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After Rannoch, after she breathlessly watched as Alexander stared down a Reaper and won, after they frantically worked together to save the Quarians and the Geth from each other, Tali had discovered a new found feeling of hope.
She had watched her people step foot on their home and find allies in their enemies. She had sat next to Alexander, played absentmindedly with his gloved hands, looked out over a dead Reaper, and told him of the house she was going to build.
As she leaned on his armored shoulder, she spoke of the soft fabrics she would fill it with, ones she could run her bare hands over. She imagined the garden she would have out back, overgrown but alive. She went into detail about how the morning light would shine into her bedroom, the ray’s warmth on her uncovered face. He had smiled at her then, with dirt smudged cheeks and tired eyes, and asked why his warmth would not be enough.
It had become a dangerous thing to talk about the future. It was a risk to imagine what it would be like. But in his casual acceptance of a future together with her, she had found hope.
Now, in the haunting quiet of The Normandy, she grasped for it. The embers of Thessia still seemed to burn in the crew’s lungs, and the sharp grief in the air hung heavy.
Liara mourned. Alexander raged.
When they had retreated back to the shuttle, they met heavy resistance. At the sight of the first husk, Alexander’s gun remained holstered on his back. Instead, he tore into the reaper forces with his biotics, a fierce vengeance in his movements, and his yells sounded across the destroyed atrium. He tossed his whole body into each new enemy, his biotics flaring angrily around him. He always rushed into battle, always had to be in the middle of it. But this was different. He was careless, and Tali was scared. Scared for his safety. Scared of what he was going to do. Scared of not making it off the damned planet before the whole thing burned.
As he carved a path, charging into whole groups and then slamming them to the ground, she desperately tried to watch his back. Her shoulder ached from hours of bearing the kickback of her shotgun, and she scrambled to protect both him and a compromised Liara, whose shots hit nothing but rubble.
As they made a final dash to the shuttle, Tali grabbed Shepard’s hand and pulled him along, forcing him to use only one hand to send shockwaves at the advancing forces. She didn’t loosen her grip until they climbed into the shuttle and collapsed into seats as Steve got them out. If asked, she could not say if she had reached out to him in a search for safety, or if she was afraid he was going to charge into the fray and leave them all behind.
In the briefing room, he seemed to look right through everybody, his eyes steeled and voice hard. Her eyes scanned him over, taking note of every part of him. She looked over his rimrod back, the deep cut on his eyebrow that still slowly oozed blood, the way his fingers gripped the side of the holo table.
He had shrugged away from her concerned hands after the debriefing, avoided her searching gaze, and she had let him go. She had not meant to, had wanted to grab on and not let go, but she had jerked back at the glare he sent anybody that tried to approach him. Tali regretted her movement immediately when she saw regret flash across his face. He stared at her for a moment, a storm in the set of his brow, before he strode out of the room and left her staring at a closed door, wondering what they left on Thessia.
Within an hour, the crew whispered about him unleashing on Joker. Those in the CIC heard the muffled argument, and not even the multiple reprimands from Commander Shepard himself can keep gossip from flying through the ship, the crew desperate for distractions from the looming war.
Tali had not meant to lay more on his shoulders, but then she and Garrus had faltered, neither sure how to breach the bubble of Liara’s grief. Like in all things, they had turned to their commander. Alexander had not paused like them, instead the angry set to his shoulders sunk, and he walked into the Asari’s room with the presence of a man about to be condemned.
She had wanted to wait for him, to keep him from escaping into himself where she cannot follow, but the idea of waiting outside Liara’s door had felt intrusive. She found herself in engineering, elbow deep in a filtration unit ignoring the worried looks Adams sent her way, needing to keep busy and calm her fidgeting hands. She allowed the thoughts of circuitry, engineering, and coding, to replace thoughts of Thessia, Alexander’s fury, and Liara’s sorrow.
“Admiral Tali’zorah, if I may have a moment of your time?” EDI cut through her thoughts, and only then did she realize that Adams and the engineers were gone and replaced with the night cycle’s skeleton crew.
“Please call me Tali, EDI, we’ve been over this” she mumbled absentmindedly, still partially focused on the wiring in her hands.
“Of course, my apologies Tali,” EDI sounded genuinely rebuked. She paused as if for thought, as if she did not have one of the fastest processors in the universe. “I have a request.”
Tali slowly withdrew her hands from the innards of the filtration unit and looked up. “What can I do for you?” She stretched out her shoulders, and a deep ache responded. The fatigue she had been ignoring settled over her, and she felt as if the ship’s gravity was malfunctioning, her body weighed down in place.
