A planet sized pen brimming with purple ink broke across the sky and was smeared by the palm of a higher power. Pinpricks of stars broke through the flood of purple and on the bottom rim, throbbing pink bled off the sky and into the sentient trees back behind the small lake. The capitol of Terra Nova was settling into their beds - pulling silken blankets under their chins and curling their toes under the soft fabric, feeling the cool sheets fade warm after a long day of corporate work. This city was not ready. This planet was not ready for the Reapers of whom will tear through the atmosphere in red hot globs with the purpose of swiftly taking the lives of millions - melting the glass window panes into molten syrup, cooking the pavement into polished glass and vaporizing people until they blow away in the wind and dust the burning trees with their ashes. Their screams will land on deaf ears - the Reapers will conduct an orchestra of destruction and lead a chorus of screams. They are all blind sheep who will be corralled by the thousands of mechanized wolves and will push them off the cliff of the universe, plunging them into an endless abyss where even memories are annihilated from time and space.

"Tali?"

She turned to meet Shepard's face of whom expressed concern. He is her shepherd. The people who inhabit this galaxy will have to follow his command in order to fight back against these wolves. He will ignite the dark path ahead with cunning and have to enlighten the galactic communities or else they will all fall into utter darkness where there are no lights, no candles, no flicker of burning hope. Tali hugged him and he returned a warm embrace like he knew what thoughts were swimming in her head.

"Are you going to be all right?" he asked.

Her fingers did not unfold.

"I am going to be alwright."

She looked at the city from over Shepard's broad shoulder and saw it ablaze in the fading sun's last light. It was a sign of things to come.

"I can feel them."

"Feel who?" she asked.

"The Reapers. I get flashes of them burning and tearing apart the protheans. They leave mile wide craters in the center of populated cities. Big red hot craters. Plumes of smoke fog the atmosphere and bakes planets like sticking it in convection ovens. I see the mantles of planets being torn open creating bloody scars on the faces of these once beautiful worlds. They are coming soon. I feel them. Millions of them."

She squeezed the hand of her captain, rekindling his fading flame of hope - faintly fanning it so it will bloom into a full grown bonfire once again. One cannot use logic when thinking about Reapers. One must use their hearts when going against unfathomable odds not in their favor. Tali decided not to say anything, rather she showed her concern and positivity through a gentle squeeze of his hand. Maybe it would be better to dive right into the fight instead of waiting on the edge of a knife - waiting to be impaled or come out with just wounds. Either way, they have one hell of a fight ahead of them. It will be huge, beyond anyone's comprehension. It already has snowballed and made its own gravitational field which is tugging at all of them, especially Shepard. The sky deepened in color and the pink rim above the tree line melted away into a cooler color.

"Tali?"

She turned to meet Grandpa's face that was pressed through the sliding door to the back porch.

"Yes, Grandpa?"

"Do you want to see the ship I commanded before I retired?"

"Yes... yes, indeed."

Her tone was somber.

"Come on inside, child."

She caught a sound of pity in his voice towards her.

Tali looked into Shepard's face of which was now grinning. He lightly kissed her smoked veil and stared once more into the sunset. A breeze slipped off the placid lake and rifled through their clothes. Tali remembers standing on the porch of the beach house they rented on Diamond Cove with her helmet off. The smell of salt water, the refreshing aroma of a brigade of cool air pushing into the stifling hot ranks of the fading afternoon sun, and most of all, the feel of Shepard's lips brushing against hers. The last molten drip of sun splattered silently behind the trees as Tali walked inside of the house. Even though her air filters siphoned most aromatics from the air, she could still pick the fragrance of a scented burning candle flickering on the dinner table. It smelled of cinnamon. She knew this because Kasumi wore a perfume that smelled like that and was the only way Tali could tell if she was sneaking around the Normandy cloaked. Grandma sat at a pulled out chair, aimlessly staring at her hands - her tools of destruction.

They shook. Tali could almost hear the clatter of metal, see scalpels instead of fingers.

