As he watched the thick metal door slide open, Shepard's arm jerked to his right to shove the syringe under the small pillow that sat beside him.
The movement was smooth, and he did not let how frantic he felt show on the rest of his body or his face, but even so it was too late.
Just as he had predicted, Tali walked through the doorway, stride casual, before she shifted somewhat, a subtle change in her body language telling him what he already knew.
She saw it. She did.
He stared at her for a bit as he tried to reckon with that, but he pulled himself out of it, pushing himself to his feet.
"Hey, Tali." He greeted her, trying his hardest to keep the previous anguish out of his voice with a bit of put-on evenness.
She took a touch longer to respond than she normally would, and her voice was quiet and unsteady when she did.
"Hey."
Her stance was a little cautious, a little tense, head lightly tilted in the question she did not seem sure about asking.
She saw it. Only hope now is that she's not feeling confrontational.
"What are you doing up here, love? Is something wrong?" he tried to divert them both from the matter at hand.
"No, n-nothing. My shift just got done, so…" she trailed off.
"Guess it's nice for you to finally have some time off now that you have your little helpers. What's it like having Ken and Gabby back?"
"Mostly the same as it was. Ken is as insufferable as he always was, and Gabby does her very best to keep him in line, but…they're skilled engineers, and I'm glad to have them here."
"Well, good. Had to pull a few strings with my Spectre connections to get them here, you know." He said with a weak little smirk.
She did not seem to match it at all, but she did respond to the quip, wanting to convince herself that this was a situation in which banter was possible.
"I'm glad that position finally did some good for you. But if you heard half the jokes Ken makes about you, you might wish you hadn't pulled those strings at all."
Her voice lacked much of the fire it usually carried when they had their little verbal sparring matches. The words were empty, an act of theatre for both their sakes.
He didn't entirely know how to respond, didn't really feel up to responding. Both of them knew that something was wrong, and trying to put on a face for her made him uncomfortable. He had not had to do that for so long, not around anyone and especially not around her, but this was a strange case, an exception he thought he needed to make.
He was about to excuse himself for some duty that either didn't need doing or could wait until later, wanting to run, but she spoke before he could, voice both careful and caring.
"I…wanted to come see you. To talk to you…a-about today."
He tensed a little. He should have known she wouldn't buy the put-on stoic mask he had tried to wear after the loss of Thessia. She knew him far too well by now to be blind to how the defeat had shaken him, apart from which wearing such a mask was not something he was used to doing anymore.
"What about today?" he responded, trying to keep calm.
Her fingers met at her waist to start in their usual nervous dance, and she looked down at them, as though to oversee it.
"You know what I mean. I know how hard a loss like this is on you…are you doing alright?" Now the previous act was done, and her concern was not concealed any longer.
"I have to be. And yeah, it was hard, losing like that…but it's done now, and I gotta carry on. It is folly for a soldier to let past defeats keep him from future victories." He recited with a slight shift to his accent and cadence, a half-impersonation of the prothean's booming voice.
"You talked to Javik, I see."
"Figured it was a good idea. Insulting as it sounds, he has a lot of experience with handling defeat. He spent his whole life fighting the Reapers, and lost a lot more than he won, so I asked him a little about finding solace in the face of that. It…helped me. Thessia was a great defeat, but all I can do is suck it up and move on to the next fight."
He hoped it would ease her worries, hoped it carried the false certitude he wished to convey, but it did not. They both knew that.
She closed the slight distance that had separated them to stand close.
"It's just…I know you tried to hide it, but it looked like today really hurt you…I don't like seeing you this way, John, and I don't want you to feel like you need to keep it from me, because you don't. I'm here…so do you want to talk about it?" she asked softly.
He attempted to deflect her words.
"I already talked. To Javik."
"Do you want to talk to me?" she pressed.
"Not about this, because I don't need to. I'm fine, Tali. I'm over it already." His tone was a little sharp, hoping to get her to ease off without truly sounding upset with her.
Her eyes fell from his, then, looking back down at her hands for a long moment as the silence lingered between them, tense and uneasy. Once it all reached its breaking point, she straightened her shoulders, drew in a little breath, and rose her own eyes back up to his face, silvery stars piercing easily through the flimsy shield he'd thrown back up.
"I don't believe you."
Her voice was a little pointed, a little irritated at his stubbornness, but mostly it was just concerned, wavering slightly at the worry she felt for him. The emotion could be heard in her tone just as easily as it always could, earnest as she was, and it cut him like a knife.
