XIV: PISTOL GRIP
SSV Normandy
She had no idea what to expect.
Her entire life had seemingly been building up to this moment, from the training in her childhood, to her duty as an admiral… and now it was here. It was a relatively simple thing to consider, as easy as flipping a "0" to a "1" on a registry, altering the smallest byte of code to display the opposite result. Her beliefs had mainly focused on the physical—objects that were tangible or had been, once.
But this was not a tangible chain. It was all in her mind, the very fabric of her upbringing. A change that she had been entertaining as long as she could think, long enough that she might have thought such a day would never come.
All this time, there had been a homeworld out there for her. Rannoch. The "walled garden." An ideal to strive for, as real as reaching out and touching another living being. A world lost to her people's own creation, with the utmost vow spoken among them all to one day take it back and have its original owners reclaim it, securing a home amongst the stars.
Her people had been saying "Keelah se'lai" centuries before she had ever been born. By the homeworld I hope to see someday. The way Rannoch had been spoken of, she might as well have assumed that the galaxy revolved around it. Were her people at all religious, in terms that other races could approximate, Rannoch would have been made the de facto symbol of her entire belief system. The outline of a circle, constantly hovering over everything. Shadowed from distance and light, never to fully realize in the crux of her mind.
Maybe it did seem like a religion to everyone else, Tali had to reason. The way she spoke about Rannoch to her shipmates, to John, it was as if she was a nomad on a quest to find proof of a deity's existence. Though she knew that there were others out there who would take such zealotry to further extremes—on the fleet, she had seen how blindly many of the admirals and captains would instill their lust for their former homeworld unto their crews, desperate to take any route offered to them if they thought it could lead them to Rannoch in the end. Conversely, she had witnessed the despair and jadedness that other quarians had succumbed to, believing retaking Rannoch to be a fool's errand and to consider the planet forever lost, instead focusing on finding a new home in the depths of wild space, somewhere the Council could not exercise their oversight. Somewhere that they could be free and live, one day, breathing the air without filters. Without an enviro-suit.
Given enough time, Tali probably would have joined that latter group. To strive for something seemingly intangible for years on end without any change in one's situation would test the resolve of the most steadfast of people. Tali did not know if her mental fortitude could have withstood that for her whole life. She had given and given and given all that she could to her people. To her father. The results had never conjured themselves for her, not to mention the variety of trials and tribulations she had to face from her own people played a hand in stymieing the rewards for her valiant services.
But now, those were all moot points. In the end, her faith and perseverance had been rewarded. Rannoch, every square mile of it, belonged to the quarians once more.
Her mission—the mission her father passed down unto her—had finally been accomplished. She had a homeworld. Her own plot of land to build a house upon. Everything that she had ever wanted. All those dreams she had as a child, of being able to sit on a balcony and watch the ragged sun set upon a darkening sea, could be achieved.
The weight of just how much had changed in such a short order finally hit her an hour after the fighting had died down on the surface. She was numb ever since she had taken the shuttle back to the Normandy. Speechless. She had spent an entire hour alone in an isolated cubby on the engineering deck immediately after boarding, trying to get her thoughts in order while being alone from everyone else. The blood flow to her hands had felt like it had slowed—she had to stretch her fingers in regular intervals just so that the welcoming ache could stay with her. She did not immediately go to see John—she was still trying to comprehend the vastness of what the future was going to hold for her that she knew she would simply be in such an excited state that would only serve to overwhelm the man.
Besides, he could wait for her.
There would be no forgetting today. She was sure of that. The warming sun of Tikkun through her suit and the howl of close-range fighter passes through the slot canyons. The momentary twinkle of temporary stars becoming the heavenly tapestry above them—her people fighting the geth in orbit less than a hundred miles away. The razornoise and plasma wash of the Reaper's blasts cooking the heatscorched desert pillars with Shepard bravely facing it down, all alone out there. The roar of orbital blasts as the machine was torn apart by precise strikes from the fleet, obliterating its very existence from all of memory. The listless shape of Legion, having uploaded the entirety of his intelligence matrices to the geth nodes, now without form or function, falling to his knees before collapsing at Tali's feet, the fading light of his optic mirroring the refracted glare of the million tiny suns that Tikkun made upon the undulating surface of the ocean.
And then… the familiar hiss of equalizing atmosphere. An intense smell of sea salt, with a richness that caused her mouth to instinctively salivate. Air thick in her throat. Eyes battered by gusts of wind, coaxing out tears.
That uncontrollable burst of emotion. Rushing into his arms. Having only the briefest amount of time for her smile to take hold before she kissed the armored and burnscarred human, feeling the prickle of his stubble tickle her mouth. The savage rush of endorphins as he met his tongue with hers, the two of them clutching heavily at the other as they stood on that cliff, knowing for good that they would never be apart again.
In the end, Shepard never needed to ask anything of her.
It was almost maddening just how right he was all the time.
Tali kept replaying that moment over and over in her head, which was singular amidst a vid's worth of memories that had been permanently etched into her cortex today. Where to go from here?—she had to mentally hold back her racing mind else she would go insane with trying to map out the course of her life for the rest of the day.
At least she knew where she was going to build that house. As for the design… well, she might solicit the opinion of another party to help.
Eventually, after Tali had calmed down sufficiently enough, she made her way to the elevator and headed up to Shepard's cabin. Where else could she go after today? He had done all of this, given her a world back, for no reason other than to do it for her. To ensure she could have something of meaning once this war was over. Why else would he come all the way out here, if not to be so selfless?
Such generosity. There was no way she could ever repay him, even if he did it out of some sense of chivalry.
She would not let words be her answer to this action. This demanded a gesture of equal weight. Something that he would never request, but that she would be willing to give without a second thought.
