Ten days later – The Citadel
The door to the apartment rushed open and Shepard hobbled his way into the spacious living room, Liara right behind him. The transition from the bustling wards to the quiet bungalow provided a much needed dose of auditory relief and the silence fell upon them like a blanket.
Shepard leaned on his custom-made cane as he yawned loudly. He shrugged off his jacket somewhat awkwardly and threw it onto the couch. His entire right hand still felt a little raw, despite the work the doctors did of reconstructing his finger bones, but he was able to grip objects without that much difficulty. His leg, however, was another matter as the damage it sustained was so severe that it couldn't all be fixed at once. The compound fracture had been so violent that the initial surgery was incapable of repairing all the damage at once. This was just an injury that he would have to look after for the time being and it would help ensure that he would not rush into a foolhardy situation anytime soon. Truthfully, Shepard should still be interred in the hospital but he had made enough of a scene that he was able to secure his freedom away from the sterile hallways to a place more comfortable.
Careful not to put too much pressure onto his bad leg, he took tiny steps as he made his way through the expansive place while Liara walked over to the kitchen. She set a few grocery bags down and began to stock the fridge while Shepard stood silently, pondering to himself.
Concerned, Liara looked at him. "Do you want me to make you something?" she asked.
"Hmm?" Shepard murmured, distracted.
"Do want something to eat, Shepard?"
"Oh," Shepard said after a few seconds. "No thanks, Liara. I'm not that hungry."
Liara just sighed in amusement. The wounds on her body had finished healing days ago but it was still tender for her to breathe; the memory of the flaring pain from her cracked rib had been giving her a good amount of hesitation the entire time.
"So you mean to tell me that you've been having hospital food for over a week and you're not dying for a decent meal in the very least? When they released me four days ago, the first thing I did was rush over to the nearest food court. I was starving."
"Right now I'm tired more than anything," Shepard said, yawning for good measure. "I guess all I want to do right now is sleep."
"Then I won't hold you back," Liara said as she shut the door to the fridge. "But I insist on coming by later tonight to bring everyone dinner."
"Garrus too?"
"Garrus too," Liara smirked. "He can rib us all later for getting tremendously banged up while he didn't sustain a scratch on his body. It'll make for some interesting commentary."
Shepard shrugged as he made a motion of obviously looking down at his leg. "Ah, well. I can't get lucky all the time, right?"
"Guess not," Liara chuckled. "So, I'll be back here in the evening with food. Hopefully you'll be awake by then and we can all have a nice quiet evening where we can just sit and talk."
"My life has been lacking a lot of those nice quiet evenings, to be honest," Shepard said thoughtfully. "That sounds excellent, Liara."
"Perfect," Liara beamed before she quickly dug around into the pack on her side and withdrew a data tablet and placed it on the kitchen island. "Before I go, you might want to take a look at this."
Shepard shifted his weight on his feet. "What is it?"
"Well, I had a lot of free time so I decided to do a little digging into the Broker's files – the old Broker's files. It turns out that he had hidden a small stash of information that was protected by several-," Liara paused as she saw Shepard's eyes glaze over. "You know what? That part doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that I managed to uncover an unusually detailed dossier and I thought you might find it interesting. The tablet is programmed to open to the dossier in question whenever you want to peruse it."
"A dossier?" Shepard's eyebrows rose. "On whom?"
"One 'Teyrna Avantus,'" Liara replied grimly. "But, that is not the name we knew her by."
Shepard nodded solemnly. "Grevel," he whispered.
Liara gazed at Shepard before she slid the tablet a little bit further. "Just something that might interest you." She walked out of the kitchen and turned towards the door before she stopped in place. "Do you need any help in getting up the steps, Shepard?"
Shepard stared at the staircase that led to the second story and paled for a very short second before he regained his composure. "That…that won't be necessary," he said, his mind pondering how he was going to pull this off. "I bet I'll be able to tackle them on my own."
Liara just crossed her arms with a knowing smile. "I'll just wait here until you've made it. Just so I can confirm that you didn't break your neck today."
"Appreciate the vote of confidence," Shepard scowled as he lifted his good leg up onto the first step and slowly brought his bad one to match.
There was actually little pain in the feat but it was dreadfully slow work. Taking one step after another for two feet at a time was proving to be more of a hindrance to his patience than his actual disability. Regardless, he managed to make it to the top without any additional agony, but with the added bonus of a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.
"Made it," he gasped, trying his hardest to look proud when in fact he was about to collapse from exhaustion.
"So you have," Liara grinned from the first floor as she turned to go. "I'll leave you be now. See you later tonight."
