Research and Development

Tali had done a bit of research on humans.

Specifically, every night in her sleeper pod before she went to sleep, every morning before she got to work. At mealtimes, and breaktimes, and every bit of free time. Even on shift when Adams wasn't looking. It was starting to eat away into her sleep schedule, and still she was not content.

She had read up on military customs and family values, ancient history and recent history, art and even a few anatomical diagrams that she had lost more than a healthy amount of sleep over. She had found some human music, too. Old, Shepard said, but a personal favourite of his. It seemed confusing, at first; it was slow, prone to change and built up towards a feeling Shepard had only called "triumphant". She had asked him what he meant, and he had placed a hand over her visor.

"Listen to it," he had said. "I mean really listen."

She balked at him. Not that he could see. "What do you feel?" He whispered, softly.

She quivered, the two of them uncomfortably close. Breathless, "Shepard..." was all she managed to say.

He didn't understand. He was so blissfully clueless.

But she had felt something. She had felt the slow pace, the warm feeling washing over her in waves, building to a state of elation as though she were absolutely weightless. More importantly, however, she had felt safe, peaceful, content. Whether that was because of the music or her Captain's touch, she didn't know, but she bought the whole 'album' as Shepard had called it from the extranet to play in her sleeper pod. She hadn't had better sleep in months.

That was exactly the problem, though. Everywhere her thoughts wandered, they would always return to her heroic Commander, dashing in to rescue her from sudden danger as he had when first they met. Why did it do that? Was there something wrong with her? She made a mental note to ask Auntie Raan if she was sick when she went home.

And there was the biggest issue of all of this. She felt odd when she wasn't with Shepard. The man took her with him on every operation he completed, barring when she was hurt. Disproportionately more so than Liara, or Ash, Wrex or Kaiden. Even Garrus, who seemed to be the closest thing to a brother Shepard had.

When she had asked, he had just shrugged. "I need you." He had said, and she positively glowed.

He came to visit her lots, she recognised. She even earned herself a jealous glare from Liara when she walked in on Shepard teaching Tali how to play the human game of chess. The King is always vulnerable without his Queen, she recalled. But judging from the feelings she got when he was gone, the odd, hollow ache, she suspected the Queen had it just as bad.

How was she to return to the Fleet, to live her father's life like he planned, when she already had a ship, and a Captain? How would she choose serving some stuffy old Admiral and marrying off a quarian Captain when she'd already found everything she'd wanted, and a leader who'd earned her complete loyalty?

Whether he knew it or not, Shepard was tearing her apart. And if she wasn't careful, she'd let him.

So she sank what time she could into researching human behaviour. It wasn't hard to find, at least at first; the extranet was a wonderful thing. But it was all females. Try as she might, she couldn't find any human males talking about what they felt, as though it was restricted knowledge. Was it restricted? Was this secret kept in order to not be exploited by their enemies? She made a mental note of asking her father one day.

She had stumbled across, at one point, some human-turian romance vids. Adams had suggested them one day when Tali wouldn't stop pestering him with questions. She gave them a watch, and to his credit she did learn something; that they were the wrong kind of romance vid. She thanked the ancestors for the privacy of her visor's interior display when the human male reached up the Turian's skirt and turned their lovemaking became... more apparent. And more loud.

Some sounds had escaped her helmet, and the engineering staff had never looked at her the same way since.

That only made her problem worse. Often, she'd find herself drifting away from the present, and towards the future. When she closed her eyes, the couple in the vid changed, morphed. He put his hand on her suited hips, their bodies mashing together, and she could almost feel the hands exploring her body, hear the breathless way he called her name.

She snapped back to reality and her face burned. Oh keelah, she thought. I really must be sick.

So she had gone to the only other human male she could ask. Chief Engineer Adams was off the cards; he had already misunderstood what she needed once. Joker was a loudmouth. If she told him, it would make its way back to Shepard soon enough, and she wasn't sure she wanted that. So, reluctantly, she had to go with the last option. Navigator Pressly.