It hit him quite hard. He could feel his resolve falter under her caring assault, knowing then that if he didn't distance himself from the situation, he would fall.
He grit his teeth to hold back the tide, and reached out a little stiffly to rest a hand on her upper arm.
He spoke with the last of the shallow guile he could muster.
"Look, I appreciate your concern for me, love. I do. But it's just not needed here. I'm fine." He punctuated his words with a nod and a small rub of her arm through the black padding of her suit.
"I'll see you later, right now I need to head down to the CIC and discuss some things with Traynor."
He turned a little to his left, tearing his eyes away from hers despite how part of him raged against it. He took a few small steps away in an attempt to project a casual, yet definitive demeanor. He hoped this would be the end of it.
It would not.
He was a few steps from the door when he heard her rapidly close in on him, stride long and purposeful.
He staggered forward a step when she caught him, arms wrapping tightly around his midsection and head pressing into his back, nuzzling a little at one of his shoulder blades before she spoke, voice dripping with even more worry than it had before.
"Please." She begged with another squeeze of her arms. "Please don't…"
The words made his eyes sting and his lip quiver, the sadness and confusion and pleading she felt being so clear to him.
"I…I can't." he breathed.
"You can. You have, just like I have with you…y-you haven't hidden yourself from me like this since…since we first said what we felt for each other. You opened up to me then and all the other times after that because I wanted to ease your pain, and it helped! You said it did! Unless…were you lying to me? All this time?" Now she sounded hurt, and a little guilt struck him.
He tensed in her embrace, bringing up a hand to hold one of her wrists.
"No, Tali. No. Every time I needed you, you were there, and it did help me. Please don't ever doubt that."
"How can I not, John? How can I not when you won't tell me about this? What's so different about now compared to before?" she pleaded.
"Doesn't matter what's different about it. You can't help me with this, and you shouldn't have to." He said sharply.
"But I want to. And…i-if I can't help you with this pain, then I at least want to share it with you."
His brow furrowed a little.
"That makes no sense."
"I'm in love. Do you really expect logic out of me?"
He stopped to smile a little, just as he always did when she said those words to him in that lovely honest way, but he caught himself and brought it back down to a small scowl she could not see, trying his last avenue of defense.
"I'm not so sure that applies just now. You…you should go, Tali. I don't think I'm the person you love right now. I will be. Soon, I hope…I just need you to give me some time." He attempted, glancing over a shoulder down at her veiled head.
He felt her pull her head off of his back enough to look up at him, and saw confusion in the shiny eyes that met his.
"Who is it you think I love, John?"
"Someone I'm not right now. Someone who isn't so pathetic and despondent. A better man, and stronger…a man a little more like the hero I'm supposed to be." He explained, somewhat weakly.
She seemed to process his words for a very long time, and in that time the only thing he could hear was his heart thudding in his ears and the soft noise of their breathing.
Eventually, though, she spoke in an odd tone, sharp yet with a caring undercurrent.
"That's stupid."
Despite himself, and the nature of the situation, he let slip a weak laugh at that. He stifled it immediately, but still a little smile lingered on his lips as he responded.
"Why's that stupid?"
"It's stupid because it's wrong. You're not two people in one body, John, no matter what you think; you're one person. And you think I only love the part of you that's a hero? Well…you're wrong about that, too. I had a crush on 'Commander Shepard the Hero', along with half the female population of the galaxy. A silly girlish infatuation that didn't mean anything. That never could have meant anything. What's there to love about a hero on his own? A hero is too perfect, and too far above all of the things normal people go through to really connect with."
Her voice did not shake or waver like it might normally have done. It was clear to him that she had thought about this before, and that she believed every word she said.
She paused for a little, as if waiting for him to say something, but he didn't, so she continued.
"But you're not that. You're not perfect, and you're not just a hero. And that's a good thing. I-I only started to really love you once I learned more about who you were underneath the mask you wore; a man who wanted to do everything alone, who wanted to become more than he was or ever could be, a man who was so stubborn as to be annoying sometimes…b-but also a sensitive man, one who truly cared about those around him and what he was fighting for, one who was smart and funny and passionate and completely blind to it…the sort of man who could love me even in spite of the mask that I wore."
Her words burned with passion and conviction and adoration, and he wanted to say something, then, but he found he couldn't, his mouth too dry and his throat too tight, which was all to the good, since it was clear she had yet more to say.