"See you," Shepard said as he walked up to his bedroom door. The miniature sterilization unit hummed and blasted, performing a brief and sloppy decontamination before allowing him access to his bed.
The temperature was a few degrees warmer than the living room and Shepard's shirt was off before he even reached his mattress. He leaned his cane across a nearby chair and tugged at his pants. They were a special design that allowed easy removal if they were pulled in the right way and soon they joined the shirt at the foot of the bed. Now clad in his boxers, Shepard gingerly rubbed at the hard cast that encased his knee, temporarily immobilizing it. He tried not to imagine how ghastly the wound looked underneath the surface and conceded that it was probably best if he did not know. All he knew right now is that he was alive and that the person who did this to him was definitively dead. Modern medicine could fix a crippled leg but it still was not able to mend a decapitation. Tricky endeavor, that.
The covers were loose on his bed so it was pretty easy for Shepard to swing his legs up and slide them underneath the sheets. He took a few seconds to properly orient himself, mostly making sure that his head was in a comfortable position against his pillow. Once Shepard was satisfied that he was tucked in just right, he sighed out in relief just before he felt a hand gently slide into his grip from the left, a sensation of three smooth fingers against his skin.
Heart pounding happily, it seemed to take forever for Shepard to turn his head, but when he did, Tali's smiling face quickly dissipated any initial fears he harbored. She, like him, was also tucked tightly in bed, but she also happened to be outside of her enviro-suit, which Shepard could see folded meticulously on top of the dresser beyond the quarian. Her black hair splayed around her pillow and her face quickly transitioned from uncomprehending drowsiness to lucid glee in a very short time.
"You're back," Tali croaked, tears beginning to fill her eyes.
Without verbally responding, Shepard turned to the side (making sure not to hit his knee on anything) and grasped at Tali's head before pulling her towards him for a kiss. The deep exhales from their noses denoted their desperation and relief, and their lips gently parted and converged several times over. Both made muffled noises of passion throughout their kisses and they reluctantly parted after a minute, already longing for more contact.
Shepard still held Tali's head in his hands as he smiled happily. "Tali…" he whispered. "You wonderful woman. I'm so very proud of you."
"For what?" Tali asked genuinely, her fingers tracing around Shepard's chest. "Killing Grevel?"
"For bringing me back," Shepard clarified, his smile only getting wider. "You risked your life to save me and you succeeded on all counts. I…I don't think I would have been that brave, facing off against that monster like you did."
"It could be mistranslated as stupidity instead of bravery," Tali smirked. "I was driven primarily by emotion back there so I don't think that I planned things out all that well, to be honest."
"I'd be willing to argue with you there on that front."
"I only did what I thought was right, John. I…" She was interrupted by a tiny cough but her pained expression looked to Shepard like she had just gotten impaled. Alarmed, he felt Tali's forehead for a fever.
"No," Tali waved him off weakly, but with a smile. "It's…it's fine, John. It's just my wound that hurts."
She gestured down so that Shepard could see exactly what was bothering Tali. He now noted that, instead of her recognizable enviro-suit, Tali appeared to be wearing a loose white shirt and pants that looked like standard hospital wear, wrinkled from having spent the entire day in bed with them. Tali tugged down the collar of the shirt a bit and Shepard could see the faint outline of a sling wrapped around Tali's left collarbone, holding it in place. But more prevalent was the enormous white bandage taped over the middle of Tali's chest, covering a large portion of her grey skin.
Shepard couldn't think of anything to say so he leaned forward to kiss Tali's cheek instead. She murmured happily and pulled the collar of her shirt up. "I think these clothes were meant for humans," she remarked flippantly. "They're a little baggy over my arms and they don't really meld well with my legs."
"Is that the worst of it?" Shepard asked as he drifted the conversation back, cautious. "Your injuries, I mean. Do you need anything for the pain, Tali?"
"They've got me on painkillers," she reassured him. "And some medicine for the cold I received from being out of my suit."
Shepard blinked, nonplussed. "You mean that you were out of your suit for a while and all you got from that was a cold?"
"Yeah, actually," Tali nodded. "I completely forgot at the time that the majority of bacteria and pathogens that exist cannot survive in subzero temperatures. Xawin was an effectively sterile environment for me - at least that area was - so I didn't get deathly sick. Actually, I think that I might have picked up the cold from when I was carried onto the Normandy by Garrus, come to think of it."
"Yeah, Garrus brought me up to speed when I was getting prepped for surgery a few days ago. He mentioned that you were released two days before I was, is that right?"
