[This is going somewhere I really wasn't expecting. Maybe everyone WILL get a happy ending. ]
It pleased Tanith in a perverse, petulant kind of way that it wasn't Lorik that made her change her course on the way to the Citadel, but the Normandy herself.
She didn't have that much further to go, almost a day, when the ship's VI posted information gleaned from Alliance communications on to her omni-tool.
She'd been wrestling with one of the oxygen scrubbers in the bowels of the engine room, trying to stay busy, when her arm bleeped. Rubbing t he part of her skull she'd manage to whack against the inside of the bulkhead, she queued up the information.
News that Earth had been invaded had reached her days ago, but this was new to her and it really shouldn't have been
Palaven was under attack as well, and with a far larger force than what hit Earth.
Filter forgotten, she stood without looking and made her way back to the living area, reading through reports and transcribed chatter. It made sense, of course; the Turians represented the best military force the Galaxy had to offer, why wouldn't the Reapers hit them with everything they had?
They weren't doing as well as everyone had feared, however. The Turians were holding their own to some degree, far stiffer in the spine than the Reapers had guessed. Rumor had it that the Reapers were pulling forces away from half-harvested colonies to increase the pressure on Palaven.
Tanith resisted the urge to swear, staring at images that made her flush with excitement.
The Normandy, her Normandy, had been spotted leaving the Sol system, had docked on the Citadel for less than a day, and was now on a 'diplomatic' mission to Palaven.
"Diplomatic my round behind," Tanith muttered, heading towards the cockpit and keying up the quickest routes to the Turian homeworld. Screw the Citadel. If I can get back on my ship- She didn't want to think about what she was attempting; jumping into a hot zone full of Reapers and pissed off Turians.
It didn't need to make sense. None of it did. She just knew she had to do it. She had to get back on her ship.
o0o0o0oo00o0o0o
The jump into Palaven space was as chaotic as she braced herself for, but she was far enough away to make manuvering easy enough, undetected amidst the fray. Finding the Normandy was easy enough, but getting there took several nerve-wracking minutes of dodging fire and hurtling debris.
She wasn't stupid enough to hail the Normandy while they were attempting a shuttle drop, and while she was a decent pilot, she didn't know if Joker would even let her dock without the Commander there. And noting the drop happened on the moon and not the planet, Tanith knew her assumptions were right. This was no simple diplomatic mission.
She waited almost an hour before callingin. She gave her old code and identification number, praying it would at least get her noticed by more than this little English twat giving her a hard time on the other end.
"Not that I blame them," she muttered under her breath.
A few minutes passed before a familiar voice rang through her ear piece, and she almost sobbed in relief to hear the tones of a friend.
"Holy shit is that you, Freak?" Joker asked, a laugh in his voice. "God, I hope it is, because you have no idea how perfect your timing i-i-i-i-"
A stutter ran through the feed, and she blinked in surprise. Resident chatter and battle going on, EDI ran too fine a system to be remotely effected by something as small as a war. "Yeah, Joker, it's Tani. Talk to me, what's going on?"
No static, just comm-modulation upsets. "-ip's going haywire. Tried- ...ontacting the Command- ... tower's dow-... crew not as familiar- ...-ong story. ...-an you get to me?"
"Will my ship fit the bay?" Tanith asked, tapping at a few keys and guiding her ship to where the Normandy held orbit, safe and at a distance from the war raging around them
She heard a smirk, heard it, through the comm system. "Baby, you pull it up, I'll guide it in. We'll make it fit."
"You are just as filthy as ever, Joker," Tanith laughed, jubilant for the first time in weeks.
"No one here appreciates my humor. Hurry up, before comm d-d-d-d-d-de-" The disruption cut him off, but Tani knew what to do now.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
The crew here were not military, not like the Cerberus crew was. Basic combat, maybe, but these kids were more brains than brawn. On a ship like this one, that was probably a benefit, but Tani found it eerie that she wasn't stopped once on her way to the CIC.
Then she got there, and realized it was probably because it wasn't the CIC anymore.
"Oh, baby," she murmured, running a passing hand over an exposed panel; the whole ship was in pieces. "What did they do to you?"
Lights flickered and levels shuddered as the Normandy wrestled with itself, throwing sparks now and again from the exposed wiring. When she finally got to the cockpit, she laughed as Joker turned and she happily fell into the completely unprofessional embrace. He gave her a snort and a good hug, pushing her back to look at her.
"Jesus, Freak ... you look like hell," he told her.
Straightening, she brushed at her eyes and growled in frustration at her body's betrayal. "Shut your face, Joker, or I'll break your collarbone. What's going on?"
His chair spun around as his hands danced over the console. He gave her a run down of where everyone was, the current mission, back-tracking to the ship escaping Earth with the skeleton crew it had, personel that had been in charge of re-furbishing the ship but not actually run it.