To say the man was in hysterics would be far too mild to accurately describe the situation. Pressly could hardly breathe, wheezing as he had when Wrex had come aboard and given him a bone-crushing pat on the back. Only this time it seemed the old navigator was having the time of his life, rolling over and banging his hand on the floor over and over as Tali looked around sheepishly. The navigator's enjoyment of the situation seemed to have afforded Tali a lot of unwanted attention from the crewmen still of the operations deck. Perhaps this hadn't been a good idea.

When Pressly was done laughing, he finally let out a few relieved "hoo"s and "hah"s before getting to his feet and dusting off his uniform. "Wait, you're serious?" Tali nodded.

The navigator scratched the back of his head, unsure of how to answer her question, or hell, if he could at all. Serving with Shepard had taught him to respect aliens more than he would care to admit, once going so far as to say Tali reminded him of one of his daughters. But then if she was like one of his daughters, wasn't this "the talk", in a sense? He twiddled his thumbs, clearing his throat before turning back to Tali. This wasn't going to be easy.

"You can't stop thinking about a certain person? And who's the lucky quarian, huh?"

"Actually, Pressly, it's not a quarian." Tali confessed. She could've almost laughed at the shocked expression on Pressly's face.

"The... Commander? Shepard?" Now it was Tali's turn to be flustered. How had he guessed? Was she that obvious? Pressly sighed. "Aww, shit."

"Well, um- I don't... it's not what you're-" Tali stammered.

"Now don't you try lying to me Missy!" He growled under his breath. She was surprised how authoritative his tone had become, and for a minute she was almost scared, but he relaxed. "Look, I'm not the one to be asking about boy trouble. I told others the same thing." Others. Of course there were others.

"But I will tell you this, as a friendly gesture: you already know the answer to any question you could ask me. I know Shepard, but I ain't his shrink. If you want to know which way his head's screwed on, ask him!" She hesitated, and the navigator seemed to sense her doubts.

"He's got a real soft spot for you, Missy." Tali blushed furiously. She would do it. She would talk to him. Pressly was right to say she knew exactly what her feelings were, but if others had asked... and Liara?

She would do it. And the suit, the clean rooms, the visor? They could all go to hell. As soon as the time was right, she would ask him.

Then Virmire happened. The debriefing room was hushed. No one dared look at the Commander.

He was as cool and collected as always, gentle and graceful, and yet there was something... off about him. The whole crew felt it. The feeling before the start of a gunfight, like walking into a storm. Beneath the surface, Tali knew, a time bomb was ticking. Someone had to disarm it, but no one wanted to be the one who set it off. Under Shepard's cool, breezy demeanour a storm was brewing.

Liara joined with his mind, of course, but when had she ever refused to do that? Tali fought back the urge to glare. Liara had to do it if they were ever going to find Saren. It was a necessary evil. But Tali would do far more than glare if Liara kept gushing about his 'strong mind'.

Then there was the call with the councillors. She had stayed behind to give Shepard the engineers' damage report. He just raised a hand and said, "Not now, Tali." That was that. She wasn't in the room for the meeting, but she could hear his voice thundering off the walls from behind the door. When the doors finally opened again, he was back under control, briefly instructing Joker to head to the Citadel. His eyes were hollow, cheeks gaunt.

"Shepard-" She started.

"-Not now, Tali. I don't want to talk about it."

...

Shepard should've been used to writing letters to the families of the ones he lost. But he'd begun to hope that this command would be different. He'd known everyone on the ship better than even Anderson had, and just now had he realised why that wasn't a good idea.

"We're soldiers, Lieutenant!" Major Kyle had said, pressing the radio into his bloody hand. "We do whatever it takes to finish the mission!"

"Whatever it takes, Major?" The radio crackled to life. Gunfire and pleas for mercy were all that could be heard.

The Major grinned. "Whatever it takes."

And he'd spoken to Ash's sisters, too. Promised to keep their big sis safe. How many times would doing the right thing be this painful? Ash was one woman. Her sacrifice had saved the galaxy, as his soldiers' sacrifice kept Earth safe. A handful of sacrifices to save the trillions, right? Yes. He had a job to do, regardless of how he felt.

