Author's Note: Once again, please review or favorite! Those who have been following this story may notice I changed the rating and teaser. This is simply an attempt to garner a larger readership. It will eventually have to return to M. And I intend to push that rating.
Chapter 3: Past the Brink
"Interdum, nex est melior..."
(Sometimes, a violent death is better...)
~Unattributed
This ought to be good. Jack was never one to socialize with the rest of the Normandy's crew, but that thought had been enough to rouse her from the maintenance area beneath the engineering deck. She just had to see it. It wasn't every day that a man of such high standards, of unblemished virtue, had the potential to fall apart. She smiled at that. Shepard deserved it.
And so Jack sat in one of the vacant chairs that surrounded the Normandy's Combat Information Center, spinning a holopad in the air with her biotics. She was not the only one who had found an excuse to be just outside the Communication Room. Ever since Shepard had returned with Tali's body, the crew had been in a mixed state of mourning for the quarian and curiosity as to Shepard's reaction. Jack wasn't exactly linked into the rumor mill aboard the ship, but the talk was everywhere. Shepard had been in love with Tali.
Jack snorted at that thought. Love? Love was a weakness, something to be stamped out. Desire and lust? Now Jack understood those. She had felt them towards Shepard, upon their meeting on Purgatory. She had found his physical presence, along with the fact that he had cared to visit her routinely, as strangely... cooling. Like a fire she could not douse was weakened when around him. So she had offered herself to him, in a way she had never done before: without an ulterior motive. And that bastard had turned her down.
All the condolences in the world couldn't change the facts. Shepard had chosen a quarian, a goddamn, fucking quarian over her! Upon hearing of his supposed relationship with Tali, an emotion had built in Jack like she had never felt. To someone less jaded, they would have identified that emotion as jealousy. But to Jack it was just another, somehow more poignant, form of hatred. And she had let it fester.
She was human. She was strong. She was willing. And what did Tali offer him? Weakness piled upon weakness. Maybe Shepard liked her innocence, her naivety. Or maybe it was just the fucking suit, the goddamn helmet, the whoreish accent. Jack mulled that over. If he had really loved her, Shepard had been an idiot, and he had payed for it.
Letting the holopad drop to the floor, Jack glared at nothing in particular. If the rumors were true, they shouldn't have had time to do anything... fun. But had he even seen her face? Touched her skin?
And it was the thought of Tali's skin that brought Jack out of her contemplation. She spun her chair to the left, where Mordin sat, supposedly running new combat algorithms through the weapon systems. She scowled at him. The lack of response that garnered required a more direct approach. "Hey, Mordin."
The salarian glanced at her quickly, slight discomfort showing on his face. She got that a lot. "Important work. Maybe later?"
Jack openly scoffed at that. "Bullshit, Mordin. Your waiting to hear The Illusive Man's decision. Just like everyone else." She gestured with both arms. Along with herself and Mordin, that movement encompassed most of the crew. Garrus, Joker, Jacob, Chambers... they were all here for some "reason" or another. Mordin seemed to see the futility in any further deception. He turned to face her.
"What?"
Jack smiled. She liked getting her way. "Seeing as no one has ever seen it, and you have looked through her medical records... Tali's skin. What color is it?" The question took the salarian aback. He gave her a dubious look, as if questioning her intentions. A few seconds of silence, however, failed to illicit an explanation from Jack. Seeing this, Mordin finally answered.
"Quarian skin color, like human or asari, varies. Tali." He sighed. "Tali's skin. Light purple." Another few seconds of silence passed between them. Mordin shifted uncomfortably. With a condescending salute, Jack finally let him off the hook.
"There. That wasn't so hard. Light purple, huh?" Mordin nodded in affirmation, obviously wishing to end this conversation. He knew a conversation such as this was considered sexually explicit by Tali's people. It was a perversion of her very memory. Jack knew that too. Only she didn't care.
Before she could dig any further, a single rifle shot rang out, reverberating through the Normandy. A half dozen firearms were pointed at the the Communication Room as Shepard stormed out, followed closely by Miranda. She was trying to reason with him. The smoking shotgun he carried displayed her at success at that endeavor.
