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Who: Niko Bellic

vengeance_driven and Tali
When: Backdated, slightly earlier in the month
Where: Mero #02
What: The events of the past little while finally beat Tali.
Warnings: Mentions of slavery, sexual assault, torture

Two weeks ago, she returned to the Moira. Two weeks, an uneasy normal she settled into like faulty atmospheric settings in an envirosuit - breathable, but wrong. She was busy, always busy, and she'd always liked busy, ever since she was little and her idea of fun was making mini-drones and doing engineering homework. It had rung a little hollow for a long time, though. As artificial as the personalities she'd program into those drones as a kid.

Even sleep had lost its comfort. When she found it, it taunted her with dreams that verged on nightmarish, but were never enough to wake her, settling themselves into prickly, uncomfortable dozing as she oozed in and out of consciousness. She never remembered what they were when she got up in the morning, only that, once again, the night hadn't been a restful one.

The same thing that night - only the dream dug its claws into her, made itself remembered. She flickered between places - a pen on that outpost, a convenience store on Aqada, the incinerator on the Citadel, but in all of them she was cornered. Cornered and knowing she could fight or die - or give herself and live. Not just give herself up, but give herself. In Tali's dreams, she was almost always wearing her suit, even now - in these places she was naked, and when she shuddered awake, she could feel hands on her as vividly as if they were just there.

They weren't there, but she could feel them in the places her skin crawled - her jaw where her mouth had been pulled open, and grinding her teeth didn't make it feel better; her waist where she had been grabbed, pulled as if she weighed nothing, and furiously scrubbing at the skin there with her fingers didn't soothe it; her thighs where her legs had been pulled apart where she stood, and pressing her legs together till the muscles hurt didn't stop a phantom hand scraping the skin of her inner thighs, the ghost of a rough palm at the apex of her thighs.

She'd been calm for two weeks now, and part of her must have known it would end.

A soft part of the back of her mind told her it was fine, she was fine, it could have been worse, it could always be worse. Was it the first time her body had been invaded? Nanomachines crushing her organs, blood in her throat-- she had flinched hard and earned a slap on the thigh that had made her bite her lip, tasted blood then too--

Rolled over, buried her face in the sheets. Rolled over again, foetal position, face in her arms, legs curled to her like her limbs could protect her. The sobs came before the tears, great shuddering efforts to breathe under a great weight, and that Niko was next to her probably asleep was forgotten as the those sobs wracked her body.

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"Considering that you have gone so long being treated as a thing, I guess being an 'alien' doesn't help, does it?"

He knows that, back when he felt owned, being an 'illegal immigrant', inherently different and unwelcome, bothered him. He missed his home, destroyed by the war though it was. Hers, as far as he knows, is still going.

"Then... you should talk to Shepard about it. I would have to think about it, but it's your home. You're proud of your species. I can see why you miss them."

"I don't mind that so much," she said, and her smile was more genuine this time, even if her voice was high and raw. "Most people on board don't make me feel different - but mostly I don't mind because of you. You're good at making me feel normal."

Or rather, he was good at making her feel like being different was, in itself, normal.

"Wherever I go, it'll be with you." Her gaze flickered away again, back down to her knees curled up in front of her. "I miss my people, sure, but whatever happens...you're stuck with me for good."

She met his eye, something a little bit shy in the grin she shot him. Sure, for a long time they'd been silently assuming every time they talked about the future that it would be a future of them together. But neither of them had ever said it directly.

It was a nice promise. The idea she'd always be there, or intended to. It made him worry he'd let her down again; after all, she just recently found out how much he wanted to get away from himself.

When he spoke again, it was in her language, meant only for her.

"Take your time deciding. I'm not impatient. We'll stay and think about what we'll do with ourselves." Because he knew his words, the few reminders he could bring, might not be enough. When he returned to a human language, this time it was Serbian, and he relied on the translator to take care of it.

"What do you miss?"

She had to focus for a moment to bring her mind back to itself and think about the words, but she wanted to - and was just about finally able to - speak back in his own language. "I think..." she said, words halting and heavily accented, "maybe you are not...not ready to go..." She didn't know the word that matched up perfectly to 'impatient', but she struggled through anyway. "But I am ready. I want not to be here."

