"Can I see her?"
"She isn't here, Mr. Moreau."
Joker scowls. His hand wraps tighter around the armrest of the lounge chair in the middle of the officer's mess. This Cerberus base is even more restrictive than Arcturus. Suspicious glares and whispers follow him everywhere. He grabs for his cup of lukewarm, congealing military-style coffee and gulps it down. 'Mr. Moreau.' He hates being called that; it reminds him of humorless teachers in the navy brat schools he'd found boring as hell as a child. Of course, what else are they supposed to call him? Joker? They're not friends.
"Where is she?" he asks softly. The artificially perfect woman holds his gaze without blinking. Her shoulders are tense, she blows out an impatient sigh. "Dammit, you can't just bring me here and not tell me anything!" Joker snaps. "I need..."
"Be patient," Miranda Lawson advises coolly. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze that is probably supposed to be reassuring, but it's clear the action is unfamiliar to her. Joker pulls his hand away immediately. He wraps his fingers tightly around his coffee mug and stares into it as though it can give him some answers. Lawson's high-heeled boots click loudly as she walks away.
"Is she... okay?" he finally asks. He doesn't expect an answer, but he can't swallow the question anymore. Even if it is a stupid question, so non-specific as to be meaningless. He's not sure he wants a specific answer.
"She's alive," Miranda replies. Joker glances up, because it's the first time he's heard even a hint of nervousness or strain in the woman's voice. But she's already started walking again. He nods to the empty chair across from him, finishes the coffee, and drags himself through the chokingly claustrophobic halls of the Cerberus station, his braces holding him up but offering none of the support he actually needs.
He doesn't understand what he's doing here, not really. He doesn't understand why they want him, he can't explain to himself the kind of twisted web he's gotten tangled up in. He's never been a religious person - no one in his family ever was. They were scientists, engineers. They believed in cause and effect, trial and error, physics and biology and mathematics and calculable limits. When the doctors told him he'd never be able to walk, he understood why, and when he forced himself to watch with a clinical detachment as Alliance Command reported Shepard's death, he understood that too. People don't survive being ejected into space without oxygen. It doesn't happen. Knowing this makes things worse, fills his head with spirals of questions and fears that he can't begin to disentangle. Uncertainty needles at his brain, keeps him awake.
But they let him fly. Easy runs, cargo hauls, they keep him blind and his routes are slaved to a computer so that he can't make off with their ships while they aren't looking. Cerberus is always looking. It's an even more insulting waste of his skills than the Alliance using him to train their noobs. But even knowing that, he can't help enjoying it. Just a little bit, he tells himself, because if he's going to be doing it anyway, what sense does it make to hide behind a wall of bitterness and anger? He allows himself to relax, just slightly, into the comfortable embrace of leather seats, his fingers flying over the controls, his body settling into familiar responses to the awe-inspiring panoramas of pinprick stars sprinkled through deep space, swirling nebulas, the quiet of a ship drifting on autopilot, half-asleep. There is beauty out here, in the dark, and sitting in the middle of it, he can't help but be aware of his aliveness. The empty silence does nothing to keep the questions at bay, but it gives him a way to handle them.
Time passes: first in hours, then days, and weeks, long enough that he stops waiting for a response from Alliance Command, stops looking over his shoulder every second, settles into the routine habits of daily life in a paramilitary organization that pays little attention to things like protocol or regulation. He listens to angry rants in the common areas, even joins a few. The people here are good guys, most of them ex-Alliance who'd grown tired of the bureaucracy too large to do anything more than ignore those human colonists they claimed to represent. Out on the ground, away from the naval bases, the humanity that the Council sees on the Citadel means nothing. They pander to politics and do nothing. Joker thinks about the medals buried in his footlocker and surprises himself by agreeing with these Cerberus idealists.
When he realizes how much he's fitting in, how many hours or even days he lets pass without feeling that hollow ache of guilt, without thinking about Shepard, the weight of reality immediately settles back onto his shoulders, and it's enough to crush him. He drowns it out with the alcohol that Cerberus doesn't even bother hiding. They figure if you're dumb enough to drink while on duty and fuck something up enough to be noticed, it's on you.
