Chapter Nine: Broken and Alone

Tali was fast. She had a gentle way about her movements that felt like she was dancing around him rather than sparring. A slow lean to the left before shuffling backward then springing to the right, ducking a blow with grace and a small featherlike laugh coming through her filters. He lazily swiped at her, to see which way she would duck. Did that twice and then a third time – bringing his knee up to the side she favored and connected with her collarbone. She grumbled a Quarian curse word at him, spun in the middle of recovering from the impact and brought the heel of her foot directly into the slim arch of his back.

He stumbled forward nearly into her at the connection and felt a low snarl build in the back of his throat. Garrus knew Tali was aware of his slight disadvantage. Ever since the building had fallen down on top of Liara and him, his left foot didn't quite hold all his weight easily. Sure, if he strained, but it wasn't easy and it always tended to give him trouble. He couldn't be too hard on himself; it hadn't been but a few months since it happened. He was still healing.

Still, it bothered him that he had a weakness.

And that Tali had figured it out.

Dirty tricks. He thought as they squared themselves back towards each other, angling and shifting their bodies into a small circle. He was aware that some of the crew members in the Cargo Bay had stopped working and were watching them. There was always a crowd – humans really enjoyed their sports.

Apparently, sparring to humans was this sport called, "Boxing". He hadn't understood why they would consider boxes to be a part of a sport, but species differences could sometimes be weird.

"What's wrong," Tali quipped, her accent coaxing and sharp. "Getting tired, old man?"

"Old man?!" Garrus chuckled, easily dodging her three-fingered fist as it tried to connect.

"Moving a little slower today," she would tell him, "Your plates getting too stiff or something?"

He tutted as his hand popped the underside of her mask. Her head snapped back then to the right as she shook it to clear her vision. She cursed again. "Language, young lady."

They chuckled together and when she went to dive towards him, no doubt trying to get him off balance, he shifted back. However, he didn't quite make it out of her path and she landed against him hard. Harder than she had ever actually sprung at him before, his feet tried to find their footing but failed and he grabbed her upper arms as he fell back ungracefully against the ground. Her body crashing atop his with a thud.

He was about to say good job when he realized she wasn't looking at him, her body was stiff, a worrisome thought about her suit and a rupture fluttered into his brain as he looked down towards her body. But then he felt it.

It being a heavy shake of the ground beneath them. Followed by a dangerous and high-pitched screech of the walls around them. He pushed her up off of him and stood quickly. The humans around them looking up and around before quickly scrambling to their positions. It was too late. Another jolt around them had him nearly toppling back onto the ground, but Tali had found her footing and reached out to steady him.

A loud panicked voice filled the Cargo Bay,

"Multiple hull breaches! Weapons offline! Somebody get that fire out!" It was Joker, the panic dripping with command. Garrus looked up towards the intercom and then down to Tali whose hand on his arm was tight.

The next time the ground beneath him moved it was clear that they were under attack. The entire room swerved to the right, boxes and equipment slammed into the far wall as the occupants in the room all fell to the ground amongst the debris. He heard a sharp pained cry from Tali, her hand dislodging from his forearm. He hit something hard, his entire body curling around it before sliding to a stop. Blinking he looked up to find his body halfway under the Mako.

"Garrus!" He heard his name and tried to find the voice, but the ship flipped again, and he was tossed into the air, hands going to the Mako to try and steady himself or it or anything. He felt like a ragdoll. The alarms began to sound then and when he came back to rest chest first on the Mako's bumper he groaned at the ache in his plates.

Tali came into his view, and she seemed to be hopping and jumping over items to get to him. Garrus pushed himself up and onto shaky feet, glancing around the Cargo Bay that looked like a war zone. Blue eyes landing on one of the crew members who was crushed under a part of the ceiling that had apparently fallen.

"Hurry," he heard Tali demand and he looked to her quickly when she pulled his arm. "Hurry, Garrus!"

