From behind the colored veil created by the mask on Tali's enviro-suit the stars took on a more romantic appearance. Or perhaps the young quarian machinist was just being silly, having watched a few too many episodes of Fleet and Flotilla. Still, the sight of the stars had an inextricable power to seize her breath and send her imagination running wildly off into the celestial clouds of quasars and nebulas beyond.
She spent much of her time between the starboard observation deck and the engineering room. She loved the contrast of the two places. The mechanical drone of the Normandy's Tantalus drive core as it labored to rocket the Normandy through space, the intricate tinkering her and the other engineers did to squeeze what power they could from the ship's systems to increase the core's output and improve other functions, and the racket of status alarms and notifications always reminded her of the love she had for ships. But the quiet solitude she found in the observation deck and the glittering, distant stars beyond always populated her imagination with ideas of what else might be out there. Despite everything the galactic population knew about the Milky Way, there was still so much left to discover.
When it was late and most of the crew slumbered Tali often found herself here where she could contemplate her thoughts and reflect on her experiences.
The doors to the deck slid open and Tali turned to see the turian, Garrus Vakarian, step inside. She felt her chest flitter as thoughts of their momentary embrace before the mission against the Cerberus base surfaced in her mind. He walked in, seemingly at ease. They hadn't spoke of the days leading up to the assault on the Illusive Man's last bastion of safety.
"Garrus," she stammered, as the taller alien arrived beside her. His eyes fixated on the same cosmic sights that had entranced her.
"Tali," he greeted as he gazed into space beyond, drinking in the vivid, swirling colors of a pulsar thousands of light-years away. "I thought I might find you here."
"You have… something you wanted to say?" she asked. She kept her eyes locked on the observation porthole, too timid to glance over at Garrus.
Their moment in the main battery had been spontaneous, unexpected and fleeting. It was the culmination of spur-of-the-moment flirting along with shared moments when one of them would not-so-accidentally brush up against the other in passing.
When Garrus admitted how he'd felt and stepped forward she was quick to embrace him but unsure how to proceed. Then Shepard walked in and the both of them had made a joke of it. But it wasn't a joke to her and the thought of walking into that hellish battle on Earth frightened her more than she could imagine. For a time she couldn't understand why. She'd survived so many hard fought battles and narrowly escaped death countless times, but then she felt oddly apprehensive, more so than ever before.
After a time she realized it was because of her feelings for Garrus and his own admission that he cared about her. She was worried because she wanted to survive to explore the revelation that someone might love her more deeply than a friend could. She was apprehensive because Garrus didn't shy away from danger and was quick to volunteer himself to personally wade into combat beside Shepard… and she wanted him to live.
"Well," he paused for a moment. "I wanted to say… good job." The words fumbled out of his mouth and were delivered awkwardly. He was brave and often charming, but could seldom find the right words for a girl he liked when it counted most.
"Good job?" she questioned, hoping for more.
"On the uh… the radio signal thing. Very good detective work," Garrus managed to say. If turians' faces could redden his certainly would. He scratched the back of his head nervously. "Definitely outdid this C-Sec officer's sleuthing skills."
"Thank you, Garrus," she chirped with some semblance of joy. Then an awkward silence followed.
"Guh, well I suppose it's not too difficult. I wasn't a very good C-Sec officer, after all," he blurted suddenly, abhorring the silence then cursing himself for breaking it.
"Oh…"
"It's a nice view," he muttered sheepishly, trying to save himself from his own bashfulness.
"Yes," Tali murmured. "It's nice to look upon the stars and know there aren't Reapers lurking in the dark."
"Thanks to Shepard," Garrus offered.
"I think he would agree it was thanks to all of us," Tali replied buoyantly. Shepard was amazing. He was the focal point of their drive toward success against the threat of the Reapers. Garrus and Tali knew that all too well- having been there from the start. But Shepard was keen to remind them how important they all were to the mission and more often than not remarked on how impossible the undertaking would have been without them.
"You're right," Garrus agreed. "I would have given my life for this crew and the Commander. He… he was my best friend." The words tumbled from Garrus' lips awkwardly. The title seemed haplessly childish or immature. My best friend? Did battle-hardened warriors have such things? But it was true. He'd have done anything for Shepard; shared any danger, fought any battle.