Tali's mouth opened to say something but she uttered silence. Ahead, Grandpa carefully stuck his socked feet into some blue plaid slippers and waved to Tali without looking at her. She followed his command and they went down a slight flight of stairs into a dug out part of the house - something called a den.

"Well, there she is. The best damn ship on Earth."

Encased in a glass box was a six foot long model of Grandpa's ship.

"This is the USS John F. Kennedy," Grandpa said, clearly being assaulted by nostalgia.

"That is named your president that was shot by a sharpshooter, right?"

Grandpa looked at Tali and whispered, "Yes. In fact, there were more shooters involved as revealed twenty years ago by new evidence. To all the conspiracy believers out there, that was like a drop of jelly to ants on a hot summer day."

"We had something like that happen on Rannoch hundreds of years ago." She bent over to look at the model in detail, peering at Grandpa from his reflection in the glass. "Some people say it was the first sign of hostility shown by the geth. The lead designer of the geth and forerunner of artificial intelligence was killed by a rifle shot four miles away. Only a synthetic could pull that off," Tali said, not taking her eyes off the model. "Now I am not sure what really happened, but people are still upset about that."

"Huh, Rannoch sounds a lot like Earth," said Grandpa.

"I guess. I have seen vids and pictures of Earth, but never visited it."

"I love it. Rich culture, great beaches, wonderful cities, amazing people, and pretty damn good food. Rannoch didn't looks so bad, well off of the pictures I have seen of it."

"I hope to visit it one day," Tali said more to herself than anyone else. "Maybe... build a house on it." She saw Shepard flinch. Grandpa sensed uneasiness in the room.

"That man over there," Grandpa pointed at Shepard, "helped me build this sucker years ago. That is how he got into models."

"That took three years to construct, Tali. Many days of my summer were spent painting that."

Tali looked up and stuffed her fists into both hips. "So that is where he picked up that hobby and steady hand. You should see his collection on the Normandy."

"That's my boy." Grandpa heavily patted him on the shoulder. Shepard grinned and patted the top of Grandpa's wrinkled hand.

"Anyways, Tali." Grandpa hobbled to the case, bent over and placed both wide hands on his knees. "This was the oldest ship in the Navy, built back in 2018. Powered by two nuclear reactors and could hold about eighty aircraft. We just kept upgrading her, putting new tech on top of the old. It was a jumbled mess but she had character. How do you like that, Tali?"

"I love it when men talk big, heavy machines."

"Does Shepard like to talk about big heavy machines as well?"

She thought of the Reapers.

"I mainly do the talking about mechanical objects. Shepard just listens."

Grandpa looked at his Grandson.

"I think it is sexy," he said.

Tali blurted out an embarrassing laugh, dog bark thing. She covered her mouth and laughed silently, her back jerking up and down.

"The amount Tali and I laughed means we should live past two-hundred," Shepard joked. "Tali, talk about the Normandy really fast."

She coughed then said, "The Normandy SR-2 is great ship. The design was in co-operation with human and turian engineers." She decided to leave out the fact that they were once under Cerberus command and that they stole the design of her old baby, the SR-1, "She houses a Tantalus Core in the bowls of the ship outputting about one-hundred times the power of your old ship, Grandpa. Think of trying to fit a watermelon into your mouth, and that should give you an idea of how hard it was for those engineers to fit that engine under her hood. She is coated in two-foot-thick ablative armor - armor that reacts to kinetic energy and molten jets of tungsten, depleted uranium, or copper created by the Munroe effect that can easily bite through regular armor. It explodes and pushes the dangerous stuff away, leaving us nice and safe. Do you want me to tell you about the stealth systems? How much "horsepower" out engine has? What about our upgraded Thanix canons?"

Grandpa's mouth hung open.

"You're right, that is sexy."

"Grandpa!" shouted Tali, batting his chest.

All of them howled and Tali heard grandma giggle in the kitchen.

"We had similar boats hundreds of years ago. Just like these but different looking," said Tali.