Luckily for her, she knew what she could give. For a start.
The door opened and Tali was expelled onto the topmost deck. The cabin threshold was locked, but it opened with just a touch—EDI had programmed the door to accept only Tali's ident code without delay. She walked inside and heard the spray of water to her right—Shepard was in the shower, trying to soak off the grime and fatigue after spending nearly twenty-four hours down on Rannoch, fighting nonstop. She was just glad that he was doing something other than work. If anyone deserved a little downtime, it was him.
Tali was torn between two different choices, but she decided to wait. She leaned her back against the aquarium wall, a deep gurgle behind her and a raking hissing noise continuing to emanate from the bathroom. She shifted positions eagerly, alternating between crossing her legs while she waited, her body more fidgety than normal. Just nerves, she had to remind herself. You've done this before. This is him, remember?
Regardless, her heart gave a pit-a-patter when she heard the shower stop, a trickling noise dripping in from behind the closed bathroom door. Five minutes later, Shepard emerged, a blast of steam pushing him along, wearing only a towel around his waist. She was standing out in the open, not bothering to hide—he noticed that she was here almost immediately and he began rubbing at his neck almost sheepishly, considering the half-dressed state he was in.
Tali did not mind. She drank in the sight of him, noticing how his bare chest, rippling with muscle, was still gleaming from the shower. A throb behind her forehead started to form, her vision starting to narrow. A small part of her was a bit amused at the preposterous image of the scene—the gawking quarian looking onto the half-nude human. She was already enacting out a fantasy that billions, if not trillions, of others had entertained at least once in their life, if not with this very man.
She rubbed at her upper arm and broke eye contact first, staring at the floor for a moment before she figured that she was being stupid and resumed her gaze upon him again. "I had… hoped to catch you," she managed around lips that seemed hesitant to function.
Shepard's grin just became an expression of loving. "I'm glad that you did."
"If you wanted to… I don't know… rest, or something, I can leave—"
"Tali," Shepard interrupted as he walked forward, bare feet on the cold metal ground. Wet footprints trailed in his wake. He reached her and took her smaller hands into his. "I couldn't think of anyone else I'd rather be with right now."
Straightening, Tali edged her body closer to Shepard's, their feet nearly touching the other. She ran a hand along his smooth arms, unable to help herself, before she reached up and gently touched his jaw.
It was funny how so many others had only seen Shepard as the Commander, the Spectre. The self-serious soldier who would wade into hell to achieve his objective, amidst mists of blood and gore, a titan of the battlefield. For a man who was capable of putting fear into machines, she could look upon that face, into the bottomless well of his eyes, and find that lonely spark within for her to cradle and stoke. For she was the only guardian of that gentleness, the only one who had truly seen the man behind the curtain, a mask of his own.
Shepard just stood there, letting Tali run a hand over his face. He shifted against her and Tali swore that she felt his breath fluttering almost agonizingly, as if he was holding back on something.
He inhaled deeply and slipped his hands down so that they were now holding her waist. "Did you want to talk about what happened down there?"
The light on Tali's vocabulator flashed, but it was just an involuntary response from her making a slight noise in the back of her throat. After a moment, she decided to hell with it, and quickly reached up and depressed the catches to her mask. She pulled it away and let the covering clatter to the floor. Cold air prickled her cheeks, along with a faint waft of humidity that echoed in from the open door where the shower was still cooling. She ignored the soft alarms that trilled in her ears—the enviro-suit alerting her of an atmospheric breach.
She shook her head. "Not really."
They moved towards each other at the same time, eyes closed, mouths open, their lungs torturously expanding against their ribcages as they met in a passionate kiss, desperate moans escaping from the both of them.
Even though Tali had removed her mask just hours earlier back on Rannoch to kiss Shepard, her desire had in no way diminished. She had not even gotten sick from her brief exposure to her homeworld's atmosphere, her head feeling surprisingly clear and lucid.
All the better to enjoy this moment.
Her tongue snaked into Shepard's mouth and he made a surprised grunt that quickly tremored into a murmur of approval. He returned the fervor and gently moved forward, pressing Tali's back against the aquarium. He was so close that she could feel him harden beneath his legs, under the towel. Trembling lips squeaked out another moan, her hands tracing the muscles of his abdomen before they cradled his cheeks.
Tali's head was throbbing again, but it seemed to offer direction. She then reached down and undid the towel around Shepard's waist. He offered no resistance. It then fell to the floor and puddled around Shepard's feet, offering Tali an unobstructed view to confirm, with her own eyes, the change that had already occurred in her lover.
Her body ached at the sight of him. A throe of remembrance. Recalling the night she had shared his bed for the first time, her legs locked around his waist, his gentle thrusting inside her, a strangled cry as she came, clinging upon him.
Again, she thought. I get to do this again.
He noticed the attention she was giving him and he smirked. "Not much has changed. Still the same scarred-up marine."
She reached up and traced one of said scars on his chest. That had been from one of the times when he had been stabbed by a Collector. She had to help peel his armor off in this very cabin. Blood had streaked the floor and had hardened upon the scattered armor pieces, even coating her hands. He had been bleeding so much that she had thought he was going to pass out from losing too much, but she had managed to get him patched up in the end.
"You're exactly as I remember." Lidding her eyes seductively, she licked her lips as she breathed. Her hands on his chest balled into fists.
Shepard sensed the change. "What is it?" he asked, his voice gentle.
Dryly, she gave a huff and laid her forehead upon his chest, feeling his heartbeat. The slow rasp of his lungs. He held her there, just waiting.
"How did… how did I get this lucky? How did I come to deserve you?"
He did not reply right away, except as he applied a gentle finger to her chin, tipping her eyes toward him.
