Next morning she went to talk to Joker.
"You're definitely losing your touch," he declared upon seeing her. "Never thought I'd be the one helping to carry you back to the ship, Commander. Might wanna cut back on the liquor before we lose the last shred of respect for you."
"Yeah, yeah. Tell me in detail what happened after you guys brought me back."
"Well, you were still partly coherent and wouldn't let anyone come with you to your room to help you, only Dr. Chakwas. I'm surprised you didn't slug the poor woman in the process. Anyways, Kelly kept us in the CIC, asking about the night, when we heard the screaming. Mind you, I never thought sound carried so far across the ship."
"Did EDI enhance it?"
"It didn't have to. So we went upstairs and Garrus had a fight with the door. The Thing said that by your own specification nobody was to enter your cabin, even if you were in distress. So he used his XO authorisation, went in and punched you." He measured her thoughtfully. "You know, Commander, you don't scream like a girl. Don't know why I'm surprised, just seemed like something noteworthy."
"What do you mean?"
"Girls scream in those high-pitched sounds that only dogs can hear. I have a sister, I would know. But you…"
"I scream like a guy," she finished his phrase. "Well, I drink like a guy, I fight like a guy, I swear and throw and drive a car like a guy. Don't know why people still think I'm a woman."
His eyes dropped to her chest probably before he could help it, and his cheeks flamed up. Even Jo's face warmed up under that glance.
"It's, uhm, probably… your… small hands."
"Probably. So, how did Chambers end up in my cabin with the rest of you last night?"
"She kinda tagged along and nobody thought about her, we were too worried about you. Sorry."
"No, you did everything right. Still, she had no business being there."
"Are you going to kill her before she tells the Illusive Man?"
"That is very likely," Jo said cryptically, patted him on the shoulder and turned to leave. This time Joker grabbed her wrist to hold her back:
"Shepard, wait." He released her hand immediately, though she really had nothing against skin contact. He bit his lip a little nervously before asking: "Are you okay?"
"Right now – yeah, peachy. But I think this is when alcohol and I part our ways forever."
"That's drastic. Maybe something, you know, a little softer than ryncol? Beer?"
"And risk another nightmare like that?" She shuddered. "I'd rather not."
"Was it really that bad?"
"Let me put it this way: have you ever heard me scream in terror? Or at all?"
"I understand. I do. Still, such a shame!" He said with a sudden cheerful smile, as Jo heard someone coming to join them in the cockpit. It was Kelly.
"Commander, it's good to see you in a better condition," she said. "May I have a word with you in private?"
"Sure," Jo said and followed the redhead towards the conference room. She threw a questioning glance over her shoulder, but Joker only shrugged.
"Commander," Chambers began when they were alone. "You seem to be suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder."
"No, really? What gave me away?"
"You hide it well, mind you, but I couldn't help but notice that your mood swings very often, you eat without appetite and have trouble sleeping."
"That your professional opinion?"
"I'll take the risk and say it the way it is: if you don't get help, you're not fit to lead this mission. I would strongly recommend that we schedule at least ten sessions and you let me help you deal with your trouble."
"And if I refuse – what will you do? Relieve me of my post?"
"I realise I can't do that, Commander, but you are a reasonable enough person to agree that you can't risk the survival of the whole human race just because you don't want to admit that you need help."
"And what in the name of god makes you think you can help me?"
"It doesn't matter how little you think of my degree, I'm still trained to deal with exactly this kind of situation."
"The kind where your patient had been dead for two years and then resurrected?"
"Well, no, but I learned about the near death experience."
"Even you have to be smart enough to realise the marginal difference between near dead and dead as a doornail. What about the kind of situation where your patient is being spied on every second of every day by the most evil, unscrupulous, sick and twisted organisation that ever existed?"
"Your view of Cerberus is influenced, Commander."
"By what?"
That shut Kelly up for a moment. Jo stepped closer and looked her deep in the eye:
"Tell me right now, Kelly. What was it that influenced my view of Cerberus so much?"
"Rumours?" It sounded more like a question, not like a statement. For the first time Chambers' shell cracked a little as she refused to admit the most obvious thing: Jo knew of Cerberus from hard evidence and personal experience, not rumours. Jo inwardly patted herself on the shoulder: offence was still the best defence.
"Rumours, really?" She raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know by what else."