“Dr. Chakwas has been unable to check on Commander Shepard. After calculating the different possibilities, I believe you are the most likely to convince him to seek aid from her.” At the mention of Alexander, Tali inhaled sharply. She had not meant to work for so long. She had not meant to leave him to his thoughts.
How could you let him be alone? How could you not make sure he was okay?
“Is Alexander hurt? Where is he?” She demanded, frantically walking to the elevator, willing it to come faster as EDI responded.
“Scans indicate nothing too serious, however there are injuries that will not heal correctly without proper treatment.” A pause. “I also do not believe it is good for him to be alone in his current condition.” Tali hit the elevator button again.
“If I may, repeatedly pushing the button will not make it come any faster,” EDI offered.
“I know!” She whacked the button with more force, and the doors opened.
She tugged on her fingers, fidgeting as the elevator brought her to the Commander’s quarters. She had made this trip many times, but her heart had never beat with such dread before. The doors slid open and she took a breath before she knocked on his quarters. After a moment of no response, she attempted to open it. It was locked.
“EDI, please open the door,” she demanded, looking to the ceiling.
“Commander Shepard has asked for no visitors.” Came the disembodied voice.
“You’re the one that told me to come up here EDI!” Tali snapped, glaring at the ceiling through her facemask.
“This is true, however the Commander has asked for no visitors,” the AI replied, as if it was simple and not infuriating.
Tali paused and crossed her arms, “And do you believe this is in his best interest?”
She stared down the door, hoping the AI would acquiesce. After a moment it wooshed open to Alexander’s room, his lights turned down low.
She had not even stepped fully in before she jumped at a voice.
“Please leave me alone,” a gravelly voice said. It came from near his bed, but it took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimmed light and spot the commander. He sat hunched over on the ground with his back against the foot of his bed. Datapads were strewn haphazardly in front of him, and a bottle of scotch that he had victoriously “seized from the enemy” a week ago sat next to him, half empty.
He was shirtless, and deep purple and black bruises mottled his torso. The cut on his eyebrow looked an angry red.
She approached him, glad he could not see the worry on her face, stepping over a trail of his dirty fatigues on the ground that led to his bathroom.
“Xander, please talk to me,” she softly asked, “or talk to somebody, anybody, it doesn’t have to be me, you know the others care too, but you are not okay.” At his silence, she quietly added on, “Or at least let me look over your wounds.”
Tali reached her hands out to him, only to quickly retract them when Alexander’s body tensed. Silently, she sat down next to him as he watched her warily. Looking closer at the datapad in his hand, she could see it showed feeds from Thessia. “ I said leave me alone,” he ground out, brow furrowed.
“No.” She stared stubbornly at him, mentally pleading for him to just once give in easily.
“Leave, Tali! That’s an order!” He shouted, datapad clattering to the ground as the anger rolled off him.
“Then write me up for insubordination, but you damn well know you are no longer just my commander, and I’m not leaving,” She snapped back, hands now clenched like his.
Alexander’s frame shook, and he shot up, taking steps away from her as his anger burned white hot. “Get out!” His whole body was tense.
She had figured out early on that his anger, while never false, was often also a mask, something he could easily throw up in defense.
In the face of his anger she stood steady, knowing it was not for her. “You should know at this point I’m not going to leave you,” she softly told him. “So please, talk to me.” She pushed off the ground and ever so gently, reached out and took his hand in hers. And that was all that was needed for the taut string within him to snap.
“It’s my fault!” Alexander roared, ripping his hand from hers and slammed it against the wall, the sound reverberating through the room. “I was sent there to do one thing. And I failed!” His shoulders shook and the fury on his face burned away into sorrow. “The very people that brought me back to defeat the Reapers are now keeping me from doing so and I don’t know how to win.” Desperation leaked into his voice.
Tali reached for him again, gripping at his shoulders and pulling him into her. He resisted, desperate to pry himself away, only for her to wrap him up again. Her smaller frame wrapped around his, and she felt his tremors even through her suit. She grasped at the back of Alexander’s head and brought it down onto her shoulder, holding firm as he tried to shrug off her comfort. She did not think he knew how to let his walls fall, always standing tall and strong.
Some days, she thinks that he fears if he breaks down he’ll never get up again. Other days, she fears that too. He holds himself together so naturally, covering up the cracks with a sharp anger and an air of confidence. But like the older ships she remembered that were back on the Fleet, held together with only stubbornness and ingenuity, repaired with wrong parts when supplies wore thin, he was bound to break eventually.
He stopped pushing against her and his arms fell limp at his sides. It was as if the fight had left him all at once, and his anger abruptly seeped out of him. He let his weight lean onto Tali and she stumbled back, bracing, but caught him. She hugged him to her body harder, as if she could pull him into her suit with her, protect him from all the harm. She felt a shudder run through his body and a quiet sob was muffled in her shoulder. She held tight.
