The door swooshed after Kaidan, and Jo still stood in the middle of the room, her fists clenched. Her heart was beating fast somewhere in her throat and she caught a few extra breaths to calm it. What was he thinking? Seriously. How could he even assume? Her lips tingled where his brushed them, and Jo hurriedly rubbed her wrist against her mouth to get rid of the unpleasant sensation. How dare he make a move on her like that?

She started pacing. She had stopped flirting with him after she'd had sex and talk with Ahern, but apparently Alenko never got the message. Seriously, what was his damage? Hadn't she told him a while ago that she wasn't interested? A severe case of selective hearing? She almost ran against the wall, pushed herself off it with her fists and propelled herself in another direction. Make a move on her, well, that guy was seriously out of his mind. Like she'd ever be with such a pathetic, whiny, confusing crybaby.

She took a deep breath. No need to insult anyone. It sufficed to say that he was not exactly causing her stomach to flip and her heart to skip a beat. She was even sorry if she'd given him the wrong impression. Still, they were merely hours away from Ilos and their doomsday, she desperately needed to clear her head, to calm herself down. Jo stopped pacing, took a deep breath, held it, then released it slowly. She knew where she could find peace of mind and clarity of head, and much more than that. Her heart skipped a beat. The cockpit.

It was the end of the day shift, but she knew that Joker stayed late in his seat, when an important mission was scheduled in the morning. She was not surprised to find only two navigators in the CIC and Joker all by himself. His attitude held other soldiers firmly at bay, and she liked that.

"Hey, Commander," Joker nodded when she sat down. "Can't sleep?"

"Hm, I probably could, but… too much on my mind."

"It's going to be fine, tomorrow. If anyone can do it, you can."

"Oh, I know," she chuckled. "Ilos isn't what's on my mind."

That got his attention:

"Oh? Then what?"

Jo darted him a quick glance and searched her own feelings. She realised that she wanted to tell him everything. Why? Couldn't say. She did, however, distinctly remember the way she had felt on Feros. The absence of his voice in her intercom had made her tense. When he was back, she'd relaxed, gripped the rifle tighter, because she knew that all would be fine. All the times she came here seeking peace, guidance, help, a shoulder to lean on, he'd never disappointed her. All would be fine, as long as he was with her. She could tell him very much anything.

"Alenko," she said, making herself comfortable. He looked at her curiously, but hid most of his face under the brim of his hat. "He just came to my cabin and tried to kiss me. Imagine that."

There was a pause from Joker, then he said with just a slightly exaggerated outrage:

"Yeah, imagine that! Who in his right mind would make a move on their commanding officer? If not the regs, then your reputation alone should have warned him off. Did you break any bones?"

"No, I just sent him away. No need to leave damage for everyone to see. He's probably regretting it already," she sighed and curled up in the chair. Joker wasn't looking at her anymore, but found something extremely interesting on his static, perfectly orange screen. "It's not even about the regs," she sighed. She could tell how attentively he listened to her, despite making a show of focusing on the screens. "I guess if I had strong enough feelings for a man, I wouldn't even hesitate to leave the Alliance… But Alenko… there is just no spark. Most of the time I don't know what he's talking about. He's told me that he likes adventurous women, but then he seems to be punishing us for being just that. And then he talks to me about his difficult childhood, like he thinks he's the messed up one," she snorted. "It was fun to encourage him at the beginning, but it stopped amusing me long ago. I'm even kind of sorry now for leading him on." She spoke her mind without thinking twice. This only happened in one person's presence. She looked over at him and noticed that the tips of his ears were dark pink, and his face under the dark shadow of his cap showed a strange emotion, one she didn't know where to place. She sighed: "Still, I'm not sure I even fall under the frat regs anymore. I'm a Spectre, right? Plus, we just stole the ship and ignored our orders, so I'm not even sure I'm still a Spectre."

