forgivetheinsubordination | IC Contact

[She hums in thought, looking around the rover as if something might jump out at her - and then glances sharply at Garrus. Well, it's something to know that she was right, at least. Maybe a couple of years ago her reaction would have been different - more of a, 'well, he's an adult (sort of), he can handle himself'. But back then, would she even have noticed? Would he taken time out from his own pain to come and help her?

That was two years ago, though, and now here they are, and the very sound of his voice and the way he holds himself is making something close to anxiety coil in her ribs.]

You've got a soldering gun? That might actually work. [It's not a great idea, but the outer layer's tough enough to take it, and it's better than a patch. The only issue is making sure it doesn't get through and sear the inner layer - or her.

But that's only a distraction for a moment or two, and she pauses, sobering - before leaning forward slightly, close enough that he might - just might - be able to see the outline of her face.] But you're not all right now. What happened?

[He fishes through his armor compartments for his soldering gun and the length of metal he needs to solder with, pulling them out after a few moments. They're not things he needs often, which is why he'd forgotten where they were exactly. They're also apparently not enough of a shield or deflection from her curiosity.

Garrus takes a breath, and his mandibles draw very close to his face before he answers.]

I got... involved. We've been here, what, nine months? Something like. Lot of downtime. Something started. And now it's over. Shouldn't have let that happen.

[It had been such a mistake. And yet it had been wonderful, too, and he doesn't know if he can completely regret what had happened. He shakes his head.]

You got something to protect your arm while we do this? Don't wanna burn you. Some scrap of cloth, anything you can lose inside the suit.

[Though it would have to be sterile, then. That makes it tricky.]

Edited 2015-02-10 23:04 (UTC)

Thanks. [She murmurs it, taking the solder gun and metal and looking them over. All she has to really stop her from being terrified of this going wrong is blind hope, which... she doesn't tend to like relying on.]

Uh... Not right now, but... [She stands and makes her way over to her locker, rummaging around in it for a moment before bringing out a blanket.] This'll do.

[Sitting back down, she takes the knife out of its holster and starts to cut a piece out of one corner of the blanket, quiet for a moment. Her whole relationship with Garrus now feels like an engineering project she half finished, then came back to ages later to find it rearranged. Two years ago, she's not sure she'd have pictured him dating an alien - and being this affected by it being over.

Empathy wells over her... along with a twinge of envy that he can have such a thing, a twinge that she chokes down hard.]

Don't say you shouldn't have let it happen. Don't think that. [There's an intensity to her voice she hadn't anticipated, and she's clearly slightly taken aback, clearing her throat.] If you get a chance to be happy, you take it. And you were happy, right?

[She glances up at him, a brief flicker of the eyes.]

[He's a little startled by how strongly she corrects him, and Garrus realizes he has no idea if she's found time to date while they've served. Had there been someone that she regrets not seeing? Not giving a chance? He doesn't know, and now is really not the time to ask. Right now he can just listen to her words and look away at the question.]

I was happy.

[Enough of the time that it made all the difference. And yet he'd ended it. The pain had been going to overwhelm the happiness, and that was his fault for not being more careful.]

What...

[Garrus' voice comes out a bit more hoarse than he'd like, so he clears his throat and tries again.]

What do you need me to do?

[He can see why she'd called him, due to where the tear is. She can't take care of it on her own and it'd be so much easier to focus on carefully repairing the suit than how he'd been happy with Noh-Varr.]

Okay... [She rips the rest of the tiny patch of blanket away with her fingers, and brings it up to the suit tear, slowly and carefully tucking it in under the upper layer. It'll feel weird for a while, but she'll live. Better that than the alternative.] I'll hold the edges together as best I can and you... try not to solder my skin to the suit.

[It almost sounds joking.

There's still the feeling of a sharp twist in her gut at the tone of his voice before. Hoarse, as though wrung dry by the sheer force of the emotion crushing it.]

Just keep thinking about that. [There's still a sort of heaviness to her own voice - like it's laden down.] Being happy - that's the important thing.

[And, pushing a lighter tone into her voice:] And if that doesn't help, I have a knife and some guns.

Haven't soldered anyone to anything in all my life, and I'm planning on keeping to that record.

[He's trying to sound comforting, but he's aware that he's probably not doing well on that front.]

Don't worry about your arm.

