A/N: Hello again all! I would like to address a few reviews saying that Shepard feels very weak in this story. That is mostly by design. In game and in most canon material we see Shepard being this unstoppable juggernaut of badass power. The entire purpose of this story is to see him as human, as fallible, as a person with vulnerabilities. He is not perfect and the value of his team is that the ones he is close with, Tali, Garrus, Chakwas, Liara, are his safe place to be open. The whole purpose of his breakdown over Feros was not just to give him and Tali a chance to be together. It was because that was the first time he trusted someone enough to be able to grieve with them over the course of months.

Anyway, I hope that little rant can give a little insight into how I see the character of John Shepard.

Also, this chapter marks the end of this story. It will be continued in Little Talks II. I already have the first few chapters mapped out and at least in the beginning it will feature a lot of Tali on the fleet as well as the myriad adventures of the rest of our crew while Shepard is being rebuilt.

Thank you all so much for reading, following, reviewing, DMing. It makes me feel like people enjoy my writing and sustains me in this project as well as my original project that I'm writing in tandem.


"Adams I can-" Tali dissolved into a fit of giggles again, "I cannot 'let you feel it'" She gestured with her hands.

"Come on Tali, you're the best engineer anywhere in the Alliance. I'm sure you could-"

"There is absolutely no way I can build a nerve-stim for a human!" She shrieked, laughing again.

Adams had been on about this for a week now, ever since he had overheard a snippet of conversation between her and Shepard.

"It just seems like it would be so cool!" He exclaimed, pouting, "The ability to feel...well...anything on demand!"

"Maybe you should destroy your race's immune systems for three centuries...I'm sure someone will invent one for you," She gave him a look.

"That seems excessive."

"You get to actually feel things...just enjoy that," she said, a bit more somber.

Adams nodded, "I guess you're right. That's probably better overall," He seemed suddenly sheepish, "Sorry for asking…"

"Keelah," She sighed, "It's fine. If you were a stranger I'd assume you had some kind of xeno fetish but I know you well enough to know better."

"Tali, I'm married," He said defensively.

She rolled her glowing eyes, "Yes you are. And I've been around humans long enough to know that doesn't necessarily matter in the military." She let him look offended for a second before saying, "But you're a good person and Mika is a lucky girl."

"How did this conversation get here?" He asked helplessly, trying to pretend he was focusing on a terminal.

"Because conversations about nerve-stims only ever go one direction," She quipped before lying down on her back and scooting under a piece of equipment, "Shall we get this capacitor bank back in shape now that you're done being horny?"

"I..wha-...er...yes," the flustered engineer stumbled over his words before swallowing and logging into his terminal.

Tali, giggling quietly to herself, called up the appropriate toolset on her omni-tool and let it start manufacturing the wrench to open up the exterior panel. As the device hissed and buzzed manufacturing raw matter into a handy little wrench, Tali smiled. This life was pretty good for a quarian pilgrim. She had friends. She had a good ship. She had a...good captain. She had even maybe ignored a handful of emails from the fleet querying when she would be returning from her pilgrimage. The thought of leaving though made her feel lost.

Since Keenah died last year, the Normandy crew was the closest thing she had to a family. This was her...well...not home, but something close.

Her omni-tool chirped to alert her that her tool was ready. She grabbed the floating orange wrench by its ergonomic handle and fitted it into the slot of the first fastener. Adams and Tali worked quickly through the familiar process of troubleshooting the failed capacitor stack. The problem turned out to be a deposit of graphite across a set of terminals causing a short at high voltages.

Tali liked Gregory. He was intelligent, professional, and a geek in many of her favorite ways. They had an easy working relationship. Despite this, they had never established anything of a deeper friendship. Tali always chalked it up to the strength of her relationships with the combat team overshadowing her "work friend".

"Could you hand me the Munsen Scanner?" She asked from her spot on her back under the capacitor bank.

"Sure, what for?"

"I want to run a sweep of the capacitors themselves to ensure none of the coils have fused."

"Good thinking," He said, handing her the little metal box that contained the absolute latest in mass-field scanning technology.

The Munsen scanner had been a real boon to the galactic community of engineers when it was released about 10 years ago. The device used a combination of trans-spectral radiation and its own small mass-field to create incredibly detailed scans of anything one pointed it at, including energy fields.