It was turning into an odd sort of hope that if they only could leave the Moira, were in control of where they went and what they did finally, maybe they could both start to mend themselves and each other. She was starting to hold it up in her mind as the best thing they could do now. Besides, if she took long deciding, if either of them took too long with this, they could end up somewhere that wouldn't tolerate them leaving. Maybe the new captains weren't as lax as the old ones.

It was easier to use her own language to answer the question, to talk about anything important. "People here don't think like quarians. It's frustrating, you know? I have conversations and I'm sick of people saying things I don't understand, or me saying things they don't understand. I want to have conversations with people I've just met where I don't have to say, 'sorry, I don't get what you just said' every single time."

She smiles, a little wistful. "I miss our culture. There were... I don't know - vids, tech, politics - a whole fleet, a whole galaxy outside one ship to keep up with. Here, there's nothing. And it feels really lonely. Do you ever feel like that?"

"I can go if you want."

He said it simply. He had one friend here, Snake, that he'd feel bad for leaving behind. But otherwise he'd be fine with going.

"If you're ready, we can start packing some things into the ship and I'll talk to the captains about getting this stupid hand thing off and then we can go." But, there was a point... "But yeah, it... the closest thing to your people that might exist in this universe is that pilgrimage.

"I do get it. It's pretty lonely. Especially when people keep telling you that the way you think and act is wrong, when it is just how you are from. When your own language is something people yell at you for using."

"I know we can't leave straight away." She shook her head, sighing. "We're still in the Runoff, we shouldn't leave the ship by ourselves right now anyway. I just need to know it's happening - that we're not just staying here."

There was something to be grateful for, she thought as Niko spoke - she'd been welcomed here a lot more warmly than the rest of the galaxy ever had back home. She had avoided what he was describing completely, ever since arriving on the Neheda all that time ago.

"At least people are nicer here than where you came from," she said softly. Here, it was just the knowing that everyone was so different, and the occasional realisation that she was the only one - literally the only quarian in the universe. As lonely as it was, she'd never had it as bad as Niko had.

"Hey," she said presently, sniffing and sitting up straighter. If she didn't say it now, emotions raw and completely bared, she wouldn't say it later. It would go back to an awkward, shamed thing she wouldn't know how to bring up again. "I didn't react very well to--to what you told me a while ago. I didn't know what to do, I panicked. I let you down and I'm so sorry."

There was nothing she could say right now, voice as high-pitched and emotion-laden as it was, that wouldn't sound pathetic, but she was ignoring it.

"It is still lonely, though. I imagine it's very hard. I can understand why you would want to go back." The last of a species always seemed tragic.

"I shouldn't have put that on you. It is my problem."

That was the problem with the panic. He just plain didn't want to talk about it anymore. He was fucked up; discussion over. Either it would kill him or it wouldn't. Until then, he'd just worry about other things. Tali would be kept separate from it.

"Don't think about it if you can help it. Please."

It wasn't often that he said "please" like that. In that he now wanted it to be a non-issue. Just in his head, not outside of it, not discussed.

"That part could be a lot worse." It was true - at the start of her Pilgrimage, she'd been truly alone - no crew, no friends, no one who'd even look at her without seeing a thief.

"And I shouldn't have thrown it back at you," she mumbled. "I should have helped." She shook her head almost before she was done. If she was going to wallow in guilt - and she would, she could at least do that privately.

"OK, though. You don't have to... OK." It was the 'please' that did it - not just the mere word, but the sound of his voice in that moment twinged within her painfully. She didn't want to think of him dealing with this - with anything - by himself, but there wasn't anything else she could do. Sit off to the side, and if this killed him... At that thought, she pressed her knuckles into her eyes as if trying to forcibly shove the thought away.

"No, no no," He pet her hair, running his hand over it as she tried to either get it out or collect herself, or both, he couldn't tell.

"Let's talk about you, let's work on this. Let's remind you that they can't have you and they never will." He wouldn't have let them. Even without Garrus and Shepard, who really only contained the damage, he would have gotten her. But the results wouldn't have been pretty, and he's sad she couldn't have used that shotgun.

Probably wrongfully so, but still.

"I know I say you're one of the strongest people I know but I think you could use some help this time. Do you want me to talk to Shepard for you?" He very well knew that she could, but- "Just for outside perspective."

