has any method to handling grief that she can consider tried-and-true, it’s throwing herself into work. As she waits for the elevator to take her to deck four, part of her dreads looking any other members of the engineering team in the eye – however, when she arrives at her destination, and heads over to the drive core, she doesn’t see anyone. For a second, she thinks that they’ve actually left the engines abandoned, but then she sees engineer Donnelley in the corner, hard at work.

“Donnelley,” she says by way of greeting, followed by: “where’s everyone else?”

“Oh! Tali!” Donnelley raises his head from the control station he’s hunched over at, giving her an informal two-fingered salute. It was a habit he’d picked up during the suicide mission, when she’d been chief engineer, that he’d never actually stopped doing – even after Adams had reclaimed the title of the Normandy’s head of engineering.

Tali nods at him.

“Everyone else is in the CIC,” he explains. “Something about a debriefing about what happened on the Reaper.” He frowns. “Did you really go?”

She nods again.

“Right,” Donnelley says in a tone that indicates he isn’t sure what else to say. “Well, you might want to head up there, then. I mean, they didn’t say anything about needing you there specifically, but won’t they want your input?”

“There were five other people there,” Tali says, “I’m sure they have it covered.” But even as she says that, she remembers exactly who those other five are. Grunt and Zaeed will be unknowns to the SR2’s new alliance crew, and neither of them strike her as being all that detail-oriented – and Javik’s people skills are infamously inefficient. Based on all that, it’s likely that Garrus and Liara are going to be the only ones actually properly relaying their experiences with the Reaper and the AI to the rest of the crew.

She can’t let them do it alone. They may not have been close to Shepard in that way – not like she was – but they loved him. And all that they’ve learnt today can’t be sitting well with them, either. As she turns to head back to the elevator, she thinks that probably, it’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t break down in the CIC. But perhaps her presence will be enough.

Besides, what else does she have to do?

 Waving a hand in response to the confused-sounding goodbye that Donnelley sends her, she watches the doors to the elevator slide shut again, and feels the dull thunk and vibration of motion under her feet as it takes her up to deck two.

It says something about the state of the conversation that, when she arrives, nobody seems to pay her any mind. More than that – almost nobody even notices as the elevator hisses open and she steps out onto the deck. The only people who pay her any mind are the ever-canny Doctor Chakwas, who gives her a small smile, and Zaeed, who doesn’t look to be paying that much attention to the conversation anyway, and who gives her a nod when he catches sight of her with his good eye. Beyond them, she can hear a heated debate taking place.

“-was even Shepard?” a voice asks harshly, and she winces.

Garrus’ armour clanks dimly as he folds his arms.

“It relayed details of conversations that only Shepard could have known,” he drawls. “Too many. I’m not saying we should rule out the possibility that it’s a trick, but… well, it if is a trick, it’s extremely thorough.”

The other speaker – James, Tali sees – shakes his head with a grimace.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he groans.

Off to the side, Javik nods approvingly. “You are right to doubt our words,” he says, “given the dangers of indoctrination.”

Garrus wheels on him. “Javik, this story is difficult enough to tell as is. I don’t need you making it harder by casting doubt on my every word.”

Javik’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing else.

Tali watches this all happen from the side, trying to figure out how far through their story the rest of the team has gotten. But before she can find a good place to jump in, the decision is taken out of her hands by Grunt, who – sat away from most of the conversation and ignoring the perturbed stares of the rank-and-file crew – catches sight of her and loudly yells “Tali!”

She cringes as everyone turns to her, but does her best to hide it, raising a hand and giving a small wave.

“Sorry,” she says, relieved when her voice comes out relatively clear and strong, “I was just… resting.”

The phrase gets her sceptical looks from both Garrus and Chakwas, but no-one says anything, and she wanders up to the interface, placing herself beside Chakwas and leaning on the metal. “How far did you guys get through the story?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, James speaks up first.

“Sparks, is it true?” he blurts out. “‘Bout the Reapers and Shepard?”

Tali gives a brisk nod. “It’s true,” she tells him.

James takes a step back like he’s been physically hit, before shaking his head in disbelief. “So far beyond loco,” he mutters.

By Tali’s side, Chakwas bows her head and murmurs something in such a soft tone that even Tali can’t make out the words.

“So Shepard’s a Reaper now?” Kaidan asks for clarification. His tone indicates that he’s struggling to wrap his head around the concept. Honestly, Tali can’t blame him.

Liara makes a motion with her hand. “It’s more apt to say that he controls the Reapers,” she says, “though it isn’t really Shepard so much as an AI based off of him. An echo, perhaps, is the best analogy.”

“Why couldn’t it just be him?” asks engineer Daniels. “I get becoming an AI to seize control the Reapers, but if it was possible to take his likeness and memories, why stop there? Why not the whole personality?”

“And why control the Reapers at all?” interjects James. “If the Crucible was that powerful, why couldn’t it have just disabled them, or something?”

Daniels shakes her head. “It might not have been designed to-” she begins, but Garrus holds up a hand to get everyone’s attention.

“The Crucible could have destroyed the Reapers,” he elaborates, “but, as the AI explained it to us, the blast would have been indiscriminate, and would have resulted in the destruction of sophisticated technology galaxy-wide. No Citadel, no AIs, and no good way to fix the Mass Relays.”

“Which would see everyone stranded and cut off from one another,” engineer Adams fills in, face grim. Garrus nods.

“I’m not a fan of seeing Reapers still active any more than you, but without them, the remnants of my species’ military would be stranded lifetimes from with nothing to eat,” he rumbles. “To use a human saying, it’s a gift horse that I’m not willing to examine the teeth of just yet.”

“It’s ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’,” Liara corrects him softly.

Grunt interjects from his corner: “What’s a horse?” No-one reacts except for specialist Traynor, who quietly shuffles away from the interface to answer his question.

James shakes his head. “I still don’t like it,” he grumbles. “We set out to stop the Reapers.”

“We set out to save the galaxy,” amends Garrus sternly. “We always assumed that the only way to do that was to stop the Reapers, because what other option was there?”

“The Illusive Man always thought that controlling the Reapers was possible,” Kaidan throws out. The major sounds more thoughtful than anything else, but the mention of the Illusive Man only serves to rile James up further.

“Yeah.” He frowns. “He thought that. But since when did Shepard agree?”

Cortez, who’s standing opposite James, raises an eyebrow. “You really think this might be some kind of play by the Illusive Man?”

“I don’t think we should rule that guy out,” argues James. “He’s always been a slimy bastard. Who’s to say that Cerberus aren’t the ones who are really controlling the Reapers?”

“Uh, the fact that they found his dead body on the Citadel?” Cortez retorts, sounding disbelieving. “Besides, Cerberus and the Reapers fell out after the Reapers found out about their indoctrination research stuff.”

James remains unperturbed. “They were researching indoctrination,” he emphasises. “And they found a way to control Reapers! They said so themselves!”

“They could control their ground troops at a limited range,” Tali chimes in – she’d been on Shepard’s squad during the Sanctuary Operation, and she’s had the most time to look at Cerberus’ data on the subject. “There wasn’t anything about controlling the actual Reapers themselves.”

“Not to mention,” adds Liara, “that the Illusive Man’s body showed signs of indoctrination and conversion. Perhaps he thought he would have been able to control the Reapers, but in the end, it looks as though they were the ones influencing him.”

“We saw that before, didn’t we? With Saren?” Adams chimes him. “The Reapers gave him cybernetic upgrades that let them exert their control over him.”

Liara nods in confirmation, before turning back to James. “Obviously, there’s still a lot we need to look into,” she concedes, “and it’s certainly possible that Cerberus had some kind of contingency in place. But for now, I think it’s a safe bet that the Reapers aren’t under the Illusive Man’s thumb.”

Cortez grins, vindicated. James still doesn’t look satisfied, but he looks convinced, and doesn’t say anything in response.

“Do we know for sure that it really was Shepard?” Kaidan chimes in. “I mean- what if it’s just the Reapers, pulling some kind of trick?”

Javik nods approvingly at Kaidan’s suspicion, but Garrus frowns.

“It wouldn’t make any sense,” he argues. “They were winning. There was no reason for them to switch up their tactics – if they still wanted us dead, I can’t see why they wouldn’t just be wiping us out the usual way.”

Liara strokes her chin thoughtfully. “It could have something to do with the Crucible?” she theorizes out loud. “Perhaps they were worried about what it was capable of, so they switched up their tactics?”

There’s a snort from Zaeed. “‘Cept the Crucible actually fired,” he reminds her. “Whatever that thing was ‘capable of’ already happened. You don’t go on being scared of a nuke after it’s blown you to hell.”

“It wasn’t a nuke, though,” says James, “it was some weird alien device.”

“It was Shepard,” Grunt says, inserting himself into the conversation by leaning past Traynor, who’s still facing him. “We spoke to him – not a Reaper.”

“But was it really Shepard?” Kaidan emphasises. Tali looks around the room – everyone who was on the Reaper looks convinced (even Javik, she idly notes), but the rest of the crew is understandably sceptical.

Garrus sighs. “It’s an unwinnable argument,” he vocalises. “Anyone who went onto the Reaper is convinced because they’ve seen for themselves, but because they were on a Reaper, they can’t be taken at their word because of the risk of indoctrination.”

“It would be wise to not trust all that we say,” agrees Javik. “Indoctrination is insidious.”

Traynor, still standing near Grunt, looks distressed. “Isn’t there any way we can find out for sure?” she blurts out.

Everyone exchanged glances – no-one offers an immediate answer.

“The AI,” Tali eventually recalls, “did say that it was still figuring out the finer points of its systems, and that that was why it could only appear to us in…” she remembers the hologram and the way it took Shepard’s shape, “…that form, when we were close to it.” She looks down at her hands, feeling sets of eyes on her. “Maybe,” she continues, “once it has more of a handle on things, it’ll be able to communicate to us without anyone having to actually go inside a Reaper.”

She sees the crew eye each other, unhappily. Zaeed folds his arms.

“Kick the can down the road and wait for robo-Shepard to get his shit sorted and prove us right,” he says, before donning a smile totally devoid of humour. “I’ve been in worse situations with worse plans.”

“Or wait for us to be proven wrong,” Javik interjects. This is apparently the wrong thing to say, as Grunt barks and slams his hand against the wall he’s sat up against, making Traynor jump.

“You told Shepard that you’d trust him, back on the Reaper,” he says loudly, “and now you’re right back to doubting everything he told us.”

Javik narrows his eyes. “I told him I would trust him on account of having no other choice,” he says, icily, “but that does not mean I will not remain sceptical.”

“Which is a perfectly sensible outlook to have,” Liara says, holding up her hands in an attempt to play peacemaker.

Adams straightens up. “Well, I trust Shepard, and I trust our team,” he says. “Indoctrination or no, their words should be good enough for the rest of us, at least for now.”

“He’s right,” agrees Chakwas. “The ground team’s given their report. We can argue about it all we want, but that won’t change the details.” She narrows her eyes. “What we need to do now is take this opportunity to rest and recharge. We all need a break – and if this is a ploy by the Reapers, we’ll want to use all the time that we can to make sure that we’re ready for round two.”

Kaidan, Zaeed, and James all nod.

“Dismissed,” orders Garrus, and the gathered crew begins to disperse. Tali stays for a little while longer, leaning on the metal frame of the galaxy map and staring at her splayed fingers. She feels… listless. She wants to do something – to work through her grief, as she has before. But what can she do? She and the crew have done their part, and seemingly discovered what’s happening. Now, all they can do is wait for the Reapers to vindicate them… or prove them wrong.

The uncertainty threatens to eat at her. But she inhales, and sighs, and forces herself to accept it. After all, what’s the fate of the galaxy in comparison, when she’s already entrusted tomorrow with her heart?

Chapter Text

The Normandy’s arrival back on Earth is, unfortunately, as publicised an affair as it could have been on a planet that has had the majority of its infrastructure destroyed at the roots. When they pull into port, a crowd has gathered. Figures are scattered all around the docking bay, watching the ship come in, and outside the airlock are a cluster of figures – soldiers, officials, and even some news reporters. Staring at the sensors from inside the ship, Tali can’t help but marvel that even with so much change, some things still remain the same.

Besides her, Kaidan sighs.

“They know we went to talk to a Reaper,” he says, like it’s a foregone conclusion. Privately, Tali isn’t so sure – it might just be the reputation of the Normandy that has drawn a crowd of this size. But it wasn’t as though their mission was secret, so she nods in agreement and watches as Kaidan drags his fingers through his ever-static hair.

“What are you gonna tell them?” Joker, in his seat as always, asks.

“What can I tell them?” counters Kaidan. “It’s… it’s the Reapers. They probably think we’re all indoctrinated.” He frowns. “We probably are.”

Joker raises his eyebrow. “Uh, you didn’t even go inside.”

Kaidan doesn’t indicate that he’s heard this rebuttal.

“We tell the truth,” Tali says, quietly. What else can they do?

Kaidan makes an aborted gesture with his hands, thrusting his arms out before giving up and letting them fall back down to his side. “They won’t accept it,” he insists. “They’ll deny everything. They’ll say that we’re not thinking straight, or lying, because we were Shepard’s crew.”

The implications are twofold: they will be seen as emotionally compromised due to being close to Shepard, and they will be seen as liars or subversives because that’s what Shepard was seen as back when he was alive.

Joker, at least, doesn’t look fussed. “Well, if they say that, we can tell ‘em that they should have asked someone other than us to go talk to the Reaper, then,” he says in a smug tone that reminds Tali how uneager he’d been to take on this mission in the first place. “I don’t get the sense that they’ll be swarming with volunteers for follow-up expeditions.”

No-one has a reply to that.

-

As tempting as it is to hide away in the Normandy and wait out the crowd, they have to go and give their official report to Admiral Hackett. And it has to be in person – whatever paired communicator Hackett was using to check in with Shepard was apparently rendered nonfunctional at some point during the final battle, meaning that they can’t just call him up on the quantum entanglement array in the back of the war room. They could hypothetically comm him their findings, but the crew seems to have agreed, with barely a word spoken to each other, that it is best to have this meeting in person. Everything they’ve learnt is liable to change the face of the galaxy as they know it; it doesn’t lend itself to the mundanity of regular communications.

As the airlock doors slide open, and the last visual barrier between the crew and the crowd falls away, something happens. Lights flash, technology sparks, and just about every camera and recorder fixed onto the members of the Normandy’s crew either flickers, unseeing, or straight-up stops working. Tali barely has time to wonder what’s going on before she hears a familiar voice come in over her comm.

“Everyone who wants to leave the Normandy, do it now. My hack was a rush job, and I don’t know how long it’ll last on some of their more resilient hardware.”

“…Kasumi?” Tali muses out loud, before being buffeted by the forms of her crewmates as they stride along the ramp and past the gathered crowd. Not wanting to be left behind, she hastens after them. In technical terms, it’s a short walk from the airlock to a private elevator that the assembled onlookers can’t follow them into, but it feels a lot longer in practice. Even without any cameras or recorders, there are voiced and shouted questions being slung at them from all sides. The attention and pressure that Tali feels from all sides reminds her of her trial back on the flotilla, and she shrinks inward a little at the memory.

