Chapter Text

“Um, Commander?” Shepard’s smile put Tali off, her bare, lightly-haired arms leaned over the table with her fingertips pressed together. Tali shifted in her seat and pushed back against the edge of the plastic table, using it as a makeshift barrier. “What is this, exactly?”

“It’s for you.” Shepard nodded and leaned in a bit further, her head hovering above the armor box she plunked in front of her while Tali was in the middle of a mindless game, wide awake while everyone else on the ship slept. She tried to keep her distance from the human’s uncomfortably familiar gaze by pushing her chair back again, but the commander just leaned in a few more fractions.

“For… me?” Tali hated the commander’s sharp stare. The last time she stared at her like that, she practically yelled at her to hand over the damned evidence. Tali shook her head. “There’s got to be some kind of angle here. You hate me. Keelah, you hate everyone.”

Shepard’s smile faded a bit, and thankfully, her sharp eyes dulled. Tali breathed a small sigh broadcasted by the horrible microphone in her helmet. She held her helmet up by the crook of her palm between her thumb and forefinger.

“You’re kicking me off the ship, aren’t you?” Tali swallowed in an attempt to open her throat. “I suppose I should have expected this. My skills are too specific for most of your ground missions anyway.” Tali pushed her chair inwards and grasped the sides of the box to open the hatches.

Suddenly Shepard’s hands clamped on top of her own and forced the box closed again. “I’m not giving this to you to say goodbye, Tali.”

“Then why?”

“It’s… Consider it an apology.”

“An apology, what? Why would you want to apologize? To me of all people? Keelah, you hate me! You hate everyone!”

“Tali, I don’t hate you! I don’t hate anybody on this ship!”

“Really? Is that why you used me to expose Saren? Why you left me behind on the last mission?”

“Tali, I left you behind because we were going against batarians. You’re better suited to fighting geth—”

“Because my people have been fighting them for centuries? Commander, I’m not a looping program, I can handle more than you’d expect.”

“Not without decent armor you can’t. That piece of shit you wear into battle couldn’t stop a spitball from piercing through you.”

“It’s not my fault there isn’t any decent quarian armor in the galaxy!”

“I know it isn’t! That’s why I got you this.” The commander pushed the box away from her and loosened her grip a fraction. “My team needs the highest quality equipment available for these missions, Tali, and I can’t bring you into the fray when you’re in danger of a suit puncture.”

“You… you actually mean that, don’t you?”

“Tali, I admit it. The way I treated you when we met was unfair. I take full responsibility for it and I was hoping we could start over after I gave you this armor.” Shepard closed her eyes and didn’t open them until she was done speaking. “You were the only one I spoke to on the Citadel who didn’t already know who I was, what I did. I had a chance to make a different impression on you than I did on everyone else I met, to prove that I wasn’t a single-minded military idiot… and I blew it. I’m sorry.”

Shepard drew her hands away from Tali’s own and rested them on the table. Tali stared at the box again for precisely ten seconds, listening to the soft, nearly imperceptible whirr of the engines a floor below them. She clicked the hatches on the side of the box open and there, folded neatly inside, was a set of Colossus IX armor.

She snatched the cuirasses instantly, hands shaking. Underneath the impeccably light ceramics was red decorative fabric with no pattern, flexible and with expertly hidden seams for its pockets. If there was a way to make Tali any more breathless, she didn’t know it. “H-how did you even get this?” she whispered.

“The chief engineer from Asteroid X57 said he had worked with some quarians. They left this behind after they finished working on the fusion torches.” The commander’s mouth turned up at the corners but the rest of her face seemed… off. Tali couldn’t quite decipher humans when their eyes were so dull and small. Sometimes it registered as if they didn’t have any eyes at all.

“This is… Commander, this is quite possibly the most advanced model of quarian armor in existence! I, I don’t know how I could possibly thank you.”

“Hey, you don’t have to thank me. This is supposed to be an apology, remember?”

“If this is what you do to apologize, I can’t say I wouldn’t like it if you made mistakes more often!”

