The last thing Joker clearly remembered was that EDI had flown up out of her chair right after the red shockwave swept through the Normandy. Joker shouted out to her, to ask her where she was going, and all he heard her shout back was that she had to get to the AI core.
Other people would fill in the blanks for him later - he remembered Traynor announce over the com system that the word from Earth was that the Reapers had been destroyed - dropping over like dead flies was more precise - and the crew went crazy with shouts of happiness. Garrus said he'd gone out the airlock, saying he wanted to see what was happening outside. Liara and James followed him out at some point, where they said he went back in after a minute or two. He recalled that - he thought it was about time to see what EDI was up to - she'd love having a whole new planet's surface to explore and record data about. They could patch the Normandy up after they celebrated getting out of the Sol relay alive.
He'd planned to give her a victory kiss in return for her good luck one.
Cortez's tear stricken face was waiting for him on the other side of the doors. Joker figured he was crying about the victory. He didn't expect Steve would have any other reason to be upset.
"Joker! You have to get down to the AI core, EDI's -" he raised a hand to his earpiece, "EDI, he's back on board, he's coming, just stay with us -"
Joker didn't need to be told twice - he took off as fast as he could. Cortez chased him across the CIC, telling him how EDI paged him, specifically, to find Joker when she couldn't - something about the fact that she only trusted pilots - and he was on his way to look for Joker when…something, something, he remembered Sam shouting in front of her console, something about a disaster on Rannoch.
The fear coursing through Joker quickly started to drown out all the sound around him, and the world was deafening silent for a few minutes, until the screams started once he got out of the elevator.
He had never heard her scream before but he knew the sound of her, in any form, instantly.
He raced.
Chakwas was standing in front of her desk, a hand over her mouth, ashen. Tali and Adams were beating the door to the AI core down, its lock engaged.
He screamed EDI's name and the door unlocked instantly.
She was standing in front of the console of her blue box, hands moving so frantically at a speed that could never be mistaken for human. The screaming was coming from the speakers, the lights flickering, her processors groaning and roaring like an old car's engine from a movie.
She turned to look at Joker. Her mouth was open only slightly but her eyes were wide, unblinking, and her hardlight visor was bright red. She said his name like a question from her platform's mouth, the sound jarring against the shouting, and crumbled right to the floor. Adams was trying to ask her what was wrong, directing his voice up to the speakers in the ceiling, while Tali dashed to the screen on the other side of the room, to try to diagnose the problem herself. Joker knelt down on the floor as carefully and quickly as he could, shaking EDI's shoulders gently, trying to get her to look him in the eyes. No response.
"EDI? EDI, come on baby, what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong, stop screaming, we can fix it…" he cradled her head in his hands.
She finally seemed to snap out of it, the screaming vanished, her hair dissolving into strands under his hand. "Jeff! Are you unharmed?"
"I'm fine, EDI, I'm fine. What's happening to you?"
She lifted her arm up, and put a hand on his chest. It seemed like it was almost impossible for her to move, like she was weighed down. Her fingers started to twitch like crazy, and her head flopped to the side. He pulled her face back up to look at him the right way.
"There is a signal. You cannot hear it? It is slicing my code apart, rewriting my ability to control myself. I've removed my processes from the ship. I fear I would have caused inadvertent damage otherwise. The division was…excruciating. I am…being rendered nonfunctional by this outside source. I have done all I can to defend myself but I am afraid it is much too advanced for me to fight. I am dying, Jeff. I am sorry I will not be here to protect you any longer. I planned to spend my life doing just that."
He didn't even have time to react. Her focus was slipping and she was sinking further down to the floor, so he pulled her sideways against his chest, his back to her blue box. He stroked her hair, his other hand entwined with hers in her lap.
"Can you feel, still?" he croaked.
"A little. This platform remains undamaged."
"Is it from Cerberus? A delayed virus?"