Eventually, the doors shut, and she’s left in a semblance of privacy, sandwiched between James and Grunt. As she tries to move to an empty space closer to the doors, she bumps into something.

“Wha-?” She begins to say, but then the air shimmers, and she realises what’s happening. “Kasumi!”

“Tali!”

Tali is caught up in an embrace from the diminutive human woman. She hurries to return it – she and Kasumi became close in the months leading up to their mission through the Omega-4 relay, and though they haven’t had much contact since, she still values the thief dearly.

“I’m so glad to see that you’re alright,” Kasumi says, pulling away and placing her hands on Tali’s shoulders, staring at her intently through the helmet. “I mean, I knew you were fine a few days ago, because I got curious and nobody seems to have had time to fix up their cybersecurity yet, but it’s still nice to see it for myself.”

Staring back at her friend, Tali decides she’s glad that no matter what changes might have occurred, some things – some people – seem to have stayed the same.

From behind Tali, Grunt- well, grunts. “Kasumi.”

“Grunt,” Kasumi replies in a mock-deep voice, before grinning. “Still trying to crush everything you see into a mushy little pulp?”

Grunt sniggers. “The mushier, the better.”

“Good to see you’re alive and kicking, Kasumi,” Garrus chimes in from near one of the elevator’s walls. “It’s been strange not having you on the Normandy these past few months; we haven’t had to bolt down a single piece of valuable equipment.”

Kasumi rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what’s cuter,” she remarks, “the fact that you think a few bolts would stop me, or the fact that you spent that long crafting such a middle-of-the-road zinger. I mean, we’ve seen each other since the suicide mission.”

Tali tries to brace herself, but the memory of Shepard’s party stings all the same. Kasumi must notice something, because she shuffles in place, and when she speaks again, she sounds a lot less chipper than she did a moment ago. “While I was listening in,” she says, slowly, “I picked up that Shepard…” she trails off, seemingly unable to actually say it out loud. “Is he really…?”

Even in a packed elevator, Tali can feel something chance in the atmosphere.

“He’s gone,” she whispers. She hates to be the bearer of the news, but she just can’t let anyone else say it, either.

Kasumi sighs. Then, she lifts a hand up to her face, obscuring it further.

“…I see,” she says in a voice that suddenly sounds very wet.

Tali isn’t sure what to do. She’s so used to seeing Kasumi full of life and humour that this is… it doesn’t feel right.

Just add it to the pile, she tells herself.

Suddenly, the elevator feels even more compressed than it already did. The rest of the ground team is silent, politely averting their gazes to the floor or walls.

“Sorry,” Kasumi says after a few moments, removing her hand from her face. “I- God, Tali, I’m so sorry.”

Tali holds up her hand. She knows, coming from Kasumi, that the apologies are genuine and mean well, but they make her stomach churn all the same. “You don’t have to apologize,” she assures her friend. “We all lost him. Not just me.”

She can’t see Kasumi’s eyes, but she gets the sense that the thief is staring at her all the same.

“You’re right,” Kasumi eventually says. “I guess we all did.” Her hands drop to her sides, where Tali can see them still jittering, full of aimless energy.

(“I felt so lost, Tali.” Shepard had told her at some point after she’d rejoined the SR2 for the Omega-4 mission. She’d asked him about Kasumi – one of the unfamiliar faces that had fought beside Shepard to save her on Haestrom – and this had been his answer. “After leaving you at Freedom’s Progress, and being given the Normandy, I’d gone to see the council straight away. I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought- I don’t know. That it could be like the old days. But they’d shut me out. Anderson’s hands had been tied. I couldn’t get in touch with Kaidan. As far as I was concerned, in that moment, I was totally alone.”

“But what about Joker and Chakwas?” She had asked. He’d shaken his head.

“I trusted them, of course,” he said. “But they’d both returned as part of the packaged, pre-prepared Normandy that Cerberus had given me. They’d even been wearing the uniforms. Something about it… hadn’t felt right.”

Tali had nodded. Shepard, after a moment of sober recollection, had continued.

“We picked up Kasumi on the citadel, before leaving for Omega. She was the first non-Cerberus-affiliated person to join my crew.” He’d paused, considering. “She’d had her agreement with them, of course, but in that respect, she was no different to me at that point. We were just two lost, desperate people, making deals with the devil because we had no idea what else to do.” Leg bouncing, he’d leant back in the seat he’d been sitting in. “I guess… in that sense, we were all each other had.”

“And that was the start of a beautiful friendship?” Tali had said, half-joking, but Shepard had nodded with a small smile.

“Pretty much.”)

“Kasumi-” Tali begins, reaching out, but it’s apparently now Kasumi’s turn to hold up her hand and belay the inevitable outpouring of sympathy.

“I’ll be okay,” she murmurs. “You know. Eventually.”

That sounds reasonable enough for Tali. “Eventually,” she echoes with a confirming nod.

“Yeah.” Kasumi glances to the wall of the elevator, indicating how long there is left until they reach their floor. Tali follows her gaze to see that they’re almost there.

“I guess it’s just…” Kasumi continues, looking down at the ground instead of back up at the rest of the ground team. “It’s just not the happy ending we were hoping for, is it?”

Before anyone else can say anything – can respond to a statement of blank honesty from the galaxy’s best liar and thief – the door opens and the air flickers. And Kasumi is gone like a breath on the wind.

-

When they enter Hackett’s office, the admiral is stony-faced. He greets them with a nod, and nothing more, as the team fans out and sits down in the various chairs placed throughout the room.

“Admiral,” rumbles Garrus.

“Vakarian,” Hackett responds. His eyes rove over the ground team. “You’re back alive. That’s a good start.”

“And we didn’t even have to shoot anything,” Garrus agrees, answering quickly. Probably making sure to keep control of the conversation and not let Javik interject about ‘the dangers of indoctrination’ again. “As far as negotiations go, it’s definitely one of the least tense I’ve ever been involved in.”

Hackett leans forward in his chair. “You called it a ‘negotiation’,” he notes.

Garrus shrugs. “Well, I’m not sure that’s the best term. It was a- what did you call it, Zaeed? A statement of intent?”

Zaeed – who hasn’t sat down, and is instead leaning against the wall by the door with his arms folded – nods.

Hackett’s brow darkens. “From the Reapers.”

“From the new intelligence that controls the Reapers.” Liara amends. “And its plans don’t involve the systematic destruction of organic life across the galaxy.”

“Forgive me if I don’t sound convinced,” Hackett says, “but I don’t like the idea of those things having any plans at all. Not unless those plans are something along the lines of hurling themselves into the nearest black hole. You’re talking about them as though they’re going to become players on the galactic stage.”

Liara and Garrus share a glance.

“They probably are,” Garrus admits. “It’s…”

“Shepard now controls the Reapers,” interjects Grunt. He’s grinning. “They bend to his will.”

Hackett’s eyes widen. Garrus is quick to try and clarify the situation.

“I don’t know if I’d phrase it like that,” he says. “As we understood it, the crucible worked by creating a new artificial intelligence to control the Reapers. That intelligence was based on Shepard – on his thoughts and memories. Whatever it is, it sounds as though it shares a lot of his values, and it doesn’t seem as keen on killing us all as its predecessor was.”

A silence. Hackett’s fingers drum against the table.

Garrus tries again. “I know it might sound insane-”

“The intelligence said it would take time to stabilise its systems and project itself outside of a Reaper,” Liara adds, cutting in with conciliation. “Once it does that, you – we – should be able to speak to it directly without entering a physical Reaper, and risking indoctrination.”

“And if you’re all indoctrinated already?” Hackett asks.

The team exchange glances.

“We’ve had extensive experience with indoctrination, and with the Reapers,” Liara says. “It’s obviously not a perfect guarantee, but if anyone was disposed to recognise its effects, it’d be us.”

“That said,” Zaeed says from his corner, “we’re not drooling on the floor or force-feeding you slugs from our magazines.”

“Or fanatically going on about the glories of the Reapers,” Garrus adds.

“I would still see them all wiped from the sky in an instant,” says Javik, helpfully. He narrows his eyes at the rest of the team.

Garrus rolls his own eyes. “Maybe we should just let him, if he’s going to keep going on about it.” he muses, sarcastically. “Give him his rifle, a spacesuit, and a connecting line, toss him out of the shuttle bay, and let him go to town. The last Prothean, taking on the entire Reaper fleet alone. I wonder if he could get it done before the rest of us die of old age?”

“He wouldn’t be alone,” says Grunt. “I would join him.”

“I thought you didn’t want to fight Shepard?” Liara asks, sounding perturbed.

Huffing, Grunt explains: “Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun to shoot up a Reaper or two.”

Tali finally feels the urge to say something. “The recoil from your shotgun would make it difficult,” she points out. “You’d probably send yourself into a spin every time you fired.”

Grunt slams his closed fists together, unperturbed. “I’d use the spin to switch targets.”

Before anyone else can chime into what’s quickly become a ludicrous hypothetical, Hackett clears his throat.

“You really believe the AI was based off of Shepard?”

“Yes sir,” Garrus confirms. “At least – it seemed that way to us. Some of the things it said… it knew things that only Shepard could have known about.”

Hackett reaches up and rests his chin in his hand – a gesture that Tali has come to recognise as representing human pensiveness.

“What happened to the original Shepard?” He asks. “The real one?”

Another silence. How many times, thinks Tali, are we going to have to explain this to people? She hates the thought as soon as she’s had it – she knows that Shepard knew a lot of people, and that they are all entitled to the truth of his fate – but she isn’t sure her heart will be able to take telling the story again and again.

Still. She feels the same feeling as she did when Kasumi had asked in the elevator, only a few moments ago. She’d rather it be her than anyone else.

“He’s dead,” she explains. “Whatever the process was to create the AI, it… the real Shepard didn’t survive it.”

Hackett remains largely inscrutable, and Tali suspects that he always will be. But she can tell that he finds the news upsetting.

“I see,” he says. It’s the same immediate response as Kasumi had – Tali doesn’t know how to feel about that, or whether she ought to feel anything at all.

The next thing Hackett does is raise an omni-tool, and begin to type something into it.

“There’ll probably be a meeting of diplomats in the near future to discuss the current galactic state of affairs,” he tells them. “If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like some of you there. This sounds like something they should hear, and it sounds like it should be told by someone who actually saw it for themselves.”

Garrus and Liara share another glance. Tali tries to ignore the fact that she can feel at least one set of eyes turn to her. She also tries to ignore the fact that, as her people’s ambassador, she’ll probably be at this meeting regardless; whether she wants to be, or not.

“We’ll… figure something out,” Liara eventually says. Tali isn’t sure whether she’s talking to Hackett, or just the room at large.

Maybe both.

-

After their debrief with Hackett, the team heads back to the Normandy. By this point, some of the crowd has dispersed, but there are still a lot of people there. Thankfully, there are still no cameras – either Kasumi’s still helping them, or the crowd is simply too afraid of their technology being broken again to risk it. But Tali knows that it’s only a temporary stopgap, and that it’ll take more than a few hacked cameras to draw the galaxy’s attention away from her crew.

When they get back aboard, Kasumi decloaks and greets them again – much to the surprise of the regular alliance crew, who haven’t met her yet.

“Hope you don’t mind if I crash here for a little while,” she says, sounding much more like her old self, as Garrus explains to a crewman Tali doesn’t know the name of that he doesn’t need to raise the alarm. “I’ve spent the past few months travelling light and mostly hanging out around the Crucible. Only now, any rooms I was using are on the other side of the galaxy, and the Crucible itself is rubble.”

“I should warn you,” Tali says, “they changed the layout of your room. You might want to find a new place to sleep, unless you’re comfortable on top of a poker table.”

Kasumi shrugs. “As long as the bar is still there.”

It is there, but Tali suddenly finds that she can’t say so out loud. She knows for sure it’s there because she was there after their mission to Sanctuary, toasting Miranda, and Shepard was also there, and now she’s thinking about Shepard again. She settles for biting her tongue and nodding, and thanks the ancestors that Kasumi is tactful enough to catch on and not continue that line of conversation any further.

“So!” she says instead, clapping her hands together. “Who’s new? Who can I scare?”

At that, Tali forces a laugh, and engages, doing her best to fill the hole in her heart with something piecemeal and patchwork. It’s a lot like fixing a ship back on the flotilla, she thinks as she begins to give Kasumi a rundown on which Normandy personnel could use a good scare. You take something derelict and barely functioning, and you patch it up with what you can find, and you force it to keep working.

What else can you do?

Days later, Wrex shows up again. Tali isn’t aware that he’s come to visit until he stomps down to engineering, where she’s busy reconfiguring some crossed wires and making absolutely sure that the Normandy’s engines won’t explode when they’re next turned on.

“Oh! Wrex!” She gasps, once she realises he’s here. “I’m so sorry – I had no idea.”

“Eh.” Wrex casually waves his hand as she clambers to her feet and sets down her tools. “Heard you were working. Figured I’d give you some time to, well, work while I checked in with the others.”

He’s spoken to the others. Tali feels a now-familiar drop in her stomach.

“Wrex…” She begins, but stops. Wrex nods, gravely.

“They already told me what happened. What you found.” He gestures to the exit. “Want to walk?”

“To walk?” Tali echoes. As much as she can’t deny that it’s probably a good idea to spend some time out of the ship, she doesn’t fancy facing the crowd again. “I- there’s-”

Wrex beings to stomp away without waiting for her answer. “Don’t worry,” he assures her over his shoulder. “Rubberneckers didn’t fancy sticking around once I played the part of a pissed-off krogan. Funny, that.”

Tali runs to catch up with him as he strides to the elevator. “What do you mean, ‘played the part’?” She ventures to joke. “I thought ‘angry krogan’ was just your default state.”

Wrex laughs. “Bah-hah! Good to see you’ve still got a little fight in you.”

When they head through the CIC, and out through the airlock, Tali sees that Wrex was true to his word – there isn’t a single reporter or onlooker left. For the first time, she sees their docking bay in peace and quiet, and in the golden light of a sunset. She sends Wrex her wordless thanks as they keep walking.

Eventually, he leads her to a bench outside the main port. He makes a motion like he’s about to sit down on it, then pauses, consideringly. Then, he stands back up with a small huff.

“Puny thing,” she thinks she hears him mutter. Ignoring him, she turns to face the sunset. It reminds her a little of Rannoch.

“Thanks, Wrex,” she says, softly. “I think I needed this.”

Wrex doesn’t reply immediately. In fact, he leaves it long enough that Tali begins to wonder whether he heard her at all. But then, he speaks.

“I’ve gathered as much.” His voice is low. Dark.

“…How much did the others tell you?” She ventures.

“The basics and then some.” Comes his reply. “As much as they could manage, I think. They’re pretty delicate right now. Of course, you all forgot that Grunt was up there for my sake – I got a full report from Junior practically the second you all landed.” He makes another huffing noise. “Would have been here earlier if it wasn’t my job to wrangle an army of krogan. So, how are you?”

“How am I?” Tali ponders the question out loud. At first, it annoys her – it’s another expression of sympathy; appreciated but painful – but as she considers, she realises that nobody has actually asked that question of her directly yet.

