Chapter One: Lost
…
Searing agony ripped through his body. It took all his efforts not to scream at the excruciating pain all he could see was... well nothing. Not at first. Blood was pooling into his eyes. His whole face was bleeding into the flickering control panel of the Hammerhead.
What in the hell happened?
Wiping the blood from his eye sockets, Commander John Shepard; First human Spectre, active duty Cerberus asset and part time corpse pulled his head back tenderly and did a mental check to make sure everything was in working order. He first wiggled his toes and instantly felt a thousand times better, despite having his face mashed in by the crash. Not only were his legs undamaged but so was his spine. Good, that meant his cybernetic implants did make all the difference.
He groaned as he rested his head back into the seat, now barely attached to the tank Wiping the blood flowing from his nose, he noticed the damage report and the communication set both of them looking like they were to crash at any moment. The Hammerhead was shot to shit. They must have overshot the landing and hit the jungles when...When the Collectors arrived.
Shit...
John's hand hit the Hammerhead commlink channel. He needed to get a status report.
"Joker, this is Shepard, do you read? I needed a sitrep five minutes ago! What in the hell happened?" he demanded, his voice hoarse and sounding much older than he remembered.
The message sent back to him was not good if he disregarded the static. Joker sounded panicked.
"Collect-.. Evasive... Retreat... Stay still..."
The line went dead, leaving the Spectre in an almost silent cockpit. Silence only broken by the hissing of the drive core dying and the communication network failing.
"Joker? JOKER, COME IN!" he roared again as though shouting would make the communication link strengthen.
The commlink broke in a final gasp of sparks and hisses. Leaving the disoriented Commander all alone in the shattered cockpit with no clue what in the hell had happened.
What he knew was that he was not alone on this mission. He had brought a team with him. No... Not just a team.
It was just Tali and him now...
Newly renamed Tali'Zorah vas Normandy had approached him about this operation. She had gotten a request from the Migrant Fleet to seek out a lost quarian ship, a lieutenant and her crew had gone missing after a routine scouting mission into the Hades Nexus system. Tali, who was naturally completely dedicated to helping her people, despite the fact the leadership tried to sell her out, had insisted that they check it out. Now she had vanished. She was gone from the Hammerhead.
Shepard looked up to find that the hatch had been already opened. Tugging off his safety belt, he could just imagine that it was open by the quarian's doing. In all likelihood that woman was probably constructing a quantum entanglement communicator out of what was left of the Hammerhead; she was that good at turning scrap into something useful.
He reckoned he should probably help. He might have been a jarhead, but he reckoned he wasn't completely useless in fields other than killing people. He'd probably hand his command over to Tali and just serve as a grunt. Keep her safe while she put together a plan.
He silently tugged himself out of the crashed hover armoured personnel vehicle; the sunlight blinded him briefly as his eyes took a while to get adjusted. He coughed and pushed himself out of the hatch and stumbled off the broken Hammerhead and falling ass first into the mud with a yelp. He groaned, hoping the mud and his armour had made sure he had not broken his tail bone.
Goddamn did he miss the Mako…
Groaning again, he pulled himself up and noticed the quarian footprints in the mud. They were longer, more graceful strides which moved that woman quicker than most. Tali presented herself as almost a ballerina in the way she moved, ad right about now Shepard was wondering why in the fuck he was having these sorts of thoughts.
Shaking his head as he pushed through the flora, Shepard followed the tracks as they led away from crash site and through what looked like a clearing. His guess proved correct. As he crossed through the last of the palm-like trees, he found himself on a rolling plain, a small creek flowing just strong enough to make noise.
Fortunately for him it didn't take as long as he thought.
John smiled slightly through the pain as he noticed the figure standing in front of him. There she was...
Tali stood there in the middle of treeless, grassy field, pacing back and forth and speaking franticly. It was, however, spoken in her native language. She seemed to be barking orders in her own language, Khellish. Shepard frowned to himself. Was she radioing the crash survivors of the quarian vessel?
"Tali?" John spoke up, calling out to her. "Tali, are you alright? Did you get Joker?"
Tali bounced and turned right around, her eyes were wide through the mask plate glass as her shotgun in her hands flung right around and was immediately raised at his chest.
Shepard threw his hands up, too surprised to do anything other than that. As soon as the weapon was raised, it was slumped back down.
"Tali... what in the hell was that for?" he growled at her.
Her bright eyes somehow widened even more by the sound of his voice. She looked surprised... almost shocked by his call. His slight grin, caused by the feeling of elation to see and that that she had gotten out of this mess in one piece slipped away. She seemed upset, almost shaken.
"Shepard?" she spoke, her voice sounding… extremely more foreign than usual.
"Tali, is everything alright?" he spoke again to her. "Have you been hurt?"
Tali simply stared at the question as though he had said something completely reprehensible to her. Any trace of amusement on his face fell away as he awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. Slowly, Tali stepped forward, inhaling deeply.
"Shepard, Fal Aliza'tar dar daeqist?" her voice suddenly chirped almost like a bird, surprising the Commander.
Shepard blinked rather stupidly in his own opinion. At first he figured it was confusion, then perhaps a joke to make him smile after he got his face smashed apart. It didn't take long before he drew to the most logical of conclusions.