"They aren't a bad bunch, but if it weren't for EDI filling in all the holes, we'd be really screwed. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm completely willing to pick up the rest of you Cerberus defectors as soon as we can. That part of space is still Reaper free, right?" he asked, tilting his head up to look at her.
Memories battered at the walls she'd put up, and she clenched her jaw in resolute defiance.
"Nothing substantial," she murmured.
"That's great! We can-"
"No, Joker. We can't. I'm the only one left." I will not cry. I will not cry. Please stop asking, please, please...
Joker wasn't stupid. He turned back to the console. He was quiet as he tried a few more adjustments to the comm system. Then, "Slavers?"
"No." She took a slow, deep breath. "The Illusive Man didn't take our resignation very well."
"Son of a-"
"Normandy, this is Liara T'soni coming in for dock. Joker, what's your status?"
"I'm barely keeping her out of the life support systems, Doc, but she's somewhat... kind of ... stable. For the moment. If you give it a few seconds, I'm sure it will go haywire again. We got some extra help but you might want to get in here as fast as possible."
"That's kind of the idea. Cortez is turning around for the second pick up as soon as I'm on board. Shepard's come into trouble locating the Primarch. Looks like the one we expected didn't make it. Rules of succession point her to the next one down the line, but it turns out he's a general on the front lines."
Joker pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why can't anything ever be simple?"
"Don't say that. Death by Reaper can be pretty simple."
"My, aren't you cheerful. Hurry up and get in here."
"Already aboard. Cortez is heading out. I'll be right there."
o0o0o0o0ooo00o0o0o0o
Between Liara, Joker, and Tani, they got most of the systems calmed down by the time the Commander returned. Even knowing the ship had been stripped and put back together (mostly), Tani was surprised to find most everything still worked and responded the way it had on the original SR-2. Refurbished as it was, the mainframe was the same and the core systems, that she had supplied the hardware for, hadn't been tampered with. Bypassing all the Alliance crap installed was easier than she expected, and while the Normandy still waged some kind of internal battle, for the most part life support and communications stabilized.
All of this had to be done from the cockpit, however; EDI's mainframe was locked through beyond the med-bay, several Alliance crew trying to pry open the doors as the AI was still not responding.
Commander Shepard boarded and made her way to the physical mainframe, and after that the cameras cut out.
Tani leaned over to stare at Joker's screen. "That's ... weird..." Joker made a strange sound of agreement. Without looking up, she slapped the back of his head.
"OW! What was that for? I agreed with you!"
"Stop looking at my cleavage. I'll break your pelvis."
"I was just appreciating the view. It's a shame you only like the tall, dark, and spikey ki- OW!"
"Don't be rude-"
A voice, familiar but no longer disembodied, resonated playfully behind them. "That, Specialist Delano, is completely impossible for Jeff."
Tani and Joker whirled around.
"Oh my," breathed Tani.
"Nng...nn..." managed Joker.
And there was EDI, in all her metallic, feminine glory.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Tanith was assigned to Cortez pretty quickly. While he didn't mind doubling as pilot and shuttle mechanic and stepping in as procurement officer, it was clear where his love truly lay. He was also the first to admit that her people skills far out-stripped his own.
"The discounts you brought in are still legendary," he told her with a small smile, passing the datapad to her after keying in her ID specs. "They're still charging me extra for ordering intergalactic."
Tani raised her eyebrows at him, eyeing the list of suppliers. She knew most of the owners personally, and even with the change of crew, that surprised her. "Did you tell them you'd kick back a percentage prefered minerals we found? The Normandy has an amazing refinery system. It saves everyone money and sends materials straight to EDI to repair, manufacture, or stack for trade." She stopped, wincing at the sound of her voice and the look of doubt on Cortez's features.
"I'm sorry. I forget you guys really haven't-" she began, then sighed. "Don't worry, I got this." She gave him a small smile. "It's all about exploiting EDI's lesser known qualities to give the suppliers what they really want." She tapped up the contact information of a mod supplier on Illium. "I got this," she repeated.
Per the Commander's instruction, the first set of orders was to supply and refit the Normandy up to par pre-Alliance and post-Cerberus. Half of the refurbishing done to the weapons were the last to get replaced, and with the invasion of Earth, many of the parts were left in the docks in Vancouver. Tani hadn't heard about Garrus' roar of frustration, but she was fairly sure she felt it through the floor panels.
Armed with several large crates, Tani felt a weird clench in her stomach as she made her way down to the Main Battery. She'd only been on the ship a few days, and already she was her usual, awkward, stumbling self around Officer Vakarian. Just like old times.