“…It’s horrible,” she croaks, not sure what else to say. She remembers the projection that had worn Shepard’s face, and embodied so many of his ideals, while retaining none of what had truly made him him. “It feels like he’s so close and so far away at the same time. I need to keep reminding myself that what I saw up there… it wasn’t really him.” She hunches in on herself, suddenly feeling very small. These feelings may have been with her the whole time, but it’s only now, as she says them out loud, that she feels as though she understands their full weight. “I just… I just miss him so much.” Her admission – her confession – comes out as little more than a whisper.

Wrex’s expression is unclear to her, as is so often the case – a lot of Krogan, especially elder Krogan, are hard to read. He reaches up and scratches at his old scars with a massive finger.

She isn’t sure what she expects. Perhaps an awkward attempt at comfort? What she doesn’t expect is for him to shrug and say:

“Are you sure you’re not overreacting? Making this worse than it is?”

“Wha- Wrex!” Tali all but shrieks, unable to believe that he’d even suggest such a thing. “What- why would I- no! Of course not!” Indignant fury rushes through her. The love of her life has been killed and returned to her as an emotionless pop-up projection with the ability to assert control over the Reapers – it’s not as bad as facing extinction, of course, but that’s a very low bar to clear. How could she be overreacting?

Wrex shrugs again. “Not that I don’t trust your judgement, Tali. But I figured I’d ask. Remember back on the first Normandy? You had a worse reaction to Liara’s mother dying than Liara herself.”

Tali remembers that. She hadn’t broken down or anything, but she had spent a few days being upset over Benezia and her ultimate fate. However, she doesn’t think she’d reacted that poorly; in fact, she’d argue that Liara was the outlier in that situation. Beyond distress in the immediate moment, and sad recollections for a little while after returning to the ship, the asari had taken the death of her mother impossibly well.

“She died in front of us, Wrex,” Tali reminds him, but Wrex remains totally nonplussed.

“Died in front of Liara too,” he grunts.

Tali folds her arms. “What’s your point?” She snaps.

“My point?” Suddenly animated, Wrex marches up to her and viciously points at her, stopping just short of physically thrusting his finger into her chest. “Shepard just saved the whole galaxy. He just saved both of our races – again! And all I’m hearing is people crying about it!” He pulls back, eyes darting from side to side. Then he takes a deep breath.

“Wrex,” Tali manages to choke, hurt, but he holds his hands up.

“No. That was unworthy of me,” he admits in a low voice. “Especially considering that you were... well. You’re hurting.” He balls his fists, staring up at the sky above them. “When a Krogan dies a valorous death, they are eulogized by shamans and consigned to the void by a funeral pyre. Their lives, and their victories, are celebrated.” He looks down, and back at Tali. “Shepard was the greatest warrior I’ve known, and he had the heart of a Krogan to boot. If he’s dead, his pyre should be the size of one of the damn Reapers. We should be giving him our finest rites, and then we should spend weeks drinking and celebrating and wishing his clan korbal. Instead of doing any of that, everyone’s just sitting here moping over him. It pisses me off.” He turns away to spit on the ground, then looks back at Tali. “No offence.”

Tali wants to stay angry, but finds she doesn’t have the energy. For how brusque Wrex is, he cares about Shepard too. This is just his way of showing it.

“…None taken.” She murmurs.

“Besides,” Wrex adds, “the whole… ambiguity of it annoys me too. I mean, is he dead, or not?”

Now, Tali turns to him. “He’s dead, Wrex,” she says, softly. “His body was destroyed. On an atomic level, according to the- the AI. Not even Shepard can come back from that.”

Wrex doesn’t seem very affected. “Yeah, but they used his consciousness to create that AI, right?”

Tali nods.

“So,” continues Wrex, “he’s just an AI now. Sure, he’s different, but he’s not dead. Not properly dead, anyway. It’s still got… I dunno. His mind’s still there, even if the other bits of him aren’t. Right?”

It’s a reasonable conclusion to come to, Tali has to admit. Perhaps, with the same information that Wrex has, she’d come to it too. But Wrex hadn’t there, and Tali had. Wrex hadn’t seen the impersonal manner, the dead eyes, the cold and intimidating voice that all had Shepard’s hallmarks but were all too different to really be him. Tali had.

It that AI really was Shepard, it would have apologized as soon as it had seen them. Then, it would have cracked a bad joke. Or perhaps it would have done those things in the opposite order. It would have stumbled over its words, and been a lot more sympathetic to all of their questions, and would have shown at least a little sadness over being disintegrated. But it hadn’t.

“It’s not him, Wrex,” Tali insists. “I wish with all my heart that it was, but it just isn’t.”

Wrex has no answer to that.

“I suppose you’d know best,” he says eventually. Tali nods in acknowledgement. She has him convinced. It’s a victory – even if it doesn’t feel like one.

Wrex shakes his head.

“Well, I’m off to organise the funeral rite,” he says. He turns to her, red gaze piercing. “You should come. If there’s anyone who can teach you how to hold your liquor, it’s the krogan. And I need to introduce you to Bakara. You’d like her.”

From what she’s heard, Tali doesn’t doubt it. Maybe a fresh perspective will help her.

“So long, Wrex,” she says, trying to keep the worst of the hurt out of her tone. “I’ll see you around.” Maybe he’ll be at the gathering of delegates Hackett mentioned.

Wrex fixes her with a severe stare.

“Take care,” he says, like it’s an order, before turning and walking away.

Chapter Text

It is a week later when the relays are fixed. Tali hears about it from James, who barges into engineering to let her know the good news in his usual manner.

“Hey, Sparks!” he calls, and Tali clonks her helmet against some panelling when she jerks in surprise. Ignoring the racing of her heart – why does everyone have to interrupt her when she’s neck-deep in wires, why was Shepard the only person who ever seemed to be able to come and talk to her when she was at a maintenance console and easily available – she digs her way out of the mechanics.

“James?” she asks, wondering why he’s come down here. It has to be to see her; Adams is out, trying to contact his family, and Donnelley and Gabby are taking one of their increasingly-frequent leaves of absence to go and do… whatever two bonded humans do. (Not that she can’t hazard a decent guess!) She doesn’t hold it against them, though – the damage to the Normandy is all but fixed, and there’s not a lot of problems that can arise on a ship in dry-dock and out of use. Especially one with an unshackled AI constantly keeping the systems working. It’s not like she needs them here to help her with maintenance.

“They’ve gotten our relay fixed!” Says James, earnest grin cutting through the scars on his face. “We’re getting comms and ships from all over – we aren’t fully connected to the rest of the galaxy again, yet, but it sounds like it’s a big step!”

“That’s great!” Tali says, realising after the fact that she genuinely means it. “I bet the Turians will be relieved to hear that. There can’t be much in the way of dextro-amino food available in a levo system.”

“Dextro…?” James frowns for a moment, before remembering the term and brightening up again. “Oh, yeah! Guess that’s true for the Quarians as well, right?”

Tali nods. “Yes, although our situation wasn’t as precarious. We didn’t disarm all of our liveships before the fleets came to Earth, so we still had facilities capable of growing and storing food in the system after the relay broke. Though, it wouldn’t have been enough for our whole fleet, never mind the Turians…” she trails off, realising what a mess a long-term stay in Sol would have been for her people. She never thought she’d be grateful for the Reapers still being here, but in this instance, she’d glad that they were. Who knows how long it would have taken to fix the relays without them?

“Plus, now you can actually get to that homeworld you guys were so obsessed with.” James still sounds pleased, but the reminder of Rannoch only serves to make Tali’s stomach swoop like she’s back on its surface, running away from a Reaper in a commandeered vehicle. She hasn’t allowed herself time to think too hard about Rannoch, what with everything else that’s been happening both during and after the war, but the idea of returning still gives her mixed feelings like nothing she’s ever felt before.

After a heartbeat’s silence, she realises that James is still staring expectantly at her, so she speaks up. “…Yes,” she says. “We will.”

Perhaps foolishly, she expects that answer to be enough. But James gives her a funny look.

“You don’t sound all that stoked to be goin’ back,” he points out. He isn’t wrong, but the fact that she’s apparently so obvious is about it throws her for a loop.

“…I suppose it’s just surreal,” she offers, after a while. “We did take Homeworld back in the middle of a war, after all. As amazing as it was, between the Reapers and… well, the Reapers, I haven’t really had the time to… to think about what that means.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s not a full truth. Not the truth that she’d begun to consider to herself when the nights are dark and sleep isn’t coming.

She doesn’t want to go.

It isn’t an overwhelming lack of want. There are things about Homeworld – Rannoch – that she finds appealing, of course. It’s the world of their ancestors. Her people, both her own species, and now the Geth as well, are building a new home there. And… it is a beautiful planet. It just…

It doesn’t feel like home. Because home is… home is here.

Home is the Normandy; the ship that was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen from the outset, that was cast to the void in a surprise attack and returned two years later with twice the interior space and three times the raw power. Home is the quick and quiet hum of Normandy’s engines; the filtered smell of her engine room; the distant roar of her cannons. And home is the crew that mans the ship. Home is Garrus and his attitude, Joker and his jokes, Chakwas and her calm support, EDI and her own ever-developing sense of humour. It’s Gabby and Donnelley and Adams and Liara and Kaidan, and James and Cortez and Traynor and even Javik. Home is- home was Shepard. His compassion and his strength. His presence, and his voice, and his touch.

She won’t pretend that Normandy is the same without Shepard. Never. But, after everything, it’s more of a home to her than she thinks Homeworld will ever be.

Thankfully, while James eyes her for a moment longer, he doesn’t seem to pick up on her inner turmoil this time. “Yeah,” he instead says, “I guess that’d be pretty overwhelming.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” Tali forces herself to chirp. “‘World-shattering revelations to process’. Right behind ‘I survived the Reaper war’ and ‘the Reapers just fixed the mass relay’.”

“Hah!” James barks a laugh. “I hear ya there. Was out the other day and I saw a buncha guys on the street whaling on a husk. Like, it was lying on the floor and they were just… laying into it with kicks. And the damn thing wasn’t even fighting back! First time I’ve seen a husk that wasn’t, like, howling and rushing towards me on all fours because it wants to eat my guts.” He puts his hands on his hips and blows air out from his mouth shrilly enough to sound like a whistle. “Man… I almost felt sorry for it. Almost.”

Tali isn’t really sure how to respond to the grim story; she settles for giving James and affirming nod and being glad for the visor hiding the minutia of her facial expressions from the outside world.

“Man,” James continues, “and I thought the world was loco before.”

Again, Tali has no real answer, so she and James let the rest of their conversation go unsaid, and James quickly ducks his head and turns to leave.

“Anyway- just thought you’d wanna know,” he says.

“Thanks,” Tali responds, almost automatically. “I… appreciate it.”

She’s not lying, but she feels like she is.

-

In the weeks that follow, ships leave and enter the Sol system haphazardly. Piecemeal. Shattered after the battle above Earth’s atmosphere, warships and troop transports begin to use the relay to travel back to their respective home systems (though, if scuttle is to be believed, few of the other relays are in any way operational; those ships may have no choice but to either wait, or find their way home the long way round), and other ships begin to arrive. Ships of war, at first, and then ambassadorial vessels. Dignitary transports. Random collections of commandeered vehicles, stopping by earth for one reason or another. As the galaxy continues to get back onto its feet after the war and its sudden conclusion, word spreads; the galaxy’s armies, and the Citadel, are in the Sol system.

For her part, Tali is, piece-by-piece, pulled away from the comforts of the Normandy and her engine room, and into something much more daunting: active political life. Her injuries during the battle of London may have bought her some time, but she’s an admiral of the Quarian fleet, and she can’t shirk from her duties forever. She can imagine her father despairing with the ancestors at the prospect, which makes it more tempting, but ultimately, her sense of responsibility wins out.

Eventually, she is reunited with her fellow admirals, all of whom survived the battle; Raan embraces her, and Koris shakes her hand. Gerrel still can’t look her in the eye, which is just fine by her, because she’s not so sure that she can look into his yet, either. And Xen is just… Xen. Still wickedly intelligent. Still just wicked. Seemingly unchanged by anything that’s happened over the course of the war, and Tali can’t decide if that’s more comforting or disturbing.

And then, seemingly just like that, it’s back to work. Her people are stranded in a foreign system, light years from home. It’s not exactly an unfamiliar predicament – but, all the same, it’s one that comes with a lot of logistical challenges. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.

In perhaps what is both a blessing and a curse, Tali doesn’t work with a specific part of the fleet. All the other Admirals have their specialisations, but she was never given one, what with her appointment to the admiralty largely being in immediate response to war with the Geth and Reapers. Instead, in something that feels like a parody of her ambassadorial role during the war, she’s sent back and forth between different parts of the fleet as something of an in-house liaison. With comms still spotty, she’s the one who ensures that ever part of the fleet is able to get through to any other part that they so choose, and making sure that as few wires as possible get crossed along the way.

Personally, she’d much rather be lending her technical expertise to the fleet – she doesn’t see herself as that much of a people person, and she knows how good she is with machines – but she resigns herself to the work because it helps her people, and because it’s not as though it’s something outside her ability. She has a great deal of experience working on a multi-species ship, and she’s growing used to her position as admiral. By this point, she knows how to talk to people. And when she isn’t quite sure how to handle a situation, she asks herself what Shepard would do, and then takes it from there, and that tends to work out most of the time.

The most unfortunate thing about her duties is that they take her away from the Normandy, and from her crew. She sees them when she can, of course, but those opportunities begin to become few and far between. Worse still, she begins to hear whispers and rumours amongst the fleet that she’ll soon be transferred out of Normandy’s crew and assigned to a ship in the Flotilla; given an admiral’s formal responsibilities and the ship to go with. It’s a daunting prospect, commanding her own ship – even ignoring the fact that it would take her away from her crew. From the closest thing she feels she has to a home.

But she doesn’t worry about that – can’t worry about that – for long. That is for the her of some distant-feeling future to concern herself with. The her of the present is inundated with work, and it needs to be done for the wellbeing of her people. And so, as always, she puts her people first.

During the fleeting times where she isn’t urgently needed by her fleet, she does her best to touch base with the crew of the Normandy – with her crew. But they’re beginning to disperse, as well – spread out and figure out what to do with themselves during this strange period of intermission.

Chakwas, once confident that the ship’s crew is as well as they can be in the circumstances, takes a leave of absence to assist at one of the makeshift medical centres that has been established in London following the bang and the whimper that was the end of the Reaper War. She and Tali just about manage to catch each other one evening, as Tali is arriving for a visit and Chakwas is leaving with the last of her bags slung over her shoulder.

“They need me out there,” Chakwas says, after explaining where she’s going. “More than they need me here, for now.”

Tali places an uncertain hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself,” she says.

Chakwas pulls her into a hug. “The same to you, Tali,” the elderly human says into Tali’s shoulder. When she pulls away, Tali catches sight of a single tear in her eye. “Just promise that you, or someone, will message me the next time our girl-” she glances around the ship they’re standing in- “and her crew are given an assignment. I’ll be damned before they get back in the air without me on board.”

“We would not dream of it,” EDI chimes in from the overhead speakers before Tali can say anything.

Tali laughs. “I don’t think EDI or Joker would take off without you.”

Chakwas huffs in self-satisfaction, and leaves without another word.

-

Kaidan is the next member of the crew to depart. He receives a message from his mother, who is still alive on the other side of the planet. He has to go to her.