[That, at least, is safe. Carefully, taking his time, Garrus gets to work trying to make sure he doesn't wind up damaging her or the suit. She needs this, and it's really not like there are other quarians running around to make more. After a few seconds, he responds to the other with an attempt at a lighter tone as well.]

Wouldn't really be fair to stab him with a knife he made. And I don't hate him. Or even dislike him. So no shooting. I'll be all right, Tali.

[It's the opposite of hatred that's the problem. If Noh-Varr had mislead Garrus, or lead him on, or anything like that, Garrus could and probably would be angry. But he hadn't. Noh-Varr had been honest all along and it's Garrus that entirely messed everything up.]

I'd rather you didn't break that record, no. [There's a slight faintness to the retort this time, and she finds herself not looking at what he's doing, instead staring down at her lap, and the knife still balanced on her leg.]

Noh-Varr? [It's an effort to stay still and not jerk around to look at him.] Huh.

[It's not that she didn't see it - she just didn't know what to see. It's not like she and Garrus have had this discussion before now, and it's not like now is the right place to ask for gossip, even though some part of her dearly wants to. Tali's not experienced in this stuff, but even she knows the basics of when to keep her mouth shut.]

Okay. I won't shoot him. Or stab him. I won't even make his rover's haroomba perform elcor opera.

[He nods in confirmation, not repeating Noh-Varr's name right now. His subharmonics are already obvious enough to her. She doesn't need to deal with them faltering over that.

Garrus finishes soldering the tear before he looks up and gives her a little shrug.]

I wouldn't rule out the elcor opera just yet. Maybe put it off to the side for now.

[It's funny, at least, and that's something he could use.]

Try out the arm, see how the suit feels?

I'll make the preparations. Just in case.

[She smiles, a little, and flexes her arm as Garrus finishes up. It feels... off, but not like it's going to tear any second, and that's all she needs right now. All it has to do is last until they're done here.

Simple, right?]

Yeah, it feels good - it should be alright for now. Thanks, Garrus. [She slumps a little on the stool for a moment, letting the relief wash over her - and then almost immediately, she's standing up, full of nervous energy as usual.] Did you want some water or something?

[Spoilers: there is no 'or something'.]

[Garrus nods. Sometime, when he's feeling better, he's going to rib her about having elcor opera, even if it turns out she doesn't. It's something that's deserving of teasing. For now he'll simply be relieved that the patching is going to work for now, and she's not already curled up with a horrible fever.]

You're welcome, Tali. And I'll take water, unless you've got something to be doing.

[He's already had a drink, and he doesn't need to use alcohol. Some of the edge is gone. That's enough. The rest he'll work on.]

Don't wanna be the dark cloud hanging over your head, or however that goes.

[When he gets around to teasing her for it, she'll know he's feeling better. For now, she bustles around the rover getting water for them both, rations for herself. When she sits back down again, she's trying not to eye him so carefully, so critically, looking for any cracks in his figurative armour. She slides a cup of water over to him.]

Here you go. And don't worry about dark clouds - I'm wearing a hood, remember?

[She picks at it and grins a little. Sometimes commiserating and talking it out is the best thing to do. Right now, she's not sure it is.] I was just going to eat, so...

[The haroomba, she notices when she looks around for it, is active and sitting on top of the weapons locker. She clicks her tongue as if hailing an animal, and it bounces over to her; she reaches to take it and put in her lap like the strangest pet any person ever had. Unpackagaing the rations - and somehow she manages to act like this is totally normal - she gives the food to the robot to sterilise.] If I take my mask off to eat, will you spend the whole time panicking about infections?

[Because she needs to eat, she needs to test that the haroomba can keep the air sterile, and besides, she'll be thinking about panicking enough without Garrus vocalising it.]

Yes. I'll panic and act like a quarian doesn't know what she's doing with her own mask.

[His voice is very dry as he lifts his glass of water in her direction before sipping His subharmonics aren't quite right, yet, but he can manage that, at least.]

Go ahead, Tali. I trust your judgement there. Can I eat too? Not your food. I've got some with me.

[And this way if the haroomba started messing up or not performing as expected, Garrus would be there to help check out the programming. Plus if things go really wrong he's got nanite shots. Garrus tucks away his soldering kit, pulls out the jerky, and checks the location of the nanites just in case before closing up his armor. It's the least he can do, keep an eye out for the crew.]

They seem a little less irritable this time. The haroombas.