She felt too tired to muster up much more than the occasional hiccough, a stray tear tickling her cheek before she rubbed it away. There wasn't anything left to let out - she felt drained, wrung dry. Niko's touch was gentle, and she leaned into it without thinking, eyes closed.

She'd just have to make it up to him without the words. Without more apologies. Just by being there.

"I was thinking..." A deep breath that she let out as an explosive huff of air. "I need to talk to somebody. They have therapists on board, right? Maybe one of them can help.

"I don't know if I want to lay everything on Shepard. She knows most of it - I accidentally took her to Macha when we visited that other Ingress - but she's got enough going on."

Just because he chose not to go to therapy (and generally hated the idea of letting someone near his head) didn't mean that he couldn't see the value in it for someone like her.

"I... don't mean to make comparisons. I only mean good in this. But when Kate was alive, she went to one, and it helped her a lot. Kept her strong when she had a lot of shit she had to deal with." At least it gave her the self-respect to refuse Niko's offer of a real date, a real relationship, until he'd proven he was willing to leave his way of life behind.

(Mostly.)

"You should go then. If it can help you."

But that didn't mean he wouldn't talk to Shepard.

"Don't feel bad," she mumbled, shifting so she could lean against him. "I don't mind hearing about Kate." She was silent for a moment, and then, "It's nice that you still think about her. She's not been forgotten."

No one she'd ever known had told her they'd been to therapy, and at home she'd never needed it. "And it's good to hear that. I'm glad it helped her."

She was quiet again, eyes closed and taking deliberately slow breaths. Then something occurred to her.

"Wait - which Shepard were you thinking about talking to?"

"The one that didn't say the sort of racist things."

Which still confused him- the first Shepard he knew wouldn't have said anything like that. "But ah... yeah, it did help. Her brothers weren't good people. They were my friends, but as you can guess... I don't exactly need quality morals to make a friendship. I just need loyalty and kindness to me and mine.

"Kate was pulled into that world long before me. That's why she wouldn't do anything with me until I got out."

She stiffened at his first words, and though she listened to him talking about Kate, his brothers - nodded at just needing loyalty and kindness because she knew that, knew he didn't care about anything else a person was or had been - she was clearly distracted.

She was silent for a moment as well when he finished, trying to think of something to say, to focus her mind on the conversation and not on a throwaway comment, but--

"What did she say to you? Shepard." It burst out all the same, and she wished she could sound surprised, but she didn't. Urgent, but not really surprised.

"I don't remember the exact words, but I remember she was pretty ah..."

And he hesitated. Like he didn't want to have to tell Tali. She'd already dealt with enough, and this was one more thing. A version of a friend that seemed to condemn her, the face of a woman she looked up to.

But she also deserved the honest story, and to make that decision for what she wanted in her life.

"She seemed pretty grossed out that I was dating an alien. Like wondering how I could do that was more important than whether I was a good boyfriend. It's how it came off. I wasn't used to Shepard being like that."

He hesitated, and she readied herself to have to tell him she needed to know. Then he did.

The breath she took in to speak felt something like a sob. "Yeah, she's said things to other people too. At first I didn't believe it, but since she got here, she just... It feels like every time we talk, I'm forcing her to be there."

She dragged her arm across her face; her eyes were burning and wet. "I thought she just didn't like me very much at first, but now... It's aliens. It's all aliens.

"I guess I'm lucky." It was an odd thing to say, so she rushed on. "I mean, I have the other Shepard here and the one back home. Sometimes I think about this other version of me out there whose best friend is disgusted by her."

"Yeah, but... I don't know. You want my opinion? It's pretty shitty she's pretending to be your friend if she doesn't like you at all. You got a good Shepard. That is your friend. And maybe she deserves to be told that you're sick of her shit."

Because Tali usually gets really tired of this hell from strangers.

"But don't worry about it right now. Your good friend is still really good. She is what she means to be."

"She saved my life, too," she said simply. "She's still Shepard."

It wasn't that she spent much time with her anyway, not anymore. She had tried - and still did try, occasionally - but each time left her feeling so hurt and drained it stopped being worth it.

"You're right, though." She still looked troubled, regardless. "The other Shepard's still a good friend. I'm a lot better off with her."

He sat up against the awkward wall of their bed and twiddled his thumbs. Just thinking about it.

"Tali... If you met a version of me that was plenty okay with beating women... would it still be me?"

