You are Madonna, you're Lady Divine

You are part Mother Theresa and a Valentine

Some man's pariah and a slippery slope

But to me you are the fire and I fly to my hope

(Jude: Madonna)

Fourth day in the Terminus Systems and still no new intel on those disappearing ships. Jo wasn't frustrated, like most of the crew seemed to be. In fact, she enjoyed the quiet, for once. There was hardly anything of the usual "do the impossible" about it. Sure, she was only officially here to investigate the disappearing ships, her true mission was to find out more about the Reapers, but she felt light in her heart. She smiled quietly to herself as she stepped out of the elevator, Joker's voice rattling off the usual tech stuff in her earpiece. But her instincts were warning her that things wouldn't stay quiet and simple forever. That was why the message about a foreign cruiser following them rang all the alarm bells in her guts. Jo startled towards her locker for her armour, when Joker's warning in the loudspeakers gripped her heart tight:

"It's not the geth. Brace for evasive manoeuvres!"

Jo gripped a doorframe tight and planted her feet on the ground when her pilot threw the ship into a side roll. Damn, he was good.

But not that good. A terrible rumble threw her to her knees. Alarms rang all over the ship. They'd been hit, and hit hard. The hull was definitely breached at several points. Air was leaving the ship and she heard people screaming, shouting, doors shutting, cables bursting and showering everything and everyone in deadly sparks. Jo hauled herself towards the locker and put her armour on.

People were dying. She set up a distress beacon and started helping the crew into the escape pods, when Alenko told her that Joker was still in the cockpit. Cursing under her breath she sent the Lieutenant into one of the pods and made her way towards the CIC. The world became surreal. Alarms were still yelling at her from all sides. Fire roared, singed her armour, blocked her way. The ship trembled in its last convulsions all around her. Taking its last dying breath.

"Mayday! Mayday!" Joker's voice lured her like another beacon. Suddenly the finality of what was happening struck her. There was no roof over the CIC. Just deep space. Furniture floated. Corpses bumped into objects. And everything was eerily quiet. Deadly quiet.

Far ahead, what seemed like a world away, she saw an energy wall keeping the atmosphere in the cockpit. Slowly, pushing floating stuff out of her way, she made her way to the wall.

He was still working. He was still pushing buttons, trying, trying so hard… Had she only been that kind of person, Jo would have started crying.

"Come on, Joker, we have to get out of here."

"No, I won't abandon the Normandy! I can still save her!"

"She is lost. It won't help anyone if we die along with her. Come on."

"No, we just have to… Oh no! They're coming round for another attack!"

Jo turned around just in time to see a beam cut right through her ship. It severed off the entire engine section, she could see that through the hole in the ceiling. Damnit.

Survival instincts shut down all thoughts and emotions. Focus on one thing, just one thing.

She grabbed Joker's arm and pulled him out of his seat. Not as gently as he would have preferred, no doubt, but he'd be grateful later, also no doubt.

"Ow, watch the arm!" He still had time and breath to complain. Jo considered lifting him and carrying him over her shoulder altogether. It wasn't hard out in the open space. But Joker already found his feet and began moving alongside her. His arm around her shoulder and his body against her, she could feel the touch even through her armour. Strangely, it gave her comfort even in this situation.

She hauled him into the last remaining shuttle, when another beam hit. Jo looked back to see bits and pieces of what had been her home for such a long time get ripped into open space. Another jolt threw her backwards and a sudden realisation hit her: she wasn't going to make it back to the shuttle.

"Commander!" Joker shouted in panic. Only her long training gave her the strength and the agility to grab a metal pole and hold on to it for a second longer. Joker's voice. Would it be the last human voice she would hear in her life? He was reaching out for her out of the last remaining shuttle.

All went quiet in her head. That escape pod needed to leave, but Joker was not going to leave without her. She needed to make him. Luckily, she was holding on to the same side of the door that held the console. Jo hit the button. Save the crew. Save Joker. No matter what.

"Shepard!"

The door closed and the pod left.

One last word, her name that he'd shouted after her. The last thing she would ever hear. The word hit her like a blow. There was so much in it, she realised. One last word filled with pure, desperate and true love. He loved her. She didn't need any other love confession to know that. He loved her.

