There were words. They had been there for a long time, but her mind only seemed to have noticed just now. Someone was talking right next to her.
Fight!
Suddenly the lights blinded her, big bright lamps shining into her face. Johanna's heart beat harder and faster as she tried to remember, to understand the words, tried to move.
Fight!
Some woman's tits swayed into her range of vision. The skank was trying to tell Jo something. She even put her hands on Jo's skin, which caused incredible pain. The tits disappeared, instead an ass became visible. Suddenly annoyed, Jo wondered who the skank thought she was.
Fight.
There were more words but everything went blurry. Fight, fight… Her heartbeat slowed down and the lights disappeared along with the tits and the words.
She dreamed of explosions, nothing new there. And there was the voice again, saying words… Jo woke up with a startle when a new explosion shook her bed. This time the surroundings didn't blind or confuse her.
It wasn't even a bed. It was a lab table. Cold and hard. Fuckers. The world seemed a lot less confusing than the last time, but somewhere on the surface of her mind hung a huge question mark.
"I died."
She remembered. Bits and pieces of her beloved Normandy being torn off and blown into open space, the hoses of her armour breaking, the air escaping her lungs, a painfully familiar voice shouting her name with true despair, and those endless, yet short like lightning, twenty three seconds of an incredible sunrise, before the lack of air clouded her mind and the temperatures destroyed her body. She remembered all of it, every little sensation, every cell of her body dying.
She remembered more. Warm darkness, feeling free and weightless, feeling home. Feeling at peace, eternal peace.
She remembered being torn from the beloved darkness, stuffed into this meatbag called a body, and the pain. She remembered the pain of the process, remembered fighting it to go back to the darkness and peace, but she hadn't been allowed to. She'd never been so pissed at anyone in her life. But this – tearing her from heaven and back into a body that no longer fit, that was agony. A hellish kind that nobody in the world was ever supposed to feel.
She touched her face. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her whole essence, her soul hurt.
Fight!
She had to do something. Go back to her peace. Return to the darkness. Now.
"…under attack. Shepard, your scars aren't healed, but I need you to get moving, this facility is under attack."
That voice again, only this time with no tits attached. Jo was somewhat glad about that. This voice reminded her of the first years of her military training. Throwing soldiers out of their beds, sleepy, sore, every muscle on fire from last night's training. A mercilessly even voice. They were taught to hate that voice so much that they obeyed it, jumped out of their beds just to make it stop talking.
"There's a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room, hurry," the hated voice ranted on, as Jo looked around. It was indeed a lab, computers all around her, just your usual research facility with no view, bright light and grey plastic all around, like so many Jo had seen in her life. There was the locker the voice mentioned. Jo got up and tried her legs. Surprisingly, they obeyed her without trouble. She walked.
"Grab your pistol and the armour from the locker, you don't have time to wait around, Shepard, grab your weapon and armour!"
Jo opened the locker and found the pistol. She checked it. It was some new type of weapon, needing a thermal clip. First things first – she had a weapon to kill herself. Just find munitions and she would be on her way out of this hated body and this hellish world.
"This pistol doesn't have a thermal clip," she said aloud, wondering if the voice could hear her.
"It's a med bay. Keep your head down, Shepard, shield yourself from the blast!"
Interesting, Jo thought, crouching behind a see-through barrier as an explosion shook the air above her head. The voice seemed keen on keeping her alive. How bizarre. Everything was bizarre right now.
She found the clip, she found a way to insert it. She stood there, looking down at the pistol and the whole world faded out around her. A bullet to her brain – and freedom waited for her on the other side. True freedom. A bullet to her brain – and the agony would stop. One bullet – and she would be happy.
With a hand so eager that it trembled Jo raised the pistol to her temple.
What if she didn't go back to the darkness? What if suicide didn't lead her to the same place?
Her finger on the trigger stopped. A little fear turned to a full-scale doubt. She'd died a warrior's death of sacrifice. She'd died righteously. She'd been at peace back then. Now she was full of agony and hate. Blowing her brains out wouldn't be the same.
