Chapter Text
Emblazoned with the N7 symbol, the silvery metal reflected a cloudless sky.
When Joker shifted in his seat, the coffin blasted him with a stinging sunbeam, too. Commander Shepard was dead, but nature saw fit to give New York City a nice day. Doesn't it rain for these things?
Joker glanced at the podium by the coffin. Anderson stepped off the platform and joined Hackett while Admiral Whitwell took his place. She swept a measured gaze left to right. For a moment, her eyes seemed to fall right on him. Just like the last one, Joker didn't care to listen to her eulogy. They could've sent the Normandy anywhere else, part of him wanted to believe. But the order said Terminus Systems, the Omega Nebula, wipe out the geth holdouts.
The other part of him, the part Joker deemed more reasonable, knew that the order didn't matter. What mattered was that he didn't move his fingers on the flight control fast enough, that he didn't think fast enough. And now his brain was making up for it by reconstructing every detail of that last voyage—a false second chance. A false "next time."
That next time, he didn't say "I can still save her."
He took Shepard's arm and stood up. He leaned on him on the walk to the escape pod before beam weapons could slice through the remnants of his ship. Each step took ages, but both of them got into the pod. Both of them landed on Alchera. And maybe while they waited for the Alliance to rescue them, they'd smile and toss jokes at each other to dull the loss of the Normandy. He could almost see Shepard, shaken but still breathing inside his black armor, huddled on the other side of the pod. "So much for going down with the ship, huh?"
But he did say "I can still save her." Shepard had to hoist him out of his chair while the Normandy fell apart in flames around them. And Joker landed on Alchera staring at the empty other side.
A light breeze brushed his hair, naked without the old SR-1 cap. Grass crunched as he shifted his feet. And the empty coffin still held a clear blue reflection.
"Imaginations are dangerous," he once told Shepard.
"… the Munich was never the same…" Rear Admiral Whitwell droned on through a microphone, but Joker looked left at a soft cough. Into his vision pressed a line of dress blues with heads atop them, standing in uniform save for the one with a fist covering her mouth. Joker beat down the irritation. They'd been here this whole time, the reasonable half said. And there were no private moments to be intruded upon. Not like he deserved one, given how the last moment he got with Shepard went. How many in that crowd, he wondered, were right behind him, staring at the back of his head and making that exact conclusion?
Not very many. The nice part of getting to sit was that he was too low to notice. Nothing new about that.
Whitwell stepped off the podium and traded places with Hackett. Announcements or closing words or whatever. Then finally, gloved hands surrounded the coffin and took it away, its reflection sliding with its movement. A bugle sounded in the distance.
That time, "unidentified vessel" was all Ensign Salvacruz needed to say. He accelerated the Normandy to full speed, yelled at Pressly to prep for another jump. Then the stars became a blue blur beyond the forward viewport. Another time, he danced the Normandy around the cruiser's beam weapon, faster than anything he'd managed at the Battle of the Citadel. A few close calls, maybe—close calls made things exciting, but in the end he got his ship out of range and jumped to FTL.
That next time, he was better. But the beam did hit, first the thrusters, then the hull—one, two, three merciless strikes that reduced the star of the Alliance fleet to little more than debris. "I can still save her."
"Joker?"
He blinked back to his half-eaten lunch on a white plate and the scarlet tablecloth beneath. Chakwas, in well-fitted dress blues, looked at him from across the table with a hint of a frown. "You've been rather quiet."
I'm perfectly fine. Joker dropped his gaze. Shepard's gone. I've moved on. I have my life to live. I'll survive. What about you? Many of Chakwas' patients over the years were dying slow deaths in her med bays. Do you remember them all? Hell, there was barely a dent in the classic Chakwas composure. Joker didn't know if that pang in his chest was anger or jealousy or both. He took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, and took a look at the shining New York skyscrapers out the window. "Nice to have this whole thing in here…" Joker mustered a weak smile. "Except Shepard's from Brooklyn, not Manhattan. Well, was."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I think Liara needs someone to talk to more than me. Cried her eyes out during the Council service." That one was even more of a whitewashing spectacle than the Alliance ceremony.
"But Liara isn't here. You are. You haven't been taking care of yourself, haven't you?"
Lanes of skycars criss-crossed between the old buildings and the new. The corner of the Empire State Building peeked out from behind the War Memorial Tower. "Do I need to trim my beard?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Okay, fine, my apartment needs some cleaning, too." No, I'm not fine. Shepard's gone. My ship's gone. It was my fault. How the hell do I move on from that? He sighed. "'Grounded's' a stupid word for this. Sounds like I'm a kid being punished for breaking Mom's favorite vase or something. Well," he picked at his lunch, "I guess I did." He got it ripped to shreds and burnt to a crisp. That was probably even worse.