"Two rules. Hands against the walls, and shut the fuck up!" He called out, languidly.

The last of the Batarians was lined up against the wall. Only this one wouldn't stay still, kept resisting. Even under the strain of Shepard's biotics, he kept wriggling and writhing free. "N-No, you've got this wrong! I wasn't a slaver, I'm just a pilot!"

"So you weren't involved? I guess you didn't just kill my men?" Shepard slammed the pilot's head against the bunker wall.

"No! No, I swear it. On my life! I just brought the raiders here." He stammered.

"Wrong answer!" Shepard dragged him to the floor, sinking his steel capped boot into the man's throat. "What's your name, pilot?"

"Ughh. I can't breathe." Shepard drew a combat knife from his boot. The pilot shivered as it came out slick with batarian blood.

"Funny. That doesn't sound like a name."

"Agh, it's Othrin!" He cried. "Please, I have kids!"

"Othrin, you disappoint me. You forget the rules."

"Ach- I- no, please..." Shepard knelt down next to him, drawing the point of his knife in lazy circles around the pilot's eye.

"There are two rules, Othrin. Two rules."

He shuddered. Not there. Shepard had had enough of Torfan to last a lifetime, and no matter how many times he felt lost or confused, he wasn't going back there. It had been a long time: N7 training and Anderson's command had freed the hatred from him, taught him how to cope with loss. A life had been lost under his command, true, but it had saved trillions. Ashley had saved trillions. Her sisters would be proud.

His door slid open, and in came a familiar figure. Good. He needed the company.

Tali saw the rings under his eyes, but the colour had started coming back into his cheeks. She wasn't sure if he still needed time to think things over, but if he did, she was just making things worse for the both of them. Maybe now wasn't the best time. She turned to leave when he called out.

"Stay." It wasn't a request so much as a command, and she couldn't help but obey. "Please stay."

She settled down on his bed, feeling the hardness of the mattress. Keelah, it was worse than her cot on the Neema. No wonder he was so tense. She thought he might say something, but he just sat there. So she took it upon herself to say something.

"Shepard... about Ashley..."

The wind whipped at his face, as though the planet itself knew what was coming. Kaidan had the bomb. If he went to help Ashley, the trigger might be disarmed, and he could not let that happen. Regardless of who he helped, he had to see the mission through; Kaidan couldn't protect that bomb on his own.

"Go get her, Commander. Let me do my job."

"Bullshit. Go help LT, Skipper. I can take care of myself."

Ash or Kaidan. Honour or Duty. Ash had said she could take care of herself; he sincerely hoped so.

"I'm sorry, Ash."

"I know. There's nothing I can do to bring her back." He gritted his teeth, purpose and warmth flooding back into those cold blue eyes. He fixed his gaze with hers and Shepard clasped her hand. Her cheeks flushed. "But when we find that Turian bastard, let's kick his ass. Can you do that for me Tali?"

"Wherever you go, Shepard, I'm with you." Her heart was racing. Whatever she planned, however prepared she thought she was, that Bosht'et had a way of uprooting it. She had gone into this expecting to comfort him, and now she felt so... vulnerable. She had to go on the offensive at some point.

"I wish that were true." He said, his eyes betraying a fleeting look of sadness. To hell with it. She pulled him in and wrapped her arms around his torso, resting a helmeted head on the crook between his neck and his shoulder. He sat, wide-eyed for a moment, before meeting the embrace. His arms mirrored the action, drawing him in. Both were content to just sit there for awhile, the troubles of the day almost forgotten.

It was Tali who finally spoke up. "I have your back, no matter what. Vishz'ne esu, Shepard."

"You gonna tell me what that means, Miss Nar Rayya?" He smiled.

"One day, Shepard. One day."

...

When Tali had gone, Shepard returned to his terminal. He scrapped his draft letter to Ashley's family. When the time came, he'd be the one to tell them, in person, but until then he had a mission to finish. He did find one message, dated for the same day.

Delivered by One Admiral Rael'Zorah.