Oh, fuck it. She would have to fight again, and find another noble death to return home to the darkness.
Everything dropped inside her. The implications broke her heart and almost broke her body. There would be fighting, walking, talking, eating, solving problems, just… living. The worst agony of them all. Living.
The pistol dropped to the floor, and Jo followed suit. She fell to her knees and screamed in tears. And screamed. And screamed. She didn't want to suffer this agony of living, but she had no choice, and that horror, despair and helplessness broke her. She screamed her lungs out and collapsed, curled up on the floor once she had nothing more inside her and sobbed. She felt nothing in her whole body, just that it shook in violent spasms as she wept. She couldn't say how long she'd lain on the floor, tears running down her face, mourning herself. A broken doll. A tortoise out of her shell. A newborn without a mother. An old warrior robbed of her peace.
And then she returned to reality. She had to, there was no other choice. She had nowhere else to go but back to reality. Explosions, bitchy voice on the intercom. Pistol. Jo shook her head, wiped away the tears and set her jaw. She closed her eyes and took one deep breath. She held it, conditioning herself to accept the idea of not dying. When she released the breath slowly, she was ready to go and fight.
Fight everyone who did this to her. Take her revenge. Put them all through the same kind of agony.
When she got up, the darkness she longed for so much shone through her eyes and surrounded her whole being. She was not a biotic and never would be, but right now she felt like she could fly on the sheer power of her fury.
She was no longer Johanna Shepard. She was a death angel.
And she would find those who did this, she would capture them and devour their insides while they were still watching. She would open their bodies with her bare hands, she would rip out their beating hearts and eat them, she would make sure they knew agony they forced upon her. Her vengeance would be slow but as inevitable as death itself, and there would be no mercy.
Never.
Jo hit the console on the door and it slid open. What happened then didn't register in her mind. She walked through the facility never bothering to take cover. What for? She didn't care if she lived or died. Her eyes saw better than ever before and her hand followed her focus like a lazer pointer, taking each mech out with two shots exactly in the middle of their stupid heads. She stopped listening to the bitch on the intercom, but she did take a look around the facility. She listened to the audio logs on the computers. She thought she'd been furious before? Fuck that.
NOW she was furious. So furious that eating the hearts of those who did this to her seemed like too merciful. They deserved a lot worse. They kept her here as an object, reconstructed her body? She'd been unconscious on their table, naked, surrounded by strangers who crawled up her every orifice and even cut her a few new ones? And all the while they worried about money?! There was no word to describe the wrath that turned her whole body and soul into a nuclear winter. She was a death angel on a righteous mission, looking for her victims. She needed to dismember someone right now. Dismember, devour, and make a piece of art from their bloody limbs.
Then she saw one. A black human insect shooting at the mechs. No, she was not going to shoot him from behind. He would know exactly what was happening to him when she skinned him alive.
"What are you doing here?" the man said, reloading. "I thought you were still work in progress!"
"I just woke up. You probably know more than I do," Jo said, coming closer to him, stretching her hands towards his throat to start dismembering him…
"Right, sorry about that. I'm Jacob Taylor. I've been stationed here for… Damnit!" he crouched deeper, as a mech's shot almost blasted his head off. He got up and killed one of the mechs. "Things must be worse than I thought if Miranda's got you running around. I'll fill you in, but we'd better get you to the shuttles first."
Miranda. Jo took cover. Miranda was good. The insect would take her to the pure cold-hearted bitch she heard about in the audio-logs. This guy was a nobody. She needed Miranda, the real necromancer on this station. It was probably the same skank who'd shoved her tits in Jo's face when she woke up the first time. Oh, the bitch was going to suffer like no one had ever suffered before. No one.
"Lead the way," she said.
Just as they'd got out of their cover, a man's voice sounded in the speakers:
"Check, check, is anyone on this frequency?"
