Chapter Text
I'm a fucked up mess
Feeling angry and depressed
Joker
“Admiral,” Joker said. He felt strange standing at the vidcomm in the war room. EDI could run the ship just fine without him, but the Normandy was still Joker’s baby.
Admiral Anderson appeared battered, but not broken. That man somehow still had hope.
“Joker, I wanted to talk to you about Shepard.” Anderson grew somber. “How’s she holding up?”
EDI had been eavesdropping. Her voice came through the ship’s intercom. “The Commander’s stress levels have increased according to hardsuit readouts. If Mordin were still alive, he would suggest clandestine pharmacological intervention.”
“That bad?” Anderson looked to Joker for confirmation.
Joker nodded. “Yeah. It’s bad. When she came back onto the ship after Thessia she…” How could Joker even start to describe it? He’d never seen the Commander that defeated before. The image of her hollow, nearly lifeless eyes haunted just about everyone on the ship. “Did Hackett tell you what happened after that Batarian system went up in smoke?”
Anderson shook his head.
“It was bad, okay. I don’t want to talk about it.” Joker crossed his arms. Maybe Shepard hadn’t told Hackett about putting a fucking gun to her head. And that was after having a goddamn civvie therapist to talk her through shit. She didn’t have Kelly anymore. The best substitute available was some combination of liquor, shitty old music, and Turian dick.
Admiral Anderson looked Joker in the eye. “Flight Lieutenant Jeffery Moreau, I have an order for you.”
“Sir?” Joker snapped to attention on instinct.
“You look after Shepard for me. She’s the best hope we’ve got.”
“Not sure I’m the best one for that job, sir, but I’ll do what I can.”
Joker took the long walk from the vidcomm to the cockpit. His uneven steps slowed when he approached his chair. EDI was already in her place.
“You also appear unwell, Jeff,” EDI said.
“Got some orders I don’t know how to follow.” Joker sat down heavily in his cushy leather seat. At least the Alliance hadn’t stripped this out of his baby when they came in for retrofits and “getting her up to regs”.
“These orders pertain to the Commander’s mental health.”
“Yeah, EDI. They did.”
“You are very protective of the Commander, Jeff.”
Joker shrugged. “Been through a lot together.”
EDI nodded, though Joker didn’t know if she actually understood. The AI focused intently on the screens in front of her. “ I am still trying to figure out the complexities of Human relationships. I do not have anything to worry about from Shepard, do I?”
Intelligence
“I am still trying to figure out the complexities of Human relationships. I do not have anything to worry about from Shepard, do I?”
“What!?” Jeff looked over at EDI’s mech body in confusion and shock. “EDI… Shep’s like a sister. Are you… Are you really still jealous?”
“I do not experience jealousy any more than I experience other feelings. I have explained to you that it is a series of positive and negative feedback—”
“Feedback loops. Yeah. That’s how a brain works. Look, EDI, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise. You have a more longstanding connection to the Commander. Most perspectives of Human males on this ship indicate that she is objectively attractive. You are more physically compatible—”
“Whoa! That last one? Nu-uh.” Jeff vigorously shook his head. “Shep gets her kicks fucking a Turian. She’d grind me into dust. Besides, there’s such a thing as knowing someone too well.”
EDI pondered this idea while Jeff kept talking.
“EDI, I want Shep to be happy. I just feel a little frustrated that the person who does that for her is also the asshole who broke her heart. It’s… It really is like a brother-sister thing. I said you’re the only girl who could ever put up with me, right?”
“Your personality is quite abrasive in the opinion of other Human women who have served on this ship,” EDI said. “However, I find you endearing and understand that your combative attitude is a defense mechanism to compensate for physical weakness.”
“I… Uh… shit. Yeah. Right on the money.” Jeff scowled. He began grumbling to himself.
Joker
“If we don’t finish that Crucible soon, there won’t be a galaxy left to save,” Joker grumbled. “Guess the Asari are wishing they had more commandos and fewer dancers right about now.”
“Heard that, Flight Lieutenant,” Shepard said. Joker’s blood turned to ice at the sound of her voice. He braced himself for the incoming smack and his hat brim covering his eyes, but as the moments of silence dragged on, it never came.