"If anything," he said, "I'm the lucky one to have met you."
Always the right thing to say.
Tali trembled in Shepard's arms and her inhalations became agitated. He understood that she could not wait for much longer—it was all in her eyes, the pained grimace that crossed her face—and he obliged her by not delaying anymore.
The naked human scooped the quarian up in his arms, a hand on her thighs and another supporting her back. Tali got a glimpse of her reflection in the aquarium as Shepard turned, the echo defined enough to note her narrow nose, eyes the color of quicksilver, her thin lips, and the subtle stripes on her skin that almost seemed to blend into a singular shade of gray upon her face. Almost as if she was looking at a stranger.
Shepard walked down the steps with his captive towards the bed. Like before, he gently lowered Tali down, the back of her helmet indenting the pillows at the head. But he positioned himself atop her, his mouth meshed with hers, her arms and legs free to grasp and hold him as if he were the prisoner in this situation. He moved his body so that he was now between her legs—she felt him harden against her and she gave a shuddering cry, a sound of need. He was rocking in that position, slowly teasing her, the human wanting so desperately to please her.
As Shepard was kissing her jaw, she tried to throw her head back even further than the pillows would allow, her mouth locked open, her breaths now frantic and quick.
"J… John…"
"Mm?" he murmured by way of a question, now kissing her cheek.
She tried to move her arms up. Something was clawing across her throat, constricting her guts. She needed freedom. She needed all of him.
Her hands on his cheeks again, she grabbed at his head so that they were nearly nose-to nose, both nearly gasping. "Get this…" she tried, almost stammering, "get this suit off of me."
With a smirk, Shepard sat up, allowing Tali to rise with him. She now sat in his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist. Tali slid her sehni from atop her helmet in one smooth motion, exposing the dimly glinting metalplate of the lobed covering. Her delicate face framed by the alloy, she must have seemed so vulnerable to Shepard—his smile cooled and he ran a gentle caress over her face, before he put his hand upon her cheek. Closing her eyes, she leaned into the touch. Just feeling his warmth, the calluses on his hand.
Together, their hands then moved dutifully, almost like delicate machine limbs in some automated sequence. Kissing each other intermittently, Shepard depressed Tali's exterior helmet catches, one by one, around the gold-plated cowl that connected to her helmet. He then gently removed each of the atmospheric tubing that connected at the back of the helmet, each cannula breaking free with a pressurized hiss of air. What was left of the helmet tumbled to the bed, allowing Tali's short black hair, barely a couple of inches long, to be free.
Taking Tali's suit off should have been a simple affair, but the two of them were constantly distracted by the other, with both of them interrupting the intimate procession to passionately kiss or for Shepard to run his fingers through Tali's hair, which never failed in eliciting several groans that betrayed her rapidly building lust. Eventually, they managed to unsnap what was left of Tali's sehni, lifted off the cowl that covered her neck (allowing Shepard to kiss her bare throat, again throwing off their schedule), and then they started on freeing the quarian's arms.
The enviro-suit had hidden seals that traced all around it like a jigsaw puzzle. The zips and sections were impulse-controlled—Tali had to manually unlock each one, but this allowed her and Shepard to easily peel back her suit, piece by piece.
Shepard took the interior seam of a section on Tali's right arm and gently pulled, turning the suit inside out. From the elbow up, Tali's limb was made bare and she spread her fingers out, allowing the cold air of the cabin to waft between them. Starship steel gray. Pale. Veins easily perceived through the thin membranes. Shepard gently held the quarian's naked arm and kissed her hand with a soft tenderness, causing her to uncontrollably giggle.
Eventually, after another bout of intense kissing, Tali had managed to free her other arm, and had also disengaged the seals that ridged along her back, snapping open her suit, and exposing her stark spine along with brief glimpses of the mare plains of her back. They then set about uncoupling the buckles that looped upon her waist and disentangling the final swoops of fabric that connected Tali's sehni amongst the rest of her suit.
With nothing else inhibiting them, together they peeled the suit free from her shoulders and slowly stripped it down until Tali was naked from the waist up.
The first time she had shown herself this way to Shepard, Tali had been so nervous that she had been covering herself with her hands until she felt comfortable enough in her own skin around the man. This time, she made no effort to prevent him from seeing everything. His eyes sparkled with a gentle longing and she had the dim realization that no one else had ever made her feel so loved with just a look before.
Slowly, Shepard guided Tali to lie down on the bed. He was there with her, kissing and licking at her breasts, her small nipples hard with desire. She laughed once, just out of pure relief. That, despite the craziness this galaxy had fallen into, things could go right for her once in a while.
While Shepard was sucking at one of her breasts, he was softly squeezing her other, a thumb teasing her nipple. But his hands could not be satiated for long—they roamed around her body, touching her everywhere, a tapestry begging to be explored. Every slide of a finger feeling like they trailed fire upon her. His mouth and tongue producing electric sensations wherever he kissed her. He moved his hands down her side, across her stomach, up her throat, near her mouth. Tali's tongue snuck out and licked Shepard's fingers as they grew close and she arched her back in pleasure with Shepard still at her breast.
More… she thought, though she wanted to say it. It's not fair… I want more…
Almost if he had heard her thoughts, Shepard started to move his way down, kissing a trail upon her toned stomach, his tongue marking a wet path that dipped over her shallow navel, grazed her hard abdomen, until he finally reached the lip where her suit still clung over her hips.
Deeply, he kissed her stomach, his hands caressing her, a dumb smile on her face the whole while. His hands hooked upon the lip of her suit and, in preparation, she began to lift herself up so that he could easily remove it.
But before he did, he raised his head from between her legs. "Hey… Tali?"
Nearly gasping, she looked down and made eye contact. "Y-Yes, John?"
