Authors Note: I'm late to the Mass Effect Fan Club. This is my view on what could've happened after ME3. I made Shepard 3 years younger in this story.
She was a nervous wreck, and when she's nervous, she couldn't help but start wringing her hands.
She thought back to the moment. A moment that seemed like a lifetime ago already, when in reality has only been a couple of minutes. The moment that seemed like the last time they will ever see each other. The sheer pain at the memory only made her wringing worse.
Come back to me.
She repeated this thought over and over until it felt like the only words she knew, and again his words prior to her plea kept coming back to her. Soft, loving...pleading. She let a small tear fall from her luminescent eyes, hidden from the view of the universe by her purple visor.
Go back to Rannoch, build yourself a home.
She remembered the lack of an answer from him when she reached out her arm, hoping against hope that he would change his mind and leave with her. But she knew that wasn't John Shepard. He would never leave a task unfinished and, as much as the thought pained her, would never make a promise he couldn't keep.
No! He has to come back, Rannoch would never be a home without him! I already lost him once, I almost lost him again more times than I can count! I can't actually lose him again, not after all we've been through. Ancestors, please hear me...and protect him!
She had been leaning against her turian friend as she limped on. He was her brother, the one who stuck by her and Shepard longer than any other person in the galaxy, the C-Sec officer turned vigilante turned war hero, Garrus Vakarian.
He was battered and bloodied as much, if not more, as she was. His armor glowed from burn marks and his helmet was peeled away after the cargo bay doors were closed. Blue blood dripped from the corner of his mouth and eye. Together, they both grunted as they were led to the Normandy's medbay. In between her own grunts, she must have let out a small whimper, because Garrus started to rub her shoulder, trying to put in as much comfort in as he could possible.
"Shh...shh, he'll be alright," he whispered, trying to console her as one would with a younger sibling. After all, the two were like siblings. "He'll be okay, I'm sure."
"How?" She quietly sobbed, "how can you be so sure?"
"Are you kidding?" His mandibles twitched in pain, "we're talking about the one and only Commander Shepard here!" He paused to give another grunt. "Two-time galaxy saver...and he's doing it again a third time!"
She let her other eye release a trickle of salted water, "But we were there with him those times, Garrus! He's all alone now!"
She sniffled as she remembered him dashing off toward the battlefield away from her, looking all alone, helpless, relying on nothing but the armor on his back and the gun in his hands. She buried herself in Garrus's arms, letting a sob wrack her body.
"I know..." Garrus soothed, "but I like to think that he isn't alone, that all of us are in his heart, he's thinking of us next to him as he runs off to save all our asses...I bet Thane and Mordin are with him, as well...They would be proud."
She hugged Garrus tighter, "Keelah, I'm just so worried."
"Yeah...so am I."
She started to cough, and the two friends found themselves finally making it to the medbay.
Doctor Chakwas looked up, Tali knew she returned to the Normandy shortly after attending to other emergency medical business on the planet. That was when the Normandy crew stopped to catch their breaths and prepare for the final stretch to the beam. She was probably reluctant to leave, of course, leaving what seemed like billions of dying soldiers to other medical staff.
But it seemed all of those thoughts dropped once the Doctor laid eyes on her. She knew the old doctor left because she expected the Normandy to have wounded, but she could tell from the look in her eyes that she was one of the last few Chakwas wanted to see injured.
"Disengagement and Evacuation in 3...2...1..."
Joker counted down over the intercom and the shift of movement told the crew that the Normandy was going into space. Clearly it was no easy task, as Joker was dodging other ships during the battle and the shockwaves coming from their guns didn't help.
"Oh dear, bring her over here." Chakwas motioned to a bed nearest to her. She struggled to keep the worry out of her voice and instead tried to lace it with a soothing tone, as a mother would. "Lay her down carefully." Garrus obliged and picked up Tali. She refused to put her arms around his neck, something she would only reserve for her John, doing so to anyone other than him would be pretty awkward for her. So she settled by resting her helmeted head in his shoulder and her gloved hands in her lap until Garrus set her down onto the bed. The sheets were pulled tight so they wouldn't get in the way.
"I'll bring myself back, but right now I have duties to do," Garrus said forcefully. He may have been terribly injured, but his endurance was something to be commended. Blueish blood may have coated his armor, but as Shepard's chosen second in command, he seemed determined to make sure the crew was safe.
Chakwas started to protest Garrus's departure but he had already left the room. She was quick to yell after him, "Be back ASAP!"
The old doctor then turned her attention to the young quarian Admiral and began searching over her, seeing multiple suit ruptures and red blood oozing from the skin-tight rubber. Some of the blood had already soaked into the tattered purple cloth wrappings, turning it into a sickly maroon. Shrapnel had also been embedded into her skin in some of the ruptures, quivering with every cough that Tali made. Chakwas was finally showing signs of fear, and it made Tali slightly more uncomfortable.
The doctor took a scan of Tali's body underneath the suit, red glowed where infections started and dark cobalt where her body wasn't yet touched. It seemed like she was littered with crawling red ants, growing an infected colony within her body. Chakwas then checked the surface of her suit and felt hard indents. Tali's automated suit systems had already begun locking down sections to prevent any surface infections. Her other suit systems were also hard at work, dispensing all its antibiotics and using up the last of the medi-gel reserves.