"Tali, is your translator broken?" He asked her quickly not liking the pause giving for the question.
Tali, like John stupidly stared at the words spoken as well. His theory was confirmed right there and then.
Quirking his lips to a sheepish smile, John reached out and pointed to Tali and then gestured to the ground next to him. Tali nodded quickly and limped his way. John grunted as he pulled his translator out of his ear. It was coated in his blood and clearly broken as he suspected. Wiping the blood off the receiver, He showed to Tali's whose eyes widened, her mouth gasping as she understood exactly what had happened to him now.
She nodded, confirming his theory officially.
Both of them lost their translators.
Shepard emitted a low laugh… oh for fuck's sake, of course this was happening.
John fell to the ground, dumping his gear off his back. One hand wiped the blood still flowing freely from his injuries; the other digging into his armour to produce a pack of rarely used purely medicinal pack of cigarettes. He didn't smoke often... just when things got this messed up; and it seemed as though since he started his war with the Collectors he was smoking more and more.
Shepard felt Tali's eyes on him as he slipped one into his lips and again patted his armour. He nearly swore as he realized he hadn't brought along a lighter. Pissed, he threw the cigarette to the jungle floor and looked up to Tali, meeting her clearly concerned gaze.
"We've overshot our LZ by easily ten or so clicks." He spoke to the quarian, more for himself than for her. His thumb gestured back towards the smashed up Hammerhead. He added. "We'll gather what we need. We move out in ten."
Tali did not move at his words, Shepard sighed, rubbing his head. Of course she didn't understand.
So, they had no transportation, no communications back to the Normandy, and worst of all: No working translators to even speak to his engineer... well, friend. This was going to be the worst stranded situation he ever found himself in.
He went to work limping as he pulled himself past Tali and back into the tank searching for salvage, only pausing for a second to wave Tali to follow him. They would gather what they needed for a long term stay on this world. Spare equipment they could possibly use at the quarian crash site: weapons, electronics… things which Tali could possibly work with.
Above all else, they needed was a working signal beacon and some sort of faster than light communication device.
It wasn't that tall of an order; quarians were, after all, known for making something out of next to nothing. It may have sounded like a stereotype. But it wasn't far from the truth. Especially when it came to Tali; she was a certified mechanical/electronic genius. She'd strip everything useful from the Hammerhead and they'd construct something…
From behind him, he could hear footsteps following his lead. Tali, it seemed, understood the gist of it, or had the same idea... Or she had the idea before he did. She was much cleverer than he was when it came to this.
As he dug through the vehicle, Tali joined him, mimicking what he was doing. Together the two of them worked furiously to salvage what they could. Looking up through the hatch he could see a rainstorm was brewing overhead and night time was falling quickly.
Though the lack of communication was disheartening, at least Tali still trusted him and seemed to know what he intended. As shitty as all of this was, this inherent trust between two aliens, built over such a long period of service together was making this situation just a little better.
...
...
One M-3 Predator heavy pistol… working condition.
One M-22 Evicerator Shotgun, repaired with intact pieces of Shepard's damaged M-22.
One M-96 Mattock Heavy Rifle, battered, Thermal clip receiver jammed: crippled but usable…
That was all the firepower they had available. Everything else was lost to the crash. The Hammerhead was no Mako. The moment the thrusters blew off as they tried to land safety. That, combined with the massive fracture in the rocket launcher left the vehicle no longer safe to ever use again. Fragile equipment such as omni-tools was damaged, but salvageable once they got back onto the Normandy.
That was if they got back to the Normandy…
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy sighed to herself. This was not looking well for the two of them and whatever quarian survivors they could find once they were ready to move out.
The engineer, no longer wanting to think of the bad aspects of being trapped on this world, turned her head and watched John... Shepard as he silently fanned the flames of a small fire he lit using a charged thermal clip. It was quite ingenious of him, really and she would have gladly praised her captain had both of their translation software survived hitting the planet.
For now, they had found cover in the small cave as they waited for both night time to end and a heavy rainstorm that came in quick and overwhelmed the two of them. Tali could not believe how absurd this was. They were two highly advanced species and now they were separated by something as simple and taken for granted as language.
Now look at the two of them, they were huddled in a damn cave like a couple of savages...
She shuffled nervously as she stared into the back of Shepard's head. Tali sighed again wistfully. It could have been worst... At least she had some very nice looking company. That was if she disregarded just how battered he looked, of course...
She only knew a couple of human words. It came with her travels. Mostly it was names of ships, their worlds, and names of individuals as well as the occasional curse word she heard her captain utter when his anger got the better of him. That was about it, her translation software took care of everything else for her. Shepard, it appeared, was on the same page as well. The way he was miming things to her did he think her stupid or ignorant?
John...no... Shepard, finally glanced back at her, noticing how huddled she was in the back of the small cramped cave. Tali silently watched as his mouth formed words that were little better than gibberish to her. He paused and gave a laugh that warmed Tali's spirits up immensely. He had reached out towards her, waving her to join him. Tali nodded and crawled over, resting her body close to the human. Not too close, just... close enough.
The fire gave details to Shepard's face. It showed her how much dried blood coated him. She winced at the sight and resisted the urge to break out what little medi-gel they had found.
