A/N: Hello fellow Talimancers! This project is intended to fill in some gaps and make Shepard/Tali's relationship feel a bit more natural and fleshed out. Will be updating regularly. I don't have a specific plan for which chapters will be written but it's sort of following in time as I play through ME: Legendary. My take on the canon is Paragon John Shepard with occasional Renegade moments. I am using the games as sort of an abridged action-report and filling in details and making minor adjustments as needed to show realistic relationships between everyone in the story. Anyway, read, comment, enjoy, and Good Hunting!


The Mako shuddered and rumbled as the ice and rocks pushed the advanced suspension to its limit. John Shepard jostled around in the crew seating in the body of the six-wheeled vehicle and watched as Liara and Tali's heads bobbled in time with his. They were quiet.

As it turned out, maintaining a road on the constantly shifting icy landscape turned out to be remarkably expensive. Because of this, most of the corporations on Noveria had switched to hover-vehicles a few years ago, and so the road was more of a navigational aid now than an actual driving surface. There were occasional spots of blessed smooth pavement, but it was mostly a greyish ice field meandering through the frozen wasteland.

Garrus sat up front driving. The team was almost 5 hours into the 15 hour drive from the Hot Labs back to the spaceport at their maximum speed of 50kph. Shepard had traded off with him about an hour ago. The Turian had been grateful for a change from the motion-sickness-inducing motony of the crew cabin. It was too turbulent to do any weapon maintenance as he normally defaulted to when passing time. Turians didn't have the same sort of vestibular sense that Humans did, but the jostling turned his alien stomach just the same.

Liara was looking a bit green herself…purple? Violet? What color did sick Asari turn? Either way, she was far less vocal about her discomfort than Garrus had been. That could have been something related to her species or, more likely, processing the emotions of the day. In just a few minutes she had been forced to come to terms with her mother's enslavement and betrayal, engage in a brutal firefight with her, then watched her turn a pistol on herself. Shepard didn't envy her.

He had tried to be comforting but beyond graciously accepting his condolences and friendly support, she had essentially shut down any real communication that was not mission critical.

Tali, by contrast, was somehow asleep in her seat across from him, two down from where Liara was trying to keep it together. Her helmeted head was lolled to the side, leaning against a bulkhead. Shepard noted with a slight smile that Tali snored lightly and her speech modulator turned it into a sound almost identical to a cat purring. He had to suppress a grin every time the little blue light flickered. Considering Liara's situation, grinning would probably be seen as insensitive.

Shepard rolled his head and shoulders, trying to find more comfort in the plastic bucket seat. Equipment rattled in racks above their heads and the vehicle jerked as Garrus made an occasional swerve to avoid some debris.

Post action reports, Holo-vids, Games, VR Immersions, they all left out the mind-numbing long-term discomfort of actually getting to and from the interesting part of any mission. Maybe he would write an irritatingly dense minute-by-minute report on this one, just to make sure the brass didn't forget what they were dealing with. The part of him that strove to be the perfect soldier shook that idea off, but a not-insignificant part of him really wanted to make sure Hackett and Udina knew just how fucking annoying some of this stuff was. Maybe he could have engineering improve the crew seats before the next deployment.

"Shepard," Came Garrus' stern voice from the front, rousing him from his thoughts. Tali also jerked awake, her glowing blue eyes flickering as her eyelids fluttered…Shepard assumed.

"What's up?" He queried, standing and wobbling his way forward to the driver's cab.

Once his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw a series of armature emplacements lining a rim to the east and a scattering of infantry platforms.

"Geth…need you in the turret,"

Shepard was already halfway into the gunner's pod. The turret was a self-enclosed space above the crew cabin that protruded downward as a bulge in the 1.5m tall ceiling. It was accessible via a hatch which opened downward to become rudimentary stairs. He folded himself into the small space, large enough for one person lying down plus an assortment of equipment, or maybe two people lying down if they really liked each other.

The mass-accelerator cannon whirred as it spooled up and the targeting motors whined in protest at being made to work in the cold, nearly -50C. Shepard swung the cannon to target the first of the line of Geth Armatures and fired, taking out its shields and a sizable chunk of its foreleg. They had awoken the hornet's nest now. Whereas they had only had a handful of targeting signals hitting them before, now there was a solid platoon of Geth artillery locking on their plasma weapons.

