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During the upload, waves of blue light wash over Shepard. He looks more curious than uncomfortable, Garrus thinks, and he does not seem nervous at all. Legion tells Shepard not to move so much, and he frowns, impatient.
Then, with no warning, his eyes roll up, and his head tips back. Garrus takes a half-step toward him, on instinct. But his vitals, still visible on Garrus’s visor, are all normal.
“Is that supposed to happen?” Tali asks.
“Yes,” Legion says. “We must guide Shepard-Commander through the server. Please guard this area. We do not expect resistance from additional platforms. Remain alert as a precaution.”
Legion makes that unpleasant, stuttering geth noise, and goes still.
Garrus looks at Tali, then at Legion, then at Shepard.
“I… guess we just… wait,” Tali says.
Garrus withholds a sigh. Waiting has quickly become his least favorite wartime activity.
For the first while, they keep their guns in hand, but the base is silent. Tali sends her drone to circle the perimeter, just in case. Then she sits down with her back against the barricade opposite Shepard. Garrus considers joining her, but he’d be restless within minutes, so he settles for leaning against the console near Legion, where he has a good view of Shepard and the area behind Tali.
“So… how have you been?” Garrus asks. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk, with… you know.”
Tali tilts her head at him. “Me being an admiral and you being an expert advisor?”
She enunciates the title, which means Shepard told her about it; he’s the only one who says it like that. “Yeah, well.” Garrus shrugs. “Mine’s just a token title. Didn’t really mean anything until recently.”
“I think it suits you,” Tali says.
Garrus is about to protest her teasing him when he realizes she’s being genuine. It isn’t the first time she’s complimented him, but it is the first time she’s done it so sincerely and simply, with no joke hiding the praise. He doesn’t really know what to do with it.
“Oh,” he says, inelegantly. “Well… thanks.”
She tilts her head in a smirking sort of way, which makes him wonder if she was, actually, making fun of him. It’s impossible to tell, sometimes, and not because of the mask.
A quiet falls over them, suddenly somber.
In a whisper, Tali asks, “How is Palaven?”
“Could be worse.” That’s what he always starts with, because it’s true, and it’s easier than saying anything else. Palaven is still there, patient in its slow orbit. It might have a few more craters than it used to, but it’s there. He was looking at casualty reports again when Shepard called them down to the shuttle. Sometimes he pulls up the statistics from the planets he sent extra supplies to before the war, and he speculates. Half of them have gone dark. A few are still hanging on. Whether that has anything to do with him is anyone’s guess, but it’s nice to pretend.
Garrus finds that he doesn’t want to talk strategy right now, not with Tali. Instead, he says, “My family’s still there,” which is not exactly something he wanted to talk about, either, but, well, now he’s said it and they’re talking about it.
Tali is watching him. He keeps his eyes on Shepard, trying not to focus on anything at all.
“Your father?” she asks.
“Yeah. And my little sister.” Wait, what the hell? He hasn’t called Solana that in years. “Uh, she’s not that much younger than me. Don’t tell her I said that.”
But how would Tali tell Sol anything? Tali didn’t even know he had a sister, because he hardly talks about home, somewhat intentionally. And now, with her and Dad still on Palaven—
“If you ever get to meet her,” Garrus adds grimly. “I guess.”
Well. Not like the conversation was especially cheery before, but now it’s worse.
“I hope I do,” Tali says. “Someday.”
Tali and Solana occupying the same room would be a riot. Most likely a riot targeted at Garrus. Sol would dig up all kinds of embarrassing stories from when they were kids; Tali would get that narrow-eyed wicked look she gets, a silent promise to bring the stories up again whenever Garrus thinks he knows what he’s doing; and his father would watch the whole scene unfold, leaning back with his arms crossed, thinking it annoying and childish but not enough so to put a stop to it. Shepard — obviously Shepard would be there — would miraculously find a way to change the subject, give Garrus a “you owe me” look, and then somehow find out all the embarrassing stories later anyway.
