He knew that something was wrong as soon as he stepped into Shepard's cabin. He found her pacing beside her fish tank, the blue light casting shadows across her face. She looked tired; hell, she always looked tired lately, but this was something that went past a couple of sleepless nights. It was something that made her look older than she was, and he felt unease fill the pit of his stomach.
"Shepard?" She seemed to jerk up from her thoughts at the sound of his voice. He wondered if she had even heard her door open - she had given him unlimited access to her room at the very start of what he called their Cerberus Days. He normally asked for permission or knocked before barging in out of courtesy, but he hadn't asked this time because the upset tone of her voice when she called him over the intercom had sent him on high alert. "What's wrong?"
Even from his spot at the top of the stairs, he could see indentations where her short nails dug into her skin where she was tightly holding onto her elbows. "I went to Huerta Memorial today," she told him, her voice flat.
"Oh shit. Alenko. Did something happen to him?"
She shook her head. "No, he's fine. In fact, he's practically crawling the walls and looking forward to getting out." Her brow furrowed as if she was trying to word what she was thinking. "Jeff, have you heard anything from your family? Anything recent?"
"No." Hope flared in his breast and he descended the staircase to join her. "Have you? Were they evacuated; are they all right?" That same hope died when that tired, worn expression she had didn't go away. He looked at her in horror. "No. No."
She took a breath. Breaking news to anyone had never been one of her strong suits, but this was something that Jeff needed to hear from her. "I overheard an Asari huntress talking to a doctor there. She had been part of an extraction team sent to Tiptree. She talked about getting stranded at a farm." At first, Shepard had just shrugged off the conversation, treating it as background noise like so many of the other things she often overheard. Yet she had decided to stick around and eavesdrop when certain details began to hit too close to home.
His eyes were wide and he took a step closer to her. "That could have been anyone. There are tons of farms all over that colony."
Shepard reached out and held onto his hands. "She talked about a fifteen year old girl whose brother is a helmsma in the Alliance. She said the girl's name was Hilary."
He shook his head, not wanting to believe it. But then he remembered a conversation that he had overheard at the Presidium. A young nurse had been talking about a patient that sounded like a match for Shepard's huntress. Joker remembered the nurse because at first glance, he had thought that she had been an older version of his sister. Holding Juliana's hands, he leaned against the glass of the tank, bracing himself for the worst. "What happened?"
Very haltingly, she told him about the attack on the farm during the evacuation. She described how his father had put himself in front of Hilary, taking a blow that had killed him instantly. Joker bent his head and took a shuddering breath. Hearing about that had been hard; he loved his dad. Guilt had already eaten him up by hoping that if at least one of his family members would make it out alive from Tiptree, it would be his sister.
Swallowing thickly, he tried to find a ray of hope. "But she's okay, right? That Asari made it out fine, so Hilary had to have…"
"Hilary was very brave," Shepard told him. "The huntress said that she managed to kill several husks with only a stick. There were so many…"
"Hilary. Tell me about Hilary. Please."
Shepard bit her lip, her fingers tightening around his. "They had to go back to your dad's house to get the radio they left behind. They were attacked and Hilary… got hurt."
His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, she got hurt?"
"She broke her leg. They tried to set it, but the injury slowed them down."
He grit his teeth and looked away. Hilary was the healthy one; the baby that their parents had put through a gamut of tests to make sure that she hadn't gotten the same genetic defects that had spontaneously appeared with him. She was the one who had won physical fitness awards in school for being the fastest in her class, the one who had joined practically every single sport her school had to offer. He was the one in the family with the brittle bones; Hilary had never broken anything her entire life. "She didn't make it off Tiptree, did she?" he quietly asked, dreading the answer.
Juliana let go of one of his hands in order to slide her palm against his cheek. "No, Jeff. She didn't."
He exhaled and it seemed as if he was suddenly too heavy for his body to hold up. His knees buckled and he dimly felt Shepard's arms go around him for support. "My Gunny," he whispered raggedly, his fingers curling into the rolled up sleeves of Shepard's uniform. She held him close and ran her hands over his back, feeling his arms tighten around her in return. She just held him without saying anything, and for that, he was grateful. He'd had enough of the empty platitudes and meaningless condolences during his mandatory psych evaluations back when he had been grounded.
He leaned back after a while and searched her face. He had known her long enough to realize that she was hiding something from him.
"You're not telling me everything, Jules. Tell me how she really died," he accused. Holding her shoulders with his hands, he forced her to look him in the eye. He watched as she tried to look away, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. He shook her. "Tell me. Don't spare my feelings, I need to know."
She paused, as if trying to find the right words. If there had ever been a moment where he had wanted to take back his words, he would have gladly gone on thinking that his baby sister had died overwhelmed by Reapers instead of being killed just so one Asari could survive.
