"Where's Ashley?" Shepard asked as he put his tray on the table, sitting down at his seat opposite to Tali.
"No idea, Commander," Garrus answered from his right, ponderously spooning some turian stew into his mouth.
Tali twiddled a tube of nutrient paste in her fingers, staring longingly at the delicious contents of Garrus' plate. Eating was probably the only thing aboard the Normandy she didn't like. It wasn't because of the paste – she'd gotten used to it years ago at the Fleet – but the fact that she was the only person who couldn't actually eat. Sure, she did 'eat' the paste, but one couldn't actually call it 'eating' in the traditional sense. She would just stick the tube into her mask, and it would feed her. It made her feel like a freak.
"Anyone seen her?" Tali heard Shepard asking again, and quiet murmurs of denial filled the air. "Shit," the Commander hissed as he collapsed onto his chair, tossing his head back.
"I think I saw her yesterday," Wrex admitted from Tali's right, opposite to Garrus. He dropped his small spoon into his share of the stew, and stared at it with disinterest.
"I've been looking for her for days now," Shepard snapped, glaring at Wrex. "Why in a hell didn't you say so?" he demanded, scowling at the large beast at Tali's side.
Wrex's eyes narrowed, returning the glare. "You didn't ask."
Shepard's jaw bulged as he grit his teeth in anger, his eyes now light with fire. He looked like he was going to explode right now, right there. The sound of his fist hitting the table was loud, and everyone flinched in surprise. The blow shook the table, the trays and plates on it, making his and Garrus' water spill over. He then leaned forward, towards Wrex in a silent scowl. "Even with as small brain as your species have, I'm sure you could have figured that out without me telling you that. Idiot."
A very uncomfortable silence spread over to the table, and Tali found herself twiddling the tube in her fingers again in both discomfort and very nervous anticipation. She carefully tried to take a quick glance at the krogan next to her to gauge his reaction, readying herself to separate the two if this came to blows. Her body tensed and her hands curled up in fists as she waited.
She sighed in relief as she realized she wouldn't have to. Wrex stared back at Shepard for a moment, then dropped his gaze, picked up his spoon, and resumed eating. Shepard leaned back, pushed himself away from the table and stood up. After taking a few steps towards his own cabin, he turned back to the table, staring at something at Tali's left. "Get that damn chair out of here," he growled, starting towards his quarters again.
The four remaining members of the team continued eating in uncomfortable silence, none of them looking at each other. Tali wondered if she should go to him, but pretty quickly realized that she wouldn't be much help,not in his current state of mind anyway. They would most likely just fight.
"He seems rather tense," Liara remarked from her corner of the table.
"Nothing escapes you, Doctor," Garrus muttered.
Their exchange ended there, and Tali's attention turned to John's words, the ones concerning the chair on her left. It had been Kai-
She stopped herself right there. She couldn't think of him now, this wasn't the time to start crying again. He was not coming back, no matter how much she wished it. He was gone forever. And now she was thinking about him! Damn it... Gritting her teeth, keeping her eyes closed, she felt a tear trickling down her cheek. She sniffled quietly, barely audibly, but in the silence of the table it was still very loud. Tali felt the eyes of the entire table turning to her, watching her. She felt angry. Didn't she have the right to mourn her friend! "What are you looking at?" she snapped, and the gazes of the others fell back to their plates.
And another moment of uncomfortable silence followed.
"S-should we take the..." Liara started hesitantly, perhaps trying to avoid inquiring anyone's wrath. "...the chair somewhere?"
Everyone stayed quiet, and after a moment, Liara's head drooped back down, clearly hurt that everyone had ignored her.
Tali slowly rose, and lifted the chair up. "I'll take it," she muttered quietly, feeling obliged to do so due to her childish outburst a second ago. It wasn't their fault she was upset, and she shouldn't treat her friends like that... Then she sighed wearily to herself; she was very good at making herself feel guilty about everything... Just a small thing she did wrong, and it could almost completely ruin her day...
Tali started towards the elevator, dragging the chair with her.
…
But where should she put it? Tali had taken the elevator down a floor, to the engineering deck, but still didn't know where to put the damn thing. To the drive core room? No, it would be in the way. To the CIC? Definitely no, it would be in the way even more... To the storage room? Nope, definitely in the way. Deciding to give up – at least for the moment – she put the chair down and sat on it. Leaning forward, resting her head on her palms, she sighed. They had saved the colony on Feros – well, some of it, anyway – killed countless rachni on Noveria, rescued Liara from an erupting volcano, and destroyed Saren's cloning facility. They had done the impossible countless times, but now this chair seemed to defeat her.
