It was like walking with a second shadow; wherever Niali ventured to on the ship, Kaidan Alenko was half a step behind her. He said very little but she could feel his eyes burning into her with unspoken questions. Even if he had mustered the wherewithal to ask them, she doubted she would be able to provide him with any answers. There were things she was reluctant to admit and even more that she still struggled to understand. Time travel was beyond her scope of knowledge, even for an ambitious scientist determined to unearth the secrets of the universe.
Based on the calculations that she had been able to do in her head, it shouldn't have been possible and yet... she had deduced that this was neither a dream nor a prank. The people around her were not clones or holograms. They were as solid and as real as she was. It was probable that she was dead and this was some strange hallucination that her oxygen starved brain had thrown together in a desperate attempt to fill in the missing pieces of her childhood fantasies.
She had idolized a woman she had never met, after all. All she had left of Jane Shepard were stories told to her by her mother. She had created an image of her father (for lack of a better term) in her head but it paled in comparison to the real thing. Or, what she could only assume was the real thing. This Commander Shepard was as real as she could be, whether she was a figment of Niali's dying imagination or not.
It was a lot to process and she sat at the communal dining table with her hands clasped in front of her and her shoulders slumped. A shower and change of clothes were supposed to make her feel better, but all it did was remind her how out of place she was, even on a ship crawling with aliens. All of which cast her curious glances as they passed by, but none of them stopped to make small talk and she sighed in defeat while passing a hand over her head and letting it move to rest against the side of her neck.
Working her fingertips against the sore muscles there, her thoughts strayed to her mother β her real mother. Niali could only imagine the look on her face when the report filtered through that her daughter's ship had been blown to pieces and the crew killed or in her case, missing. Having gone missing was worse than being confirmed dead and she drummed her fingertips against the table in an absent rhythm. She would never be able to get a message to her and that triggered another thought that had her hand growing still and her head lifting suddenly. Dark eyes widened in alarm and she swallowed down the bile rising in her throat. How would she get back and more importantly, could she even get back?
Civilization had come a long way but as far as she knew, skipping through time was not as simple as passing through a mass relay and these relays were still fully functional. Unless she could find a dormant one that was no longer in commission... But even then, the chances that she could get back to the same point in time were slim and it was more likely that she would be thrown into a wormhole and lost forever.
All of these troubled thoughts were making her head hurt and she buried her face in her hands and closed her eyes. This was a mess and she wasn't even sure that she was on the right path. It was possible that she had miscalculated, but she had run those damn numbers so many times for there to be an error. She had spent nearly a decade breaking down the components of the relays and she knew them like the back of her own hand. She could have built one in her sleep for all the good it would've done her. There was so much blood on her hands that she wouldn't be surprised if they eventually changed color from blue to red.
She should've just asked the commander to hand her over to the authorities when they reached the Citadel and save herself the trouble of trying to help the disoriented asari. Niali didn't deserve help and she especially didn't deserve help from Shepard.
"Tired?" His voice put an abrupt end to her brooding and Niali dragged her hands down her face as she lifted her head to look at him. Kaidan dropped down into the seat across from her and pushed a plate in her direction.
"Just... thinking," she mumbled, pulling the plate closer and scrunching her nose as she inspected the meal. It was nothing to write home about and it smelled like paste, but she couldn't remember the last time she had eaten.
"Want to talk about it?" His offer took her by surprise and she gave a few deliberate blinks to illustrate her shock. It was the most he had said to her in several hours and she quickly looked away. "You don't have to. But sometimes it can be good toβ"
"No, I appreciate the offer, Major. I really do," she cut him off quickly and pushed the lump of food around as her stomach churned. "I was just thinking about the rest of my crew and how it's my fault that they're all... gone."
Kaidan was quiet for a moment and she wanted to shrink under his intense stare. "Losing people is never easy," he said finally. "Being the one that made the call is even worse. But it gets a little easier to deal with in time."
That was less comforting than she had hoped it to be and the asari sighed deeply. "I guess so." What else was she supposed to say? He had been kind enough to hear her out once and she doubted that he would care enough to listen to her tales of woe. He was her keeper, not her therapist. Nothing he said would be enough to erase the damage she had caused by being overzealous. Had her mother been there, she would have smoothed a hand over her head and laughed, reminding her that was a Shepard, after all. Between her parents, her obsession with discovering the unknown and her fearless determination were to be expected. However, it was still no excuse for allowing others to suffer the consequences of her actions.
"We should reach the Citadel by tomorrow morning," Kaidan added. "If any of your crew did survive and were picked up, you'll have a shot at reconnecting with them there." She wished that she shared even a small fraction of his optimism and Niali tried at a smile of gratitude, but it fell short.
"I think that maybe I'll try to get some rest until then. Thank you, Major." Abandoning her untouched meal, she rose to her feet slowly and nodded her head once in parting. Turning on her heel, she walked the short distance to the crew quarters before he could respond and crawled her way onto an empty bunk. The sooner she closed her eyes to sleep, the sooner she might wake up back in her own bed and be out this nightmare for good.