"I didn't feel like going back to the liveship but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go," Tali grinned as she patted the bed. "Besides, I needed a place to rest and recover so Liara helped me get set up in your apartment."
"Well, I'm not complaining," Shepard shrugged. "Did your operation go okay?"
Tali made a face as she tested her shoulder. "They set my collarbone but it still feels a little stiff. I'll probably be back to my full range of motion in a few days. The stab wound," she paused somberly, "was a little trickier. It turned out that the knife just slightly punctured one of my lungs and that there was a lot of internal bleeding. They mended it with cautery and stitches…after vacuuming my lung. I think it's safe to say that I'll always have a scar from that wound now."
"It won't be that bad," Shepard said as he began to brush Tali's hair with his fingers. "You're one of the toughest people I've ever met. You'll be back on your feet in no time."
Tali smiled from both the praise and the grooming but sadly shifted her gaze down to Shepard's leg, hidden by the sheets. "And what about you, John?" she asked. "You were injured about as badly as I was. Are you doing okay?"
"As good as I can manage," Shepard admitted as he adjusted his leg on the mattress. "I'm not sure if I will be able to run a marathon after all my operations are completed but my knee should be reasonably repaired over the coming month. I think I'll be fine."
Tali did not look convinced. "That's awful," she whispered as she slowly shuffled her body so that her side was touching him. "What…what are you going to do about it? Aren't there some way you can get your leg fully working again?"
"There probably are," Shepard mused, "but the options presented to me were a little too intrusive to my liking. Cloning, cybernetics, the usual. I'd rather have them work with the bits they already have versus me getting more artificial crap stuffed into my body."
Tali held a look of concern on her face. "John…" she began, "that's going to hamper your military career, don't you think. I mean, soldiers get wounded all the time and you've accumulated enough of them that it should have killed you a hundred times over but now you're not going to be at one hundred percent after this. Do you really think you'd want to continue with the injury you've sustained?"
Shepard shrugged. "Actually, Tali, staying in the Alliance was just a way to keep me busy all these years. It provided an outlet for my work ethic so that I wouldn't be bored all the time. Frankly, I'm not all that interested in continuing down that path anymore. I'm actually thinking about pursuing other interests and I believe that this injury has given me my out."
Tali did not notice that her breathing had escalated but she did notice when Shepard's hand squeezed tighter on hers, matching her grip and strength. "But…" she stammered, "what will you do now, John? You've been in the military for a long time and… I mean, that's a pretty big transition. Do you have a plan after you leave or something resembling a plan?"
"Oh, I don't know," Shepard sighed dramatically. "This is not the sort of decision that I've made lightly, but I've got an idea of where to go from here. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do after I muster out but…" he grinned mischievously, "I'm sure it will all be easier if I had someone by my side to share the experience with."
Tali and Shepard turned their heads at the same time, the latter with a knowing smile on his face. Tali gaped for a second before she glanced up at the ceiling in mock thought, the tips of her fingers beginning to play with Shepard's hand.
"So…" Tali said slyly. "You're saying that if you weren't lonely, you would be more confident about making this decision, am I right?"
"Just about," Shepard bobbed his head.
"And," Tali continued, "you would prefer to be with someone you knew instead of a complete stranger. Someone you could have complete trust in." She bit her lip. "Although, there are many people that you trust completely, now that I think about it. How could they be differentiated between each other so that you could only pick one of them?"
"They can't," Shepard admitted as he snaked his arm behind Tali's neck, propping her head up a bit. "But I've already decided whom I would like to join me. This person has a certain…spark to them that connects us both. However, I don't want to pressure them into doing something that they don't want to go along with. They must desire this as much as I do."
"And whom might that be?" Tali arched her eyebrow with a smile. "This person you're referring to."
Shepard laughed and fidgeted knowingly. "Well, let's see…I've known them for many years. Been with them through some tough times but also have made some really good memories with them. In fact, because of how much time I've spent with them, I'd go so far as to call them my best friend."
"…And?" Tali asked eagerly.
"They've been a great companion the whole time I've been with them," Shepard continued in a light tone. "Even when things were at their worst, they somehow pulled me from the brink to make me see the hope they possessed. This person someone I've admired for a while and always put my faith in. They have never disappointed me once, not a single time."
"…And?"
"And…" Shepard deliberately paused as he pretended to think of the correct words to say, "…and they've been someone that I've loved the whole time. There has never been a day that has gone by without me thinking of them, wishing that I could see them again. When I finally did get that chance a few days ago, that was the happiest I've been in years and it made me realize something. I want more memories like that. I don't want to spend the rest of my life longing for better days. I want to have my best friend close by again."
