(A/N: Bam! Just because...JUST because of all the favorite stories and alerts I've seen tacked on to this single story...I'm reviving it! And continuing it! Please, keep submitting your reviews, your ideas, everything! What you love, what you hate, I'm taking it all now! Although, if you go ahead and simply flame me without explaining why, or make a half-assed criticism, I will simply take it and heat my boiling pot of ideas.

Enjoy!)

You Don't Hear the Bullet

I Heard That One

The Normandy

Three Months Later

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

Over and over again, the old coin hit the desk at just the right angle to bounce up, spinning around and reflecting the light back up at Shepard as he lazily toyed with the piece of currency. A gift from his father, a rare piece nowadays. The golden dollar, it was called. An American coin, something seen not all that often even two-hundred years ago. Though it was worn and dull now, it had once shined like a star, and even though it wasn't really gold, he still valued it as such.

He caught the coin, turning it over in between his fingers, head cocked to the side as he studied it for what seemed to be the millionth time. He never polished it. Ever. To do so would be like scrubbing away all the memories he had of the farm, and of his parents, and the hab-unit that constituted their small home. He'd never forget Mindoir, that was a fact, but he was still unwilling to shine the coin.

He sighed, setting the golden dollar down onto the desk as he turned to peer down at the latest scans. Days in this one system alone, and for what? Nothing, that's what.

Another unexpected side effect of all this free time, however, was that his mind was apt to wander. And, as it always did, he thought back to his triumphs…his mistakes…

Torfan hung before them, bright, beautiful, like a pearl in the oily blackness of the deep oceans back on Earth. The ice moon held a deadly secret at its core, however, one quite invisible to the naked eye and far more dangerous than deep-sea diving.

"There is –no- doubt about it, El-Tee," said the shuttle's copilot as the landing craft slid into position in the bay of the Twelfth Fleet Cruiser, the Los Angeles, awaiting deployment. "-That- is one huge goddamn hidden base."

Shepard leaned in, squinting at the readouts as he did so. He didn't pretend to understand 'tech-crap mumbo-jumbo' as he affectionately called half the advanced systems the marines ran across, but one could read a surface-scan, ground-penetrating ladar readout easily enough.

The pirate base was deep underground, with only a few access tunnels, and they were all protected by thick, reinforced doors. Kenneth Shepard frowned as he realized something, however.

He pointed at the screen saying "I don't see any long-range defense systems in there."

"Well, of course not. There's no way we can scan inside the base itself right now, the batarians lined the damn walls with EM shielding."

"So we're flying in blind?"

"Pretty much yeah-"

The copilot didn't get anything more than that, however, as a streak of light suddenly shot up from the planet's surface, smashing into the hull of the Los Angeles, detonating with a force equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. The shuttle was jerked loose from the moorings as the cruiser began to fold in on itself, imploding and violently venting atmosphere. "Mayday, mayday! I say again, mayday! The CSV Los Angeles is hit and going down, repeat, we are going-"

The comms was suddenly cut, however, as the ship –did- explode now, catastrophically, sending the shuttle reeling away, flipping end over end in empty space, rocketing down towards Torfan…

He was, thankfully, snapped out of his thoughts by an electronic ding. His eyes rose from the coin in his hand, up to his private console, before his head swerved around to the door. Normally, the crew knew not to disturb their captain when he had sealed himself away. If he wasn't to be found out on the deck with the rest of them, then he well and truly wished to be left alone.

This, however, was a welcome interruption. He needed something to break him out of his trip down memory lane, and Kenneth had a feeling he knew who it was.

"Come in," he called, setting the golden dollar down reverently before turning to address the intruder.

As he had suspected, and was delightful to have it confirmed, the resident Quarian aboard the Normandystepped in, her strides more confident than the last two times she had been to see him.

She cocked her head to the side almost teasingly, and even though the visor blocked his view, Shepard suspected there was a smug smirk under there.

"Getting a little too trusting now, aren't we?"

The Spectre shrugged, taking on an expression of mock ignorance.

"I have no clue what you're talking about."

"I could have been anyone at all, yet you go ahead and take the chance and let me in before you confirm it. You didn't used to be this careless."

Shepard feigned a chest injury with extra drama as Tali crossed over to him.

"Ah! I am –forever- wounded! How will I recover?!"

His reward was a light smack on the leg.

"You big baby. Seriously, though, it's good to see you've lightened up so much."

"Tali, enough with the insults."

She laughed again, and the light, visible glow of her eyes that he could see through her helmet slimmed, saying that she was scrunching up her face in amusement.

"Seriously, Ken! You've got to stop that. I may have to add on an extra rebreather just to live with your jokes."

Shepard shrugged.