"And that…that doesn't mean I don't love you for your heroics, because I do. You're so selfless, and you fight with everything you have, every day, for everyone, for people and places you'll never know. You do what's right, even when it's hard…you've taken the hopes of a galaxy on as your own personal burden, and born it with more strength than I've ever seen in a person. You're a hero, John; you are, but it's not all that you are, not who you are."
She drew in a deep breath, then, and reached up to his shoulders to turn him around to face her, bringing her hands higher to rest lightly on his cheeks, thumbs brushing away the small tears he hadn't known he'd shed.
"Who you are is you. And that's the man I love. You. All of you. Not some of you, not most of you…All. At your highest and your lowest, when you win and when you lose. I loved you when you destroyed the Collectors once and for all…and I love you now, maybe more than I ever have." She finished at last, voice warm and full of conviction but also a little shaky in the face of the tears he knew she was now shedding.
He was overwhelmed by a great many emotions in that moment.
First and foremost was of course how touched he was at her words, how much he wanted to say back, how much he wanted to say that he felt exactly the same about her. But also inadequacy, a sense that he had not done anything to earn a love this deep and probably never could, a touch of guilt at forcing her to worry so for him, a good deal of self-loathing at being so stupid as to push her away like this and try to handle it all alone when this exact thing had happened before, and a dozen others he could not name if he tried.
He reached his hands up to rest them lightly on her wrists, pressing on her own to cup his face more tightly. He closed his eyes for a moment, basking in the sheer warmth she exuded, the love she felt for him radiating off of her like sunshine, and the love he felt for her in return but could not articulate just now.
A few more teardrops streaked hotly down his face, but she wiped them away before they could get very far, thumbs rubbing in soothing circles when there were none to occupy them.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, he slid his eyes open and looked into her own. There was a searching, expectant look to them, so he spoke, voice thick and words entirely inequal to the passionate outpouring she had just gifted him with.
"I…thank you, love. For that, for everything, just…thank you…I'm sorry, I don't have any words besides those."
He saw her glimmering eyes narrow up into what he knew signified a smile.
"It's alright. It's enough." She assured him emphatically.
Some strange insecurity seized him, and he knew the question he asked was stupid, its answer obvious, but he asked it anyway.
"Did…did you really mean all you said?" he asked weakly.
"Yes, John…Every word of it."
She said warmly, before she gave a light scoff.
"You know me, I'm not spontaneous, o-or good at…talking. If I can pull off a speech like that, then you know it's something I really believe in. Something I've thought about."
Her eyes fell from his, glued to his chest.
"I…I only wish I had shown it to you before, i-instead of just thinking about it."
Her tone was almost guilty, so he brought down one of her hands from his face to press a kiss to the top of it. She gave a low purr in her throat in response.
"None of this is your fault. None of it. And you have shown me, more times than I can count…I'm just a hopeless idiot."
She rose her eyes back up to gaze into his, a little playful light shining in them.
"Only sometimes."
His shoulders shook then in a laugh which seemed to lessen the weight on his soul so much more than he thought it would.
Once they settled, he met her quip in a way that would have been unthinkable to him just one short hour ago.
"Well, on the slim chance that you're also a hopeless idiot…you know I feel that way about you too, right? That I love you for all that you are?" he said with an odd blend of sincerity and amusement.
She moved in to lean her head on his shoulder.
"Mm. I know." She cooed softly. "Unlike you, though, I don't really have a heroic component to love."
He looked down at her with a little incredulity.
"Oh, please. One of us selling ourselves short is enough, Tali. You've been right beside me for everything they call me a hero for. So have the others."
"Well…you were the hero among a group of heroes." She deflected.
"I'll accept that title, as long as you agree to count yourself as a member of that group." He pressed.
"Alright. You win."
She surrendered playfully, before her demeanor shifted to be a little more serious.
"Now please talk to me, John." She said softly.
His own expression shifted to match hers.
"Well, if I'm honest, you already guessed the reason for why I was feeling the way I was. And after what you said…I feel a lot better already."
"I still want answers."
"And you'll have them. I never should have kept it from you to start. It was stupid of me."
He said a little ruefully, taking her hand and leading her back to sit side-by-side with him on the edge of the bed.
"Like I said, you already guessed what it was. Today…Thessia. It hit me hard. Real hard. Losing any battle is hard, but this..I guess it's finally starting to sink in that we're losing this war. That I'm losing it. And you know me…you know how personally I take these things. I got to hating myself for my failure, got to thinking of things I might've done differently. Got to thinking how little time I have left, how little room I have for more mistakes. All this just kept swirling in my head, around and around until it ached so bad I thought it might burst…it was too much. I wanted an escape." He finished weakly.