This discovery set something free in her. Some hidden truth, the writing on the wall she'd been too stupid to read until now. She was in love with him, too. She was in love from the very moment when he snapped at her that he wasn't good, wasn't great, he was the best damn helmsman in the entire Alliance fleet. He'd woken the one thing in her she didn't have before meeting him. Her heart. There was no lying in the face of death: she was in love with him. A small, bitter-sweet regret jabbed her heart: they could have been so great together. Could have done so much together. But now… No, it was all right. In the face of death she could honestly say that she wouldn't have done anything differently. She could only hope that her love would be with him like a guardian angel for the rest of his life, whatever he chose to do with it.

The SSV Normandy was no more. All around her Jo saw burning and crashing parts of her life, being torn to pieces. All was gone. Her career, her life, her resources, the Prothean warning, the mission, everything except the survivors of the crew, drifting out there in the escape pods.

Was someone watching her? Seeing her?

She was being spaced. She had no illusions about that. She still had some time, but at this distance to the planet's surface she'd probably burn up in the atmosphere like a meteor. Survival instincts told her to fight, to run, do something, but the old warrior inside her heart just took a deep breath and relaxed.

They made it out. Joker made it out. They were going to be fine. It was time to say good bye to her family, friends and her love.

Suddenly Jo realised that her air was leaving her armour rapidly. Some piece of metal must have fractured the hoses. She had no more time! Still, she tried to reach back and plug in those hoses again, but it was much too late.

She had seconds to live. She was going to lose consciousness much sooner. And the only thought that crossed her mind, the thought that stretched for the entire twenty three seconds of her remaining life, was: what an amazing, astounding, unreal sunrise this is.


What did just happen?

Shock numbed all of Joker's body as he stared at the closed door. What did just happen? Did she just… She couldn't be... This was Commander fucking Shepard here, she could do the impossible. She always did the impossible. She could survive anything. Next thing he'd know she'll be grinning at him in victory, joking about being invincible.

Johanna Victoria Shepard. He was pretty sure nobody on the Normandy knew her middle name. Please, he begged any deity that would listen right now. Please, let her win this time. Let her be victorious. This can not be the end.

Logic was telling him something that he violently refused to accept. No. This could not be the end.

He didn't know how long he was in the pod, alone, uncertain of anything that happened to his ship and his Commander after his pod had launched. Then a turian merchant ship answered the distress call. When the door opened and he stepped out onto the loading platform in the unfamiliar cargo bay, he looked over the crowd. Twenty people made it. She had to be here among them. She couldn't have died. He refused to even think that.

Someone asked him if he was all right, but he was still looking for her. Dr. Chakwas was there, Alenko, but he couldn't see Shepard.

"What happened?" Alenko was suddenly in his face. "Where is she?"

"She's not here?" Joker asked back, when the fact hit him in the stomach: his had been the last escape pod and she was not in it.

She'd been spaced.

"No. No, no, she has to be alive, has to be out there!"

He grabbed the first turian and demanded to see the captain of this vessel. The captain wasn't far, personally observing the rescue.

"We need to find her!" Joker shouted at the turian.

"Who?"

"Commander Shepard! She's still out there, we need to search the debris and find her!"

The turian looked at him with genuine sorrow.

"There is nothing left. I'm sorry."

"No. It can't be. She's alive, she needs us."

"All the debris has been pulled into the atmosphere and burned up. Only the large metal parts made it to the surface. My scanners show no life signs anywhere. I'm sorry."

"No." Joker shook his head stubbornly. "No. She's not dead. She's NOT DEAD!"

But something deep inside him told him that it was true. His heart knew. She was gone.

Everything was hazed after that. Alenko's hands shaking him. Several men trying to separate them. His lifeless limbs hitting the metal floor when the tragedy left him no strength to stand. Breaking bones. Many broken bones. Even more broken bones when Alenko launched at him again and landed a punch. Joker didn't feel any of that. The crude med bay of a merchant vessel. Chakwas' teary eyes as she worked on him. More people. Transfer to another ship, Alliance this time. Faces. Questions. Citadel, a hospital, Anderson, Garrus. Questions. Questions. More questions. He didn't hear them, didn't see them.