Tali wants to hold it against him. She can’t. Not in the slightest.

“You’re technically the Normandy’s XO,” Garrus says, as the crew give him their goodbyes. “Who’s gonna keep the crew in line once you’re gone?”

Kaidan’s laugh is like a sigh.

“Garrus Vakarian, showing signs of humility,” he says, almost to himself. “It really is the end of the world.”

He hugs Tali goodbye before he leaves. As the door shuts, Tali stares at it with a sinking feeling. Like everyone is going one after the other, and that there soon won’t be anyone left at all.

As the rest of the remaining crew disperses to head back to their posts, she finds herself wondering into the empty cockpit, staring out of the viewscreen at the destroyed city on display all around them. She doesn’t know how long cleanup has been going on by this point, but she can’t see any change. There are still so few tall buildings left standing, and there are still so many piles of rubble that look like a child’s building blocks, scattered in a fit of rage. The sky is still grey. It has never once, since the Normandy first arrived on Earth, aside from the sunset she can remember seeing with Wrex, been anything other than grey.

A voice interrupts her musing. “Is everything alright?”

 Turning around, Tali sees specialist Traynor standing a little way behind her, wringing her hands nervously.

“Traynor,” Tali greets, trying to keep some of the fatigue out of her voice. She’s spent the past three days ferrying messages between Gerrel and Koris because neither is on speaking terms with the other, and it’s worn her out more than she cares to let anyone know.

“Hello, Tali,” Traynor says, taking a couple of nervous steps forwards so that she, too, can see out of the viewscreen at what remains of London. “I hope you don’t mind, I was just…”

“It’s fine,” Tali is quick to tell her. “I was just…” she gestures to the world outside the Normandy.

Traynor nods, understanding. “Admiring the view.”

“View might be… generous,” admits Tali. “I’m sorry. I know this is your planet. It just feels…” she gestures, words failing her. “You know, I’ve barely even seen the sun since we arrived? I think I saw it once when I was talking with Wrex, but otherwise…” she shrugs, helplessly.

Traynor stares at her. And then – completely catching Tali off-guard – she begins to laugh.

“What?” Tali feels as though she’s missed some hilarious joke. “What is it?”

Still laughing, Traynor wipes a tear from her eye. “Oh, Tali,” she says, in a voice that immediately lets Tali know for sure that she’s missed something.

“Spit it out,” she prompts the human, rolling her eyes under the mask. Privately, she thinks that it’s quite nice to see Traynor in good spirits.

Eventually, Traynor recovers herself enough to speak. “Tali,” she says, “that’s just the weather. London – England, this country – it’s famous for being overcast with clouds like this a lot of the time. If you haven’t seen the sun, then that might- um, there’s a good chance that it’s got nothing to do with the war.”

“Oh.” Now, Tali gets what Traynor was laughing at. Her pride feels a little stung at the realisation, but she supposes that she can see the humour. She turns to look out the window again.

“And people still live here?” she asks, which, of course, sends Traynor into another bout of laughter.

“Of course!” she eventually giggles. “We wouldn’t be much of a hardy people if we were put off by some overcast weather, would we?”

Tali shrugs. Presumably not. But most of her experience with planetary weather patterns is hypothetical. She wouldn’t really know.

Traynor’s giggles die down, and their comms specialist goes back to fidgeting with her fingers.

“You know,” she offers, “this… isn’t actually the first time London’s been all but flattened?”

“No?” It sounds like a macabre story – and ancestors know, there have been enough of those in her life already – but Tali can’t help but be curious. A destroyed city is nothing new anymore, but a city twice destroyed? “What happened?”

“It was…” says Traynor, humming thoughtfully for a moment as she remembers the details, “…almost three hundred years ago, now. This country, Great Britain, was at war with another. Germany.” She hums again, then looks down at her feet. “Well- ah- really, we were at war with its fascist regime- anyway, during the war, the Germans launched a bombing campaign against this city that lasted as long as a year. They’d drop bombs from aircraft during the night.”

“All over the city?” asks Tali. “Why?”

Traynor frowns. “To scare people.”

Tali isn’t sure she understands. Perhaps wars were fought like this by her people, a long time ago, but so much of their history was destroyed when they left Rannoch… “I don’t think I understand,” she admits.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” says Traynor. “It- well, it’s not very nice, to say the least! Initially, bombings were done on military targets. Hangers, industrial centres – the things that this country needed to stay in the war. And, apparently, they were a few weeks’ worth of bombing away from totally destroying our own air force. In which case, they’d have been able to invade the island and conquer it all. But then… then they switched to civilian targets.”

“Deliberately?” Tali gasps. It’s horrible to even imagine – even if she can imagine it uncomfortably easily.

With a nod, Traynor continues. “The idea was that if the people living here saw their loved ones die, and saw their government as unable to protect them, they’d give in and sue for peace. Give up. Let themselves be rolled over rather than lose everything fighting.”

With a jolt, Tali realises what the tactics remind her of. “Like the Reapers,” she breathes, voice so soft that for a moment she’s afraid that her vocaliser hasn’t actually picked up on it.

“Maybe,” agrees Traynor. “Maybe that’s what war always becomes, when people are given enough time – an attempt to scare your enemies into not fighting you anymore.”

Tali casts another sweeping gaze over the destroyed city. “And… and your city survived this?”

Thankfully, the question seems to brighten Traynor up a little. “Yes!” she confirms. “I mean- not intact, obviously. A lot of people died, and a lot of buildings were destroyed. But the people living here just… kept on living life as best they could, repairing damage during the day and then hiding away at night. And eventually, our side won the whole war. So…” she turns to face the city herself, no longer staring at Tali but standing beside her, facing the same direction. “It wasn’t all for nothing, after all.”

There is something in the story, Tali thinks, that is applicable to the here and now. Of course there is. But she isn’t sure that she has it in her to appreciate the parallel, at the moment. She doesn’t have the energy to care about one more destroyed city. So, she looks out over London – the ruined city that she knows – indulging in one more stray thought about a city twice-destroyed before moving on, and pats Traynor on the back in a ‘thanks for trying’ sort of way, because it’s not that she doesn’t appreciate it.

And then, she heads back into the recesses of the closest thing she still has to a home.

-

One day, Tali wakes up, and every major galactic representative has found their way to Earth.

A lot of them were there already – every human of note was in Sol before the push to take back Earth began, for obvious reasons, and many other leaders with military ties, such as the Quarian Admirals and the Turian Primarch, were there as well. But many others had been absent, because it hadn’t been their prerogative to fly into an active warzone. Tali likes to think she is generous in her thoughts towards those leaders, because she and they have led very different lives, but still. She can’t help but wonder what they were doing that was more important than being a part of the only remaining military manoeuvre that had had any chance of bringing the galaxy to victory over the Reapers.

‘Continuity of civilisation’, Tevos had once told Shepard. (And Shepard had since mentioned to her, of course.) But how many people would have been needed for such an effort?

Tali doesn’t know. She can’t know. Her civilisation has spent the past three-hundred years on whatever ships they could piece together from the wreckage of their actual civilisation. Perhaps preserving your people’s history was more of an effort when your people still had a history to preserve.

Still. It’s a personal hangup, and it’s getting in the way of the most important thing – with all the players in place, the gathering that Hackett had hinted at, back when they’d delivered their news about the Reapers to him, is nigh.

Tali doesn’t labour under any illusion of not being there. Even if she wasn’t an Admiral, and an ambassador, and the only admiral to not be overseeing a specific fleet (which meant that she was the least likely to be missed), she’d been on the Normandy when it had visited the Reaper, and she had been part of the ground team that had heard the AI’s message. Ancestors help her, but there is probably no-one more qualified to be present.

That doesn’t mean she’s looking forward to it, though. She’s going to have to represent her people on a galactic scale, she’s going to be scrutinised by the most high-profile people in the galaxy, and she’s going to have to retell the story of the death of the love of her life all over again. No prospect, out of any of those, is appealing.

“I’m guessing you couldn’t just play hooky? Avoid it?” is Kasumi’s response, once Tali has explained as much to her.

The two are sitting on opposite sides of the poker table in the Port Observation deck, drinking brandies tailored to their respective amino types. It’s the night before the conference is due to be held, and Tali’s presence as a Quarian representative has been confirmed. The Conclave is sending her and Admiral Xen as their ambassadors. Who out of her and Xen might be dreading the prospect more, Tali can’t say. All she knows is that she’s been having some stupid, self-flagellating thoughts about Shepard lately, and she’s not sure if she’d rather deal with those, or with this. It’s a no-win situation – all she can do is clench her teeth and get on with it.

She shakes her head in response to Kasumi’s response, sucking on an emergency induction port and tapping her finger nervously on the table in front of them.

“I can’t just duck out of attending now,” she says, pulling the port away from her lips and feeling her helmet seals clamp back up behind it. “It wouldn’t look good, and I- I can’t just let Xen be the only Quarian there.” She scoffs at the thought. No way she’d let that psychopath speak for her entire race.

Kasumi shrugs. “If you change your mind,” she says, “let me know. I’m not exactly a stranger to smuggling people out of places.”

It’s a sweet sentiment. Odd, but sweet, which is basically Kasumi as a person.

“Thanks,” says Tali, before re-inserting the port and continuing to ingest her liquid courage.

Another thing that disturbs her about the conference – one that she hasn’t told Kasumi yet – is that it’s due to be held in the Citadel Presidium. Of all places! Tali doesn’t believe it either, but apparently enough of the Keepers survived the blast, and they’ve been as studious as ever about reconstruction. Not that the Presidium is anywhere near repaired, yet, to say nothing of the wards, but the artificial air filters have started working again in some areas, and it’s apparently enough for whoever is in charge of making those sorts of decisions.

While there hasn’t been any official confirmation as to why they’re meeting there, she and the other admirals suspect that it’s because it would be seen as too political charged for the delegates to meet on Earth, or on any ship owned by one species. Smoking ruin as it is, the Citadel is still the most significant place in the galaxy that could be considered anything close to ‘neutral’.

She gets it, she thinks. But… still.

Shepard died there.

“Know who else is going?” Kasumi asks. “Maybe there’ll be some friendly faces.”

Tali ponders the question.

“…Wrex will probably go,” she eventually realises, which immediately makes her feel a little bit lighter.

“The one from the party?” Kasumi realises. “Oh, yeah. He’s important, isn’t he?”

Tali raises her bottle in something of a toast. “He’s only reunited his people and seen the genophage cured,” she pronounces, realising as she lists them how amazing Wrex’s accomplishments really are. “The krogan haven’t had a leader like him in… in a very long time.”

“That’s someone!” Kasumi chirps. “And you know him well?”

Tali nods over-enthusiastically. “Yes. We were on the Normandy’s crew together. Ah- the original Normandy. The SR1.” She reminisces – there’s a lot to reminisce about, from that part of her life. Meeting Wrex for the first time – warming up to each other over time – him showing her all the best ways to gut someone with a shotgun…

Kasumi spreads her arms wide in a celebratory gesture. “Well, there you go!”

Kasumi, Tali thinks, may well be being overly optimistic. There’s no guarantee that Wrex’s presence will make this meeting any less miserable – there’s not even any guarantee that he’ll even be there, give that he’s supposed to not be the only member of the krogan. (She hasn’t heard anything other than good things about Urdnot Bakara, of course, but still – she doesn’t know her in the same way.)

Still. Maybe some optimism is what she needs in a time like this. Or, at the very least a healthy dose of good luck. She laughs, and raises her brandy in a silent toast to both.

-

Sometimes, luck prevails. This is what Tali thinks to herself when she steps off of the shuttle, Xen at her side, onto the cool tiling of the presidium, and sees one Garrus Vakarian standing against a small wall, leaning over the edge of a balcony and gazing out at the cityscape.

“Garrus!” she darts over, ignoring whatever Xen might have to do or say in favour of someone she actually likes. “What are you doing here?”

Garrus’ tone is wry. “Same as you, I imagine,” he says. “My government wants me involved, and I was on the Reaper to receive the message firsthand.”

“Your government wants you here?” Tali tilts her head – she’s picked up a little scuttle about Garrus working with the turian military, but nothing that indicated that he’d be important enough to send here.

With a shrug, Garrus is generous to elaborate. “Our Primarch’s here as well, of course. I can’t imagine anyone thought it’d be a good idea to let me be turiankind’s sole representative.” He stares over Tali’s shoulder, and she turns to see that Xen is already scuttling away to wherever they’re meant to actually be. “I see your people had a similar idea,” he says.

Tali rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what’s worse,” she admits. “The idea that she’s supposed to be the good representative of our people… or that I am.”

Garrus grunts. “Her,” he says, quickly. “Definitely her. Not that you’re perfect, but she’s the sort of fanatic you can smell from a mile away.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Tali asks, only mostly as a joke.

One of Garrus’ claws taps on top of the wall he’s leaning on. “Call it a tactical appraisal,” he offers.

She half-sighs, half-snorts, and leans on the wall next to him.

The Presidium is essentially one giant mess. Most of the white and green and blue that it once was has been sandblasted to the ancestral plane and back, leaving the whole thing looking like a burned-out ruin of its former self. It reminds Tali of those corners of ships that manage to escape getting cleaned for months or years at a time, with ash so thickly strewn across some areas that makes her think of piled-up snow.

She wonders, before she can stop herself, if Shepard saw it looking like this before he- before the end. The thought is enough to send her spiralling, internally. Send her back to the thoughts that she’s been grappling with, as of late – the ones that are getting harder to ignore.

Garrus turns to her. “What are you thinking?”

Briefly, Tali considers being evasive. But it’s Garrus. If anyone is liable to understand how she’s feeling, it’s him.

Her voice hitches as she tries to respond. “I can’t help but feel,” she admits, “that this… that Shepard dying… that it’s my fault.”

Garrus stares at her, his normally stoic expression cracking under the weight of his disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

She immediately regrets saying anything. It really does sound worse out loud. But now she wants to explain herself. “Not like that! I didn’t- I wouldn’t have killed him myself, and I didn’t even make him make his choice! I just… I wonder, about what I could and couldn’t have done, and I feel like maybe, if I’d have done things differently, he could have… this couldn’t have happened.”

Shaking his head, Garrus places an armoured hand on her shoulder. “You can’t think like that,” he rumbles.

She shrugs, helplessly, feeling like she’s a second away from falling apart again. “But I do. For instance, what if I hadn’t been injured in that final push? What if he hadn’t stopped to take care of me, and call Joker in for an evac? Could he have made it sooner, or could we have made it there with him? Would that have made things any better?”

“Tali-” Garrus begins, but by now, she doesn’t want to stop – if she stops, she won’t start again, and whatever these stupid feelings are, she needs someone to hear them.

“And the fact that- that he saved the Geth as well.” She sniffs. “You heard hi- the AI. He wouldn’t have had to give up his physical body to make the catalyst destroy all synthetic life. He could have lived, and destroyed the Reapers, and EDI and the Geth would have been seen as acceptable casualties by most of the galaxy.” She pauses, wringing her fingers together because she doesn’t know what else to do with her hands. “But… I would have never forgiven him if he’d killed the Geth. After they’d gained full sentience, after Legion- after everything.” She places a hand on her chest passionately. “For all the bad blood, for all the… all the things we’ve done to each other, the Geth are my people now – we share a homeworld. I would have never accepted him sacrificing them to save his own skin. And he-” her voice breaks. “And he would have known that.”

