Chapter 18: Mon Ami Pierrot
After settling her poor bruised lunatic of a marine CO best friend in the mess with some food, Ella Shepard hunted up Lieutenant Quinn to pass along her new pilot-back-up assignment, and dragged herself up to the cockpit to let the primary flight lieutenant know he was being loaned out for some clandestine detective work.
He'll probably like that. Even if it does mean he has to get out of his fancy pilot's chair.
Shepard was surprised to hear two unfamiliar chuckles, masculine and feminine, somewhere up ahead of her as she passed the galaxy map. Raising her eyebrows, she realized Pressly and Williams were taking up the nav and tech stations in the cockpit, and were obviously amused by something Joker had said, judging by the sly shrug he was finishing up.
Pressly was the first to glance back at the sound of boots traveling up the CIC. Shepard suppressed a sigh as she could see his spine stiffen with her approach. Williams straightened in her chair as well, but Moreau didn't even bother to turn around.
"Care to share any of the news from on-high, Commander?" Joker called back.
"That would require those on-high to share with me, Lieutenant, which they are not prone to do. They just tell me which direction to shoot in. And yell at me afterwards for the mess."
Williams snorted softly in appreciation, and Shepard shot her a quick grin. Even Pressly's dour expression twitched for just a moment, though Shepard almost missed it as she watched Joker twist his chair to the side so he could glance back at her.
"If you're not here to help with my information gathering, ma'am, what can we do for you?"
"You can get your creaky ass down to the comm room in about 30 minutes. You have a command-approved opportunity to help our ground-team techs snoop through corporate files."
"I'll shove him in the right direction when his relief shows up." Williams offered with a grin. "Ma'am," she added as Shepard turned her gaze on the NCO.
"Didn't know you were technologically inclined, Chief?" Shepard asked, with a slight nod at the console in front of Williams.
"Not particularly, but I know which displays should be green or not, and Pressly and Joker are pretty good techs themselves. Figured an extra pair of eyes couldn't hurt, since everyone's short staffed." Williams shrugged. "If that's all right, Commander?"
"That's something you should have confirmed with chain of command, Chief, as neither your CO nor I appreciate being worked around." Williams' eyes widened at the reprimand, but Joker interrupted with a snort.
"Yeah right, like putting the soldier to work when she brought me coffee was a bad thing. She's gonna start believing all those Butcher rumors ma'am."
"As I was going to finish, Lieutenant," Shepard rolled her eyes at the impertinent pilot, "I'm not about to disagree with first nav if he thinks you've got good eyes, Williams.
"Copy the other Commanders, Navigator, and let them know you've borrowed another marine, will you please?" She nodded slightly at Pressly, who looked a bit surprised to be nodding back. "And now I must go fill out paperwork in triplicate for Central and the Council." Shepard sighed. "The perils of command track."
"Need to get yourself in trouble more often, Commander," Joker grinned. "I'll never have to worry about too much paperwork."
"Just for that, I'm putting you in charge of the flight crew schedules. Since you're first pilot, and all. Get Pressly's approval before you send them to me."
Williams burst out laughing as Joker swore softly.
Humming softly, Ella attempted to convince the auto-chef to make some simple warm milk. With honey and vanilla and nutmeg. OK, maybe not that simple. Probably above the turian bitch's paygrade. Evil pilot, naming her Julia and getting my hopes up. She bit her lip as she eyed the creamy white concoction that poured into her mug. Smells promising …
"au claire de la lune
mon ami Pierrot …"
Whirling around at the rusty voice singing along to her humming, Ella saw Joker, as if summoned by her idle thought, leaning on his crutches behind her in the quiet mess. She blinked at him for a moment, surprised both that anyone else was wandering around in the middle of third shift who didn't have to be awake, and that said person would recognize the obscure little children's song stuck in her head.
"Nice accent," she managed after a moment. "Not many people speak French anymore."
"Thank Grandpere Moreau." He somehow managed a slight shrug without adjusting his hands on his crutches. "Kept me company whenever the folks took a break from the kid in the bed." He cocked his head to the side slightly. "What's your excuse? Shepard's not very French."