He felt drugged. The room was spinning, every part of it was causing him to feel like he was in some slow-motion vid and he couldn't get his eyes to focus on anything. But the hard pull of his arm dragged him forward even as his vision ebbed inward and outward with black ooze at its corners. "Tali," the questioning in that one word fell to a flat room, she was really pulling him hard.

Garrus blinked – she had pushed him against a wall and ducked behind some opening, coming back nearly as quickly as she had left. Her hands were full of something, and he couldn't figure out the blue of it before she slammed his helmet onto his head, and he heard the click of its twisting into place.

Garrus breathed in a heavy breath as the oxygen cascaded painfully into his lungs.

He hadn't even noticed he couldn't breathe.

All at once understanding filled his thoughts and he looked upward to the large crack in the hull. It was barely holding on and the room's pressure was destabilizing. He could already see some of the debris beginning to float around them. He looked to Tali and they both set to work. Quickly rounding up any of the crew members they could find, most had been knocked unconscious – some were just trapped.

They were able to get eight of them onto the lower-level escape pods. Four pods that were placed in the Cargo Bay's back wall just in case something like this happened. At one time or another he had mentioned how human it was to want everyone in a ship to survive and how much space was being wasted by them. How naïve and stupid he had been then.

Two of the four pods were already gone, more crew probably had filed into them and left. Garrus helped a crew member into the third one and the conscious crew in there helped strapped them in. "Garrus!" One of them said, pointing behind them at the hull that was splitting and pulling apart. Panic set in. None of the humans had helmets – all of them were on the verge of losing their ability to breathe. They were coughing, but adrenaline was keeping the ones lucid awake.

He stepped back and slammed the deploy button. The door shut, spun, and sealed – turning he looked out across the room for Tali.

"Tali!" he called for her. Screamed her name into the wreckage, but it was cut off when Joker's voice filled the air.

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is SSV-Normandy! We've suffered heavy damage from an unknown enemy! Come on baby, hold together…. hold together."

It seemed far away now, the intercom, and when he looked up, he noticed that the roof was now floating out into the open stars. He could barely make out a dangerous shape in the distance. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. "TALI!"

She came towards him on the left. Her smaller body supporting an unconscious worker. One of the Engineering team. Why was he down here? The thought crossed his mind before he stepped towards her and had to reach out to grab something to keep him on the platform. All gravity was leaving the area and the danger of being lost into space creeped into his awareness.

"Garrus," she whispered. He shouldn't have been able to hear it. She was too far. Her feet were barely making purchase on the ground below her. Her eyes lifted and found his and for a moment he almost felt as if she were about to say goodbye.

NO!

His mind reared and he lunged forward. His talons reaching out and finding their mark, grabbing her shoulder, he spun around her – her body tensing against his momentum and had it been anyone – anyone else - the three of them would have uprooted and been tossed upward with the rest of the room. But Quarians were strong. Sturdy. Like Turians.

Yes. Her little answer from a not-so-long ago conversation came seeping into his mind

His body swung around them – nearly parallel to the floor as she was perpendicular, and his feet hit something hard and sturdy behind him. He pushed against it, slamming his shoulder into Tali's backside and pushed her and the engineer forward with enough momentum to get them into the small hall that housed the last escape pod.

When he hit the wall, his hand came to grab it, Tali had already pushed herself and the engineer towards the pod and was disappearing inside of it. He looked back to the Cargo Bay and noticed that what he had pushed against to propel them forward was the Mako.

It was floating in the space, almost as if it were flying. Looking like it had just done the last deed it would ever do – prideful almost. He looked away and pulled himself towards the pod with his arms as he was floating now. Tali reached out and helped guide him in, his feet barely entering the small space before she hit the release button and the door closed.

Immediately he landed on the ground with a thud, he lost his breath at the contact and felt the vibration of the little pod's engine before it jolted and kicked out of its port and away from the Normandy.

Garrus slowly pulled himself up off the floor. Tali was getting the engineer into a seat, he now noticed it was Engineer Adams. "Is he okay?" He asked her as he came to stand completely upright. The pod felt too small. Too alien. The empty seats around them were too vivid. Too…empty. He closed his eyes to them. They should have been filled.