"Shit," Said Garrus and Shepard together.

Soon enough Garrus was violently swerving side to side to dodge volleys and using little thruster hops to catch those he couldn't dodge on shield segments that had not been hit yet. The Mako rocked and shuddered over the poorly-maintained roadway. Shepard was grateful for the turret stability that made the Mako so legendary as without it he would have had no chance at landing a shot on the Geth.

"What can I do?" asked Tali, apparently fully alert now.

"Can you do anything about their targeting beams?" Called Shepard through gritted teeth as they were rattled by yet another rocket from the Geth.

"I'll try, I'm not sure what I can do at this range," She said, immediately opening her omni-tool and going to work.

After a moment, Garrus noticed targeting signals dropping off in clusters, "Nice shooting Shep," He called up to John.

"Thanks, But I think that's all Tali". He had taken out a few, but definitely not as many as had dropped off the scanner.

"Give me some credit, please," she said half-jokingly from her new position at the computer terminal on the bulkhead behind the driver's cab.

"Is there any way I can help?" Called Liara. She was standing hunched over in the crew cab, green eyes looking around frantically and both hands hanging on to cargo netting for stability.

"Can you broker peace with the Geth?" Asked Garrus

"No…I'm afraid I cannot," replied the Asari, having taken his suggestion literally.

"Then no…just hang on and don't get knocked out by a loose heat sink".

She huffed and sat back down, strapping in fully.

"That was rude, Garrus," Said Tali distractedly as she furiously worked the computer in digital combat with the synthetics firing on them.

"Busy, can't apologize," he called back over his shoulder with a bit of a smile in his voice.

4 of the 6 Armatures were smoking craters now and most of the light trooper and rocket forces had been decimated by the machine gun. Shepard's hands were cramping on the controls in front of him. He was using the handles as much to steer the turret as he was to keep his body and head stationary in the pitching vehicle.

He drew a bead on the second-to-last gigantic machine. As they drew closer though, he recognized the last two as Colossi.

"Garrus, Tali, Colossus," He grunted into the intercom as he let the heat bleed off from the last round of shots.

Shepard pulled the trigger on the cannon and…nothing happened.

"Dammit, Heat saturated," He said.

The Mako had a set of emergency heat dump vents for exactly this situation. Fortunately Noveria was ridiculously cold so heat dissipated quickly when the vents were opened. Unfortunately, it also blasted cold air into the cabin. Poor design.

"Guys, I need to open the vents…cover up if you can…three seconds," As he spoke he knocked down two rocket troopers with the machine gun.

He knew Garrus would be fine. Due to Palaven's cycle of ice ages, Turian biology handled temperature extremes extremely well.

"3"

Liara would probably be alright as well, she was tough and used to this kind of chaos.

"2"

Tali though, had spent most of her life on neatly air-conditioned space ships, never more than 5 degrees away from ideal. Standard on the Rayya was 28C as she'd told him a few weeks ago. And Rannoch was not exactly an iceball planet, so Quarians had, as a species never evolved for the cold.

"1"

Her Enviro-suit was also tuned for a more moderate climate and probably wouldn't have the ability to keep her warm for long.

"Venting," He called as he punched the big red "Emergency Vent" button on his overhead panel. Air rushed through the vents, cold enough to chill his back through the gunner's pod floor and padding. He felt a surge of guilt as he realized just how unbelievably cold his action had just made his friends.

He heard a chorus of swearing from the intercom and grit his teeth. It was necessary.

Amid his boiling guilt and worry, he saw the heatsink indicators dropping rapidly to normal levels and he immediately began firing again, using the increased cooling to rapid-fire the main gun at the Colossi. The metal projectiles were only about the size of a baseball and he had nearly 4000 remaining. As with all modern weapons, heat was the primary concern. As he fired, the reactor output increased as well, dumping yet more heat into the system's already strained heatsinks. They were radiating heat away into the frigid atmosphere as fast as he could create it. The first Colossus went down in a ball of plasma and flames, taking a few unlucky troopers with it.