"Yeah, but you're still an Alliance officer, I don't think we broke any of Alliance regs today, or did we?" Joker said quietly, leaving her rant about Alenko without comment.

"Well, no, but we're not in the Alliance chain of command right now, we're on loan to the Council, we're registered as the Council's employees, we receive their funding additional to our Alliance pay, so technically speaking, I'm acting as a Council official, not as an Alliance officer. You know what sucks about being the first human Spectre? No one has done this before. There are no rules. No one can tell me which regs apply to me, to us, and which don't. I have to wing it. I suppose if I stop being a Spectre, I'll return to my usual Alliance chain of command, but as far as I know the only way to stop being a Spectre is to royally piss off the Council. So which one am I now? A Spectre or Alliance? Because I sure can't be a servant to two masters."

"In our particular situation it probably depends on whether you even want to be Alliance or not," he said quietly and noncommittally. "The rules sure did get blurry."

Jo looked over, thinking about his words.

"I know I should have other things on my mind, really. I mean, just yesterday I had a conversation with a fucking Reaper. But still… the more I think about the Alliance, the more I become convinced that an organisation as big as this one can't possibly be as pristine as it presents itself. Isn't it all a little too clean, too good, too convenient?"

"You sound like you have more beef with the Alliance than with the Council or with Saren."

"You know, when I joined the Alliance, it wasn't just to escape Earth. I did believe in the cause. Protect humanity, protect our home planet, advance our interests in the galaxy. It just hurts to realise along the way that the organisation that gave me so much is little more than a front for the same kind of schemes, deals, crimes and pain that I tried to escape when I joined it. Saren is indoctrinated, he can't help it. Other races can be worked on. But Alliance – that is personal. You said it yourself: I'm always uncompromisingly honest. I've got nothing to hide. Whatever I do, I do for the greater good of the galaxy. I've been doing it in the name of the Alliance for many years. How come the Alliance can't be just as uncompromisingly honest?"

"Profit, Shepard. You may not need or want power, money and luxury. You're a masochistic altruist. But that makes you one in a million. Most people want to make profit and they're the ones running the world."

"Can you imagine a world where people like me ran everything?" She asked him with a cheeky sparkle in her eye.

"That's a world I'd like to live in."

"Thank you," she reached out to brush her fingers over his biceps. "That is the greatest compliment a person can be given."

Jo felt her heart sing. She had forgotten all about Alenko, and Joker never seemed quite so brisk and harsh when they were alone, he even graced her with a serious conversation. That honour seemed to be reserved for her alone.

Joker busied his hands with the screen hurriedly. The gentle touch of her hand on his arm burned him through the shirt right to his skin. She did that often, touch him. Granted, she was touching other people, too, but to him it was not the standard state of things. It was the normality of it, the casual gentleness that disturbed him the most. For years now the only people to touch him were either his family, or doctors, or an occasional hooker. He firmly stayed away from any kind of manly bonding between soldiers. But Shepard didn't seem to care. Oh, she knew all about his dislike for people. And yet here she was. She was working her way under his skin, he could tell, and he was angry about it. If she found Alenko's advances so ridiculous, then why was she doing so much to affect him? Why would she come here and tell him how outrageous Alenko's attention to her was? To make sure he wouldn't get the same idea? To remind him of his place? To kill in the root any interest he might have had in her? And why would she touch him all the time, then? Why bare her soul to him, why allow him to spy on her through cameras or her earpiece all the time? She was so damn confusing! Joker knew that most people, once they learned that he was a cripple, stopped seeing him as a man, but rather as a genderless being. He could tell that Shepard didn't think him pathetic because of his disability, but he was wrecking his brain trying to figure out right now how she saw him: a genderless buddy or a man.

He was absolutely terrified of the answer, if he were ever to get lucky enough to get one. The first case would crush him, because… The second case would destroy him even more, because… In both cases his mind drew a veil over any reason he could come up with. It just stopped working. He couldn't think. A part of him shut down the thought process to keep him from forming the thoughts that would tear him apart. It was better to not think about it.

