A/N: This story follows the fic "Dancer in the Dark," which should be read first, but is not necessarily required. I hope you enjoy!

It should have been another routine shift in Engineering, but since the geth's arrival on the ship, routine no longer existed for Tali'Zorah vas Normandy.

She stared at the mission clock pinned to her main holo screen. Two hours, fifteen minutes, since Shepard departed the ship with Zaeed, Jacob and the geth platform on another "routine" mission to locate raiders believed to be harassing shipping in the local systems.

But it had been only twelve minutes, ten seconds since Shepard called for an emergency extraction and the Normandy crew scrambled to battle stations. Miranda re-positioned the ship to low orbit to expedite recovery of the shuttle, Garrus charged every weapon including the Thanix cannon, and Tali, Gabby and Ken did their level best to make sure maneuvering, weapons and sensors had all the power they needed at their disposal.

And, as usual, no one would tell the Engineering section what was going on, which only made the anticipation worse. In that, Tali wasn't alone.

"What do you think happened?" Gabby asked, her eyes never leaving her console.

"Dunno," Ken said. "The geth finally popped its cork, maybe? Whatever set this off, Garrus pulls any more power we're gonna be able to fry an egg on the deck. We must be expecting company. What do you think, ma'am?"

Tali's grip tightened on her console. She'd spent her life preparing for geth attack. The only difference now was she was the only senior officer anticipating it. She'd warned them all - Shepard, Miranda, Garrus... everyone. Only Ken and Gabby took her warnings to heart. The geth was a walking landmine, just waiting to take out the overly trusting organics on the ship. It was just a matter of time. That Shepard of all people took the geth's word over hers, after everything he'd seen, after everything Tali and her people had endured, brought tears to her eyes. If the worst had happened, would she be able to say anything more than I told you so...?

"Mind your panels," she said. "Be ready for anything."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Shuttle arriving," EDI said in her characteristically calm tone. "Trauma team, report to hangar deck."

"Oh shit," Gabby muttered.

Tali dreaded the next few minutes. Because of Cerberus protocol, EDI's announcements could be very sketchy, sharing information only on a "need to know" basis. So sometimes no one outside of the command staff or medical team ever knew the extent of the injuries or the identities of the wounded until they were briefed. But she always imagined the worst, because Shepard was always in the line of fire. And with a geth on the landing party, worst had horrifying new connotations. Minutes passed.

"Recovery complete," EDI announced. "Chief Zorah, Report to the hangar deck. All hands, maintain battle stations."

Gabby and Ken both looked over at their superior with surprise. Tali was also taken aback at her summoning. She pointed to their monitors. "Stay here," she said. "I'll find out what's going on."

"Yes, ma'am," they said in unison and returned their focus to their instruments as Tali headed for the lift.

By nature, Tali always looked for the worst-case scenario. It was vital to her skill as a troubleshooter: start at the core and work outward, ensure the most critical systems were functional, then look for failures in the periphery. She wasn't needed as a medic, so why was she being called? A problem with the shuttle, she thought. Propulsion or life support, maybe? As she strode to the elevator she spoke to the AI. "EDI, any information on the casualties?"

"I'm sorry, Tali," EDI said. "I am not at liberty to provide details at this time. All I can share is that there is one critical injury, and one fatality."

The word fatality made Tali's heart sink. She quickened her pace. "Is Commander Shepard all right?"

"Commander Shepard is uninjured."

Thank the gods, Tali thought. But if Shepard was alive, that meant someone else wasn't.

The elevator door hissed open into the hangar bay. Support personnel swarmed the Kodiak. Doctor Chakwas and a pair of medical techs worked around a stretcher set atop a cargo crate. The patient lying on his back screamed to no one in particular, his body covered with med packs and a stasis field from the waist down. Jacob held him down by his shoulders.

"Bloody goddamn praetorian!" Zaeed Massani growled through clenched teeth. "I'll fuck every skull it's got right in the eyes for this!" Next to the stretcher, a medic sprayed medigel over the stump of Zaeed's right leg, severed at the thigh.

Chakwas's voice was calm. "It was a clean separation at both ends," she said. "You'll be back on both feet in an hour with some nice new scars."

