The thoughts that I feed

Planting a seed

With time, will begin to grow

Chapter 19b

A Proper Day Off (pt II)

Markus had spent the entire time Tali was gone planning possible aesthetic designs for the walls, cabinets, tables, etc. Little decisions like this drove him nuts. His choice wouldn't have any registrable negative impact; no one would be injured, died, nobody would have to clean up his mess. The worst that would happen here would be he'd have to pay to get it replaced. And the months of back pay he had, it'd be a dent but not a too costly one.

"Off white cream," He talked to himself in the house. "or just do the damned yellow?"

"I dunno boss, I'd go with a soft gray myself."

"Shi- JOKER!" Shepard hadn't noticed his pilot come in. "How long you been standing there?"

"Long enough to know I'm glad the Reapers didn't try to make us do interior decorating. I mean damn, I've seen you cut wires on nuclear bombs faster than this."

"Smartass. So what're you doing down here."

"Haven't been down to look at the house. Got curious."

"So what do you think?"

"Kinda small."

"Small? If this house were any bigger I'd need a permit to build a city."

"Yeah? And?"

"You really can't shut it off can you?" He asked rhetorically.

"Nope." Joker shot back with pride. "But in all seriousness I'd go with a soft gray. Goes good with any color for the counter tops and appliances."

"Makes sense; just too bland."

"What and yellow isn't it's cliché. So is cream."

"It's a classic."

"Please, that scheme has been outdated since before spaceflight."

Before Shepard could respond back his omni-tool pinged.

"Shepard," EDI said. "there's a problem. I believe you'll want to take this privately."

Shepard walked into the Rayya city jailhouse. So much for a nice day off.

"What, the fuck, were you two thinkin'?" He asked Isabella and Sonja as they stepped out of the cells. "You assaulted the head of HOMEWORLD SECURITY!" He practically yelled the last half of his sentence.

"To be fair, it wasn't our fault." Isabella said.

"We didn't start it." Sonja added on.

"So what the hell did happen?"

"Dear lord that felt good!" Ashley said stretching as the women walked out of the spa. "I didn't feel this good after the party we had."

"That was fun." Traynor joined in. "We should do that again."

"Gotta ask, why were you staring at my ass so much?" Sonja said.

"You didn't know?" Isabella said to her sister.

"Know what?"

"That she and your brother play for the same team."

"So this is how you've been spending your time." No one noticed the quarian man standing at their shuttle until he spoke up. His suit was a plain soft white with no secondary color save for the black behind his mask.

"Han'Gerrel! I-I'm so sorry I didn't see you."

"I'd like to talk with you alone." He said. The second the others stepped into the shuttle Gerrel let loose a rant he had been building for a long time.

"We can wait as long as you need." Liara said stepping in last.

Gerrel waited for the shuttle door to close before going off. "I supported you when Korris insisted on stripping you of your shipname. It was the least I could do. When you chose to stay on the Human's ship I understood. You were feeling alone, vulnerable and he protected you. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Leaving us, to stay with him after we reclaimed our world... for a human.I told myself you didn't see any options. The romanticism of war made that man look decent and respectable.

"But to ask Raan and I to stand with you while marrying him?! It's a disgrace to our people, our way of life. The way he flaunts his status, like he earned us our homeworld. And why? To bring us into his war. A war we lost tens of thousands of our people in! You were an asset to him." Tali's body by this point had shrunk down similar to when Javik spoke to her months earlier.

"You are an admiral with responsibilities to yourpeople, not his. Come back with me now, while I can still salvage this situation."

"HEY!" Sonja yelled as she stepped down from the shuttle. "Don't you dare treat her like a child. She made a choice. Only she has to live with it good or bad. Now apologize or get the hell out of here!"

"I should warn you, as head of Homeworld Security I can-"

"I don't give a flying fuck if you're the gatekeeper to heaven or king of the whole galaxy, if you screw with my sister, you screw with me."