"You know what you said down there… on Rannoch?"
She was not liable to forget ever, but words were having trouble coming to mind, so she could only muster a slight and breathy nod.
Shepard's mouth curled upward.
"I love you, too."
He then pulled on the suit, shimmying it down her hips, and Tali was free at last.
Nice, Earth
The sun finally clearing the rooftops woke Tali up when the encroaching light passed across her face through the window, the late morning upon her.
She had slept sprawled-out on her stomach across the hotel bed, each of her limbs arcing in a different direction, her head resting next to one of the plush pillows. The blankets were a mess beneath her, all crumpled and rippled from her lying atop them. Her neck had attained a brittleness from having been forced all the way to the left for an entire night. She slowly blinked, letting everything come into focus, before she shut her eyes again. A low groan mustered from her throat. She wanted to get up from the bed, but lacked the strength or the willpower to do so.
Perhaps she should have expected the steady pulse of pain that her body was giving after the events of last night. However, the locus was so broad that she didn't know where the pain was coming from.
Everything hurt. From her head, to her back, to her ribs, to even her eyeballs. The hangover plus all of the accumulated bruises and sprains she had accumulated after her little bout were all ganging up on her, acting as one central force en masse that sought to drive her insane. Try as she might, sleep would not return. She would just be located in that hazy twilight area, where images would come and go, but full lucidity would always be waiting.
The sounds of smashing glass and the throb of the bass…
Her own feral sounds as she clawed, kicked, and ripped with her own fingers…
Crimson plumes of flame and twisting contours of electricity sparking the arterial night…
She tried to press her head further into the mattress. Oh, Keelah… what did I do?
There was no hiding from what she did. Even though she had been blitzed out of her mind that night, she still was able to recall everything with perfect clarity. Down to the most minute details, which made her realize that it was not a dream.
The evidence her own body was throwing back at her was proof enough, to be sure.
Tali spent another hour lying on that bed, desperately trying to coax out a state of sleep, to no avail. In the meantime, the city of Nice had already awoken and was fully bustling just past her windows while the white sun climbed up from across the street until its gaze met the light wooden floorboards of the room, creating charred crosses upon the ground from the fixtures.
She was too tired to even look at the chronometer displayed across the interior of her visor. She didn't even know if it was the very next day, come to think of it. She could very well believe that she had slept through an entire solar day and she would have been none the wiser, for she was so exhausted.
It took Tali several attempts to rise, her arms quaking every time they supported her upper body. Every time her head shifted position, a fresh slew of aching renewed in earnest, as if her skull was filled with mercury sloshing around within, or broken glass had been embedded at the base of her neck upon her spine. The quarian writhed on the bed, torn between lying upon it forever, or having to follow the unsaid directive to always keep moving, to keep fighting, no matter the cost. Her gut seemed to chew itself from inside out and there was a fiery pain pressing on her lungs, but somehow, she managed to roll until she was on her back, but even that effort left her gasping for breath.
Waiting until the agony started to retreat, Tali raised herself up with one elbow. Another headache. She paused mid-rise, eyes clenched shot like the pain would leak from her tear ducts any second. When it retreated, she unceremoniously spilled from the mattress until she was sitting up on the floor with her back to the bed, some of the sheets coming with her and flowing over her body.
Tali probably figured that she looked rather pathetic in her current state, hangover and all, legs splayed out and spine flaccid while she sat within the sunsoaked room. She mustered a pathetic crawl over to the bathroom, her stomach angrily grumbling in hunger, but she knew better than to have food right now. Her suit may have filtered out all the alcohol from last night, but there were still withdrawal effects that could still be exacerbated if she tried to take things too fast, or gloss over yesterday's events as though they had not attained any significance.
Reaching the sink, she raised herself up, clamped her hands on either side of the basin so there was little chance of her staggering away, and filled a glass from the spigot. She only realized that she did not have an induction port handy, so there was nothing she could use to ingest the water to begin with.
Angrily, she threw the glass aside and it shattered as it hit the shower wall. She almost sunk to her knees in despair, but she hooked her fingers tightly upon the sides of the sink, her arms rigid like steel, her whole body trembling.
Just let it end. Just please let it end.
The bathroom was silent, unreceptive to her unspoken plea, though it would never be clear as to which conclusion that Tali had been asking for. She didn't know whom she wanted it for, half the time.
Legs aching like magma had been inserted into her veins, she slowly sagged down upon the closed lid of the commode. Head angled down at forty-five degrees. Hands loose between her legs. Everything without focus, a most unwelcome high.
For what thoughts remained for those miserable people? Only scant threads of reality, a longing for a life back into balance. A universe where the fantastical no longer enamored nor captivated. Only requests of the most pragmatic rose to the top of the foam, to be portioned out amidst the rushes of the rest of the pathetic lives that encircled hers, whereupon she would be satisfied by the sort of niceties that would be considered commonplace.
He was going to die. She did not know when, but it was coming. Eventually. The little devil in her ear had been whispering the truth to her this whole time, she just had not been able to accept it, to come to peace with it.
She dreamed about him every night. Many nights she curled up in bed, leaving half of it empty, as though she expected him to just walk on in one night and cuddle at her back, his arms wrapping around her and holding her close. It just seemed wrong to imagine a life without him in it. To have this void in her life, in her heart, just brought her pain. A pain that she needed, but not one she wanted.
Her hands closed upon one another. Squeezing until her bones started to ache. That tightness in her throat again, ragged breath.
Maybe the other night had been a last hurrah of sorts. A final gesture towards the already incredible speed that the galaxy was showing toward his ultimate sacrifice. They were falling back into old habits, for better or for worse. A relieved sense of complacency that old and contemptible vices could once again resume, as though the war had never happened. Her anger had been so focused at their will to forget. She did not understand why anyone would want to forget what had happened. She relieved it every single day. And therefore, so should everyone else.