"I think you do."
Kelly remained silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and put on a brave face:
"This is irrelevant to the real question, Commander. You have PTSD and you need help."
"That may be the case, but you, my precious little girl, are way out of your league with this one."
"Commander…"
"One more word, Chambers, and I might just show you what makes me the N7 Lieutenant Commander Spectre Shepard."
"Which is what?"
"I talked Saren into suicide, terrorists into giving themselves up, religious fanatics into changing their beliefs – been doing that for many years now. Always keep that in mind when you talk to me."
For a change Kelly had nothing to say to that. Jo enjoyed playing mind games with this little skank. She was still hoping that there was more to Chambers than met the eye, some hidden talent, anything at all that would justify her being here. So far the only talent Jo saw in Kelly was her incredible sluttiness.
Since they were in the conference room anyway, Jo called a meeting with the entire crew to discuss further business. She ordered them all to get their new uniforms in the cargo bay and to surrender all their Cerberus clothes. Gabby asked if the techies could keep their shoes, since they had no Cerberus logos on them and were specially made for climbing through the ship's insides. Jo let them keep the shoes, but nothing else that wasn't their personal stuff.
She dismissed them and went to her own room to empty her wardrobe. She did not keep her boots. For all she knew, there were spying devices hidden in the soles.
When she went down to the cargo bay to hand in her Cerberus clothes, she saw a small line waiting for their turn with Gardner, who was clearly surprised to see name-tagged packets for everyone, when he opened the crates. The usual Alliance procedure was a stock of clothes in different sizes, and Cerberus probably followed the same procedure with their uniforms. Jo had ordered outfits for each crew member personally. They were black and grey, soft and comfortable, with differently coloured rims on their collars to mark their position: red for security, orange for the techies and maintenance staff, blue for everyone in CIC and white for Jo and Garrus. She hadn't gotten any uniforms for Mordin, Jack, Grunt, Zaeed or Kasumi. There was no point trying to make them something they weren't. Garrus, however, really needed to look his part as the ship's XO.
The people had first thrown the Cerberus fabric carelessly into some empty crates, but under her heavy glance the heap quickly became an orderly folded and stapled pile.
"You're being thorough," Joker said to her, joining her by the crates after he got his packet. "There is nothing at all with the Cerberus logo on the ship."
"Lose the cap," she told him with a smile and a confused look on his face showed her that he'd completely forgotten about it. He took it off.
"I can't have a cap? It's my trademark!"
"I got you a new one, just open your packet," she grinned. It felt good to smile, it felt good to talk to him, stand next to him, look at him. Most of all it felt incredible that he was looking back at her and smiling. When his green eyes fixed on her, they made her stomach flip.
"You're going to change your clothes right here?" Jacob asked, when Joker opened his plastic packet and dug in. Joker fished out a new black cap and put it on his head:
"This is all that really matters."
There was "ACE" embroidered on the front of it. Jo couldn't help a smile as she looked at his satisfied face.
"It's nice to see you smile, Commander," Chakwas came over as well, hugging her packet.
"These are all personalised," Jacob said curiously. "How did you know the sizes for all the people here?"
"I am the Commander," she fixed him with a very different kind of glance than she was giving Joker just now. "It is my business to know everything about my people."
"Don't be surprised when you realise the Commander even knows the size of your family jewels, erect and not," Joker said, then bit his tongue: "That didn't sound quite right…"
Chakwas shook her head, Jacob looked confused, but Jo gently clapped Joker on his arm:
"If it's any consolation, I don't know yours," she gave him a dirty smile, all the while her heart skipped a beat. That kind of teasing put some very intense images in her head. Images that involved a whole different state of undress. "And I swear to wait patiently until you show me."
"All you have to do is ask, Commander," he waggled his eyebrows at her. Jacob looked more and more confused, even appalled at the way they spoke. The no-nonsense former Alliance officer couldn't comprehend this kind of a relationship between a CO and her crew. Chakwas was hiding a smile.
"Would you be willing to bet that I can tell your exact size if you let me put my hand on your crotch right now?" Jo teased the pilot further. Unabashed, he shrugged:
"I'm not betting against you, Commander. That's futile. I believe you."
"Go to your work station, Joker," she nudged him with another dirty smile. "Put on some porn and take care of that suspicious bulge in your pants. Jacob, same goes for you."