It seems so natural, like an old memory or dream, and not some distant, impossible future.
“Yeah,” Garrus sighs. “I hope so too.”
He searches for something to talk about other than his family — not Palaven; not Rannoch, because he knows how things are going on Rannoch; he hasn’t asked about her family, so —
“Is your—” Her mother died when she was young, Garrus remembers abruptly, and he was there on the Alarei when they found her father’s body. Back then, Tali called Raan her aunt; now, she uses a tense ‘Admiral.’ He’d know if she had siblings, wouldn’t he? Isn’t there a rule about that, for quarians? Only one child per family?
Garrus starts to ask if she has any family left, but it seems a callous question, and even more callous to ask if they’re safe, given her entire species is in the war raging above them.
Tali shakes her head, apparently unbothered. “No blood family left. The Rayya and the Neema are up there with every other ship. But…” She looks over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “Sometimes the Normandy feels more like family than any quarian ship. Maybe it’s wrong of me to say that, especially right now, but…”
“No, I… know what you mean.” Leaving Menae was hard, but Garrus had known he would do it from the second Shepard landed. Not even a choice.
He wonders if Tali will stick around, after Shepard fixes this mess with the geth. Shepard will fix it; he’s certain of that. Garrus doesn’t usually have the energy for optimism, but there is one force in this galaxy he has yet to lose faith in, and that force is currently traipsing through the geth consensus.
At least Tali would be safe if she stays on Rannoch. Safer. Even so, Garrus thinks he and Shepard would both sleep better with her on the Normandy. But Tali would be devastated to leave the Fleet, and this is Rannoch, the homeworld she’s longed for, the homeworld her father died for. She deserves this happy ending; she might be the only one of them to get it.
Generally speaking, Garrus thinks he’s been pretty successful at keeping his occasional wandering thought about Shepard to himself. Shepard seems perfectly oblivious, at least, no suspicious stares or annoying questions like “do we need to talk?” or “something on your mind?” or “have you been staring at my ass lately?”
It’s a blessing, really — the lack of questions, not Shepard’s ass, although the latter is also nice. The second Shepard suspects something, he’s going to want to talk about it. He’ll be so persistent that Garrus will cave eventually, and once they talk, Shepard will be kind and understanding and not at all interested. Which is fine. Garrus doesn’t need anything more than for Shepard to stay alive and well, or as well as anyone can be, given the circumstances. He’d rather avoid the whole conversation and keep things from getting awkward. That means only he can only stare at Shepard — ass or otherwise — when Shepard won’t notice.
It’s his jawline that has Garrus’s attention right now: the point of his chin, the dark stubble along the edge, the sharp line down toward his neck. Garrus grew desensitized to humans showing off the soft skin of their throats not long after he moved to the Citadel. Now it’s only distracting when Shepard does it, and then it’s extremely distracting — enough so that, when Garrus notices Tali’s attention on him, he’s pretty sure she’s been watching him for a while. Her head’s tipped in that inquisitive way. Shit. Did she say something? Is she waiting for him to say something?
“What?” he asks.
Tali stares for a while longer, then shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says, in the sort of voice that suggests she knows it’s not nothing.
Garrus eyes her. She eyes him back. The trouble with Tali is that she’s unbreakable, and she’s the only person who has developed an increased immunity to his Look. She actually seems to take it as a challenge.
Garrus has to look away first. He huffs and clicks his mandibles at her. Tali sits a little straighter, looking immensely pleased with herself, and Garrus spends the next twenty minutes wondering why that makes his head spin.
“Do you ever worry about him?” Tali asks.
Garrus spends some time wondering how the hell to answer that, given — well, everything: Shepard and Tali and the war, and the fact that sometimes Garrus’s sleepless nights are entirely composed of wondering whether Shepard’s having a sleepless night. With anyone else, he’d probably make light and insist there’s no need for worry. He can’t do that to Tali. Not about Shepard.