But he couldn't lie to himself about one thing: he had grown to cherish the nights when she would come up here and sit with him for hours, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. In those cases he would message the relief pilot to stay away and stretched those evenings as long as he possibly could.

It always seemed surreal in the morning. Especially with Alenko sitting in the same seat that she was curled up in right now. A thought darkened his mind: Alenko's scent was probably still all over this chair, and she was snuggled in it like a teenage girl.

Okay, first of all – Lieutenant Commander Spectre Shepard curled up like a teenage girl? Something was freakishly disturbing about that phrase. Second: she said she'd sent Alenko away, so it was probably safe to say she wasn't coming here for his cologne.

Joker couldn't say why. Almost every other female creature on the ship got the giggles when the handsome, dark-haired Lieutenant came by, even Doctor Chakwas. Everyone except maybe Liara, who was too infatuated with Shepard. But technically, Liara was not female.

"A credit for your thoughts?" Shepard spoke up from her place and he realised that he had fallen silent for too long. He blurted out the last thing on his mind, almost hoping to startle Shepard with it:

"Liara is not even female."

To his surprise, Shepard only shrugged a little:
"True."

"Your turn now. What are you thinking about?"

She laughed:

"Honestly, I was thinking that this chair kind of stinks like Alenko's cologne."

Now Joker really turned to her to see her face. Her nose was crunched.

"You don't like it?" he asked.

"No, it's a bit too heavy. Whenever I meet him in the morning before coffee, my stomach turns. Geez, Joker, I'm telling you the most unprofessional, inappropriate things today. Please don't tell anyone. Please. I just can't seem to be able to stop myself from speaking my mind when I'm with you."

That struck an unexpectedly pleasant chord in his chest as Joker returned to his screens:

"Don't worry, Commander, your secret's safe with me. You know very well that I keep no friends to share gossip with anyway."

"You let me stay here, so you don't hate absolutely everybody," she pointed out.

"Well, that's the sacrifice I have to make, but I'm paying that price to keep this job. The pay's good and I get to hone my skill to perfection, even though my Commander is a merciless bitch who keeps breathing down my neck," he stabbed at her, knowing that she would get him. She always, always got him. This time was no different. She got up from the chair and patted his shoulder once more:

"Yeah, it's a terrible sacrifice. I really feel for you. Thanks for the company, Joker. I'm off now, and you should get some rest as well."

"Yeah, I will. Commander."

She turned to walk away, and Joker turned his seat with a practiced move, just so that he could see her. The view was tantalizing. She looked smoking hot when she came in from a mission, in armour, with guns, covered in blood, dirt, oil. When she wore her free time clothes, her ass became… not even more perfect, it couldn't possibly be any more perfect. It became alive, he could see it move under her clothes with each step, those firm but also soft cheeks rolling gently from side to side as she walked, taunting him with the fantasy of the spot where they met her legs…

Damn, he was once more lusting after his commanding officer. He'd sworn to himself before to stop it and he did so again, desperately trying to ignore the throb of his heart and his penis, telling himself that a nice view and a few innocent fantasies were all this was all about. It had to be.

Jo could always feel someone's attention on her. Usually it was a feeling she pushed out of her mind. When there was a crowd, someone was always looking somewhere, and she felt dozens of eyes brushing her. But with fewer people around this instinct even helped her to find hidden cameras. She could feel being watched even by them.

If she could feel a camera on herself, Joker seriously had no idea what she felt every time she was walking from the cockpit to the CIC. In the first weeks of their mission it was just like every other guy's glance on her. Almost every male on the ship looked at her ass because they all thought she didn't know. She had never been comfortable with it, but she tried hard not to care, or at least not to show anyone that she cared. Then she just stopped thinking about it. Today his glance scorched her. Her mouth became dry and her insides fluttered all the way to the CIC exit, where the door finally obscured her butt from the burning glance.

