Chapter Text
It took him time. Taking a deep breath he stretched a little. The crash had been rough and he was afraid to become aware of the very familiar pain of broken bones. But he could breathe. That at least was a good sign and motivated him to stir a little more in his seat. Only then was his attention drawn away from his body and he became aware of the silence stretching through the ship. It had never been that quiet, not even on a late night in the dry docks. Not after the Council had grounded them. Just never! There was always something, like the metallic sound of footsteps on the tiles or distant murmur.
Fighting against the rising lump of panic in his throat, he closed his eyes and took another deep breath. He held it for a few seconds and that was when he finally heard it: stirring, a murmur and breathing. The breathing of others. Of other people. Of Crewmen. Of his crew.
Hel felt himself calm a little, odd as it was in these circumstances. Slowly he let out the breath he was holding and opened his eyes. Through the windows of the bridge a faint sunlight crept in. It wasn’t particularly bright, yet it burned in his strained eyes and he felt his hand rising up, trying to shield him from the light and then rubbing over both eyes. Blinking a few times after this he adjusted to the strange light and actually looked out of the window to his right, his gaze becoming vaguely aware of the limp form in the seat next to him.
“EDI?”
His voiced sounded alien in the still relatively quiet ship and it seemed shaken, not like his usually confident tone. Swallowing he tried to gain better control of it and tried again:
“EDI!”
But then he knew there would be no reply.
Forgetting about the window and the strange sunlight, he leaned back in his seat as another wave of panic hit him. It alienated him further from his body. Looking down on himself he saw trembling hands which wouldn’t obey him.
Breathe.
He didn’t know if that voice came from him, whether it was only in his head or someone else had actually said it to him. It didn’t really matter, but it reminded him of the act of breathing and gave him something to focus on despite the rising panic. He took a couple of shaking breaths and finally gained enough control to force himself to breathe slowly. With that he felt himself settling back in into his body again. Now he became aware of his trembling hands without looking down on them. Yet, he couldn’t quite control them.
Suddenly he also became aware of a dull ache on the left side of his chest and some strain below his knee on the same side. Taking more steady breaths he focused on the pain, tried to read it to understand where it came from and why.
It took some strength, but he brought his right hand, which was still trembling, up to his left side and pressed carefully on the spot of his ribs, where he thought he located the ache. The pain spiked, forcing him to let out a huffed breath. But it was not the pain of broken ribs. Certainly not. It was intense, but not as awful and realizing that made him sigh ever so slightly with relief. During the crash he must have hit his left side along with his leg, which was throbbing from the knee downwards, but that pain was even milder than in his chest.
The murmur behind him was getting louder and he could feel the confusion, but there were still no steps approaching him. Should he get up?
No, he really didn’t want to. He would be at the center of attention soon enough anyway, forced to answer all sorts of questions. But right now he himself could hardly make sense of the last minutes (or was it hours already?). Apart from that he was sure, he wouldn’t be able to get up and remain standing. Bless the thought of even walking on his own.
He felt his heartbeat go down though and the adrenaline leaving his body slowly, which made him dizzy just sitting there with his right hand still lying on his chest. But with the leaving adrenaline his brain finally decided to piece some of the events together. Slowly he remembered the feeling of desperation while the ship was chased by a gigantic explosion. And before that?
Dodging Reaper-Beams, basically. Dodging that was supposed to be “Protecting the Crucible at all costs”. Yes, the Crucible. It was that thing that fired the explosion they, or rather he, had to outrun.
His mouth twitched a little. It could have had already ended before that, but he was still the best freaking pilot the Alliance had to offer and he’d be damned if the Normandy would have been reduced to ashes by one random Reaper-Beam. Now his mouth actually formed into a grim grin. He had just reclaimed some part of his usual self-confidence.
And he remembered more: being called back down to Earth. Someone had been injured and he actually got the Normandy back there, right in front of giant Harbinger. He hissed. That would have been suicide for every other pilot, but of course he pulled it off. He knew it was Kaidan and James that had been injured. His friends. Despite all odds he would call them both friends now. But even though he had that knowledge that his friends were injured, a macabre hope had spiked in his heart. A hope that by picking them up, the nightmare would end and that the one person he wanted to have back on the ship would join them. Even though it was just a matter of seconds to get down and open that hatch for the pickup, he had convinced himself that it would be good now. If he came back to the Normandy, it would be good. Somehow. The thing about hope is, that it doesn’t follow any rational patterns. In this illusion of hope, all threats of Reapers would be gone, the moment he came back to the ship.
But hopes can scatter like glass and cut you deep in the process. This is especially true about desperate, non-rational hopes.
John wasn’t coming back.
He had retreaded slowly from the ramp and ultimately turned around. “Now GO!” was the order that was audible to Kaidan and James and the soldiers guarding the cargo bay. “You, too. Go, Jeff!” was the order that was almost whispered through the coms and transported only to him, the piece that cut him.
And there it was again. Loss. The pure feeling of loss that crept through his spine as Joker pieced together the memories of the battle. He closed his eyes again. How did he even manage to bring the Normandy back up into the fight? His routine maybe. And EDI, of course.
During those last minutes of the battle, he had regained more and more control over himself and the ship. There had still been determination left in him. He was going to get him back onto the ship and no one, not even a goddamned Fleet-Admiral, was going to order him away.
In the end Garrus had though.
“Listen...”
It was this small word that had cut him again and made him turn. “Damn it.” How could Garrus have known?
Looking down he found his hands shaking again. Loss. The feeling was starting to crash him, making it hard to continue breathing.
This time he couldn’t steady himself. He pressed his lips together and felt his hands grasp at thin air again to find some holding.
He became dimly aware of footsteps behind him, approaching him. With closed eyes he focused on them. During the small period of hearing them and having the actual person standing behind him, he realized that those were not human footsteps. He wasn’t a genius when it came to recognizing footsteps. He could distinguish John’s of course. And James’, but that wasn’t really difficult either, as there was no competing krogan onboard. And he also knew the person standing behind him now, before seeing him.
“Are you alright, Joker?”
He inhaled. Focusing his strength on a steady voice, he replied without turning his chair:
“Yes, yes… no broken bones, no need to worry, Garrus.”
The feeling of loss had crept up into his chest and he knew it would remain there from now on.