It had been two weeks since the events on Haestrom when Shepard had had enough and decided to confront the Illusive Man.
He stormed into the debriefing room, his leather combat boots he was accustomed to wearing aboard the Normandy, pounding against the floor. He waited for the center piece of the room to dissolve into the floor and entered the ray of the holo-scanner. He was bathed in the orange light as he waited for the Illusive Man to accept his call.
A few seconds later, all was dark on his side and the Illusive Man was visible in front of him. He was sitting in his typical position, his legs crossed, a cigarette burning on his lips. The star behind him burned brightly outshining all the other distant ones pitched behind it with a brilliant orange that seared into the eyes to proclaim. I am the biggest star there is. That was the language stars spoke at a distance of within forty million miles but this domineering fireball was filtered by what seemed to be a massive window, enough so that the room was slightly dark. He released a current of smoke from his chest and spoke.
"Shepard. What can I do for you?" He asked wondering.
"I have a few questions actually." Shepard said, his chest puffed out and his head held high, already slightly indignant.
"Well what do you want to know exactly?" He responded, flicking the butt of his cigarette with his thumb to eject ash from the tip.
"What did you do to me?" He asked slowly and menacingly. He had always been a kind and patient man but these malicious callings were overwhelming him and he needed it to stop. It was distracting him from the mission and well...everything. He was unable to suppress what memories simmered to the surface of the boiling pot his mind became at times. These memories, he thought had long since been repressed and dealt with, at a young age, in a different place, a different time. A different life.
"...Well...We brought you back from the dead, if that's what you're asking." He disclosed softly, his tone diffusing Shepard's outburst. He rested the cigarette on his lips for a split second, inhaled, removed it with his two forefingers and exhaled. His deadly cycle.
"Shepard. You're my most prized asset, my star player, humanity's guardian. If there's something you should be telling me that I'm unaware of then by all means let me know." He said directly.
"You know. Miranda's your mole on my ship and she knows everything that happens on it. You had me pieced together for two years." He said not daring to break eye contact. He continued in full stride, swinging his next words like a sledgehammer at the Illusive Man's glass 'concern'.
"What extra piece did you jam into me?" He demanded.
The Illusive Man didn't speak for a while, opting to instead let his cigarette slowly whittle away to the tip, then dropping it into his ashtray. He chose his next words carefully.
"Shepard...We knew there were certain...risks...in waking you prematurely. Mind you, we were nearly ninety-nine percent done when the station was attacked and we had to power you up..."
Shepard didn't like that phrase 'power you up'. It made him feel like a tool being sharpened and polished to be put to the Illusive Man's disposal. Maybe later to be casted away into the dark embrace of death once more upon obsoleteness. He shook the feeling away, he had warmed up to this new life, and once he'd kicked this conundrum, he planned to stay alive, and whoever stood in his way...well...
"...That being said..." He continued. "There were some tests we'd ran that concluded that your memories were intact absolutely but refreshed in a bizarre manner meaning old repressed memories could essentially be as easily conjured as something that had happened to you no less than five minutes ago. These memories that you had been unable to relive for whatever reason, like I said, repression perhaps because of the traumatic nature of the memories, have now become jumbled in your mind and I think it's bringing out certain aspects of yourself which are hard to maintain. Am I wrong?"
Right on the money, you bastard.
"How do I fix this?" Shepard asked, his fist clenching involuntarily, nails dug into his palm. He was grinding his teeth softly, his jaw muscles popping out in short intervals. His hair had fallen across his forehead, covering down to his eyebrows like a curtain drawn to hide him causing his usually handsome face to seem terribly sinister and formidable.
"Well, that all depends what the memories in question actually are. We can't just manually alter them, I'm sure you wouldn't agree to that anyway. I think this is a problem that is very personal to you. I don't have the solution Shepard." He opened his hands to him as if to prove himself clean.
"You're right. I'll figure this out." Shepard shut down the comm-link to return to his room, he needed to mull things over. Whatever he did next could make or break his mind and spirit.
While Shepard ached and writhed in the agony of indecision in his quarters, Tali was cleaning out the engine pensively.
She took a break from her activity as it wasn't dire, not as dire as the thoughts preoccupying her. She had been feeling awfully ignored or rather that she was being avoided. Not by any of the crew, she had been dining and catching up with the people aboard the Normandy, those who had served before, Dr. Chakwas, Garrus, Joker. But there was one particular individual whose attention she sought more than any other, the answer being so plain and obvious for all to see as she sometimes made 'trips' to the Combat Information Center for various fabricated reasons, all holding her agenda on their belly, to see Shepard. She couldn't understand why they hadn't spoken in two weeks except for perhaps a brief greeting. He was just too distant.
After all their moments of warmth and affectionate flirting, she was sure that she was ready to confess her feelings when Shepard isolated himself from the crew, always in his cabin, and when he wasn't he looked exhausted as if he were personally exorcising demons, or exorcising personal demons...
Whatever it was, she didn't want to let what they had or were having to slip away. She was going to confront him. She considered the weight of what she was doing as she ordered the elevator to take her to the first floor: Shepard's abode. She ran her hand along the smooth railing, realizing that this could potentially be the moment where she would confess herself to Shepard. Ever since she'd firs met him. All the feelings that had to be bottled up, then smashed to pieces upon his death...And now... Well she had no idea what they were now. They were everywhere. The elevator halted and the door slid open.