Tali shoved the wrench in a hidden pocket in her realk. Her hand bumped the sharp nose of a little model Normandy she had made a few days previously. It had been a test of a new manufacturing algorithm she was playing with, but the model had turned out so nice that she felt bad recycling it. It had lived in her pocket ever since.

"I've really got to just toss this thing," she thought, fumbling around for another pocket to stash the wrench for later.

Wrench stowed, Tali fiddled with the controls on the Munsen scanner which were distinctly built for human hands and had zero consideration for any three-digited hands.

"We need to rework the ergonomics on one of these," she grumbled.

"Good luck getting approval for that. Brass told-" The ship shook violently.

Adams was thrown off his feet into the wall where he slumped, trying to regain his balance. Tali shrieked as her head was slammed into the wiring and circuit boards above her. She pushed herself out as soon as the lurching subsided for a moment.

"Keelah een Gyak what was that?!" She cried out, rolling to her knees and mentally setting her suit to run an integrity check.

"Don't know," Adams panted, "Maybe we hit something?"

"No, Joker wouldn't make a mistake like that...I'm calling Shepard," She said firmly, grasping a convenient railing in case of another lurch.

"Shit...combat alert. Come on! Stations!" Adams shouted.

Tali dropped her omni-tool and joined the two other crew engineers who had come running from their break at the first upset. They all pulled their jumpseats out of their respective hiding places in the walls, took positions at their assigned terminals, secured their belts in a neat, practiced fashion, and got to work.

System malfunctions were coming in from all over the ship in rapid fire, showing up in a checklist format on the left of Tali's interface.

"Transfer deflector control to weapons crew!" Shouted Adams.

Irina Mazdev nodded sharply, "Done."

"Tali, can you run that new shield phasing algorithm?"

"Running it now," She called, pulling it up from her personal projects directory and plugging it into the appropriate nodes of the shield control software.

Another impact rocked the ship. A new list of flashing red warnings appeared on screen.

"Deco events!" Called David Armstrong from his position in the corridor to the drive core.

"Roger!" Called Adams, "Run diagnostics on all escape pods and standby for orders."

It was standard procedure to prep escape pods any time a decompression event occurred on any Alliance ship. Tali supposed that made sense considering that humans don't typically wear airtight life support suits 36/7.

She got the shields running her new algorithm, crossing her fingers it would help. Then, Tali set about prepping her assigned set of escape pods. The diagnostics were simple and fast, but had to be checked manually per regulations.

Pods 11-15 were reporting nominal conditions, fuel and life support levels were at standard. The Normandy's life pods, like the rest of the ship, were state-of-the-art. Each one could sustain up to 6 crew members for up to 4 earth days.

Pods 16 and 17 both showed green across the board as well. They were command pods and therefore had some extra communications equipment as well as additional fuel and slightly higher food stores. They could each support 4 crew members for up to 6 earth days. Additionally, Pod 16 had dextro food supplies. Therefore it was one of only two pods which she could expect to safely survive in. She had also stocked Pod 8 with dextro supplies for herself since it was one of the two pods dedicated to the engineering crew.

The idea of "command pods" always bothered Tali. The quarian fleet would never have made any distinction between how long a commander should survive versus their crew. If anything, it was expected that leaders would sacrifice themselves in order to ensure their crew's survival.

That was just something she'd had to get used to serving aboard a human vessel though.

The ship heaved and shuddered again, pulling her from her thoughts and back into reality. She had confirmed all the pods assigned to her were green, and sent the confirmation to Adams' terminal.

"Another deco! Flight deck!" Armstrong called out.

Tali's hearts froze. Shepard would be in the flight deck.

"Vitals?" She shouted, voice squeaking.

"Three, Joker, Pressley, and Shepard. All green," Irina said robotically.

Her tension eased slightly but her eyes were still wide. She pulled up the condition schematic and saw the cockpit's pressure shield had gone up but it was sitting at 233mb, well below what any Citadel race could survive at in the 50/50 O2-Nitrogen mix. All she could think about was Commander John Shepard struggling to breathe, to stay conscious, being thrown around like a ragdoll because her shield algorithms didn't do enough.

The ship shook again and panels fell from the ceiling above her. Sheet metal and raining sparks encompassed her. The head panel of the jumpseat stopped the metal from hitting her head and it left her sitting in a little box. Just her, her seat, her terminal. She didn't want to let go of anything long enough to try to clear away the rubble. Something burst loose and slammed against one of the metal pieces leaning on her chair with a "clang". Tali jumped.