He was consumed by agony. Pain that no broken bone could cause. Pain beyond anything humanly possible to bear. A broken heart and suffocating guilt.

It's been sixteen days, they said. Sixteen days, four hours and eleven minutes, he corrected them in his mind. They were worried about him. All this time he remained silent, unmoving in a hospital bed. His bones were almost mended already and through the fog in his mind he heard Chakwas and Anderson trying to coax some kind of reaction from him. He needed to move, get his body to work again, they said. He saw no reason to.

19d, 17h, 31m. Nurses put him in a wheelchair and let some Alliance soldiers cart him somewhere. A room. A Council official. Questions. Why would he care?

25d, 1h, 17m. Garrus at his side.

"You need to tell us what happened, Joker. We all loved her. You owe her that much. Do you want to hear what stories the reporters are fabricating? Or the stories the Council is about to release?"

Garrus told him the Council released a statement that the Normandy had been destroyed by a geth ship. No, wait a moment. That sparked Joker's interest. That was a lie.

26d, 5h, 40m.

"Tell us what happened, Mr. Moreau."

He told them. Everything.

"You did not recognise the ship's profile?"

"No, it was nothing anyone has seen before."

"Must have been a geth ship."

"No."

"You can't know that."

"Look at it, damnit!"

"We can't," the asari Councillor at least sounded respectful. "All the memory banks were destroyed along with the rest of the ship. There is no backup. We can't find anything, any proof of what happened. We have to assume a geth attack."

48d, 18h, 3m. His bones were healed. Again. He'd broken a few when the Council refused to believe him that the attackers weren't geth and declared the matter closed. He'd yelled at them and banged his fist on a table, probably even kicked something or someone. They couldn't do that. Close the case like that.

Her body was never found.

"Mr. Moreau, please understand that I can not clear you for duty if you refuse to talk to me."

A shrink. Just what he needed. How could he tell her what was going on? Her sugar-sweet fake compassionate face made him want to hurt her. Really hurt her. Did she even know what pure agony felt like? Every night he would see it happen again and again. He would reach out for her, save her, and wake up in tears. Every day he would imagine how the door would open and she would march in with a grin and tell him to stop slacking and get to his station. Every night he saw it again and again. And every day his heart broke again and again, the bitter realisation filling him like acid. She was dead. Gone.

The vids were running stories on her. Some were good. Some poured more dirt on her. Most declared her ideas about Reapers ridiculous, claiming she was barely more than an eccentric psychopath.

69d. He had been grounded. It had made him angry for exactly as long as it had taken him to get into a cab. He'd never used autopilot. This time he wanted to fly like he always did, but his hands wouldn't obey him. They shook violently in panic when he even as much as looked at the console. He couldn't fly anymore. He was done. Dead and gone. He was no pilot anymore, he would never fly again, his own hands wouldn't let him even if he wanted to. He didn't want to. Losing the fastest ship in the galaxy and his Commander, the first human Spectre, Commander Shepard, was not something a pilot could or should ever be forgiven for. Best pilot in the Alliance fleet? Pathetic. She'd been so wrong about him when she declared him the best pilot in the world. He couldn't save either her or the ship. Some pilot. He didn't deserve to even look at ships any longer.

102d, 13h, 56m. He'd left the Alliance. Handed in his resignation and was discharged. They had no use for a pilot who couldn't fly, so they let him go easily. He had no more ties to anything or anyone in the whole world.

His mother left food on the table for him. Chakwas insisted he went to visit his mother, and she basically carted him here. His mum's new house meant nothing to him. Her presence couldn't ease the agony. Nothing could stop the singeing tears that ran down his face every nightmare filled night.

211d, 7h, 9m. He'd left his mother's home after two weeks. Her worried face was too much to handle. His savings got him to a colony on Mars. The bar was filled with scumbags. The drink tasted like acid. The TV over the bar ran another review on Shepard, portraying her as a crazy, delusional woman. They dragged her name through dirt again and again, presenting 'proof' of her insanity, showing vids of events that never happened. The simulations were quite well made, too. He only knew they were fake because he'd been there and had his own footage. Footage that was now gone, like everything else.

"Yeah!" someone yelled at the TV. "The crazy bitch is dead!"

212d, 12h, 45m. Chakwas' face over him in the dirty hospital on Mars.