Jo listened to the conversation. He was lying. She knew it. He was lying about something.
Wilson, whoever it was, gave Jacob directions and they headed through another door, only to be greeted by mech fire.
"Don't get pinned down. Oh God, they found me! Help!"
Jo even flinched. The last phrases were such bad acting that she knew for sure: this Wilson was bad news. Still, she and Jacob needed to move forwards, if she wanted to find Miranda.
Curiosity put Jo's fury on hold as she watched the insect crawling on the floor, begging for medigel. She even got it some to see what it would do. The insect in the shape of a man tried to convince them that it was innocent, but Jo already knew – it was the traitor controlling the mechs. And then…
"Would you trust me if I told you who we work for?"
She stopped, without looking at Jacob. He continued without her confirmation.
"Cerberus."
Jo felt a cold wave of relaxation wash over her new body. Well, now she knew who to direct her fury at. And it was a good place to do so. Her old friend, Cerberus. Those who gave her sleepless nights and nightmares beyond belief? Who else would practise necromancy? She was thankful to Jacob for giving her this information. Now she had a goal. And bringing Cerberus down would be a worthy fight to lose her life in. That would do.
She said nothing to Jacob. He wasn't worthy of a reply. He could understand nothing of what was on her mind right now. He was only human. She was no longer that. She was Death.
And then there was Miranda, and the bitch actually killed the insect before Jo could have had her fun tearing its limbs off.
"I'll take you to the Illusive Man," the bitch said. Well, this earned her another day to live. What was the point wasting her vengeance on these microbes, when they were not the real enemies? She would find the real fiend and she would rain all hell's torture on him. Thus she found herself in the shuttle with Miranda and Jacob, and those two seriously believed she would be up for a conversation.
"Before you meet with the Illusive Man, we need to ask you a few questions to evaluate your condition," the skank spoke in a tone of a scientist assessing the state of her new creation. Jo knew that it was exactly how Miranda felt about her. She turned away from the starry view out of the window and drilled an icy glare into Miranda's eyes. The bitch didn't seem to notice.
"Come on, Miranda, more tests? Shepard took down those mechs without any trouble. That has to be good enough."
"It's been two years since the attack. The Illusive Man needs to know…"
Jo drew her pistol and aimed it point blank at the bitch's forehead.
"Shut your trap and be quiet," she said in a seriously nuclear voice. Miranda closed her lips with a little snap, finally giving Jo some real attention. "Listen carefully now. I will sit back and close my eyes for the rest of this trip. You will sit there quietly and not disturb me while I rest. If you say a word or make a sound of any kind – any kind! – I will shoot you in your head. Do you understand?"
"There are tests we really should run…" Miranda started, but Jo pulled the trigger. The bullet went right above the bitch's ear, shaving off some of her hair, and lodged itself into the wall behind her.
"This is your only warning," Jo said and leaned back. There was silence in the shuttle after that for the rest of the trip. Jo closed her eyes and let the agony consume her. If she ever hoped to be functional and control it, she needed to embrace it first. Pain was an old friend, and yet… Jo had never been in quite so much pain. Not physical pain, though. Her soul was in pain. She would have to find a way to deal with that, before she cut this Illusive Asshole into tiny bits.
Unfortunately, the shuttle wasn't taking them to the Asshole directly. She met him via a hologram. Well, at least she knew now who she was looking for. She knew what he looked like, sounded like, what he wore and smoked, and what he thought like. Her arch-nemesis. Saren had been a decent enemy because he showed up for his fights and battled head-on with her. This one was different. She realised soon enough that it would take a while to hunt him down. And she would need to play along for a while to lure him in. She hoped that he was intelligent enough, however, to know he didn't own her. Or was he actually so stupid he thought she would be grateful to him for bringing her back to life? Grateful for THIS?
She eyed him while he was talking, thinking of all the ways to torture him. Her heart sang at the images. This was the right thing to do. It made her feel good.
This phrase sounded familiar. Someone had told her once that if it felt right, then it was the right choice…
Joker.