"And the new Normandy-class frigates are an empty comfort, I know. You can replace a ship's model, even improve upon it, but you can't replace the ship." Chakwas glanced out the window. "Or the people who served aboard it."
"Pretty hard to find another Shepard, yeah."
"He was certainly unique," Chakwas said with a wistful chuckle. "Though I suspect you know more than I do."
That's an invitation. 'Remember them as they lived,' right? Liara had landed the killing blow on Matriarch Benezia, but she handled it better than Joker was doing here. "I remember asking Anderson if he found him in a vid."
"The whole voyage seems like a vid in retrospect. The Normandy, voyaging across the galaxy with its commander at its helm…" Chakwas picked up her glass. "Shall we toast to that?"
Following suit took more effort than flying. The glass' crimson contents swayed with its motion. Armali Flame was a deliberate choice on Chakwas' part, but drinking Shepard's favorite without him left a cold weight in Joker's gut.
"To the first human Spectre, the Hero of Elysium and the Citadel," Chakwas said. "To one of the finest leaders, marksmen, hackers, and friends we've had the privilege of knowing."
Joker nodded. Picking up his glass was hard, but somehow saying the guy's first name wasn't. "To Victor Shepard."
That time he didn't miss his chance. The blue lights of the Orbital Club hovered overhead while several of the Normandy's crew danced on the floor. Tali and Garrus had found a corner of the space to themselves, while Kaidan, Liara, and Wrex took up a section of the bar. And Joker sat across from Shepard in a small booth to the side.
"I know they're throwing us under the rug," Shepard said, glass of Armali Flame in hand, "but at least the geth have a connection to the Reapers. Maybe we'll find something useful in the Terminus Systems. Communications, technology, clues…"
Joker downed his shot. "Y'know, worrying about work is pretty bad date conversation."
Shepard raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. "This is a date now?"
He used that line before. "Just thought idiot bureaucrats would drive anyone to drink. You want?" Joker had said in the captain's cabin.
That time he tossed "oh but regulations" and "he's out of my league" aside and said something that didn't cut that topic short. "If you want," or even just "Hey screw the rules I like you." Instead he returned Shepard's grin. "I don't know, the whole crew watching our 'unresolved sexual tension' complicates things. How many reports to the brass are waiting there?"
A few weeks later, the Normandy entered the Terminus Systems looking for geth. "Unidentified vessel." And the beam cut through the hull.
Now, two years later, the small crowd of dancers were awash in sea green. Their moves had more sway and showiness to them—not like the happy-to-be-alive, "hooray we won" high that had taken over the crew after the battle. Joker watched from the same booth as before, sipping on a glass of water. Best to be sober for this, he'd decided. He had enough on the uncelebrated two year mark anyways. The toilet the day after stood testament.
Why they called them "death anniversaries" baffled him. Weren't anniversaries supposed to be happy celebrations?
The corner of his eye caught a fringe in that corner. Not Garrus, just an asari getting really close to a salarian.
Garrus had dropped off the face of the galaxy—so much for his plans to return to C-Sec. So had Tali and Wrex, though Tali sent the occasional message from the ass-end of nowhere. "Tali'Zorah vas Neema," the last one read. At least some of us are moving up.
At the bar, a woman and a huge bubble of personal space stood where Liara was. Pale and dark-haired, she looked around the place like she was looking for someone.
Liara had at least swung by his apartment before she, too, vanished. "You're the only one I could get in contact with," she said. "I'm going to Omega, in the Terminus Systems. It's about Shepard, but… but I can't say why."
"'Can't say why?' You sound like the Alliance brass."
"I know it sounds suspicious. I've just heard things. Rumors. If I don't return, or at least contact you, I… no. I'll contact you soon. Just… Goddess watch over you." She peeked behind him and forced a small smile. "And you should clean your apartment, all right?"
Two years later and the most relevant message in his inbox was not from her. "I'd like to discuss a potential job offer with you." Cord-Hislop Aerospace was bigger and better than other companies, but two years ago the Alliance made him senior helmsman on their shiny co-developed prototype. Still a step down.
He wasn't Kaidan, who got himself a fancy new title and, last Joker heard, his own squad. Nor was he Chakwas, who landed a "respectable enough" posting on Mars. No, he was the one who sent in the resignation forms and spent his days either locked in his apartment or working freighter jobs. He was the one who, when the time and date in the message rolled around, stepped outside and headed to the damn Orbital Club.
The lone woman at the bar had that icy corporate look to her. But if Cord-Hislop knew who he was to send the offer, they had to know his face. Joker pitied the poor soul she was waiting for.
"Flight Lieutenant Moreau?"
He didn't jump in his seat at the guy's unheard approach. He instead gave him a once-over—tall, bulky, dark-skinned—and sipped his water. "I'm not Alliance anymore."
"Sorry. I'm ex-military, too, but old habits die hard." The man extended his hand with a small smile. "Name's Jacob Taylor. Glad you came."