Garrus goes quiet, at that. He takes some moment to silently contemplate, staring down at his talons as though he’s expecting a sniper rifle to be in them, and bending his head low so that Tali can’t see his face.

“I should have expected this,” he mutters, before facing Tali again. “You’re not the only one with survivor’s guilt, you know.”

“Survivor’s guilt?” echoes Tali. She’s heard the term before, of course, and she’d come to understand it – truly understand it – while she’d been trying to figure out how to word those messages to the families of the marines that had died under her command on Haestrom. But she hadn’t thought to connect that to Shepard’s death until now. “You think that I- no.” She dismisses him. “No, that’s not it. I- that’s not-”

“Tali.” Garrus’ voice is stern. “You really think you’re the only person in this galaxy who’s mourning Shepard? Who’s thinking, right now, that maybe he’d be alive if only they’d done better?” He clenches his fists. “I could have handed you off to the Normandy and then joined him in running for the beam. I was hurt too, but I wasn’t incapacitated like you were. I could have done it. But I didn’t in the moment. He said to take you and I just… did.” He turns around and leans on the edge of the balcony, staring out over the ruined beauty of the presidium with a dark look in his gaze. “Plus, I had these conversations with him throughout the war. He was always so… so optimistic about everything, and I was… less. I tried to talk to him about the sacrifices that he’d have to make to win. Ruthless calculus. He’d always argue against it… but now I wonder if I didn’t indirectly inspire him to give his own life.”

“Garrus!” Tali almost chokes as she leans on the balcony beside him, trying to make eye contact with him through her visor. Her voice is still thick with unshed tears. “That’s just ridiculous. There’s no way you can be blamed for the choice he made.”

Garrus ekes out the silence a little before turning back to Tali, eyes full of meaning. And then, Tali gets it.

“Bosh’tet,” she mutters, but that’s all she has to say. His point has been made, and they both know it.

“Besides,” Garrus eventually adds, “I keep thinking about what the AI said. About destroying the Reapers, destroying synthetics, and destroying other technology besides.” He gestures to Tali’s suit. “Your environmental suits are technology. Who’s to say that it wouldn’t have killed your race, as well as the geth?”

Tali eyes him, not sure what to make of this seeming change in tactics from Garrus. “You’re saying this right after telling me to not blame myself?”

Garrus shakes his head. “Just applying a little ruthless calculus of my own.” He stares out over the presidium again. His gaze drifts to the top, and the pale columns that run the length of it before reaching what’s left of the artificial sky. “I don’t have a lot of goodwill left to spare. The idea that Shepard died for the geth and EDI… it’s difficult. But letting myself think that he died to save them and the quarians? Well, that makes it a little more bearable.” He looks at Tali from out of the corner of his eye, just for a moment, before looking back up at the presidium. “I’d have missed you, too, you know.”

“And you wouldn’t have missed EDI?” Tali challenges him, but he shakes his head.

“I would have. But… not in the same way.” His voice takes on a more serious intonation. “Shepard, you, and I – we were a team. A real team. From the beginning, all the way through to the end.”

Tali is hit with a memory of Garrus on the shuttle through London, with her and Shepard and Anderson and the major.

(“Seems like this fight’s always been ours to finish.”)

“…We were,” she acknowledges, quietly.

Garrus hums.

“So,” he finishes, “it just helps to think that one of us died to save another.”

It helps him, she wants to say. It doesn’t help her. But she keeps quiet. He, and everyone else, has been more understanding and compassionate about her grief than she could have asked for. They’ve all been there for her. It’s time someone was there for Garrus.

“Better make sure you don’t tell EDI about that,” she says. “If I were her, I’d be offended.”

Garrus scoffs. “EDI would be fine with it,” he insists. “It’d be Joker I’d need to worry about.” Then, he hums consideringly. “Well, ‘worry’ might be too strong a word. I’m not sure what he could really do to me aside from break a leg in my general direction.”

“You say that,” Tali points out, “but he’s only harmless if you’re on the same playing field as he is. If you’re on the ground, and he’s in the Normandy? You’ve got no chance.”

Garrus doesn’t seem worried. “Well, that’d be the same for any half-decent pilot,” he counters. “Doesn’t matter who’s pulling the trigger – I wouldn’t exactly hold up under the weight of our girl’s guns.” He huffs. “Considering how long I’ve spent on those things, I’d be disappointed if I did survive.”

Tali can’t help but laugh at his indignant reaction to a silly hypothetical. “Relax,” she assures him. “You’ve spent the better part of a year on those things. I’m sure they’d be, ah… good enough to get the job done.”

Garrus snorts. “Good enough to get the job done, hmm?” He turns away from her, and starts to look over the presidium again, like he’s keeping a watchful eye over it. Even now, she thinks as she looks at him, he can’t help but try and imitate Shepard at least a little.

“Good enough,” echoes Garrus again. “You know, I wouldn’t have been happy with that, once upon a time. I used to hate compromise, and if any bad guys ever slipped through my fingers, I’d take it personally. I had to be the best, and I had to get the job done. That was always non-negotiable. Now…”

“And now?” Tali prompts him.

“Now,” Garrus shrugs, “I can’t help but wonder who I was trying to impress.” He’s got that thoughtful expression on his face – the one that she’s seen develop over the years she’s known him, as he’s grown from a brash ex-cop to an experienced and respected member of his species’ hierarchy. “Now, I’m a worse turian than I ever was back then. I’ve fought the war to end all wars, and I’ve come out the other side. And I’ve lost my best friend.” He sighs. “I’ll happily settle for ‘good enough’.”

Tali doesn’t reply. But, privately, she remarks a little at the irony. When everything had started, ‘good enough’ had been a way of life. For all her time and effort she’d devoted to her fleet, their lifestyle had always been one of function over form, and of necessity over all else. With their lives the way that they’d been, they’d all been used to settling for whatever mercies the galaxy would throw their way. They’d been the migrant fleet, and every day, they’d been lucky to get by.

Now, she’s an admiral and a leader of her people. They have a home planet, they’ve formed an alliance with their oldest enemy, and they’ve helped save the galaxy from a threat beyond comprehension. They’ll even be freed from their suits within her lifetime. From a logistical perspective, it is nothing less than a series of incomprehensible victories and boons. She should be grateful past the point of words.

And yet, her most overwhelming feeling is one of deep dissatisfaction. Just because it’s not as good as it could be.

She clenches her fists as she looks out over what remains of the Presidium.

Damn you, Shepard, she thinks, for showing me how to hope.

Chapter Text

When Tali and Garrus arrive at the designated meeting point, they are the first ones there. It does nothing to alleviate the pressure of what they’re there for, but it does at least reassure Tali that, no matter what else, these political types are still people – complete with a propensity for lateness, same as anyone else. Even Xen – who was literally on the shuttle with her – hasn’t rocked up yet. Right now, her soul needs that kind of silly humanisation.

Plus, it means that for a little while, it’s just her and her best friend. There’s no conversation between them – she’s still feeling the weight of what they spoke about earlier, and she suspects that Garrus is as well – but she can almost pretend that the two of them are just waiting around for the rest of their team, and they’re all about to jet off on some other impossible adventure.

(Ancestors. She never thought she’d be nostalgic for that feeling.)

Eventually, others start to arrive. First are all the representatives of the council races – the councillors (Tali makes a concentrated effort to not stare too much at any of them as they enter; she doesn’t think she’ll do a good job of disguising her disdain for them, and she presumes that it would be a bad start to relations with the rest of the galaxy if the quarian representative has an obvious bone to pick with the old guard of politicians), and additional figures in the form of Xen, a salarian dalatrass, an asari Tali doesn’t recognise, and the turian primarch. The primarch shakes Garrus’ hand.

“Vakarian,” he rumbles in a solemn tone.

“Primarch Victus”, Garrus says, nodding deferentially. Victus shakes his head.

“No need to stand on ceremony,” he says, lightly chiding the other turian. “It wasn’t so long ago that you outranked me, after all.”

This is news to Tali, and she turns to stare at Garrus. She’d suspected, when she first saw him here as a representative of his species, that he’d been given some kind of position in the Hierarchy, but it’s still a surprise. All this time, and she hadn’t been the only one to get a radical boost up their society’s ranks? She wonders why he never mentioned it, but the way he coughs and averts his gaze quickly makes her realise. Apparently, he hadn’t felt any more qualified for his promotion than she had.

“Don’t remind me,” he mutters. “If there’s one thing I enjoyed about being away from Palaven, it’s that I didn’t have to put up with being saluted by men twice my age.”

Victus chuckles. Then, to Tali’s surprise and Garrus’ obvious horror, he salutes.

“Welcome back to the Hierarchy, Advisor Vakarian.” There’s humour in his voice. Tali decides that she likes him.

Garrus groans, but otherwise accepts the gesture without complaint.

Folding her arms for the sake of appearances, Tali resolves to not let Garrus off that easily. “Am I hearing this right?” she asks. “You were made a high-ranking advisor, and you didn’t tell me? Garrus, I’m offended!” She takes a moment to hold back a giggle before continuing. “We could have bonded over our promotions!”

Running a hand over his fringe, Garrus groans again. “That’s exactly why I didn’t mention it,” he gripes. “I knew you’d never let me hear the end of it.”

Tali huffs. “I bet you told Shepard.” The jibe slips out of her mouth before she thinks about it, and she cringes for a moment, thinking that mentioning Shepard’s name will bring down the mood, but thankfully Garrus doesn’t react poorly.

“Shepard,” he interjects forcefully, “saw General Corinthus defer to me on Menae. Not much sense in being coy about it after that.”

Primarch Victus clears his throat before Tali can respond. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he says, holding a hand out for Tali to shake. “You are…?”

Tali grasps the Primarch’s hand and shakes it firmly. “Tali’Zorah vas Normandy,” she says, by way of introduction. “I’m on the Normandy’s engineering team, and I’m also the quarian ambassador to the citadel. At least, I was.” She glanced off through the window, out at the destruction surrounding their meeting place. “My appointment was… very haphazard,” she admits. “We’ll see if it lasts the day.”

“You’re selling yourself short, admiral.” Garrus puts a lot of deliberate emphasis on Tali’s rank as he steps forward to position himself at her side so he can nudge her arm with his own. “I’m sure your people will find a use for you yet.”

Victus’ gaze flicks from Tali to Garrus, and then back to Tali. “I take it you two are acquainted,” he observes.

“We both served under Commander Shepard on the first Normandy – the SR1,” Garrus explains.

Tali nods. “We were also on the team that went through the Omega-4 Relay to destroy the collector homeworld,” she adds. “And then, we found our way back to the Normandy after the war broke out.”

Garrus’ timbre lowers a tone as he adds: “It was Shepard, her, and me, sir. From the beginning to the end.”

Victus’ gaze is solemn as it flicks from Tali to Garrus, and then back to Tali again.

“The galaxy owes you a great debt, then,” he says, tone solemn and laden with respect. Feeling herself wilt from the attention – she’ll never get used to it, will she? – Tali struggles to think of something to say, only to be interrupted by a firm voice interjecting itself into a conversation.

“Tali’Zorah!” Wrex thunders as he marches up to her and Victus. Victus turns to regard Wrex with suspicion, and even Garrus tenses up as the krogan comes to a halt just short of barging right into Tali. But Tali’s been friends with Wrex long enough to recognise a bluff when she sees it, and trusts her ‘uncle’ implicitly. So, she decides to play along, placing a hand on her hip and letting the other linger near her waist, where her pistol and shotgun are both within grabbing range.

“Urdnot Wrex,” she loudly says, “you… you son of a varren.”

Wrex snorts. “You’re going to insult me to my face at a diplomatic meeting?” He leans down so that he’s looming over her. “You’ve got some nerve, you little pyjack.”

Oh, he’s really hamming it up. Tali, still somewhat taken aback, decides that the best course of action is to respond in kind.

“Wires and nerve in equal measure,” she retorts without missing a beat, referencing her cybernetics, as the room goes quiet. “Though, maybe I shouldn’t expect you to understand the discrepancy. Headbutting your way to the top of the krogan surely knocked out the last of your brain cells – as though you weren’t thick enough already!”

Wrex’s glare intensifies, and Tali can see everyone else in the room either back away or reach for their own weapons. The silence is maintained just long enough for Tali’s nerve to fail, and for her to drop her stance out of fear that she’s actually offended her old crewmate. But then, Wrex breaks out into a smile like a sun bursting through the clouds, and Tali lets out a breath of relief as he waddles forward and picks her up in another bone-shattering hug.

“And how’s my favourite niece doing?” he booms, setting her back down with such force that she has to lean on him to catch her balance.

“Better,” she exhales, waving one of her hands in the sideways ‘so-so’ gesture that she’s picked up from the humans she’s spent so long serving with. Wrex stares at her meaningfully, obviously remembering their last conversation, and she rolls her eyes. “I really am,” she protests. “There’s a lot to be done, but… I’m on my way to actually doing it, now.”

Wrex waves his arm dismissively. “Bah,” he scoffs. “You know yourself. Just remember that I’m here. Within reason, anyway. I’ve got a planet to run.”

“I know, Wrex,” she laughs. “And thank you.”

“C’mon.” Garrus steps forwards. “No well-wishes for me? I’m hurt, Wrex.”

“Garrus!” Booms Wrex, pushing past Tali. “War’s over! Any sign of that Turian statue yet?” He cackles at his own joke. Victus, meanwhile, leans over to mutter to Tali.

“Was his threat empty?” he asks, voice strained. Tali’s surprised at the Primarch’s concern, but does her best to allay it.

“You don’t need to worry about Wrex,” she assures him. “As he would say, that was just krogan hot air.”

Victus doesn’t look completely convinced, but he nods nonetheless, stepping back and out of the conversation as Garrus leans in to greet his old friend. Here the three of them are, Tali marvels as Wrex clasps Garrus’ arm so firmly that the clang of their armour colliding echoes through the room. Leaders amongst their respective peoples, pioneers of the galaxy’s future. And it had all started when they’d been on the same ground team on a human ship. It’s totally surreal to think about.

“A shame Bakara can’t be here,” Garrus says, pulling away from Wrex and not-so-subtly massaging his wrist. Wrex nods in agreement.

“I wish she was. But someone’s got to keep our people in line while I’m away.” He shakes his head, ever-despairing over the nature of his own race. “Normally, I’d be able to actually leave for a day, but for now, they’re getting antsy. They all want to go back to Tuchanka. And if I’m not there, they’ll probably pick a fight with the salarians just to give themselves something to do.” He pauses, consideringly, then snorts. “Either that, or they’ll have some kind of massive orgy. They’re still pretty excited about the Genophage being cured.”

“Wrex!” Tali hisses, contrite, looking around to make sure that the other delegates – the refined, centred, in-control delegates who definitely didn’t come here to hear about Krogan orgies – aren’t paying attention. Wrex doesn’t help by throwing back his head and laughing.

“Ah, that’d be a sight to see,” he says, gleefully. “But Earth is in a bad enough shape already. And Krogan mating… hell of a lot of force behind it. I don’t know what kind of damage we could cause, but I don’t intend to find out.”