She asked the Asshole for intel on her former crew members to keep him talking, while her whole being concentrated on one word. Joker. Memories started coming up. Memories of how she felt about him. His beauty. His humour. His crooked shoulders. His crutches. His gentle hands. She remembered kissing those hands once, after they'd defeated Saren. She remembered his voice shouting her name when she got spaced.
She wrapped up the conversation with the Asshole as fast as she could and stepped out of the room. Some re-evaluating had to be done. She couldn't care less about staying alive. But everyone involved in her revival needed to suffer her vengeance, starting with Miranda and ending with the mastermind, the blue-eyed asshole. And yet another part opened inside her, a curious part. She'd like to see Joker again. Garrus. Wrex. Tali. Liara. All of them.
Next thing she knew, Miranda was telling her about her heart's desire to put a control chip in her head. She looked at the bitch with amusement and thought to herself: keep talking, please keep talking. You're adding years of torture to what I'm planning to do to you. Keep adding, I'll be happy to oblige.
The Asshole liked to think that he'd sent her on a mission. Jo found it amusing, as she played along. He was so full of himself that he couldn't see the elephant in the room. He was a necromancer, she was anything but his obedient zombie. One day it would be his undoing and she would be there. In the shuttle she was pleased to see that the two Cerberus fuckers had learned their lesson. Jacob looked out of the window quietly and Miranda busied herself with her omnitool, also quietly. Jo closed her eyes again and released her weakening grip on the agony. Holding it in check for more than a few minutes at a time was wearing her out. To gather her strength and put another barrier around it she had to let it wash over her first. That in itself was unbearable, but she was determined now. Vengeance. Death. Torture. Pain. That was good.
Meditation helped a little. She felt like all nine circles of hell got turned loose inside her mind, roaring fire, screaming voices, maddening screeches and noises that Jacob and Miranda couldn't hear. Jo didn't try to fight it. She embraced it. Instead of a soul tortured inside hell she took in all the agony and became the hell's fury, the soul of hell itself. That was the only way to put a barrier on the agony and open her eyes again. It was a battle like she'd never fought before. Like no human had ever fought before.
She knew she only had a half hour maybe before the agony broke loose again, so she hurried them through the colony, until she met Tali.
She stopped in her tracks and froze. It struck her immediately how much her friend had changed. She was no longer a girl, but a seriously badass woman. Jo's mind stumbled. With Tali's presence a little bit of her old self returned. A tiny one, but still. She hoped more would come back and help her battle the agony, but Tali couldn't join her. Still, seeing her helped more than anyone in the world would ever know. If anything, Tali had saved her that day. She gave her hope that it was possible to defeat this agony in her head. To be human again.
On their way back the Cerberus operatives left her alone and Jo sunk back into hell, helpless, unable to escape. Pain, screams, torture…
The conversation with the Asshole was straining her resolve. His voice didn't seem human at all. It sounded like one of those screeches in her mind.
"I found a pilot I think you might like."
"Doubtful." Jo rolled her eyes. Whomever this Asshole had found, she hated the guy already for the mere fact that the Asshole found him.
"I hear he's one of the best."
"Really doubtful," she shook her head. She already had a pilot, and even if the rest of her team was unavailable, which was doubtful since the Asshole claimed so, she would find Joker in any hidey hole and never let him out of her sight again.
"Someone you can trust."
Jo didn't even know where to begin replying to that statement. Trust a Cerberus guy? That was like saying she would have a passionate romantic relationship with a Reaper. Jo shuddered at both ideas and stepped out of the circle, inwardly raging at the presumptuousness of that fucking Asshole. Did he really think that just because some humans were in trouble, she'd suddenly forget that he was a terrorist involved in every inhumane experiment she'd ever heard of? Was he really delusional enough to believe she cared about some insects on far colonies who weren't strong or smart enough to protect themselves? She cared about nothing right now. Nothing and nobody.
"Hey, Commander," she heard behind her.
