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It had been a very long year and a half. And to be quite honest, Shepard couldn’t remember the beginning of it.
She’d heard stories, the people who came to visit explaining how she was found under the rubble of the Crucible; tales of a lengthy excavation, of surgery after surgery led by Miranda, of a coma that seemed to last too long.
She always nodded, expressed her gratitude, and supported her friends who came to tell her these things. But mostly, she just felt tired.
It was exhausting, being alive still. Alive again. She had died once, and almost died a second time, and now all she really wanted was some rest. But between rebuilding efforts that she was asked to be the face of, friends trying so tirelessly to keep her cheerful, and strangers coming up to her to thank her… rest was seemingly nowhere to be found.
Shepard was relieved when they finally let her out of the hospital. She'd never done well when forced to do nothing, memories of practically tearing at the walls during her house arrest could attest to that, and being in the hospital meant she was almost never alone.
And no matter how terrible she felt about it, the honest truth was that she desperately wanted to be left alone.
There was really only one visitor she ever felt truly comfortable with. He was quiet when he visited, out of character for him, but welcome all the same. She understood though, out of everyone she knew, he was the one who most understood what she was going through in that hospital bed.
Not to mention that he was grieving, his girlfriend killed by Shepard's decision. She tried not to think about that too much. He never mentioned it.
When they let her go, she packed up her stuff and was out the door within the hour. She wanted to go to her apartment on Intai'sei, but the relays could only be rebuilt so fast, and there wasn't any way to get there yet.
So, she retreated to Anderson's old apartment instead.
It was blessedly empty when she got there. No one inside except for her and her memories. She was barely through the front door when she broke down and cried — it was the first time she had.
During the war there she never had the time, and during her hospital stay she never had the energy. But there, in the apartment hand selected by the man she had long considered the closest thing she had to a father, she let herself grieve for who she had lost. She let herself grieve for the future she suddenly had stretching out in front of her.
And then, when she was all cried out, she dropped her aching body onto the couch and fell asleep.
During the war, silence was a luxury she could not afford, and before the war it was an annoyance she tried to avoid. But now, whenever she was home alone, she reveled in the lack of noise.
Of course, she was rarely alone for long.
She assumed it must have shown on her face, the way the war changed her — the way being crushed under tons of debris had crushed her spirit all the same — because her friends seemed to have set up a rotating schedule of visits, trying to keep her from dipping too far into a depression. When she let herself think about it objectively, it was really quite nice. Of course, objective thought wasn't really the space her head was in, so mostly it just felt overwhelming.
She just wanted a break. A break from being Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy. But between meetings with the new Alliance and Council officials, and scheduled social hours, there was never a time to relax.
Even her visits with Joker stopped being relaxing. He never came alone.
She tried not to think about why that might be.
She tried not to think about glowing spheres and fresh metal skin.
All Shepard wanted was to rest. But at night, she couldn't sleep.
She'd always had nightmares, stemming from her childhood and incorporating fresh horrors she'd seen in the Alliance. When she was on the Normandy, she'd slip down to the cockpit, settling into the co-pilot seat and sharing in insomnia with her surly flight-lieutenant. But now all she was was a big empty apartment, and nothing to help her settle when she woke up unable to breathe.
The nightmares rotated, but the themes were the same. Her lungs, unable to expand, sometimes lost in the vacuum of space, other times crushed under the weight of the rubble.
She spent a lot of nights on the couch in the living room, the TV on to some late-night show, volume muted, her face pressed into the leather as she let the changing lights of the television wash across her vision, willing her eyes to shut.
Only one thing helped.
Joker had been there, with Tali. They were sitting in the office, Tali filling the space with her words the way she always had when she was uncomfortable.
Shepard didn't talk much outside of her professional meetings nowadays.
Joker didn't talk much to Shepard.
But that afternoon, Tali had stumbled into a topic that seemingly had been weighing on Joker's mind. And he started to talk.
Or well, perhaps talk wasn't the right word.
Joker started to rant.
It was one of his long-winded rants, where he gets angry about something that more happened in his head than anything that had happened in real life. And Shepard found herself smiling. A real, honest smile, her first in what felt like lifetimes.
So, subtly, Shepard tapped on her omnitool and recorded the rest of Joker's speech.
From that day, whenever the nightmares got too bad, she'd pull up the recording. When Joker's voice was filling the room, Shepard never forgot how to breathe.
She tried not to think about why that might be.