"Shepard. Shepard! Do you know how much that communicator cost?" A conversation regarding the losses Cerberus sustained when he fired a blast of buckshot into the communications array was not high on Shepard's list of desires. His aiming of the shotgun at Miranda, in the midst of his crew, made that obvious.
"Go to hell." Shepard waved the shotgun around the room, "That goes for all of you!" With a growl of unmitigated wrath, he threw the Shotgun against the now closed door to the Comm room. "What do we have on this ship!? The galaxies best brought together! And you can't-" Shepard hesitated. He had never admitted his feelings for Tali openly. The anger he currently held threw any modesty he held out the window. With an accusing glare at no one in particular, he finished. "-bring her back!"
The assembled crew stood in silence, watching their Commander for his next move. He seemed to hesitate, his anger wavering. Miranda jumped into the lull. "I'm.. so sorry Shepard. I, and the Illusive Man, would do everything we could to bring... her back." She put a hand on his shoulder. "But it just isn't possible. The Lazarus project was built to bring you back. Just you. You must remember, that took four billion credits and two years, with decades of research prior to that. And it was all lost when we remote detonated the station. There is nothing Cerberus can do."
Shepard pulled away from Miranda's grasp, a weary look suddenly descending upon him. He saw the truth in her statement. "I'm going to see her." His statement was followed by action, as Shepard quickly boarded the elevator, heading down. Upon the closing of the elevator door, a cloud seemed to lift from the room. Garrus hacked out a nervous cough. Chambers rubbed one of her eyes. Jack jeered silently at her. Was that a tear? It was Miranda who finally broke the resulting silence. She rubbed her brow before addressing the crew. "Okay, everyone back to work..."
And most did as commanded. Rather quickly, the CIC emptied as everyone returned to their respective duties. Only Jack persisted in her seat, watching as Yeoman Kelly Chambers moved across the room to Miranda's side, before starting to speak in a soft voice. Jack listened in.
"It's not a good idea to let him do that. He has to let go. Keeping her down there will prevent Shepard from ever moving on." Kelly spoke in a whisper, her usually chipper attitude entirely absent.
Miranda gestured to the twisted remains of the shotgun, which Shepard had left. "I know, Chambers, but who is going to stop him?" Jack was disappointed, she had expected some real analysis from Kelly. Upon reflecting on that for a moment, Jack reversed her initial dismay. Knowing Miranda, that would have to be given in writing. Their conversation continued, but Jack had already tuned them out. She was on the move, heading back to her "den". And if just happened to take her past the portside cargo area? So be it.
Minutes later, standing on the catwalk just outside the elevator, overlooking the hanger-bay, Jack was able to see through the windows of the cargo area into what had been Grunt's room. Shepard was leaning against a large tank, his cheek pressed against the glass, eyes closed.
Upon returning with Tali's body from Omega, Mordin and Doctor Chakwas had rigged Grunt's old live-tank to prevent decomposition in Tali, in hopes that Cerberus could revive her at some point. Tali was thus suspended in a neutral fluid that prevented bacteria from feeding on her body. Seeing as the tank was originally designed to only keep someone alive, the doctors had ingeniously used the quarian's own envirosuit to regulate everything. Unfortunately for Jack, this had required them leaving her suit intact. Jack had wanted to see what Tali looked like, to see for her own eyes what Shepard had chosen over her. She now knew it was a hopeless wish, however. Even the rips in Tali's right shoulder showed nothing, the doctors having resealed them before flooding the tank.
Such a minor defeat did not keep Jack's lips from skinning back, as a vicious smile shined through her normally stormy exterior. That setup would allow Tali's body to remain as it was indefinitely. As far as she was concerned, Shepard could keep that corpse as long as he wanted. That..carcass...would never bring Shepard happiness, only grief. He could imagine the decades that had as yet not passed, of the years they would have spent together. He could think of times that would never be, the love that would never be shared, the sheer amount of joy he would never experience.
And it would consume him.