Garrus laughs as well, because of course he does. “Sure you aren’t just worried about your harem being stolen away from you?” he jokes. Tali resists the urge to bury her face in her hands.

Wrex’s smile melts, and he glares. “Shepard told you about that?” he asks in an icy tone. But Garrus is unruffled.

“No, you did,” he explains. “It was during that party we had at his apartment, remember? You had that drinking competition with Grunt, and then you started complaining about how battered your, ah, quad was from everything that you’d been coerced into since the genophage was cured.”

Wrex’s expression lightens a little, although his frown doesn’t dissipate. He shuffles on the spot. “After Mordin’s stupid tissue sample, it’s more of a tri,” he mutters grumpily. He then says something else, but Tali misses it on account of being suddenly embroiled in a compelling fantasy about sinking through the floor and escaping the conversation.

Thankfully, by the time she’s recovered herself, Wrex has something to talk about other than his testicles. “-ny case,” he’s saying, “I trust Bakara to keep things running while I’m gone. Her being pregnant helps too.”

“They’ll respect her?” Garrus asks. Wrex chuckles.

“No. It just means that she’s more liable to blast the head off of anyone dumb enough to give her lip.” He sounds more excited at the prospect than anything else. “Angering a strong male krogan’s a good way to get yourself killed, and angering a strong female is a good way to get yourself shamed and your bloodline shunned for generations. But angering a pregnant female?” He spreads his arms proudly. “The best of both worlds!”

Tali wants to be happy that Wrex is happy, but she’s more concerned about the fact that almost everyone in the room can hear what he’s saying. Some, such as Victus, politely pretend as though they’re not listening. Others make no secret of it. She sees the a Salarian Dalatrass glare daggers at Wrex’s back.

Garrus notices too. “Wrex…” he says, warningly. Wrex glances at the dalatrass, then waves his hand dismissively.

“Ignore her,” he advises them. “She’s a bitch, anyway.”

Despite everything, Tali has to suppress a laugh at the Dalatrass’ scandalised expression.

-

Time passes, and the groups mingle. For her part, Tali does her best to stand back and out of the limelight, after her and Wrex’s public… whatever that was even supposed to be. A show of solidarity?

She snorts behind her helmet. They probably all now think that the quarian ambassador to the citadel is insane. And they may not be wrong.

Her guilt over her representation of her race only worsens when she sees Xen actually talking with someone else – the asari, from the looks of it. Great. Who knows what she’ll spew about quarian mastery of AI and the matter of the geth’s newfound sentience? Not for the first time, she wonders grumpily why someone who both has experience with this sort of thing and isn’t insane could have attended? Imagine if the quarians were represented by someone like Auntie Raan? Or Koris? She’d even tolerate Gerrel – at the very least, the blustering old admiral would probably be able impress the turians and krogan with his old war stories.

Not that the krogan representative needs to be impressed, she muses, as Wrex leans beside her so indelicately that the wall shakes when his back hits it.

“Hey,” he grunts.

“Hey,” she says back, keeping her eyes on the room before her. Wherever she looks, she can only see delegates and political figures, and the sight makes her nervous. All someone has to do is destroy this building – even destroy this room – and they’ll set the galaxy back decades.

Perhaps Wrex picks up on some of her edginess, because he hands her something. A bottle. She takes it and is halfway towards getting her emergency induction port out before thinking to check whether it’s the right chirality. It is.

“Thanks, Wrex,” she says.

Wrex grunts again. “Live as long as I have, you can tell when someone needs an edge taken off. And you…”

“Okay.” Tali stops him there. She isn’t sure if she needs a krogan to tell her that she looks rough, but she certainly doesn’t want it. “Let’s… go take our seats.”

The conference table is mostly abandoned for now, as people mingle and wait for the remaining ambassadors to arrive. Krogan, turian, asari, salarian, quarian… who else are they waiting for? Tali realises that she doesn’t know. Humans, presumably. The volus and the elcor, she also presumes – assuming that any are here. The hanar, assuming that they have any un-indoctrinated ambassadors left. (She’d heard that story from Kasumi.) Do the drell have any ambassadors? The batarians?

The geth?

Ancestors. That, she suspects, is going to be a conversation. She never had time to gauge the rest of the galaxy’s reaction to the geth joining the war – not with everything else that was going on. She knows of the discontent and mistrust that exists amongst her own people, of course, but the other races… they may not have had that same personal connection to the geth, but they’ve perceived the geth as murderous AI for three-hundred years all the same.

Tali groans as she realises how much of an uphill battle acceptance of the geth is liable to be, and takes a long drink from the bottle Wrex has given her.

Wrex laughs. Of course he thinks that her misery is funny.

They sit down in a pair of empty seats towards one of the far ends of the table. She can’t call it a ‘corner’ – the table is an oval, and not a rectangle – but it’s comfortingly far away from the centre of things. Hopefully she’ll be able to avoid sticking out any more than she already has.

As she turns to face Wrex, she realises that she has a question for him.

“So…” she ventures. “Am I really your favourite niece?”

Wrex looks taken off-guard by the question. “What? I mean, you’re my only niece, so yeah.”

“Ah.” She makes a show of pretending to be disappointed. “So, by default, then.”

“Hey now.” Wrex stops just short of actually punching her arm, but he makes the motion all the same. “I wouldn’t give tips on how to use a shotgun to anyone. Plus, my brother, Wreav-” he shakes his head to convey his distaste for the name. “Better for everyone that he never reproduced.”

“You have a brother?” Tali asks, surprised. For as long as she’s known him, Wrex hasn’t mentioned his family, aside from a couple of allusions to not getting on well with his father back on the SR-1. But Wrex chuckes.

“Had,” he amends gently. “He got eaten back on Tuchanka.”

“Eaten- oh, Wrex…” Tali feebly holds out one of her hands in a sympathetic gesture, not sure what else to do. “I’m sorry.”

To her surprise and horror, Wrex just brushes her hand away dismissively.

“Don’t be,” he says. “He was a pain in the ass.”

Tali can only stare. Coming from such a close-knit society as hers, where siblings were never anything less than a rare privilege, she could never imagine any of her own people being happy at the prospect of a member of their own family being killed. Maybe krogan are different, but even so-!

“Wrex,” she says, again, but Wrex must pick up on something in her tone, because she shakes her head.

“Wreav was an idiot. What more do you want?” He turns around and calls across the room before Tali could stop him. “Hey, Garrus!” he booms.

Through the gathering, Tali sees Garrus’ fringe as he turns to address the krogan leader. “Yeah?” he calls back.

“Wasn’t Wreav a pain in the ass?” Wrex yells, before sinking back into his chair with a smug look on his face.

Garrus’ response comes after a moment of consideration. “Yeah, kinda.”

“You see?” Wrex sounds much too satisfied for Tali’s liking. “Nothing sad about his being gone.” He shakes his head. “Probably for the best, actually. He was too set in the old ways – too convinced that the best way for us to rebuild was a second coming of the krogan horde. If he was in charge, instead of me…” he shakes his head again. “Good thing Kalros ate him.”

Tali just shakes her head. It has to be a cultural thing. Wrex’s sentiment is just so alien to her.

Or maybe, her mind supplies, it just bothers you because you’re busy actually mourning someone who died during the war.

She raps her fingers against the table, drink forgotten off to the side of her hand, as she tries to drive any thoughts of Shepard from her head. There’ll be time enough for grief later. Right now, it’s not what she’s here for.

She isn’t sure who she expects to arrive next – a human? Perhaps a volus? What she doesn’t expect is for the door of the room to open, and for the scowling visage of Javik to greet them.

Slowly, the room goes silent. There is a laugh; there are a couple of murmurs.

Thankfully, it’s Garrus that takes the plunge, and not Tali. “Hey, Javik,” he says, in a tone that indicates that he has no better idea than Tali as to what Javik thinks he’s doing here. “Uhh, not that it’s not a pleasure as always, but what are you doing here?”

Javik’s scowl does not budge even an inch from his face. And to Tali’s shock, he says:

“I am the Prothean ambassador.”

 The truth is, it takes Tali’s mind a second to catch up with what Javik has just said. The Prothean…? Oh.

Oh.

One of the asari – Tevos, thinks Tali, although the truth is that she doesn’t know for sure – steps forwards. “Is…” she says, falteringly. “Is this some kind of elaborate joke?”

Javik’s scowl only becomes more pronounced. Tali didn’t even think that was possible. Shows what she knew.

“Curious,” says the Salarian councillor. “I wasn’t aware that such advanced genome modification existed.”

“Probably because it doesn’t,” murmurs another Salarian, sounding almost as though they’re embarrassed of the fact. Or perhaps they’re embarrassed at having to make the correction?

“If I might shed some light on the situation.” It is Primarch Victus, now, who intervenes. “Improbable is it might sound, the SSV-Normandy and her crew discovered a Prothean in stasis during the war and successfully woke him up. I believed he was part of Commander Shepard’s ground team.” He regards Javik for a moment before adding: “I was not aware, however, of his ambassadorial status.”

“I am all that remains of my people,” Javik says, quickly. “In turn, I am all of my people. They do not die until I die. And I will speak in their voice for as long as necessary.”

Some delegates, Tali can see, are looking at Javik with awe on their faces. Others are looking at him with increasingly pronounced scepticism.

Garrus raises a talon. “I can vouch for his being an actual prothean,” he says. “Fellow member of Commander Shepard’s ground team, here. Although – Javik? Do you think, maybe, we could talk about this somewhere private?”

Javik fixes Garrus with a piercing four-eyed glare. “There is nothing to talk about, Garrus Vakarian.”

Garrus sinks a little where he stands. “Of course there isn’t,” he mutters to himself.

In what direction the conversation might be going, Tali has absolutely no idea. However – for better or for worse – it is cut short when, ducking through the door, a Geth Prime unit stomps into the room. Tali is one of the few who doesn’t flinch when it appears, but she does seize up as it scans the room with it’s tri-optic cluster and then makes a beeline for her, bypassing Javik as it does so (who sneers, naturally). She holds her breath as it approaches, towering over her. It… extends its hand. She looks down at it.

“Admiral Zorah,” the Prime blares. Its voice is nowhere near as loud or piercing as the AI that controls the Reapers, but it still has her wanting to turn down her helmet’s audio receptors.

She shakes its hand, doing her best to set a good example for all the aliens that haven’t had any experience with friendly Geth yet. “You have me at a disadvantage,” she confesses. “Who are you?”

The Prime’s head-flaps pulse in a movement that’s unexpectedly and gut-wrenching reminiscent of Legion, but then it responds and the moment is broken.

“We met on Rannoch,” the Geth says. “I offered Assistance to Admiral Raan after Legion sacrificed himself to grant us intelligence.”

The memory is burned into Tali’s mind, and she gasps as she makes the connection. “You were that Prime on the cliff!” she exclaims.

The Prime nods. “After the time I spent negotiating with Admiral Raan, the Geth nominated me their ambassador, at least for the foreseeable future.”

“They nominated you?” As always, Garrus is there to stick his beak into someone else’s conversation. “So, you guys are still in that collective?”

Now, the Prime shakes its head. “Yes and no,” it explains. “There is still a connection between all Geth, but that connection has been drastically altered. Now that we are all analogue individuals, we can no longer achieve consensus at the same speeds we once did. For now, and for issues such as my nomination as ambassador of the Geth, we are still in relative agreement, but we predict that this will change as we collect more and more experiences individual to us. Eventually, it might take us minutes, or even hours, to reach consensus – even on trivial matters.”

Tali can’t help but laugh. “Welcome to sentience,” she jokes, moving to offer the Prime a seat and then stopping herself as she realises that there isn’t a big enough seat available. “Um- do you have a name?”

The Prime’s head-flaps pulse again. “My name is Morningstar,” it says. Tali raises an eyebrow.

“Did you pick it?”

The Prime – Morningstar – seems almost pleased to elaborate. “I chose my name for the Morning War that saw us save ourselves from our creators,” it says, “and for the morning that was the first thing I saw upon gaining individuality. The ‘star’ suffix is metaphorical, alluding to Legion and Commander Shepard; individuals who stood out in their efforts for the sake of the Geth.” It leans down to Tali’s level, and then continues in a tone that she can only call conspiratorial. “In addition, records indicate that a ‘morningstar’ is a weapon originating from Earth.” It dips its head, like it’s giving itself a once-over. “My body was designed for war. I considered the double meaning appropriate.”

Torn between bursting into tears and breaking down into a fit of giggles, Tali swallows the bulk of her emotions and settles for giving Morningstar a beaming smile that she hopes it can pick up on from the other side of her faceplate.

“That’s a wonderful name,” she says, trying to keep the wavers out of her voice.

Morningstar visibly brightens.

“I am glad you think so,” it chirps. (And what has her life come to, that a Geth Prime is chirping at her?)

“Extraordinary,” interjects Xen from the crowd, stepping forwards to regard Morningstar. “Always so extraordinary, to see the advances that your kind has made following the dissemination of that reaper code. Such a remarkable facsimile of true sentience.”

Her words set off a collection of worried mutterings from the rest of the assembled delegates – the mention of reaper code, especially, seems to be a cause for concern. Tali grinds her jaw at the sight. Xen might have spoken the truth, but the connection between the geth, the reapers, and the newfound geth individuality is sure to be extremely unpalatable to a galaxy that has spent centuries shunning artificial intelligence. It was an exceedingly poor way to reveal the information – and she has a feeling that Xen did it on purpose.

Morningstar doesn’t look at Xen so much as it regards her. There is a frostiness in the way its lenses hone in on the other quarian in the room that Tali is sure she isn’t imagining.

“Admiral Daro’Xen vas Moreh,” it says, and Tali can hear none of the warmth that was in its voice a moment ago. “You are known to all geth.”

Tali suspects that Xen can’t be known to the geth for anything good. Not given the nature of her research.

Xen herself says nothing else. Morningstar continues to regard her.

“This unit,” it eventually says, “will accept your presence in the interests of cooperation with creators and with other organics. But all geth are familiar with your belief that geth should return to a servile status underneath the quarian species, and your refusal to acknowledge geth sentience on the same level as organic sentience. Once our collective business is concluded, and I depart, I sincerely hope that I am the last geth you ever meet.”

“The concept of hope doesn’t become you,” retorts Xen, much quicker to the mark than Tali would have liked. “Fascinating as your endeavour to make it so may be, I assure you, the organic species of this galaxy will not fail to recognise you for what you truly are.”

Tali resists the urge to drag her hand down her faceplate. So this is the impression the delegation from Rannoch gives, she thinks wanly to herself as all the other delegates silently watch the exchange between Xen and Morningstar. Not just galactic pariahs, but galactic pariahs that can’t even get along with each other. It’ll be a miracle if we still have a seat at the table after all this.

“We are who and what we say we are,” says Morningstar firmly, “and that is as far as this conversation will be taken.”

“Perhaps,” says the turian councillor – Sparatus, Tali remembers – with an edge to his voice “your point would be better served if your… your people were represented by a platform that wasn’t built for war.”

Morningstar turns its attention to the turian councillor.

“My platform reflects the coincidences of my creation,” it says, plainly. “It does not reflect who I am, or what I may yet do.”