"Tali, can you-"

"I'm calling Shepard," She cut off Adams, hardly realizing she'd done so.

The crew was talking around her, but she could only hear the buzz of her own thoughts, the half-baked late-night math she had thought might save the ship in an encounter like this. She called up her omni-tool and dialed Shepard's personal comm.

He picked up almost instantly. He was wearing an oxygen mask. Her tension eased just seeing him there, looking back at her through the holographic screen.

"Shepard! Keelah...what's going on?"

It looked like he was speaking but all she could hear were the hollow sounds of alarms in the cockpit passed through a barely-there atmosphere.

"Are you okay? We have escape pods ready to go if you need them!"

Saying it out loud set something cold and heavy in her stomachs. The thought of abandoning the Normandy, her erstwhile home and safe haven away from the insanity of the war against the Geth and Sovereign, felt like ice in her veins.

An almighty force slammed the ship once more. It was all Tali could do to keep herself pinned in her jumpseat and not flail about like a ragdoll. She looked down, the screen had gone dead.

Any one of these shots could be the one that ends him

Finally, the order appeared on her screen, "All Hands - Abandon Ship"

Alarms clanged through the corridors around her and her crewmates were shouting. It all melted into an unintelligible cacophony. She realized that this should be some enormous watershed moment in her mind, but her mind felt infuriatingly blank. All that was there were impressions of the ship, the crew, and what she'd miss about them.

"Tali...Let's go!" Shouted Adams. He was standing over her and hauling back on the fallen paneling that trapped her in her seat.

That shook her back into reality, "Tali, Are you okay?" He shouted, grabbing her shoulders roughly.

She nodded forcefully, "Yes...alright...let's go."

Tali let him pull her up and away from her terminal, casting one baleful look back at the place where she had spent so much of the last 8 months; the place where she had leant and talked with Shepard or Garrus for so many hours.

She grit her teeth and started after Adams.

"The bay outside depressurized," He said, "The pods are unreachable without a manual pressure field...I'll do it," Adams had a faraway look in his eyes.

If he stayed to run the field, he would not be able to get to a pod. There were no emergency EVA suits in engineering and humans were particularly susceptible to vacuum. He was volunteering to die.

She shook her head violently, "No, Keelah een Gyak, I have a biosuit, I can stay and do it. You get Irina and David to pods."

"No, Tali...I can't let you-"

"Yes you can now Go! I'll run the field and the three of you can take Pod 9. My food is in 8. You get out and launch, then I can drop the field and get to my pod."

The world was exploding and she was standing around arguing with her superior officer like she was a teenager. Fitting, she supposed.

Adams seemed like he was going to try to argue but before he could, Irina came up behind him, "Are we going to be okay?"

Irina was crying. The hell of this situation had broken her. Tali's hearts clenched as she saw her comrade choking through tears, hanging off David's arm.

"Nobody knows how they'll deal with combat until they see it," Something Shepard had told her forever ago. His words floated through her mind.

"Yes, you're going to make it. Get to the door and wait for my signal," Tali's tone left no room for argument.

Adams nodded respectfully to her, "I'll see you soon."

Tali returned the gesture and turned back to the drive bay corridor, making her way to the projector controls. A manual pressure field was a tricky deal but she had used them a handful of times in the past for moving particularly hazardous materials safely in and out of engineering.

The process involved manually warping the multiple field projectors to create a little bubble of isolated space which would, if managed correctly, be airtight. There were not actually any manual controls for this process as it was not "technically" approved of by any Alliance procedure. It was, however, very common practice and most engineers knew it by the time they hit active duty. Tali had learned it from Armstrong her very first week aboard the Normandy.

The "manual controls" were actually a series of rheostats and variable gain capacitors that had to be manipulated precisely. Tali pulled back a panel about halfway down the corridor to the drive core. The ship shook again but that was practically background noise to her at this point. She ducked into the narrow space behind the bulkhead and activated her helmet lights. Nimble fingers made quick work of adjusting the controls and making a bubble off blue hardlight just outside the emergency field that had automatically gone up earlier.

"Is that big enough?" She asked.

"Should be," Called back Adams.

"Alright, I'll give you 15 seconds to get inside then I'll start moving it."

"Understood."

"Go."

15...14...13...12

Irina and David went ahead, crossing the buzzing blue barrier. Irina looked around uneasily at the fragile walls of the hacked force field.

