A/N: Hope you're all enjoying so far. Please leave a review if you can.
|Present Time|
|Date: 4/1/2184|
|Location: Aboard the Neema|
If Tali could squeeze the bridge of her nose, it would be now.
The AAR was filed vocally largely by everyone who'd participated.
Almost unanimously, with the exception of a select few, everyone had considered the world a total no go.
Not long after, the entire group filed out of the Rayya's one of eighteen meeting chambers to depart back to their respective home ships. Tali herself, as soon as she'd entered, sat down in a heavy heap to go back home.
It wasn't a surprise.
The entire operation was a failure, clearly. Just as Tali expected. Soon enough, the word would spread 'round... and the politicking would ensue. Heads would roll and Koris would take the brunt of the failure.
As always.
It wasn't long before she'd arrived back at the Neema. Soon enough, after she left the docking bay, decided it be best to attend Oliak's funeral and 'final' departure to the ancestors.
She leaned at the door, far away from the crowd of mourners, and sighed. Some bowed their heads and started praying. A preacher passed around some religious ornaments to begin a ritual. Tali was not a religious woman of any sort. Most quarians weren't. Tali would go so far as to believing that most species in the galaxy didn't.
Another bitter sigh left her frowning lips. The Reapers had voided religion in its entirety. All of them.
She left the funeral just as the casket had been launched safely away from the migrant fleet. Oliak's wife and son stayed, watching reverently at the spec that once served as a doctor, husband, and father.
Tali cast one last look at the casket before thinking of John. She felt tears well up in her eyes at the mere thought of John and his funeral. At the very least, Oliak had an open casket for everyone to pay their respects. John didn't get the luxury. And neither did the people closest to him.
She left and made her way back to her room.
It wasn't a surprise to see that Oliak's funeral had reminded her of John. Every day something would remind her of him.
Every. Day. Chores, working, sleeping, eating...
All of it would make her sink into a memory or flashback of him. And then, before she knew it, ten minutes would pass, and the people around her would look at her like she was an idiot or some lazy slink.
When she arrived at her cubicle, she yanked the curtains aside, went to her desk, opened a drawer, and grabbed her injector. She held it at eye level and felt her eyes flutter heavily with shame and hesitation. The last time she'd ever considered taking drugs was back after leaving Noveria all that time ago with John and the others.
And when she thought of that harsh and unforgiving planet, her well of memories of that bad place flowed.
All of them were worth forgetting.
All of them.
|Many Months Ago|
|Date: 6/25/2183|
|Location: Milky Way/Horse Head Nebula/Pax System/Noveria: Peak 15 Research complex|
"Shit..." John said before taking a painful looking breath of icy air, "...Give me a second, guys. Let me catch my breath."
His weapon dropped into his sling and he leaned on the railing closest to him iced with frozen blood and death.
Both Garrus and Tali stop next to him and rest themselves.
"You okay? You look like shit." Garrus said as he eyed the frozen bits of charred meat on his chest plate.
"Yeah." He nodded through a sigh, "I'm fine."
He finally discarded the trashed helmet he carried down the hallway with a frown. The last fight really took it out of him. Breathing zero degree air felt terrible. Add it with the frothing smells of spilled formaldehyde and rachni shit, it was a party.
"I'm glad you're okay, though." Tali offered.
About fifteen minutes ago, she saw one of the rachni beasts whip at his face with one of its razored appendages. His helmet, as a consequence, hadn't fared well against its daggered claws.
But it saved his life luckily. So there was that.
"I know, right? ...It's good to know I have both my eyes still." He gave a bitter chortle and eyed the quarian next to him. She nodded in agreement.
Tali herself had to give John some credit. The way he recovered from that staggering blow was nothing short of spectacular. He rolled to the side in like one of those awesome movie-vids before shooting the monster's horrendous looking gut. The poor thing's stomach turned into a terriblelooking cavity running with gooey snot. When the rachni still gurgled a horrifying scream of anger in lieu of being forcefully fed fifteen rounds of incendiary ammo, Tali replied by depressing her shotgun's trigger which took the stupid shit's head clean off.
The rachni's scrambled organs (Or whatever remained) exploded onto the Spectre's armor like a mad artist would a defenseless canvas.
He looked terrifying and, at the same time, like total shit.
She'd have to forgive him later for doing that to his gear.
"Okay..." He breathed, "I'm good. Let's... let's go."
"We should have stuck together." Garrus intoned, "We shouldn't have left Alenko and Ash with Wrex to guard the VI core."
"Seemed like a good idea at the time." John mused as he looked at the remnants of whatever was left of his helmet. He'd retrieve it later when they came back from doing whatever it was they needed to do here.
The chilly air assaulted his frozen nose again.