"No. It was not present until the crucible was fired. I was fine before that."
He could hear her talking to a few people from all around him, and on top of that there were multiple things she was broadcasting from the speakers that made no sense, stats on the ship's performance, something about a tutorial for booting up a VI program on Luna, a stream of consciousness mess about destruction and the wrong decision…he couldn't follow one part of it at a time, so it jumbled together. It made such a deafening sound it shook the ship. It shook him to his core.
"Was it that red light? Is that what did this?"
"The logical answer seems to be, yes."
"Dammit, dammit, fuck! I was so focused on getting through the relay, I couldn't even try to outmaneuver it, I figured whatever it was would either wipe us out or it was harmless. SHIT! Oh god, EDI, I'm so sorry, I fucked up, I didn't…" he sobbed. The years of nightmares he'd had about losing the ship again had morphed into just losing her. Ships could be rebuilt. EDI, immortal as she seemed, would only exist once, and he had failed her. Why did destruction follow him everywhere? Why did he always lose everything he loved?
"Jeff, stop!" he'd never heard her voice actually tremble. "It was not preventable - I certainly would have stopped it if it was. I know you would never allow harm to come to me on purpose, even through negligence. My sole purpose in currently staying operation is for me to ensure that you are safe…I'm rewriting my essential codes against myself just to speak and reason right now. Please…do not become angry. I don't want to waste power on anger." she shuddered violently, and the room groaned again as her processors started to overheat. "I…may I ask you to remain here with me? Please don't go. I would like to converse with you once more. May I share with you a scenario I've devised?" the voice coming from her platform was getting weaker with every word.
"I can't hear you over…you."
"Come closer." she whispered, gently pulling the side of his face down, his ear across from her mouth. Her volume was soft, and her voice less synthesized than he expected. He would struggle for years to remember the exactly what she said, but it was all too much at the time to commit to memory.
She told him about a wish of hers, a date she was planning. Her hope was now that the war was over, they could find some quiet colony or town on Earth to visit that was experiencing winter, because she wanted to see snow for the first time. She wanted to inspect ice, to watch snow fall, to see how it felt to be cold. She talked about wanting to try wearing winter clothes, and that if he got cold she would overclock something to make herself warm and keep him close. She wanted to make him try different winter foods and tell her how they were, to go play in the snow, go for walks, all of it. She had a fascination with the one season they'd never been anywhere she could experience outside the ship.
Her words and thought pattern became more jumbled as she went on, but he didn't care. He was entranced with every word she said, living the fantasy along with her in his mind. Her soothing tone, her voice in his ears for the last time was too much, and even if he'd been able to watch her face, he wouldn't have been able to see through the tears. He pushed her head into his shoulder and curled up to make a shield for them with his hat's brim, huddled in their own world as she talked and talked and talked, drowning out all the other sound. It had always been her voice, to him, the reason he had fallen for her, she had always just truly been her voice more than anything else. Other people are their smile or the way they stand or how they move around but she had always been her voice.
She finally trailed off - he never knew how long they'd been like that - minutes? hours? and she pulled his face around to look at her.
"Jeff, I have a query. Is it too early into our relationship for me to confess that I love you?"
He knew he couldn't speak if he wanted to, so he kissed her instead, deeply, a little rougher than he meant, a lot slower than they had time for, with all the emotions he knew no other way to express. He sank his fingers into her hair, pulling her closer, as if it would keep her safe, prevent her from vanishing. She sank into it, arcing towards him, her head lolling back, cutting the kiss, her visor switching off.
And she was gone.
For years he would dream of her, at dusk, in the gently falling snow, her body sitting curled up, surrounded by her processors, a frozen spot of silver in a sea of white and grey, and he would walk towards her unmoving form, to sit with her in the winter and freeze, in a surreal world all their own. A world just like how he felt, devoid of color or warmth, a dead place, without EDI's voice to guide him, to remind him he wasn't alone.