He grinned. Killing soldiers, mercenaries, even varren still turned his gut. It was just work. Killing Geth though, they were just machines, this was fun. He kept firing, alternating between the main gun and machine gun as his unending stream of driven mass tore through the synthetic ranks.

"Shepard, you need to shut the vents…Tali is not okay," called Liara loud enough to hear her through the floor and over the chaos of battle.

His heart stopped and almost without thinking he hit the control to close the vents.

"Take care of her," He said firmly to his Asari teammate.

He tried to focus on shooting, but half his mind was now in the frosted crew cabin and most of the remainder was occupied in coming up with novel ways to place blame on himself for killing the innocent, enthusiastic engineer who he had sucked into his suicide mission.

He had finished chipping away at the second Colossus' armor and was lining up to take off its "head".

An alarm distracted him, their forward and right-facing shield generators were depleted, and half the vehicle was fully exposed to enemy fire. Shepard swiveled the cannon toward the weakened side just in time to line up a shot at a handful of smaller Geth platforms emerging from behind some rocks. He started firing and decommissioned the whole group but had to stop once his heat maxed out again.

He released a huff of air from his nose and furiously watched the temperature gauge, and refused to vent again. At that moment a rocket from a previously hidden trooper struck the front right wheel with its full force. The Mako was lifted off the ground with the force of the explosion and the front and middle wheel as well as a large chunk of the armoring on the right side were blown completely off the vehicle. The nose crashed down and skidded on the icy asphalt in a shower of sparks and a symphony of shrieking metal.

Shepard dispatched the bastard with an unnecessary volley of machine gun and cannon fire but the damage had been done. The Mako was dead in the water. The remaining Colossus was charging its plasma cannon. Shepard turned the turret toward it but knew he couldn't get the shot off before it fired.

"Garrus!" He shouted through the com

"On it," Came the hurried reply as the thrusters suddenly fired in an uneven fashion, flinging the crippled vehicle upward about 4 meters and rearward about 12, evidently enough to dodge the ball of plasma. Not enough however, to stop the shockwave from the imploding mass effect field from stripping off the rest of their shields.

Shepard's temperature indicator turned green again and he took three well placed shots, knocking the head-like turret off the Colossus and decommissioning it. After a brief scan for additional hostiles, he collapsed back onto the padding and sighed. His head settled uncomfortably into the cracked faux-leather mat. They were crippled. Tali was unwell. Normandy was tied up with bureaucratic nonsense for at least another 5 hours. The Geth knew where they were and probably had sent information of their hobbling to the network. There was a good possibility they would see a dropship appear in the next few hours. All of that was bad but...they were alive for the moment.

That meant they could plan, they could adapt, they could deal with this like they always seemed to over the last few months. His little team had really become his family in that time; Tali, Garrus, and Liara more than the others if he was being honest. Ashley had even gotten on him last week for his apparently obvious preference for the three of them in a landing party and had forced a promise that he would take her and Kaidan on more missions. Truthfully though, he didn't realize just how significant the disparity was until he looked at his logs and realized that he'd taken at least two of his favored three teammates on nearly 80% of the operations they had conducted in the last month.

"Liara, How's Tali doing?"

Instead of the Asari researcher though, Tali answered, "I'm okay...f-f-freezing though." She took a shuddering breath, "That la-" She coughed hoarsely.

"The last hit blew a hole through the hull and the heaters can't keep the cabin warm enough for her suit to manage," finished Liara.

"Dammit, I thought we'd get out of this without a hull breach," Thought Shepard sourly.

"Alright, how are you and Garrus holding up?"

"My suit is compensating well,"

"This is still warmer than my tenth winter back on Palaven," said Garrus with a bit of smugness evident in the clicking of his mandibles.

"Good. What's the cabin temp?"

"-10C and falling slowly," Replied the scientist.

"Are you warm up there?" Asked Garrus

"Yeah, the turret is isolated and the gun heats it up," Shepard had a weird hard-to-describe trepidation about what Garrus was about to suggest.

