Summary: Shepard promised to build Tali a house on the Quarian homeworld

After the Reaper war, spoilers (mostly speculation and fan hope...yess..ignore them.

And a shout out to Harvest by Nuts! You must read the story, it's beautiful.

"OW!" A loud manly yell, a manly yell interrupted a few workers some chuckling softly to themselves. It wasn't the first and not the last that Commander Sheppard had once again failed her craft check.

"Son of a bitch." The tall brunette swore rubbing her now red thumb. She was straddling a support beam, hammer in one hand and nails in a another.

"Shepard, you okay?" Jacob was across from here, eyebrows raised. "That's like the fifth time you did that to yourself."

The Spectre just rubbed her thumb willing the pain to go away. "I'm Jacob, jesus christ given what we all faced together do you really think I'd get killed by a hammer?"

"There is a probably chance that such a thing could occur." And there was Legion helping support the beams with his robotic strength. "Tetanus is still a debilitating disease that requires injections with very large needles."

"Shad up."

From her perch Shepard could see her crew milling around helping with construction. That and Geth.

After the Reaper war, with the Geth sending their own armada to help the Council could only do so much. They couldn't afford a war with the Geth and seeing how the Geth helped them there was no reason to. Of course the quarians wanted to, they wanted their homeworld back. That entire thing was a story for another time. Suffice to say, after what seemed for ages, the quarians were back on their home planet. There were still those who want the Geth back as their servants, thankfully they were a minority. The war with the Reapers showed the quarians exactly how much their 'children' had evolved in the last 300 years.

Which was also why she was here trying to build a house with her own bare hands.

The infrastructure were still around so it didn't make sense to realistically build Tali a house but she made a promise. Besides every house needs a tree house doesn't it? A place where they could all hang out, get drunk and wake up wondering exactly what happened the night before.

With that in mind she took another swing at the nail that looked back at her with a cocky smirk (if nails could smirk this was had one a mile long).

"OW-cockmotherfucker!"

"Shepard..." A blue hand reached over her shoulder to take her hand gently. Shepard looked up to get half a face of chest. "...Shepard..."

With a smirk of her own she moved so she could look Liara in the face. The Shadow Broker just rolled her eyes. "Perhaps you should help Tali with the blue prints, I can help take over with the actually building."

Head shake. "No. I promised her I'd build her a house. So here I am, building one!"

"Not to mention slowly breaking your fingers." Jacob said in a not too subtle voice.

Warm blue hands slowly traced up her face. Shepard closed her eyes feeling Liara's face just inches from hers. "LEGION!"

She felt herself get pushed. Betrayed! She was betrayed! And them a thunk as she landed in Legion's metal arms. Shepard looked up to see Liara look apologetic. "Tali needed you."

The Spectre's eyes narrowed. "You could have asked, the ladder is right there!" Vicious pointing from her position on the Geth.

The blue alien merely smiled. "And Legion was right here."

"We would have caught you Shepard-Commander." Legion said, as if he could read her mind. "Statistically if you had fallen from that height you could have broken your back, neck, head had we not been here"

Hah, there you go Liara how do you like the guilty look huh! Feel the burn! Shame! Shaaame.

Shepard carefully scrambled out of Legion's grip mindful and thankful that Liara had filched her gear, Kasumi must of her taught her something. It was a losing battle she reckoned, nails 10 Shepard 0. Best to go see what Tali was up to.

This totally counted as her building the house Tali wanted, totally. Her minions counted.

As she walked through the tall fields of some sort of plant that was native to this world, she caught sight of Garrus configuring what she hoped wasn't weapons. Damn Turian was always 'calibrating'. A few minutes later she found Tali standing on the roof of the lone house in field. She whirled around spotting Shepard. "Shepard!"

The still dressed in civvies with bandages around her fingers human smiled and walked up to the quarian. "Hey Tali, something the matter?"

"What? No. No. Of course not. Just thinking."

"About what?"

It wasn't that Shepard was a god damn flirt as Miranda would always remark upon, Shepard had no real idea why, but she could see something that passed as a blush form on Tali's face. "Nothing. It was just I was remembering what Legion said about the Geth and souls and..."

That was when Shepard saw the being standing in the middle of the room through the open door way, a Geth platform. It was...staring, well the flash light bulb head thing was pointed at two pictures that were adorned on the wall. Aside from the very spartan manner of decor those two picture were the only colorful things in the house.

"The Geth was a worker here, there used to be a few dozen but they all decided to upload onto the same platform." Tali said quietly when she noticed Sheapard glance at the Geth. "The quarian that used to own this place, she made them a picture. And they made her one."

This spoke volumes about how far Tali came in understanding the Geth, in working with the very machines that drove her people off their planet.

"They've been holding vigil for her." The entire damn planet was a memorial. "I wonder..."

"Yeah, Tali?"

"What Father would think of us making peace with the Geth."

"I don't know." Shepard wrapped her arm around Tali's shoulder. "But I do know he'll be pissed off at the shitty tree house I'm making."

A small laugh and no matter how much she glared, the mirth could not be contained. "No Shepard, I think he'll be happy."

"Oh?"

"You're fulfilling his promise to me."

A heartwarming moment.

"DIE NAILS DIE!" And that was Grunt yelling his multiple lungs out. "BE CRUSHED BY KROGAN MIGHT!"

Shepard felt her eyes twitch. "...I'll be right back Tali."

As she ran off to stop Grunt, the Geth had stepped out of the house looking at Tali. It nodded to her. "Creator Tal'Zorah."

Shepard could only hear the first part.

"Who did this place used to belong to?"

"A friend."