Her breath was ragged, her faceplate was misted, her heartbeat was pounding, and her mind was strangely clear. Tali found the experience of shock to be strange... She knew that she was in shock.
She didn't realise that when someone entered a state of shock, that they could be consciously aware of it. Keelah, of course, she hadn't ever really thought about it. The initial days of being held up in Alpha Base had introduced her to shell shock and constant thrumming anxiety, and she had thought that couldn't be topped.
She now realised that she was likely just as naive now as she was a little over a week earlier. Their recon mission to proceed over the bombarded terrain and get eyes on obscured Dragons Teeth had been incredibly smooth, by their usual standards.
But, like their usual standards, but at a scale entirely unlike those very same standards, things had turned Frajen shaped. Tali scoffed blearily at the Quarian'isation of the human expression about an oddly shaped fruit. It was small moments like that which she knew helped her manage the strain and stress of their constant embattlement – amongst other things.
Her eyes flickered to Shepard. He was moving amongst the collected squad and the platoon of Turian and Alliance soldiers who'd jumped aboard the Normandy's lowered ramp with them. The hanger was packed, and everyone was bustling with activity.
Soldiers checked and rechecked their weapons. They checked each other's armour. They had briefly popped their helmets off to shovel down energy gels to stay primed. Tali felt removed from it all, whilst more a part of anything than she'd ever felt.
The contrasting feeling troubled her, intellectually, but strangely not emotionally. That in itself bothered her, but it went in a loop, and she had enough mental energy to not chase the thought.
She clenched her eyes and tried to drive away the mental image of the battle that had been unfolding just before the Normandy had swept in to pick them up. Two Krogan destroyers had come flaming in like meteors close enough that the squad had felt the blast of heat from their passage overhead.
They had gauged out channels into the Geth army of thousands, and then a column of Krogan Tomkah's had come lurching and bouncing over the hill and charged directly into the approaching lines of Geth Primes. Tali and the squad had all remained on their stomachs, continually firing, using tech and biotic abilities constantly.
It was fire, shift aim, fire, reload, use an ability, fire at a more vulnerable target, repeat. Tali's inner ear rung, and she rolled her lips to attempt to depart from the feeling. "Get it together, you little Von, you're a soldier for the Migrant fleet!"
Tali didn't know why she'd verbalised the affirmation. That was a lie... She knew precisely why.
She'd hoped that Shepard would have been close enough to hear so that he could come and bolster her self-esteem. He wasn't close, though, and she opened her eyes to find him on the opposite side of the hanger swapping weapons on a rack with the rest of the Normandy squad by his side.
Tali clenched her eyes, nodded, and exhaled, before rolling her shoulders and straightening and pushing through the packed in Turian and Human soldiers. They made room for her without pause, and in seconds she'd crossed the hanger and silently joined the inhabitants of the usual ship in changing out their more ranged weapon choices for short to mid-range.
Her hands deposited the Incisor sniper system that she had initially used as her ranged weapon of choice, and she replaced it with an M8. Next, she grabbed a collection of thermal clips and slid them into concealed pouches around her hips, and turned to find Shepard.
He'd already moved away, and she saw him close to the landing ramp with his hand on the side of his helmet. He was in communication with someone; probably Joker or even that Bosh'tet Xen, Tali thought with her lips pinched, and eyes narrowed.
