The loneliness of the cosmos racing by above the cabin is deeply unsettling, and so John Shepard turns away from the window and closes his eyes. He shifts his attention to the quarian, who still speaks softly as she rests beside him.
He smiles, calming when the words slip over him and soothe his thoughts.
John can see Rannoch as it must have been, full of cities and the lost songs of her ancestors, brimming with beauty that overflows into each small laugh that punctuates her words. Her home-world appears to him each night, lavishly stunning with possibilities in his mind as it has always been to her. Each garden she describes is colored with soft hues and shadows that match her own until he is lost in the whisper of swaying trees and lavender flowers. Alien hands lift and stretch graceful fingers toward the stars, imagining windows where only sunshine pours through.
Laying in the bed with him, content, she lists each of the people who will sit at the table in the kitchen she plans to build.
"That's a lot of induction ports," Shepard tells her, knowing that his humor is weak at best and yet too relaxed to care. He searches through tumbled piles of sheets and embraces her waist carefully, watching over her shoulder as the fish float nearby in the dim light of the aquarium.
"I wouldn't need them anymore," she answers quietly, and he can almost hear the smile she offers him. "You know that."
"I've already forgotten. You should probably tell me again," he murmurs. Her arms brace against his chest playfully and she pretends that she will leave, only to draw closer to him in the end.
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy.
John Shepard sleeps, listening to her reverie of a gentle world that will never hurt when the atmosphere threatens against her bare skin. He fights for that single dream each day, bending galactic politics through sheer force of will alone, destroying evidence without a second thought and betraying those that he has never particularly cared for. He makes the hard decisions, the right decisions, secretly believing that he is the only one who is willing to go as far as the galaxy requires.
It is a harrowing thing, truly, to do the things that must be done; to have destroyed entire star systems. More harrowing, still, is how little he hesitates. "I love you," he whispers to her one day as he contemplates it, surprised at the emotion that wells inside of him suddenly. The steadily expanding nebula of scars trailing into his eyes admonishes him with a pulse of light he does not see.
Tali's gaze shifts away from the engineering panel immediately. "I love you too," she replies, too loudly and quickly for her own comfort. She hesitates, and then reaches out to him. "I was so afraid that you wouldn't come back."
"Why?"
"All of those people, Shepard..."
"I know," is all he can say in response, because to comment further would only betray how little he cared about them. The relay in the Bahak system had folded in on itself, a violent shockwave that no one could hear. It was the only mourning gasp of the Batarian Hegemony before it burnt away.
John did not warn any of them.
He holds her, listening to the quiet hum of the drive core. Tali'Zorah is beautiful; an adoring face covered in faded violet porcelain. Everything about her is delicate and mysteriously perfect in his vision. He does not forget that fate has placed a protective suit between them, and so he continues to fight. Rannoch is won for her, strange with its burning sky, but still the war continues. The emotion welling in his chest that day, small at first, irredeemably stubborn as time goes on, reveals itself to be only a tortuous liability at the end run.
On Earth, the beam crashes into her. No, he thinks, unaware that he is screaming her name.
No, no, no.
Someone drags her back to the ship, with her suit ragged and torn. She calls out to him and then, white light surrounding him, the beam takes John Shepard away.
There is so much pain.
He stumbles forward, aiming for blue light. Time passes without measurement.
Cities are rebuilt.
A moment's worth of wonder crashes through metal tubes wet with past civilizations when he finally finds her again, and then it is gone; replaced only by a hush of air that is stale and humid in foreign spaces. The porcelain of her body is bitterly cold, waiting for him in the pieces of the old ship that failed him, tucked away on a planet that should have been a paradise.
"I love you," he tries to tell her, and cannot.
He repeats the words again and his intention is only pain released as bright light; a bursting totality of the scars that once clung to his jaw. The metal alloy that is now John Shepard continues to attempt to speak to her in reverberating tones, delivering words that sound like nothing and shatter him further with each unanswered syllable. Emotion swells through him with a starkly terrifying warmth. It is as unexpected as it is familiar, and Reapers scattered across the galaxy shudder, halting to turn away from their wards.
The pieces of her, fragile, are gathered up. "I love you," he repeats, because she is still perfect beneath her broken mask.
A ruthless sovereignty is required to keep her safe in the new ship. His decisions are settled into seeping alloy compartments and a blackly polished chassis; rationalized expressions of violence that weigh heavily around the metal pedestal she will now always be placed upon. The salarians uplift the yahg, a first strike against him that is as desperate as it is inevitable, and they are punished swiftly for their transgressions. The asari join the scattered remains, seeking to attack against his fleet.
They fail.
Each new Reaper ensures her safety with unrelenting force, destroying everything that could possibly desecrate her small body further and advance the suffering threatening to rust him into nothing. The turians are the last to betray him, fighting their bitter wars of attrition as they attempt to injure him further and take her away, as he knows they would do.
An old man calls out to him, with grim eyes and a visor that has been weathered by experience, and then he is gone.
There are flashes of memories, followed by more pain.
The fleet descends upon Rannoch at the very last, with endless swarms of black machines clutching to its outer crust like insects crowding a flame, ignoring the panicked population as each ship alights upon warm sand. The planet is dry, and dusty, and strange; so unlike the dreams inside tumbled sheets that have not come true.
She was correct long ago. "I have a home," she had cried out to him, perfect and beautiful.
Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch.
It is John Shepard's last thought, cradling her body inside of him, and then the machines are silent.