CHAPTER 29: Make You Feel My Love
2185 CE
We headed back to the Rayya together in a pall of silence. Tali was afraid to ask me what I found. I was afraid to tell her.
The first thing I did when I got back was to confirm that our deal still stood. In gratitude for the return of the Alarei, the warning about the Geth, and the evidence they needed to stop anything like this from happening again, everything on the Alarei would be classified and explained away as a rogue attack by the Heretic Geth, accidentally let in by a careless researcher who died for his mistake. The truth, without all those messy details.
In thanks for my assistance with the Geth, in both martial and diplomatic sense of the word, no charges would be filed against either of Tali's parents. I asked about the shuttle, but apparently its departure wasn't logged. Shuttles are under the jurisdiction of the ship that hosts them. It was noticed leaving, but no one thought to ask why or where until it was gone.
I gave them the evidence and we departed the Migrant Fleet.
2185 CE
'But... what about the email? What if he's right?' I hear Tali's mother say as I venture near the engine room. I follow it inside.
'Take the Enterprise. I want you outside the ship when we activate them. If anything goes wrong... Warn Tali. Tell the Fleet. Just... Protect our daughter, please?' Rael begs. Tali is watching him on her omni-tool, staring.
'For you, Rael.' Tali's mother nods. The video ends.
'Are you okay?' I ask.
'No.' Tali sobs.
I sweep her into a hug.
'He knew the risks. You told him the risks. He did it anyway. He doomed his ship to die. He saved his wife over his crew. And she let him...' Tali wailed.
'I'm sorry.' I patted her on the back, softly.
'The worst part is... she didn't even warn the fleet. He told her to and she just... ran. And now, thanks to us, she's going to get away with that and... And I want her to!' Tali confessed.
Tali laughed, hysterically. 'My own mother and father are the worst traitors and war criminals in Quarian history and they're going to get away with it. No one will ever know.'
'Your father paid for it with his life.' I reminded her.
'It's not enough. Not for this.' Tali shook her head.
'I still want him back. I... How does Liara deal with this every day? And she has the help of her mother being indoctrinated to cause this! I don't even have that.'
'But, you know, on the upside, your parents never tried to kill you like hers did.' I tried to point out.
Tali sniffled. 'There is that. Kelah, I need a drink.'
'You have a working emergency induction port?' I asked, surprised.
'Nope! Mine got busted on Haestrom. I need to fix it, but it never seemed the time.' Tali hiccupped.
'I'm sorry Tali. I thought I was making things better.'
'You were. This... this is bad, but... That virus was 7 years ago. I was only 17. You gave me that time with her. You tried to warn my father. You saved my mother's life once more. You did... good. It's not your fault it ended up like this.' Tali reassured me.
'Nor yours.' I countered.
'Chakwas has a sterilizer in the medbay. I'm sure there's a metal straw in the mess that we can render safe for me to use.'
'And the alcohol?' I asked.
'Garrus probably has something?' Tali decided.
'I can't let you do that, Tali.' I decided.
'What can you let me do then?' Tali laughed, mirthlessly.
'You asked how Liara could handle it. So... why don't we watch Up, in the Commander's quarters. Just you, me, and Shepard?'
'Can Garrus come? Don't tell him why just... can he?' Tali asked, her voice sounding small, but hopeful.
'For you? I'm sure he wouldn't miss it for anything in the Galaxy.'
Tali stared at me through her suit.
'Thank you, Krell. For trying.'
I smiled back. 'Don't worry about it. You're a great kid, Tali. You deserve better than this.'
I pulled out my omni-tool and messaged EDI to page Shepard.
We'd get through this; together.
2185 CE
Dealing with loss is a real problem for Krogan. It wasn't really that much of a concern before the Genophage. We had very very large families and even if your favorite kid died, or your favorite sibling, or cousin, you had a ton of other relatives and friends you liked and disliked to help you through it. You had your krantt, too, which was even closer than your family although the two categories could and often did overlap.
So what then was a newly jobless ex-warlord to do when deposed as a result of the Genophage? What grand problem could I address in the over two thousand years until the Reapers were set to invade again?
I wrote. I wrote mostly to get my feelings out, to set them on a page so that I could examine them and deal with them. I wrote from a deeply personal place. And because that place was deeply personal, I wrote from the position I was in at the time. I was an ex-warlord facing 80 years of war that we were certain to lose, my favorite sister had died, I lacked the support of my clan, most of my kids were dead, and then there was the Genophage...
I wrote 'On Loss' the definitive book of Krogan grieving; part military treatise, part requiem. Reciting passages from 'On Loss' is now very popular at Krogan funerals; when we have them.
The book deals with confronting the inevitable, with addressing foes you can't defeat; death counted foremost among them. It talks about accepting loss and recovering from it.