"Oh," Tali sighed explosively, her frantic eyes pleading, "just say my name so that I can kiss you, you bosh'tet!"
Shepard's laugh was straight from the belly and he gently stroked Tali's face with his hand. "And…I love you, Tali'Zorah."
The next movement from Tali went by in a blur. She mustered her energy so that she rolled from her position on her back to on top of Shepard's chest, her petite body supported by his firm frame. With a ravenous hunger, she pressed her lips against Shepard's and froze in that position, true to her word. The kiss was fierce and hard, but it was sweet and emotional at the same time. Both of them surrendered themselves to the other, drowning out the outside world so that they could be the only singularities inhabiting their tiny capsule of time.
Tugging at his lower lip, Tali parted, faint trails of tears running down her face; some from joy, some from another sensation.
"Ow," Tali winced as she pressed a hand over the bandage on her chest. "I shouldn't have moved so quickly."
Incredulously, Shepard stared at Tali in amusement and both started laughing raucously at the same time. Shepard had to turn his head into his pillow to stifle his laughs while Tali shook from his vibrating chest atop him.
"Oh, Tali," Shepard breathed as his chuckling died down. "Now I know I've been away from you for far too long. You're starting to put me over your personal health again."
"Screw my personal health," Tali panted. "I'm going to take every advantage of being near you now because you've always been worth it. You know that I would die for you, John, so I'm going to live as much as I can when you're around. Because I love you just as much as you love me."
"That sounds definitive to me," Shepard beamed as he rubbed Tali's back. "So, what shall the first thing that we do together be? Is there anything that you want to do on the top of your head?"
Tali tilted her head in thought, her eyes slowly scanning the headboard for inspiration before a sudden inclination fell over her, one that made her feel like gravity was weighing heavily on her and that she was going to be crushed if she struggled further.
"A nap would be a start," Tali yawned, her head already beginning to droop. "After that…who knows?"
"We'll make it up as we go along, then," Shepard said as the back of his head hit the pillow. "Story of my life, it seems."
Tali slowly slid forward to supply Shepard with a gentle kiss on his lips before sleepiness fell upon her and she lowered her head onto Shepard's bare chest. Both of their arms loosely embraced the other and Tali smiled as her body rose and fell from Shepard's deep breathing.
"Sounds good to me," she murmured, as happy as she had ever been. Within seconds, the spell of slumber fell over the both of them and soon the only sound in the room was the quiet snoring of two souls in peace.
A/N: Thus ends The Reengaged and concludes the two-story arc started with The Disengaged.
Some plot hiccups notwithstanding, I had a good time writing this story and playing around with the AU elements. It's a lot more liberating for me to create an original story rather than be bound by the formulaic structure of the games. (Of course, that stance is probably because I've already gone over the games so many times that I can't think of anything else to write during that time period).
However, along with my author's notes that I'll present in the next week, there will be a little bonus chapter that comes next. It will be different from the tone of the story but I am writing to share a few unused ideas that I had during this story's development while presenting them in a narrative form. It won't be revolutionary but some of you might find it intriguing.
But now that I've finished this story, I have an announcement to make. I've spent almost whole year now of writing Mass Effect fanfiction and I've immensely appreciated all the warm support I've been given. Writing for this community was rewarding, fun, and altogether inspiring. It was a great place for me to hone my writing skills and gain the confidence to try something different with each new installment. Today, I say to you all that I now want to try something different. For the past few months, I've been researching other franchises and ideas, weighing multiple options for where I wanted to continue in the future and I believe that I have a good idea of where I want to proceed.
With that being said, I will be retiring from the Mass Effect franchise (not indefinitely - anything is possible) and I will make my next story from another science fiction franchise that is considered to be one of the most important series in all of video games (despite it having a smaller fanbase than Mass Effect). How long I will stay in this new franchise is up in the air, but I want to get more practice before I write an original story that I have in development. That original story is what I consider to be my ultimate goal and writing fanfiction has been the perfect stepping stone for me to gradually put my ideas into motion. When the next story debuts is unknown at this time, but I don't consider my departure from Mass Effect to be definite. I'd guess that, one day, a new idea will arrive and that I will want to act on it accordingly. Not now, but definitely later.
After all, I will always have a soft spot for our friendly engineer Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. It's been a rewarding experience writing a character like her and I hope that I get a chance to return again to write a story with her in it. What harm could come of it anyway? As Tali would undoubtedly say: "Totally worth it."
You've all been a tremendous audience and I thank you for your support. It's been my pleasure to be here.
Stay classy, everyone. (Couldn't resist ending on a quote, no matter how cheesy it sounds!)
-Rob Sears
