Tali was already in the cargo bay when the Kodiak shuttle passed through the hangar's atmosphere-sustaining mass effect field. She had decided to take a break from the engineering deck and pop on down to level five to welcome Wrex and Mordin back to the Normandy. Next to her stood Dr. Chakwas, who also wanted to say hello to the Salarian scientist. The shuttle doors opened, and its occupants filed out. Shepard was followed by his fire team of Garrus and their newest member, Javik, followed by Wrex, Mordin, and the female Krogan they had been tasked with rescuing.

Honestly, Tali had not expected the war summit to evolve into a Krogan rescue mission and then devolve into an all-out battle between STG and Cerberus. Tali had asked Liara when she first heard about Cerberus' presence on the planet what they could want or even have found out about the Krogan female. The Asari didn't have an answer.

"Tali!" Wrex bellowed as he hopped down from the shuttle and lumbered over to her. The Krogan battlemaster and the Quarian engineer hugged each other in greeting. "Its been too long! How've ya been?"

"Good. I've spent most of these last few months on Earth with Shepard which was pretty fun, even with him being under house arrest." Tali responded.

"That's good to hear. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that the Migrant Fleet would let you take so much time off. You're one of the best fighters they've got." Wrex chuckled as he patted Tali on the shoulder. His chuckle quickly died as the room fell into an uneasy silence in his response to his comment. Wrex frowned in a mixture of confusion and concern. "Is there… somethin' I'm missing here?"

"Well Wrex… I uh…." Tali stammered. She hadn't actually told her adopted Krogan uncle about her exile. Tuchanka's infrastructure wasn't exactly modern, and her communications had been rather limited enough living with her boyfriend in confinement. Truth be told, she hoped that he would have found out by word of mouth. But very few people cared enough about an banished Quarian to spread rumors about her. "I was exiled."

Wrex's eyes went so wide it looked like they would pop out of his skull. "What!?"

"I was convicted of bringing live Geth back to the fleet." Tali said, her voice shaking slightly. It was weird, the pain of the accusation and conviction should have faded by now but Tali still felt a strange knot in her chest when she said it outloud.

"Bullshit! You're the best Geth killer I know! Hell, I even saw you tear out a Geth prime's headlamp with your own two hands!" Wrex snarled in outrage. "They should know you know when a Geth is damn well dead."

"Wait, you ripped a Geth's eye out?" Steve asked out as he was exiting the shuttle. "Sorry, it just seems a little… hardcore for you."

"I was… having a bit of a bad day," Tali muttered sheepishly. That had been the same day Liara had made a pass at Shepard. Thankfully, the Commander was horrible at picking up on romantic signals, and the Asari's attempt at flirting had gone completely over his shaven head. Needless to say, she still had a lot of anger that she had taken out on the Geth.

"More like a Krogan day!" Wrex slammed his fists together in classic Krogan applause. "What stupid Pyjack would believe that you, of all people, would send back live Geth?"

"Wrex, what happened was a lot more… complicated," Shepard said delicately, walking up to them.

"What so politics got involved?" Wrex growled in anger, immediately picking up on Shepard's subtext. "Shepard, don't tell me you let Tali get kicked out of the Fleet for some bullshit political deal!"

"It was my choice," Tali said stiffly.

"What?" Wrex asked, blinking in disbelief. "Why the hell would you do something like that?"

"I needed to keep the fleet together, my leaving… was the best way to do it," Tali whispered softly, crossing her arms and looking off to the side to avoid meeting her adopted Uncle's eyes. Afterward, she simply turned and started walking towards the elevator. "I need to get back to work."

Wrex opened his mouth to call out to her but said nothing. Instead, he looked at Shepard as the elevator doors closed. "I don't suppose you'll tell me what happened?"

Shepard shook his head. "All I can say is that it was part of a dispute about going to war with the Geth. Anything beyond that wouldn't be my place to say. Don't get me wrong Wrex, I've been trying to get her to open up, but she won't."

"That's cause you humans lack Krogan tact. Don't worry, I'll take care of this." Wrex turned and walked towards the elevator the Quarian had just left through. His heavy footfalls echoed throughout the hangar bay like war drums.

"Don't do anything stupid Wrex! From the looks of it, that girl has been through enough without you drudging up her past to satisfy your damnable curiosity!" Eve called after him over the din of Wrex's departure.

Wrex waved her off as he keyed the elevator. "Aw, it'll be fine. This requires some good ol' Krogan tough love."

—-

Tali had barely made it back to her terminal before Wrex walked into the engineering compartment. The Krogan jerked his head, signaling for Adams to leave, to which the Engineer obliged, not out of fear but because he knew that they would need some privacy given the closeness of their relationship. The Quarian sighed in exasperation. She should have known that Wrex would be too hardheaded to let something like this go.

The Krogan warlord walked over and casually leaned against the nearby wall with his thumbs hooked onto his armor's belt. In a calm fatherly voice, he simply asked "What happened?"

Tali rolled her eyes at Wrex's act. "That isn't going to work on me Wrex. You're not my dad."