11...10...9...8

Tali was biting her lip, trying to tune the projectors to just the right shape and get it to stay stationary so it didn't randomly shift and leave a leg or a head outside the bubble once they were in vacuum.

7...6...5...4

"Thank you, Tali," Said Greg Adams.

She was too mentally tangled up to respond, but his thanks made her smile a little through the struggle.

3...2...1

She took a breath and moved her hands to another set of pots and switches, slowly moving the field along the walkway, through the existing planar field which opened to allow them passage, and down the stairway to the escape pods.

She monitored the progress via a holographic display she'd set up prior to building the field. Once the axis values read "44.3, -88, 90.1" she knew they would be at the loading port. Normally materials would be loaded at. The life pods were exactly opposite the loading port, so all she had to do was flip the -88 to a +88. The y-axis reached the value she was looking for and she started dragging the x-axis toward 88, trying to move at a rate which would not make walking difficult, but fast enough that they weren't left waiting for her.

The bubble reached the pods.

Nothing happened

She checked the coordinates.

Her hearts pounded in her ears and sweat dripped from her brow.

Still nothing...There should be a green light when the pod was closed and activated

She was beginning to doubt. Was her timing off? Had she left one of her friends out in the cold to die? Was she misaligned?

Tali took one hand off a control and pulled up a schematic. No, the math was right.

No no no no

The ship shook again. Her hand slammed uncontrolled into the panel above her, folding the field in on itself.

"Keelah no!" She screamed.

The field was gone. If they were outside they were... The light was...green?

Green light

Green light!

"Hell yeah!" She shouted. Nobody could hear her but she'd just saved three lives and felt damn good about it.

Time to go

She started to wriggle herself out of her little hole. Her whole torso had needed to be buried in the bowels of the ship to reach the field "controls" and so it was quite a process to get out. The ship rocked again and something slammed into the metal paneling around her waist.

"Ah!" She cried out as she felt cold metal press against the rubbery material of her suit.

Tali tried to squeeze back out but the paneling was bent in such a way that her rib cage couldn't pass it.

"No...no no no...aggh!" She groaned as she pushed with all her might, trying in vain to get her body out.

"Is this how I die?" she thought for the first time in a while.

It would be an honorable death by any standards. She felt cheated though. The ship shuddered again, tightening its grip on her abdomen. Tali let out a gasp as air was pushed out of her.

She felt cheated because there was so much she looked forward to now. Her pilgrimage was done...mostly. She could go back to the fleet and be a full-fledged crewmember. She could show Garrus and...Shepard around her home ship...Maybe they would have helped her move. Moving day was typically a big deal and a quarian's closest friends and family would always help.

She probably wouldn't get that now. She would be stuck behind this bulkhead until…

Her omni-tool lit up, buzzing violently against her hand.

Tali was almost annoyed. She was busy trying to accept her fate and...

She flicked a thumb to answer the call, "John!" She cried out, glowing eyes wide and hearts hammering in her throat as she saw him.

Keelah, He's safe! He's in a pod! But it's still docked!

Fresh panic rolled through her. The only reason he was still docked was either the pod had a fault or he didn't want to launch. She had personally checked his pod, number 16. It was good...right? She could die, but he needed to live on. The Galaxy needed him. Tali knew she was a footnote player at most, but John Shepard would be a story told for millenia. His story would not end here!

"Tali, where are you?" The way he said her name made her fight more desperately to get out.

"Engineering," She groaned, "Stuck."

"I'm on my way...stay put," He sounded so certain, like he was going to waltz down here and they would calmly stroll to the escape pods.

No, he can't come down here. The core could go. There's so much vacuum between the CIC and here. I'm not worth it.

"John no, don't! It's too dangerous! Leave me," She choked saying the last words, but it's what he needed to hear. The window disappeared. He had closed the connection.

The ship quaked again and she was bound tighter still in her confinement. The breath was forced from her lungs and she groaned. All she could think about was John being thrown into space. John being struck head on by whatever nightmare weapon the alien ship was using. John getting trapped under some debris just as she was and dying because he tried to save her.

What felt like hours later, the door burst open and a fully-armored Shepard came hurtling through.

Her hearts beat in her throat, "John! Keelah...you're okay!"

"Tali, are you alright?" His voice sounded wrong, strained. Maybe her worry wasn't misplaced.