An infinite loop of a thought—I need to be with him—refused to quell in her head. It was meant to be ignored, but Tali entertained it, all the same.
She had never answered the question that had been unasked since all of this started, since Shepard fell into his coma and never woke up: what am I supposed to do now?
The lack of an answer scared Tali. Maybe she thought the answer did not warrant a quest to find it.
Or maybe… the truth was something she had been too afraid to even consider.
For who would truly care if her whole existence was to finally meet a terminus? Garrus, for sure. Liara, too. And Kasumi. And James. And Jack. And everyone else that she had served with on the Normandy. Okay, so they certainly cared. That, Tali could not compartmentalize or otherwise convince herself of the opposite. Had they had not shown her any interest whatsoever, what was to come would certainly be all the more easier, but time and again, they had demonstrated their devotion, their concern. To deny the strength of their friendship was not only a delusion, but an insult.
She could not disassociate herself from any of it. Could not run from it. She was as much of a phantom as the ones that lived inside her head.
Perhaps it would have been a mercy had she just bled out on that battlefield. Or that she had died en route to the hospital. That way she would never have had to suffer the misfortune of enduring this hell—
The thought frightened Tali so much that she leapt from her seat as if electrocuted, her headache vanishing in an instant, leaving her head clear. She got up so fast that she impacted with the far wall and nearly tangled herself up in the robe that had been hanging on the rack nearby. With claw-like hands, she groped for the robe, holding onto it lest she fall to the ground.
No… no… she had just decided that she was not ready for that. Not at all. Bad enough that she had to imagine her luck running out all the way back in her past. There was no chance she could finish the job with her own hands.
Her heart rapidly thudded in her chest and she trembled, feeling sick. The fatigue was returning again, and with it, the headache. But also a new pang: hunger. She had already slept through at least one meal and was paying the price for it. She needed to get something in her, even if it was nothing but gruel.
Slowly, she pushed away from the wall until she was standing under her own power. The weight of her despair continued to hang around her neck like a noose, but she was still standing. Her whole life was in tatters, burned to guttering crisps—it wasn't liable to get any worse, was it?
Things tangible and intangible hurt. Shivering, Tali headed out of the bathroom after taking a pill for the headache and went back to bed, intent on lying underneath the covers this time.
She wondered what kind of room service this hotel had. After last night, she was wary about going outside again.
The quarian was the only one in the shop, which was the size of a shoebox. It smelled of leather and grease in here. The walls were bereft of decoration, as if this was a place that was meant to be mobile on a moment's notice.
"These the only firearms you have?"
Tali stood at the counter of the gun shop, the Promenade des Anglais behind the bright glass doors, the light streaming in so bright that the world appeared a singular shade of white. This part of Nice was where the fanciest of the fancy came to play, where the hotels with rooftop bars and pools were clumped together, where there were outdoor cafes that came with bills large enough to rent out entire Citadel blocks.
That did not explain why someone had chosen to base a gun shop here, but Tali was not in the mood to question strategic business placement.
The clerk just vaguely gestured to the glass case in front of him that doubled as a counter and to the racks behind him that were mostly empty, the remaining items a series of black and sinister long guns. Rifles. Shotguns. But a sparse selection—even the smallest ships on the flotilla had more of an armory.
"We did at one point. Should have seen this place before the war," the clerk said. "No better incentive to bolster one's home defense after seeing those Reapers stream through the sky."
Tali bought that. Apparently, according to the clerk, this region had a rather solid hatred against any firearms, thus making it one of the safest places to live on the planet. However, after Reapers and husks had overrun pretty much every major city during the war, even the staunchest of anti-gun inhabitants had put their name down on any waitlist they could find, not wanting to put their lives solely in the navy, intent on defending their homes and families from the interlopers that would certainly kill them without sparing a second on remorse.
She'd eaten a small breakfast—or was it technically lunch?—before coming here. During her meal, she had tried to recall the specific events of her drunken brawl the other night in order. It had just been a series of stupid risks that had resulted in a miraculous payoff. She did not deny that the thought of beating up those goons—not to mention stabbing and electrocuting them—felt good. She replayed the looks of surprise she had gotten right before her fists had smashed their faces, or the screams of pain they gave out before they toppled to the ground, too beaten up to continue further.
No doubt about it that she had gotten lucky. While eating, she had also come to the conclusion that trapezing around the continent with a boot knife as her only line of defense was just asking for more trouble. The array of injuries she had received from her night of brawling was just a testament to that fact. She needed to be smarter in the future, and if she wanted to avoid getting hurt or messed up any further, she needed to take better precautions. That was when she had figured that she'd better get some armaments, make herself more of a deterrent than a mark. She had some money she had partitioned to her discretionary funds and this was one of those moments where it paid to be discretionary.
"Got something special in mind?" the clerk eyed Tali, his tone quizzical but not suspicious.
"A shotgun, mainly. Something like a Katana, or a Scimitar—"
But the clerk was shaking his head. "Don't have any of those in right now. Or for a while. Eighteen-month waitlist on both."
Tali gaped at the man. "Eighteen months?!"
"Mil-spec's in heavy demand. Can you blame the people here? They want something that can blow a marauder in half, not a double-barreled antique or something only good enough for hunting pheasant."
Tali scanned the rows of guns behind the clerk but found nothing she recognized. "Then what would you recommend for someone who wants something now?"
It did not take the clerk long to come to an answer. He fiddled with the locks to the racks and came back with a slender-looking weapon, one that Tali could almost wrap her hand around at the thickest point. The design was angular, but rugged. A pistol grip with a ribbed pump and a folding stock.