"A-hah! So it's daddy issues." Wrex said, a smile breaking out on his face. "And Garrus says this detective stuff is hard.

Tali had the unbearable urge to take off her visor and smack herself upside the head. She and her big mouth. "Wrex, you didn't deduce anything! You're just making a guess based off what I said."

"It's an educated guess based on your subconscious feelings," Wrex said, raising his hand in the air like a Greek philosopher having just made a profound statement about the nature of life itself.

Tali responded by placing a hand on her hip and cocking an eyebrow at the krogan, who could see the movement of silver underneath her visor, indicating skepticism.

"Ok fine, you got me. But we both know I am on the right track." Wrex said, stepping closer. "Not to mention the fact that my own father tried to kill me. I can smell daddy issues a mile away."

"My dad hasn't done anything to me-"

Wrex stuck up a finger and cut her off. "Now that's a lie, and you know it. You've never been good at lying Tali, especially not to yourself. I know you've got something to get off your chest. You know you've got something to get off your chest. Hell, the whole ship knows you've got something to say! So why don't you just say it?"

"Cause there's nothing to say! I did my duty to the fleet. Period. Full stop. Nothing more needs to be said." Tali insisted, growing more irritated at Wrex's prying.

"That makes no sense. Why the hell would the fleet exile one of their greatest heroes. You made a name for yourself when you helped kill Saren on the Citadel. We both did. We both showed the galaxy that our kind can be heroes. And while the galaxy may have forgotten that our people didn't. It's one of the reasons why I'm the leader of clan Urdnot and the Overlord of Tuchanka. And I know the Quarians have a much longer memory than the Krogan. So what happened that they would make them to just throw you away like that?"

Tali exploded. "THEY DIDN'T THROW ME AWAY!"

The volume and ferocity of her scream shocked Tali and even made Wrex step back. Nevertheless, she continued. "There are still people who care about me on the fleet! I wasn't thrown away!"

"So do you still talk with them? Are you still secretly in contact with the Admiralty Board? Cause unless they're thanking you for your sacrifice daily, then they tossed you aside just like the Council did the Krogan." Wrex snapped back, pointing a finger directly into her chest. "Is your father calling you? Because if this is his doing, he better be."

"HE'S DEAD!" Tali screamed. She could feel a painful pressure building up behind her eyes. "He got himself killed on the Alarei after the Geth he built got loose! I had to do what I did to protect his memory! The admirals would have branded him as a monster, the worst Quarian to exist since the ones that built the Geth in the first place! All the good he had done would have been forgotten, and he'd have been reduced to a boogeyman that parents tell their kids as a scary story. I loved my father! I loved him enough to take the fall for his mistakes so he could continue being a hero to my people."

Only when she finished speaking did Tali realize she was crying. The Quarian could feel the tears trailing down her cheeks. Her chest felt tight, and she was short of breath despite the fact that she was breathing quite rapidly. She opened her mouth to try to end the conversation so she could go down to Jack's cubby to calm herself down, but Wrex spoke first.

"So you didn't do it for the fleet. You did it for your dad." Wrex said, nodding with an odd sage-like wisdom she hadn't seen in him before. He walked over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Why exactly was he building Geth if that's so taboo for your kind?"

"H-H-He was doing it for me. For all of us. He was working on a way for us to wipe out the Geth so we could take back Rannoch. The other admirals would never have allowed it, so he did it in secret on one of our research ships. When the Geth took control of the ship, the admirals automatically assumed I had to be connected to it somehow. He promised me that he would build me a house on the homeworld. That's all he wanted; he wasn't a monster. Things just got out of hand…"

"If he was doing it for you, why did he ask you to take the fall for him? If he cared that much about you so much that he would do something sacrilegious for your people, surely he wouldn't have wanted you to get punished when he got caught. Especially if he was already dead." Wrex asked, gently prompting Tali to continue.

Tali said nothing. She couldn't meet Wrex's eyes. Instead, she looked away.

"He didn't want you to take the fall, did he? He made sure that you weren't directly involved with anything incriminating. He was fully prepared to take the blame, wasn't he?" Wrex asked, already knowing the answer.

Tali nodded shakily as her chest began to heave, and a new wave of tears began to pour from her eyes behind her mask.

"Tali. Your father cared a lot more about you than mine ever did about me. He loved you. He knew that his name would have been wiped from the fleet's records, and he was prepared to let it happen to protect you. He wouldn't have wanted you to get exiled for what he did." Wrex said emphatically.

"He loved me?" Tali looked up to meet Wrex's gaze. "If he loved me, why wasn't he there for me?"

Tali shrugged off Wrex's hand and began pacing across the room while she spoke. Her voice rose with each word she said and she flung her arms around in a rage induced frenzy. "He wasn't there when mom died! He wasn't there when I left for my pilgrimage OR when I got back! He was only there when he needed something from me. His work was the only thing he cared about! I grew up with a damn Admiral instead of a father because he insisted on chasing a fucking delusion rather than spending time with his own daughter!"