Tali gaped at the model. It must have weight close to one-hundred pounds. It's deck was a carpet of asphalt holding about a dozen of dated aircraft, fifty years old by the looks of it.

"Well it looks like being a ship captain runs in the family," Tali said impressed.

"That's right," said Shepard.

"So what happened to it?"

Grandpa looked at Tali, eyes shimmering. "They gave me enough money to retire and keep my mouth shut, took it from me, and made it into a floating museum."

"I'm... I'm soorry."

"Don't worry about it, darling."

"When did you get... kicked off?"

"When we made first contact."

"That seems not coincidental what so ever."

"That is because it wasn't. I think they didn't want us to look like a rudimentary race that still used boats." His tone switched to something hateful. "I hope those little shits who roam my decks with brochures, sunscreen, and fanny packs all fall overboard." A laugh belched from his guts, startling Tali. "I loved that damn ship to death. We had the nickname The Kraken." Tali could smell cologne batting at her face from Grandpa. "And that was not the ship's nickname but mine. I flipped the Alliance Secretary of Defense's desk and punched him in the face when he told me about the decommissioning."

"That sounds familiar," Tali muttered to Shepard.

"Huh?

"Oh, do you know of Captain Anderson?"

"Yes," Grandpa said. "Good man he is. I read the book about him and Saren. Scary stuff he went through."

"He punched Udina in the face in order for us to escape the Citadel," said Tali.

"That old bag deserved someone's four knuckles driving into his face," Grandpa bellowed through laughter. "Your Captain, Tali, needs to publish a book one day so everyone can learn about your adventures. In fact, I have been meaning to ask you, that asteroid X57 a couple years back that almost hit us, I heard a Spectre saved us from that. Do you in fact know him or her that stopped that rock from breaking this planet in half?"

"Yes, I know him," said Shepard, both python like arms across his barreled chest.

"Tell him I said thank you. I like my house the way it is. I would have been very disappointed if it got crushed."

"Your welcome, Grandpa."

Tali giggled.

"I... oh, that was you?" he shouted.

"Us." He wrapped an arm around Tali's shoulder.

"I swear, I never thought that little boy who played with bulldozers in our backyard was going to save his grandpa's skin one day."

A look of dread washed over Shepard's face and his arms went limp on Tali's shoulder. Usually, he is in the brightest of moods and forces everyone to smile when he walks into the room. She remembers the pranks he played on everyone before the Suicide Mission just to ease the tension. Never before has Tali seen such strategic use of a whoopee cushion before. His mood today has been bouncing everywhere, not taking a chance to rest and settle down. He was acting strange. Sure they had to refuel and get some essential supplies for the Normandy, but there was something else Shepard wasn't telling Tali. What was the real reason they were here, in this house?

Suddenly, the real reason as to why Shepard wanted to visit his grandparents in the first place collided with Tali. Sure he wanted to see them and introduce Tali to them, but he...

No.

Tali's throat tightened and her hand wrapped around Shepard's ferociously.

Shepard wanted to say goodbye to them.

"What is wrong, Grandson? Did I say something?"

Shepard let go of Tali and he went to hug his grandpa.

"Now now, what is wrong?"

Tali's knees quivered and almost collapsed. Her bowels trembled and made a funny noise while tears rimmed her eyelids. Grandpa kept reiterating what's wrong and each time he said it, the more nervous he got. Tali's eyes went back to the model, then to the kitchen table, through the door way. Grandma still sat there. The smell of cinnamon would never be a scent of hominess nor comfort, but of sorrow and anticipation - a negative turning point in her life.

"There is something we have to talk about, Grandpa. I have got to get it off my chest."

He let go of his grandfather. Tali could see Grandpa's eyes were red cotton balls - inflamed and swelling with fear. Tali imagined them popping like water balloons. Grabbing Grandpa's arms, she and Shepard helped him to the kitchen table. Grandma's eyes flickered up to Tali's. They glowed yellow in the candle light - the flame dancing on top of her oil slicked iris'.