The voice was so familiar that she didn't even know who it was for a millisecond. She spun around and saw…
A grin on his face. A cap on his head. A three weeks' stubble. Crooked shoulders. Limp.
And a Cerberus logo on his shoulder.
"Joker…" Jo breathed out and covered the distance between them to enclose him in a tight embrace.
Miranda's words had been like a hammer to his brain. Shepard was alive, in the next room, in person. He'd been expecting the word for months, but still it came with a shell-shock. Everything disappeared: time, space, his surroundings. He couldn't hear or see or think straight as he descended the stairs to the comm room on shaky legs. The whole world filled up with white noise.
Then he saw her. And nothing happened. No goddess-like appearance with thunder and lightning, nothing to mark the thing that the whole galaxy deemed impossible and unnatural. A dead woman was alive again.
It was as if she'd never been dead. She looked the same: stature, half-tilt of her upper body, blond hair in a knot. Joker leaned against the door frame, unable to hold his own weight. His vision blurred. How could this be? Two years of agonising torture – and here she stood, like nothing was the matter? He'd been through hell and she just stood there like everything was fine?
His foggy mind registered at some point that she was touching him, hugging him. His hands were not his own as he took her shoulders and pushed her at arm's length away from himself to look her in the eye.
Oh, it was her all right. Not a clone, not a cyborg, not a fake. Real Shepard. She'd stepped through time, leaving behind those seven hundred forty two days, nineteen hours and nine minutes like they never happened. They didn't, not to her. But he'd known, felt and lived every second of them. Every moment. He'd lived in agony while she was gone and now she just stood there, same as before? Did she really think they would just pick up where they'd left off? Did she expect him to smile and say it was good to see her? Would she want him to look at her the same way he did back then? He could never look at her the same way. Never. He'd changed more in those two years than even he realised. He'd cursed her time and time again, he'd hated her for dying and now he hated her for living.
For a few stolen moments Jo simply melted in the arms of the one man she couldn't live without. The screams got a little quieter and the agony subsided slightly. Help me, she wanted to beg of him. Help me, stop the agony, save me…
But he moved her away from him and in his eyes she suddenly saw her last judgement. His eyes told her that it was all real and true. Two years ago she'd died. He'd spent them alive and he'd been through worse hell than she was experiencing now. He couldn't help her even if he wanted to, and he… didn't want to.
Why did she have to come back and open all the old wounds? They'd never healed in the first place and her presence felt like acid on his bloody flesh. He was not the man to dig into his own mind and reflect on his feelings. Never. But if he allowed some reflection right now, Joker knew he would start hating her. Truly hating her. Despite his best attempts to suppress them, his emotions rose higher and higher, pain and hate threatening to blow his lid.
When life becomes too much to handle – deflect with sarcasm. Joker hurriedly grabbed that old wisdom. Deflect with sarcasm – that was easy. It was the only option now, really, because if he allowed himself to think what he was really feeling, he would truly blow. He would say things to Shepard that he'd regret later and they'd part ways right now, strangers forever.
He didn't want that. Two years of pain or not – he didn't want to leave. Maybe one day he'd find a way to tell her without breaking their friendship how much he hated her nonchalant reappearance. Today he was unable to. So, he deflected with sarcasm.
He turned and started walking. Shepard fell in next to him, asking him questions. Good. Questions were easier than facing his demons.
"You walk without crutches?"
Easy.
"Yeah, Cerberus gave me some new kind of treatment, strengthened my bones. I still need the leg braces, though."
"How did you end up with them anyway?"
Not so easy.
"I, uhm. I left the Alliance after they and the Council swept under the rug everything you stirred up. I was grounded anyway, there was no reason for me to stay."
"But Joker – after everything we've seen them do, after what they did to me in that lab, how can you… how can you?"
"I know who they are and what they do. But they saved your life and…"
Suddenly he found himself tossed against a window, her elbow in his jugular and her glowing red eyes in his face.