"Yes...I'm fine, stuck behind this bulkhead."

She heard the noises of magnetic boots fixing to the floor panels near her.

Damn Bosh'tet hero

She heard him struggling with the panels and he shouted hoarsely, "Get away from this panel."

He slammed a fist into one of the panels that was hemming her in. She scooted around as well as she could but was still pressed up against it.

"John! Be careful!" She cried. If he was too aggressive he could hurt her. Worse, he was clearly injured somehow and he could hurt himself.

A series of ridiculously accurate biotic bursts tore the panels away one by one. She wasn't sure she had ever seen such precision expansion fields before. Every once in a while she was reminded just how incredibly talented he was.

The second panel came away and light poured in. She could see him now, armored and apparently whole. Behind his visor though, his face seemed paler than usual.

"Are you okay?" he asked, setting to work on the third panel.

"Yes...keelah...what happened?" She tried to wriggle herself upward toward the newly open space and away from the other crushed paneling.

"New aliens...uurgh!" Another panel burst free. Their eyes met and a thrill ran through her at the intensity in his grey eyes, "Why are you stuck?"

"Engineering crew couldn't get out unless I manually put up a force field. I had to get back here to set it up. They got out fine but the last blast crumpled these panels and.."

"You're amazing," he said, eyes meeting hers through each of their visors.

With a cry, he tore the last one free and pulled her out. His hands, strong and reassuring, held her close in a way he hadn't since Feros. She let herself enjoy it, the rare warm comfort, for a beat before the reality of their situation tore them apart again.

John shuddered and his grip became lax around her middle. If they hadn't been floating in zero-g, she was sure he would have fallen to the ground.

"John! Hang on...I'll get us to a pod".

"Only one left...CIC...I'm fine,"

"You're not fine...come on".

He sounds so weak...I need to hurry

Alliance armor had hidden handles for a situation just like this. There was one between the shoulderblades and one under the sternum. She searched around and found the one on his back, taking a firmer hold on it than she had on anything else in her life.

Quarians had remarkably dextrous feet, nearly as good as hands but a bit stiffer. They could still hold a handle solidly though. She grabbed a handle with her right foot and another with her free left hand and began the process of pushing them both through the void that was once their ship.

John had become limp, only barely hanging onto her with loose arms around her waist. As pleasant as it would have been in another situation, she wished he would hold on tighter so she could have both hands.

She had to navigate through the system of ladders and access tubes to reach the CIC. She passed through the Crew Deck and found a frozen body floating there, frozen droplets of coffee hovering nearby. Her chest tightened. She knew the frozen face but not the name that had belonged to it.

She was a whole person until a few minutes ago...she had a family and aspirations and doubts and fears.

I didn't even learn her name…

Shepard stirred and she tightened her grip on his handle. Tali grit her teeth and shoved them past the corpse and to the next passageway which would bring them to the CIC. Three more bodies floated in the flickering orange light of the Combat Information Center. On the starboard wall there was one open port with a green light. They reached the pod and she climbed inside, pulling him in after her.

Once she was sure he was not going to float away, she moved to the control panel, finding everything about half-done. It looked like the pod had been pressurized, then depressurized.

Keelah! Is that how he got changed? Dammit Shepard

Because of the sloppy way in which the process had been half-initialized, the whole system was in disarray. There was also only about 70% the original O2 load, since so much of it had already been used to fully pressurize the tiny cabin.

The oxygen situation would probably not be a problem considering it was only the two of them, but the system was so frazzled it would be near impossible to reset without just cycling power from the external power.

The ship rocked violently. Tali and Shepard were slammed into the walls of the tiny vessel. Tali heard a sharp "thunk" and whipped around to see John more aware than he'd been in the last ten minutes.

She turned back to the panel and tried a few more soft reset procedures, but nothing would re-engage the thruster control program or the environmental control system.

"Shket ..I've got to reset it from outside," she swore.

She began to move toward the door but a hand pushing firmly against her shoulder stopped her. She looked up to find John sailing out the door.

"I'm on it," he slurred.

Keelah een Gyak! What is he thinking?!

"Don't...I can get it," She said firmly, trying to push him back inside but managing only to float herself away from the controls, "John," she cried, grasping helplessly at him once more.

She was half out the door when she saw him about to engage the hard reset. If he hit it and she wasn't inside, it would go and strand both of them. If he hit it and she was half through the door, it would close without regard for the squishy quarian body it was slicing in two.