"This night turned into something dark from something that was once light. I think it is me," said Grandma, hands cupped over her mouth. A breeze from outside knifed through the parted porch door making the flame writhe in pain.

"Grandma, do you remember me telling you about Sovereign?" Shepard asked.

"The Reaper, yes."

"Well..."

"There are thousands of them coming," finished Tali.

"Hundreds of thousands and they are coming soon."

Grandma shot a look towards Shepard who added to the statement. Shepard filled them in on the upcoming invasion, the protheans, the 50,000 year time period, everything. Tali sat there quietly, listening to Shepard talk - a husk void of emotion. Grandma grabbed Tali's hands and desperately held onto them. Tali watched a small black bug climb on the table between their hands. The cinnamon flame rippled off its obsidian carapace as it crawled towards Grandma's tanned hands which were tied taught around Tali's three fingers. Looking down at them, it was hard to imagine them being tools that made people writhe in pain and cry out while sharp objects inched closer and closer, then bit...

"I have... got to soak this up for a minute," said Grandma.

She slapped the little bug as it began to crawl on her hand. It was so small, she was so mighty, so much better than that bug. It was just an annoyance to her and something so insignificant, she didn't even flinch or bother to show emotion towards its death.

She walked into the kitchen and pulled a bottle from a wine rack.

"My boy," Grandpa addressed Shepard, "Have you come to us to say goodbye? Can we do anything to escape this?" Grandpa looked into Shepard's face. "There is no escape, is there?" His lower lip quivered as did Tali's, followed by Shepard. Keelah, Tali hated this. All she has grown to love in the world was on the verge of annihilation. What of her family? Aunty Raan? Will they too just be turned into debris - fossilized remains floating silently in the vacuum of space for 50,000 years until another space faring species finds them and places their mummified remains in museums for others to gawk at?

"Not if we beat them, Grandpa." The two men hugged and Tali placed a reassuring hand on the old man's thigh. "If we don't though, I have an apartment on Intai'sei. Terra Nova is going to be a prime target, so I suggest you stay at my apartment until we beat the sons-of-bitches."

In the kitchen, Grandma set her wine goblet down hard on the counter.

"I am not moving anywhere. I am going to hold my ground right here in my dream house. Beautiful memories have been had here. Memories of you growing up, my Love. Memories of you playing in the backyard with your friends, picnics on Sunday afternoons, trips to the beach, sleepovers in your room. I can't leave here, my Love. A couple of old machines are not going to make me move."

"Grandma, there aren't going to be a couple machines, but thousands. It will rain two kilometer long spaceships who have genocide as efficient if the clouds showered nuclear bombs. If you stay here, you will die."

"We need time to think," she said.

"Think about what?" Shepard's fist slammed on the table. "Grandpa, tell me you will use your brain. Think about what I am telling you!"

Tali's head snapped to Grandpa, her spine shot erect.

"You will stop them before they hit us, I have faith in you kid."

Shepard blew air through his pursed lips that pressed together forming two white hot razors.

"You don't understand. They are going to hit us simultaneously, use the mass relays to literally stride from system to system eliminating everything. Scorched earth. Rolling thunder. Carpet bombing the hell out of everything populated!"

"If we go to your apartment, we will lay in wait for our destruction," Grandma added. "I don't want to be hunted the remainder of my life like an animal. I cannot bear that burden."

"I will stop them, I will kill every last one of them to keep my family, my friends, my crew... Tali, alive. I swear to you both."