"And me." Isabella said joining her older sister.

"Hmph. Typical mud-ape response: when confronted with something you can't understand you get violent." Ashley, Traynor and the rest of the shuttle occupants had stepped back out, in shock about the shouting match going on just outside. Several of Rayya's police had also started making discrete calls in case they needed backup.

"I'm not the one chastising someone I call family for her choice in husband. Now like my sister here said, apologize or just walk away. Before things get unfortunate."

"I think they already are." Gerrel said before taking a swing at Sonja.

She and Isabella ducked then slammed into Gerrel knocking him to the ground with a loud thud. The half dozen officers that were watching ran to Gerrel to assist him against Sonja and Isabella. The G7 Marine took the policemen and women while her freighter captain sister kept on Gerrel, offering chances for him to apologize every third or forth blow.

The Normandy crew however just stood awestruck at the brawl unfolding before them.

'Those two are just damn insane' Markus thought to himself as he listened to his sisters describe what happened. He was happy they so readily defended Tali, but wasn't too pleased how they did it.

"Quit slandering the admiral!" One of the quarian security officers said. "He's a war hero!"

"He's a bigoted asshole." Sonja shot back. "And I got about a half dozen eyewitnesses who can prove that."

The officer simply humphed back.

"Jeez," Isabella said under her breath. "I thought it was only turians who had the sticks up their ass. Is this an all dextro thing now?"

"Izzie," Markus hissed with a glare. "the bail for you two is already set at 85,000 credits. Each. Please don't give them an excuse to pile on more."

"Sorry."

After signing the paperwork for them to be released including a stipulation that they were to remain out of Rayya City boundaries for the duration of their stay along with the other two major cities, the Shepards returned to the Normandy for dinner.

Isabella provided dinner from the small galley in her ship: spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce. While Isabella cooked in her own ship for the three of them, Markus made up the last of the dehydrated dextro-packs which were similar to dehydrated levo food.

While they ate, Tali kept deathly silent. She was still processing what happened with Han'Gerrel. Sonja was doing what she could by telling of some of her more amusing missions.

"So my drop pod malfunctioned dropping me into the middle of this asari monastery. The doors blow open showing me nearly a platoon's worth of Collector troops. I barely have time to grab my sniper rifle and pistol and get to cover behind a table before they open up. The chair was practically melted down into slag." That got an 'ooh' from her brother.

"So there I am, scion on my right, pinning me down and abominations coming up on the left. I tried cloaking, but the swarmers overloaded everything but the heat sinks in my guns. Then this hyuuge biotic explosion sends the abominations flying into the scion blowing it to pieces."

"Asari Justicar?" Markus asked curious as to who saved her ass.

"Volus vanguard."

"Oh big, bad marine isn't ever gonna live this down." Markus said laughing, his drink nearly spilling out of his mouth.

"Says the man who fell through a fish tank."

"Hey hey hey hey! That was actually part of my evil clone's plan. No, really. It was."

After they were done Isabella went back to her own ship while Sonja crashed on one of the chairs at the poker table in the lounge. Markus and Tali left for their cabin on Deck One. Despite not doing much, he was extremely tired. Part of it was bailing his sisters out of jail, the other was a defensive instinct to avoid his needed discussion with Tali.

"Tali, there's uh, there's something we need to talk about." He couldn't lift his head let alone look at her right now. His mood was quickly becoming almost as low as hers.

"What is it? Did you finish the house?" She said with a faux mask of optimism.

"You had better sit down."

She sat down in the corner of the couch, curling up into a ball. Gerrel's words were still having a bad effect on her.

"I know this isn't the best time," He said curling up next to her. "But if I don't say this now I'm pretty sure I'll keep finding some excuse or another for the rest of my life."

She was already hugging him tightly. "What is it?"

"I've got radiation poisoning."