It wasn't that she was still smitten over him. Granted, he was still very attractive to her in all the ways a person appealed to her, but she was still cursed with that rigid loyalty to Lorik, even if their ... whatever ... wasn't exactly clearly defined. It had more to do with the fact that Garrus was the first Turian she'd seen and spoken to since she left Noveria.
Being around people helped. A lot. But being around a Turian only seemed to make her ... anxious.
And horny. She missed Lorik, and the letters she kept going through were getting dirtier and dirtier with every time-stamp.
She keyed in her code at the battery door, the chime notifying the occupant that she was coming in. The doors slid open without a wait, and using the dolly, she guided in the massive crates.
"YES." Garrus' triumphant cry made Tani jerk, the dual tones playing along her nerves like they always did. Turian voices were a senuous weapon. It wasn't fair.
Without so much as a grunt of effort, the top crate was lifted off and revealed her figure, and she busily tapped at her datapad to mark off the contents in her delivery from her manifest, tapping in their location and purpose. Halfway through her adjustments, the pad was pulled from her hands.
Garrus scrolled through the inventory list, a rumble of approval radiating through his chest. "Good, good... wow, Delano, you wasted no time getting back in touch with your friends, did you?" Blue eyes smiled down at her as he passed her the manifest. "The best AI in the galaxy can't harvest the kind of friendships that you can."
EDI's voice chimed through the main battery. "I feel a little resentment at that, Officer Vakarian. If given enough practice, there's a possibility I could-"
"No offense meant, EDI. It's only the trust issues between organics and machines I referred to, not your charming personality," came Garrus' reassuring reply. He winked down at Tanith, before stopping to pick up the next crate in the stack.
He had a few questions about the other items he'd need, and she made a note of them on her omni-tool. It bothered them both that the Normandy was so below standard when it came to her weapons; this was not how they left her and it was almost insulting that her teeth had been the first thing the Alliance had pulled.
As she took his next request on orders, she shook her head and muttered at some of the more basic, common-sense items on this list. "Ridiculous," she let slip, her irritation starting to show.
Garrus crossed his arms to look at her, posture tight and rigid as he waited for an explaination.
Tanith blushed with embarassment and shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir. It's just ... they take almost six months to dismember the greatest ship ever made, attempt to put her back together, only to leave her defenseless? And not just slight set backs to modify her guns, no, they pull the whole thing out and leave it on the floor of the docks because ... what? They're afraid someone will take her?"
He listens to her brief eruption without comment, and then gives a slow, Turian smile. "We-e-e-lll... that is what happened, isn't it?"
Her nostril's flare in irritation, fingers blindly queuing up a schematic, stepping forward to use his console. In a second, EDI's mainframe is on display. "This right here is a piece of engineering genius. An organic crew on this ship is almost obsolete, even without the funtions of an AI. Granted, there isn't a VI that can keep up with our EDI, but still... if the Alliance wanted to make a few leaps ahead in their own fleet systems, if they'd spent half as much energy examining the mainframe as they did tearing out the guns-"
She's almost shouting. She knows this isn't a reason to get this upset. It's something else. A lot of something else.
A tremor of tension ripples through her, and for a moment she doesn't understand why. But then she feels a squeeze on her shoulder and realizes that Garrus has his hand on her. She shudders and can't help the lean in. She can't remember the last time she was truly touched, Joker's hug notwithstanding.
At her unintentional reaction, Garrus' eyes flicked to her neck, understanding on his face as he rumbles at her softly. Tani blushed, twitched and covered the mark under her ear.
Her brief stay on Noveria with Lorik had been a lot of things. Wonderful, romantic, emotional. It had also been quite intense, and the recollection of one of her last encounters with him had earned her a true Turian bite-mark. While she didn't regret it, it did mark her as what Joker had teasingly called her; a 'freak' for Turian lovings.
She'd been warned that by baring the mark, it would make her easy to identify to not just humans, but other Turians as well. Given as she was innately monogamous, she'd never really considered the bite as more than a right of claim. In this simple moment though, standing in the battery not a foot from the first Turian she'd ever had the hots for, his hand on her shoulder and her body resonating with need, she understood something else about the mark on her skin. It let other Turians know that not only did she appreciate them sexually, she could also handle them. Sexually.
"Are you alright?" Garrus asked, pitching his voice soft and low.
Damn that voice.
With a slow, deep inhale, Tanith gently pushed aside his hand, standing a little straighter. Without planning on it, she did give him a gentle squeeze before releasing his fingers. "I... I am. Just ... stress, you know?" She gave a small laugh at the understatement. Grabbing her datapad and keying the dolly back into activation, she dipped her head in acknowledgement. "I have to get back to work. I'll put in your order right away, next stop we'll have the ability to get the Normandy's teeth as sharp as they ever were."
Unwilling to allow herself the chance to be any more awkward, she practically fled the battery and the very interested Turian watching her go.