“Too soon?” Joker hazarded a glance back at the Commander. She stood stiffer than the stick that used to be up her Turian boyfriend’s ass. Yeah. It was too soon.
“Joker, you’re a damn good pilot, and I put up with your juvenile bullshit because of it. But we’re in the middle of a war.” Shepard’s hand twitched towards him, but she reined it in.
Well, she didn’t have to be such a bitch about it! Joker clenched his jaw, careful not to grit his teeth too hard since he didn’t want to be drinking through an “emergency induction port” for a week and a half while Chakwas fixed him up with regen drugs. He opened the cockpit galaxy map and searched out a no-name planet. “See this place? Tiptree. Little colony on the ass-end of nowhere. My dad lives there. So does my sister. Reapers rolled in a few weeks ago.” He closed the window. “So, you can assume that I’m generally aware that there’s a war on. Commander.”
“...Why didn’t you tell me?”
“More important shit going on. Got the news about halfway to Ontarom.”
“I mean before.”
Joker shrugged. “Didn’t think a backwater shithole like that would have attracted the Reapers’ attention. Not like Illium or Palaven.”
“EDI,” Shepard said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jeff requested I not reveal the information. It had no tactical benefits to our movements, so I agreed.”
“Okay.” Shepard leaned on the back of Joker’s chair with her arms crossed. “So tell me one thing. Why the jokes?”
“Because, you stupid bitch, EDI says that according to your armor’s metabolic scans, you’re under more stress now than during the Skyllian Blitz. More than Akuze, when Thresher Maws ate the rest of your squad.”
“I don’t need you all to take care of me, you know. That’s not your job.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Joker reached up and put a hand on one of Shepard’s arms. “I just got off a call with Anderson. He told me to take care of you.” Joker sniggered at himself. “The guy leading the resistance on Earth is worried about you. And I’m supposed to help. Not like a ‘Turian boyfriend’ kind of help, more like a ‘kick said boyfriend’s ass if he fucks up’ kind.”
“I appreciate it, Joker,” Shepard said. “But I’m fine.”
“No you’re not, Shep.” Joker sighed. “You’re like half-robot at this point—no offense, EDI—and it’s my fault.” Joker squeezed Shepard’s arm. They stared at the layers of holographic orange displays, blinking weather and military data. “When the Collectors blew up the first Normandy, you died because I wouldn’t leave… because you had to come back for me.”
He felt the shoves from Tali’s tiny fists all over again. The scathing glances from Williams and Wrex. The silent, smoldering hatred from Liara and Garrus. Even Chakwas had berated him for letting Shepard get herself killed for a cocksure jackass with something to prove and a brittle bone to pick with the entire galaxy.
“I meant what I said, asshole,” Shepard said. “I’ll break every goddamn bone in your body if I have to. No way in hell was I leaving behind my pilot, ‘specially not when he’s the best in the galaxy.”
Joker scratched his goatee, much more of a beard now that he’d gotten lazy. “I guess it would have looked bad on your report.”
“We’ve got work to do, Flight Lieutenant,” Shepard said, standing upright.
“Aye aye, Commander, ma’am.”
“Commander, before you go, I have a question about Human behavior,” EDI said.
Joker could practically hear Shepard lock up. “This really isn’t the best time, EDI,” she said.
“Perhaps humor? A penguin is driving through the Arizona desert…”
Baby, c’mon, stop. She’s—
“I’m not in the mood.” Shepard stomped out of the cockpit.
EDI frowned. “I had not yet suggested a lively rendition of La Marseillaise?”
“Shep’s… She just needs some time, EDI.” Joker kept his eyes forward but reached across to take EDI’s hand. He always expected her to feel like a synth, cold and unwelcoming. EDI’s internal processors kept her hands and the rest of her body warm to the touch, though. Joker ran his thumb across her knuckles.
“Very well. I will maintain a respectful distance until she indicates otherwise.”
Observer
“Li, are you sure everything is okay?” Ashley asked. Liara had been avoiding her wife since leaving the war room. She’d locked herself in her office and gone over every piece of intel about the Crucible, the Protheans, anything she could think of. Corrections were made where Javik’s information denoted the need for a correction, but other than some distressing insights into the origins of her species, Liara had nothing else to help. That VI had been their only hope.