"What?" Tali's head shot up to look at Shepard, whose eyes were transfixed on the corner of the coffee table. He was remembering the day he saved the galaxy almost at the cost of his own life yet again.

"When I was on the Crucible, the intelligence said I had a choice. Either kill all artificial life, become in essence, a Reaper god, somehow fuse organic and synthetic life or do nothing. Our fleets couldn't keep taking the pounding and that was just Earth. The Crucible was the only way we could win: wipe out the Reapers in one fell swoop. So doing nothing was out. I didn't trust what it was saying about me taking control or synthesis so I was left with one choice. But I couldn't just murder the geth in cold blood like that."

"What happened?"

"I did what I did best: I started cutting, soldering and hacking. I overrode the energy signature to take out heavy-Reaper coding. I was already struggling to stay awake. I had lost so much blood, my hands were coated red, shining in the light like glass. It seemed to go on for, well forever. I knew what I was looking for from when we were poking around EDI's coding. Made that look like a child's picture book by comparison but I finally did it. I singled the energy to delete the programming of anything operating with more than half a million lines of Reaper code.

"The intelligence continued spouting how this was only a temporary solution, that we'd soon be threatened by artificial life. That all of this would just happen again. When it was done, I hit the switch and everything just... exploded. I was crushed by god knows how many tons of the Citadel, bleeding out from several places on my body, the only means of getting on or off the station was shut down. The only thing I could think about was you, how I let you down.

"When I awoke I was in an post-op tent somewhere in London, the city we fought through. I don't remember if it was day or night. All I knew was there was screaming everywhere, injured soldiers all around me. Anyone who could stand was helping treat those who couldn't.

"When I heard the Normandy was missing, I just drifted. I didn't want to go on. It was easier just to, sleep my life away, let it just, pass on by until I died."

"But that message..."

"As much as I wanted you to be alive, it had been over four months with no word, no rumors that you survived. I just... I... when I saw you again," He turned back to Tali with a very wide grin on his face. The kind of grin that says that she's the perfect woman for him. "I felt better than I ever had. That ring I gave you, Isabella slipped me was the family ring when she pulled me aside.

His eyes went back to the table corner. "When I woke up after doctor Chakwas and EDI fixed my limbs she gave me the news. When the Crucible blew it released a radiation no one had ever seen before, Theta radiation she calls it. It doesn't spread unless there's enough of it to go off the scanners. It builds on itself, the more of it there is the faster it builds. Most of that medical cocktail she gave me was to neutralize the radiation. If she hadn't, I would have been dead a week later. But there's a catch. I need to keep taking it and prolonged exposure to some of the chemicals in it will eventually reach lethal levels."

"But- after everything you've done... how can you be dying?"

"It won't happen for a while. It'll be thirty years, maybe thirty-five. Chakwas will be able to get a better idea as the years go on."

"Markus..." She hugged him to the point where his eyes started feeling like they might burst out of his skull, then released him just as quickly. "What will... I mean when you... What will happen?"

"It causes a build up in the lungs. Shortness of breath, possible blackouts. Then, eventually, more than likely, I just won't wake up. Chakwas is looking for alternates with less damaging results but she's not too optimistic. Not that she's going to stop."

"I'm so sorry." It was all she could get out. Every time she tried to say something else she couldn't form the words.

"It's alright. I always figured I'd die face up on some rock hundreds of light-years from home after my squad made a hot evacuation or lay dead beside me. It wasn't until about a year and a half ago, when we became intimate that I started to think that maybe, somehow, I could carve a life out beyond military service."

Tali was speechless at this revelation about him.

"When we got Rannoch back, I was so sure I could get away with you. When it was all done, I'd retire and spend the rest of my life with you. I don't know how much time is really left, it might be a week, it might be thirty years from now. All I know is, if I had to do it all over again." He started coming out of his trance-like state. "I'd do it. Because you're worth it. I love you, Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch. And I don't plan on spending another day away from you, ever again."