Tali stared into the dark torrents of Shepard's eyes. For the first time in a while, she saw that Rottweiler come alive. The candle glowed in his eyes but it did not reflect the meek flame, rather what Tali saw was a bonfire. Her Shepard was back. It took his family recognizing eminent defeat - accepting it - for him to come back to life. His muscles flared, his gaunt cheeks filled up and his eyes had new found life brought back. His voice vibrated Grandma's wine goblet, like Grandpa's did when she first met him. It boomed with passion and love, wanting to take the fight to the machines, wanting to slap them in the face and tell them who was boss. Keelah, she just wanted to embrace him yet he was unleashed, throwing everything he had at his Grandparents. He was pissed, but he didn't spout hateful words, rather he showered them with stern love. He wasn't like male protagonists in those sappy romance novels Kasumi and Kelly consumed. He never directly expressed his love through soft words and hollow phrases, he showed it through action, looks, and subtle movements. He showed it through saving the damn galaxy, putting his life on the line daily in order to protect everyone he loves, including the luckiest damn quarian in the galaxy. He has shown his love for her before, through intimate moments and love making, yet Tali just now saw it on a grand scale, a scale that is 120,000 light-years across. Keelah, she didn't need diamonds on rings, pearls beaded on necklaces, perfume wrapped in fancy paper or other material needs of the sorts. Suddenly, she felt pity towards every woman who is in love and alive at this moment. Shepard is giving her the galaxy, physically and symbolically. He is giving her life.

"So, you are going to give up on your daughter? My mother will be commanding a ship that will have to fight the Reapers. You are giving up on your great-grandchildren, on me, on Tali?"

Tali put a fist up to her chest.

"Sitting here and waiting to die is not something to be proud of, not part of my legacy. You must evade, fight, and evade. Live as long as you can, stick it out and not give up. Look at how the Red Army won Stalingrad all those years ago. They faced overwhelming odds and defeat, yet they held their ground from the invading army who wanted to sterilize their land. They fought back through the toughest of conditions. They fought to protect their land, their families, their loved ones that would have died or lived miserable lives if the enemy broke through." His fist crashed into the tabletop. He began to pace the kitchen. "You can still keep those memories of me in your backyard, those Sunday picnics, the first time I brought your future granddaughter-in-law to meet you... don't throw them away here. If you stay, you will be vaporized, suffer nuclear radiation and have your skin peel off like cooked phyllo dough, or die in your beds without even knowing what in the hell hit you from orbit. You will either suffer or die without a trace - ripped apart, burnt, crushed and smashed into the scorched ground that will soon be this planet." Shepard was breathing heavily and a single tear fell down his face. He was trying to say something but his trembling lower lip seized it from happening. "I love all of you."

Tali was speechless, unable to mutter a single syllable. Grandma sunk her forehead into his shoulder and Grandpa went over to hug both of them. All Tali could think about was how many families will not get the chance to do this - the billions of families who will parish beneath molten cement, cherry hot rebar. All those people who will be turned to ash from orbital fire and not get to resolve their love. Children will be going to school, husbands and wives going to work without getting to say goodbye. Soon, the schools will be set aflame, playgrounds melted with children cooking on the metal bars like meat on a grill, and corporate buildings sliced in half, the wives and husbands tumbling hundreds of stories to their deaths. She thought of all the fights people might have gotten into before their deaths - the slammed doors, the exchange of hateful words and rude gestures. They will never be able to say I'm sorry and I love you. At that moment, Tali hated the Citadel Council for not releasing the truth.

"My Captain, my love has lost too many people, Grandma and Grandpa," Tali started, "Please, don't throw away your lives like this. We have seen too many go like that. It huurts him, kills something inside of him each time it happens. He loves you."

"Tali, my dear, come," Grandpa whispered. She joined them in the hug.

"You are part of our family now, Tali. Even if you had one, we would still accept you with open arms and loving embrace."

Family.

The word choked her up. Not only did Shepard give her love and the galaxy, but he gave her a family, all of which are impossible to obtain from a quarian standpoint, was literally handed to her.

I am the luckiest damn girl in this galaxy.

"We'll run, my Darling. We will run," Grandma muttered through Shepard's shoulder. "We will run like hell, wherever you want us to go, we will go and hide."

"Thank you," both Shepard and Tali whispered.

They all hugged a bit longer and Tali didn't want to let go.

Tali's hands fit into Shepard's like a glove.

Lots of practice, I guess.