She gave a little squeeze of his hand before she spoke softly.
"Is that…is that what that syringe was for?"
He gave a little resigned sigh before he reached to his right with his free hand to pull free the syringe from its place underneath the plush pillow.
He looked down at it thoughtfully for a moment before giving it over to her, pressing it into a three-fingered hand.
"Yes, Tali, that's what it was for."
The quarian looked down at it, turning it around in her fingers before bringing it near her visor to more closely examine the fluid it contained.
"W-what is this, John? Medicine?" she asked cautiously.
"Almost. It's a drug, but not the kind any respectable doctor would ever prescribe. They call it 'A Moment's Rest.' It is…was pretty popular back on Earth, among criminal gangs. I've told you before that I used to be a part of gangs like that when I was young…but I didn't tell you about this stuff. I-I was addicted to it, quite strongly. It was really all I had in those days. Didn't have any family, and the other guys in the gang were just a bunch of assholes I survived with, no more. Life was tough, then, so the moments of peace…of respite it gave me were all I had to look forward to. Eventually, though, I pulled myself out of that pit, left the drugs and the crime behind when I joined the Alliance. Didn't even think of it for years. Until after I died, and Cerberus brought me back."
As he spoke, she leaned in a little closer and rested her head on his shoulder, offering her support without a single word.
"You know exactly how I felt, then, saw it in the reckless abandon I showed in every fight. So for those first few weeks I fell back into it, used it when those feelings were too much. But…that was before I had you. I stopped using it again after that, of course, since you were always there…" he trailed off, realizing the contradiction in what he was saying.
A contradiction she picked up on immediately.
"But I'm here now, too. So why? Why did you feel the need to push me away like that?"
Her voice was mostly just curious and concerned, not upset or accusatory, but even so he could not help but apologize.
"I'm sorry, love. I never should've-" he began.
"No, you don't have to say sorry, and I don't want you to. Just tell me why, John." She cut him off and spoke a touch more assertively than he was used to.
"It's…a few reasons, I guess. The first is that I thought you had enough to worry about. I'm not the only one to feel the stress of this war, not the only one who feels the weight of what I stand to lose pressing on me. Another is that I thought you couldn't help me with it, that there wasn't anything you could say or do to make it better. This wasn't some misconception or…some false despair that was weighing me down. I did lose today. I did. And I guess I thought that just because you couldn't reverse that, you couldn't do anything to help me."
He drew in a deep breath before letting the air out in a shuddering sigh.
"Mostly, though, I just…didn't want you to see me this way. Didn't want you to see me fall this low, to the point where a needle was what I needed to cope. I guess part of me thought that if you did, you would think less of me and become more distant. A-and I know that doesn't make any damn sense. Pushing you away because I was afraid of you pushing me away? Ridiculous. It…it was stupid. I was stupid." He ended, eyes cast down to the floor.
Beside him, Tali gazed into his face for a long while before she looked back down at the syringe in her hand. After a moment's consideration, she allowed her wrist to go limp, and the syringe fell to smash against the floor in a puddle of fine glass shards and oozing blue fluid.
He stared down at it, relieved that she had been able to do it. Even now, he wasn't sure he would have been able to cast away the last of his old escape, his surest solace.
She pulled him away from his thoughts with a light brush of her thumb at his hand, before she spoke, voice light and full.
"It's okay, John. I meant what I said…I love you even you're being stupid."
He allowed himself a low chuckle at that, and stopped for a bit to reflect on how he felt.
The war and his worry over it still hung there, an ever-present shadow over his mind, but now he felt a spark of hope, a sense that he actually could do what he claimed to have done earlier. He could move past today. He could go on, fight the next fight, fight with all he had until the very end, win or lose, knowing she would be beside him. Of course, she had always been there, and he chastised himself again at being so stupid as to push her away.
"Thanks, Tali. You always make me feel better about things. Lighter in spirit. I really don't know what got me to think that you wouldn't understand, that you wouldn't be there for me, even when I knew that you would've, and I know you always will." He said softly with a wide smile.
He knew from the way her eyes squished up that she matched it.
"Whenever you need me." She affirmed warmly with a squeeze of her hand.
A comfortable silence followed, and he lost himself in the soft sensation of her thumb rubbing circles into his palm. Eventually, though, he felt that he should get back to things.