"Good..." The doctor simply said. She next held a tool up to Tali's head, where red glowed and numbers appeared. Chakwas seemed alarmed as the number had three digits, but Tali quickly activated the cooling system within her helmet, encasing her head with sudden cold, and the doctor relaxed as the numbers slowly crossed the bridge to two digits, still threatening to return to the other side. Tali guessed that she should be alright, but only should.
"Thanks for doing a part of my job, dear, I appreciate it," Chakwas joked, trying to lighten the mood. Tali sneezed with a small laugh.
"Bless you," the older woman replied warmly. She turned away to look for more medical supplies on the shelves.
Tali raised an eyebrow, one eye wider than the other. She heard John say the same phrase before to her whenever she got sick and had asked why, only to have his answer be that he himself didn't know other than it was a human tradition. She couldn't tell if she made a suitable questioning look through her mask, but it did not matter for the old doctor answered her without even turning around.
"Human phrase, it is sometimes believed that the soul escapes through the nose when someone sneezes, so others say, 'bless you,' to keep the devil from capturing it...Another belief was that the heart stops momentarily, so saying the phrase welcomes the person back to life." Doctor Chakwas paused as she found what she was looking for, tossing it into the medkit next to her. She then picked it up and turned back around again towards her patient.
"But now, we generally say it just to be nice."
Tali smiled weakly. "The only thing that's captured my soul is John." Her mind wrapped in happy memories as she thumbed a certain rock in her pouch.
"Makes sense, that man is what we humans might say, 'devilishly handsome.'"
Tali's ribs hurt from her laugh and Chakwas smiled. Tali thought it was odd, to be having a lighthearted conversation with the old doctor as if it was any regular day while the galaxy was at war on the planet below them, where guns blazed and bodies fell, never to emit another beautiful song of laughter, instead, horror was permanently scarred on their cold, empty faces.
"I hear some even call him, 'the devil of the battlefield.'"
The comment reminded her where Shepard was now, and the promise he didn't make, the words he said to prepare her to be separated from him for the rest of her life. Her mind burned with worry, "John..." Then her mind burned with absolute terror. "John!"
Chakwas was at her side in an instant to stop her from getting out of bed. "Hey, hey, hey!" She exclaimed. She had started to wheel the bed over to the recently installed decontamination chamber in front of the A.I. core room, only to pause to look Tali in the eyes with steel in her irises.
"He'll be okay, but right now I need you to slow down your breathing and calm down, if you keep stressing then you're only going to make things worse for yourself."
"I can't, he's in danger! You don't understand, I might not ever see him again!"
"Tali, calm down! That's a doctor's order!" Chakwas roared.
Tali gasped at the doctor's sudden surge of anger. Chakwas took notice of this and she sagged like a deflated balloon. "I'm sorry, but I need you to remain calm, you're going to lose a lot of blood if you don't."
Tali's tears returned to replenish her dried cheeks. "But John," she started as her bed crossed the threshold into the decontamination chamber, already the room had started its cleaning protocols.
"He said to return to my homeworld, to build myself a home...he said it like he was going to die!"
The older woman cursed under her breath. "I'm going to kill him myself."
If he comes back. Tali sadly finished in thought.
Doctor Chakwas prepped Tali for cleaning. She started by taking off the bloodied purple hood and cloth wrappings and hooking an oxygen tube to the port underneath Tali's helmet. Then she put an oxygen mask over her own face to prevent her germs from making contact with the injured patient.
Next, she snapped on two blue latex gloves and revealed a syringe with some fluid inside with a needle protruding from the other end. Tali rolled her arm over as in second nature, gasping in pain from the action. This would be perhaps the billionth time she's received an injection of some sort, but after all the wounds she received from battle and how sore her body felt, she wasn't too thrilled about more metal objects entering her body.
Chakwas found the port made for injections, and slid the needle into her arm, pushing the odd fluid into her body. Tali immediately felt numb. She couldn't feel anything, not even the needle that quickly left her.
"That should both lessen the blood loss and numb the pressure," Chakwas explained, turning around and latching a bag of fluid into her system, "and this should make sure that you are gaining rather than losing blood."
She grabbed another needle and held it up for Tali to inspect, "I'm sorry Tali, but I'm going to have to give you a mild sedative, should only make you sleep for an hour, don't worry, it's perfectly compatible with the numbing shot."
Tali wasn't at all worried about the sedative, she had complete trust in the older woman. Instead, she feared for the man she loves, knowing that no one was there to help him, no one to protect his back with shotgun fire, knowing that she wasn't there to pick him up if he fell down. Not wanting to be aware of her worries, Tali looked at the needle.
"Knock me out, Doc."
With that, the old doctor poked the port on her neck and darkness washed over Tali's vision like the gentle lapping of waves on the shores of Rannoch.
Somewhere on the Citadel, the man she wanted to share those shores with struggled to launch the Crucible to save all life from the destruction of Harbinger and his family of uninvited reapers.