As soon as they were in the elevator, Shepard pushed the button to take them up to the Loft, instead of to wherever the armory had been moved. The Alliance had really reworked things; Tali could only hope they showed more intelligence than Cerberus and put the loadout stations back in the cargo bay.
"Admiral?" Shepard asked, her grin somewhat subdued.
Tali opened her mouth then sighed. "It's mostly a formality. Like you said—geth expert." This close, she could see the stress lines etching Shepard's features, the faint dark circles under her eyes…and did her face look a bit thinner? Or was that just memory playing tricks?
Tali looked away from her guiltily. "I…Keelah, Shepard. I'm so sorry…about Earth and…this." She waved vaguely to indicate the mess with the geth.
"It's been rough," Shepard allowed. "How did this happen?"
To Tali's relief there was no accusation in Shepard's tone, just a need for information she might not have time to solicit once things started happening in earnest.
"I…" Tali swallowed hard. "It was so weird. I always thought I'd agree with Gerrel about the geth and retaking the homeworld. But after working with Legion…I thought there might be some other way. Koris agreed with me—you remember Gerrel called him a geth apologist."
Shepard nodded. "So…outvoted by a narrow margin?"
It was nice that Shepard thought well of her in spite of thinking poorly of the others. "I'm an Admiral. People look to me for guidance." Which still made her snort wryly. She didn't feel much like a wise leader. "Public disagreement would divide the Fleet."
"I get that," Shepard answered somberly.
'Getting' something wasn't the same as approving. However, Shepard moved off the topic before Tali could experience another bout of gnawing conscience. Part of her had felt that maybe division of the Fleet to stall a bad idea would be useful…but there had been so many unknowns. And she didn't have an actual fleet under her jurisdiction; she had simply assumed her father's responsibilities…or some of them.
"So, how're you doing?" Shepard's expression melted into something less professional.
"I'm fine...no, I'm not fine. Seventeen million lives are riding on me and I don't know if I can save them." And, in the back of her mind, she'd finally begun to appreciate the burden Shepard had been carrying for so long—and in silence. Sometimes it took experiencing pain to understand that pain in others, so to speak. It was part of the reason she wanted to give Shepard a big hug and tell her that things would be okay.
"You're doing everything you can to fix this." Which was Shepard's way of saying she didn't like how things had turned out, but she wasn't going to let that be a stumbling block or a wedge.
Tali sighed. "You know…Xen's ideas? The ones that made retaking the homeworld such a tempting thing? It's all based on my father's work. The stuff we didn't wreck or purge. Everyone who's died so far, that's—"
"That's not your fault," Shepard said firmly. "No one here is dying because of you. They're dying because of decisions made by the leadership as an overarching entity, not because of any one individual."
It took Tali a few minutes to nod that she understood. She glanced back at Shepard when a five-fingered hand appeared hesitantly on her shoulder. Shepard was always uncomfortable with physical indications of affection past the brief gestures one could expect between soldiers. "You know, I think I understand you a bit better since joining the Admiralty Board," Tali said softly.
"Here I thought I was easy: kill Reapers. Eat ribs. Fight Cerberus."
Tali gave an involuntary bark of laughter as Shepard retracted her hand. "You're horrible."
Shepard grinned and nodded, her expression full of mock guilt over being so 'horrible.'
But Tali recognized the evasion, something she might not have done before she began to feel the weight of her position bearing down on her. So she abandoned her intention to tell Shepard what it was she understood. The feeling of people looking to her for guidance and having to fill that need even when she felt she could use a little herself; the doubt that she had to push through in order to act, second-guessing her own decisions and dealing with the fallout of bad ones knowing there was only one person responsible when things failed; the cold knowledge that her decisions could end in the deaths of others. Many deaths.
She knew she was only touching the tip of the iceberg, just getting a brief taste of the burden a friend had been carrying but which she herself had never appreciated in full. Shepard didn't need to be reminded of all this, or any of it, and certainly didn't need to hear it put into such concrete terms. It would be demoralizing at best.
That was something else she'd learned from Shepard: when you didn't know how to help, sometimes you had to ask yourself what you would want and hope that it would work with someone else. And she'd been with Shepard long enough to know that sometimes one just had to push.
"Shepard…" Tali swallowed. She hesitantly stepped up to Shepard, studying the pale features and bright eyes. More particularly, she once again took in the signs of stress and tension. There was only one thing to do: she put her arms around the other woman and pulled Shepard closer, patting her back reassuringly. "It's going to be okay. We can do this."
Shepard gave a soft sound that might have been wry appreciation of the gesture—or, rather, the intent of the gesture. Nevertheless, she didn't try to extricate herself. Rather, she wrapped her arms around Tali in a way Tali imagined a big sister might do for a distressed younger sibling. "That's the spirit."
Or it would have been had Shepard been the one feeling as comforted as Tali did when she stepped back.