She still couldn’t get over how the Commander had just let Kai Leng get away. But Liara’s anger was cooling, however slowly. “I’m working, dear,” Liara said by way of an answer to her bondmate. “I’m trying to determine what we can do once we arrive at Horizon. What do you remember about the colony?”
“I wanna talk about what you said to Shep,” Ashley said. “Liara, you’re not cruel .”
“My delivery left much to be desired,” Liara admitted.
“You’re not even paying attention to me, are you?” Ashley shrugged off the door and approached Liara at her wall of screens. She took Liara’s shoulders and turned the Asari away from streams of data and intel, all of which Liara needed to personally review with her own organic eyes. Glyph was a decent assistant, but it was only a VI. It made errors in judgment.
“There’s nothing else to talk about. I apologized to her. It’s not my fault that she didn’t accept it. And I won’t apologize for being upset with Javik.”
“What about throwing Garrus?” Ashley demanded. “Li, he’s our friend. The five of us, we’ve been fighting this war from the start. We all saw Sovereign on Virmire. We saw all manner of fucked up shit and nobody believed us. We have to stick together.”
Did they really? What would have happened if someone had been compromised? “There are more important things in a war than friendship.”
“And how is a squad supposed to operate if they can’t trust each other?” Ashley’s pleading brown eyes met a wall of ice. “Li, baby, we’re a team.”
“If it had been you and me, and you’d had to choose between getting the VI and saving me, what would you have chosen?”
Ashley took a step back. “What kind of question is that? You’ve got biotics. You could have survived or gotten the falling concrete somewhere else.”
“I would have chosen the VI and ending this war. I love you, Ashley, but we have responsibilities to more than just each other. I’m more than just your wife. I’m the Shadow Broker. I’m also an Asari. I live for a thousand of your years, my people were… chosen… by the previous cycle to lead this one, apparently. That changes things.” Liara looked back at her gathered intel. “We’re able to look at the bigger picture because of our longer lifespans. Our wisdom, our guidance, it’s what is needed in the galaxy. And when it goes ignored, we see what happens here.”
“And here I thought Asari understood the need for galactic cooperation better than anyone,” Ashley said. “The Asari hid that beacon from everyone. And then made it illegal to hide Prothean tech. When Humanity entered the galactic community, we opened the Mars archives! Once the information gets out, roughly infinite people are going to be pissed at Asari High Command.”
“Well, nobody will find out if we all get destroyed by the Reapers!”
“And Asari arrogance is what’s going to get us destroyed,” Ashley said.
Liara fixed her bondmate with a cold stare. “I think you need to reconsider what you just said. Dear. ”
“I know what I said, darling. ” Ashley straightened up with her arms crossed and her heels together. She looked to the side, chin slightly raised. “Li, admitting when you’re wrong is something Shep taught me. I was wrong about a lot of shit, but I don’t think I’m wrong this time.”
“And she taught me we have to be ready to sacrifice anything,” Liara shot back. “Victory at any cost, even our lives.”
“At what point do we sacrifice everything worth living for? Wouldn’t that make us no better than the Reapers?” Ashley squeezed her eyes shut and a tear escaped. “We’ve gotta fight with more than just our heads. Everyone back home, they’re counting on us.”
“It was a mistake,” Liara muttered. “Getting them together, I never should have given Garrus a push in the right direction.”
“You keep coming back to Shep and Garrus,” Ashley said. “Li, what is your fucking problem with them all of a sudden? What, you think it’s Garrus’s fault that he almost got crushed by falling rocks? Again? Didn’t that happen when we first met you?”
He’s where I should be! I deserve to be XO! I deserve to be the Commander’s second in command! Her best friend! Her partner! She should count on me after all I’ve done for her!
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Liara tried to shut Ashley down with a glare, but the Human was going to press the issue.
“No, seriously!” Ashley threw her hands up and back. “What is your actual fucking problem? This has been going on for a while, Li, but you’ve never said it out loud before. I didn’t know what to say because, well, maybe I thought you were just stressed out from the war. But…” Ashley calmed after the initial outburst. “You don’t wanna be married to me at all, do you?”
No.
Yes!
“Ashley, that’s… It’s not like…”
“You don’t have to say another goddamn word. It’s written all over your face.”
“Dear, please, just let’s talk about this!”
“I’m packing my shit and moving into the barracks. We need some space to figure shit out.”