Chapter Text
Her grief is doubled by the long, warm day. This time of year on Rannoch–and there will be years , now, in one place–the sun is out forever. The night is just a few short hours. She clings to the brief, purple twilight like a mask. Before all the lights come on at night, she’s invisible.
There is still so much work to be done. It has been two months. She doesn’t wear her helmet anymore, because the crying is more infrequent and her face isn’t as puffy. Now everyone can see how pretty she is– you’re so pretty , he’d said–and how it is for no one. Were the circumstances different, she might be her planet’s most eligible bachelorette. But the circumstances aren’t different. Men avoid her like the many illnesses they used to fear.
The sun is setting. She’s in her workshop, sweaty, greasy. The work hides the sun, hides the hurt. There is always something broken to fix or something in pieces to turn into something new. Her hands have calluses now, and they never have before. Working with no gloves, no barrier. The sting of her skin breaking, healing, breaking. It’s something. She’d never say it out loud, but it’s something that helps.
She has a message waiting. The blinking green on her terminal glows in her peripheral. She hates getting messages.
There was a time, months ago, when every beep at her terminal set her heart racing; is it him? Finding a way to sneak past his fancy incarceration, his comfortable prison, to make contact? It never was. She nearly lost her mind. Nearly, again, like when he died. The first time. Before. She hates thinking: that one was easier. That one, I was just a girl.
Now the messages are just work. Just politics. But the anticipation, the heart-jumping split-second of wonder–it never really left, did it? There is still a part of her waiting to hear from him.
But he’s gone.
“Gone,” she says out loud. It’s been a mantra. She steels herself and breathes deep–the clean air of her homeworld filtered through the vents in her workshop–and approaches the terminal.
The light is blinking faster now, meaning: urgent.
“Shit,” she says. The clock has run out on people pitying her for her heartbreak, on everyone giving her the time she needs to heal. She can’t fuck up anymore. She can’t take time off to cry. Even Raan has been giving her an attitude for spacing out during meetings. She types in her passcode. The terminal scans her face– pretty –and the screen unlocks.
URGENT COMMUNICATION FROM CITADEL in bright red letters, and Tali is ashamed at her lack of panic. Who cares, she thinks. Though she is technically still in their employ as an ambassador, her concern for the goings-on of counsel space have waned since she left the Normandy. She cares for her friends, of course. For the vague safety of the galaxy. Assured, now. Now that he’s dead.
But she’s being a child, so she opens the message. She’s surprised to see that it’s a video.
“Is this the right–ah– goddamn …” Commander Bailey presses a finger to the camera, adjusting it. He coughs. “This message is for Tali’Zorah. There have been certain developments here in the past few days that require your immediate attention. I can’t say much over comms–please respond. C-Sec will charter travel for you to come. Bailey out.”
“What the shit…?” The message deletes itself. She presses a hand to her forehead.
She turns away. A small beep. The light glows flashing green once more.
“Keelah…” Sighing, she opens the newest message. Another video, a familiar face, but not Bailey. No, this one has her attention.
“Tali? You answered? I was sure it would go straight to your messages,” Traynor says, practically gasping. “Did you get Bailey’s comm?”
“Samantha…?” Tali expands the video window to really look at her. It’s been a long time. Not that long, but forever when she’s hurting. Forever when they’re so far away. “Yes, I did. If it’s not a matter of galactic chaos, it’s going to have to–”
“It is , Tali,” she says. “Well–potentially. If anyone found out. But I–”
“Can’t say much over comms?”
Traynor chuckles. It churns some old warmth into Tali that she has not felt in some time. Missing something. A home. A family.
She curses herself–she is home. Rannoch. It’s everything she’d worked for.
“I know I can’t expect you to leave Rannoch over nothing, Tali,” Traynor says. “Trust me, I wouldn’t insist if it wasn’t absolutely critical.”
“You’ve got to give me something . I can’t just leave because my old life comes calling. I have responsibilities, people who are depending on–”
“It’s Shepard, Tali.”
The name pounds through her chest. In her stunned silence she finds herself lifting her fingers to her lips as if to prevent her from whispering it.
“Wh…what do you mean?” she asks, a croak, a weak voice. Like a child.
“That’s all I can say, Tali. Please, you have to trust me. We need you here. He…” Traynor sighs and shakes her head. She lowers her voice so quiet: “We think we can get him back. You need to be here.”
Years ago:
Many Quarians die on Pilgrimage. The galaxy is an unfriendly place. She just didn’t know how much. She was sure that, were she to fail, it would be because she got sick or something, like an idiot. Not this. Not like this, she thinks. Her neck is in the hand of a stranger. It’s dark, and no one is coming because there is no one. She is out here, alone, the only one of her kind she’s seen since she left, and she is going to die like this.
And she would laugh if she wasn’t scared, because she’s gotten it wrong. Sure, they will take off her suit, and she will die. But not from illness. From all the hurt. They touch her like they want her and want to kill her and they all have guns and she won’t even have the chance to die slowly from an illness because once they’re done finding out what it’s like under her suit they’ll shoot her in the head and she’ll never see the homeworld.
But she can’t die, because she has a message to send. She has something important to tell everyone, and if she dies now, no one will ever hear it. She wants to say to these men: don’t you understand? Kill me if you have to, but let me speak first. Let me show you. We are all in danger.
But they don’t care about that now. One of them is reaching for the gasket that keeps her air flowing. She holds her breath as if that will help.
And then–gunshots. She thinks it’s odd that they shot her so quickly. Odder still that it doesn’t hurt. Her eyes open in a flutter and so many of her assailants are laying bleeding on the ground. But she lives. The man with his fingers on the gasket holds his gun to her head.
People speak. Her head pounds. If she doesn’t die from this, she’ll die from her brain exploding. She’s too young for this. She’s too weak. She’s gotten herself in trouble and she was a fool to leave her people, even for this important of a rite.
A bullet speeds past her head. She feels the warm splatter of someone else’s blood against her helmet.
Her knees buckle, releasing all that fearful tension she’d been holding like a string about to snap. Strong arms catch her. The hard, cold texture of armor. It’s all she’s ever felt. Fabric. Metal. But the hands that steady her feel different, even through gloves.
“Are you alright?” the man asks, bending down a little, looking through her helmet as if he can see her face, her eyes. No one has. Not since she was a child. Sometimes she forgets what she looks like but in this moment she wishes so much that this man, this stranger, could see her.
“I’m–”
“Did they hurt you?” he asks.
“N-no,” she says. “I’m alright, thank you.”
The rest is a history the galaxy will never truly understand. No matter what they write about them, no matter what people remember, they’ll never really get it. How her body felt. How it stayed that way forever, changed just by meeting him, seeing him. Giddy, girlish infatuation that grew into devotion, love. From the inside out.