"Well, I should probably go get some work done." He said, attempting to push himself to his feet.
Tali surprised him by tugging on his wrist, and he fell back down to the bed with a little thump.
He shot her a quizzical look, but she spoke before he could voice his question.
"It'll be a few hours until we reach the Citadel to resupply. We have some time to take it easy, John." She said in a chiding way.
"I guess we do, but I really should-"
"You should take this time to relax, to…to get a moment's rest. That's what you wanted, right? One way or another?" she asked earnestly, after the small pause.
"It was." He conceded.
"Then let me give it to you."
"You already did, love." He said with a little smile.
"I meant literally. Now come here." She said, in a tone which would allow no argument.
He crooked an eyebrow at her.
"I, uh, don't know what you want from me."
"Here." She insisted with a pat of her thigh.
"You…want me to lay in your lap?" he realized.
"Why not? How many times have I fallen asleep in your lap?"
"A lot." He answered with a chuckle. "Sometimes I wonder if you prefer it over the bed."
She ignored his little joke to continue with her point.
"Yes, a lot. I have a lot of experience with falling asleep in someone's lap. So believe me when I tell you that it's…nice."
"Alright, if you insist." He surrendered.
"I do." She said definitively, with another pat of her upper leg.
With another chuckle, he shifted his body around until his back was toward her, leaning back to lower himself. Her hands caught his shoulders lightly and guided him down to rest his head against the tops of her legs.
Huh, she was right. This is nice.
And it was. A light warmth exuded from her body even through the fabric of the suit, and the thigh which was his pillow struck a good balance between firm and plush. Already he could feel an urge to shut his eyes, but he kept them wide open for the sake of a quip.
"So…what now?"
The hand which still held his shoulder let it go for a moment to give it a little flick, and she let out a breathy giggle.
"Now you sleep, you little bosh'tet. And I'm not leaving until you do." She scolded him in a tone eerily similar to Doctor Chakwas when he wasn't cooperating with some treatment or other.
"Yes, Mom." He shot back, letting his exhaustion pull his eyes closed before she could do worse than a flick.
He basked in the quiet that followed their little exchange, whereas before he had done anything possible to drive such silence away. His chest quickly settled into a deep, easy rhythm, and he could tell he would not be able to fight off sleep for much longer, not that he wanted to.
Before he slipped into the black fog of sleep, though, he felt her fingers run affectionately through his hair, feather-light.
His body tensed up more than he intended as a shiver rushed down his spine, and he felt her react immediately, yanking her hand back and tensing up herself.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to! I just w-wanted to know what it felt like!" she stammered, and from her tone it almost sounded like she thought she had hurt him.
"No, no, it's alright, Tali. I just wasn't expecting it, that's all." He clarified bemusedly.
"Oh." She said sheepishly. "Well…good. Y-you've just never let it grow out before now, so…"
"Yeah, I get it. Don't worry about it."
"I-I won't do it again."
His eyes shot open a little.
"No, wait! I didn't expect it…but that doesn't mean I didn't like it."
"Oh." She said again, both surprised and pleased, and he felt the slight caution in her form as she brought her hand up to return to its place in his hair.
Instead of tensing up again, he did the reverse, allowing what little tension remained in his body to bleed out him in a satisfied breath and a quiet, somewhat embarrassing groan of pleasure from low in his throat.
Her fingers ran softly, lovingly, through his short locks, pulling back a few from his forehead and tucking them behind his ears. They pressed in to brush or scratch at the skin of his scalp in a few places, drawing forth a few more pleased noises from him, which seemed to amuse her, if the little respondent giggles she gave him were any indication. Before she could make some snide comment, he took the initiative, but his voice came out in a sleepy slur.
"Probably shouldn't've introduced me to this…Now I'm gonna wanna do it all the time, and we can't both sleep in each other's laps."
She gave him another little laugh.
"That's alright, John. We can trade off." She promised him.
Another long bout of silence followed, during which the last of his energy seemed to leave him, and he could feel his ability to think fall away.
But he mustered it for one last little half-prank, just to see what would happen. He allowed his body to fully relax and constricted his throat so that a small snore escaped it, hoping that she would buy his feint.
She did, it seemed, as he felt her hand shift to cradle the back of his head, while the other came up to brush her fingers softly against his cheek. And then she spoke in a low, tender voice.
"That's it…rest easy, my treasure."
Though he knew it gave away his little deception, he did not stop the smile from rising to his face, and went happy into the fog of sleep.