He handed the shotgun to Tali for her to try. "This one's called a Finch. Lightweight design, based on an old Italian model."
Tali hefted the weapon in her hands. "Doesn't weigh much," she affirmed.
"Polymer casing. The grip is rubber, as is the end of the folding stock. Only the most important bits are metal."
She flipped the weapon, noted the grooves on the stock grip, which would give good purchase with her gloved hands. The Finch also had a magazine disconnect button, and the reload system seemed to be lifted from another Ariake Tech model. Aside from the corrosion-proof mold, very little about the weapon was more than likely original.
"Heat sink capacity?" she asked.
"Four," the clerk said.
"Shots per?"
"Two."
She lowered her arms, still holding the shotgun, and cocked her head at the clerk. "Two?" Even the most beaten of weapons on the flotilla could still spout off four shots per heat sink with reliability.
"The Finch is a consumer-level model, lady. The mass accelerator and heat-dispensing technologies were scaled down in order to fit them into the antique housing. The tradeoff with that is that you get less shots per heat sink, unless you're fine with risking the thing exploding in your hands from overheating?"
Examining the shotgun again, Tali turned it over in her hands. "How many ammo types does it support?"
"Just the one," the clerk said. "Non-modified."
Tali almost shook her head. "I see what you mean by lightweight." The weapons she had typically used offered a bevy of options, which included armor-piercing, cryo, and inferno ammo, among others. They were software options mated to the mass accelerator and were not exactly novel concepts.
"Ammo mods are illegal for civilians," the clerk explained. "The Finch was not designed to cater to militaries, so the manufacturer figured there was no use in making it bulky. What you've got there is something with no frills, no excess. Just a tube with a trigger."
It seemed that was that. Tali figured there was not a better option in this store and she certainly did not want to leave the city empty-handed. She placed the shotgun onto the counter and then began looking at the pistols behind the glass casing, which sported a much larger display than the long guns.
She tapped on the glass. "Is that a Carnifex?"
The clerk brought the pistol she had been pointing at from where it had been resting and handed it to Tali. A squat, boxy, gray thing with an oversized handgrip to accommodate all races. Her finger easily slipped over the trigger and she lifted the weapon, testing the iron sights.
Watching her, the clerk studied Tali's movements. "You've been in the service, I take it?"
Tali gave a ghost of a nod. "I fought in London," she said. It was the truth, but left enough details out for it to be a ubiquitous backstory.
He gave her a sympathetic look. "Wish I had been there. I was over in Angola, holding down the port city."
"Hmm," Tali just murmured, indicating that she was not interested in talking about the recent past. She tested the slide of the Carnifex, finding that the spring was in good condition. It was not the most powerful pistol on the market, but it packed a bigger punch than most. On an unshielded target, it could separate limbs from their owners, if the aim was good.
She set the pistol next to the shotgun and rotated it so that the barrel was facing to the side, drawing a line that bisected the store.
The clerk looked at her. "To your liking?"
"Throw in a crate of clips and a scope mod for the pistol. Then yes."
Nodding, the clerk bent down. "Gratis for a fellow vet." He emerged with a slightly worn cardboard box, the decals peeling from the sides, and set it down next to the Carnifex. He also went back to the rack and pulled out a small footlocker stamped with the insignia of an ammo maker. He rang up Tali's order on his terminal, the quarian glancing out the door from time to time.
"You're lucky you're here now," the clerk said. "Couple more months, the waiting period will be reinstated."
Tali paid by hovering her omni-tool near the MFID sensor of the terminal. "You have waiting periods on Earth?"
"Sure, but the government suspended them during the war due to 'unusual circumstances.' They're due to be restored a month or two after the anniversary. After that, ten day waiting period for the pistols. Five for the long guns. But right now? You can walk out the door with them."
"Thanks," Tali said.
"My pleasure. Now, did you want a bag for your items?"
Cannes, Earth
Hôpital de Cannes
Qual took the elevator down to the third floor from the roof, the light of the day filtering through the glass walls of the lift. He was ferried downward, whisper-quiet, able to hear his own rampaging heartbeat in his ears.
He had been informed there had been an incident, of sorts, before he had made the Hong Kong airport. A chartered SolBanc flight had whisked him to the spaceport at Côte d'Azur, and from there he had taken a private shuttle to the hospital at Cannes, several miles away. As he had approached, he had looked out the window and noticed that the hospital had been situated right next to a graveyard, which he found altogether morbid.
The private wing had its own security checkpoint, which Qual walked right through. Even the rich can't get sick like everyone else, the quarian sourly noted. He found Haas-Mase sitting outside one of the rooms in a chair that most likely was not ergonomically rated. The financier saw the approaching auditor and stood with some assistance from his cane.
"His so-called friends at least had the good sense to not admit him in the same city where it happened—!" he was in the process of snarling through gritted teeth, but Qual ignored the man and strode through the door as though it was nothing but vapor. He had already gotten the rundown on what happened during the flight over. Haas-Mase was just venting, which he did not need to be a party to right now.
He ripped aside the plastic curtain that rimmed around the bed, the door sliding shut behind him. Two doctors were currently attending to the patient, who was sitting up and lucid, albeit nearly half his face and neck was covered in bandages.
"Out!" Qual barked at the doctors, who both jumped and looked at the other in a panic. They took too long in acting that the quarian sighed, pulled his gun, and held it up. "Get out!" They followed orders moments after that.
Waiting until they were alone, Qual walked back over and quickly yanked the sheeting closed so that they had some semblance of privacy here. Then, he looked back on the patient.