"Don't mind if I do!" Joker nudged her right back and left with a wide grin. Jacob wasn't grinning, but he also left. Jo looked after the pilot with longing tugging at her insides. What she wouldn't give to touch him, tell him she loved him. But now was not the time.
Chakwas stepped closer to her, as they observed people coming down, bringing their Cerberus clothes.
"It's really good to see you smile and tease, Shepard," the doctor said quietly.
"I was thinking a lot about what you said. At least I found one thing that can still make me smile as much as before. Banter with Joker."
"May I ask you how much you trust Miss Chambers?"
"Exactly as much as I trust Miranda and the Asshole."
"Then why is she here?"
"She's so… so wrong for the role of a double agent. She told me she is going to be spying on me and the crew the moment she met me. She's so stupid, naïve and… I don't even know. I can't believe he put that kind of slut on board to keep up with me. I wonder if the Asshole ever knew anything about me at all. Like, all the psychological training N3, N4 and N5 involves? Does he not realise that I can spin his Kelly in a dance of my own choosing? I can bend her to my will any time I want, I can convince her of anything. He probably saw my shooting range scores and stopped reading my file at that point."
"Perhaps there is more to Kelly than we think, then?"
"I hope so," Jo shook her head a little. "I really do. Otherwise I'll be seriously insulted. That's why she's still here. She amuses me because she's helpless against me with her psychology degree like a hanar baby against a rhino."
"Be careful anyway, Commander," Chakwas nodded. "Nobody is invincible, not even you, not even your willpower."
"Yeah, I know. I'm already failing."
"How so?"
"I can't will myself to fall asleep. Getting drunk only got me nightmares I really don't want to repeat."
Chakwas stepped closer with a professional look:
"You have trouble sleeping?"
"I've had a total of two hours of sleep ever since my resurrection."
"It's been almost three weeks, Shepard."
"Tell me about it. I've tried sleeping pills but they didn't do a thing."
"Come to me later, I'll see if I can get you something stronger."
"Thanks."
Jo went to Miranda's cell personally.
"Hand them over," she said to the other woman. The bitch eyed her with cold disdain:
"No. I believe in what Cerberus stands for and I won't give up my loyalty."
"Fine by me," Jo said and waved three soldiers over. "Hold her still," she ordered them. She made sure beforehand that everyone on the ship knew – Miranda using biotics was punishable by immediate death, and the bitch knew that, too. Jo swept everything that remained on the shelves after the initial cleaning into a plastic bag, which included all of Miranda's clothes, even her underwear. When the room became even more barren than before, Jo looked at the brunette being held by three men, as she eyed Jo with a murderous glance.
"Either you strip that thing right now or I cut it off you," she pointed at Miranda's catsuit. It was the last thing on the whole ship sprouting a Cerberus logo. Miranda was defiant, when she raised her chin and remained silent, unmoving. Jo took a hunting knife from her belt and approached the woman. She grabbed the fabric on her body, lifted it, and generously cut the patches with the Cerberus signs out, leaving gaping holes. She had taken Miranda's shoes away already, and now all the Dolly had was a half-cut piece of fabric stretching over her curves and failing miserably to hold.
"Humiliating me will not prove your superiority, Shepard," Miranda called after her, when Jo was leaving. "It only shows how much you're afraid of me."
Jo stopped in the doorway, and everybody else in the mess hall turned to listen.
"I know," she said honestly and very seriously. "I am scared of you. There is no person in the whole wide world that creeps me out more than you do."
"And your way to deal with the unknown is to shun it?" Miranda tried to claw her little nails of desperation into Jo while she still had her attention. She'd been isolated in her cell for almost three weeks now with nothing to do and nobody to speak to.
"It's better to cut off a rotten limb in order to preserve the rest of the body from getting infected."
"Rotten limb? I am a genetically modified human being, everything about me gives me an edge. I am the future of our race."
"Then how come you're so barren?"
Miranda gasped in the first real surprise since Jo met her, and everyone who listened in dropped their jaws.
"How did you… My file is classified!"
"I don't need to read your file to know that. One look at you tells me you're a woman who compensates. You can't create life within your own body, so you try everything you can to prove to the world that you are worth anything at all."
"That is not true. You just made a lucky guess."