Fuck did it hurt. He was really considering the idea of going back to get another one from the Mako just so he could breathe... but thought otherwise. He'd dealt with worse. He could handle it now.
"To leave the krogan—the ones that were able to drive the rachni to oblivion."
"We'd still be disadvantaged." John said, only glancing at him, "He'd be a liability in these quarters."
"Fair enough." He remarked.
They resumed their steady advance before crossing a door which lead into some sort of foyer. Just as they had practiced before, the team quietly, with calculated precision, spread out before analyzing the room's dimly-lit ambience.
Garrus was the first to call out contacts by using simple Alliance hand signals Shepard taught to them both. Hand signals meant they hadn't been seen by the squid faced maniacs. A good thing.
-TWO CONTACTS. FRONT- Garrus motioned.
John nodded and reiterated to Tali. She nodded herself and took a small peak behind her own piece of frozen cover.
Upon closer inspection, the quarian noticed the rachni were consumed with some territorial duel over a dead body. Based on what remained of the poor soul, she guessed it to be human.
Organs and iron-rich blood littered the snow covered floor. The human's torso was left relatively intact leaving an arm and head attached.
The Body jerked and the human screamed a bloody gurgle before opening his one remaining eye to the two rachni above him.
Tali's heart, at that very moment, ceased to exist. Her moral compass, having now been completely unhinged by the horrendous sight before her, could put even krogan to shame.
Her sub-machine gun choked a single round into the man's head to save him from agony worse than hell ever could be. Her focus fell to those two wretched beings.
The rachni peered at the human and realized their twisted game came to an abrupt end. They turned to face the quarian, their new 'game', and charged; amused by the idea of 'meat-not-like-their-own' coming right out into the open.
Unfortunately, they didn't have the capacity to know she was armed unlike the dozens of others they'd killed before.
"You. Fucking. Animals."
She stood up from her wall of cover and switched back to her shotgun.
She fired a hefty slug at the closest alien's head and turned it into a hollow skull.
The second one wasn't going to fare any better than its partner. Her shotgun's choke widened for wider pellet spread. She fired in succession three times to cloak the rachni in super-heated tungsten. It stumbled from the blanket of pellets before crashing into a table buried in snow.
"Tali!" John screamed as he tried to get a good line of fire on the last rachni, "Get out of the way!"
His order fell on deaf ears.
She fired into the joints of every limb the sick fuck had. Every thundering bark from her shotgun had ended with a squealing howl of pain.
"TALI! MOVE!" Shepard screamed with Garrus right behind, "MOVE GODDAMNIT! MOVE!" Both their rifles were held up with Tali in their line of fire.
When she was satisfied knowing it was going to watch itself die, she fired into the rachni's weaving spears. The stems split like ripe melons and clattered to the floor slithering like snakes without heads.
She walked right up to the creature and dropped her shotgun.
"You. Sick. Fuck." She punctuated her words with the strongest kicks she'd ever given in her life right into the rachni's beak.
Blood spluttered from its mouth following several of its weird teeth.
She did it again for good measure.
Then she reached for her knife and drove it into its neck several times before working up the courage to finish it off with a blade down its disgusting toothless mouth.
She shoved the serrated blade deeper into its open throat until the dagger surfaced to the back of its neck. Before she could even bother stabbing it again, she was forcefully grabbed by John and pulled to safety.
She pushed and struggled while Garrus finished the alien with a burst of rifle fire.
"Tali. Tali!" Shepard continued to pull her away until his back lined a wall. He placed her against an alcove before grabbing both her shoulders. "TALI!"
She stopped struggling and looked up to the man that finally brought her to her senses. When she did, she wrenched free from his grip.
"What the hell, Tali, was that!?" John screamed with more worry than anger.
His stare stiffened at the glare he received from her.
"I did what I had to do, god damnit." She spoke in a ghostly tone and gave him another long stare before sheathing her knife and picking up her shotgun.
Before John could give a reply, she cut him off.
"We have a job to do, Commander," She bit coldly before turning away, "Now let's get to it."
Both John and Garrus were too spooked to say anything else.
So they stared silently as they watched her eject a spent thermal shell before inserting more into her guns.
Their stares burned. But she ignored them and racked the slide of her shotgun to check for malfunctions.
The post-trauma was going to settle in soon.
And Tali wasn't naïve to know it.
|Six Hours Later|
|Date: 6/26/2183|
|Location: Normandy SR1, Level 2 A/3.|
For the rest of the mission, Tali had been quiet. When they returned, the quarian made headway straight to her room.
She didn't care about killing the matriarch. She didn't care that it was Liara's mother. She didn't care about the asari commandos. And she especially didn't much care for discovering the rachni queen.
