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Where was a Cerberus coup or murderous clone when you needed one?
Shepard almost wished Harbinger would drop down out of the sky and say he had come for her. Being processed into a reanimated husk was surely a better alternative than what was in store for her this evening.
She was glad she’d worn a jacket. It wasn’t cold, it never was on the Citadel. But crossing her arms in a jacket; genuine sim leather from the finest cloning vats, made her look breezily nonchalant. Whereas crossing her arms in just the dress she had on underneath; designer label Thessian polyfibre from somewhere Kasumi was not at liberty to say, made her look awkward and gangly.
Next to her Tali was literally bouncing with excitement and it was almost enough to make Shepard feel better about what she’d gotten herself into.
She’d thought Tali was choking the day she’d dug her own grave.
Shepard had, let the record show, been following Hackett’s orders to the letter. She was on shore leave. Using this graciously given time to relax, re-evaluate, rejuvenate. All those fun words. And if she’d fallen through a fish tank here or there and the Armax Arsenal Arena just happened to have her name on the leader boards well, different people found different things relaxing.
She would let the Reapers win before she took up golf.
So she had been relaxing in Anderson’s apartment when Tali who had been reading through messages on her omnitool suddenly stiffened and let out an audible squeak.
Which would have been fine if she started moving again. But she didn’t.
“Tali?” She didn’t respond. Just kept staring at the orange hard light projection making little spluttery noises.
"You ok?” Still nothing.
Just as Shepard was plotting the fastest way from her spot in the living room to Tali’s in the kitchen and mentally reviewing quarian anatomy to determine if the Heimlich would even be possible let alone effective, the spell was broken.
With a shuddering gasp that set her vocaliser alight Tali let out a stream of speech so rapid Shepard’s translator gave up. The parts she could pick out were ‘Geth fucking ancestors’ there were citations explaining the syntax implied reference to someone else’s ancestors; ‘malfunctioning recycle unit’, not the kind found in kitchens and because some turns of phrase weren’t specific to one species culture ‘a twelve balled krogan’.
Who would’ve thought ‘keelah’ and ‘bosh’tet’ were her light oaths?
Tali was almost vibrating and worried she’d shake something loose; she had wires, ports and sensors in places no sane species would put wires and ports and sensors, Shepard tentatively made her way to her side.
“Tali?”
“Shepard!” Tali cried she held her omnitool baring arm up and waved it up and down excitedly
“Did you see? Did you see?”
Shepard tried to but she was moving her arm too fast for her translator to settle on the khelish script and render it into English.
“Uhhhh,”
“Fleet and Flotilla Shepard! Fleet and Flotilla! They’re doing the stage show on Tayseri ward! Original cast! One night only!” Tali’s voice got higher and higher as she spoke and it was fairly obvious she wasn’t stopping to breathe between words.
“There’s a stage show?” Shepard asked. Somewhat dumbly in retrospect.
Tali didn’t seem to have heard however. She had already pulled up the theatres extranet site. The news it seemed though was not good. Tali’s face fell. She was in her suit but Shepard knew her well enough to recognise any expression. Quarians weren’t all that difficult to read if you knew them well enough. And Shepard knew Tali so well she may as well have prefaced her speech as elcor did.
“That’s, a lot.” Tali said eventually. She drooped noticeably. Her entire body conveying the emotion in her voice. She ambled trance like to one end of the kitchen.
“It’s Fleet and Flotilla,” She said, to herself Shepard gathered, before spinning on her toes and wandering back the way she’d came.
“But that many credits, it’s too much.”
She spun again and retraced her steps.
“It’s for the turian war effort, that’s a good cause,” Another turn and trip back to the other side of the kitchen.
“It would be a sign of cooperation and trust between our people if an Admiral were to attend this performance. I could claim it as a diplomatic expense,” Tali’s pacing and murmurings gained speed. “Surely the board would allow it at a time like this.”
She suddenly pulled up short and as they often did at times like this her hands found eachother and began worrying.
“No. No, I’m being selfish.”
She said in what Shepard and Garrus had come to call her father’s voice. It was the one she used whenever she passed herself over or sold herself short. The one that made words of love into something transactional she hadn’t done enough to earn.
Perhaps it was because she used her father’s voice, unaware she was doing it as always. Perhaps it was because she looked like a little purple kicked puppy as she closed her omnitool. Maybe it was because falling through that fish tank had gotten water in her brain.
But whatever the reason it was then that Commander Jane Shepard made one of the few tactical errors of her illustrious career.
“If you really want to go Tali,” She said without thinking, “I can buy us tickets.”
Shepard was an Alliance N7, a Council Spectre. The fire and battlefield forged best of the best. But there wasn’t enough training in the galaxy for her to adequately deflect or defend against Tali’s tackle hug.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She cried as she spun them both somehow. She wasn’t on the ground anymore Shepard’s brain told her. Tali had picked her up and in defiance of the laws of physics was twirling them both. Tali, stick armed little slip of a thing Tali, was spinning six foot something musclebound her and her centre of gravity had nothing to say about it.
The smile on Tali’s entire body and in all of her movements as she put her down was almost enough to make Shepard not regret having ever opened her mouth.
She had tried, desperately tried. to drag Garrus down with her. But he, unlike her, had some sense of self preservation and had seen them off with a breezy;
“You girls have fun,”
“I will remember this Vakarian,” Shepard threatened darkly as she was all but wrenched from the Tiberius Towers.
“Please do,” Garrus chuckled after her.
So here she was in line in the foyer of some grand Tayseri ward theatre next to a bouncing quarian and effectively doomed.
‘For a good cause’ Shepard told herself eying the banners hanging on the walls, signifying the units the turian cast members had gotten leave from for tonight's performance. She was here for a good cause. Plus Tali.