And yet they shared only a handful of memories that didn't involve them risking their lives. Garrus' victory as king of the bottle-shooters was chief among them—although it was very likely Shepard had allowed him that small victory. The thought of such a driven man allowing Garrus a tiny victory was enough to make the turian smile.
"I'm glad you didn't have to," Tali said sweetly. She looked over at Garrus for the first time. "There's been enough death."
"Me too," Garrus stated mildly. "I guess it's time to rebuild." It was a simple statement for an overwhelmingly complex problem.
"Speaking of that, why didn't you return to Palaven to help the reconstruction efforts there?" Tali inquired.
Palaven, like Earth, was in ruins. Cities had been bombarded, hundreds of thousands were dead, and what remained of the turian forces were in disarray. Those that had survived the holocaust on Palaven had scarcely been heard of since the Crucible was fired. No one knew just how extensive the damage was, but thousands of turians immediately began the arduous journey back to their home world to see what horrors had been inflicted by the Reapers.
Garrus had never considered leaving. Not even for a moment.
"I've never really been very good at fixing things," Garrus exclaimed. "And I owe Shepard."
He glanced over at Tali for the first time since entering the observation deck and realized she was already gazing upon his scarred visage.
His small, blue eyes gleamed in the low light of the room. He could seem so grim when he wanted to, but there was a magnetism to him; a comeliness that Tali saw in the quiet moments when he seemed at ease. His facial scarring was a reminder of his habit of putting himself in the line of fire. It was a mark of his courage and now the sight of them stirred something inside Tali. They were silent for a moment as they merely looked at one another.
"I could ask you the same question," Garrus began finally. "Why didn't you leave with the Migrant Fleet?"
Every quarian ship had departed with the fleet after the battle with the Reapers had been won and repairs to their ships had been made. They were headed for Rannoch—the monumental task of resettling their home-world was chief among their agenda.
The quarians had reconciled with the geth and their synthetic creations had pledged their support and assistance with the quarian transition back to Rannoch. But the geth were gone now. They had succumbed to the same strange fate that had taken EDI from them. But that wasn't going to stop the quarians from calling Rannoch home again.
"Without the mass relays it's going to take a long time to reach Rannoch," she murmured solemnly, turning her eyes back to the vast expanse of space. "And I owe Shepard too. Besides, I've never felt more at home than here, on this ship."
"Yeah," Garrus said lightly. "I agree."
Quiet returned to the cabin once again as the two of them gazed beyond the shimmering blue-shifted refraction of light caused by the Normandy's FTL travel. The entire universe was theirs to behold; from the pulsars they had seen before to the accretion discs of black holes and the gamma ray bursts they looked at now. It was mesmerizing to behold—a cosmic flurry of colors and patterns awash in the middle of a vast span of black ink that stretched on infinitely.
Then, suddenly, Tali could feel Garrus' fingers delicately intertwine with her own. Startled, she looked in his direction and met his gaze.
"For what it's worth, Tali, I'm glad you're still here," he told her softly.
She felt a giddiness rise inside her and thought about repressing it. After a moment she decided against it. She let the emotions wash over her. She needed that powerful feeling bubbling within her because the very nature of her physiology excluded her from such things as touch or smell. At this moment she could not feel his skin against her own, nor could she experience his breath upon her as he pulled her tightly against his body. But her heart raced and she could feel droplets of sweat form upon her brow. She was excited. She was nervous. She was happy.
"I wouldn't trade it for any other place in the universe," she muttered. She felt his arm wrap around her waist and she was suddenly tucked snugly within his embrace. She didn't mind the feeling of his bulky armor against her form, or the fact that she couldn't truly feel the sensation of his touch. The moment and the feelings that flooded over her was enough. No more words were said between them. Instead they lost themselves in the moment just as they had done so many months before the final battle that took their leader's life. The seemingly insurmountable yearning was released now and Tali sighed. Was this really happening? Was she living a life like the ones she watched on her favorite vid?
She could only be so lucky.