"You're a goddamn angel, luv," Zaeed said before passing out as the anesthetic finally took hold.

"I thought he'd never go under," Chakwas muttered. "Alright he's stable. Let's get him upstairs."

Tali stayed out of the way as the medical team attended to the human mercenary. She moved next to Jacob. "What happened?"

"Collector ambush," Jacob said, wiping sweat from his brow. "They hit us from all sides. Got hairy toward the end."

"EDI said there was a fatality," Tali said nervously. "Who didn't make it back?"

"Legion," Jacob shook his head. "Praetorian got him."

"Keelah!" Tali clapped her hands together. "I thought someone had been killed."

Jacob frowned at her. "Didn't you hear what I said? Legion's dead."

"Legion is a machine," Tali said with more irritation than she intended. "It can't die because it's not alive."

"Well, 'it' just saved our asses." Jacob pushed his way past her. "So pardon me if I want to show 'it' a little respect. Shepard's waiting for you inside."

Tali watched him board the lift with the medical team and the doors slid shut. There was a time not too long ago where Jacob was her most trusted ally against the geth after Shepard decided to keep it on board, but even Jacob eventually turned on her. He started treating Legion like a pet, or worse, a friend - just like everyone else. She shook her head and walked up the ramp to the shuttle.

She found Shepard sitting on the aft bench of the passenger compartment, staring towards the front of the ship. When he didn't acknowledge her, she turned to see what he was looking at.

The geth was strapped into one of the forward seats, presumably so its mass wouldn't shift in transport. Its superstructure sagged in the belts, its limbs dangling toward the deck. The usual flutter of its head panels was noticeably absent, and its central aperture was cold and dark. White conductive fluid spilled onto the seat and floor around it.

"Is there anything you can do for him?" Shepard asked.

Tali bristled at the pronoun. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't happy to see the geth platform like this. If it were damaged beyond repair, it would ease many of her fears and repair a lot of damaged relationships on board the ship. But she would at least take a look, for Shepard's sake.

She activated her omnitool and waved the glowing interface around, casting shadows across the geth's inert form. She'd analyzed hundreds of destroyed geth and knew exactly what to look for. "Power output zero," she read the results aloud. "Batteries depleted. All generators burned out. Light physical damage to the exoskeleton, but there's extensive internal damage. Sixty-two percent of its servos are out. Checking core memory matrix..."

A wave of relief washed over her, and she fought not to show it. The geth's memory cores were fried to slag. "Either its self destruct protocol triggered or there was a massive electrical overload. In either case there's not much left in there."

"Damn it," Shepard rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the destroyed robot.

Tali stared at him. Shepard was the worst offender when it came to anthropomorphizing the geth and the others always followed his lead. She sat next to him, facing the geth. "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do," she said. "So what happened? I mean, if you want to talk about it."

"I don't know where to start."

"Well, that's okay," Tali said, trying to sound cheerful. "Why don't you go get cleaned up? I'll take care of things here. We can talk later."

Shepard closed his eyes with a sigh, then stood. "No, I've got to talk to the Illusive Man first. Tell him what we found down there. What are you going to do with him?"

"Who?"

"Legion."

Again, Tali tensed at the use of a formal name. "Take it apart, send it back to the fleet." From the look on his face, Tali knew what was coming next. She stood to face him. Ordinarily she'd say something to lift his spirits, something funny or charming but it didn't come. After everything she'd put up with since the geth's arrival, every concession and compromise, she couldn't back down on this one. "That was our deal, Shepard. When you first brought this thing aboard."

"I know," Shepard said, still focused on the geth. "Guess that armor didn't do either of us any good."

Tali scowled "What?"

"Before you cut him up and ship him off, I need you to do something for me."

"What is it?" An uneasy feeling spread through Tali's gut.

"Access his systems. Look everywhere you can. Memory caches, backup devices, you know better than me. See if you can piece anything together from the last day. Anything at all."

"I don't know, it's taken a terrible shock. There might not be anything left to recover-" Shepard's weary, shattered expression stopped her mid-sentence. "I'll do everything I can. I promise."

Shepard nodded and stepped towards the hatch, giving the geth shell a parting glance before descending wordlessly down the ramp.

Tali glared at the burned-out hulk. "Great. Just when I finally get rid of you."