“Ha… yeah.” Shepard kept the corners of her mouth lifted, but her eyes began to wander along the edges of her vision.

“Thank you, Shepard. Really.” Tali followed Shepard’s gaze to the sleeper pods and got an idea. “Would you mind letting me, um…?” Shepard wasn’t looking at her. Tali coughed to get her attention. “I’d like to put the armor on right now, if I can.”

“You were thinking of using one of the sleeper pods?”

Tali nodded. “Would you mind letting me know if anyone needs me while I’m changing? I know Engineer Adams has the midnight shift right now but if anything comes up…” She didn’t want to take any chances with outside exposure. Damn these suits. Tali was usually on midnight shift herself, but Engineer Adams seemed to be under the impression that quarians were diurnal, like humans, and wanted her to ‘get some sleep on schedule for once.’

Shepard chuckled between chewing and swallowed before answering. “There won’t be any severe engineering emergencies at two in the morning, Tali.”

“You’re awful.” Tali pulled away from the table a bit too quickly and knocked her chair over. “I’ll pick that up later!” Moments later she was situated neatly within the sleeper pod, the Colossus armor balanced atop her head. She began to remove the fabric of her current enviro-suit.

It felt amazing to leave her skin out for a little bit. She might get a light fever but it didn’t matter to her. The padding of her old suit chafed sometimes, the tacked on armored sections made her limbs numb, and she had never been able to breathe decently filtered air since she left the Rayya. She took a small moment to savor the feel of air recycled only once on her skin.

After replacing her gauntlets, she began to lift her chin up to replace her chest plate. As she leaned upward however, the Colossus armor on her head hit the ceiling and stopped her short, making her curse.

“Any problems?” Shepard must have moved closer to the sleeper pod while Tali had been replacing her gauntlets. Keelah, she really was concerned, wasn’t she? Tali furrowed her brow.

“It’s no big deal, Commander. I’ve bumped my head against plenty of ceilings before. The helmet usually gets in the way of their nefarious meddling.” Tali shimmied a bit so the chest plate she wore unbuckled from her shoulders. She let it join her old purple gauntlets at the bottom of the pod.

“Bet the ceilings have been plotting your destruction for a while now. Want to talk about it?”

Tali sighed a bit while she situated the black chest plate, curling the decorative ribbon around her neck for now. She had been dreading this conversion; she had hoped that, if she played her cards right, she wouldn’t have to bring up any details of her personal life while on the flotilla. She’d much rather keep the conversation to her people as a whole. Less… personal.

But, her commander had asked her a question. No secrets among shipmates, Tali, her father’s voice echoed in her ears. Secrets lead to suspicion, suspicion to investigation, and investigations reveal everything. Whatever you were trying to hide will always be discovered. Better to be straightforward with everyone.

“According to all our historical records, I’m one of the tallest quarians ever born.” Tali’s shoulders slumped, and she rested her forehead on the glass in front of her. “Didn’t exactly make life easy for me growing up. Not hard to pick me out in a crowd.”

“Really? You’re about as tall as I am. Didn’t know quarians were that short.” Tali couldn’t quite make out the strange inflection in Shepard’s voice given by the translator, but she assumed it meant Shepard was trying to comfort her.

“Maybe it just wasn’t conducive to reproduction to be tall as a prehistoric quarian.” Tali fought with a stuck greave on her left leg. “Quarian men and women are all around the same height. Well, except for me. I’m the freak.” Tali tried to laugh through her last two words. It didn’t sound quite right.

“You’re not a freak here, Tali. Everyone onboard the Normandy is about as tall as or taller than you are. If it makes you feel better? Humans think tall people are sexy.” An undertone of laughter colored Shepard’s words.

Tali grinned as she finished clasping the new greave to her left leg and began working on her right. “Oh really? Does that mean you think Garrus is sexy? His head is the highest of everyone on board,” The right leg’s greave was much easier to remove. Tali let it join the other pieces of her old Hydra armor on the ground. She heard Shepard snort out a guffaw from outside the pod.