"Thank you for the fire, Captain. Here, let me tend to those injuries," she whispered to him softly, forgetting for a moment that he could not understand. She heard him grunt. He seemed to get the gist of what she was saying.
As her long fingers reached out and tentatively grazed her Captain's skin, Shepard flinched and growled slightly, causing Tali to blink and recoil. She was stopped by Shepard's hand gripping her forearm, keeping her from fleeing at his reaction. Slowly she exhaled and tilted his head to one side. Unfortunately neither human nor quarian had medi-gel to spare. What they had, Shepard seemed to want to save in case of an emergency, leaving her captain in quite a mess.
It was a mess Tali could not stand to bear witness to without doing something, anything to help him.
She reached up and quietly she unfastened her mother's hood, trying her utmost to ignore the curious expression the human wore. Her father, had he been alive, would disapprove of what she had planned.
But to hell with him and his disapproval; she knew her mother Qualia would understand. She was beautiful like that. Her memories were full of moments of her charity and compassion for others. She would have done the exact same without the slightest of hesitations.
Of course mother, unlike father, did not know that she was harbouring a crush on this human…
Hearing her name being called almost as if he was protesting her wrecking her hood, Tali moved past Shepard and the fire to the edge of the cave. With no hesitation in her intentions, she reached outwards, pushing the hood into the rain storm.
"At any point you could have told me that this mission did not take priority. Yet you took it up with the same sort of dedication I felt for it…" Tali spoke aloud to the human as she watched her mother's hood soak quickly. "You could have said no, you had every reason and justification to tell me you had no time for this... for any vice I have asked you to help me with... but you didn't…"
Tali trailed off and looked back to the injured human, sitting there in silence.
"You never say no to me…" she observed. "…Why?"
Tali turned back and found the bleeding Commander, tugging off his damaged shoulder armour. His eyes, beautifully blue and shimmering in the fire's light never left her presence. Tali bit her lip and turned back, crawling back to his side.
Yet again Tali'Zorah moved her hand up to hold the undamaged cheek. This time John did not flinch. Instead, he just sat there silent as she wrapped her right hand in the dampened, detached hood. With as much care as she could give, she moved the hood over the cuts, washing the drying blood from off his face.
"I wish you knew what everything you have done for me has meant," she continued as she applied pressure to the gash. "I have giving you almost nothing in return for your kindness. It's even hard because you do not ask for anything in return."
She nearly jumped as the hand that held his cheek pulsed unnaturally, almost like a sudden electrical shock. She pushed her hand uncertainly into the flesh. It was a sub-dermal implant. It must have been one of his cybernetics, pulsing away from inside his body. Tali felt herself go faint. It reminded her of just how much life had changed for her Captain. Gone for two years only to come back and find out that everyone had moved on with their lives…
Well, almost everyone...
She could not speak for the others, but she could not move on from the loss...
"You know, you are my best friend, John Shepard," she spoke again, her voice almost longing for him to understand what her words meant. "You are the only person who has ever stood by me unwavering. Thank you."
Perhaps not having these translators was a blessing. She could speak her mind freely about him for the first time. Confession had a nice warm feeling, like… it was a release.
"Tali."
Her name was the only thing she could understand as John mumbled back to her, it was slurred and alien sounding to her. Though she could not make sense of the human tongue spoke, she paid attention as though it did.
He was worth the effort.
Shepard snorted and shook his head as though he too understand how absurd this was. Instead he grabbed her hand, surprising her, sending a jolt of warmness through her body even though layers of her suit blocked a moment of true intimacy.
Now in control of Tali's thin arm, he pointed it at himself, poking his chest with her finger.
"John Shepard…" He stated factually.
Tali nodded. Yes, he was certainly John Shepard. Through cuts and bruises he was as handsome as ever...
He moved his hand over to the flickering flames.
"Fire…." He spoke again. He waited several seconds before repeating the word until Tali understood. It was the human word for K'vais.
"F'i're..." Tali repeated uncertainly her mouth forming the human word rather awkwardly. John smiled as brightly as he could and nodded. He moved her hand once again, a little lower. He was now gesturing to the thermal clip, bright as the flames licked against it.
After making her say thermal clip in human tongue, her hand was resting against his open wound.
"Stop..." He made a gesture of his hand straight up. "Bleeding…"
He ran her fingers through the blood and gestured to the iron scented liquid.
Tali blinked as she pulled all the pieces together. John... wanted her to stop the bleeding by burning the wound closed. How could he suggest something so barbaric be done?
Thinking about it though made it clear that he was right. The bleeding needed to be stopped and they couldn't spare any medi-gel in case the Collectors had landed a raid to look for them, and if the lost quarians were wounded more severely than he.
John tugged off his combat gauntlet and handed it to Tali to use so she did not burn herself. The engineer nodded and gingerly, she reached down and dug the thermal clip out of the fire pit.
"AH, AH!" John spoke out, his index finger raised. Tali remembered the gesture's significance; if she was right, it meant that a human was asking for a moment. So taking a chance on that guess, Tali nodded and waited as John bowed his head, inhaled deeply and nodded, his eyes staring into hers.
Tali, obliged, wincing as she stuck the overheated clip into the wound, listening as blood hissed as it boiled and skin was burnt. Shepard shook, his teeth gritted. Still he did not move, nor cry out. He suppressed his pain as he glared into her eyes.