“The better question would be if I’m ever not worried about him.” That comes out sounding considerably darker than he meant it. “But I worry about everything,” he adds, trying to sound casual. “You know that.”
Tali doesn’t answer right away. She’s gone perfectly still, curled with her knees pulled up under her chin. It reminds Garrus of an evening she spent scrunched up like that on the floor of the Normandy’s main battery, when they talked about Omega and Haestrom and strict fathers and sick mothers until long past when they both should’ve been sleeping. He wishes, not for the first time, that he could see her face, if only to try to guess what she’s thinking.
“Garrus?” she says, quiet and severe, despite that his attention is already on her.
“Yeah?”
Another beat passes before she speaks. “If this doesn’t… if I don’t… You’ll take care of him. Won’t you?”
He wants to ask what she means. But he knows the answer, and he doesn’t need to make her say it.
Tali’s always been able to handle herself. He knew she was stressed. Frankly, he’d be more alarmed if she wasn’t stressed. But they’ve barely talked and barely seen each other outside missions. He hadn’t gotten a chance to gauge how bad it was.
This, Garrus thinks, is Tali’s equivalent to when Shepard stares out the viewport, dark circles under his eyes, and won’t hear his own name called until the third or fourth time. Garrus will do anything to pull the commander out of those moments. He’d do anything to pull Tali out all the same.
“Yeah,” Garrus says. “I will.”
Admiral Raan calls. The liveships are safe. Shepard is still statuesque in the pod; Legion is still off.
Shepard mentioned that he and Tali were keeping their relationship quiet in front of the other admirals. They’re not very good at hiding it — and considering Tali describes quarian gossip like a national sport, rumor probably spreads fast — but even if they didn’t flirt with each other every five minutes, it’d be obvious from the way she looks at him now. Something between a sigh and a laugh leaves her lips. Garrus knows from the curve of her eyes that she’s smiling, and he wonders what her smile looks like, how it must light up her whole face, how she must shine like a star when she laughs.
The pod opens. Shepard jerks awake. He stumbles out. Garrus catches his right arm, Tali catches his left, and they hold him up.
He looks normal, at least, and not at all changed from when he went into the geth consensus. His eyes are shut tight while he shakes his head, then cracks his neck, then straightens. He ignores Tali’s half-panicked question and asks, very casually, “Did it work?”
Garrus looks at Tali, and he thinks again how beautiful she must be, and it occurs to him that they’re both still holding Shepard’s arms.
A dozen geth primes walk over, and Garrus remembers this is neither the time nor the place to be a hopeless romantic. But his mind keeps drifting back to Tali looking at him, with his hands and hers on Shepard.
It’s quiet on the shuttle back to the Normandy. Shepard stares off at some spot near his boots, his brow furrowing, his hand rising to absently scratch at his nascent beard. Garrus watches the blunt tips of Shepard’s fingers against his stubble.
Then Shepard straightens, in the way he does when he wants to redirect everyone’s attention away from some grim thought he almost vocalized, and glances between Garrus and Tali.
“You two get up to anything interesting while I was in the matrix?” he asks with half a smirk.
“Oh, nothing,” Tali says, in that faux-innocent voice. She tips her head at Garrus. He has the sense she’s daring him to say something, and he doesn’t know what, because it can’t be what he thinks it is.
Garrus breaks eye contact and clears his throat. “I’m sure Tali will tell you about it later.”
“I’m sure I will,” Tali says.
This time, though, she does not sound teasing. Her voice has gone too soft. She isn’t actually going to tell him, is she?
“Well, whatever you were doing,” Shepard says, apparently oblivious — that’s odd, he’s usually a little better at reading the room — and then that shadow comes over his face again, and his voice shifts into that quiet, too-sincere tone, the one he used to talk Tali down after her father died, the one he used to ask Garrus to join him on Menae — “I’m just glad the two of you were there to catch me.”
Oh.
Wait, what?