"They didn't 'save my life'. I fucking died." She tossed the words at him with such energy that his knees gave in. "They raised me from the dead, they're necromancers, and I'm not the happy cheerful Shepard from before. I was dead. I still am. There is just the little matter of this walking bucket of bolts called my body, but I'll take care of that soon enough. Never dare to thank them for saving my life, Joker. Never."
Sarcasm could only get him so far. When her words sank in and he realised that she planned to get herself killed again very soon, holy fury broke his resolve to tiny pieces. He exploded. With a monumental effort he grabbed her shoulders and tossed her away from himself. She stumbled to the opposite side of the corridor, the wind knocked out of her, the back of her head hitting the wall not so gently.
"Think you're the only one suffering in pain?" He was in her face now, pressing his arm into her throat. "Think I wasn't in my private hell for those two years, twelve days, nineteen hours and nine minutes? You died on me and now you stand here, telling me you want to kill yourself again? Should I spare you the trouble and strangle you right here and now?"
Her eyes widened at his elbow in her throat. He'd never used violence in her presence, especially against her. Surprise on her face only poured oil into the fire of his anger. She hadn't been there for two years, she hadn't seen him initiate bar fights, punch and kick the Council officials, break furniture or dishes. She'd expected him to be the same gentle flower that never left his seat and complained about the slightest pressure on his bones. Well, tough luck, lady, he thought. I've changed. I'm not the same guy you used to know. I can toss you across the room along with your armour and guns and follow up with a punch to your pretty face.
He was tempted, but he held back the punch even though he certainly could deliver. If anything, Cerberus had made sure he built up muscles to support his new bones. The fragile Joker was a thing of the past in every way. Still, some part of him laughed at his own outbreak. Start a fray with Commander Shepard? A squad of krogans would lose that one. But to be fair, she started it, so he was well within his right to answer her violence with his own.
This was new. Joker and Shepard tossing each other around – who'd have thought? But the tension and anger inside him vented a little in this outbreak and Joker could think straight again.
"I wouldn't strangle you even if you begged me to," he said, removing his elbow from her jugular. "You'll live like the rest of us and feel it. All of it." He turned away from her, collecting his thoughts and calming his breath.
Jo was still splayed against the wall, breathless and wide-eyed. Truth: she'd never seen Joker so angry. She'd never expected him to become violent. Not her Joker anyway. He was right, though. Two years had passed and this was someone new in front of her, someone she would have to get to know all over again.
But the agony was gone, she suddenly realised. He'd chased it away completely for a few moments. Maybe this new Joker could save her after all, better than even the old Joker could. And… she was hot for him. Her body, a numb stranger since she woke up on that lab table, was suddenly aflame at being manhandled by this man. He'd taken her breath away just like the day he told her he wasn't good, not great, but the best damn pilot in the Alliance fleet. He was truly one of a kind.
While she relished her first agony-free moment and let the sexual desire wash over her, Joker found his own composure and pointed at the window she'd tossed him against.
"There is one more thing," he said. "They only told me last night."
They watched together as the lights in the hangar illuminated a familiar shape. A space ship. Jo could see all the differences at once, but the shape was very similar and she was glad about this little reminder of what had been her home.
"She's gonna need a name," she said like a peace offering.
"And a pilot."
"I already have a pilot," she brushed her fingers against his but he jerked his hand away.
"You want me back at the helm?"
"Isn't that why you joined Cerberus?"
"That didn't answer my question."
"I'd never fly with anyone else, Joker."
"So… you'd trust me with your life again?"
"Joker, get your things and report for duty, 'cause if you don't, I'll kick you into the next galaxy."
"So that when you get yourself killed again, nobody will be surprised, what with my bad record and all?"
She hadn't expected him turn his sarcasm on her in such a cruel way. They would both need time to readjust to this situation.
"Get over yourself," she said. If he could dish out tough love, he needed to learn to take it, too. "You didn't get me killed, you couldn't even if you tried."