She’d broken out what she claimed to be her two sexiest belts for the occasion and they were, in Shepard’s estimation, quite nice. Although she thought Tali’s waist and hips were fantastic no matter what was wrapped around them.
The veils and hoods Tali usually adorned her suit with were nowhere to be seen and instead she wore a scarf draped over her head and flipped over one shoulder.
“This is new,” Shepard tugged at the tasselled hem.
“Do you like it?” Tali asked excitedly, “I made it years ago, it’s just like Sha’lei’s!”
“I’ve never seen you wear it before,”
Well,” Tali hummed bashfully, “It’s not really practical. In the movie Sha’lei wears it on her pilgrimage but a real pilgrim would never wear something so loose. It could get caught in something or someone could grab it. And it would stick out if you were trying to hide.”
She explained before looking around surreptitiously and standing on tiptoes to whisper in Shepard’s ear,
“Don’t tell anyone but sometimes when I was supposed to be studying I was really sewing. I managed to bring it off the fleet with me by using it to line my knife sheath!”
Shepard couldn’t help but smile at the thought of diligent and dutiful little Tali shirking her lessons to sew a scarf from her favourite vid.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” She promised.
“I could make one for you if you’d like,” Tali offered.
“Not much of a scarf person Tali but thanks,” Shepard said sincerely.
“But you’ll need one!” Tali protested, “You can’t be bareheaded on Rannoch, the pollen will stick to you! Well I mean you’re human so it won’t but you still might overheat if you don’t cover your head. I suppose you could wear a hat but scarves are nicer. Well I think they’re nicer, I don’t know what you think. Or if you even want to come with me to Rannoch and I’m babbling aren’t I?”
“A bit,” Shepard agreed slipping an arm around her, “But I don’t mind.”
The foyer was filled with patrons. An austerely dressed dalatrass was overseeing an identical, right down to the wraps around their webbed toes, group of salarian girls. Asari milled about as they so often did. Acting, even now after the fall of Thessia, as if the Citadel were their possession and the other races were only there at their discretion A couple of elcor were monotonously proclaiming their excitement over having gotten seats. And Shepard spotted a few humans who seemed more the theatre going type than actually interested in the show. The largest contingency unsurprisingly was made up of turians. Mostly, Shepard would guess from the holo’s she’d seen, around the same age as Garrus’ sister.
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen to tonight's special performance, please take your seats,” Came a recorded voice as the doors to the theatre opened and like a condemned woman facing the gallows Shepard went to her fate.
The seats were comfortable at least and sectioned primarily by species. According to the signage it was sectioned by build but that basically translated to volus in the front, turians and salarians in the back. Krogan in the back of the back. Asari, humans and quarians in the middle. And elcor and hanar in the specialty sensory booths that provided scent and luminescence to accompany the performance.
“I can’t believe I finally get to see Leeta’Tam dance!” Tali proclaimed clasping her hands together. “My mother and Auntie Raan saw her perform once, they said she made the Zoot dance look graceful,” She explained.
“They didn’t take you?” Shepard queried.
“Oh no,” Tali shook her head, “I was much too young. They left me with my father. I got to sleep in his workshop and that was just as exciting to me. He stuck me to the wall and told me to be quiet so I just watched him work until I fell asleep,”
“He stuck you to a wall?” Shepard demanded, appalled, but Tali laughed.
“Not me me! My bubble, they’re magnetisable. I was perfectly comfortable until the third engineering shift woke me up hours after he left. I was a little too quiet I think,” Tali gave a little laugh as Shepard’s heart broke for her.
“What’s a Zoot?” She asked before Tali could begin reframing what was obviously a fond childhood memory and realise her father had put her out of the way and forgotten her.
“They’re a type of animal. We used them before we industrialised for transport and farming."
“And they’re not very graceful?” Shepard ventured.
“No, they’re big and clumsy and so is the dance normally,” Tali explained.
The seats around them were filling up fast. Shepard had had no idea Fleet and Flotilla was so popular outside quarians and turians. Due to the build separation the identical salarian girls were a row ahead of them while their dalatrass was an entire section back. They tittered amongst themselves like adolescent girls from any species.
The asari taking their seats across the aisle had wine glasses. Shepard’s gaze landed on the crimson liquid enviously. She’d walked straight past concessions without looking. But any hope she’d had of running out and drinking them dry was dashed as the ushers closed the doors to the foyer and a recording requested that omnitools be placed on standby for the performance.
Shepard dutifully switched hers to the requested mode as Tali disengaged hers entirely. Shepard tried not to convey how nervous that made her. On Tali’s wrist an omnitool was a weapon of mass destruction and going without weapons had bitten her in the ass once already on this shore leave. But she also wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t recognise a desire to be constantly and well armed was a troubling development in her mental state. One she should do her best to avoid encouraging.
The theatre lights dimmed and Tali audibly gasped. Music swelled from the orchestra pit but the acoustics of the room made it sound as though it were coming from everywhere. This was it, Shepard thought, what she’d been dreading.
As the curtain rose Tali’s hand shot out to grasp hers in a death grip. Shepard gently but insistently loosened her hold enough to thread her five fingers through Tali’s three as best she could. Tali’s gaze never left the stage, where an impressive rendition of a quarian trading deck had been assembled. Shepard swore her eyes were brighter, as completely mesmerised she mouthed along to the words being sung there, vocaliser glittering.
It was going to be a long, long night but for Tali Shepard would endure.
This prompt was supposed to be angsty but I'm more a slice of life/fluff type of person so went in another direction, I hope it paid off.
Let me know if it did, or just what you thought in general. I accept criticism of my work I only ask that it be constructive
Ari Out!