"Let's get Tali up there with you then. It'll keep her warm and Liara and I can try to work on stuff down here without worrying about her dying". Garrus' voice was all business but it was obvious to anyone who knew him well that he was deeply concerned for the Quarian who had become almost a little sister to him.

Shepard felt a sensation in his stomach not unlike launching into a Relay Jump. He could not really connect it to anything in particular. He was not injured. Sure he was concerned about his crew, but that had never caused such a feeling before. He shook it off and nodded.

"Okay, It's gonna be tight so let's coordinate. I'll roll to the side, Liara, you open the hatch, Garrus you help push Tali up".

A chorus of agreement came from the two crewmembers.

Then Tali spoke up again, "I probably won't die if I stay down here. I don't want you to get cold Shepard. I don't want to be a-" She was cut off by the ever-Paragon of the Alliance,

"Tali, 'Probably not dying' is not good enough. I need you on this mission. I need you on my team. Get up here," His tone left no room for debate.

She did not speak, but she did huff a little in acceptance.

"Ready Shepard?" Asked Liara.

John scooted ungracefully to the side, cramming his backside into a nest of wiring, vaguely concerned about being electrocuted by a frayed cable. He crammed himself into the side of the flat turret as well as he could, ensuring he was pretty much clear of the hatch which normally was directly under his legs.

"Affirmative," He said stiffly.

He was not prepared for the blast of frigid air that came as the hatch was opened from outside. He wasn't even wearing an enviro-suit, just a t-shirt. His armor was in the overhead rack in the crew cabin.

"Shit," He swore in a rapid exhale as his warm cocoon was flooded by the outside environment.

Before he could think about his own discomfort, Tali was half-crawling half-being-pushed into the gunner's compartment. He helped as he could from his awkward position, straining his muscles to move the lithe Quarian into something approaching a comfortable position. She groaned, straining her frozen muscles to their limits just to pull herself along a few feet.

"Closing the hatch," Said Liara

"Th..ank you," Murmured Tali weakly.

The hatch shut with a sharp "click-shhk" and they were alone.

They were a few inches apart but he could feel the cold radiating from her body already. The air in the pod was still cold but not as much as it had been down below.

Basic survival training. Share body heat, except with Turians. They're not exothermic in the same way as mammals, so you would just be giving them your heat despite them not needing it.

Were Quarians exotherms? Shepard realized he had no idea. All he knew was that Tali needed to be warmer. He looked at her face. Still unable to make out any detail besides her little pointed nose and luminescent eyes which were flickering, unable to really remain open due to the hypothermia probably.

"Can I touch you? We can share body heat," He asked, heart pounding in his chest faster than it had during the fight.

"N-" She started to speak but the effort of crawling into the turret had clearly been too much and the first syllable fell off her lips unspoken.

Tali nodded her head in a minute motion.

John inched his way forward, eyes firmly locked on the panels behind her head. This was to save her life, nothing more. There was no part of him that would enjoy this beyond the compassion he felt helping a comrade-in-arms. That Relay Jump feeling was back though. He shook it off and wrapped his right arm around her slim waist and rested his forearm against her back, holding her tightly to his body. His left arm maneuvered under her neck and gave her helmeted head a soft place to rest.

He hissed as her frosted enviro-suit made contact with his bare skin. He finally looked at her. Her eyes were closed and he could feel her abdomen expanding and contracting with slow, shallow breaths. He realized there were actual ice crystals on the inside of her visor from the water vapor in her breath. He held her tighter, despite the biting chill of her suit which was quickly numbing his exposed skin.

"Thank you Shepard," She whispered in her modulated voice as she curled into him instinctively.

Despite the thermal situation, he felt warmth flood through him at her words.

They lay like that for a while, occasionally shifting for comfort. His left arm fell asleep and he tried very hard to ignore it. His mind buzzed like an Eezo core. Would she be okay? Would there be long-lasting effects from the hypothermia? Did she think he was weird for wanting to warm her up like this? He definitely smelled ripe after the three days of nonstop travel and combat, could she smell it through her filters?

"You guys comfy up there?" Asked Garrus over the comm, with an obvious smirk in his voice.

