This was one of the worst days of Tali'Zorah's life, right up there with the death of her mother. She was sitting in a crippled Normandy on an unknown world. Sitting in Shepard's cabin (their cabin, she had to remind herself). Sitting on his bed (their bed). Without him. Without knowing if he was alive. Knowing that the rest of the crew thought he was dead, even if they were careful only to say it when they thought she couldn't hear. Having to accept that they might be right, that this time he wasn't coming back. That this time, she was alone for good.
Tali didn't know what to do with helplessness; she was an engineer, used to problems she could pick up, turn over in her hands, and repair with an omni-tool and a soldering iron. But the heart and the soul weren't so easily fixed, and so Tali could do nothing but sit, alone with her pain. Working in engineering had helped; it had been easy to ignore the dull ache in her bones and the knots in her chest when she was repairing fuel injectors and re-soldering circuit boards. But she could only hide in the drive core for so long, and six consecutive shifts had seen Adams stealing her omni-tool and Doctor Chakwas threatening to sedate her unless she went and got some damned sleep already.
She had tried to sleep, really; she'd even wrapped herself in Shepard's sweater (and its comforting aroma of sweat and coffee and that burnt-eezo smell that came off used heatsinks), and rolled onto Shepard's side of the bed (gone disappointingly cold from days of disuse). But every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, battered and broken and still, or she saw the haunted look in Ash's face as she'd explained ordering Joker to flee.
So instead she was sitting in bed, staring at the picture Glyph had taken at Shepard's big party. It was the only picture she had of him, believe it or not, and she could barely even see his face in it. Her finger brushed the glass, gently tracing the line of his jaw, and she felt a white-hot stab of hatred for the photographic version of herself, at whom Shepard was no doubt smiling that little smile he reserved for her alone. If not for her doppelganger, Shepard would have been looking at the camera, at her; she'd have been able to see his kind eyes and warm smile and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have felt so alone.
But no, he was looking at the other Tali; a Tali who, to her shame, couldn't even remember the damned picture being taken. And Tali, the real Tali, had nothing.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. For all the things she had lost, she still had the memory of him. One such memory surfaced; it had been after a very bad day and she had asked him: "How do you keep going?" It hadn't been the first time she'd asked, but usually he brushed the question off with a joke; but that day, he'd been quiet for a long time.
"I think about the people I've lost," he'd said finally, so quiet she'd strained to hear him, "The people I've failed. The ones who deserved better. And then I think about the people who are left, the people I care about, and I promise to give them better."
It hadn't made sense to Tali at the time. It hadn't made sense after Alchera, either. But it had made sense on Freedom's Progress, when she'd seen her teammates, bodies stretched at grotesque angles, and when she'd seen Veetor, terrified and vulnerable. It had made sense on Haestrom. It made sense now.
She thought of her friends, all of whom were suffering at least as much as she was. She thought of Joker, who had to share a ship with a constant reminder of his lost love; of Ash and Garrus, and their families shattered by war; of Liara, who had once loved Shepard too. They deserved better.
She set the picture back in its place on the bedside table, and curled up in Shepard's place on the bed. For her friends, for the ones who were left, she would sleep. And then she would talk to Joker.
And if the ancestors smiled, if Shepard was still alive, she would make sure they never ran out of pictures.
So there's chapter one. Chapter two will be up next week. If you want an author's note, check my profile.