"Jeff, you should know better than to start a bar fight. You have eighteen breaks and two dozen fractures."

He felt none of them. He couldn't feel anything at all anymore except for the agony and guilt.

364d, 5h. The last of his savings disappeared in exchange for a bottle of ryncol.

367d. Hospital again. Something about pumping his stomach.

He started talking to her in his head. Sometimes he wasn't sure if he even talked out loud, because people would give him odd glances.

"Your favourite colour is grey. At least I think it is. The only civilian clothes you have are two grey shirts. You're not one for a big wardrobe."

371d, 9h, 28m. He ran another extranet search on her and found an online memory storage account she used to keep, paid for another few weeks. He hacked it. There were a couple of pictures of her parents: one alive, three from the morgue. Joker had never seen any pictures of Shepard's parents. They were both blond, just like she was. She had her mother's delicate facial structure, eyes, brows and chin, but she had her father's hooked nose. Also there was a song. He listened to it. Something Italian, something incredibly weird, like it was from an opera. He didn't know what it was about, but it made him weep like a baby.

372d, 19h. He basically had to beg for this job. He needed a few credits to prolong that account's validity, but he had nothing, so he needed a job. All a wash-out former Alliance pilot with creaky legs could get were shuttle runs between Mars and Earth. He sat in the cockpit and willed his hands to work. He was broken, damaged, but she needed him. She needed him. She was the only one who could make him overcome the trauma and fly again. She needed him, and he performed another impossible deed for her. He flew.

400d. Vids about her disappeared from the news long ago. He never went to the Alliance-arranged funeral. Saying goodbye to an empty coffin was beyond cruel. Seeing others was not an option. He did hack the report, though. After she was declared killed in action and no relatives had been found, her possessions would have gone to an auction, but it turned out that she owned nothing that hadn't been with her on the Normandy. Even the house on Intai'sei was still registered in Admiral Ahern's name, not hers. The Alliance got their hands on her bank account, though. Joker did a little count to find out that she left almost all her salary from the last ten years there. All her shopping had been a few drinks here and there and some personal items. She didn't need money at all. The Alliance donated that money to a Shepard Scholarship to help disadvantaged children from Earth by sending them to the Alliance. Nothing like a little self-serving there, he supposed.

443d, 4h. The world kept spinning. Every day, every minute he wanted to shout at these people going about their business: how can you keep living? How can the world keep spinning, when one is missing? The best one, the… only one.

Every knock on the door was her. Every gush of wind was her voice. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her face. He stopped watching the handful of vids he had saved of her in his private storages. The one where she let Garrus, Wrex and Liara touch her hair. One right before Ilos, as they waited impatiently in the cockpit, partners in crime. One about Finch. One about her sparring with Ash in the cargo bay. A few more of her doing mundane things that meant the world to him. Watching these vids turned him inside out.

… He lost count for a little while after her birthday, after another night of drinking landed him in the hospital again. Chakwas was there again, telling him that Shepard wouldn't want him to waste himself away like this. He was wasting her gift to him. She had had something better in mind for him when she'd saved him.

"What does it matter what she would think? She can't. She's dead. She died on me. She should have never let me defy her orders like that. She should have beaten me into obedience, should have made sure I'd leave the ship when she ordered me to. It was all her own fucking fault. She never should have…"

Tears came again and again. His dreams took him to the same day again and again, filling him with hope when he saved her, and crushing him every morning.

491d, 3h. Numbness was all that was left in his life. Numbness and guilt. He kept flying the shuttles despite shaking hands. He felt like a zombie. The pain never eased up. The guilt never lessened. He saw the world changing around him and felt out of touch. Alien among his own people. There was nothing in this world for him anymore. The one woman who made life worth living, constantly confronted him with moral choices, gave him philosophical questions to think about, drank like a skunk, swore like a back alley whore, wore no other colour but grey, appreciated his sense of humour and touched the deepest corners of his soul, all the while hiding the most unusual, magnificent cascade of hair in a bun and a man-killer ass under her armour, this woman was dead now. He saw no point trying anymore. Nobody could motivate him like she could. He didn't want to be motivated.

"You were supposed to be invincible," he told her in his imagination. "How could you do this to me?"

