A/N: Thanks so much for all the favorites, comments, and follows! I took some liberties with the epilogue here, but I really wanted to tie this little fic in with the events of ME2. I hope you enjoy!

Tali fidgeted all the way to his cot, but that didn't stop her from running her hands over his fringe and unclasping every piece of his armor she could reach as they went. Once Garrus had deposited her on the bed and she had divested him (still smelling of dust and blood) of all but his gauntlets and boots – which soon lay in a heap with the rest of his discarded gear – he pulled her onto his lap with a throaty groan, relishing the squeeze of her thighs and the opportunity that lay ahead of him.

"So, the good doctor and Councilor Sparatus were once an item, huh? Explains the brandy."

"Still an item," she corrected, admiring the twist of muscles in his cowl as she drew her hands across his chest, "if that stockpile is any indication. She said they met during the Contact War, both of them scouts. They got marooned in a cave without supplies, had to huddle for warmth. One thing led to another…"

It sounded like the plot of a bad vid, exaggerated for dramatic effect, perhaps even warped over time by deepened admiration; he had no way to tell, nor did he particularly care. Garrus was certain Chakwas had leveled all manner of unwanted tactical advice on Tali, and while he wouldn't turn down a demonstration, she deserved a night of uninterrupted worship and he'd be damned if he didn't give it to her.

Mirroring Tali's movements, Garrus marveled at the weight of her breasts as he palmed them, imagined them swinging like beautiful pendulums in tandem with his thrusts. Her nipples peaked up under his fingers, even through the suit, and he continued his taunts as she gasped and writhed against him.

"You know, that shop on the Wards really got me thinking. You could have sent me their extranet link, even bought the stuff yourself, but you chose to send me there. Why, I wonder? Is there something you wanted me to see?"

Without warning he wrapped his legs around hers and flipped them. Humming against her veil, he slid his hands down to her waist, not quite giving her the pressure she sought, though she gasped at the change in contact and immediately arched up into his touch.

"I think there's a specific topic you didn't know how to broach with me," he murmured, slowly rolling his hips into her, "so you insinuated it instead by sending me on your little errand."

She couldn't stop the smile that tugged at the ends of her mouth. A worthwhile gamble indeed, sending him to Maya. "Is that so?"

"Mmm-hmm," he crooned. "I also think…"

With one last snap of his hips, he released his grip on her waist and lifted her to her feet, motioning for her to stand by his console while he grabbed a black duffle from under his cot. He unzipped it slowly and produced a pair of detailed himlah cuffs, braided together in the same style as the floggers on display at the shop.

"… someone has a bit of a fetish. One I might be inclined to oblige if you do as I tell you."

He was shaking – either from nerves or excitement, he wasn't sure – when he slipped the cuffs around her wrists. Probably both. It wouldn't have been the first time she brought this confused delirium out of him. He had intended to take his time with this, to coax the pleasure out of her slowly, but the pulsing throb of his dick dictated it all: he had neither the patience nor the stamina to make her wait. The two exchanged hushed words ("If I go too far, we can stop." "I'll be fine, Garrus.") before he kissed her bound hands and lifted them over her head.

The blood rushed to her cheeks like he had flipped a switch; not out of embarrassment or even giddiness, but because she had underestimated his ability to surprise her. Her technological prowess made any sensation possible with a few program tweaks, but when the tor'zhan cuffing her hands to the pipes above the Thanix flashed that thick tongue as he caressed the small of her back, the holographic fantasies faded to ether and she lost herself in a reality better than any she could imagine.

Tali's arms now held taut above her head, Garrus admired the new, tighter warp of her curves as she stretched up tall onto the balls of her feet. He smacked her ass hard and lingered there, allowing his blunted talons to sink in, just a little. Tali rewarded his attention with a long breathy moan that he knew was exaggerated – another attempt at dirty talk for his benefit, he figured – but she wouldn't be embellishing her reactions for long.

"You like that, huh?"

"Mmm."

"Good girl. Spread your legs for me."

Tali shimmied her legs apart as far as her height would allow – about a foot or so. Garrus appraised the distance and grabbed a pair of small crates and placed them under her feet, sliding them along the floor grating until her legs were stretched as far as she could manage. What a sight she was, endless legs giving way to serpentine hips (spirits, his talons would touch if he grabbed her around the middle) up to those perfect, magnificent tits.

He worked her up slowly, testing her tolerance and flexibility with his newly acquired arsenal. She was a hell of an acrobat, flexing her back like a felis when he flicked a riding crop between her legs or removed a different piece of her suit and lit tiny electrical shocks across her bare skin. He never exposed more than one section at a time, teasing her instead with little welts, cool breath, and a rough blue tongue on patchwork flesh.