Instinctively, she rolled back into the pod. Tears welled in her eyes.

He's going to sacrifice himself for me...I can't...I can't let him.

"No!" She shrieked "You're staying here, you Bosh'tet!" The door closed. With a forceful "clang"

Their eyes met through the 4 inches of clouded glass. His grey eyes held raw emotion. Which one though, she wasn't sure.

"I can't leave you," She whimpered, tears flowing freely.

He reached out and touched the glass with silent fingertips, she rested her forehead against it.

She screamed again, slamming her hand fruitlessly on the little glass porthole.

"I should have gotten out!" She shouted.

She felt her body compress and her ears pop as the environmental system pressurized the cabin, then she was thrown against the closed door as it launched forcefully.

Then, her body crumpled against the door under 1.7 g's of acceleration, but the pain didn't register.

She saw him spinning away from her. She knew what his expression would have been, she didn't need to see it. He probably felt good about it, the Bosh'tet!

The thrusters disengaged and she was left floating.

Tali was still screaming, still slamming her fist limply against the door. The screams melted into helpless, coughing sobs. The sobbing melted into whimpers. The whimpers melted into nothing at all in the grim silence.

The only noises she heard besides her own heartbeats were the chirping of some instrument and the hissing of air in the recirculation vents.

John Shepard wouldn't for a second believe that he had done anything wrong in that situation. She would live and he would feel vindicated in his sacrifice and die a shkitaak hero.

Maybe I'll take off my mask and die in here...that would show him.

Her fingers played with the release under her chin, then stopped as a wave of guilt made her sick.

Don't die out of spite...It's the only thing he would never forgive you for

She curled up as memories assaulted her.

John laughing as Garrus made some dirty joke at his expense.

Tea in the cargo bay.

John telling her about N7 training and the absolute hell of the final…

He has a plan

John Shepard always had a plan. It was the reason he was so damned good at his job. He always had a plan, executed it, and adapted as necessary. Surely this was something he had thought of…

How much O2 does his suit carry? Water? How could he be planning to survive?

Focused, she flipped over to the control console and strapped herself into the chair. It felt like some sense of normalcy.

She opened her omni-tool which seemed to have lost some of its projectors in the chaos. A section of its holographic display flickered and buzzed. Tali groaned and fiddled with the display parameters until all the relevant information was visible.

She started doing math and worked out that with just what was probably in his suit already, assuming he had recharged it after the last mission, he had about an hour. Then, there were loads of oxygen canisters in the armory and in the medbay that he could use. She didn't know how many but he had at least 32 hours of air available.

Her chest grew tight. 32 hours wasn't a lot in terms of interstellar travel, but it was a lot better than nothing.

The pod stopped its stability spinning with a burst of lateral thruster fire. Tali looked up.

"What was that alien ship that attacked? I never got to see it," She spoke aloud.

There were three portholes spaced around the waist of the cylindrical craft and she took turns at each one, looking for whatever their enemy had been, but she couldn't make anything out besides the frozen planet they were orbiting and the stars and sun beyond.

The radio crackled. The voice was unreadable. The static came on again and this time resolved into a familiar Turian voice.

"Sszzhht-elf, Liara, Dr. Chakwas, -sshhht -yansky, and Tucks are accounted for...Pod 5...Does anyone read?"

"Got you Garrus, glad to hear your voice. Lts Alenko, Emerson, Gladstone, and Barret accounted for in Pod 2," That was Kadian.

"Is Shepard accounted for?"

Liara

Tali swallowed and prepared to key the mic. She was superseded by a chorus of "no's" though.

Joker cut in, "Shepard saved my ass, stashed me in number 17, and took off to get Tali."

After a moment of silence, she went to speak again, "Is Tali accounted for?" Garrus asked.

Another chorus of "no's"

Bosh'tets

There was silence again and she forcefully keyed in, "Tali'Zorah, in Pod 16," She took a heavy breath, "Shepard stayed behind...there was an issue with the pod and he manually launched it from the outside."

There was silence.

"I did the math and he likely has at least 32 hours of oxygen available to him."

"Is there a way to recover him?" Asked Liara.

Every time she spoke, she liked the asari less.

"Possibly," Said a familiar voice...Adams. "Pods 12 and 4 have airlocks for personnel recovery."

"Anyone on 12 or 4?" Asked Garrus.