Still, he felt himself changing, too. He was becoming more sarcastic, cruel with words, harsh.

602d, 16h, 8m. The clock never stopped ticking. One second after another. Adding, adding, adding more moments, minutes, days, weeks, months to the life without her. The clock was a statement to his endurance. Would she say that a lesser man would have killed himself? Or was he too much of a coward to do it? The clock surely didn't bring any ease to his pain. It was as sharp now as it was the moment he realised what happened.

He was imagining what she would be like now. Saving people. Killing bad guys. Tough and beautiful. Breathtaking.

"You're irreplaceable," he told her in the nights. "Can't forget you. Can't ever get back what we had. If the Reapers arrive tomorrow, I couldn't care less. This galaxy without you in it isn't worth saving or living in. Forgive me for this weakness. I know you'd want us all to continue your fight, do whatever we can to stop the threat, but I just don't care. You burned up in a blaze of glory, and I'll enjoy watching the rest of the world burn for what they did to your memory."

612d, 10h, 7m.

"Mr. Moreau, my name is Miranda Lawson. I have something to show you."

A little while later – the clock was forgotten for now.

This was not true. Not true. Couldn't be true. Impossible.

Was it? It was Cerberus they were talking about.

All the inhumane experiments. All the facilities, evil doctors. Could this be a trap? He would have liked to talk to the one guy Joker knew would understand him best. Garrus. Unfortunately the turian was nowhere to be found. Joker had to make that choice by himself.

Shower. Sleepless night. Foggy morning.

"I need proof."

705d, 1h, 39m. The clock kept ticking. He would never allow himself to start a countdown simply because whatever they promised him was not happening. Not true. Couldn't be.

Still, he was recovering from a surgery now. They did something to his bones, some procedure that he was sure had cost hundreds of innocent people their lives. He could walk without crutches now. Still limping, still in need of metal leg braces, but at least he could move around and function like a human being. Almost.

728d, 5h, 28m. They put him through paces. Hours of training in a gym. Hours of flying simulators, then real ships. Shuttles, one-man-fighters, cruisers, anything they had available with a pilot's seat. He broke their simulator eventually and wiped the floors with their best pilots. He was, after all, Shepard-proclaimed best pilot in the world. He would do Cerberus no favour by showing them his shaking hands. He needed to get a grip on himself.

He just couldn't let himself believe she was about to come back. This had to be another dream. Waking up with hope and being crushed again would kill him for sure. They never let him see her, saying that they couldn't compromise the security of the project's station, its location, and other bullshit. But they did show him vids. Chakwas expressed a little doubt about what she was seeing there. Was this really Shepard? He didn't doubt. Somehow he had absolutely no problem believing that the body was real. What he couldn't believe was the steady heartbeat, brain activity and the raising and falling chest. He would only become a true believer once he looked in her eyes again.

740d, 13h, 41m. Life was becoming more unbearable than before Cerberus approached him. Back then he knew she was dead and when every gush of wind made him hear her voice, he still had security in the truth that she was gone. Now… every time a door opened – he jumped. It could be her. It was possible. And it was unbearable.

Cerberus, however, was not a fun bunch. The doctors creeped him out. He had seen too many Cerberus doctors and facilities under Shepard's command to ever trust them. The pilots that "trained" him were less creepy, but they were not the people to waste his sense of humour on. Still, this was the first time in two years that he was interacting with people on regular basis without being drunk and while having a goal in mind. Their looks in his direction told him a lot. He had become harsh, hardened. He could go verbally brutal on someone like never before. He'd been sarcastic before? He was cynical now, full of venom and disdain. When – if – Shepard came back, she would find him a different man. A part of him wanted to be the same Joker she knew, but his heart knew he would never be the same. One didn't live through two years of torture to walk away the same cheerful boy. He was a new man now. Colder, harsher, disillusioned. He could tell her about reality, about how different real life was, opposed to the dream of equality and peace and cooperation that she lived in. Maybe one day he would tell her that, just to punish her for dying on him.

742d, 19h, 8m, 11s.

"Mr. Moreau, you will find Commander Shepard in the comm room."


AN: Thus begins the next big arc of my story. I hope you enjoyed it so far! I'll do my best to keep it enjoyable.