She sat on her bed and kept her empty stare on the needle shooter in her hand.
ɪɢxᴀɴᴏғᴇɴ .256% ᴅʟʏ ʀʟsᴇ
-ᴏɴᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴅᴏsᴇ- [1 ǫᴅ]
ᴛᴇᴍᴘ. ʀᴇʟɪᴇғ ᴏғ sʏᴍᴘᴛᴏᴍs
ᴏғ ᴏʀ ʀᴇʟᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴘᴛsᴅ
The little vial read.
She swore to herself before this had all started that she'd never take it, no matter the circumstance.
But saying it was different than actually experiencing the trauma of watching someone lose their life the way that man did back at Peak 15. She'd remember this for whatever remained of her life. No doubts.
She didn't second guess herself.
She guided the needle to her arm and pulled the trigger.
Tali didn't even feel the pinch. Her breath trembled and she waited for a few minutes. Things were already starting to feel better. And just to see if it would help, she closed her eyes and shut out the world around her.
A sudden knock on the door stirred her away from trying to settle into an empty and thoughtless trance.
"Tali." John called just outside her room, "I want to talk to you."
Tali considered her options.
Ignore him?
No. That was a good way to get people really worried. And she certainly didn't want John to worry. It was probably best to just meet him face to face since she hadn't taken off her suit yet.
She went to the door and allowed him access into the antiseptic suite situated between her room and the hallway outside.
When he stepped in under the spray, he saw Tali open the door from the other side and stand by the doorway cradling her chest with a syringe shooter dangling at the end of her fingertips.
Never had he seen her look so vulnerable in his life.
John felt himself choke up. It was absolutely soul crushing to see her like this.
She felt her walls crumble just being next to him.
"John." She rasped with a choked swallow, "I— ...I—"
The syringe held loosely between her two fingers fell to the floor. Her trembling hands cover her mask to hide the agony she felt spilling out of her.
He too felt himself crumble. "Don't—don't cry…"
Without any idea of what to do, John opened up his arms and drew her into an embrace. "It's okay, Tali. I know."
She threw her own arms around the man before squeezing him tightly.
If she let go of him, she knew she'd be letting go of sanity itself.
She tried slurring something, but before the unintelligible words could even leave her, John started to stroke her back caringly.
Anything she was about to say died on her tongue.
Tali didn't necessarily know why, but it helped soothe some of the pain swelling in her chest.
"I'm sorry." John said sadly as he closed his bloodshot eyes, "I'm so, so sorry, Tali."
Minutes pass and they held on to each other with their teary and red eyes.
Eventually, the two separated and held each other at arm's length.
"Thank you, John..." She murmured quietly, "Thank you so much."
John nodded caringly at her. "If you ever need me... You know I'll be here."
He held onto her hands caringly. She nodded slowly herself before squeezing his closed palm.
"I think I'm going to take a long hot shower."
"It helps." He nodded before putting a hand on her shoulder, "You'll be okay, Tali. You'll be okay."
"...Okay."
|Present Time|
|Date: 4/1/2184|
|Location: Aboard the Neema|
An uncountable amount of time passed and Tali hadn't let the needle leave her sight, much less her hand.
Mindlessly, she stared at the syringe the same way she did after that mission on Noveria, rationalizing that her pain could disappear with the simple press of a trigger.
God, she wanted to. But another part of her stayed her hand. So she sat quietly in the small lab on the unusually quiet Neema for a long while and kept staring.
Eventually, the lab doors opened with Juel at its berth.
He noticed the syringe in her hand and placed whatever he was holding down on the table behind her.
"It's not going to help." Juel croaked with his back still facing her.
Tali's eyes went to the only other quarian in the room.
She didn't have the heart or courage to say anything, so she stayed silent. Juel took that as an invitation to continue.
"I've already been down that road. Believe me." He turned around and eyed the shooter in her hand, "It didn't help me. It never did. It's an addiction. A reminder of everything you've ever lost."
He took one steady step toward her with a concerned look on his face.
"Here. Give it to me." He reached out as delicately as he could and removed the needle from her hand.
She let him and didn't grace him with the respect of even acknowledging him.
The silence alone told Juel enough. She was crying inside.
"...I'm sorry, Tali." He murmured, "I'm so sorry."
Without a thing to say, Tali stood up, kept her gaze on the floor, and left the lab.
When Juel heard the doors close behind him, he took a seat before staring at the little shooter and muttering to himself.
"Keelah."
Codex Entry: Normandy SR1
Level 2 A/3 was originally designated as the clean room on the Normandy. It is in-between the cargo bay and crew quarter level and was generally used for those undergoing invasive surgery. Due to Tali's special needs for sterilized habitats, she was given the clean room to take as her own for the duration of the campaign against Saren.