Joker is on his third beer, angry at everything and utterly sick of being told to be patient. He never gets to decide to talk to the Illusive Man, but he knows he's important to the Cerberus leader, if only because of his connection to Shepard. So when he starts trying to pry for details about the Lazarus Cell, it means an almost instantaneous comm request, the inordinately obtrusive holographic display. The Illusive Man is unnaturally bland and calm, though far from forgettable. He pointedly refuses to answer any questions about Shepard, and steers the conversation to other topics.
"We can help you, you know," he says simply. His eyes linger on Joker's braces, as though it weren't obvious what he meant.
Joker can feel the man's unsettling gaze, somehow, even over the vast distances of space. He snorts. "Yeah? You clearly don't know me as well as you think, big guy. I've turned down these offers before."
"And yet I'm not talking about a cumbersome exoskeleton or any of the blundering attempts at surgery the Alliance offered you," the Man says smugly. His arrogance and conceit rub every cell in Joker's body the wrong way, yet if he's noticed the darkness of Joker's returning glare, he simply ignores it and carries on. Joker gets the feeling he is a bystander rather than a participant in the very one-sided conversation. "Fixing the human body is a relatively simple thing, after thousands of years of study. We're very, very good at it. Cerberus teams are the best of the best. We can harden your bones, strengthen them... cybernetic nanites to inject collagen, working with your body, part of it... no side effects. You'll be able to walk. To run. We can give you the ability to function at peak physical condition for a man your age. You'd pass any test the Alliance might care to throw at you."
A chill runs down Joker's spine as he lets the words wash over him. He knows his answer, or thinks he does, but the implications of the offer still make him squirm. He has always been acutely tuned to the signals of his own body, cautious of every minor stress and strain. He knows the ease with which discomfort can suddenly explode into pain. He understands shock, and trauma. He knows more than any pilot ought to about blood and first aid and the rules of military medicine. And he remembers with stomach-churning anxiety the images he's watched through Shepard's HUD feed as she trawled through Cerberus labs before, the pure, venomous hatred in her voice as she came down, shaking, from the adrenaline high of those missions.
She'd wrapped a blanket around herself and curled up in the empty co-pilot's chair in the heart of the Normandy's night shift, asking pointed questions he'd never been able to deflect about the nature of evil in the universe. She'd wake up suddenly from nightmares of Akuze that left her sweaty and shaken, and he could see the darkness reflected in her haunted eyes in those moments: he understood how the rumors got started, why people were uneasy around her, how they figured, without ever getting to know her, that she was dangerously unstable, constantly on the edge of losing her grip completely. They never saw how quickly she shook off those memories though, flashing him a teasing smile, reaching for another drink. Shepard had never judged him by what he couldn't do. She'd been his C.O., sure, but the first one that hadn't made him feel like he was constantly trying to prove himself. He never had to justify his presence on her ship. The Normandy was theirs.
There are a thousand reasons why turning down Cerberus' offer is a good idea, but only one that matters: if they are telling him the truth, Shepard belongs to them. But he doesn't. And he won't sacrifice any part of himself that might weaken his ability to protect her. He will give nothing to Cerberus, owe them nothing, they will have no leash with which to control him. He's here for Shepard. Nothing else.
"No thanks," he says harshly. It's a tone of voice the Alliance medics would recognize all too well.
The Illusive Man stares him down. Joker wonders if he might try to force it. But he couldn't. He has no illusions that Cerberus wouldn't use him for their medical experiments if they thought it suited their needs. He knows, with an unsettling certainty that he cannot quite ignore, that they do exactly that sort of thing all the time. But they need him because of his connection to Shepard, and he knows, although it has never exactly been put into words, that that is why he is here, and that the Illusive Man will do nothing to jeopardize his loyalty, tentative as it is.
"Very well, Mr. Moreau," the Illusive Man sighs. "We simply want what's best for you."
"Don't insult my intelligence," Joker snaps.
A smile quirks at the edge of the Illusive Man's lips. "Perhaps you're right. I suppose it would be more accurate to say we'd like you at your best. For Shepard's sake."
The hologram snaps out, leaving Joker alone and feeling as though Cerberus has been crawling through his brain. The feeling only intensifies when he drags himself into his small private cabin to find someone fiddling through his few belongings like she owns them. At the sound of the door sliding open, Dr. Karin Chakwas turns and gives him a tired smile. "I hope you've been remembering your medications, Jeff."