"Ah, I had a Mama Amelie and Oncle Romain. Though the song's courtesy of Papa's addiction to folk music. He liked finding old French songs in particular so he could torment my mother and Uncle with his wretched pronunciation." She tilted her head to the side, mirroring his movement as she considered the oddly quiet pilot. "Yours is much better, in fact."
"Always been good with my tongue."
And there we go... She grinned at him, shaking her head in mock dismay. "Should've known you couldn't maintain a civil conversation for more than a minute." She nodded towards the table next to him. "If you want to take a seat, I'll be happy to share my attempt to convince the 'chef to make a nice soothing drink. Unless you're up at 0300 on purpose? Which I doubt, since you're supposed to be on duty to fly us through the Nebula in, oh, five hours?"
"Physical therapy day," Joker admitted, as he slowly worked his way down into a chair, sliding his crutches under the table. "Always have trouble getting, and staying, asleep. Extra sore." He paused, as if considering what he was going to say for once. "How 'bout you, ma'am?"
"Nightmares," Ella answered curtly. "Got an extra fun new one, courtesy of Eden Prime and the beacon."
"Care to share?" Joker asked seriously. "It's a pretty good cure for most nightmares."
Watching Robert's body, impaled, turning grey, working himself free, attacking, the screams of tortured metal and dying stars echoing through the air around them. Desperately scrambling backwards, crying, shouting, finally forced to shoot him in the head when he won't. stop. coming. The blue fading away, his skin warming back to dark brown, his eyes rich and dark, his voice, weak and whispery... "you killed me jelly-bean... why? why'd you kill me... "
Ella shuddered as the memory of the dream flooded her thoughts again, then shook her head hard, banishing it back into the depths of her mind. "Don't think I'm ready for that, Joker," she croaked. "Thanks, though."
She picked up both mugs from the 'chef and walked over to the table, careful not to spill. She slid one across the table and settled herself with the second, sniffing again experimentally. Still smells good. After the horror that had been her first attempt at dinner from the damn 'chef, however, she wasn't about to risk a full gulp. She carefully dipped her pinky into the warm liquid and licked her finger clean.
"Mmmm," she sighed, closing her eyes with pleasure as she sucked the last drop off her finger. Doesn't taste much like milk, but damn that's good.
"If you're going to be sucking and moaning like that every night, ma'am, I'm going to need to replace my cruise sock ahead of schedule."
"Ew!" Ella's eyes flew open to the sight of the pilot's laughing face. She leaned over and pulled the first mug back across the table until it settled next to her own. "Just for that, I'm not sharing. All mine."
"You know the 'chef has a recall function." Joker was still laughing at her. "I can make some more."
"Really?" Ella turned and glared back at the machine. "So I didn't have to memorize which buttons I pushed? How do you make it do that?"
"The orange recall button pulls up the last five dishes. Otherwise, you have to go into the main menu. You really don't know how to do that? How have you fed yourself the past thirty years?"
"Well, ever since I enlisted, the Alliance has made sure to shove food at me. And before that, minus a short stint being subjected to an institutional cafeteria for wayward teenagers, I had a proper kitchen. With actual food, kept in a fridge, an awful lot of which we grew or raised ourselves. And then we cooked it ourselves. On a stove."
"Barbarian," Joker shuddered elaborately.
"Ha. You'll take that back if I ever get access to an oven and make some proper bread." Ella sighed wistfully at the thought. "So much better than the styrofoam you get out of machinery."
"You can bake?"
"Why does that always surprise people?"
"Probably the scar and the broken nose. And the guns. And the throwing people into walls with your mind. You don't look very domestic. Ma'am."
Ella snorted. "Normal people don't answer questions like that, Moreau."
"Life would be dull if I were like normal people."
"Sometimes dull is good?"
"Really? 'Cause you give the impression you shoot people when you're bored."
"Hey, I haven't shot anyone yet, and spending the last two days watching all the techs play with mysterious files while I get to sign paperwork? Very boring."
"All our reports on our lack of progress so far weren't captivating reading? And we tried so hard to find new ways to say 'no new data'." Joker sighed mournfully.
"Suggestion for you geeks, then. If you want your reports to entertain your vanguard commanders? Tell Vakarian to translate his tech-speak into baby-english. Alenko's good at it, he can help. As they are right now? My eyes glaze, and my brain tries to escape out my ears."