"But you still loved him enough to take responsibility for what he did?" Wrex asked.

"I-I…" Tali trailed off. After a few seconds her shoulders slumped and her arms which had been gesticulating wildly, now hung limp at her sides as the anger faded as quickly as it had come. "I don't know. Does it even matter? Rannoch still belongs to the Geth. And now I've lost the only home I've ever known…"

"Not the only home," Wrex said. "You've still got me. You've still got Shepard. You've still got the Normandy. You've got a home and a family, and one that cares about you at that. I still don't know why the admiralty board decided to charge you specifically instead of someone who actually knew what was going on or why no one spoke out against your exile. But I do know that no one on this ship would treat you like that."

Wrex lumbered over to Tali. "It took me centuries to sort out my relationship with my father. To deal with the fact that he tried to kill me when I only wanted to help the Krogan. But I've gotta say that it was the best thing he ever did for me. Without that I would never would have left Tuchanka and met Shepard, and we wouldn't have a cure for the Genophage in our grasp!"

The Krogan held out his hand and tightened it into a fist as if he was already taking hold of the syringe that would save his people. A smile was on his face that portrayed something that she had never seen in him before.

Hope.

Despite knowing Wrex for years, he had never been hopeful. Even when he had left the Normandy SR-1 to return to Tuchanka he had the expression of a man who was returning to a war zone, which he technically was. When she had seen him during the build up to the Suicide Mission, he had looked weary from the stresses of ruling. Now however he saw the chance at real salvation for the Krogan.

"Now… well I'm not really sure where I was going with this. I'm not a fucking doctor, I don't know shit about people's mental states. But I think it's pretty good progress that you've admitted the real reason why you left the fleet." Wrex threw his arm around Tali and led her out the door to the drive core to the elevator. "So I say we celebrate with a few drinks in that fancy bar you got on this ship. Whaddya say?"

"Well I guess it beats moping down here all day." Tali said, looking up slightly. She felt a slight churning in her gut as the walked however as she replayed the words of their conversation in her head.

—-

"Cheers! To a successful raid on Sur'kesh!" Wrex bellowed as he raised his glass of Ryncol high in the air. Tali's and Garrus' drinks clinked against it and they all took a swig of their respective beers. When they finished, Garrus spoke up.

"Tali, should you be drinking that?" The turian asked, pointing a talon at her unfiltered beer bottle. "I had thought you would have sterilized it by now."

"My immune system has gotten a lot stronger since we parted ways Garrus. I can even eat solid food now with my mask off," she took another sip. "Not here, of course; my immune system isn't that strong yet. But I can handle your standard Turian beer now."

"Just because you won't get sick doesn't mean that you can hold it," Garrus said taking an even longer and louder sip of his own drink. "I have yet to see you actually hold your alcohol Tali."

"Is that a challenge, Vakarian?" Tali asked, raising an eyebrow under her mask.

"What if it is?" The Turian shot back, raising one of the plates on his carapaced forehead.

"Hah! None of you lightweights could keep up with me!" Wrex said before guzzling down his Ryncol. "But I would love to ref a little game between you two."

Said game ended with Tali passing out at the bar. When she woke up, she was in Shepard's captain's cabin, where her boyfriend was sleeping right next to her. He was in a sitting position with his crew clothes still on. Tali dimly realized through her sleep-addled mind that he must have fallen asleep waiting for her to wake up so he could lecture her about blacking out in a drinking contest on a military vessel. She was sure the lecture had included how unprofessional it was for her. Still, she was also sure that Shepard would have been unable to continue to berate her once she broke out her award-winning puppy dog eyes in a plea for sympathy. However, it looked like he was unable to stay awake long enough for her to come out of her alcohol-induced nap.

Tali looked up at her chrono in her helmet's hud.

2:30 am

The toxin filters had thankfully cycled most of the alcohol out of her system, leaving her with only a minor headache. Gently, she pulled her boyfriend down into a position on the bed that would not leave him with a crick in his neck the following day. Honestly, humans had such badly designed spines, and they insisted on controting them into positions that were guaranteed to hurt. Thankfully, she was there to help.

As she rearranged Shepard's posture, he jerked suddenly in his sleep. His breath quickened as his muscles lightly spasmed beneath his skin. Tali frowned at her boyfriend's sleeping form. It must have been another nightmare. He had been getting them a lot these past few nights. He never told her what they were about, though. Gently she wrapped her arms and legs around him and nuzzled her helmeted head into the crook of his neck. She didn't know if holding him helped, but she liked to think it did.

Tali tried to fall back asleep but was unable to return to the sweet, sweet state of unconsciousness that she had earned through her ingestion of liquor. The drinking contest had been a very useful tool to help keep her from dwelling on the previous day's conversation with Wrex. However, now lying awake in the dark, she couldn't keep the truth from her mind any longer.

She had taken the punishment for her father's sins.

She had been exiled for the memory of a man who had barely cared for her.

She had lost her home over a man who was already dead.

She had ruined her life.