They walked along the lake in the backyard, on a gravel path which was lit by subtle yellow lamps. Fish, most likely from Illium, swam in the pond, glowing neon blue and leaving a fluorescent baby-blue trail in their wake like a melting comet in the black of space. Neither of them spoke since the episode in the kitchen yet both smiled.

"I like watching you shout." Tali broke the silence. "I've said that before, haven't I?"

"Right after screaming at your admirals you told me that."

"Hmm, you have a good memory."

"Anything that comes out of those lips of yours stick to my brain."

"Is that a good or bad thing?" she asked flirtatiously.

He didn't answer but chuckled. It was an infectious little laugh.

"I've been meaning to ask you something, Shepard."

"Uh-hu?"

Tali pointed across the lawn at what looked like a little outhouse attached to the side of his grandparent's house with a big air filtration unit on top. It grew out of the their house like a growth. "What is that?"

Shepard's eyes followed her finger towards the small outbuilding.

"Oh, that is my old bedroom. Remember how I told you I had really bad allergies here when I was a kid? Something about this weird pollen from these even weirder plants that used to grow on Terra Nova effected me negatively until Terra Nova Health and Safety took on the enormous task of destroying them a few years back. Literally, half the population of people on Terra Nova were allergic to the damn pollen, including me. Anyways, I couldn't sleep in the guest bedroom in the house, which oddly enough, my grandparents were not allergic to the pollen like I was, so they built me my own room and air filters that siphons all that gunk from the air. They are useless now, though."

"I see," she chuckled, imagining little Shepard coughing and wheezing at the mercy of something the size of a crumb.

"Hey, me playing soccer with my friends who were not allergic was not a funny sight. I always got picked last by the team captains."

"I know that feeling. When my teachers back in school said 'group up with a partner' I always was left alone. It is a bad situation, let me tell you. Especially when you cared about that kind of stuff back in the day." Tali tried not to think about losing her mother and grandparents.

"Do you want to go on a ride?"

The question caught her off guard.

"A ride where?"

"There was this place a little bit from here. Shall I call it a surprise?"

"I lurve surprises, Shepard."

"Okay then!"

Shepard's arms scooped Tali up and carried her across the lawn. His immense strength took her by surprise. He is always so gentle with her it is like he has no strength at all but she knows better. Tali has seen what the commander can do, like literally fist fight the Shadow Broker who outweighed him three-fold. Her fingers curled around Shepard's t-shirt as he carried her across the lawn, onto the drive way, and gingerly let her fall to her feet next to the passenger door of the Corvette. Again, the sight of this car, this thug in a silk gown, brought a sloppy, shaky smile across her lips. The way the car curved and flattened out at the front like a shark sent shivers dashing towards the back of her skull, prickling her skin on the way up. It was feminine looking from the side with its sexy voluptuous hips containing its fat tires, but tapered to a razor's edge at the front - ideal aerodynamics for slicing through the air at high speeds. Her fingers timidly clutched the chromed handle and she flinched, expecting it to growl, maybe turn around and bite her. All she got was the metallic thock when the door opened.

"So, where are we going," Tali asked, slipping her behind into the seat.

"Like I said, a surprise."

"Tali'Zorah isn't too good at waiting, but she likes surprises, nonetheless."

"Why does Tali'Zorah refer to herself in the third person?"

She didn't have an answer for that except to just giggle back at him.

"Do you want to start it?"

"The Vette? Keelah, yes!"

Shepard dangled the keys in front of her like bait and she literally launched at them, groping for them in the dark.

"Make sure it is in neutral, first."

"Okay," she said biting her lip. Shepard was grinning.

"You know what?"

"I drive!"

"You took those words out of my mouth."

They switched seats and as Tali circled the car, she traced a line on the car's front lip with her finger, keeping it calm enough until she could sit inside of the beast. The driver's seat wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but that was not the point. The steering wheel was quite large and the two fat dials carved into the dashboard, watching her like eyes in the dark- predator eyes. There was very little light out at this time of night, but there was enough to see what she was doing.