As fast as she pressed the hot metal against his skin, she tugged it back, releasing it back into the fire. John slumped over, hissing as pain coursed through him. He fell into her lap still breathing roughly. Tali, her stomach filled with guilt for hurting him wrapped the soaking wet violet hood over the wound once again.
"Shepard, I'm so sorry," She apologized profusely. "You were right though, it was the only way to stop the bleeding without breaking out the medical supplies…"
John's alien baritone spoke again, babbling softly, as though he too was apologizing right back to her. Tali sighed and watched the crackling of the fire, her hands running through his hair affectionately. She felt the human's heart beat into her lap. They remained there for what felt like an hour before she could feel herself getting drowsy with sleep.
Tali shuffled the two of them back of the small cave where she had pulled out was left of the leather bound seats of the Hammerhead. Together the two of them laid down in the improvised bedding, both of them resting with no spaces between the two of them in an effort to conserve heat released from Shepard's body and Tali's suit environment system. This was going to be awkward for them, but Tali would worry about it once they were safe and back on board the Normandy.
Unconsciously, she pushed the human's head into her chest as though to protect him from exposure. Shepard found himself face planted against rubber and reactive armour. If the Commander complained, she did not think she would ever hear it. Well... to be honest, she did not need to do this... but she could honestly not mind it all that much.
It wasn't often she got to drown her dashing Commander with her flesh.
Well, not technically... but for a quarian, it was close enough.
...
...
"Tali flank left... oh never mind!"
John quickly waved his nonverbal command to Tali and fired another round from his Mattock, connecting with a varren, splitting it open. Tali nodded chirped something affirmative and moved in the direction he needed her to be. Her improvised Shotgun blasted a second varren, tearing it wide open.
After waking up to find that both of them were completely tangled into each other's bodies, they both pushed the awkwardness to the side as they gathered their remaining equipment and moved out without a word spoken to one another. Even if they could understand one another, it was hard for him to get over waking up with his face buried deeply into Tali's breasts.
Not that he minded it, of course.
Now they were back on the hunt for the crash. Tali's half working Omni-Tool was flickering on and off as the mapping program showed them they had landed only slightly off trajectory rather than the twenty or so kilometers as Shepard hypothesized. It was not long before they found the first sign of the crash: a chunk of the ship's hull.
"Bosh'tet, Se'uvai!" he heard the frustrated quarian cry out s she smacked the omni-tool in vain. She had spent hours trying to hardwire her and his Omni-tool in a vain attempt to have one of them working. Trying to get the piece of shit working again, she did not notice the growl and sudden rustling in the wood in front of her
Shepard fired another burst at a Varren who popped up in front of Tali. Tali jumped back and turned to him.
"Yo'ali Havas' hav Iktarn, Shepard!" she spoke, dropping her arm and raising her improvised Shotgun back into a combat stance. Shepard nodded, assuming the words were 'thanks'.
They continued moving defensively through the bush, past more wreckage until finally both of them stumbled across a muddy impact, like the freighter had left a massive skid mark in the side of the planet.
The sight of the dead quarians, scattered around the wreckage site like ragdolls, instantly dampened any excitement created by discovering the crash site. Tali looked almost crushed as she slowly examined each of the dead at a pace that Shepard could only describe as mournful.
A sudden cry from inside the wreckage caught both of their attentions, and then a sudden roar from out in the jungle. More varren were here and looking for another meal.
"Shepard!"
John turned to find that Tali had thrown her Predator heavy pistol over to him; it was a clear statement to the Spectre. Set up a parameter while she searched for survivors. Hitting another varren group with both weapons firing, John dived behind some cover as Tali bolted into the wreckage of the freighter.
Quietly, Shepard hoped that they hadn't been too late. The last thing neither he nor Tali wanted to see was another dead quarian.
...
...
"You're going to be alright, Lieutenant... definitely sick but all right. We have a very capable ship's doctor. She's had to patch me up quite a bit so she's an expert in or physiology now."
"I can already feel the infection coming on. When can we move?"
Tali sighed as she felt the eyes of Lieutenant Forzan, the only crash survivor left stare at her expectantly. What could she possibly say to the woman? That in a moment of childish curiosity, Tali decided she wanted to try the Hammerhead, which her captain approved through her begging? Now the Hammerhead was smashed to pieces in the woods because the Collectors had been tracking the Normandy...
"We're stuck here, but that is temporary," Tali reassured the lieutenant. "My captain's pilot has never failed him before. He will be back soon."
Tali closed her eyes. She lied. That bosh'tet Flight Lieutenant had failed Shepard before. Jeff "Joker" Moreau was very unlikely to ever leave her "Shit List", as Ashley Williams once called it, for placing his pride and love of a ship over his and Shepard's life, that damn fool.
"Thank you Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. I'm grateful for your arrival," Forzan whispered groggily as the medi-gel burned inside her injuries. "Until then, feel free to eat if you are hungry. This world is Levo's DNA based life. I'm afraid your captain will have to be content with eating the varren if he is hungry."
The engineer bit her lip. It would not surprise her in the slightest if she caught her Captain munching on a roasted varren... he was practically krogan at times.