Silence

"Pod 12, Pod 4, report!" he said more firmly.

A crackling reply came a moment later, "Pod 4...Marcus Greico...hit by-zzht...shhh-leak...Monica and ck-ck-ck-mira already…" He coughed and the line went dead.

Ice crawled through Tali's veins.

"Marcus!" Kaidan shouted.

No reply came.

"If you can hear us," Said Kaidan's solemn voice, "It was an honor serving with you…"

Tali keyed her mic, "Keelah Se'lai."

They weren't quarians so it wouldn't mean much to them, but she respected them as her crewmates and it was only correct to give them a proper sendoff.

Hours passed.

The life pods rendezvoused at an orbital point near where the Normandy had been to find the ship itself not where they expected it to be. It was in a degrading orbit but it would stay there for several months if undisturbed.

Tali tried transmitting to Shepard's suit radio directly. It took some serious hacking of the backup radio transmitter to do so and she was quite proud of it. She got no response from him.

Her hearts sank but it was possible he'd turned off his transmitter to save power. That's what she would have done. Maybe if she'd come up with the idea earlier she…

Not worth thinking like that.

At 2200 ship time she gave up sleeping. Not only was it damn hard to sleep in zero-g, but the pod was too quiet. Everything was too unsettled. She might still die. John might still die.

Everytime she closed her eyes, she saw him, alone, spiraling away into the endless night as she sat warm and safe in her little life raft.

Some of the engineers had spent time trying to hack together a way to use multiple pods to rescue him. Nothing they could come up with though could be done without depressurizing a pod with unprotected humans inside.

Tali could have depressurized hers and scooped Shepard up, and she nearly tried to, except that her figures told her that even the most optimistic estimate of remaining air would be less than 12 hours for two of them after the proposed maneuver. Since that was substantially less than the 22 remaining hours Shepard would have if they did nothing...they did nothing.

Click, "John...if you can hear me, most of us are okay. I'm safe, Garrus, Liara, Chakwas, Kaidan, Joker, and nearly the whole crew are still floating around trying to find you," Her voice stayed strong through the transmission, but hot tears came as she released the key.

She knew with every hour that passed, the likelihood of him still being there when rescue came decreased.

Nobody else could possibly hear her transmissions on the combat band. She clutched the hand mic to her chest and rambled into it as she drifted around the cabin.

"I don't know why you had to do it...We could have reset it and left together...Bosh'tet.

"Sorry...I shouldn't call you that but…you were being stupid

"I know you're floating around bored out of your mind right now, so hopefully you hear this and it's keeping you occupied.

"...Or maybe I just keep waking you up and you're trying to sleep...If I am, I'm not sorry.

"I think there were a few spare O2 canisters in the engineering cargo bay. I'm not sure where they ended up, but it was crate 71-116 if you can find it."

Her eyelids were getting heavy.

"Thank you John for...everything.

"You're really the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm so glad I got all wrapped up in your crazy spectre world.

She yawned. In her mind, he was there, listening to everything she said and alternately smiling, groaning, laughing. He would say something back, something clever, supportive. He was beside her, relaxed and safe...running his hand through her hair, across the setae on her antennae...back on the Rayya, lying in the artificial sun in the purplish grass between the keleven fields.

A sudden lurch of her life pod woke Tali. She flailed her arms and legs out, "Ah! What is…"

She was panting heavily, hearts pounding furiously in her chest as she looked around, getting her bearings.

Aliens...Life Pods...John

John!

"John...are you there?" She transmitted frantically through her hacked radio.

It gave an empty, unsatisfying crackle in response.

"It's fine," She said aloud, "He hasn't been able to respond yet but it's only…"

She checked the ship clock "1221...he's got tons of time left, even if he didn't find the extra oxygen."

"Normandy Crew. This is Alerus Typhus of the Turian Hierarchy. We have captured your life pods in tractor beams and you are being brought aboard the Cruiser Noctis."

Tali was suddenly alert. They were saved! She saw more than felt her life pod accelerate toward what she could see was the distinctive straight lines and birdlike build of a Turian ship.

The comms were suddenly mayhem. Praise and thanks from various crew, confusion, assurances. She couldn't key in to say anything without being immediately stepped on.

Instead, she took her little hand mic which had been her safety the whole time she was in the pod,

"John...The Turians are here, they found us. I'll make sure they know to look for you."