[That's about as useful as talking about the weather, he realizes a moment later. And then a moment after that he realizes that no, it's worse, because Tali might find actual weather interesting seeing as she's quarian.]

Just making sure. [She's not sure what his reaction would have been to her just reaching up out of nowhere and plucking her mask off her face. So, fair warning.] Just don't cough on me and we'll be fine.

[Definitely don't do that. That out of the way, after waving at him to go ahead and eat his own food, she reaches up and unclasps the mask, letting the air hiss out as the seal breaks and lifting it off. She immediately has to clench her eyes shut hard against the lights in the rover, nose wrinkled and automatic tears starting in her eyes, and it's a moment before she can open her eyes properly and focus on Garrus again without the darkening effect of the visor.]

Really? [You're talking about tech, Garrus. That's a good place for small talk with Tali. There's a moment, though, after the first word she speaks without the visor, where she starts a little at the unfiltered sound of her own voice - and she has no inclination at all to hide the slightly confused look that passes over her features. It's a second before she goes on.] How bad were they before?

[He's surprised to hear her actual voice. He shouldn't be, he'd seen the mask come off just now, but it's never struck him that it's normally so... filtered. But of course it is. Everything is with quarians.]

Uh.

[Right, a question.]

The one we had before, in my rover, was a jerk. Aggressive, tried picking fights. I named it Javik, after the prothean. Before Javik himself showed up. He took it pretty personally. His people aren't exactly fond of synthetic species either, so he kept trying to convince the others in my rover to break the haroomba. They didn't listen. Thankfully. And then when I shared a rover with Liara we called her haroomba Glyph.

[...which, right. Garrus shakes his head.]

She winds up with an assistant VI in your future and my past. A pretty dumb one that she names Glyph.

[So there's a few seconds when the two of them are just sitting there in confusion at the sound of Tali's own voice. This is par for the course.

As Garrus talks, she picks up the pack of food from the haroomba and, instead of just eating the ration bar like a normal person, she's picking tiny bits of it off with her fingers and eating those methodically. As he gets to Javik trying to convince people to destroy the harooma, she finds herself grinning, with the slightest flash of sharp teeth.]

They're just VIs. Actually, I think they're kind of cute. [Yeah, theirs just kind of cleans up and doesn't do much else. Which she's more than fine with.] Although Sebastian's - Sebastian Michaelis, he's one of the new recruits - his rover's haroomba was trying to take people's clothes off. Although I think that was just a programming mishap.

With Sebastian, there's no way to know.

[He's getting to know the demon more and more, and at this point Garrus wouldn't be surprised by much of anything.]

Though I think he's more after souls than bodies.

[Funny. He'd never really realized quarians had sharp teeth too. Both species are dextro, digitigrade, with three digits, sharp teeth... If her people hadn't been mammals, he'd wonder if somehow turians and quarians somehow were related, billions upon billions of years back.]

And I like the haroombas some, personally. Useful. Funny when they glitch. And considering the amount of hair the human women in my rover leave everywhere, invaluable.

[Complaining about something he's not really bothered by is one of the safest conversations Garrus can have right about now.]

Hair? Nice. [Her face twists comically, lips pursing.] Well, it's three guys and me in this rover, so - not a problem.

[Tali doesn't really notice any difference in their interactions as she slowly eats the rest of the rations, but without the mask on, the way she communicates - or rather, how much she communicates, changes. From the way she chews lightly on her lip when she's listening, to the fact that even the mildest of reactions shows very clearly on her face, she's even more of an open book than before.]

[She furrows her brow a little as something belatedly occurs to her.] Wait, what do you mean about Sebastian? Souls?

[Gosh, Garrus, what could you possibly mean about that nice human?]

[It's fascinating to watch her face, and he's working very hard to not stare. For once Garrus doesn't rely just on her voice or the way she's shifting or moving her arms. He can see her expressions. ...And she's probably not that aware of them, he realizes. Why would she be? Most of her time is spent with the mask on.]

Which three guys?

[He hasn't paid a lot of attention to rover assignments that aren't his own, truth be told.]

And I mean souls. Tell me you're reading the files of people. That's what he eats. The good news is that it's people who willingly, stupidly enter into a contract with him, so it's their own choice.

Sasuke Uchiha... [She has to stop and remember the other two, brow furrowed, absently chewing her lip; she's barely met them yet... and she certainly can't pronounce their names.] Kouha Ren and... Nobuchika...Ginoza. I knew Sasuke already, but not the other two.