François was rigid as he sat upon the bed, his legs dangling off the side. Squares of beige-colored bandages had been taped, forming a trail from the right side of his collar all the way up to his cheek. Gauze and crusted smears of antihistamines at the edges of the coverings nearly enveloped the human's right eye, which was rimmed red and raw.
It took all of his willpower for Qual not to gloat. Finally, someone had the good sense to give François a thrashing—the quarian was just sorry that he had not been the one to personally level the blows. But that was beside the point. The big problem that Qual could immediately see was that someone outside of the family had laid their hands on the CEO's son. Retaliation on family was looked down upon in this industry, which meant that François was persona non grata, a made man, unless Haas-Mase gave his explicit permission. Haas-Mase had seen fit to not include François in his dealings until he was sure that his son was ready, but despite the young man's immaturity, it seemed that those dealings had come home to roost regardless. Someone was going to have to pay for this. And Qual was going to have to be the one to level judgment.
It just irked Qual that François, of all people, was going to be the impetus for whatever hell he was going to let loose upon his unsuspecting shadow foe. Of all the lynchpins, did it really have to be him?
He stood there for a while, just looking upon François, taking great pleasure that the younger man seemed to be unwilling to meet his eye. Not only beaten but humbled, too. Qual was starting to think this whole encounter might have done the man some good.
"Let me guess," Qual said with no small amount of sarcasm, "the attack was unprovoked and without cause?"
François finally looked up and narrowed his eyes. Obviously gauging whether it was worth it to engage with Qual's barbed comments or not.
The quarian walked around to the other side of the bed, closing down some of the floating diagnostic windows that hovered around the patient, as they were in his way. He turned, now facing François' back. "You were in Nice last night. That part, I gathered already. Your friends dropped you off here in Cannes, but I'm going to need specifics. What happened?"
The man swallowed. "It was just a—"
"What… happened?"
François screwed his eyes shut. Trying to pull up humiliating memories. "It was at… a… a bar on the Promenade. I forget the name—I was drunk—"
"You were in an unregistered brothel blocks from the Villa Masséna Musée," Qual interrupted, almost sounding bored. "Please, don't be stupid enough to lie to me now. Your father paid good money to install that GPS tracker as part of your cortex implants. He has the power to know where you are at all times, and by extension, so do I. I'm trying to help you."
"I don't need your fucking help."
It was hardly worth putting up with François' attitude, especially when there was little to be gained when all of his dignity had been drained already. Qual walked over and, before François could act, reached up and yanked on the bandage that was covering the human's cheek, ripping it off partway. François yelled.
Qual had seen many gruesome injuries in his life, but this was enough to make him wince behind the mask. Electrical burns were terrible to behold. The skin on François' face was blackened and charred, already peeling in thick clumps from his cheek. A center of angry pink flesh had been rimmed by the corona of dead skin. A flash burn, not an arc burn, which as lucky as the electrical arcs from whatever device had caused this trauma had only passed over the skin and not into it. Had the opposite been the case, François' cheek would have been roasted all the way through. As it was, a swath of blistered and reddened skin raced down his jaw and neck, like a bad sunburn.
"Ah, yes," Qual's voice was mild as he studied the wound. "Someone was angry at you. Medi-gel's not going to fix that. Plastic surgery, perhaps. Left you alive to eat the medical costs, maybe?"
"Fuck you!" François shouted as he slapped Qual's hand aside. He resealed his dressings with a pained wince. "I couldn't see their face, anyway."
"Only figures that you weren't paying attention even as you were being brutalized."
"No! I mean, they were like you!"
Qual's head tilted. "Explain. They had a mask on?"
"No," François said again, leaning forward. "I mean, they were a fucking quarian."
Rearing back a little in interest, Qual dipped his head in thought for a moment before appraising François. An idea came to mind, but he didn't entertain it. "Male? Female?"
"Female."
Qual chewed the inside of his cheek. "Their enviro-suit. What color was it?"
François raised a hand pathetically from the bed, turning it upward to indicate his obvious unhelpfulness. "It was dark, man. I couldn't see shit. Could've been red, or green, or fucking neon for all I care…"
"Did they speak to you? Was their voice light? Deep? Did they give anything away?"
"Yeah, the spoke to me, or something!" François threw up his hands in exasperation. A mistake, seeing as he aggravated his burned skin near his neck, which caused him to clasp a hand over that area while he screwed his eyes closed. "It was… shit, I can't remember."
"Think harder."
"I'm trying!" François barked as he slapped the bed, unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a manner. "They didn't sound old, or anything like that. Maybe… maybe older than me, but not much." When he saw the light flare from Qual's vocabulator, the next question incoming, the human suddenly stilled as a wave of remembrance opened up to him. "They said… 'Ask yourself if this was worth it.'"
The idea that Qual had in the beginning was beginning to take on a more definite shape with each scant detail that François relayed. It couldn't be… A bad feeling gnawed at his insides and he opened up his extranet browser and flipped over to the video section. He tapped in a line in the search bar and several clip previews were quickly displayed on his screen.
He tilted his arm in François' direction as he selected one of the clips to start playing. "Look. Was it this person?"
"Man, I don't know—"
"Watch the clip, you bosh'tet! Was it her?"
The man's eyes were drawn to the screen from Qual's incessant needling. The clip was a recording of an interview, back from 2183. The chyrons at the bottom indicated that the clip was taken from the Citadel, apparently at the induction ceremony of the first human Spectre. The reporter on the screen was a smartly dressed human and could scarcely keep the pride out of his voice as he took the opinion of every person that crossed the lens of his cam-drone, wanting to know what they thought of such a historic moment.
The footage cascaded through a series of banal answers from some rather unremarkable individuals, but the vid soon warped to an armored turian with an eyepiece, who gave a rather diplomatic, albeit encouraged, answer about the whole affair, which at the time, was rare to hear from a turian at all.