Turning his back to the small room he moved to the small window. There were two mirroring each other on the sides of the rounded doorframe– angled and hard to get to, but he had to see. He stood on one of the seats and peered through it. His eyes wide when he saw the yellow beam of a weapon slice into the Normandy. They were already far enough away that it seemed small in size. The Normandy was not small. It was big. Large. Enormous to him. It was safety and comfort. It was the roof over his head. The pillow on his bed. The walls that kept him grounded. It was his home. And it was in pieces.

In the distance he could faintly make out other pods slowly plummeting as they were. The gravity from the planet below them doing an excellent job of bringing them all back together. Soon, he knew, their pod would hit the atmosphere and the calm they were experiencing now would be replaced with the descent. Nothing about any of this was right. Nothing safe. He didn't know a damned thing about this pod. Who did the maintenance? Who knew anything about it? Would it survive the entry?

Garrus thought about a lot of things. He thought about the ship that had come and did this to his home. It had been an odd cylinder shape far in the distance, almost looked like stone and metal, but it had been hard to really see details against the bright beam that had been fired from it. When the Normandy finally gave way, when her last stance was hit and the imploding vessel finally came apart, Garrus heard himself and Tali cry out in an anguished chorus of something deep and raw and indescribable.

He tore his gaze away and looked to Tali who had mimicked his position on the other side of the pod. Her eyes glued out the window watching the same horror he was witnessing. When he looked back out of the window, the enemy ship was gone and the Normandy was in a million different pieces; broken. She swayed against the horizon of the planet behind her, defeated and alone.

Worry clawed its way up his spine. He hadn't been able to think about anything but surviving. Making sure Tali survived. He hadn't had time to let his thoughts prickle outward like the web of a spider – one thread attaching to another. Images of his crewmates coming to his mind and he slammed his forehead against the wall. He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about them. He wasn't ready. He couldn't do it.

A low painful keen came from his subvocals and he choked on it. His mouth falling as heat slammed against his eyes. Turian's didn't cry like most species. There weren't tears. But the pain in his back, the sudden heat in his face and the vibration that kept coming from deep within his chest was unmistakable. He couldn't do this.

Not now.

He gasped and pushed himself away from the window. Cursing loudly into the room.

Tali was hugging herself and was already sitting. Engineer Adams was still slumped in a far seat – unconscious and oblivious to what their situation was. He was almost envious of the man then. He would wake up not having to had seen…not having to know…

No, that wasn't right.

He shook his head and sank down into one of the seats directly opposite of Tali. She was breathing hard, her filters shuttered with light as if she were speaking. Her body was shaking. He frowned and reached forward, putting his hand on her knee and she jumped at the contact.

Immediately he lifted his hands, "Tali, are you hurt?"

She shook her head, "I…I don't think so…"

He tilted his head slightly and inched forward in his seat, "Is your suit okay? Do you know if there's a rupture or tear?" He could do this. He could focus on the matter at hand. Tali. Tali and Engineer Adams.

The Quarian shifted, her arms relaxing from their snug hold and she started examining herself. After a few moments she stood and he looked over the back of her suit, down the spans of her legs and twisting her to look further still. It didn't look like there was anything torn or punctured, and he sighed in relief as she sat back down. Her wide glowing stare locking onto his eyes from behind the purple hue of her hood.

"I don't know how I didn't get some type of suit damage," she said off-handedly.

Garrus didn't know either. The way he had been thrown around, the way objects had slammed into him and he into them. It must have been the same for her. He looked her seated form completely over again and realized that Tali had saved everyone in that Cargo Bay. At least the ones that made it out…his gaze drifted to the empty seats.

The empty seats.

He closed his eyes to them.

"You saved my life," he whispered and didn't miss the way she hugged herself again. Her head shaking against his words as if she were silently arguing. "You saved Adams."

Again, she shook her head. "I…I don't…I don't remember…"

And then her body shook against the seat and sobs filled the air. Shock. She was in shock. Fuck. He reached out and pulled her out of her seat and into his lap. It was intimate, he knew, but the pod was so tiny, and she needed something to brace her.