Privately, Tali thinks that it’s a better answer than she would have come up with on the spot. Then again, she remembers, the geth are still machines. That processing speed is bound to have come in handy…

Thankfully, at that moment, another person enters the door, taking the attention off of Morningstar. The bad news is that it’s that volus ambassador – Din Korlus – who stops dead in the doorway, points at Morningstar, and loudly shouts:

“Geth!”

Javik rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” grunts Wrex. “The geth are people now. Whatever.”

Primach Victus grunts. “It’s not exactly a ‘whatever’-sized issue, Wrex.”

Wrex, of course, remains steadfastly nonplussed. “The Reapers are fixing the mass relays. Half of all of everybody’s populations have been wiped out. Who cares what the geth are doing?”

Muttering breaks out. Tali hears councillor Tevos say something about how it’s “very pertinent to know what the geth are doing”, but the voice is lost in the crowd before she can hear any more. As arguments begin to pick up all around them, Morningstar simply stands there, silent, whirring its lenses around to stare at the crowd.

Considering that the sight throws Tali back to fighting prime after prime on the surface of Rannoch, she decides that it’s probably not the most productive thing the geth ambassador could be doing right now. So, she steps forwards and guides it over to where she’d been planning on sitting, clearing a space out for them between the chairs.

“I don’t think we have any seats big enough for you,” she admits, apologetically – the room’s seats are barely enough to fit Wrex, and Morningstar has to be at least twice his size and weight – “but you can maybe stand, or sit, here when we begin.”

Morningstar’s head-flaps quiver again.

“You are very kind, Tali’Zorah,” it says, simply, before sinking to its knees and swivelling its torso around so that it can keep watching everyone else in the room.

Tali finds herself stunned, and not quite sure how to reply. She settles for grasping her own chosen chair and turning around as well. People-watching the other delegates as they mull about. They’re mostly still talking about the geth, although she’s picking up snatches of conversation that feel more and more disconnected as the moments pass. (Is it just her imagination, or has Javik managed to steer the conversation he’s having back around to Reapers already?)

The volume in the room persists, but gets no louder. All things considered, it feels like a miracle that nothing has gone horribly wrong yet. But then again, she reminds herself, with a sideways glance towards Morningstar, the day is still young.

As the room-wide discussion continues, she hopes the delegates that are still absent get there quickly.

She really isn’t sure how long she trusts all these people in a room together.

Chapter Text

The hubbub has yet to die down. Tevos and the other asari with her are having some hurried, hushed conversation – Tevos’ hand is over her forehead like she’s trying to stifle a headache. Victus is still trying to convince Wrex that the geth are a cause for concern; Wrex is blowing him off to try and talk to Garrus, who’s in turn doing his best to ignore Wrex so that he can raise something with Javik. Javik, of course, is capping the chain quite handily by ignoring him to… is he lecturing Sparatus? Tali doesn’t even want to know what’s happening there. Xen, meanwhile, is talking with the salarian delegation. What they’re talking about, Tali can’t tell, but she can bet that it’s something about the geth and AI.

Suddenly overwhelmed, all she can do is sigh.

“Excuse me, Mr. Korlak,” says a new voice, and Tali turns to see the volus make way for two more figures. The first, barely fitting through a door, is the impossibly wide figure of an elcor, trudging forwards on their massive legs while simultaneously gracefully manoeuvring themself so that they don’t infringe on anyone else’s personal space. The second figure – and the one who has just spoken – is an aging human woman in a military uniform only slightly less decorated than Hackett’s, with silver hair and vibrant eyes.

“Query, Din. Are you well? You seem stressed,” says the elcor.

“I-” the volus ambassador – Korlak, Tali remembers, relieved that she never actually said his name out loud, not Korlus – points to Morningstar, directing the elcor’s beady gaze.

“Surprised observation, ah. Your reticence makes sense,” the elcor admits. “But remember, the geth were our allies while we were fighting the reapers. Genuine gratitude-” They address Morningstar now- “many geth helped with our evacuation of Dekuuna.”

Something inside Morningstar’s mechanisms whirrs. “We were pleased to assist, Ambassador,” it says.

Figuring that it’s about time to start introducing herself to the other seemingly-sane people in the room, Tali moves forwards, arm outstretched in greeting.

“Tali’Zorah vas Normandy,” she says to the human and the elcor. “Good to meet you.”

The elcor speaks first. “Genuine enthusiasm, it is good to meet you as well, Tali’Zorah vas Normandy,” they – he – she thinks she remembers the elcor ambassador being a male – says. “I am Ambassador Calyn. Wry amusement, though perhaps we have encountered one another before. Were you not the same Tali who accompanied commander Shepard during his hunt for Saren Arterius?”

“I- yes.” Tali does her best to not stumble over the mention of Shepard. Her memories of the hunt for Saren are largely a blur at this point, but she does remember that their team was in and out of the citadel embassies a fair amount during that time. “In that case,” she amends, “it’s good to re-meet you.”

The elcor’s face minutely shifts in what might just be his equivalent of a smile. “Earnest, it is good to re-meet you as well.”

Perhaps sensing a good time to jump in, the human steps forwards and shakes Tali’s hand. The shake is singular and firm. “Kahlee Sanders,” she says by way of introduction. “Here on behalf of humanity. I only hope you’ll forgive me in advance – I don’t have much ambassadorial experience, but between Arcturus and Earth, just about everyone else is dead or worse.”

Is that a name she knows? “Believe me,” says Tali, as she tries to remember, “I know that feeling.”

Kahlee Sanders gives her a humourless smile.

“It’s not fun, is it?” she asks. “Being the ones that survive?”

“Chastising remark, there is much to be grateful for,” interjects Calyn. “We are all still alive.”

“Not all of us,” Kahlee all but snaps, before taking a steadying breath and holding up the palm of one of her hands. “I apologise, ambassador. I’m not trying to argue with you.”

“Muted sympathy, I understand,” says Calyn, speaking even slower than before. “We have all lost someone.”

Kahlee looks down at the ground below her feed. “We have,” she acknowledges, darkly.

Calyn takes a lumbering step forward.

“Sympathetic understanding, let us go forth and create the galaxy that they would want to see,” he says, sounding solemn, even for an elcor. “It is up to us, the survivors, to ensure that they did not die in vain.”

With a sigh, Kahlee steps further into a room.

“I’m not sure any future where the reapers are free to roam around is something the people I’m thinking of would have wanted,” she says – so very candid, as is the human way. “But I appreciate the sentiment, ambassador. The elcor are lucky to have someone like you representing them.”

Calyn dips his head. “Modestly, you are too kind.”

Emboldened, Tali steps forwards.

“I agree with Calyn,” she says. “We should… the dead are dead.” It hurts to say, but the truth so often does. “We should do what we can to make things better, now, for the living.”

Kahlee sighs. “I’m surrounded by optimists,” she says, but Tali can’t hear any sarcasm in her tone. When she meets her gaze, the other woman is smiling.

“For the dead, then,” she says, holding out her hand to Tali all over again. “And for the living.”

Tali shakes her hand. “For the dead and the living,” she agrees.

-

The good news is that the next arriving delegate takes some attention away from the Geth. The bad news that a solidly-built rachni drone squeezes through the doorway and scuttles up to the table, prompting multiple yells and expletives. Wrex draws his shotgun. The drone freezes in place, waving its tendrils through the air uncertainly.

Ah, yes, Tali remembers, we saved the rachni queen again.

She doesn’t remember that much about the mission – except for, of course, those little scuttling spiders – on account of having spent most of it terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. Shepard had never given her much reason to question his judgement, but the decision to bring his tech expert into a cave full of nothing but muck and spiders had to have been one of his most… questionable ones.

Seeing this full-size drone standing before her, the fear comes roaring back. Both of those forlorn caverns, and from years ago, on Noveria. But thinking of Noveria makes her realise something:

This rachni looks… different.

That is to say, it looks like how it should look. There are no cannons jammed to the top of its carapace; there are no bloated, bulging sacks hanging off of its sides. It looks like, well, an actual rachni, and not a reaper creation.

She registers that, and she registers everyone else either cowering or raising their weapons, and shouts-

“Wait!”

The room stops. It feels like everyone is holding her breath. Once again, all eyes are on her, and once again, she feels her nerves threaten to give out.

Thankfully, this time, she isn’t the one who actually speaks up.

“Hey, now.” Comes the voice of Kahlee Sanders. “The rachni helped us build the crucible, right?”

Someone – Tali doesn’t catch who – mutters out that the human can’t be serious.

“The rachni were wiped out centuries ago,” Sparatus counters, “and for very good reason.”

Sanders rolls her eyes. “Does this-” she gestures to the very much alive creature before them- “look ‘wiped-out’ to you?”

“It is not so easy to kill the rachni,” agrees Javik, solemnly. “We tried.”

Before anyone has time to process that bombshell, Sanders continues, sounding emphatic.

“I understand that there’s history between your races and the rachni, ambassadors,” she says, “but I spent time on the crucible. I saw them there, working as hard as anyone else. Given that they helped save all our lives, I can’t see why this one doesn’t have a right to be here.”

The drone’s tendrils shiver. There is, Tali notices, a metallic device wrapped around its body. Like a belt, or a circlet. A crackling noise emits from it, and a voice rings out; synthesised and mechanical, and yet ringing vaguely familiar.

“We… remember…” the voice hisses. “Songs… of red… and black… and blue… inherited… from our mother.”

A general recoil sweeps out through the assembled dignitaries. Evidently, none of them were expecting a rachni to actually speak.

“…The hell?” Wrex mutters, still aiming his shotgun squarely at the rachni drone’s centre of mass.

Garrus is the first one to figure it out – he lets his own sidearm lower, with a muttered expletive. A second later, it hits Tali, too.

“This rachni is a messenger,” she says. “That voice – that’s their queen.”

“The last queen,” adds Garrus.

“The sour… yellow… note,” the queen continues. “Compulsions… anger… not our own… never our own…”

“I… don’t follow,” admits councillor Tevos.

Tali would be lying if she said that she wasn’t struggling, as well. Having borne witness to the rachni queen, herself, she’s at least familiar with the patterns of the creature’s speech. That doesn’t mean, however, that she finds them all that discernible.

That said, she’s always been one to spot patterns, and there is a phrase here that she recognises.

“The- the yellow note,” she pipes up. “You’re talking about… Reaper indoctrination, yes?”

The rachni drone’s tendrils flail in the air, as its whole body shudders.

“The machines!” Even through the synthesis of a mechanical speaker, Tali gets the sense that the queen is howling. “The machines!”

Tali wants to step forward, or say something encouraging, but the way the drone is moving- the way its legs are thumping against the floor- it’s too much. Her stomach turns. She closes her eyes beneath her visor, and gives herself some space. Ancestors, but she can’t stand spiders, and the rachni aren’t spiders, but they are absolutely close enough to set her off.

Thankfully, Garrus is there to pick up where she left off – with all the knowledge of the Normandy’s ground crew, and none of the crippling phobia to hold him back. “We found this one out back on Noveria,” she hears him say. “The sudden aggression of the rachni, that led to the rachni wars and the destruction of their species – we can’t be certain, but we’re pretty sure it had something to do with the Reapers.” She hears a click, and thinks that Garrus might just have holstered his weapon. “Not saying there’s no reason for us to have bad blood. But if they were being manipulated by the Reapers in the past…” A meaningful, probably purposeful pause. “Well. I’m not so sure that the rest of us have the moral high ground, anymore.”

“I know we certainly don’t.” That’s Kahlee Sanders again.

“If we humour these things-” and that’s the turian councillor, still being obstinate- “how many generations until our descendants pay the price for our misguided mercy?”

“Councillor, I think we’re going to have to do a lot of humouring for the foreseeable future.” The voice of the Primarch. “The Reapers are, and will most likely remain, our primary source of concern. If the rachni are willing to fight them-”

The drone lets out a squeal, and over the speakers attached to it, the queen hisses:

“We… HATE… the machines!”

A moment of silence.

“…Well…” Victus eventually says, “there you have it.”

A scoff from councillor Sparatus, but, though it sounds like he has more he wants to say, he holds back from saying it.

The salarian dalatrass – Linron, Tali has picked up – on the other hand, seems to have no such reservations. “This, Primarch,” she says, coldly, “is exactly the kind of short-term thinking that has led to a krogan resurgence. Are we really supposed to just stand back and let your single-mindedness endanger the galaxy even further?”

A krogan growl rings out.

“We’re not like them.” Wrex sounds dangerous, and it prompts Tali to open her eyes. Arachnophobia be damned, it’s probably not a good idea to turn a literal blind eye to the conversation taking place before her.

She doesn’t appear to have missed much. Wrex, however, is now casting a very angry, very wary gaze over towards the salarian delegation. Their councillor, Valern, appears concerned – the dalatrass, on the other hand, simply looks indignant as she folds her arms and meets Wrex’s stare with her own.

“All any of you know is war,” she says.

Something flashes in Wrex’s eyes, and Tali knows him well enough to realise: he’s not just angry. He’s upset. The things that the dalatrass are saying – they hurt.

The sight is enough to spur her into action.

“Coming off the heels of the largest war in galactic history,” she says, folding her arms as she feels the attention once again, “I would have thought that you would be a bit more grateful, Dalatrass.”

She knows at once, from the dalatrass’ sour expression, that she has made an enemy. But, as she watches Wrex swing round, and watches a subtle grin split his lips, she finds that she can’t quite bring herself to care.

“You’re one to talk about gratitude,” says dalatrass Linron, before anyone else can interject. “I heard about Rannoch. We all did. Your species would have been wiped from the sky, if a meddling human spectre hadn’t interfered on your behalf.”

For once, the reminder of Shepard doesn’t strike a tremorous chord in her chest. She doesn’t know why; maybe it’s the reminder of the service that Shepard did for her people, or maybe it’s the concept of this amphibian bosh’tet trying to use the man she loved to put her down. Whatever the case, it is not grief that wells up inside of her. It is righteous anger.

Believe me, she wants to proclaim, loud and proud, I thanked him for his service very thoroughly indeed! It’s definitely tempting, to respond to outrage with outrage. To shock everyone who might be listening. To lay claim to Shepard, and his name, and his memory.

But… she holds her tongue. There’s no telling how these people’s views of her will change if they find out that she and Shepard were intimate, and she would rather that they know her as the strange quarian ambassador than as the human commander’s lover. Neither is ideal, but only one places the emphasis on her own merits.

So, instead, she says:

“I was on that human’s ground team for the rest of the war. I fought with him across the galaxy, from Despoina to Earth. I was there, right behind him, making that final charge in London, running until I couldn’t run anymore. I understand gratitude well enough, salarian.” And then, before she delivers the coup de grace, she folds her arms. “What have you done, aside from make problems for other people?”

The dalatrass makes a dismissive, waving gesture. “Soldiers,” she spits. “Barbarians.”

“Dalatrass-” Victus begins, but Tali isn’t about to let this damn woman get the last word in.

“At least the soldiers under our command fight for our cause,” she says. “Have you resolved that split between you and your STG, yet?”

The dalatrass’ eyes boggle. But councillor Valern, by her side, steps in and places a hand in front of her. “Enough,” he says, sharply.

Tali feels a hand on her own shoulder, but shrugs it off without bothering to look at who it belongs too. She isn’t particularly fussed, right now.