"A lot of our equipment has been damaged," Tali spoke again as she sat the Lieutenant down into a makeshift mattress. "I was curious if you had been assigned a translator piece. Somehow we both broke our devices in the crash. We've been stumbling over language barriers since we landed. If only one of us could understand the other, then we will be in a better state."
Forzan nodded. Her hands dug into behind her veil. A faint hiss escaped from behind the helmet and soon enough, Forzan hand pulled out, gingerly cradling a small microchip. Strange... Tali had expected she would have had an omni-tool translator... not so apparently... It was a suit based translation device... interesting.
"Here, I do not need it." Forzan spoke, handing the suit chip. "I was the only one the fleet equipped to deal with non-quarians. It's a bit older then I imagine you use."
"Thank you. I will also need to enlist your help." Tali returned as she opened the USB port in the back of her helmet and pressed the chip in. "We need to build a beacon so that the Normandy can find us quickly."
Forzan nodded weakly.
"I will be glad to," she said wearily. "I can't move so well though."
Neither of them pad any mind to the heavy boots stamping behind them.
"Perimeter is clear, Tali. How's the patient?"
Tali stiffened slightly as Shepard's baritone made perfect sense to her. Well, at least one of them understood the other now. She turned back to face the source of the voice and smiled slightly, her hand raised to Forzan.
"Shepard vas Normandy; this is Lieutenant Forzan vas Cyniad." Tali introduced her captain to the wounded lieutenant. She paused, looked around. Sheepishly, she added. "Well... what's left of it."
Shepard showed limited understanding to her, of course. Regardless, he understood enough to hold his hand out to Lieutenant Forzan, who looked at it almost nervously
"Ah... hello… Tali here gave me an hour long lecture about finding you..." he spoke with a smile in his voice. "She tends to think that she needs to present a well thought out case in order to get me to do something for her. Must be a quarian thing..."
Shepard trailed off, his grin dying as his hand remained unshaken. Slowly he lowered it away and rubbed the back of his neck. He did not seem to notice that the quarian engineer stiffened up at his sweet words.
"I see... no translator as well... "He mumbled. Giving both of them a brief nod, he lifted his rife and stepped back out of the wreckage, leaving Lieutenant Forzan and a suddenly jumpy Tali in his wake.
Forzan chuckled weakly.
"Alien, but very handsome." Forzan mused, shooting Tali a knowing look. "Good on you Tali'Zorah."
Tali nearly shrieked at the older woman for such a blunt statement.
"The tense stressing of his name in your voice, the way you turn to him. It's so obvious that it's almost embarrassing." Forzan chuckled as she pushed herself up against the wall. "I do not imagine your father would approve of what you're thinking of your captain right about now..."
Tali shrugged, idly.
"He's not thinking of anything now. He's dead," Tali answered her dryly.
Forzan raised her hand to her mask, as though she wished that she could take back her observation. Tali shook her head. Forzan was in the dark for weeks about fleet activity. She could not have known about the trial about the geth activation... or about her father's idiocy.
"It does not matter; besides... I already told him exactly what I was thinking about my captain. To say he was furious was an understatement." She admitted to the Captain, her voice suppressed any grief and replacing it instead with sly tone… conspiratorial as the two women kept their eyes on the back of the human male. "If my father did not like that I thought such things about a human, it would not matter to me. Not in the slightest."
Forzan and Tali laughed softly.
"Well, I should go, try to explain to Captain Shepard that I have a translator..." Tali decided. She was stopped however by Forzan reaching up, her hand gripping her arm.
"Not so fast…" Forzan smirked in her voice. "I don't know much about his people, but the way he looked at you? Come on, you felt it..."
Tali shifted nervously, her hands wringing as she admitted she did feel that strange alien spark fly.
"Okay… so I might have bought a couple of human body language manuals… all of them more random than the next..." Tali admitted ruefully. "It's strange to witness first hand though... Keelah, especially from him."
Forzan looked almost amused at the prospects of an Admirals daughter being so personal with an alien.
"Well why don't you just tell him you have a translator in the morning?" Forzan tried to persuade. "He does not need to know so quickly. You can see if he says something. Just say that you fixed mine during the evening."
Admitting the lie was a feasible one to tell, Tali sighed as she continued to stare at Shepard watching the tree line, his rifle raised and looking ready for a fight. Forzan was right... It wasn't as though they were in a real need of communication at least for now.
"I do not see the harm in it... It would be interesting if something... anything came up." Tali admitted to the Lieutenant, trying to fight the urge to feel too guilty for this sort of scheming.
Forzan rubbed her hands together, mostly likely she was grinning at the prospect of some fun. Tali sighed and understood the older woman's plight perfectly... this sort of distraction would be perfect to push the loss of her whole team into the back of her mind.
She really could use a distraction from her own losses as well...
...
...
"ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL."
This shell of a being, too soft, too weak to remain for long before the sheer weight of his presence shattered the being completely. Harbinger, Commander of the Reaper fleet and creator of these husks, turned itself back and faced the detachment gathered around the primitive wreckage.
Harbinger relished in the mistake made by the organics, led by their naïve, short sighted leader, Shepard. Had they been so foolish to believe they could chase his pawns unopposed? Well they would learn sooner than later that this was a fight they could not win. Shepard only had two options for salvation: assimilation or death.