She liked it. That one glance. As she stepped down a few steps, she had to pause, lean against the wall and take a few deep breaths. She'd never liked male attention on her body – and her body was really unhelpful in this regard, being so pretty. She always felt the need to fight it. When Alenko pulled her against him for a full body check this afternoon, she felt like she had to fight it. But Joker… The reason for her suddenly speeding heartbeat was the realisation that against everything she'd been through in her life, she welcomed his hot, desiring glance on her. For whatever mysterious reason, his look didn't make her want to run and hide, on the contrary. It made her want to strip her clothes and let him look at her as much as he wanted. Look deeper. Look everywhere.

This would not do. This flash, this image in her mind, it desperately needed to leave. Jo took a breath and used her willpower to shoo it away. Mission. Commanding officer. Fate of the galaxy.

It took her about a minute to collect herself. Thankfully, no one was walking the stairs at this time of the evening. She quickly proceeded to her cabin and locked the door, hoping to leave all the inappropriate thoughts outside.

Next day started with a proud moment when she put her and her team's life in Joker's hands and he dropped them off onto a twenty meters landing patch between some walls and rocks just as safely as he promised. Then, as she stood surrounded by Prothean life pods, deactivated a long time ago, her entire world was jerked out from under her feet. For the first time since she touched the Prothean beacon she was getting some real information, real perspective from the last survivor of the previous cycle, Vigil. Her head spun, to say the least. The whole civilisation she knew, species, planets, cultures, days, years, centuries of working, suffering, surviving, fighting – it was all just another little experiment under someone's microscope? Next cycle. That was all she and her entire world had ever been. Next cycle. Vigil just expanded her horizon far beyond the galaxy and far beyond all comprehension of time and space. If her little human brain could get perspective on the big picture, then this was big. Far bigger than anything this galaxy could ever imagine. A whole cycle had given their lives so that she could stand here, probably moments before Saren opened the Citadel relay and ushered in the next wave of genocide. A whole cycle had laid down their lives so that she had this one chance to stop it.

Several months back, when she woke up after touching the Prothean beacon, she had felt different, but couldn't say in what way. She'd instinctively felt that a storm was coming and she was smack in the middle of it. Waiting was over today. Hoping she was wrong was futile. This was it, and her role in it was the biggest question. Was she, her team, her ship, just another speck of dust in the wind of time that would sweep away another cycle, one of millions? Or did the Protheans take their fate in the spirit of true, true sacrifice?

Jo had wondered: why her? And yet she had to admit she was glad it was her. What did Joker call her? A masochistic altruist. Uncompromising. Liara also kept telling her that anyone with weaker mind and lesser personality wouldn't have survived a contact with the beacon in the first place. Yes, Jo staggered right now, feeling the magnitude of what was becoming her destiny. She staggered under the weight of the galaxy, her own cycle and every cycle before. She felt the dying gasps of countless lives, crying out without any hope. But she was glad it was her standing here right now and not someone who couldn't handle this. Whatever chance the Protheans had given them, Jo knew that she had the power of mind, power of body and power of personality to make the difference. She'd been fighting for peaceful cooperation all these years and realised now that her deepest belief was the only means of this galaxy's survival. She changed in that moment, when she accepted her task and duty. She would do whatever it took to stop the annihilation.

She looked around at the life pods. In each of them lay a dead testimony to the greatest sacrifice in the galactic history, across all cycles. Every living being in the world owed these people their existence right now without knowing it. Ilos, this facility, changed Jo forever. She gripped her rifle tighter, took a deep breath and promised to herself and to these dead people to not let their sacrifice go to waste.

Her instinct and decades of battle experience spoke up in her with a careful voice: every victory has a price, if a victory is even possible in this case.

I'll pay the price, Johanna vowed.