"Eh, just one of my many gifts."

"What, levity?"

"No, weeding out those with no humor."

She doubled over again, holding up a hand to stem the tide. No one was quite sure why exactly Commander Shepard, ruthless Spectre, kickass N7 elite was in such a good mood lately, but many suspected it may have had something to do with Tali's periodic visits to his quarters. Of course, Joker was quick to spread rumors, but since his security cameras didn't cover the Captain's Quarters, he wasn't sure of anything.

Needless to say, Tali and Kenneth's relationship hadn't gone anywhere physically past intimate hugs, the occasional pinch and follow-up return slap, and GASP! cuddling.

That's right. Kenneth Shepard cuddled with Tali.

All levity aside, however, these visits they did, her to his quarters and he to the engine room, gave them the opportunity to talk a lot about themselves, each other, problems in the galaxy, ideas, dreams…everything you'd expect a couple to talk about.

But Shepard couldn't help feeling a little…dissatisfied. It shamed him a little that he was feeling so impatient to simply give in to his instincts and hormones, like some wild animal, but held himself in tight check around Tali. After all, according to her, a Quarian could hardly ever even leave their bio-suit aboard the Migrant Fleet, much less outside it. And, apparently, to do so was seen as the most intimate act between two people.

Of course, when she had boiled down all the limits and whatnot to him that night in the Citadel Alliance docking bay, she'd made sure to spell that out for him right away.

She jokingly referred to it as the night he had 'proposed,' much to his chagrin. She teased him about it all the time...

"Seriously, you sounded so nervous! And you spoke so informally! 'How do Quarians show affection?' Is that your way of asking a girl out?"

Finally, however, there was the point where the humor simmered down between them as they finally addressed the problems both had. Either current or in the past.

Call it exorcising demons.

"I have to agree with Pressly, actually. Slavers are far more likely to be in this sector than geth are."

Tali's head cocked back the other way, and almost instantly, Shepard could picture a frown or a raised eyebrow on her face.

"So why are we here?"

Ken shook his head, the coin returning to his hand once more, flipping it between his fingers as he tried to sum up a response. Why were they floating out on what felt like the most pointless mission the Council had decided to assign them?

"Because there's really nothing, is there? Face it, Tali. They don't believe me. Even after all I've done, they still don't take me seriously."

"I would think they took you seriously enough when you carried their lives in your hands."

A light chuckle, but all the humor had been quickly sucked out of this situation.

"Look, we both know the geth aren't the real threat. It's hardly even a war now. More like we go out and hit them and they're far too disorganized to mount their own offensive."

Granted, the geth were still able to swiftly and efficiently butcher an overconfident opponent with their cold, calculating lethal efficiency and brutal gauss weapons, but a coordinated geth attack hadn't hit them in weeks.

"Ken, I wouldn't get too complacent if I were you. After all, these are –geth- we're talking about."

Shepard sighed, nodding to recognize Tali's good point. You could never keep an artificial intelligence confused for very long. Grouped together again as they were, and still producing more and more platforms, the geth were starting to reach the come-around point where they got organized again.

Before he could make a verbal response, however, the Normandy shuddered violently, veering and swerving to the side.

"Brace for evasive maneuvers!"

Shepard's reply, mostly consisting of curses and threats as to what he would do with the pilot's legs once he got his hands around Joker's throat, was lost in a flurry of waving limbs, flying chairs and smacking against the bulkheads.

The Normandy shuddered again, and Shepard could hear an almighty tearing ringing through the metals, a sound that sent chills down his spine. He knew that noise, he'd heard it all too often in space battles.

That was the death cry of a ship when its back was broken.

"Ho…ly shit!"

He stood, swiftly, his hand swooping under Tali's arm, lifting the dazed girl to her feet and supporting her as the ship shuddered once more.

"C'mon! We're under attack and we've undoubtedly got hull breaches!"

Tali would be fine in her bio-suit, but Shepard's body armor and soft suit were still in his locker!

The ship swerved again, but Ken was ready this time, and he held his balance, still supporting the Quarian as he punched the access panel, opening the doors.

Immediately, heat washed over them both from the fires in the crew deck, blazing nonstop all over the place.

"Go! Start getting people to the escape pods, Tali!"

Ken pulled himself around the corner, hanging on the railing as the Normandy was struck by her mysterious enemy once more, finally bringing his feet back to the ground and stumbling over to his locker.

Onyx IV armor was designed to be ready to grab in seconds if need be, but all Ken cared about was the bodysuit, not the armor plates themselves so much. However, as he finished tugging on the last part, the ship shuddered again, knocking his helmet clear.

Something exploded behind him, and he heard the dying screams of one of his crewmen. Dammit, this was Torfan all over again when the batarians tried firebombing them out!