Well, the chair couldn't actually take all the credit of that... One human man however could. That bosh'tet...Why did he have to die? Why couldn't he have survived? Why had he activated that bomb?
Why wasn't he alive...? At that, she felt tears streaming down her face again, like so many days before. Why did he have to make her feel like this? Why couldn't he be here?
Tali remembered him setting off the bomb, forcing Shepard to choose between him and Ashley. Tali recalled a strong desire to hurt him for doing such a thing, for playing a damn hero... For leaving all of them to fight this fight... She sniffled, and bit her lip. She missed him very much, and he had only been gone for days. She hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye to him, had only managed a weak mutter of his name...
She sniffled again. Sometimes she wished he hadn't set off the bomb, that they would have tried to save them both and die. It would have made things a lot easier. It wasn't that she wanted to die – she very much didn't – but this current outcome wasn't all that desirable either. The Normandy just seemed so very empty without him.
Everything after that was unclear, much like on Feros... She remembered Kaidan's words 'Take care, Tali' - a reply to her muttering of his name -and that was about it. She remembered Garrus pulling her from the arm, bruising it under his tight grip. The bruise on it was similar to those on her leg and wrist, courtesy of certain events in John's quarters... Events. That sounded more than what had actually happened, but it still made her smile, if only briefly. Had it been too much? Had she been too... eager? She had jumped on him, for ancestors sake! Keelah... Suddenly a faint sense of embarrassment rose to her face, making it shine purple. Just one touch, and she'd gone crazy. It was embarrassing, she didn't want him to think that she was... easy. It wasn't like that! She wasn't! It was just the suit! It was because of this piece of fabric and tubes that she acted the way she had, not because she was... easy. Tali wasn't sure why she was even thinking about this, and the monologue in her head was starting to sound like self-assurance.
She wasn't easy. She was just...chained. Chained by her immune system, chained by her suit. And suddenly she had been set free by his touch, for nobody had ever touched her like that, not with such passion... Someone wanted her, saw her. Not as a friend, but as a woman. It was new and exciting, and she found herself enjoying the sensation very much, but she just didn't want to give out any false impressions... That wasn't what she was, who she was.
Suddenly she realized how disgusting this entire scene was.
She sat on Kaidan's chair and thought about her petty problems. What was wrong with her? Kaidan was dead, and he should occupy her thoughts, not these... stupid insecurities of hers. Shepard haunted her thoughts, not Kaidan, and it was wrong. It was all wrong.
She was abruptly pulled away from her somber thoughts by a loud clang. It was like something hard striking against metal, the sound echoing in the empty garage. Her head shot up, but she couldn't pinpoint the noise's location. She heard the voice again, and realized that it was coming from inside the Mako. She got up and started towards the large vehicle, curious to find out the source of this racket. It had torn her away from her daydreams, and Tali at least wished to know what it was. She climbed on top of the large vehicle and due to some sudden burst of idiotry glanced down, immediately regretting doing so. Her heart jumped to her throat as she again realized height of the Mako, and how she never had gotten used to high places. She measured the distance to the floor with her eyes, and felt terror creeping down her spine. Swallowing her fears, she turned to the hatch and reached for it. She wrapped her fingers around the handle, turned it, and pulled. The round scuttle opened with a soft creek, revealing the dark interior. Tali carefully lowered herself through it, and entered the Mako.
The interior was very dark, almost pitch black, and Tali had to activate her suit's night vision feature to see anything. And she definitely saw something.
"Keelah," she muttered, and suddenly was blinded by light. The lights of the Mako enhanced by her suit's light amplifier was too much for her eyes, and she squeezed them shut instinctively."Keelah!"she repeated herself, this time yelling. Slightly panicking by the sudden pain in her eyes, her left hand fumbled for the button to shut the night vision off, while her right reflexively tried to cover her eyes. As her hand found the button, the darkness returned.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Chief Williams standing before her, her haggard face looking worried. "Jesus Tali! Whatta hell are you sneaking around here for?"
Tali's eyes blinked rapidly as they tried their best to adapt to these violent changes of brightness, and her sight blurred as they watered. "I heard sounds coming from here," she muttered, her head throbbing, her eyes still hurting "I didn't mean to frighten you..."
"Yeah," Williams said with a sigh, sitting down on a bench right behind her. It was probably where she had sat when Tali had dropped in. "Thought it was Shepard or someone, and that it would be easier for them if I turned the lights on," Williams explained, her soldiery bearing and posture all but gone. "Sorry," she added apologetically.
