I don't own Mass Effect or the characters within it, I'm just borrowing them for a bit. 'Ah yes, "borrowing". We have dismissed that claim.'
Grounded
Commander Shepard was in his quarters, brooding over recent events.
The Normandy was headed back to the Citadel. Having destroyed Saren's krogan cloning facility on Virmire and revealed the location of the Conduit, they were now preparing for an assault against his geth forces. The Normandy would lead the fleet into Terminus space, towards the Mu relay and Ilos. The Conduit, whatever it was, would be there. Finally they were starting to see the end of this long journey...
The price had been high though. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko had died on Virmire after arming the bomb that would take out Saren's base. Having been forced to choose between saving him or Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, Shepard decided to save Williams because she was with the salarian STG team. It was a simple choice of how many lives to save; one or half a dozen. A simple choice, but one of the hardest decisions he had ever had to make.
After they had left the planet and finished the debriefing, Shepard got the message that the Citadel fleet was almost finished massing for the assault against Saren. He had told Joker to head for the Citadel, then went straight to his quarters without speaking to anyone else.
–
Tali stood outside Shepard's quarters, trying to decide whether to go see him or let him have some time to himself. He hadn't even talked to her before he went straight back to his room. Maybe he just wanted to be alone for a while. Still... she didn't like the idea of him sitting alone brooding over things he couldn't have helped. Shepard, as good a commander as he was, had the habit of blaming every little thing that went wrong on himself. Arming that bomb early had been Kaidan's own decision, a safeguard in case he couldn't hold out against the assaulting geth until help arrived. Unfortunately, it was also what made rescuing both him and Williams impossible.
She shook her head a bit. It wasn't really anything to wonder about. She couldn't let Shepard be by himself, beating himself up over things he couldn't have prevented. Seeing that the doors weren't locked, she headed straight in.
Tali saw him sitting on the edge of the bed, bent forward with his arms resting on his legs. Seemingly deep in thought, he didn't appear to have noticed her coming in.
"Shepard?"
His head came up slowly, and he looked at her.
"Hey Tali..."
He looked down on the floor again. Tali came over and sat next to him on the bed, close enough that their shoulders just barely touched.
"Shepard, are you alright?"
She knew it was a bit of a silly question. After all, a crew member and friend had died, so why would he be? She needed to get him talking somehow though, and it was the only line she could think of.
"... I guess I've felt better. I'm not really comfortable with people under my command dying. First Jenkins, now Alenko..."
"Jenkins?"
"It was on Eden Prime, before we came to the Citadel and met you. He was killed by geth drones shortly after we touched down. He was a good soldier... a bit eager and impatient, but he could have made it far if he had gotten the chance..."
Shepard had a wry, sad smile on his face as he thought back on the Eden Prime mission.
"He was my responsibility, and I let him die... I don't know what I could have done differently to prevent it, but that doesn't mean that it was inevitable... and now it happened again with Alenko..."
"Kaidan armed that bomb on his own, there was nothing you could have done to stop it. We didn't have time to save both him and Chief Williams once the bomb was armed."
"Even so, I might have been able to do something to stop it from getting that far. Maybe I should have left more people with him to hold the position in case of reinforcements, or left someone else in charge of the bomb, or..."
Tali put her arm around Shepard's back, hugging him closer to her.
"You can't see the future, Shepard. Some things will simply be out of your hands, and you have to know when to let that go..."
He shook his head slowly from side to side.
"I can't just do that, Tali. I can't watch my men die on me, shrug my shoulders and say 'there was nothing I could do'. Once a leader starts doing that, he is going to keep losing people to all of his mistakes, to every shortcoming he has, every unforeseen circumstance, every tiny detail that he happens to miss..."
Shepard tightened his fists.
"Even if it looks like it was inevitable at first glance, I can't just settle down with that. What if there was something I could have done? Just because it's not easy to see at first doesn't mean that there was no way it could have been prevented. If I can't find something I did wrong and learn from it, how can I stop it from happening again?"
Seeing Kaidan getting killed had driven home what could happen if he didn't have everything under absolute control. Kaidan had acted on his own, and it had put Shepard in a position where it was impossible to save both Kaidan and Chief Williams. Not only had it been impossible to save both, but he had to choose which one to save, and tell the other he was being left to die.
Tali hugged Shepard tighter, resting her head on his shoulder.
"I don't know what to tell you, Shepard. Maybe it could have been prevented, but... If you can't see how it could have been done, I don't know anyone who could. You got us all this far, through all kinds of dangers and against insurmountable odds. We assaulted the base of our enemy in what most people would consider a suicide attack, and still you got everyone except Kaidan through alive. I don't think anyone else could have done what you have. You can't see the future, and some things you simply can't plan for..."
She sighed a bit.