But soon after, the images swerved and a quarian soon filled the screen, draped in a purple sehni with a white pattern of rippling solar waves embroidered within the fabric.
"Um… I certainly didn't expect to be seeing something like this today," the quarian was in the middle of saying, the editing having cut into when she had been midway through answering the question the reporter had posed her, "but I know that the humans have been wanting to have more of a voice in the galactic government, so this represents a good step towards that goal. As I'm on my Pilgrimage, I haven't had the chance to really find out what they're like, but in the next few weeks, I hope to have a better answer for you—"
François was fixated upon that clip, hanging onto every word the quarian was saying. Qual even played the clip back for him again, sensing that recognition was flickering within the human's eyes, a deadly spark.
Finally, neuroelectric scrawls of light reflected upon him, François looked up at his father's auditor. The bandaged man gave a thin nod.
The clip continued to play. "Your name is?" the reporter asked the quarian off-screen.
"Tali," the quarian said. "Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."
"You see?" Haas-Mase hissed, pacing the hallway of the hospital. "What more proof do you want? She's targeting me. Targeting my family. You waited too long in making a move against her."
They stood in a deserted wing of the hospital, the waning sun casting slanted orange images upon the far wall through the windows. They could have been shouting and no one would have heard them, but they chose to keep their voices reserved.
Qual tilted his head, a glazed sunburst refracting through his visor, making his eyes glow more fiercely than usual. Truthfully, he did not believe that Tali'Zorah had tried to get to Haas-Mase through his son. Anyone who knew anything about Haas-Mase knew that his son was a dipshit and that his father would never retaliate above the maximum amount that was tax-deductible. Still, he had to account for all the possibilities and this was certainly one of them. "If she really wanted to target you," Qual said, "why did she leave your son alive? It's a sloppy risk that brings her no reward. She could have easily killed him when—"
"Oh, horseshit!" Haas-Mase raged, waving a hand. "Maiming him was a message! To me! She's trying to punish me for the fees that SolBanc's algorithm gave to her commander!"
Eyes glinting behind his dim visor, Qual resisted the urge to sigh. Instead, he raised a calming hand. "If it really was a targeted hit, then you know that Tali'Zorah isn't going to expect the blame to fall on anyone else's head but yours. You're the CEO of the bank that controls the commander's insurance policy—why would she believe that you don't have the ability to fix it?"
Haas-Mase stomped his cane on the floor. "Weeks ago, I might have. But after today? No, I will not give an inch to that woman! Sure, the bills for François' care will be taken care of, but it's the hit to my policy that she's going to have to pay for. She just bought herself a greater debt than what she had already been saddled with!"
"Yet you don't care about the money," Qual reminded him.
"It's not about the money, damn it! It's the principle!"
This is what Qual had been worried about the whole time, that the situation would just spiral out of control before he could take stock of the entire project. SolBanc was two steps shy of declaring a war upon one woman, a very famous woman, which would have very little chance at being covered up, considering that Tali'Zorah had already played her hand about not being afraid to go public with her grievances. They were already in a PR disaster, but what would happen once this little revelation got leaked to the press?
"Fine," Qual said as he shuffled his feet. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"What I told you to do when this fucking thing first started! Take care of it, no matter the cost!"
It looked like he could drag his heels no longer. Moving against Tali'Zorah, let alone any member of the Normandy crew, seemed like a guaranteed invitation to a pyrrhic victory. Maybe if there was not so much money riding on all of this, the future of a company at stake, Haas-Mase would have been more ambivalent at the whole affair. Perhaps he would have granted Tali'Zorah everything she had wanted from him. But, along the way, the two of them had decided to make this personal and now Qual was caught in the middle, responsible for cleaning up the mess that someone else had created.
He considered imploring Haas-Mase to reconsider, but knew that his words, no matter how impeccably they were rehearsed, would just reach deaf ears. When there was a fortune at risk, the career of even the most esteemed soldier was meaningless in the eyes of the almighty credit. Qual understood this—it was why he was here in the first place. If Tali'Zorah threatened that balance, the way that things were destined to go, then so be it. She had made her bed, so she would have to lie in it.
The quarian turned, staring out the locked windows, towards the ragged Mediterranean shoreline. "No restrictions on how I operate?"
"Carte blanche," Haas-Mase affirmed. "I will not be blackmailed, nor will I have the future of my company be at risk because of one emotional woman's antics!"
Qual nearly corrected Haas-Mase, seeing as Tali'Zorah had not bothered blackmailing the financier at all, nor had she ever been described as an emotional person, even in the tabloids. On the contrary, all of the news bulletins had described the admiral as someone who was cool under pressure and a certified genius with technology. But he let Haas-Mase establish his fantasies, seeing as there was little use in bringing reality to the table.
"Finding her won't take long," Qual finally said. "A couple of days at most. Easier than you might think."
"Why? You have a lead?"
"The town of Nice is wired with a CCTV network. I took the liberty of reviewing some of the footage on the shuttle ride over. Tali'Zorah left the building with a victim, a human female. The footage doesn't indicate where Tali'Zorah ended up going, but I've tracked the location of the other girl. I find her, then I find our wayward admiral."
"You sound pretty sure of the timeline."
Qual chuckled so softly that only he could hear himself. "I pride myself on being punctual. Two days. That's a guarantee."
A/N: And thus, an irreparable collision course has been set. We shall see soon enough what the consequences of Tali's actions will result in.
Playlist:
Unmasked I [Love Theme]
"who's name is written on water"
Max Richter
Sleep
Bathroom Ruminations
"Rooftop"
Lost Metropolis
woob
The Hallway/"Two Days"
"All Out War"
Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe
The Dark Knight Rises (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)