Increasingly, Harbinger was choosing death over union with the parasite and his minions. They were too much of an annoyance for coexistence.
"Spread out," Harbinger ordered. "Find any survivors of this crash. No one is to survive."
...
...
Night had fallen over Gei Hinnom once again.
Tali sighed as she set down the almost completed transmitter. Despite being stranded on a planet with wild Varren everywhere, she had to admit that the world was rather beautiful. With a perimeter set up, all the weapons scavenged, and the dead lined up for quick retrieval should the fleet want to scavenge what remained of the Cyniad and perform body retrieval. There was nothing left to do but to lounge back and relax the best she could.
Lieutenant Forzan was fast asleep. She was down for the night on a mild sedative, leaving her all alone with her captain. Fortunately for the two of them, there were no heavy rainstorms tonight. Instead the night sky shined back at them, with thousands of star hanging above them.
Tali was no astronomer, but her mother had the talent. It was one of her many hobbies in her spare time as she raised her daughter mostly alone. Father's attention was always on everything and everyone else. Wherever the Migrant Fleet roamed, mother always knew which of the stars was theirs. It was always a faint light, starlight that radiated from the star back from the times of their ancestors.
Using her child logic, she always wished she could send a message backwards in time by deflecting the light back to its source. Create some sort of Morse code to warn the ancestors about what would happen. Of course she hadn't factored light travel did not work that way. Still... a child could dream of that... Her mother encouraged it. Qaulia'Zorah was always allowing her child's imagination to flourish.
At least until her father told both her and mother that such childish thoughts were stupid and a waste of time.
A gag caught her attention. It was Shepard. In his hands was a cooked varren steak he had cut off a fresh kill. A large bite-mark was bitten out. She watched amused as John spat the disgusting meat out into the flickering bonfire.
"That krogan was right. This shit is terrible…" her captain said, sounding rather nauseous. "Might as well eat some goddamn nutrient paste… Oh wait... I don't want to have a seizure! Just great… fan-fucking-tastic…"
Tali stifled a laugh. She simply tilted her head and stared at him as he remained distracted by the fire. His hands ran through what little hair he had. Quietly Tali wondered what he would look like if his let it grow out... just a little bit... enough to run her hands through it...
She exhaled and closed her eyes and pushed that thought away. Instead she wondered what life was like for Shepard when he was a child... She wondered if he knew how well he had it. He was space born by parental choice. He had a home world to go to still.
One her biggest obstacles with him was his willingness to humanize the geth. Write off they did as... what he described it as was child abuse. It was one of the few topics which created a heated division between them. He never backed down and always found a counter argument. At one point while they were chasing Saren he managed (at least in her opinion) to justify the quarian exile. Those words that he spoke made her not speak to him for a week straight. It was the only time she ever contemplated leaving his crew.
That feeling lasted about a day. Before she could seriously put thought into is, Tali found in her sleeper pod a hardware program for her Omni-Tool. On it was a state of the art Alliance Combat drone with a small letter of grovelling from her stubborn future captain.
She immediately named it Chiktikka vas Paus.
It didn't settle the matter, but it certainly made her understand that her and her pilgrimage captain were quite allowed to differing opinions and still retain a friendship.
A friendship based on an odd attraction to an alien.
It was an attraction she had wanted to expand on since he helped her with her pilgrimage; pushing her childish crush to genuine feelings. Feelings she immediately suppressed the moment she found that both Williams and T'Soni were vying for his attention, reminding her that a quarian had no place amongst the aliens anymore.
But now... after coming back from the dead, Only to have Williams call him a traitor for doing what he did best: protecting us all. Liara... who John was with, using him as a pawn. Something that hurt him, but like her, he suppressed any heartache he may have had.
"You're a really strange woman… risking your life, simply because I asked you too."
Tali looked up, breaking her silent stare off. Shepard's head was turned slightly. Shooting her a fraction of a gaze before turning back to stare off at the fire, almost transfixed by the flickering flames. Her brain, always the source of selfless dictation nearly blurted out that she could understand him. Every other instinct railed against the concept of telling the truth.
"I don't think I've ever met a woman who ever had unshakable faith in me. I don't blame the others. I'm not a very good person."
Speechless was the only word that could describe her as. All thoughts of telling Shepard that she could understand vanished. How could Shepard think he was not a good person? He saved so many lives. People depended on him. Not like her. Everyone around her died because she was not strong enough to convince the Admirals that Haestrom should not be taken lightly. She failed and everyone died...
Shepard wasn't a bad person. She was.
"You were a very sweet girl." He reminisced, earning a hidden smile from the quarian. He paused and hastily added. "I mean you still are... only more... you know... woman."
The way he dragged that word: woman. It made Tali shudder with a sudden thrill of excitement. She ducked her head as she prayed to her ancestors for him not to see her rubbing her legs and thighs together as though she was burning alive inside her suit.
Stupid reawakened hormones...
"You were naïve, half glass full kind of person... stubborn, but I didn't mind it. I wish that didn't have to disappear so quickly…" Shepard inhaled the cigarette smoke.
Exhaling it slowly as he stared off, there was a strange look of melancholy present.
"You have no idea how hard I tried to protect you."