Turning towards the stairs that led down to her adopted home, Jack laughed out a single word.
"Good."
She emerged from a dark, deep blackness.
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy shivered, the wind playing with her short raven hair. Upon processing that thought, she sat up with a start She shouldn't be able to feel the air. Upon looking down, the sight Tali beheld filled her with fear. Her envirosuit was gone. She was naked. Gasping, Tali looked around for something to cover herself with. There was nothing. In every direction, a field of trimmed pale yellow grass stretched to the horizon, blowing softly in the wind.
Tali tilted her head in confusion, a gesture learned from nearly a decade behind a visor that required something more than facial expressions. She lifted her arm in a most experimental way, feeling the air rush against her skin. It felt...wonderful. Since being fitted for her first envirosuit at the age of fifteen, Tali had forgotten what it was like to see without the glare of a visor, to smell without three layers of oxygen-scrubbing, to have her hair move in the wind. And like a blind man who could suddenly see, Tali realized what she had been missing.
It was this deluge of new sensations that prevented her from instantly recognizing her location. The videos she had seen in school, showing this planet, were over three centuries old. But any quarian could tell by a glance. This was Rannoch, the quarian homeworld. The orange sky, the pale grass, the dry air; there was no mistaking it. That realization left her aghast, as hundreds of questions surged through her mind. One, however, kept coming to the forefront.
How had she gotten here?
She sat there, running through these questions for nearly an hour. As her mind searched, the rest of her body slowly explored the new sensations it had long been restrained from experiencing. The feeling of a hand resting on her shoulder suddenly shook her to full perceptive clarity. It took her a moment to realize that it was her own hand. To be able to touch her own shoulder, without two layers of material between them, was an astonishing situation for the young quarian to find herself in. This prompted a curiosity to explore this -no- her world.
Standing slowly, her body used to the tight cling of a suit that was no longer there, Tali started walking. The direction wasn't intentional, she was steering a random course. After awhile, she slowed again. Something disturbingly intangible told her to keep moving, but her senses were once again overwhelmed. She knelt, feeling the grass between her toes, took a flower, and breathed in. She knew hat flower's pollen should scare her; that much foreign material could kill her. But that fear, refused to come.
Eventually continuing on, Tali soon reached a small depression, where she lingered again, the wind blowing overhead. Sitting down, she spread her arms in the ankle deep grass, content with the world.
It was then she heard the rustling of feet moving towards her.
Pulling her legs to her chest, Tali did the best to cover herself. But what approached was not human, asari, or turian. It did not judge. It was a figure, of that Tali was sure. It seemed to be at the point of being blown away in the wind, like a column of smoke before a breeze. But beyond that, her mind seemed incapable of discerning much else. It was at once both identifiable and mysterious, a being that she could simply not comprehend. It seemed to sense her unease, and somehow, without changing its slow approach, soothed it.
Tali was at a loss for words. She breathed a single word. "Keelah..."
Hearing that word, the being stopped. It seemed to respond positively, for it's next act was to engage her directly. Nothing on it moved, but Tali felt as if she could feel it's very words.
"We are sorry, Tali'Zorah vas Normandy nar Rayya." The use of her formal name was reassuring to the quarian in a way she could not explain. She found herself asking a question.
"Who...what are you?" Her question hung in the air for what seemed like ages. The being, without moving, finally answered.
"You cannot join. He is coming for you. He intends to bring you back. You should be ours. It is not right. It will not end well."
Tali was confused, her mind overloaded by the bizarre nature of the situation. She pressed for clarity, stammering out a second set of inquiries. "Who is he? What are you talking about!?"
The being's...aura, seemed to shift. Whatever is was thinking was bringing it to anger. And that anger bred a fear in Tali she had never felt, as if the very world she was on resented being forced to answer that question. Finally, it responded.
"Shepard."
The being disappeared, as did the grass. The ground turned brown, then started cracking as the moisture it had held disappeared. The wind instantly became a gale as heavy rain fell from the sky.
Tali screamed, and her world went black once more.
Continues in Chapter 4: The Answer
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