She tried not to think of late nights under the glow of the mass effect drive covering the windows of the Normandy in flight, two people comfortable with each other in the way they never were with anyone else.
She tried not to think of Joker standing in the bar, telling her he had never even considered her an option.
She tried not to think of supporting his relationship with another woman, unable to let herself fall into anything with anyone else anyway.
And then it was April again.
The past April she was still in the hospital, newly woken from her coma and not allowed visitors yet. But there was no escaping it this year.
Her birthday was coming, and if patterns held, there was absolutely no way she'd get through it without her friends doing something.
It wasn't a surprise, her friends rightfully assuming that throwing a surprise party for someone clearly feeling the effects of the war would be a mistake. Of course, knowing the party was coming didn’t help matters much. It just made her dread the coming days, knowing that more and more people would be coming and going, setting things up, all culminating in way too many people in her apartment, with the sole intention of celebrating her.
Shepard hadn’t really had an opinion of her birthday before the war. And she hadn’t cared much after the war started either. She remembered her first birthday after coming back from the dead; she had felt weird about it. Like it was a gift she hadn’t asked for. A prize she hadn’t earned. But in spite of the weirdness, she hadn’t minded the well wishes she received.
But now?
She wasn’t sure what had changed. Just another moment where she almost hadn’t woken up. Logically, she couldn’t figure out why this almost-death felt so different than her first.
And yet, the idea of celebrating her birthday now felt like a weight she couldn’t shake off. Like someone had switched on her mag-boots and she couldn’t find the switch.
Like there was a force pressing down on her from above as she struggled to dig herself out of it, unable to find purchase in the rubble and yet still clawing, nails filing down, hands scratching until they bloodied.
But she tried not to think about that.
Better to just let it happen anyway, as it made her friends happy, and she considered that a win. And in a life filled with bureaucracy, she'd take all the wins she could get. So, for the first week and a half of April, she lived her life around party planning.
Everyone shied away from putting a number to her age. They couldn't seem to agree. Shepard found herself unable to land on one side of the argument or the other. Is it years since she's been born, or years she was alive? It was a very unique problem.
It gave her something to think about. To avoid thinking about anything else.
She had more overnight guests those weeks. Friends who came in from off the Citadel. Travel was still slow; it was just easier for them to stay. It was a blessing and a curse. The knowledge of other people around made it easier for her to sleep without nightmares, but it also made her too embarrassed to play her recording of Joker.
She tried not to think about how much she missed hearing his voice.
She tried not to think about the fact that he wasn't there.
And then, she woke up and it was April 11th — her birthday.
By that point she had amassed quite a few guests in her apartment, seemingly everyone she knew that didn't have their own place on the Citadel was there. She woke up to the smell of pancakes and a dozen cheerful voices wishing her many happy returns.
She smiled. It hurt her cheeks.
Most of the day was spent being a quiet presence in other people's conversations. She didn't have any meetings, which mostly meant that she didn't have anything to distract her from the reminder that she was supposed to be happy.
She should have been happy. She was glad she was alive. But why did it all feel so much harder this time?
She wondered if it would have felt like this the last time she woke up had she had even one spare moment. She wished she had fewer spare moments now.
People flowed into her apartment throughout the day, some bringing gifts. Tali gave her the Geth recording unit with Saren's conversation, the item that brought them together, and Shepard thought that perhaps crying wasn't out of the realm of possibility. She hugged the younger woman tightly instead.
By the time dinner was served, most of the guests were already there, but the real party didn't kick off until eight. Until that point, Shepard could get away with conversations and pensive silences. Until that point, Shepard could stay calm in as much silence as an apartment full of rowdy military people would allow.
Jack made the change, calling the casual conversations boring as hell, and turning the music on.
From that moment on, it was like a switch had been flipped, and all of her friends threw themselves into the party mood wholeheartedly. Shepard wandered from group to group, staying long enough to make everyone feel like they had her attention, and keeping one eye on the door.
She tried not to think about why. About the person who wasn't there.
She missed the moment that changed, her attention fully on Grunt attempting to juggle and very much not succeeding. But she saw him out of the corner of her eye twenty minutes later, cap drawn tight against his head, leaning against her counter, and drawn into a conversation with Liara.
He hadn't come up to her to say hello. He hadn't even gotten her attention to give a nod or a smile. He hadn't even come over to wish her a happy birthday.
Her lungs got stuck. She felt like she was in one of her nightmares, lost in space, trapped under rubble, unable to breathe. There were just too many people. Too much noise. She needed to get out. She needed air.