Hell, maybe he needed something to brace him.

His hands shook as he pulled her into his larger form. One gripping her shoulder and the other rubbing small circles along her hip. She had relaxed into him as she sobbed. Sobbed for them both. Sobbed for everyone.

He closed his eyes and let himself feel her pain. Because it was his. It was his.

Uncertainty was worse than knowing.

Because no one wants to know, but they have to.

They had to know….

Garrus and Tali had fallen asleep. Her body relaxed against his own, the side of her head against his large shoulder and his head lolled to the side at an uncomfortable angle. Still, they were asleep. When a hard hand fell on his arm his eyes snapped open and he looked upward to the man who was standing in front of them.

The weight of his questioning gaze hit Garrus harder than he ever thought possible. As if he had slugged him right in the heart. He frowned. "Tali," he would say and motion for Adams to sit, "Tali, wake up."

She shifted and groaned, her head lifting, "Sorry, Garrus," and shifted her body up and off him to stand. When she noticed Adams was awake she immediately reacted with, "Adams! You're okay!"

The engineer nodded slowly, reaching up to run a hand down his face, "As okay as I can be."

Garrus looked around them, standing he peaked out the window and noticed they had drifted close to the planet now. How long had they been out? He frowned again. His brow plates shifting as he stretched his neck and eyed the skyline. He couldn't see any more pods, but he saw burning trails in the atmosphere. "Looks like we are about to start our entry."

"Its why I woke you up," Adams said, and he turned to Tali, "The rest of my crew?"

Garrus looked over his shoulder to the woman as she shook her head, "I don't know, Adams, I…found you and brought you here, but I didn't see anyone else."

Adams nodded at that, his lips pursed and his chin strong. But the worry and pain in his eyes was reflected in the eyes of all the occupants of the pod.

"Two pods were gone by the time we got to them," Garrus offered and sat down in his seat again. "I am sure they were full of the crew before they left."

He hoped. Spirits did he hope.

"Anyone heard from the Commander?" Adams asked suddenly.

Garrus bit back the snarl that wanted to escape at the question. How dare he ask such a question? How dare he bring her up! A dangerous glare flew towards the human as Tali piped in her answer before Garrus had the opportunity to unleash his anger.

"We lost comms, neither of us know how to do anything with this pod," she said almost shyly.

Adams hummed and stood, moving to the farthest wall and started fingering a keyboard there. Garrus felt his mandible slap against his cheek and his mouth plates twitch as he watched the man work.

"This is Pod 4, we are about to make entry, comms will be down – do not disconnect. Once we are through the burning point we will contact." A familiar voice cut through the cabin. It was choppy, the connection, but the voice was strong. Kaidan.

If Kaidan made it….

He felt something shift inside him.

No. No. He told himself. No.

"Pod 8 – confirmed. Entry ETA 2 mins. I see Pod 3 entering now." Another voice, less familiar answered.

He looked around the pod and noticed the large number nine painted against the wall. They must be in 9. He wondered what the other four pods in the Cargo Bay were. What would the cockpits be. There was only one there. He supposed it may be one. Frowning deeper he strained to hear the last message trying to make its way through the comm: "Pod 5 – its hot – its too hot!" And then the connection was lost and he sat back in his seat sharply.

"At least some of us are still out there," Adams said to himself, and he clicked open their comm and he spoke into it: "Pod 9 – entry in 60 seconds, see you on the ground."

Then he stepped back and quickly got into his seat. He threw the harness over his shoulders and began clicking it into place. Tali and Garrus followed, though Garrus struggled getting his to fit. He growled at it and almost ripped it out from the wall before Tali's hand stilled his own and she quickly loosened the extender and helped him finish buckling himself before returning to her seat and refastening hers.

He felt like a child for a split second before he realized that maybe – maybe she needed to help him like he needed to help her. To keep his mind…to keep from thinking….he closed his eyes. But opened them just as quickly when the pod felt like it slammed against something, shaking all around them, he felt his plates itch at the sensation. His grip tightened against the bars that were attached to his seat -finally understanding what they were for.