He went scrambling after his helmet, down between the hot bunk pods, his fingers reaching repeatedly for that last piece of armor.

"Ah ha! Gotcha, bitch!" he snarled in glee, lifting the helmet and bringing it to rest over his head, locking it down into place as he stumbled over to a damage control panel.

It was bad. The Normandy had dozens of smaller hull breaches already, most in the top of the craft, a few in the cargo bay, and fires were raging out of control on every level.

"Shepard!"

He turned, finding Tali behind him, obviously having passed the message around to abandon ship.

He nodded, pressing a final button on the holographic screen before he ignored it to address her again.

"Distress beacon's ready for launch. At least that part of the ship isn't damaged."

Tali nodded, riding out a minor quake easily.

"Got it! Do you think the Alliance will get here in time?"

A circuit blew up near her head, and another fire started up. Cursing, Ken leapt forward, seizing two hand-extinguishers, tossing one over to her.

"I'm not doing this just so they'll find our frozen corpses! Is everyone on the escape shuttles?"

Even as they fought a desperate and losing battle against the flames, they still managed to coordinate and move like a team, covering each other's blind spots and fighting down advancing tongues of fire with spurts of white foam.

"Joker's still on the bridge, he won't abandon ship!"

Ken swore, again, tossing the extinguisher to the side and finally just pulling a panel open, ripping several circuits out in an effort to prevent anything else from exploding.

"…I'm not leaving either."

Ken glanced over his shoulder at her, his Quarian genius, as she desperately kept up the fight. There were times for heroes, he knew. Serving in the Systems Alliance Space Marine Corps required heroes of ordinary men and women almost every single day, but a lot of the time these heroes simply ended up dead for no good reason.

Not anymore. No one else was dying today.

He spun around, grabbing Tali by the arms as he almost forcefully wrestled the extinguisher away.

"Get to the damn shuttles! I'll haul Joker's crippled ass outta here!"

"Ken…"

Frustrated now, the soldier rising to the surface once more as he stumbled to another panel, he pointed wildly towards the staircase.

"Get the fuck outta here! Now, Tali!"

She paused, as if on the verge of saying something, but he simply turned back around, ripping out another panel and tearing at more circuits, tearing at electronics in an effort to keep them from overloading.

Then she hustled away.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" cursed Shepard over and over again as he slammed a fist onto the Emergency Evacuation Protocol button, one of the last holo-screens still working, powered by an independent power source. A siren rang out, and the Spectre knew that the side armor would be retracting to allow the shuttles a clear way out.

That only left one last thing…

As he hustled away from the malfunctioning Damage Control screen, he didn't need the barely discernable holographic warnings or the explosions going off all around him to know the Normandy was on her last legs. It was the tremors through the deck, the screeching in the hull, the dents and rends and tears in the bulkheads that told him.

The mass effect field slipped, and he felt his weight suddenly lift off the deck, momentarily, before he slammed back down hard, feeling the impact shock into his ankles. That meant the primary fusion plant powering the ship was well and truly dead. It would only be seconds before the backups were killed too, so he needed to hurry.

"Mayday! Mayday, mayday! This is SSV Normandy!"

He'd heard that death call far too many times for his liking as ships were blasted out from under him. The Los Angeles' destruction over Torfan came back to him, lost with all hands.

Not this time. It didn't matter if you heard the bullet that hit you or not, as long as you weren't dead, you could still do something about it.

"We've suffered damage from an unknown enemy!"

"Joker! There's no one out there!"

It was useless. Either his own radio was broken, or the pilot was ignoring him, as per character.

"C'mon baby, hold together…hold together!"

Ken didn't even respond this time, stepping over the shrapnel-ridden corpse of Private Henderson, one of the marines stationed aboard for security and ground team purposes. This was becoming far too eerily familiar, from several different memories, and a sense of both vertigo and déjà vu set in as he punched the emergency release button at the top of the stairs to get to the CIC.

The doors slid open, and with what sounded like a massive gale, the atmosphere behind him was suddenly pulled out into the vacuum of space. Henderson's body smacked into Shepard, and with the weakened gravitational pull from the dying mass effect field in the deck, the Spectre was almost launched skyward. Instead, he managed to spin around, sending Henderson off into the cold, unmerciful void.

Not like there was anything to be done for the man now.

As he limped along, hearing his own heightened breathing, Shepard looked up at the enormous hole torn in the top of Normandy, feeling his heart break as he saw the damage done to his ship. Her back wasn't just broken anymore…she was torn to shreds, barely holding on by some miracle. Hell, it was a wonder the fusion plant hadn't gone apocalyptic with the first shot, if the weapon was powerful enough to pierce kinetic barriers with the first shot.

