Two Years?

It is almost night time at one of Earth's major cities, the buildings and streets glow with the dark blue ambience of twilight. Tali walks down one of its streets by herself, nobody else present in the area. There are low and medium-rise buildings to both her left and right, and staring straight ahead reveals yet another wall of buildings where the street terminates. The buildings are run-down and decrepit, and the alleys between them are filthy and covered in discarded trash. Though the city she walks within is a major metropolis, rich in both commerce and culture, this particular area is a place of poverty and crime. There is a constant, subtle roaring sound in the background: the urban noise produced by the city.

Tali and Shepard now walk together, still in the slums of this city. They hold each other's hands; Tali's right with Shepard's left. They turn a corner, and enter another street; still, they are the only ones in the area. Shepard begins to point out locations as they walk, telling her of things that had happened here in his life; this is the city he was raised in. He has a story of something that happened for every place he points out. Some of them are funny, but most are tragic and sad. A short while passes, and he stops walking. He tells her that he doesn't want to be here anymore.

The two of them now walk together on one of Virmire's coastlines. It is night time, and everything is dark; the sky above them black with millions of subtly twinkling pinhole dots. They walk along the coast, parallel to the naturally occurring wall of rocks that typically line Virmire's beaches. Droplets of water occasionally spray down on them as waves crash against the rocks. There is a constant, subtle roaring sound in the background: the noise of the ocean.

Shepard begins to run, and Tali runs as well. They both laugh as they run together, having fun and enjoyment. Wanting to show off, Tali goes into a full sprint and passes Shepard. After a short while, she stops and turns around. Shepard is on the ground, lying face down. She approaches him, and flips him over. He is dead.

Tali continues walking down the coastline of Virmire, by herself. In the distance, the sun is slowly beginning to rise. The subtle roaring of the ocean continues.

"Arrival to Freedom's Progress in fifteen minutes."

Tali's eyes instantly opened as the VI alert message woke her. She was within a shuttle, sitting in the co-pilot's seat in the cockpit. Her second-in-command, Prazza, sat in the pilot's seat, attentively observing the ship's systems. The noise of the shuttle's drive core subtly roared in the background, permeating throughout the small quarian vessel.

During her dream, everything had been clear and made complete sense. But now, as it was analyzed by her conscious mind, it seemed as unusual and random as any other dream. The visual detail of the locations, and the stories Shepard told her as they walked in the city, were now fuzzy and muddled. She couldn't remember anything he had said; only the emotional responses to his childhood stories remained in her mind. Like dreams often are, this one had been a mishmash of imaginings and memories, merged together.

Having a dream about Shepard was somewhat of a pleasant surprise, even if it wasn't a happy one. During the time that followed his death two years ago, she had dreamt about him on an almost nightly basis. Although occasionally her dreams dealt with him being dead, in most of them he was alive and well. It was her subconscious' response to her desire of wanting him to still be alive. Or maybe it was just her mind in denial, refusing to accept that he was gone.

As the months passed after his death, the dreams of him became less and less common. Thoughts of him still appeared in her mind regularly, but for a long time now he no longer dominated her dreams. Dreams of him were now only as common as dreams of anybody else in her life. Her mind no longer favored him when it chose what to dream about.

This was not new to Tali. The same thing happened when her mother died. In the months after her mother's death, Tali frequently dreamt of her. Many times her mother was ill in the dreams—like she was in the days before her death—but she was alive, at least. And just like with dreams of Shepard now, they became less and less frequent as time passed, until the point where they became as rare as a dream of anybody else.

Just as Shala'Raan had told her—and part of her already knew, though it had given her no comfort at the time—she did heal from the pain of her loss. Since rejoining the flotilla, she became a productive crewmember of the Neema, and would often be chosen to be sent on special missions by the Migrant Fleet's Admiralty. For the last several months, she even had the special task of salvaging inactive geth parts for her father. She still longed to be closer to him on a personal level, but she was happy to at least have relationship with him at a professional level, assisting him with his research and work.

Although Shepard—and her time with him—would always be remembered and entitled to a special place in her mind, she had moved on. Her heart had healed sufficiently.

. . .

"You okay, Commander?" Cerberus operative Jacob Taylor asked to the man sitting in front of him: Commander Shepard.

Jacob, as well as senior Cerberus operative Miranda Lawson, sat together in the opposite row of seats from Shepard, aboard the human-manufactured Kodiak shuttle they currently rode on. The shuttle was traveling through space, thus relied on its own dim lighting to illuminate the interior. The glowing, orange scars on Shepard's face were particularly noticeable in the dimly lit ship.

For a long period of time now, Jacob had noticed Shepard seemed troubled. He had been quiet, staring blank-eyed seemingly into nothingness for most of the shuttle ride. Miranda had noticed it as well—before Jacob, in fact—but she decided not to inquire about it.

Shepard tilted his head up, and looked at Jacob's eyes for a brief moment. Shepard hadn't been staring into nothingness all this time, but at his reflection on the window. In the dim light of the shuttle, the reflection of his face could barely be seen; but the lines and dots of orange light emanating from his face were very noticeable, reflecting on the glass. Their color stood in stark contrast to numerous white dots of stars behind the window.

"I'm fine," he finally answered as his eyes broke contact with Jacob, and wandered back to the window. "It's only now starting to really sink in. That I've lost two years of my life. It's just… hard to wrap my head around that."

"I hear you. We'll arrive at Freedom's Progress shortly. Maybe some fresh air will help you feel better."

"Doubtful," Miranda chimed in, and then looked at Shepard so as to address him directly, "You've just experienced some mental stress. It's nothing an individual with your psychological profile can't cope with. You'll be fine, with time."

Just some 'mental stress'? I lost two years of my fucking life.