"We quarians know all about lack of foresight and the consequences of our mistakes..."
As they sat in silence, neither able to think of something to say, Joker's voice came over the speakers.
"Five minutes until we reach the Citadel, Commander"
Shepard got up from the bed slowly, his face returning to its usual steady self. It was uncanny how quickly his demeanor changed back to normal, at least outwardly. For a man in his position it was probably a necessity to always show a steady exterior to his men. In a sense, she was privileged to be allowed to see the more vulnerable, human side underneath.
"I guess this will just have to wait until after the mission is over. For now, I'll have to concentrate on not losing anyone else... and paying Saren back for every life he has taken."
He held his hand out to her to help her stand up. She gingerly took it and got up from the bed, into his waiting embrace. They held each other tight for a few moments before slowly parting.
"Thanks, Tali. I'd best go and get ready to speak to the council. Hopefully we'll soon be on our way to Ilos with a fleet even Saren's forces can't stand up to."
"I hope so, Shepard. I'm not so sure that the Council understands what is going on though. Despite everything we have found out and reported to them, they still don't seem convinced that the Reaper threat is real."
"Yeah, I'm not so sure either. But they're getting the fleet together, and I suppose that's all we can ask."
They walked out of the room together, stopping by the intersection leading to the elevator and the stairs to the CIC. Looking around to make sure no one could see them, he suddenly hugged her again, a tight, squeezing hug, then let go before she could react.
"I'll see you later, Tali. Take care..."
"Later, Shepard...."
He took a few steps backwards while watching her, before turning around and jogging up the stairs. For a while she stood there, looking at the place where he had moved out of sight. She hated being apart from him...
Shaking her head a bit, she went into the elevator, heading for engineering. There were a few more tweaks she wanted to do on the drive systems before the final stretch began. Every little bit could count when the time came to face Sovereign.
–
Tali had been working on the systems for about an hour when drive console froze, a small screen flashing with the message 'SYSTEM LOCKDOWN'. She frowned a bit. After trying to reestablish contact with the console a few times, she opened a radio channel.
"Joker? What is going on up on the bridge? The systems down here aren't responding anymore."
"Well, it seems the Commander pissed off the Council or something, because ambassador Udina just had the entire ship put under lockdown. All the primary systems have been disabled. We're grounded for now."
"What? Why would they do that?"
"If I understood it right, they're not planning on taking the fleet to the Mu Relay and Ilos, they're going to stay here and at key relays leading here and wait for Saren's invasion. And that includes us."
"What about Shepard? He wouldn't just..."
"He's been relieved of command of the Normandy... While they say it's for the time being, I don't think he'll be getting command back after this..."
Tali stood in stunned silence. If they didn't catch Saren before he reached the Conduit.... everything they had done up until now would be for nothing. Whatever function it served, it wasn't going to be stopped by the fleet being parked out in space. If that had been the case, Saren would have been forced to give up the moment they exposed his plans. They had to stop him before he got his hands on the Conduit!
Pulling up her omnitool and trying to access the systems, she did some cursory probing of the security and lockdown mechanisms. She spent a few minutes poking around, making sure not to raise any alarms inside the Citadel.
It was a no-go. While she might be able to release the Normandy given enough time, a lot of time, she couldn't do it without alerting the entire Citadel once she starting breaching security. Even if she managed to release the locks, they would never get out of the system in time. The docking bay would be sealed off and surrounded by the fleet long before they could escape.
With a loud sigh, she put the omnitool away.
"I guess it's up to Shepard then..."
Fairly short chapter, although it took me a long time to finish it. If it seems like it came out fairly quickly after the previous one, it's because this was mostly written before the chapter where Tali gets the geth data. I couldn't seem to complete it though, because it kept feeling wrong, like something was missing. Took me days to realize that I had skipped over a pretty significant part of their relationship, and so I kept this on hiatus while writing the geth data chapter. After that was finished, this chapter didn't bother me as much and I could finish it.
I'm still not happy about this chapter though, mostly because I'd love to spend more time fleshing out the relationship between Tali and Shepard in the ME1 arc, but I pretty much ran out of steam after they got together earlier than I had planned, so it'll have to continue in the ME2 arc. Oops. It feels kind of rushed to me, but I'm also a bit leery of dragging it out too long with filler that doesn't really have any impact on the story as a whole. It's a fine line to walk, I suppose.
I guess next chapter is heading to Ilos. Oh man, I'm not looking forward to writing that... Trying to make it meaningful without heading into lemon territory (nothing wrong with a lemon, but it might be a bit difficult for me to write a good one in my first fic).
Oh, and on a different note: Tali referring to Kaidan as, well, Kaidan, but Ashley as Chief Williams, is on purpose. Just one of those things that I never got around to explore further in these stories (long unwritten story short, Tali doesn't feel very close to Ash.).