Garrus looked at Tali, but her eyes behind her mask were closed and her body was tight against the seat, her feet bracing herself back against it. Turning his gaze to Adams he marveled at the serene expression on the older human's face. He seemed all over calm and clear headed. His hands were loose against the bars and his body was only slightly fighting the vibrations around them.

The Turian brought his gaze to the small windows, the flames he found there tried to cause panic inside him. This was normal. This was normal. This was normal. The mantra flooded his mind as he finally followed Tali's unspoken and not-really-given advice and closed his eyes to the room around him.

The first thing he noticed after impact, was the quiet.

The pod having landed with a painful jolt to the occupants inside, the shuddering of the cabin, the banging of harnesses of unbuckled seat belts and the loud roar of the wind around them were gone. It took a moment for him to collect himself from the angry pain that seeped all over him after the landing. Breathing hurt, but even against all the pain – he felt the quiet.

He opened his eyes, letting them adjust to the darkness that he found there. What happened to the lights? He frowned into the void and choked out one word, "Tali?"

"I'm here…" her voice filled the room quickly, reassuring him, "Adams?"

He grunted, "Yeah." But his words were strained. "Think…think something broke."

Garrus nodded. He thought something was broke too. As he sat there for a moment, letting his body adjust to the gravity of the planet, the jarring of the crash and the adrenaline that was coursing through it – he wondered what was next.

"Anyone know if we can breathe?"

Tali groaned, "Not outside, need helmets. Too cold."

He nodded, "Adams?"

"Each shuttle has emergency suits under the seats. I…I may need help getting mine on." The older man wheezed as he breathed in. Garrus finally registered that the man may actually be hurt. He unbuckled himself and fell unceremoniously and completely out of his seat and onto Tali.

Both she and he let out a pained sound, "Sorry…"

She helped move him off her, "Bosh'tet."

He deserved that.

Garrus somehow got to his feat, using his hands to steady him as he moved through the small space, he reached out and Adam's hand found his. "Thanks," he would say before he went to work finding the suit for the man. A couple minutes later and Adams was setting the helmet onto his own suit and Garrus had placed a makeshift split along the man's arm before wrapping it tightly.

Adams mentioned something about his back, but there was nothing he could do for that, "Can you walk?"

"Yeah…I think its ribs."

Liara's blue eyes came to his mind and he closed his eyes to try to block them out. No. No.

"Okay, Tali, you ready?"

She made an affirmative sound, "I almost have comms up, just give me a few…there!"

With her successful cry came the familiar husky voice into the room, "Pod 4: locater beacon is on, remember to rally to 5."

Rally to 5?

"What does that mean?" He asked.

Adams answered, "Rally to 5 is how we all get in one place. Five is the equipment pod. Its got…." He stood from his seat with a groan, "Rations, weapons, ammo…should have a few crew members too."

Garrus nodded as Adams reached out and hit a few buttons on his omnitool – a tracker beacon came to life and the Turian felt something akin to hope build inside of him. Again he pushed it down quickly and stubbornly. "Lets get there."

"Pod 9: In route, see you at 5."

Adams didn't waste a lot of time speaking, Garrus realized. He was curt, to the point and held an air of authority about him. He found his presence stabilizing.

"Let's go," Adams motioned for either Tali or him to open the door, Tali being closer to it did so.

Immediately the warm of the cabin was extinguished. Angry and brutal cold swept in around them, clawing at their armor and laughing at the meager climate controls that were now working overtime. Stepping out onto the surface of the planet he squinted against the bright light that reflected off the nearly pure white landscape. Snow and ice covered every bit he could see. Tall sharp ice columns surrounded them, covered with delicate wisps of powder.

He had never seen snow.

Garrus helped Adams out of the pod and the three of them looked to each other and then to the small vessel that had served them well. He heard Tali say something but couldn't make it out, but he understood what it meant. It was a thank you. And he curled around that thanks with gratitude of his own.