[At the mention of the files, she twists her face, managing to pull off both guilty and uncomfortable at the same time.] I didn't read that many of them. I know I should, but... I don't know, it feels like spying on people.

[Eating souls, though. That's... well, once you know some things, you can't unknow them.]

That's a... mix.

[He shakes his head, mandibles twitching slightly in amusement.]

Ren's one of mine. Good kid, odd point of view. Born to rule and all that, so there's a disconnect there. Sasuke, hah. Not what I'd expected. And I've briefly met Ginoza, when we were dealing with the butterflies and he was trying to not get sick.

[He leans back, content to take another bite of the meat before continuing.]

And the files are a shortcut. A useful one. We're already somewhat in the dark here as far as the CDC goes. Doesn't hurt to get a look behind what people will show.

[Tali doesn't have much of an idea of when to hold to eye contact and when not to - behind the mask, she can be looking wherever the hell she wants during a conversation and it doesn't make much of a difference to anybody. So there are points - like now - when Garrus is talking and her gaze on him is maybe a little too intense. It's not intentional - she's just concentrating on what he's saying and isn't thinking about what her face is doing.

She'll learn. Maybe.]

I'll keep all that in mind. And... I'll start reading the files. I promise.

[She raises a hand a little in something of a salute - a very half-hearted one considering she's using both hands to eat.] To be honest, though, I'm more worried about driving than I am about who I'm sharing this space with. I mean... [And she grins then, eyes crinkling into bright crescents.] If I mess this up, I can never make fun of Shepard again.

[Garrus chuckles and nods, meeting her so-intent gaze.]

At ease, vas Norma-Neema.

[He coughs, shifting where he's sitting and suddenly not meeting her eyes. Sometimes his teasing doesn't go exactly as planned, but why not try to hastily make up for it? Because she totally could have missed that. For once, the flood of Garrus' words almost rivals Mordin's for speed.]

If you need coaching with the driving, I did it last world. Can make sure you've always better than Shepard. Not like that's a hard goal to meet, but we don't want her to be able to make fun of you about that. Since then I could make fun of you for it too.

Edited 2015-03-01 22:13 (UTC)

[She might not have thought much of the slip up - maybe he forgot her ship name, it's an alien ship, it happens - but he goes on so hurriedly, so... totally unlike himself that she tilts her head, staring at him with frank curiosity.]

That would help... [She's speaking slowly, still very clearly confused.] We could probably go for a quick drive around here, nobody would mind - but wait... wait a minute.

[You're not getting out of it that easy, Vakarian, because that really sounded like...]

Vas... what? Normandy? [Despite herself, she huffs with laughter, assuming he just made a mistake.] Really.

[And then the dawning suspicion is so clear on her face it's like flicking a switch.] Wait, not... not really?

[Driving has been momentarily forgotten. Think of this as your comeuppance for getting around her questions about your poetry, Garrus.]

[It is better than being teased about his poetry by her. Too many already know about it - Warriorhead, Noh-Varr, Erin - and if it gets into her or Shepard's hands, there's really no point in living anymore.

Though Garrus really wishes he had any skills when it came to lying. It would make life so much easier. Too late now.]

Uh. So. I mean.

[He's shifting around in his seat like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and frankly that's not too far off from reality.]

You... serve. We're crew. Normandy crew.

[A beat, and then Garrus is closing his eyes and talking very quietly:]

And you might have almost gotten exiled from the Migrant Fleet.

[Can he still spin this to avoid talking about her father? More importantly, should he? Garrus has no idea.]

[The hesitation proves it. So, at some point, she really does change her name to vas Normandy, and there's confusion about why in the universe she'd do such a thing written all over her face. She's a quarian - why wouldn't she keep her quarian ship name?

And Garrus is just squirming and talking and not saying much of anything and not telling her...

His voice drops - and her heart drops into her stomach. There's a moment where her expression's just frozen, where she doesn't move, just stares blankly. She licks her lips - her mouth is completely dry all of a sudden.] Almost. But I'm not, right? It was... it was just a misunderstanding, right? I didn't do anything.

[Exile means treason, and that means putting the whole fleet in danger. She puts down the last of her food and, tapping her fingers on the table agitatedly, gazes at him intently. Her breath is shallow all of a sudden.]

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the icons are a lie as of now :c

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