It felt like getting spaced – at least how she imagined it, before everything glossed over black and the vacuum swallowed your screams: she was everywhere, could see everything, was simultaneously tugged apart and pieced back together every time he touched her with one of his wonderful toys. She felt like a pret'arn, one of the savage priestesses of the ancient days who lived in dense jungles and came back to camp smelling of blood and the hunt, who would tell men of their futures and bed them under canopies of leaf and star while they whooped and sang into the night. She was alive, thrumming, aware. She felt each drop of sweat erupt as it wept from her pores; her vision narrowed, clouded; she poured out into his hands. She pleaded for him to remove the helmet, to touch her and kiss her and gag her and bend her over the console, but Garrus responded with only a smirk and a gentle hand on her throat that massaged the delicious heat deep into her belly.

"Tsk-tsk," he chided. "Already giving me orders when I haven't even touched you yet. Well, not where you want me to. Not … here."

He sank to his knees as he spoke, his mouth so close to her center he could have brought her to the edge with little more than a breath, suit be damned, considering how she shook in the restraints. He rubbed a deep valley between her legs, fabric slicking over hot even though he purposely avoided the sweet cluster of nerves at her apex. "Mmmm. For such a tease you get excited pretty quickly. Maybe we need to take a break, move a little slower."

She hated him. True, blinding hatred. But keelah, he was so good. And when his meandering talons pressed insistently at her entrance, she snapped. "Come on – ahh! – you bosh'tet!"

The spark he sent crackling across her sex echoed through the battery like a shot. "Ah-ah. Such filthy language." Nifty thing, that lightning rod.

Her biometrics were off the charts – spirits, she really was getting off on this. It had been a challenge at first, speaking to her as he was, but being rewarded with such… unbridled enthusiasm… really bolstered his confidence.

"Please. Please, Garrus, mina, please!"

He could have teased her forever, watching her tense up and shriek like some otherworldly thing as he plucked her like a bow. But he could no longer ignore her murky tang that saturated the air and clung to his loins, and she did say please. Garrus Vakarian, after all, was a sucker for good manners.

When the hiss of Tali's pelvic plate opened her up to the world and two large, lubricated talons sank into her yielding virgin flesh, any pretense of restraint was gone and she howled as the numb warmth of the cleanser – and his hands – radiated through her. She turned her knees out to open her hips to him, but she was already up on the tips of her claws and her moans turned to frustrated grunts as she struggled to angle herself into him without losing her footing.

Garrus, of course, made no attempt to aid her, thinking as he always did that a little good-natured mischief was the best remedy.

"Those stim programs of yours can't penetrate you like I can. You wish it was my cock inside you, don't you?"

They both knew they couldn't, not so soon after Tuchanka. She shook her head in some approximation of a nod before craning her neck back in a silent moan, allowing the intensity of the stretch of his thick fingers to burn up her spine through every last synapse.

Fuck, she was a sight, better than the girl in the bondage vid. "Such a dirty girl, Tali," he growled as he spread her folds and curled his talons into her tight walls. "But not tonight. I want to look at that gorgeous face of yours the first time I fuck you."

Spirits, what he'd do to have her in a clean room – they'd make love slowly because they could; no need to pay mind to the efficacy of sanitizers or immuno-boosters. He'd peel her out of the suit and cast aside the helmet, lay her on her back or on all fours – she'd like that, he thought, if he took her from behind. She'd take him into her mouth and look into his eyes while she did and he'd come on her face in hot stripes and then plunge his tongue stiff into her cunt until she spasmed into his greedy mouth.

But they weren't in a clean room, so Garrus had to get creative.

He hoisted her legs up onto his shoulders and gripped her hips to support her as he kissed her thighs and flicked his tongue over her little knot before sinking his tongue deep into her center. He tasted her slowly, exploring her and savoring every gasp and murmur and twitch of her thighs as she threw her head back and rocked her hips into him.

"You taste so good," he groaned into her, nipping her thigh at the edge of her suit. "My beautiful girl..."

He circled her clit and sucked it gently, his hands kneading her hips as she bucked into him. He ran his tongue flat up the length of her before sliding back into her glorious cunt so he could the glistening sweetness out of her until she was shaking and babbling like an oracle. He had brought her to the edge so many times already that her heels were already digging into his carapace when she implored him through tears as she contracted around his tongue for release, finally, finally.

"Please, Garrus, ankida, -kida… sha'rur!" she wailed, wrenching her hands in vain against the cuffs. She ground her clit into his nose and whimpered, cursed, – no, keelah, she begged so incoherently that her Common gave way to full Khelish and she began invoking gods so obscure her translator glitched and Garrus could make out nothing but his name and white noise as her legs clenched tight against his face and she rode him through the crest of a parve'la ma'vet so explosive she swore the ancestors lifted them up into the heavens as she went limp around him.

She's floating and shivering in her afterglow when Garrus unhooks the cuffs and gathers her into his arms. Before sealing her suit, he treats the plum bruises until they fade, then tends to her earlier wounds with the same devout care, lavishing her with kisses and loving flutters as he goes.