Tali blinked. All the near orgasmic pleasure of his attention came to a standstill as her Captain finally turned back to face her.
"Every other day I second guessed bringing you along." He continued, sounding very lost. "To see the galaxy in its worst form wasn't what I wanted for you. Selfish, yes, but I didn't want you to be like me..."
Shepard exhaled smoke from out of his nose, his eyes hardened as he glared into his lap.
"Look at what happened to the others. I have a track record," he spoke repulsed by the thought. "Kaidan got killed. Liara became obsessed with hunting the Broker. Garrus went off to become Batman, but lacking any of the charm... "
He looked up again, his eyes focusing back into hers.
"And you... You were forced to watch your friends die... over and over again; and for what? your goddamn father's illegal orders?" He incredulously inquired as Tali stared blankly at him. The shit I've seen you put up with. From racism to letting me stumble ignorantly around quarian history... to making your father proud of you, even after he's gone... "
Shepard quirked his lips, as though this was all very amusing to him.
"You're a much, much stronger person then I am…" he observed lightly.
John looked away his head shaking idly.
Tali downcast her vision away from the human, as a sudden wave of sick guilt washed over her. She was bearing witness to her Captain's private thoughts. This was wrong, this was untrustworthy. She needed to tell him that she could understand. But she did not. She could not.
"I couldn't change those things even if I wanted to," He breathed again, staring once more into the fire. "There's no magic fix when it comes to your parents... but there was one thing I could help you with. It was keeping you from being me. Living to send good people to their deaths... I never wanted you to follow in my footsteps. The fact that you seem to trust me even when I place you in terrible situations only makes the guilt worse I can't even tell you properly just how much I appreciated it."
There was a pause. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, he added.
"I'm a coward," he grumbled mutinously. "I have to wait until the off chance that we broke our goddamn translators in order for me to admit that I feel something for you."
Not realizing how his words had nearly caused the quarian behind him to squeal out in surprise. Shepard exhaled the last of the smoke and tossed the butt of the cigarette into the fire and stood up.
"I should go... make my rounds around the perimeter…" he muttered. "I'll try to forget this happened and hope to Christ that you haven't spontaneously learned English."
He stepped back outside into the jungle, leaving Tali's mouth dropped open, her body frozen and unable to follow him. Had she heard Shepard correctly? Did he feel that attraction looming between them like she had? This was... This was unfathomable to her. As far as she knew; He was still seeing Liara T'Soni.
Wasn't he?
Tali nodded to herself confidently. This was all just the results of being marooned and fairly injured. He needed a familiar face, so to speak. That was it; they were just friends, nothing more. There would never be more than that, something Tali found herself uncomfortable with despite being at peace with it.
...
...
They had traveled all night, following the two distinct pairs of foot prints. Dawn on this world was breaking now. Harbinger could feel the body of the organic pawn break down. It would not be long now until its demise would occur. Forcing the augmented organic forward he squinted through dying eyes.
It was smoke. Smoke billowing out through the clearing that led to a primitive star vessel crash site. There was a flash of an organic in military grade body armour. The same armour that had been harassing its efforts the moment the bacteria destroyed its vanguard, Sovereign.
The Reaper possessed Collector turned back to the full platoon that was silently following it.
"Engage the organics. Subdue Shepard. The others are expendable."
The Drones clicked in agreement and together, they marched forward, their rifles firing in perfect unison at the organics.
Harbinger felt legs collapsed from under him. They were weak specimens, all of them. They all lacked the strength he needed. He needed an avatar, and this Shepard… This Shepard was the perfect choice.
"Releasing control."
Harbinger, the commander of the Reaper fleets left his pawn dying. Somewhere in the back of its indoctrinated mind, it was surely wondering what great crime it had done to deserve this unimaginable fate.
...
...
How in the hell could he not have expected this?
Shepard fired a burst from a Vindicator rife scavenged off one of the dead quarians. The rounds caused one the Collectors to crumple to the ground. Though he killed him, two took his place, laying down a field of fire and forcing the Spectre to dive behind cover.
Of course... of course the Collectors landed a detachment to find him. He had stopped their plague on Omega station, disrupted their raid on Horizon, Infiltrated their dreadnought... cheated death at their hands numerous times. It was only natural he would be at the top of their shit list if he had caused them this much grief.
Again he fired, burst after burst at the collector pawns. Conserving his thermal clip, he silent vowed to locate the piece of shit weapon designer that managed to convince gun manufacturers to convert their rifles back to clips and make him pay.
The roar of a shot blew over his head. It was Tali joining in on the fight. Her eyes narrowed as she shredded through the nearest Collector with her shotgun. She dived almost on top of him.
Quietly he passed her his heavy pistol and pulled himself back up one hand his Vindicator, the other, his Mattock, both of them firing concurrently at different targets, b Both weapons tearing through the platoon.
He and his engineer were this outgunned, they needed to create as much firepower as possible. He suddenly found himself wishing that he brought Grunt along for the mission. He was a whole platoon the moment he entered a blood haze.
"Shepard, Ali'wa!"
Shepard paid no mind to the words spoken, he followed to the direction Tali was firing as he laid down stream of mass accelerated rounds at several Collector drones attempting to flank them; They fell like the others.