“Okay, what’s going on? Just yesterday Ashley brought up the topic of kissing turians. There some kind of conspiracy?”

“Rest assured there is no conspiracy on my end.” Tali giggled a bit. “Let’s talk about something else. You say humans think tall people are beautiful, yes?”

“Yeah, so?”

“What else do humans find attractive?” Tali tried to keep her voice light as she changed the subject. Shepard might be one of the prettiest humans ever, Tali thought as she finally finished replacing the greave on her right leg. She’s tall. Tali began to stash her helmet away and fiddled with the decorative fabric.

“You’re asking the wrong woman. I haven’t followed fashion trends since I was 12 years old.”

“Come on, you know more than that, Commander. You were the one who brought up human beauty standards in the first place.”

Shepard laughed again. “I’ll bite. I dabbled in makeup when I was a kid. Sometimes I still do, but I can never find any blush that’s the right tone for my skin. All the decent ones are meant for women with lighter skin.”

“So humans only make beauty products for specific skin tones? That doesn’t make any sense.” Tali tilted her head and shimmied a bit to let the fabric on her suit fall properly. The ribbons were mostly aesthetic, but it never hurt to look pretty.

“Nah, there are plenty of skin products for women of my complexion, I just didn’t like the brands. I was too broke to pay for the skin lightening injections anyway. The temporaries go for about 6000 credits.”

“Temporary ones are that expensive?” What a strange beauty standard, Tali thought. I’d be glad I could see someone else’s skin at all. “I can’t imagine how much the permanent ones cost.”

“You have no idea. At least three different courier gangs back in the city I grew up in gave counterfeit permanents to prostitutes and misguided fashionistas. Some of the couriers were too dumb to tell the difference between the permanents and goddamn mercury.” Shepard’s voice lost the air it had before, stained with… regret? “Way too many junkies on the streets got a side of poison with their pretty, pale skin.”

Tali felt some strange extra weight on her hood. She patted behind her neck and found a pocket hidden underneath. It was large, and seemed suitable for holding a lot of things. She gave a quick nod of approval before finally swapping the faceplate on her helmet. She didn’t feel it was appropriate to leave the pod now however, so she just rested her hand on the glass and thought for a moment.

“Did you take any of those… counterfeits? Is… that how you know about this?” Shepard’s skin wasn’t particularly light. From what she had seen of humanity she was darker than most, but not as dark as some. To think of Shepard injecting herself to look beautiful, only to come out shaking and puking… That wasn’t honorable for a Captain.

“No, no, that’s not…” Shepard paused. “I used powders that went on top of my skin. There were times when I went overboard and I just rolled with it. Still can’t remember how I managed to fill my bathroom with green eye shadow and yellow lipstick, but nobody keeps the Butcher of Torfan away from her bat-shit beauty habits, you know?” Tali laughed in spite of herself. Somehow, Shepard always knew the best way to lighten the mood. Now she was ready.

“Alright, Commander. Are you prepared to behold my beauty?” Tali opened the door as gracefully as she could, spreading her arm outward in an imitation of the old quarian empresses of the homeworld. “Feast your eyes on Queen Tali’Zorahck!”

The pieces of armor she had let fall to the bottom of the sleeper pod tumbled out onto the plastic floor, clanking. Tali nearly tripped when she tried to pick it up, snagging one foot in the divider between the pod and the floorboard. Shepard straightened her up with a light biotic throw before she could sustain any damage to her new armor.

“Queen Tali-Zorack needs to work on a more coordinated entrance.” Shepard laughed.

“I didn’t even get to reveal the next tax percentages for the province I rule over.” Tali bent down to pick up her old pieces of armor, folding them up nicely and placing them in the box the Colossus IX armor came in, Shepard close behind.

“That province of yours is lucky to have a queen that looks like she could kick my ass,” Shepard said.

Tali laughed, a conspiring smile worthy of a sister gracing her hidden face. “I appreciate it, Shepard.”