"What're you doing here?" he asks darkly.
"I think I'm offended," she replies immediately, not sounding offended in the least.
"I'm serious!" Joker insists, flustered by herpresence. He'd never have imagined he'd come to care about the medbay staff he is forced by necessity to interact with, but Chakwas is familiar, she has a way of following him from posting to posting that can't possibly be coincidental. She reminds him of his mother in all the worst ways, and damn it all to hell, he'd worried about her. "It's desertion, being here. Treason. You can't just quit the military whenever you feel like it." Especially not to run off to a black-ops group turned terrorist network.
"I can't, but you can?"
"I wrote a letter," he replies, defensively. He sits down on the bed, wishing he were strong enough that he didn't have to. But Chakwas has seen him looking a hell of a lot weaker than this.
"And I left a lovely stack of research all ready to be published, stamped with the Mars Naval Medical Center's logo. Not a bad parting gift, really."
"They call you here for her, or for me?"
Dr. Chakwas does not try to pretend that she doesn't know what he's talking about. It's one of the things he's always respected about her: she doesn't play games with her patients, and she's smart enough to keep up with them. She leans back against the wall, and shrugs.
"Cerberus has resources, Jeff. You should take advantage of them."
"You think I should do it?"
"You know as well as I do that a procedure like this can't be given without consent," the doctor responds smoothly. Joker raises an eyebrow.
"Yeah? What about Shepard? Did she get to consent?" Doctor Chakwas sighs. Joker thinks he sees the subtle shake of her head. They both know the answer. "The Lazarus Project," he finally mutters. "You honestly think it's true, what they're saying? They brought her back to life."
"I don't know," Karin Chakwas admits.
"Because it can't be done, right? Fuck, if anybody was half that good..." he nearly screams in frustration as he waves his hand over his useless legs and the braces latched around them. She dances around the question he's really asking the same way the Illusive Man had, steering the conversation back to him, as if he matters.
"The procedure's good, Jeff," she tells him. "Legitimate research, the backing of the medical community. I'll be the one to perform it. I won't let Cerberus touch you." Joker glances up and notes the possessive fire in the doctor's eyes. "Do you trust me?" she asks.
He thinks about the hours he's spent pushing away her painful injections, her good-natured taunting as she watched him like a hawk to make sure he swallowed his drug cocktails: pills by the handful. She'd been one of the few who never seemed annoyed about taking the time to explain the x-rays and scan images to him; pointing out subtle differences that showed where treatments were making a difference he couldn't feel when his weakened bones fractured anyway.
"It'll work?" he asks, ashamed by the raw hope that he can't quite keep contained. He's spent years saying it doesn't matter, that his skills and intelligence don't require physical strength. But the truth remains that he's wanted this since he was a kid, that every morning he wakes up wondering what it would be like to go through a day without hurting. "I'll be able to walk?"
"Not right away. And not without difficulty. But yes, Jeff. I'm certain you will."
He nods, tracing his finger over the pages and pages of medical notes on the datapad she's handed him. "Do it."
"I'll set it up."
Dr. Chakwas wastes no time doing exactly that. Joker wonders briefly if she's as bored as he is. He trusts her, but in this unfamiliar place, where he's promised to never let his guard down, he almost backs out at the last minute. He's undergone procedures that required anesthesia before, from the time he was young enough that they did it with lullabies and a soft stuffed toy for him to squeeze. It's usually the only way they can fix his broken bones, rebuild them, without the pain reaching levels that would qualify as torture. He has gone through surgery, in several different naval hospitals both before and after joining the Alliance, despite what he told the Illusive Man. Those metal grafts and collagen injections are what keep him mostly functional instead of dead. A couple hundred years ago, people born with his condition rarely survived their first year. So he understands the risks, and he understands exactly how much he owes to the medical professionals who take him apart and put him back together on a regular basis. He still fights a primal panic as he feels the drug begin to pull him under. Dr. Chakwas squeezes his hand and soothes him to sleep. "Don't worry, Jeffrey," she promises. "I'm looking out for both of you."