"I..." She stared at him for a long moment, silent.

Would it? All of these different people with the same names the similar backgrounds, similar personalities. Was it right to cherry pick which one was real just because a trait of one or another wasn't what you liked? Did not liking Tali or aliens make one Shepard less Shepard? Did she, Tali, have any right to say that?

If another version of Niko Bellic arrived on the ship and only later did she realise she hated some part of this version, had no desire to be around him, would that make him not Niko?

Her first impulse was to avoid the conversation entirely - say no, lie to his face for the first time since she'd known him. Instead she lowered her face into her palms and groaned into them.

"I don't know!" She barely lifted her head from her hands to say than, then did. "I don't think that much about this - I try not to, it's beyond anything I've ever heard of and if I think too much about it, my head hurts." But if she was going to have to think about it to get out of this question, she would. She sat up a little, gesturing a little as she spoke. "The way I've been trying to understand this is, all of the multiples are the same person, only from universes that branch off from one another when different events took place in history. So in really simple terms, you can go back and find when they were one person in one universe, but they've been brought here after branching off into different decisions.

"So--so in a way, yes, it's still you. But in a way, no, because if another version of you came here and he was really abhorrent in one way or another, that means that since you and him branched off in different universes, different things happened to you and the choices you were making got more and more different until he became what he is and that's not you and you're not him."

"So..." Her voice has been getting more normal sounding as she's kept talking, her gestures getting gradually wider and more active. "I know a version of Shepard and she's never been here, but the Shepards here are more different or less different depending on...I don't know, how many choices and situations removed they are. So one version of Shepard hates aliens. She's still Shepard, but she's not my Shepard, she's nowhere near my Shepard. I don't have to like her at all."

...Good job, Tali. Good job.

That was a lot of words and a lot of thoughts. But he didn't say anything as she worked it all out for herself. His opinion was set; as far as he was concerned, that wasn't the Shepard he knew. The name was similar, the face, but it was no more the same person as he was to Roman. A distant relation.

He could sort of tell what she was saying made sense, even if it sounded a little all over the place.

"No," he confirmed. "And I wouldn't want you to like someone that you had to prove that your existence was okay to. Especially not if they come in the shape of someone that is a good friend. If someone came in as my friend Jacob and called me a Cabbage Eater? I would lay him out on the fucking ground.

"Not that you should try to do that to her. But I'm just saying. It's self respect and after everything you've survived to be here, she can go fuck herself if she thinks you're any less of a person."

This hadn't been the subject he'd started with. It was all of those things Tali had been surviving that he needed to think about.

A lot of words was always a good way for Tali to try to figure things out. Even if they didn't always make complete sense to the people around her. Or even, entirely, to her.

"People told me she had said things and I defended her," she muttered, partly to herself, before looking back at Niko. "I was on her crew. She saved me from assassins without even knowing who I was. She let me join her crew, she helped me end my Pilgrimage. I hero-worshipped her.

"I just wish I understood this. Any of it."

"It wasn't her crew, just... someone like her. I don't think she would have given you the same encouragement or place on her crew.

"I don't know. Maybe if you defended her, you can at least demand she say to you why she hates aliens." Which was weak, yes, but... something. Tali had been walked on, used, not taken for a person. That was a question she deserved to ask, that she had a right to.

"That's why I wonder about the Tali she knows sometimes," she says ruefully. "I feel bad for her, honestly."

But thinking about that wasn't going to help anybody, much less Tali herself. Either of them.

"I don't want to confront her." She said it bluntly, more so than she usually would have. Maybe she didn't have the right to hear why Shepard didn't like aliens, but at the same time... "I don't think I want to know why, and I don't want to hear it in her voice.

"But I should just stay away from her from now on." That much was clear. "It's probably better for everybody."

Shepard, the one who really acted like her friend, was already here. There was no need to keep trying and keep feeling a little pathetic for doing so.

"I'm sorry she said that to you, though," she offered, her lip curling, voice raw. "You shouldn't have heard it either."

"I was just angry someone would say those things of you. I am not insulted. I have been insulted by that talk too many times to ever believe it to be true of you."

Tali might have her own biases, but at least she cared about learning more about the people around her. Not so much in changing (even if that was inevitable), but in figuring out why other species did what they did, why they could care about each other despite it.

That shepard didn't care to.

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