So she slipped out of the apartment, went across the hall, and climbed the stairs to the roof of the building.
Stepping out onto the roof, it seemed like she had traded one sensory overload for another. It was blessedly quiet within the building's environmental shields, but the brightness was almost overpowering. Lights from the neighboring buildings, floating up from the street level and from the other arms of the Citadel, surrounded her on all sides.
She walked over to the edge of the building, resting her arms on the raised wall that bordered the roof, and stared outward, beyond the Citadel arms, and out into what she could see of the vastness of space. And she let herself sink into the quiet.
She wasn't sure how much time had passed before she heard the door to the roof open. But she knew she had been discovered. Listening to the gait of the person walking her way, she felt her shoulders relax.
Joker.
He made his way to the edge of the roof by her, standing next to her but with what felt like galaxies of space between them.
She knew he was going to say something. Probably something disarming and with the perfect amount of dry humor that would lighten this tension lingering between them. But she didn't let him, choosing instead to cut through that distance and confront the problem head on.
"You've been avoiding me."
Joker sighed, lifting his hat with one hand so the other could drift through his hair before the cap resettled firmly on his head. "Still can't get anything past you, huh?"
She didn't want to know. She shouldn't ask.
She couldn't help it. "Why?"
There was a beat, and then Joker’s voice, with a twisted cadence that told her even without looking at him that he had a sardonic grin spread across his face. "Any chance I could lie to you and get away with it?"
She didn't respond to his question, barreling forward instead in her usual manner. "Edi."
"That's… a big part of it, yeah."
"Because I killed her."
She saw his head jerk toward her from the corner of her eye. "No! No, that's not… I don't blame you for that."
Shepard glanced upwards at the Citadel arm directly above. "I do."
Another beat of emptiness. And then, with a sort of hesitance Shepard didn't even know he possessed, Joker asked, "Is that why you've been so vacant?"
It wasn't, but she wished it was. Wished she could blame her emptiness on the collateral damage she couldn't save. Wished it was anything other than exhaustion of being brought back from the brink of death once again.
She couldn't say it out loud. So, she traded one thing she didn't want to think about, for another. "Why are you avoiding me?"
He dropped his head to his arms, face hidden against the edge of the building. "What if I promise to stop? Do I still have to tell you why?" His voice was muffled through his bare forearms. Even out of his uniform, he still rolled his sleeves up as far as they could go.
Her response was quiet, but could still be heard almost pounding like a pulse. "I'd like to know."
He twisted his neck, looking at her for the first time since he had taken his place beside her, and stayed silent.
She felt his gaze, but refused to turn, asking instead, "Do you not want me to know?"
He sighed and turned his face down again before lifting himself up to his full height, steeling his shoulders against his confession. "It's not that. It's just… I haven't been able to say it out loud. I feel…" He clicked his tongue. "Look, Commander, it's just not the best look for me, okay?"
She nodded, once. "Okay." But then let the silence linger, prompting him to tell her anyway.
He shifted his weight, standing for so long clearly causing his joints to ache. "When we landed, after the red wave…" a deep breath. "I felt like a failure. A quitter." He looked at her again. "I never wanted to leave your side, everyone else always left, but I never wanted you to question that I'd be there."
Shepard furrowed her eyebrows and wanted to correct him, tell him that of course she never questioned it, of course she knew flying away at the end wasn't an abandonment. But she knew if she interrupted, he'd never finish. So she let him go on.
"But with Hackett telling us to go, and Kaiden tapping me on the shoulder, I had no choice. So I went, and tried to outrun the blast. But we crashed anyway. The Normandy was down and Edi was…" He didn't finish the thought; Shepard felt a shudder pass through her.
"Communication was shoddy, and I was… we were all grieving. I had lost Edi and I had lost the ship, and I had lost you. Again. And there was a part of me that sort of broke."
She ached to reach out to him. She kept her hands where they were.
"And then we got the word that they had found you. That you were alive. And I…" He swallowed audibly. "It was like nothing else mattered. You were alive, and I couldn't grieve anymore. You were alive and I was just… better."
Shepard didn't know how to feel about that. She didn't know why that would make him avoid her, make him feel guilty. "I don't understand." She admitted out toward the void.
Joker responded in its place. "Edi was still gone, but when I heard that you weren't, it was like it didn't even matter. Like she didn't even matter. Just for a minute I forgot about her entirely, because she was my something, my person, but she wasn't you." He let out a grim laugh. "And all I could think was, oh , of course. I'm a terrible person because my girlfriend is dead and I'm just now realizing that it didn't matter to me as much as it should have because I've been in love with you the whole time anyway."