If you're curious as to what that looks like, I'll share a passage:
And lo, the endless hordes abound he faced the foe with rocky mein,
He could not win the Rachni's ground. He stared at death, his grace serene.
They found him there. He did not flee. His former krantt, their lives he bought
A price paid dear. His gun spit glee; confronting that which can't be fought.
There is no monument for him. There is no grave to mark his name.
His Krantt survived, though duly grim. He fought a foe he could not tame.
I guess the Human equivalent would be a eulogy; or perhaps the mourner's kaddish. I never actually named the passage. I never really intended to publish it. My ex pushed me to do so.
These days it's known as 'He fought a foe.' It helps us confront the inevitability of loss. Of death.
Krogan grief isn't like Asari grief. It isn't like Turian or Quarian grief, nor like Hanar or Elcor. Humans have shades of it, but there are different shades and textures to it.
There aren't seven stages. There's just anger, and confusion.
'He Fought a Foe' has ingrained itself into Krogan culture, somewhat against my will. It helps us turn confusion and rage into something else. It helps us show respect.
Krogan Battlemasters sometimes recite it before pitching their krantt against impossible odds. Krogan parents, bitter with loss at still-born babes draw comfort from it, seeing their children as warriors rather than the victims that they truly are.
I'm very much the foremost Krogan expert on grief in this entire fucking galaxy.
None of that expertise helps Tali.
2185 CE
Shepard talks to her after the movie. I'm not sure what she says to Tali, but it helps.
More than anything else I hate this feeling. Being Krogan means freedom from dread. That's a Human emotion. Evolution, in us, has mostly replaced it with excitement.
There is no excitement to be found here. This isn't a foe I can blast with a shotgun. It isn't an enemy I can overload.
Useless.
I'm useless.
There's nothing I can do to help.
I suppose I could try and find Tali's mother. I could call my favorite granddaughter and she'd find her in a snap. But there's not much I can do with that information other than tell Tali, and that would probably only make things worse.
I pull out my pad and start to type.
Dear kid,
If you haven't heard already, Tali was cleared of all charges. She's in no danger of being exiled, and I managed to make sure that the fallout wouldn't happen to fall on her parents either.
We're going to dock at Omega sometime in the next month or so. One last shore leave before the Omega-4 Relay. I'm sure you'll know when that's happening before I do.
Tali's dad died. Her mom survived, but she seems to have fled the Migrant Fleet instead of warning them; instead of protecting Tali from her parents' crimes. We don't know where she is, and I'm not certain any of us wants to find out the answers.
She could really use a friend right now.
Love,
Gramps.
2185 CE
Liara called the very same day offering Tali comfort, as well as any information she needed, if she wanted it.
Tali asked Liara to look into her mom's location, and asked her to save her if she was in danger.
Liara agreed, understanding the subtle subtext that if Tali's mother wasn't in fact in danger, Tali didn't want to know.
I'm proud of my granddaughter. It used to be that such subtlety was completely beyond her! Why I remember a time when she was given all the clues she needed to unravel the largest galactic conspiracy in existence and instead spent her time ignoring all the subtext and complaining about academic integrity!
Liara's return email to my praise-filled thank you note was just one line:
'Academic integrity is important, Krell!'
I'm sure she'll admit that I'm right someday, but it definitely won't be any time soon.
Author's Notes: And that's the end of the Tali Arc. You haven't seen the last of Tali's mother, but you have seen the last of her for a while.
The chapter's title is a Bob Dylan song, but the specific version of it is the one sung by Adele. There's a very nice version on the Chimes of Freedom Album. Specifically that album. There's another live version with the same exact title off songs for Japan that's a very different tone to it. Chimes of Freedom is a great album by the way, all the pleasures of Bob-Dylan's song-writing, but performed by people who can actually sing; like Johnny Cash, Keha, Miley Cyrus, Sugarland, and Angélique Kidjo. If you haven't heard the song, give it a listen. It's got a good tone for the chapter as a whole, I think.
One of the fun, but also challenging things about Making Krell an amazing writer in universe is that if I want to give an example of his work he'll only ever be as good a writer as I am at the moment I'm writing the example. that means I need to try and kick everything up a notch for those bits and try and pull out more tricks to increase how well those bits sound and hit. Practically speaking a lot of that usually works through additional editing. Sometimes it comes in doing things like using meter. Sometimes it comes from taking a running joke or two and turning them into dark reprises.
That's every canonical loyalty mission minus Legion's down. Krell's already gotten his Loyalty mission on Illium with Aethyta. We're real close to the end of ME2 now. ME3 is fully plotted out, but I'm still actually writing it and frequently that means that I need to go back and rewrite or reorder things to make them fit together better. I'm currently dealing with two different paths Krell could end up taking and trying to figure out which will be more fun to read and write. So I'm not going to start posting on ME3 until all the basic plot scenes are done. I'm thinking that might end up turning into a hiatus of a week or two, depending on just how big ME3 ends up being.