Tali could fix the most complex machines in the galaxy. She could visualize their parts in her dreams, and muscle memory came easy for the repair of a loose wire or a broken coupling. She knew how to take machines apart to their very basic pieces and then reassemble them back together better than before. She prided herself in this. But as Alexander came undone in her arms, she did not know how to fix it. She could not reach in and remove the broken and jagged pieces.
Gently, she led him over to his couch and lowered both of their bodies into the cushions. She maneuvered him to lay on top of her, and wrapped herself around him. “I’ve got you Xander, I’ve got you” she whispered over and over, raking a gloved hand through his hair. He held on to her and let out three years of grief.
She wanted to tell him that it was not his fault, that the fate of a world could not possibly rest on his shoulders alone. Despite what others had told him. Despite what had been asked of him. Despite even what she had asked of him, laying the fate of Rannoch into his open hands. But he took the weight of worlds on his shoulders so naturally she was not sure he knew how to take the weight off.
When she had first come aboard the CR-2 all that time ago, she had heard Jack take jabs at Alexander’s “hero complex,” a term she had needed to discreetly look up. After one particularly rough verbal sparring match between the two, Tali also had to go searching for the human myth of Atlas, unwilling to ask Alexander after the way he had bristled, snapping back about Jack being right beside him in battle.
Now, she saw the comparison more than ever. The weight had been heaped on his shoulders for so long until it finally had his knees buckling. Did he know that others would take on some of the weight for him?
He laid in her lap, his body now still, and stared up at the stars passing by outside his window. She softly cupped his cheek, and lifted his head to look at her, rubbing her hand over his stubble and feeling as her glove caught on its roughness. His eyes glowed an angry red in the low light, brighter than she had ever seen before.
When she had first seen the angry red lines that marred his skin, she had been scared. For him. Of him. She knew it was him on Haestrom, he had immediately proven that, but the two years away had hardened her, his death had hardened her. She was not some eager Quarian on her pilgrimage anymore. She could not know what two years did to a person.
Now, the scars were just part of him. A reminder that he lived. Yet she worried for him, for his well being, knowing what their deterioration meant. Even if they did somehow make it out of this war alive, she feared how much of him would be gone.
Carefully she maneuvered herself out from under him, whispering that she’ll be back before she quietly padded to his bathroom. Falling in love with Alexander meant that she had spent many hours in the med bay as Dr. Chakwas patched him up, Tali taking turns with the doctor to chew him out. She eventually requested knowledge on taking care of human injuries, and she and Alexander would spend nights asking each other questions about their species, learning how to take care of each other’s body just as they did their hearts.
She grabbed the first aid kit off a shelf and wet a washcloth before walking back to him, gently lifting his head and sliding back under him. Alexander continued to stare straight up, and didn’t react when she took the cloth to his face and began to clean his cut. She spoke as she cleaned.
“From the very beginning, you have taken this war upon yourself. You have never taken failure as an option, and have pushed every single crew member to be better, to work harder.” She paused and laid aside the now bloody washcloth and opened up the kit. Medigel was in short supply nowadays, but humans seemed to have plenty of substitutes.
She pulled out what he had called a butterfly bandage, a small smile pulling at her lips momentarily as she remembered him describing what a butterfly was, and began to apply them as she continued to talk.
“You taught us to fight when nobody else would. You did what was needed, what others would not and could not do. You have done the impossible before. None of us doubt that you will again.” She finished with his eyebrow and inspected it, happy with her work.
Tali reached into the kit and activated an ice pack, laying it on his bare stomach over the worst of his bruises. His muscles jumped at the sudden cold, and she pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and onto the both of them. Tali knew the blanket was hers, but she could not remember when it had made its way into his quarters.
She brushed her fingers through his hair. “This was not your fault, Alexander,” she said fiercely. His jaw tightened but he remained quiet. “You did not attack Thessia, and you did not make Cerberus steal the Catalyst. And we will come back from this. You will beat Cerberus, and then you will beat the Reapers.” She looked up at the stars with him. “But as much as I know you can do this, Alexander, you do not have to do it alone.”
She softly brushed away the tears that had silently begun to slide down his cheeks. “I know you trust me. So trust what I am telling you. We’re going to win this war. Together.” She did not not necessarily believe in the Alliance, the Council, or any of the others that did too little too late. But she believed in Alexander.
His hand reached up to hers and she took it. No matter what happened, she would hold on tight; to him, to their future, to hope. The sun of Rannoch would one day shine on them again.