Shepard didn't respond. He simply went back to concentrating on his reflection on the window.

Tali was on Shepard's mind, and had been, since he awoke. Among the last things he remembered was seeing her get in the escape pod, just before he ran up to the CIC of the dying Normandy. When he found himself awake in the space station where his body had been reconstructed, he was desperate for answers on what became of his crew; Tali specifically. Fortunately, when he met Jacob, he was able to find out what he most wanted to know: that Tali had survived the attack on the Normandy. Unfortunately, Jacob knew nothing else about what happened to her.

After they left the station where he had spent the last two years of his life in a comatose state, they reached another one of Cerberus' space stations. And he finally got to speak to the leader of the infamous, pro-human terrorist organization. The Illusive Man himself.

Just like with Jacob, Tali was among the first things Shepard asked the mysterious, grey-haired man with synthetic eyes about. Much to Shepard's regret, despite Cerberus' vast information network, the Illusive Man didn't have much information on what became of Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. All he was able to confirm to Shepard was that she was among those rescued, and that she had returned to the Migrant Fleet. What became of her life after rejoining her people was impossible for anyone to know.

Shepard didn't know how, but the Illusive Man was also aware that Tali and him had been romantically involved. Neither of them had ever revealed their relationship publicly, and only the crewmembers aboard the Normandy were aware that they were together. But apparently that was enough for Cerberus—for the Illusive Man—to learn of their relationship. The Illusive Man was a master of hiding his true thoughts and emotions as he spoke, but Shepard could tell the thought of him, a human, being romantically involved with an alien, disgusted Cerberus' leader.

Being the master manipulator that he was, the Illusive Man jumped at the chance to seal up this potential loose thread with Shepard. "Whatever became of your former colleague," he said to Shepard, "She's almost certainly moved on with her life. It would be best for her, and you, if you didn't try to contact her."

Though Shepard was aware of the Illusive Man's attempts to manipulate him, he couldn't deny that—just like all effective deceits, manipulations, and lies—his words had a core of truth. Tali would have indeed moved on. Should he really attempt to contact her? What good would it do, other than reopen an old, now-healed wound? Could he ask her to drop all in her life just to be with him, after he'd been gone for two years?

Shepard didn't know what he would do. Though from his perspective less than a day had passed since he last saw Tali, he missed her, and the thought of never seeing her again weighed heavily upon him. She always made me happy, and brought me peace and comfort when I needed it most, he thought to himself, but those are selfish reasons to shatter the life she's no doubt settled into with her people. Hell, for all I know, she's already found another person to share her life with.

Then again. How will she react if she finds out I'm alive, and haven't contacted her?

A silence had fallen upon the shuttle since Shepard slipped into his thoughts. The silence was interrupted as he sighed loudly, and realized this was too stressful to think about now. He decided to think about something else, at least for now.

"Why exactly do my scars glow? I'm guessing from synthetic implants?" he asked the two Cerberus agents sitting across from him.

"Somewhat, but it's more complicated than that," Miranda began to explain. As the person in charge of the Lazarus Cell—the Cerberus group that brought Shepard back to life—she was well versed on how they had managed resurrect him. "We were originally going to simply reconstruct your dead tissue. The vacuum your body had been exposed to prevented significant decomposition, so it was doable. However, reconstructing your dead cells proved to be too costly and time-consuming, so we switched to bio-synthetic fusion for most of your body."

"Bio-synthetic fusion?"

"An umbrella term for the multiple synthetic technologies we used. Everything from standard medical synthetic implants, to reverse engineering the Reaper nanotechnology used to create husks."

"Wait a minute. Reaper technology? You put Reaper technology in me?"

"No. I said we used reverse engineered Reaper technology," Miranda responded coldly and nonchalantly, completely unfazed by Shepard's sudden concern. "Their technology is still far too advanced for us to replicate or even control, but by studying it we were able to create nanobots capable of replacing dead organic tissue with synthetic tissue. Much of your body's skeletal muscle is now synthetic muscle tissue, for example. It emits some light as it reacts to glucose and oxygen, and that's the primary reason your scars glow."

Shepard stared at the ground as he thought about her explanation briefly. A quick, scoffing laugh escaped his mouth as he began to shake his head. He looked up at the two and said, "A former Spectre, riddled with Reaper-based synthetic implants," he sighed sharply, "Why does that sound so familiar?" The sarcasm in his voice did little to hide the fact that he was clearly troubled by what he had become.

What would she think if she saw me like this? If she knew that so much of my body wasn't even real flesh? Synthetic life doomed her race to wander the stars. And here I am—more synthetic than organic.

"So. Do I even count as human anymore?" Shepard asked with noticeable frustration, his face tensing up slightly, trying to suppress the rage—and disgust—that was beginning to boil within him.

"I don't know much about how you were brought back, but I do know that your mind wasn't tampered with at all. That's what really matters, right?" Jacob said, attempting to put Shepard's concerns at ease.

"Jacob's right. A quarter of all the resources we spent on you, went into reconstructing your brain, exactly as it was before your death. Your mind has no synthetics whatsoever," Miranda commented, supplementing Jacob's assurance with facts.

"Like I said back on the station, you're still you, Commander. Just with a few extra parts inside. And those extra parts make you a hell of a lot tougher than normal. I can't wait to see you in action against something tougher than security mechs," Jacob added.

Shepard thought about what they both said. Though he still felt troubled, and it would take some time to really come to terms with the fact that his being was now a hybrid of man and machine, it did bring him comfort to know that his mind, at least, was still human.

His thoughts over his humanity were suddenly interrupted as the shuttle began to shake and rumble loudly.

"We've entered the planet's atmosphere," Miranda informed, "We'll land in Freedom's Progress shortly."