Seats from the service terminals hung in front of him, no longer interacting with the weakened gravity and floating in the cold emptiness of space. The galaxy map was smashed, crushed under the wreckage of the roof.

Ken bit his lip, pushing forward despite the pain in his leg from Henderson's hard smack into it, stumbling forward and pushing the seats aside. He could see Joker now, the crazy bastard, anchored to his seat at the helm, trying desperately to keep the Normandy afloat. But Shepard knew it was no use. He'd had far too many ships shot out from under him to be optimistic about this kind of damage.

With the fires out, due to lack of atmosphere, Ken could see that Joker had deployed his emergency face mask, a serviceman's last ditch attempt at survival in a hull breach situation. Even with enough air for two hours, Joker's organs wouldn't stand a chance in the hard vacuum. Explosive decompression was a myth, but the crushing effects of space were anything but fake. That's why so few organics engaged in infantry combat in space itself. A single projectile punctures your suit, and all your air is gone faster than anyone would have liked. If it breaks the skin…you'd be flat as a pancake before you could even blink. Hell, Joker probably already had a few broken bones just from his few minutes' exposure.

"Joker! C'mon, we gotta get the hell outta here!"

And Joker, of course, was determined to either save his beloved ship or go down with her.

"No! I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!"

"The Normandy's dead! Just like us if we don't get the fuck off this ship!"

Still, the pilot didn't want to believe the words, that final death sentence, it seemed.

"No! We just have to-"

"Lieutenant! I am giving you a direct order! Now you either get your ass outta that seat and into a fucking shuttle, or I am going to haul it over there, you got me?!"

"NO! I can…oh no."

Shepard leaned in, trying to decipher the holo-monitor as it flickered in front of him.

"What?!"

"They're coming around for another attack!"

Shepard spun around as a ripping, ear-tearing noise rang out, a yellow beam of some kind of phenomenally powerful main gun shredding through what was left of the Normandy's armor like a bullet through rice paper!

"Aaaand, that's our cue to leave."


Tali could hear every word being spoken over their radios from her escape shuttle, nestled in with Garrus, Wrex, the Requisitions Officer, Chief Engineer Adams and the few other crewmen who had gotten off the lower level. As that weapon fired, it seemed to bore into her very soul as the chatter between the commander and Joker cut off for a second, replaced instead by this ear-rending ruckus of death and destruction.

"AAAH!! Shut it off!" yelled a crewman, his hands clamped over his hears as the right side of his face bled. Doctor Chakwas was in another shuttle, and no one knew where in this thing the emergency medkit was.

"Ah! Watch the arm!"

The radio chatter was back! Every word being spoken was another second that Shepard and Joker were alive, and Tali felt her heart slamming away in her throat like a sledgehammer as she stared up at the roof of the shuttle, in what she thought might be the general direction of the dying hulk of the Normandy.

"Space will probably have already given you worse injuries than me saving you, now get over there!"

That was Kenneth! It had to be!

"Commander! Shepard!"

An explosion of epic proportions suddenly rang out over the comms, so clear were the radios that it almost sounded like their shuttle-pod was the thing being destroyed, instead of whatever was left of the frigate.

"Joker! Is Shepard aboard your shuttle?!"

"That's a negative! The mass effect generator got fried with the last shot, and he was knocked away! He's still out there! Holy shit!"

No…

She said it like a mantra, like a prayer as her eyes widened, staring up at the panel.

"No…no no no no…Keelah, no!"

There was silence, horror-inducing, terror-wrenching silence that could have introduced any number of possibilities. Everyone aboard Tali's shuttle was quiet, everyone staring up at the comms panel, everyone praying, hoping, wishing…

A grunt. A panic-laced one.

"Ah! Tali!"

"Ken! Yes, I'm here!"

"Unh! I…I've got a hole…several of them…in my suit."

The mantra began again.

"No…no…"

She could feel her tears running down her face, and her hands automatically tried to find her cheeks and eyes, getting cut short by the helmet visor in the way.

"I…I heard that one. I definitely heard it."

No…

It couldn't end like this! Not after everything that had happened! Saren, Sovereign, the Citadel! Feros! Virmire! Noveria! Ilos! They had only just…

She had only just realized how much she loved him.

"Tali!...I…it's getting harder to breath…by the second…I don't have much time left…"

"No…no…"

Sobs freely wracked her now, mixed in with the repeated denials, the hope that he would make it now utterly crushed within her.

"Tali…I love you. I just…needed to tell you that. I'm sorry."

"Ken…"

Silence.

The shuttle was silent, save for her sobs.


(A/N: Da-daaaa! My glorious return!)