She was face to face with the door to his room, standing in the corridor. She was about to turn back and leave when it opened unprovoked. Shepard was laying on his bed with many pieces of...paper, it would seem. A normal quarian wouldn't be familiar with paper as it was rarely used on Earth save for in museum exhibits but Tali was no ordinary quarian. She had an extensive base of knowledge of all races in the galaxy, humans especially and these were what humans used to utilize to store data. Books.
There were dozens sprawled about his bedside and one in his hands that he was reading. He looked up and immediately closed the book. He stood up.
"Hey." He said surprised.
"Hi..." Tali said walking toward him, kneading her hands.
"I uhh...what are these?" Tali asked quizzically. Shepard laughed and picked one up and approached her.
He put it in her hands.
"I know you know what these are so I'm not going to describe books for you." She giggled. "But these are some personal possessions of mine."
"Why do you even have books? I thought humans never used them." She wondered, following him as he walked back to his bed to sit. She liked that, he was at ease with her.
"Well, I grew up in the slums of a bustling Earth metropolis so I never really got a great formal education, the school I went to actually had a huge storage of these ancient books." He explained, patting one that was pressed down into his covers. She sat beside him.
"They never really made us use a lot of them but I knew where they were and I didn't have much to go home to after school so..." He trailed. "Actually, it wasn't much of a school to be honest, and I didn't actually have a home so I don't feel too bad about stealing the ones I did."
"What is this one?" She handed him back the one he'd been reading.
"I am Legend by Richard Matheson...That was one of the first books I grabbed. Glad I did. It's a beautiful story." Shepard lied on his back, looking through his skylight into space at the countless stars and nebulae packed together like dazzling gems and explosions. She looked at him longingly, wanting to steal a place next to him..
"I remember being cold. Too cold to go outside. It was winter and the community building I lived in didn't have proper heating so I stayed behind at the school. I fell asleep at my desk and woke up in the middle of the night. Everyone was gone. I was only twelve and alone in a locked school in the dark. I was petrified. I ran down the hall and banged on the doors and kicked at them but it was all useless. I roamed the school looking for the warmest room to stay in. Preferably one with a bed of some kind. I went into the basement, lo and behold there was a plethora of these dusty tomes. I grabbed a cot from the poor excuse of a nurse station and stayed up the entire night digging into them, sucking every tidbit of information out of as many as I could. Obviously with only one night I couldn't get a great deal done so I started staying there every night. No one would notice as no one ever went down there. The door handle to the storage room was orange with rust and enveloped by cobwebs. It was nice for a while, I got some real learning done, and I had a place to stay to get away from the gangs... And from some other things..." He mumbled the last bit robotically, lost in the stars hanging outside, above him.
"What kind of other things were you hiding from?" Tali asked, amazed he had poured all of this out to her. She inched closer to him on the bed like a child closer to the storytelling father.
"We'll find out soon enough I guess..." He whispered still fixating on the deep moving puzzle of space. She was confused by this but didn't want to delve into something he clearly wasn't set on discussing so she lied down on the bed, not directly next to him. Oh no, there was at least an arms reach between them.
For a while they didn't say much but rather stared at the many stars, each one twinkling, just brighter than the next, each yearning to prove itself ever illuminable, each with it's own story. Space, the great illusive question. How many other life forms could exist? What was the purpose of it all? What was beyond the Milky Way? What was truly Commander Shepard's favorite store on the Citadel?
These were the thoughts pervading the minds of Tali and Commander Shepard as they lay in his bed holding one another, oblivious of this, drawn together by the intimidatingly gorgeous abyss of space. Huddled and linked together in their insignificance, realizing the significance each held to the other.
Tali and Shepard lay dreamily together. It was when Shepard nuzzled his lips into Tali's neck, sort of hugging her, that she looked at him and it hit her like a bucket of cold water would hit a sleeping human, they were cuddling!
She jumped out of the bed and Shepard did likewise as he obviously became aware of the inappropriateness of it all. He actually wasn't that upset by it but clearly he felt he should have been based on Tali's reaction.
"Uhhh... Um.. err well." She cleverly delivered.
"It's not that big of a deal." He said walking slowly toward her. "I was in a vulnerable place and you were there for me. You came up here and you being here means something to me." He said closer.
"Yeah, I'm glad I came by." She smiled, relieved to hear that he wasn't appalled.
"Then, I hope you'll come to me more. I know I've been weird lately but I'm really working on it, it should be over soon and there'll be time for..." He trailed, holding her hand looking down at it. He linked her three fingers into his five and smiled.
"I can't wait. When are you going to finish whatever it is...?" She asked open to him, her chest grazing against his.
"Well actually pretty soon. We should be landing on Earth shortly." He said, those last words dropping hard, furthering the anomaly this entire encounter had been for Tali.
"Why do you need to go to Earth?" Tali asked.
"It's my mom Tali. The reason I'm this way, and I know that you see it. The reason I've been different. It's all got to do with her. I don't know exactly how but it does." He struggled to say looking lost.
"Will she be expecting you?" Tali asked, rubbing his hand softly.
"No, she's been dead for twenty years."