The hissing of a sub machine gun came from behind him, catching his attention a split second. It was Lieutenant Forzan wobbling uncertainly towards the fray. Tali screamed at her, most likely wanting the woman to turn back and let the professional Collector killers do their jobs. But Forzan would not hear of it. Not when she cut down one and was now drawing sporadic fire from them. She too ducked behind cover.
Shepard stood back up, his rifle catching another Collector, his shielding flaring up as the collector rounds hit against him. Tali screeched again, her arm dragging the Spectre back into cover.
"ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL."
Shepard's eyes widened as the familiar command echoed over the gunfire. He peered up and sure enough, one of the Collectors had been martyred and became a vessel for the Collector General: Harbinger. The creature doubled in size ad was glowing violently. Its beady eyes searching with little concern for the conflict it was now involved in.
The collector lackeys laid covering fire as the augmented Collector rumbled closer to them, its powerful biotic barriers shrugging off round after round he, Tali and Lieutenant Forzan threw at him.
"This engagement is futile, Shepard. You have lost," the juggernaut taunted them, unafraid of the Spectre.
John grabbed Tali's shoulder and gestured to the Cyniad violently.
"Tali take Forzan inside of the ship," he commanded. "I'll hold him off! Go!"
Tali stared at him in protest, but a sharp glare made her understand he was not open for a sign language debate. She huffed and nodded. Protected by Shepard's covering fire, Tali grabbed Forzan and together they fled inside the wreckage of the Cyniad, leaving Shepard alone with the Collectors.
Quietly he vowed that no one, not even Harbinger would push through his fire.
Shepard stood up and took careful aim, killing the three Collectors closest to Harbinger. He fired a concussive round from the end of his Mattock, but the blast affected Harbinger's pawn very little. Instead, it shrugged off the attack, exchanging his own fire with the defiant human.
Rounds pierced through his shield, sparking and shattering against his hard suit. Shepard ignored it and continued to drive round after round against the son-of-a-bitch Collector. After what felt like ages, at long last, Harbinger's biotic barriers failed and now his bullets were piercing armour and flesh.
SHIT!
A sudden blinding agony overwhelmed his senses. With his focus so wrapped up on killing Harbinger. He hadn't noticed one of the braver Collectors flank him. The rounds ripped through his armour and hit flesh. Not nearly as swift as he had been prior to being shot, Shepard managed to swing his rifle over and hit the Collector with a burst of rifle fire.
Before Shepard knew it, a rifle butt connected into his gut the weapon swung again, smacking the Mattock from out of his hands. He turned and found Harbinger face to face with him. Shepard lashed out, kneeing the creature back before managing to tug out his Heavy pistol. Shepard got one shot off at the Collector before it two was batted out of his hands.
Rage boiling over in the Collector, Harbinger reached up and grabbed Shepard by the top of his combat shattered armour, lifting the fully grown human right off his feet. Shepard's eyes widened as he glared at the creature, his hands and feet flaying futilely in a desperate attempt to break the grasp.
Harbinger however, was much more physically powerful then he appeared. He instead shrugged off the blows as he flailed the human now in his grasp.
"I have run out of patience with you, Shepard," Harbinger growled. "Assimilation is not your only destiny. Extermination is equally preferable."
With his free hand, the Collector wrapped around the grip of his holstered rifle and brought it up to the human's skull. Shepard spat at him hitting the pawn's face as one act of final defiance… he could faintly hear the screams of Khellish cry from the wreckage.
Tali... well so much for protecting her...
A sudden pressure something unnatural hit against him, ripping him from Harbinger's grasp and fired him against the soft muddy dirt. Harbinger hissed, offended by the reverse in fortune. Before he could raise his weapon and react, he was swallowed in a haze of majestic blue and was ripped right off of his feet, tumbling backwards from the Spectre.
Through bruised eyes, he watched as an explosion of new gunfire ripped right through the Collector line from behind them. The fire was roaring at them from the jungle. The thumping of a machine gun, the hard hitting Sniper rounds blowing fist sized holes through the drones and a weave of a renewed biotic field tearing the Collectors to pieces.
The sound of the new gunfire brought Tali back out from the cover of the ship, her shotgun blaring joining the crescendo of bloody violence directed at these poor dumb bastards.
Lamely, he too managed to raise his heavy pistol and fired as quickly as he could at the possessed Collector.
The Collector General was a mess; the creature's biotic barriers failed and were now riddled full of pistol and shotgun holes was still defiant. It fired at the quarian, hitting through and connecting to armour, causing Tali yelp and crumble under her own weight.
Shepard's eyes widened from the terrifying shock at the sight of her falling in front of him.
Tali was hit...
Oh god, she was down.
Ignoring the searing pain in his side John stood up and nearly charged over to Tali's side, his Mattock shredding through the slumped over Collector who had dropped the rifle in its hands. The human forgetting that he was in the middle of a firefight turned all his focus on the fallen quarian now in his shaking arms.
For the first time since he was still a child. John Shepard had no idea what to do.
...
...
I was taking a look at my old Connection Series work and decided that if I were to clean it up, cut out some of the content that connected it together, I could repost the work. Not all of it, but some. Be sure to thank Rick O'Shay25 on the way out for convincing me to give this story another chance.