"Okay, foot on the brake, that is the one in the middle." Her two toes pressed against the pedal. It was stiff. "Take your hand," Shepard grabbed hers softly and placed it on the stick shift that shot out of the transmission tunnel. Tali was bubbling with joy, trying not to giggle uncontrollably but utterly failed. "Foot on the clutch. That is the left petal." Tali stomped the left petal. "Now pull down on the stick." She felt the stick pop and go into neutral. She shook the stick left and right to be sure it was out of gear. Keelah, this was exciting! "Okay, slip the key into the ignition and start her up!" Without hesitation, she jammed the stubby key in and yanked hard right. The whole car shook, coughed and roared to life! The vibrations made her sit deeper into the seat and clutch the wheel in excitement.

"I think I know what to do now," she confidently said.

"Oh yeah? I bet you will stall the car within five seconds."

Tali slowly looked over and said, "Do you want to bet on that?"

"If you stall the car within five minutes, you have to promise me a kiss."

"Deal."

I should just stall this right now...

Tali pressed the clutch in and revved the engine, pushed the stick towards her right thigh and pushed up into first gear, letting go of the clutch. She could feel the transmission grinding against the engine and smelled something hot. She tried it again and felt the teeth catch, tugging the car forward.

"Goot yeah!"

Suddenly intoxicated with her confidence, ego, and the sound of the beast's gravely deep voice, she floored the gas. Savagely, the car ripped her head back into the cushioned head rest and the tortured wheels screamed under the weight of the car as the hundreds of foot pounds of torque wailed. Tali screamed as loud as she could, without noticing what she was yelling about. She felt so free! The engine hit the red line at thirty miles-per-hour and screamed with her.

WAHWAHWAHWAH!

Tali slammed the clutch to the floor, lifted the acceleration and pushed the stick down into second gear, revved the engine, and popped the clutch. The Corvette lurched forwardand the fat stick on the speedometer flew to the right. She shifted again and continued to yell, this time joined by Shepard who was grabbing onto the closest thing in the car. Tali could see taught tendons stretching in his arms and neck while his left hand clamped onto Tali's thigh ferociously. He wrestled his seatbelt into place and closed his eyes. Tali laughed maniacally and shifted again, hitting one-hundred twenty miles an hour. She flicked on the lights, drifted out of Grandma and Grandpa's street and hit the open road.

"Jesus, Tali slow down!"

"Not going to happen!"

"Oh God!"

She laughed at his terror and wide eyes. The yellow lines on the road blurred as she hit one-fifty. She felt the front end lift a bit and the car got squirrelly under the speed. She brought it down and Shepard let go of her thigh, most definitely leaving a five fingered bruise behind.

Totally worth it, she thought.

The speed and brutal power the car output was addicting. She just wanted to capture that essence, boil it over a hot spoon and inject it into her veins. It wasn't adrenaline like she gets in combat but something different. It was... hard to explain. Her chest felt lighter and her stomach sunk into her gut but it felt... good and maybe even sexual. She looked at Shepard. The wind was playing with the collar of his shirt and he was obviously trying to seize control of his breathing once again. He locked eyes with her.

"Look at the road, please!"

"Yes sir."

He laughed, nervously.

"So, where are we going?"

"There is a place on this hill." He chuckled to himself and ran a hand through his stubble. "I know... this might sound weird, but there is a woman out in the middle of nowhere. She reads the future."

"Like the Consort?"

"Yes, sort of, that is. Right before I left for basic when I was a teenager, a group of my friends and I went to her. We were drunk and stupid back then."

"So... what happened?"

"She told me I would die at the age of twenty-nine."

"It looks like she was spot on."

Shepard shot her a look that forced the smile from her lips.

"The thing is... she said I was going to die twice."

Okay, I lied. This isn't the final chapter, but the one after this one will be. Make sure to check your Fanfiction alerts for the final chapter a couple days before the Mass Effect 3 launch. By the time you read this message, I should be about halfway through with the grand finale... and let me tell you, there will be fireworks!

-RAGE

...the guy who never gets mad.