An "oh" passed through her lips before she could stop it, but Joker continued as if he hadn't heard it.
"So, yeah. I've been avoiding you because everytime I look at you I realize my feelings all over again. And then I feel like shit because you're obviously hurting and Edi is gone, and I'm just still here, pining."
"I thought… I mean, at the bar, you had said…"
He cut her off. "Yeah." The word came out a dry chuckle. "I really didn't know at the time. I really hadn't ever thought about it. But with hindsight? I was in love with you even then."
There was a lightness in her that she couldn't quite describe. "Since when?"
"I'm not honestly sure. But I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and if I had to guess?" He turned his entire body to face her, hip leaning against the wall, and her body turned toward him of its own volition in response.
He was smiling, the kind of smile that felt instinctual, and she felt a small smile grow on her face in return. “Do you remember, when we were fighting Saren, we had just gotten the green light from Anderson and you were standing behind my chair?" Shepard nodded, remembering that moment clearly, but not really seeing the significance. Joker continued, "You tapped me gently on the shoulder, and said… damn, what was it? Something along the lines of, 'thank goodness I have the only pilot in the galaxy who can steal the Normandy, not just once but twice.' And that you were glad I was on your side." He nodded to himself, eyes shining bright even under the shadow of his cap's brim. "Yeah. That was the moment."
"That was a very long time ago."
His smile twisted. "Yeah. It was."
Her voice was contemplative as she weighed that in her mind. "And that was what did it for you?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I mean it when I say it's all just a guess. I never let myself think about it until… well until recently. But yeah, that was the moment I knew I never wanted to fly for anyone else. That was the moment I knew —" He cut himself off suddenly, looking down with a sheepish sort of nervousness radiating off of him.
She pushed. She always pushed. "Knew what?"
With a shake of his head, he gave into her demands. "Knew I was yours."
There was this pulse inside her at his words. This kickstart of her heart. Like a red wave of energy pushing outward from her core. It made her feel like she could breathe again. It made her feel like she could rest.
It made her feel like she was wide awake for the first time since she had opened her eyes in that hospital bed.
She wanted to respond. Wanted to tell him how she couldn't stop thinking about him. Wanted to explain when she knew she was his. Wanted to tell him about seeking him out on the ship, finding comfort by his side, caring more about his opinions than just about anybody else's. Wanted to tell him about being unable to sleep without his voice in her ear.
But she couldn't. She couldn't find the words.
She'd always been more interested in taking action than talking anyway.
So she reached out with one gentle hand to cradle his cheek, and stepped closer to him, closing that gap he had left when he found her.
He was watching her move with widened eyes, not moving, seemingly not even breathing. But that was okay: Shepard’s lungs were finally free and she could breathe for them both.
She leaned over, tilting his face with her hand, and pressed her lips against his. It was a soft sort of kiss. A recognition of the feelings between them, a forgiveness of the time it took them to get here..
The softness didn't last. Soon enough, one gentle kiss turned to two, which turned to a continuous stream of caught lips and mixed breaths, growing in passion. They had found an agreement between them. They didn't want to waste any more time.
They stayed like that, together, for a length of time that seemed to stretch toward infinity. But all too soon, they were startled apart by the sound of the door opening.
They glanced over at the same time, witnessing a certain flustered Garrus looking like he'd rather be anywhere other than there.
"Um. Sorry, we were just wondering where Shepard went."
She felt a laugh bubble out of her, and when it left her mouth to radiate through the air, it felt like something inside her had unlocked. And she realized that moments like these, surrounded by love and friendship and a whole lot of people refusing to give up on her, was why she kept coming back.
Joker responded for them both. "Yeah, we…" He was still holding her close to him and he glanced up at her face as an explanation for their interloper. “We'll be down in a minute."
"Right. Great. Okay." Garrus said, his tone making it clear he really wanted to leave this situation. "I'll let them know."
And then he slipped back through the door, and Shepard and Joker were alone once again. They stood there, unmoving, for a minute, both equally unwilling to leave the other's embrace.
But as time stretched, Shepard realized that returning to the party didn't feel quite so exhausting anymore. "I guess we should head back then."
Joker nodded. "I guess so." But rather than stepping back, he leaned cIoser and kissed her again.
When they parted, he said in a quiet voice, "Happy birthday, Shep."
And suddenly, she agreed.