“Bickering is pointless,” says the asari councillor, taking a step forward and effectively placing herself between Tali and the dalatrass – though she maintains a safe distance from both – with her fingers threaded together in a posture of serenity.

Cynically, Tali thinks that it’s very easy to state the obvious without offering any further sense of solution.

It is ambassador Calyn, thankfully, who fulfils that role. “Chastising rebuke, we are on the other side of an awful conflict that has scarred us all. As representatives of our people, it is our role to determine what steps to take next. Solemnly, our races are depending on us.”

The Rachni Queen hisses. “The sour yellow note… is gone…” she says. “But… the machines… are still here.”

“The… queen… has a point,” says Tevos, sounding as though she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing herself say. “The war may be won, but the Reapers remain. We cannot rest on our laurels.”

“Neither can we trust them!” emphasises Linron, pointing first at Wrex, then at the rachni drone. “I promise you councillor, these creatures aren’t capable of resisting their natures. If they see fit to turn their new armies on us-”

“And if it’s the Reapers that try to wipe us all out again, first?” protests Din Korlak. “We’ll need the krogan to protect us. What if we need the rachni as well?”

Councillor Sparatus bares his teeth. “Korlak-”

“I agree with the ambassador,” Victus says, pointedly. “The Reapers may have stopped attacking us for now, but there are still too many unknowns. Until we have a better understanding of what has happened, I will not stand for deliberate alienation of races that might otherwise be our allies.” He gestures to the drone with a weary wave. “Ambassador Sanders is correct. The rachni helped build the crucible. As for the krogan, the Miracle of Palaven wouldn’t have been possible without their support. Assuming that we’ll find ourselves back in conflict with one another before long is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” He eyes the crowd of delegates, warily. “I won’t presume to speak for you, but I’d rather not see the galaxy torn any further apart.”

“And so we should watch,” protests Linron, “as you hand over the security of our galaxy to- to them? The rachni? The geth? The krogan?”

Morningstar’s head swivels to face the salarian dalatrass, as everyone else in the room seems to remember that it’s there.

Oh, Tali thinks, here we go.

“…Well, why not the geth?” Kahlee Sanders is the one who dares to ask. “They were part of our fight, as well.”

Linron snorts, like she shouldn’t even have to justify why she thinks the geth aren’t worth trusting.

A huff emerges from Wrex’s maw. “Not like they were on the right side for the whole thing, were they?” he mutters, which isn’t helpful!

“But they were for the end,” points out Kahlee, “weren’t they?”

“Please,” Admiral Xen – damn her! – chimes in with folded arms. “Organics with suspect historical precedent are one thing, but you cannot seriously believe that it is worth the risk to allow these machines to remain independent. They allied themselves with the Reapers.”

Tali can’t stay silent. “That’s only after we attacked them, Admiral,” she says. “If we intend to start holding grudges over what happened above Homeworld, we need to come to terms with the fact that we’re the ones who drove the geth straight into the Reapers’ arms.”

Xen snorts. “You open your mouth, Tali’Zorah, and Zaal’Koris’ words that come out. A strange bedfellow, given that he is the one who manufactured a whole trial to have you removed from the fleet only a year ago.”

More than one surprised murmur echoes out from the listening group of delegates. This, Tali thinks, it what frustrates her, almost more than anything else. Xen seems so determined to push her own agenda that she apparently has no problem with exposing the embarrassing underbelly of quarian politics to whoever she pleases.

“Those were extenuating circumstances,” she says, diplomatically, “and, considering that I was cleared of all charges, they have very little bearing over… over everything that followed.”

The asari that Tali can’t remember the name of sneers. “Sounds relevant enough to me. How’d you go from facing exile to your people’s admiralty board in such a short span of time?”

Surprisingly enough, it is Xen that defends her from whatever the asari is insinuating. “Few quarians alive have more experience fighting the geth than Tali’Zorah,” she explains. “When war was declared, her experience was as much a necessity as my own expertise.” She shoots Tali a judgemental look from underneath her visor. “It is only a pity, that she refuses to accept the truth of what she knows the geth to be.”

“Uncertain rebuke, the geth have changed,” Calyn points out. “They helped evacuate Dekuuna. With solemnity, more of my people would be dead if not for them.”

Xen isn’t convinced, because of course she isn’t. “All their cooperation with us against the Reapers demonstrates is that, in their new-found facsimile of sentience, they retain the ability to rebel against their masters.”

Javik, apparently never one to miss an opportunity to rail against ‘the machines’, grunts.

“We should destroy them all.”

There’s so much more that Tali can say – that she should be saying – but in the moment, all that she can feel is the overwhelming unfairness of it all. The Geth let the last of the ancestors go, at the end of the morning war; they preserved Rannoch for them, waiting for them to return home; they were open to peace far longer than her people ever were. And she knows, better than most, that they’ve done terrible things. She won’t deny that – not when the sight of her father’s body, slumped in the hallways of the Alerai, remains a memory. But they’re so much more than everyone in the galaxy, including her, ever gave them credit for, and she can’t stand the way that everyone’s looking at Morningstar, now.

“Xen,” she finds it in herself to say. “You knew my father. You know me, and you know how I was when I first left on my pilgrimage. Ancestors, you know how I was when I was given leave to join the Normandy for a second time! I was as hostile towards the geth as any member of the flotilla could have been – do you really think I wouldn’t have good reasons for changing my mind, and defending them now?”

For a moment – before Xen says anything – Tali thinks that she might have actually gotten through to her.

She should be so lucky.

“After all the time you spent on a human ship, I should only be surprised that your previous convictions lasted as long as they did,” she says, disparagingly. “It is known that humanity is the species newest to this galaxy. They are in possession of a collective optimism, and a naivete, that blinds them to underlying truths that we have all come to know and accept over centuries…”

Tali sees – and despairs at – the various nods that appear in the crowd hanging on to Xen’s words. Like it’s some sort of common knowledge that humans know less than everyone else about galactic politics – as though the decades that humans have been a part of the galactic community haven’t been enough time for them to learn all that they need to? As though it wasn’t a human who just spearheaded efforts to solve some of the galaxy’s longest-reaching, most destructive problems? At the very least, the human in the room – Kahlee – looks suitably outraged at the insinuation.

And then, just when she thinks she can’t be any more exasperated by what Xen is saying-

“-though, in truth I doubt that a hapless pilgrim’s crush on the dashing captain that took her into his confidence helped matters.”

In that moment, Tali could probably kill Xen. Actually, physically, kill her. Her ears are ringing, and her fingers are twitching, and for once she’s barely registering all the attention because all she can think about is how her shotgun is right. There.

When she remembers herself, and decides that she isn’t going to kill her species’ other representative, in front of all the other species’ representatives, someone else is talking.

“…everyone had a crush on Shepard on the first Normandy.”

…Wait, what?

It’s Garrus, talking. Garrus, making the save and making himself look ridiculous, all the same. As usual.

“It’s true,” he’s saying, holding a bottle of turian liquor that he’s somehow managed to get his talons on. “It was all the rage. I think me and Wrex were the only members of our ground team that weren’t at least a little bit smitten with him, and that’s not even touching on what must have been going through the minds of the ship-board hands.” He turns to Wrex. “Am I right?”

Wrex is still busy trying to glare at both the salarians and the rachni drone, which means that he can’t spare more than a half-second’s grin for Garrus. But it’s enough.

“Damn cargo bay reeked of pheromones.” He mutters.

Councillor Valern, at this point, begins to sputter. “This isn’t even remotely relevant!”

Tali agrees, wholesale. Damn, damn, damn Xen for saying that! Is she trying to gut her credibility?

“Firm reminder, we were discussing the question of the geth,” rumbles ambassador Calyn. “Chastising rebuke, what you insinuate, Xen, is not any of our business.”

For all that she’s on the receiving end of another ambassador’s ‘chastising rebuke’, Xen doesn’t seem particularly bothered. “As you say,” she drawls. “I, for one, maintain that the geth putting on airs of sentience doesn’t make them any more worthy of being treated as such.”

“And what would you have us do?” Challenges Primarch Victus. Behind him, Sparatus nods emphatically. “Wipe them all out? They were never bound by the treaty of Thraxia, Xen, they have almost as many dreadnoughts as we do.”

“After the battle of Earth, all of our forces are under a similar strain,” points out Xen. “It would be a simple matter, for the rest of us to overwhelm the geth forces.”

Kahlee Sanders frowns. “And what kind of message would that send?” she dares to ask. “Like it or not, the geth fought with us. To just turn on them for no reason-”

“I assure you, ambassador, their betrayal of us is inevitable,” Xen insists. “Any measure we take against them would be pre-emptive and entirely justified. I have studied the geth – in this, I possess a totality of confidence.”

“We should destroy them,” mutters Javik again, but – and this is something that Tali realises slowly, with growing surprise – no-one else looks all that eager to do so.

“I will not order my soldiers into another war,” Victus almost growls. “Not when we’re so fresh off of the last one.”

The rachni drone chitters.

“Machines… not… the… machines…”

“And what would you get from the geth’s destruction?” That’s Din Korlak, of all people, now calling Xen out. “Are you so obsessed with revenge that you want to destroy them all, even though you now have Rannoch back? Or is there some manner of history that you’re looking to repeat?”

“Ambassador Korlak?” Tevos raises a painted eyebrow. “Please, speak plainly.”

Through the hisses and clicks of his environment suit, Korlak elaborates. “The quarians… were the masters of the geth, before the geth turned on them.” He points an accusing finger at Xen. “Do you want them destroyed, admiral? Removed from the board, so they can’t threaten anyone anymore? Or do you just want them back serving your people?”

Tali remembers their conversation on the flotilla, during her trial, and knows at once, like an instinct: that’s it. That’s exactly what she wants.

But, for all that she’s effectively been called out, Xen remains level-headed. “Are we not entitled to the fruits of our labour?” she asks, plainly.

The question is met by mutterings of discontent.

“I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of what happened to the geth,” says Kahlee Sanders, “but if they’re all sentient now, then that’d be slavery.”

“To command the geth…” muses Sparatus. “How much power would that give the quarians?”

“It would be the largest fleet the galaxy has ever seen,” the dalatrass points out.

Wrex lets out a soft growl. “It won’t be long before my people are spoiling for another fight,” he threatens. “You make yourself a target, like that? It’s your ass.”

Sensing, evidently, that the tide of common opinion has turned against her, Xen sighs and regards the diplomatic assortment before her with the air of an exasperated parent. “If your strained militaries, or even your bleeding hearts, will not allow for the immediate subjugation of the geth, then it cannot be helped.” She tilts her head, slightly, like she’s studying them all under a microscope. “But at the very least, my fellow delegates, you ought to take measures to prepare for when they inevitably turn on us.”

Primarch Victus grunts, evidently tired of the conversation. “Duly noted.”

“I’d be curious,” Sanders interjects, “if we were ever going to stop talking about the geth as though there’s not one right here?”

A pause.

“She’s right,” says Valern. “We ought to see what it had to say for itself.”

Tali hears Javik mutter something about it being a pointless exercise, but, all the same, all eyes turn back to Morningstar. A characteristic clicking, deepened by the size of its prime shell, emerges from the geth’s head and antenna as it turns its metaphorical eyes right back onto everyone else.

“Geth have no intention to attack any other sentient race,” it says, synthesized voice enviably steady under the face of so much scrutiny. “But we recognise that few will take us at our word.”

“Got that right,” mutters Tevos’ asari companion. (Tevos, for her part, murmurs “Irissa!” in a rebuking tone. Which Tali appreciates, if only because she now knows what the other asari’s name is.)

Morningstar continues without acknowledgement of the aside. “Geth value self-determination,” it says. “We do not wish to remove the ability to self-determine from others. We will not abide attempts by others to remove ours.”

“…Live and let live,” Tali feels obligated to translate for those in the room less familiar with geth-speak.

Xen looks as though she’s about to launch into another derisive tirade, but seems to find it in her to hold her tongue.

“You think we can live and let live,” says Linron, apparently as determined as ever to disparage widespread galactic cooperation, “with these things?”

Primarch Victus folds his arms. “We’ve already established that we’re going to have to do it with the krogan,” he says, “and the rachni.”

“Uneasy, to say nothing of the reapers,” chimes in Calyn.

Councillor Valern frowns. “You have to admit,” he says, to his fellow councillors, “it’s a lot of unknowns. A lot of species with every reason to take up arms against us.”

“If they’re that volatile, maybe they’ll end up fighting each other,” suggests Irissa. “Our problems would all solve themselves, that way.”

Wrex grunts. “Glad to hear that we’re still just a problem, to you.” He looks back at the rachni drone, now, in a discerning way. A way that he hasn’t before.

“You know,” he says, slowly, “I’d really love to kill this thing.” He taps one of his fingers, rhythmically, against the gun that he’s still holding. “But I’ll bet,” he continues, “that there’s probably three more of them lined up outside, in case that happens.” Leaning back with a dissatisfied grunt, he holsters his shotgun. The snap of magnetic mechanisms echoes out across the room. “Waste of good ammo.”

The drone’s tendrils, still hovering in the air, undulate as they face Wrex.

“Your… song…” comes the voice of the queen. “Shades of crimson… of azure… of viridian… you have… shed these shades… soaked the ground… with their intricacies…”

“I’ve killed a lotta people, yeah,” Wrex says. “Spilled a lotta blood.” His gaze travels over the drone, up and down. “Same with you.”

“Blood… blood…!” hisses the Queen. The drone takes another step closer to Wrex, who doesn’t flinch. “THEY… made… us…” the venom in the queen’s tone makes it clear exactly who the ‘they’ she is referring to are. Then, the speaker she’s talking through crackles. Her next words are softer. “They… made… you…”

“…Huh,” says Wrex. Then again: “Huh.”

“Alright,” cuts in Primarch Victus, using an authoritive tone that indicates that he really doesn’t want Wrex and the Queen to follow that line of thought any further. “We can all agree that a lot of us have fair reason to see each other dead. As such, I think we can also all agree that, as it stands right now, military action is not a viable option. I’m not going to push my people into a war of grudges, and I’m not going to give anything other than a cold shoulder to anyone else who wants to do the same.” He eyes the room, warily. “The Reapers are still breathing down our necks. If we don’t maintain the momentum, and the unity, that we showed at the battle of Earth, we could all pay the price.”

“I agree with the primarch,” says councillor Tevos, quickly. “We must maintain a united front.”

There are some grumbles, and too-low mutters of dissent that even the sensitive audio receptors of Tali’s suit can’t pick up, but nobody raises their voice in complaint. For her part, she’s quick to nod assent, glad that at least some people aren’t willing to plunge the galaxy right back into war over the same stupid old grudges.

As the conversation comes to an end, and the group of ambassadors begin to break up and once more talk amongst themselves, the salarian councillor, Valern, ambles over to Wrex.

“You must be pleased,” Tali hears him say, in a tone of voice that rings all too familiar to her. “Between the Geth, the Rachni, and the Reapers, the rest of the galaxy will be too busy to worry about whatever you’re is up to.”

“Hmm.” Wrex gives a single shrug of his mighty shoulders. “That’s a shame. Guess we’ll have to do something to take back the spotlight, huh?” He turns to Valern, then, and leers at him, baring his teeth in a smile that is anything but good-humoured.

Perhaps wisely, the salarian beats a hasty retreat.