"See? You don't like dull."
"Huh. Point." Ella shoved the second mug back across the table in surrender. "You win. Dull is bad. Have a drink."
"Thanks." He took a careful sip as a slow blink hid his eyes, and she found herself tempted to hold her breath as she waited for them to open again. "That is damn fine, Shepard."
Ella grinned at him in triumph, before slurping carefully at her hot drink. "It is, isn't it?"
Joker just shook his head, as if impressed to have met someone whose ego could tangle with his own, and they both sipped away in companionable silence.
"So," Joker drawled after a moment, "got an impertinent question for you."
"Do you have any other kind?" Ella raised her eyebrows at him.
"Probably not," he agreed. "It's about your 'tool."
Ella stiffened, her voice dropping into a cool monotone. "What about my omnitool, Moreau?"
"Huh. Apparently that was more impertinent than I expected. Just wondering how you got your hands on the first prototype Kassa. They never actually sold those."
"Dunno. Present," Ella's voice was clipped, her mouth tight despite trying to force herself to relax. Not his fault.
"And that's bad why?" Joker kept asking, despite her chilly reaction. "You've kept it for the past six years, after all. Even a fancy prototype's gotta be out of date by now."
"All I do with it is check email, store personnel files, and trigger suit functions. Don't need anything fancier."
Joker raised his eyebrows, refusing to be sidetracked from his original question. "And again, you're still all scowly."
"It was from someone who doesn't like me much anymore," Ella admitted grudgingly.
"And that's apparently not mutual. Got it. Who wouldn't like you?"
Ella snorted in genuine amusement, finally relaxing in spite of herself. "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you? Besides my girls, and occasionally the Admiral and the Old Man, nobody likes seeing the Butcher walk into the room."
"We like you just fine, here on the Normandy." Joker shrugged. "Besides, if you're as good at the baking as you say, you should just make them cookies. Everybody likes cookies"
"Thank you Lieutenant. I'll keep an eye out for some chocolate chips." Ella swirled the last of her drink around the bottom of her mug. "This is the best posting I've had the past five years, I must admit."
"Even with prothean nightmares causing 3am wake-up calls? While chasing a crazy turian and semi-mythological geth? Your life sucks."
"Speaks the man who threatened to bring a bottle to his workstation 'cause it's a pain to get up to go to the bathroom. And is also awake at 3am from physio, and part of the same crazy mission. Pot, kettle."
"We look good in black." Joker leaned forward and whispered confidingly.
"How do you know?" Ella asked as he leaned back into his seat. "Haven't seen anyone in civvies. Besides my spectacular clubbing failure, of course. Which wasn't black."
"I know I look good in black." Joker tilted his head with a smirk, and Ella was forced to mentally acknowledge the very pleasant possibilities of a nice heavy black leather jacket across his surprisingly well-muscled shoulders. "And I have a vivid imagination."
"Keep it to yourself. Perv." Ella grinned, delighted at how much better she felt than when she flailed herself awake in the pod, smacking her wrist for at least the third time since Eden Prime.
"Hey, I could've been imagining a very classy black suit you know. All inappropriate bits covered."
"You weren't though, were you?"
"Not telling. Not that stupid. Any answer to that would get me smacked."
"Nah." Ella shook her head. "You'd probably like that."
"You've figured me out." Joker sighed. "And here I thought I was sneakier than that."
"You have half a thought and it comes out of your mouth." Ella almost laughed aloud. "What part of that is sneaky?"
"Ah, but you have no idea how many other thoughts I have I don't say out loud. I could be very sneaky. In comparison."
"Considering what you have said, I'm afraid to consider what sorts of things might actually inspire an edit function in that brain of yours."
"No you're not." Joker's expression was briefly serious in the middle of his teasing.
"I'm not?"
"Nope. Don't think you're afraid of anything. Certainly not me."
"Same could be said of you, flyboy. Thanks, by the way."
"What, for not being afraid of you?" Joker waited for her slight nod before grinning again. "That was easy."
"Explain that to everyone else in the Alliance, would you?"
"Sure thing. Want me to go alphabetical, or by rank?"