Maybe this isn't a bad thing after all, Tali thought. She'd seen many inactive geth in various states of disrepair, but never one as advanced as this mobile platform. Before sending it back to the fleet, she might find out what data it stole when it hacked her omnitool, and what it did with it. The geth said it had not transmitted the data back to the collective. Shepard bought it, but Tali knew better. Sharing data was what geth did best. Finding out for sure would be worth the effort.

How father would have liked to examine this. Tali's excitement at the prospect of dissecting the geth waned. It was this kind of tampering that got her father and everyone aboard the Alarei killed. That was reason enough alone to crate up the remains of the geth and get it off the ship as soon as possible. Simply applying power to its components could put the ship at risk. If she had her way, she'd open the hangar door and jettison in to space right then.

Tali thought of the anguish in Shepard's eyes. No. You promised. You're not going to break your word. Not to him. She called into the air. "EDI, you there?"

"Yes, Tali," came the immediate response from the ship's AI.

"Send a team down to move the geth to the science lab. I'll up in few minutes."

"Right away, Tali."

Tali stepped through the hatch and the lights switched off behind her, leaving Legion slumped in its seat, alone in the dark.

A/N: So why a remaster? If you're a first-time reader, there is utterly no reason for you to subject yourself to what follows, unless you're just really, really bored.

Tomorrow's Dawn was the second fic I ever wrote for Mass Effect, almost ten years ago. (Good grief, has it been that long?) I never really had a plan beyond wanting to explore the relationships between the characters who really hated each other on the ship, exploring how they might come together as allies if not friends. I thought maybe doing a story about Jack and Miranda, Mordin and Grunt (whose conflict was edited out of the game) and maybe Thane and Jacob. But all of these stories, and the stories I ended up writing, were intended to be stand alone, one-shots. I intentionally avoided many game-related decisions, tried to keep them generic so they could best conform to an individual Mass Effect player's timeline. After all, I wasn't writing about my Shepard, but about the side characters established in the game that I came to love.

Then I wrote For Tomorrow We Die as a sequel to Tomorrow's Dawn, to kill time before Mass Effect 3 came out and that project took on a life of its own. FTWD was a much more complicated story that required continuity that my one shots didn't have as I was creating my own alternate universe now. Part of that continuity was a small sliver of head cannon from my own playthrough of ME2 that came about as a result of the order of recruiting characters in game. Kasumi was DLC, so for me she was the last of the organics to be brought aboard. Because of the game structure, Legion came aboard after everyone else. So my headcannon was that being the nice person Kasumi was, she would befriend the even newer kid and help him adjust to life on the Normandy. Because she had the hots for Jacob, she'd co-opt him into the plan. So that aspect bled into the original Tomorrow's Dawn in a basic form, just to provide a little drama and flavor. I doubt anybody else developed those particular relationships.

Flash forward to FTWD, years later when I expanded on that idea a bit for a Kasumi flashback which expanded on that idea, turning the geth-hating Jacob into Legion's buddy after a fight in the galley. That little seed ended up growing into its own full-fledged story "Dancer in the Dark" some five years later.

The only trouble was that DITD established a WHOLE bunch of details, character moments, emotions, observations, and reactions that fit with For Tomorrow We Die that didn't exist in the "sequel" Tomorrow's Dawn, written almost a decade earlier. And if there's anything I can't stand in my own work, it's continuity issues. Therefore, TD needs a rewrite. And, like a lot of people around the world these days, I find myself sequestered inside with some free time on my hands...

So, there's not going to be much new here other than retconning some details and dialogue to reflect the events of DITD, which would have occurred only a couple weeks before. The overall plot will stay the same, with the exclusion of the branching ending in the original where Legion was dead for good. The main thing will be adding a lot more thought and action from Tali's point of view. Again, in the original, her actions and thoughts were intentionally generic in relation to ME2 and not DITD. This rewrite is intended to provide a smooth, seamless transition between DITD and FTWD, making them an actual trilogy. I think the original still makes a fine stand-alone for anybody not wanting to invest the time in the bigger story, but to me anyway, it has some pretty jarring differences compared to DITD and FTWD when it's supposed to be a bridge.

Anyway, first time or long time readers, thanks for reading at all!