"Very," Responded Tali, sounding more like herself and surprising Shepard. She wiggled in his arms, pushing her visor into his chest. She inhaled deeply and made what he could only think of as a satisfied hum.

"Good. If you want to warm it up further, I would suggest firing the cannon a few times," said Liara clinically.

Shepard felt foolish, he had actually intended on that exact action but had been so distracted by his thoughts for the last ten minutes that the thought had slid from his mind like water on a pitching ship deck.

"Good idea," He said, biting back a remark about how he'd thought of it first. "Firing momentarily".

The firing coils whined as they spooled up.

"Wait," Said Tali quietly to him. She turned her bright blue eyes on him and he found himself staring into them.

"What is it? Are you okay?" He asked, worry surging in him once more.

She laughed weakly and nodded, leaning away from him. He found that there was a dull ache where her head had been.

"Can I fire it?" She asked

"Uh...sure, I don't see why not," He said, confusion twisting his face.

She giggled, "Keelah".

Once her mirth had settled, she continued, "I have just never fired such a big gun before and...it would be interesting to try," She rationalized.

His confusion melted into a little grin and he began showing her the basic controls. She watched raptly, occasionally asking for more information on an intriguing system. She became progressively more lively over the few minutes. She was obviously much warmer and her interest in the engineering of the system seemed to make her forget about the reason for using it in the first place. Their legs were still tangled together, but forgotten about as they played with the systems.

"So if I were to hold this one down and fire at the same time it would basically leave a mis-sequenced slug in the rails and fuse the system?" She asked, far too excited about the idea of breaking their only weapon and source of heat.

"Uhh….yeah," he said hesitantly, half worried she'd try it just out of academic interest. "There was a lockout to stop users doing that, but I had Donnelly disable it because it kept damping-" He was cut off by the comm crackling to life.

"Is everything okay up there?" Asked Liara, concern evident in her tone.

Shepard let out a little chuckle, "Yeah, just...helping Tali get situated".

She giggled again and a little warmth flowed through John as he watched her.

"I suppose I should do some shooting...or Garrus is going to come charging up here to defend my honor".

Suddenly, John felt entirely too warm. His eyes went wide and he looked at her in shock.

After laughing at herself for another few seconds, she sighed and pointed at a readout, "Last question, I promise. What's this?"

"That's the rangefinder...aaand that's pretty much all I can teach you without taking it apart. Go nuts, more heat is better right now".

"That mountaintop looks pretty synthetic," she said before abusing the unsuspecting hillside with relativistic steel alloy.

Heat flooded into the gunner's pod and after about 5 shots and a bit of fun with the machine gun, the temperature was reading a comfortable 23C.

Tali's eyes were glowing with mirth when sheh turned back to John, "You think that's enough?" She asked, not taking her hands off the unfamiliar controls.

"I guess that depends on if you're warmed up," He replied, a grin spreading across his scarred face.

"I might still be a little cold," She said, mischief evident in her tone.

"Want to do a little target practice then?"

She nodded and they spent the next hour sending slug after slug of hyper-velocity alloy into suspicious looking snowbanks and refining Tali's aim and handling of the machine. She caught on quickly, Shepard had assumed she would. What he hadn't expected is to find himself in this life threatening situation, clutching his abdomen and feeling the muscles in his face ache from uncontrollable laughter.

He reached out to steady her hand on the guidance console and to show her a better way to hold the joystick to get finer control of her inputs. He placed his hand on hers and she conspicuously looked down at his digits.

"You have so many fingers," She said, ignoring his instruction, "What do you do with the extra ones?"

"We humans are remarkably good at typing," he responded without thinking.

"I'm sure that's why your evolutionary ancestors kept them," She adopted a more dramatic tone, fixing him with her gaze, "Millions of years ago, fighting for survival on the brutal desert plains, the ancestors of modern Humans carved their niche with...typing!"

Once again, he was stitched with laughter and shortly after she joined him in a fit of giggles. They lie on the mat, only inches apart as their breathing slowed once they had laughed themselves out. Their eyes met. Tali smiled. John was pretty sure she did anyway. The lights of her eyes changed shape in the way that he had grown to associate with her being happy. It made him feel warm. It was easy to forget about the cold outside.