The scent of her still hangs damp in the air like a fog when he pulls her into his chest and draws a hand across her chest to rest on her shoulder. "Good?"

"Mmmph," she mutters. She scoots back into his lap so he can lock his knees behind hers. Now there is nothing else for either to say, only to rest.

Tali lets him hold her until they both succumb to sleep. She awakes eventually in a cool haze, and finds herself swaying on the deck of a great ship bound for a rocky shore in the distance. The spray of the sea splashes onto the boards beneath her feet; she can smell the briny weeds and the lacquer from the wood stain. The salt reddens her eyes, so she rubs them – what a strange feeling, to rub one's eyelids. They feel like parchment or animal hide, thin and flexible, barely more than a membrane. She can't see the faces of the people around her, but they are familiar. One of them takes her hand. His gaze, too, is fixed on the inky horizon that is saturated like dusk, though she can feel the sun on her back. The man leans in close to whisper to her, but he is drowned out by the clash of waves on the hull. The winds are favorable, the sails strong, and the shore approaches quickly. Huge formations of craggy rock dot the beach and extend into the vast desert behind it. She knows this place – it is all she knows – but she's not been here before.

As they pull into dock the man at her side points to a hill nestled between two of the broad mountains that overlook the sea. There is a modest cottage there, hardly larger than a hut, with a thatched roof and a trellised garden out front, just as she always imagined. The man cocks his head, whether in thought or jest she can't tell, and slowly brings his thumbs and forefingers together into a makeshift square around the small plot. It is his.

He squeezes her hand tighter when he speaks again. "After time adrift among open stars, along tides of light and through shoals of dust…" His voice is soft and slow and warbling with grief, but this time she hears him.

She recalls the rest, and she nearly buckles under their gravity. She is unworthy of the words, but she speaks them with as much grace as she can. "I will return… to where I began."

The man finally turns to face her: he is quarian too, though he wears neither suit nor mask. His eyes are bright like chips of glass and they slope down at the ends, as if in permanent sadness. There is a new hunch in his shoulders; he looks so frail a strong breeze might whisk him away.

He reaches out to frame her face with rough hands, and she smiles. A choked laugh escapes him when Tali presses her knuckles to his lips – a gesture of inarticulate love that he hasn't earned, never even tried – and when the tears come cascading onto her wrists he nods and turns away. He cannot see her now.

"Don't cry," she says to the man with the sad eyes that look like hers. "I am here with you, Father."

"I'm sorry, Tali," he whispers, grazing his cheek against hers. "I'm sorry." He repeats it again and again into the strands of her hair until the great grey birds fly overhead and the clouds begin to gather. "I must go. I love you, my brilliant daughter. Keelah se'lai."

She doesn't understand why he pulls away from her – always pulling away, even in her dreams – and she clenches her eyes shut so she can spare herself the pain of watching him leave. She hears his voice in the trees and expects to see him ascending the narrow steps of the high road when she looks upon the shore again, but he is gone.

Her dream gives way to lucidity quietly and without circumstance, but it isn't until she's extricated herself from the sharp tangle of limbs and awoken Garrus that she suspects her father is dead. She tells Garrus of the towering rocks and the breeze on her face, her tired father with the sad eyes and the touch of his hands, the cloaked darkness of day and that cottage on the hill, the house on the homeworld.

She can tell by the way he rubs her back in tightly measured circles that he doesn't understand – who could? – but he does what she requires of him – he listens as she reminisces: the detached disinterest, the orders, always pushing her to be better, chastising her when she falls short and even when she doesn't.

The message comes through like any other, hidden among dozens of spam messages. She assumes it's about Veetor's progress, maybe a commendation for Kal'Reegar. Sporadic updates from the migrant fleet are not uncommon, after all, and her trip to Haestrom would have been a complete waste without them, but this, no, the stark formality, the boilerplate…

Attention, Tali'Zorah vas Neema:

By imperial order of the Conclave of the Migrant Fleet under Rule 74.1.3…

"It's a summons."

… presence is required on the Rayya…

"A summons? For what?"

… serve outside the Veil, you have fifteen (15) galactic standard days to comply with this order…

She pores through the message again; no, no, that can't be right. Bewildered, she closes the holo and for the first time in two years she's thankful he can't see her through the helmet.

"They're charging me with treason."

felis – a small, warm-blooded mammal native to Palaven that is unique for its floating vertebrae.

pret'arn – a member of the band of nomadic warrior women who roamed the jungles of western Rannoch between 400 and 600 CE.

mina - Literally: "I desire." As there is no Khelish word for "please," the closest approximation is a derivative form of the verb minet'ta, "to desire."

ankida – a sacred place in quarian lore where the heavens meet the soil.

sha'rur – Khelish for "great hunter."