"I'm so sorry." She walked them towards her bed and guided him to sit down before gathering him into her arms again as his hands grabbing fistfuls of material at the back of her shirt. Juliana said something else to him, her hands cool as they soothingly sifted through his hair, but he was lost in his memories: his mother walking into their dining room with a triple layered chocolate cake, candles illuminating her face as she sang happy birthday to him. His then-toddler sister laughing with joy as she and her big brother learned how to walk; she for the first time, he relearning how to after one of his many surgeries. His father putting together a long, winding ramp up to the tree house he had built in their back yard so Joker could safely "climb" a tree and have a private, normal space to call his very own, just like all the other boys his age on the colony had. The sight of all three of them sitting in the stands and watching with pride as he crossed the stage and received his wings from flight school. All the laughter and joking and hugs and…
"Remember Arcturus Station?" he asked raggedly, his face still pressed against the soft skin at the side of her neck. "How it had looked like a ghost town the last time we were there? I had EDI scan for any sign that the life pods had been deployed, hoping that at least some people had made it to safety, but all the pods were accounted for. The Reapers showed up so fast that no one had time to escape. I've been trying to figure out just how I'd tell Dad and Hilary that Mom didn't make it, but now…" he gave a hollow laugh that had made Shepard hold him even closer. "Now I guess I don't have to."
"Jeff…" He had never told her that his mother had still been there. Now the pained expressions and his desire to be alone since passing by the station made sense.
He moved away until he was just sitting beside Shepard. He stared at the empty tank for the longest time, at the bubbles that lazily floated to the top from the aerator. "Just…do you think," he started, his voice ragged. "Was it quick? You don't think she felt anything, do you?"
She held onto his hand. "Asari huntresses are among the most elite military units. I don't think Hilary would have even seen the blow coming, let alone felt any pain."
Jeff let out a trembling breath. "I guess I can be thankful for that at least." He squeezed her fingers. "I mean, she was hurt and if the Asari hadn't…hadn't…" He looked away. "The Reapers would have done something far worse to my sister and that commando saved her the best way that she could." He gave her a side glance and noticed that it looked like Shepard was trying to decide to say something. "What is it?"
"Do you remember back when we were tracking down Saren and I walked into a conversation you and your sister were having? How I gave her my omni-tool address if she ever wanted to write me?"
"Yeah, I do."
"After I came back and my ID was verified, I started to get a backlog of messages. Hilary wrote to me several times and I've kept all her letters."
He wiped at his face. "All of those messages were sent after the crash, right?"
"How did you know?"
"She told me once that she had written you. I think it was her way to get me to talk – she probably figured that if she told me she had written to you that I'd do the same. I never did though."
"I can send them to you, if you want."
He shook his head. "No, those were her private letters. I only knew about the one, but they should stay between the two of you."
"Are you okay?" Shepard thought of her own parents, both safe and working on the Catalyst. She hadn't heard from either of them, but just the thought of losing one parent was enough to make her heart ache, let alone losing both.
"I don't know. I think I'm still in shock. I just talked to them about a week before everything went to hell; how could things have changed so quickly?"
"I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but I'm here for you, Jeff." She leaned against his arm. "If you need anything, let me know."
"Thank you. Would it be all right with you if I stayed?" he asked. "I don't…I don't really feel like being alone right now."
She nodded. "Of course." He unlaced his boots and stretched out on the mattress. Crawling into bed, Shepard set her alarm with one hand and took the pins out of her bun with the other, her hair spilling over her shoulders in one long red cascade. There was a brief moment of awkwardness while they sorted out where arms and legs went, but eventually they wound up on their sides facing each other. They didn't say anything, and eventually she drifted off to sleep first.
Jeff stayed awake, staring at her for the longest time. Reaching out, he wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her close, the faintly floral scent of her shampoo a balm to his frazzled nerves. Hearing about his family was like a knife being twisted through his gut, but he was thankful that he had someone like Jules with him. Mom would have loved you, he thought, wishing that there had been an opportunity for her to have met his parents. His dad would have pulled him aside to tell him that he'd found himself a keeper, despite Joker's best efforts to inform him that they were just friends. Hilary would have tugged on Shepard's arm and dragged her into the kitchen where she and their mother would have regaled Jules with every embarrassing story they knew, their laughter wafting out of the room and echoing into the living area. It was a cozy, domestic sort of daydream. Unfortunately, it was one that would never happen now.
He buried his face in the cool softness of her hair and allowed himself the luxury of pressing his lips against her shoulder. She was such a pillar of strength, his Shepard. He honestly didn't know how he could make it through this war without her. The last thing he felt before falling into a dreamless sleep was the sensation of Juliana shifting in her sleep so that her arm wrapped around him, the palm of her hand warm against his back.