"I think I'll survive," Tali said cheerfully, faking a smile. Williams glanced up at her and flashed a tired one of her own. Now Tali noticed how horrible she looked; her eyes were red-rimmed with large black circles surrounding them; her skin was so pale that it made her look more like a quarian than a human, and her cheekbones protruded from under her shallow skin, making her look like a living dead. "Keelah," she muttered again, wondering if she had spent all these days in here. It definitely seemed like that, considering how she looked. Tali had always thought that Chief Williams was rather beautiful, even if she didn't make it easy to see, for she never wore make-up and always had her hair tied in a simple ponytail. Tali couldn't sometimes understand it. Quarian women – even soldiers – were always very feminine. They couldn't use make-up to make themselves look more presentable, so they used the suits. Women could use fabrics to emulate hair, to bring out or accentuate the features of their bodies, and most importantly; make themselves look unique. It would be quite hard to differentiate individuals if everyone looked the same, after all, so they personalized their suits in ways they wished to. Often these personalizations were just as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing as any outfit worn by any other race.
But Williams' beauty was now even harder to see than before. "John is looking for you," Tali said, trying to start from somewhere.
Ashley's head pop up and she blinked, like not knowing who she meant at first. "You mean Shepard?" She gave Tali a strange look, as if it was strange to call him by his first name.
"Yes."
After staring for a second, Williams' head drooped back down.
"Have you sit here all this time, Chief Williams?" Tali continued when it became clear that Ashley wasn't going to answer.
"I told you to call me Ash, Tali," Williams snapped, glaring at Tali from under her brow.
Feeling quite flustered at her outburst, Tali's fingers immediately began fidgeting nervously against each other like they always did. Her gaze dropped slightly, and she bit her lower lip in discomfort. Did it feel like this to others when they talked to her and she lost her temper? She'd hate to think so. "Sorry."
Williams sighed quietly, and gave Tali a weary look. "No... I'm sorry," she said quietly, and Tali smiled at her gently. Williams then gestured her to sit down at her opposite, causing Tali to turn over and see the bench behind her. She quickly closed the distance between it and herself, then carefully sat down on it, trying her best not to make any noise, fearing that it might agitate or bother Ashley even further. "And I don't remember Tali..."
Tali assumed she meant that as an answer for her question, so Tali smiled at her sympathetically. "Do you want to talk?" she asked sincerely.
Ashley immediately turned away from Tali, her face distorted. "Talking doesn't help," she muttered weakly, with a shaky voice.
"I know."
Both sat silently for a moment, Tali hearing Ashley's wavery sigh. "Why didn't he choose Kaidan?" Ashley asked, Tali unsure whether it was directed at her or simply rhetorical. "Why did he have to choose me?"
Tali watched helplessly as her comrade fought against the tears. She felt a similar sensation creeping out from the center of her being, bursting out through her eyes as tears as well. Tali definitely knew how she felt, yet didn't. She had lost a friend as well, true, but she wasn't the reason he was dead. What would she feel if something like that happened, if someone saved her and left someone else to die in return? What would she feel? Guilt, the most horrible guilt. She would most likely feel like ending her life, and that thought brought up a disturbing idea; Tali wondered if Williams had had such intentions as well. Her eyes started to scan the interior, trying to find any instruments capable of aiding Ashley in such a deed. The only weapon she noticed was the pistol in Williams' cargo pants' pocket. Tali could imagine her holding the gun to her temple, pondering whether or not she should pull the trigger and end it all.
If she had, then Tali was happy with the decision she had made. The last thing they needed was someone else dying.
She got up from her seat and walked to Ashley, who still kept her head turned away, avoiding Tali's gaze. Tali knelt down at the floor before her, and carefully wrapped her arms around her. Williams didn't protest, but neither did she hug her back. She just sat rigidly at her spot, as if oblivious to Tali's touch. But after a moment, Williams acknowledged her by laying her head down on Tali's shoulder.
Neither spoke, but Tali heard her quietly sniffling. Her sniffs turned to sobs, and Williams wrapped her arms around Tali as well. They hugged each other for who knows how long, when Williams pulled away, not bothering to wipe away her tears. She held Tali's hands in hers, and smiled at her. "I haven't heard anyone call Shepard by his first name..." she said thoughtfully. "I guess that means you and him are a thing?"
"I..." Tali started, breaking eye-contact. "You... you didn't know?"
"I'm just glad someone's happy," Williams said raspingly.
Tali's head surged back up, and they exchanged smiles.
Then they hugged again.