"If you choose to believe that, I won't stop you. Truth is, you may be genetically modified to fulfil your daddy's sex doll fantasy, but as far as humanity goes, as far as any organic being goes, or any being with an emotional drive and a moral compass, you are rotten to the core. You are emotionally retarded to the point of being unable to function in society. General consensus about you seems to be 'pure cold-hearted bitch', and those are not my words. You never had and never will have any friends because you don't know the first thing about what connects people. You can sexually manipulate people with your looks, but anyone can tell you: you can't have a relationship with a plastic sex doll. You measure people's worth by the stats in their med file and their psych evaluation. You don't know how to actually deal with people, you cannot care for someone. This is why no one else will ever care for you. Caring means putting your soul out there, and you don't seem to have a soul to put out there. And that freaks me out like nothing else in the galaxy. You're artificial to the core."
There was deadly silence all around the ship. Jo knew the entire crew was listening, even if only through the intercom.
"You are preposterous," Miranda had her stony mask on, trying to keep her last shred of dignity in the suit that slid off her, and couldn't. "I'm not artificial. I was born very much like any other human being."
"Genetically modified to the point of being artificial, that's how you explained to me your sorry condition on the very first day."
"I certainly did not!"
"I can read between the lines. Yes, Miranda, I can actually read," she snorted. "I know you and your sugar daddy think I'm just a soldier. But you have no idea. You are cancer on my ship and I would have killed you right away, only some people don't want me to stoop down to your level. They care about me. So I let you live. But don't mistake my mercy for something it's not. You are my enemy, the worst kind of enemy. You stand against everything I believe in. Like any cancer, you should be killed to save the rest of the body, and only my trust in the power of these doors and these guards stands between you and my incendiary round in your head."
"I may not be able to carry children, but everything else about me more than makes up for that, Shepard."
"No, not really. You didn't work your ass off to make yourself better, like the rest of us did, you took what you have for granted and declared yourself perfect. You didn't earn it, you don't deserve it. You do not deserve our company."
"I brought you back to life, didn't I? If that's not an achievement, then what is?"
"You wanted to install a control chip in my head, first of all. Second: necromancy. That's what you were doing in that lab. Raising the dead. Digging elbow-deep in a corpse's insides. Cutting up dead flesh. Did you take pleasure in that? Necromancy is one of the creepiest remnants of human barbarism for a reason, Dolly. And yet the creepiest part of it is that you honestly expect me to be grateful to you for it."
"I gave you back your life!"
"My time was over. My work was done. If you were as great as you think you are, why didn't you save the galaxy from the Reapers? What do you need me for, oh so highly intelligent and perfect one?"
This was what finally shut Miranda up, but only for a moment.
"I'm not a leader," she said. "You can't expect everyone to be as charismatic as you. That's why leaders exist, that's why they're so rare. You can lead, and I can't, but I do my work to the best of my abilities and there is no such thing as impossible for me."
"Oh, there is. Have you ever been in love?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Everything," Jo said. Miranda remained silent, clearly confused about Jo's words, and the rest of the crew remained silent, trying to hide the fact that they were eavesdropping.
Jo left the soldiers in charge of the door again and brought Miranda's clothes down to the cargo bay personally. She didn't say anything to all the eavesdroppers.
Joker's hands shook a little. Frankly, watching Shepard tear Miranda a new one was better than any porn. This was the woman who inspired a whole generation, who commanded respect and loyalty in millions of hearts and minds. He would always be proud to say that he was a part of her army, loyal to the core.
He could also see how her words were affecting the rest of the crew. How they straightened up, lifted their chins, proud of their own hard work and achievements, touched by her faith in them and moved deep in their souls by a sense of belonging.
This was Shepard magic in the making. This was why she was the N7 Lieutenant Commander Spectre Shepard. They belonged to her now, as she belonged to them.
Damnit, of course he loved seeing the woman behind the legend, the person behind the hero, her private moments between publicity. But fuck, now and then even he was allowed to enjoy the legend! Because it was there, it was a part of Shepard just like her private moments were. His heart ached at the thought that even the most exaggerated myths about her were true – she was really THAT great, and he was proud of her. Proud of everything about her: the grandeur, the cruelty, the overwhelming, fierce protectiveness, the simplicity, the secrets, the gentleness, the humanity, the alienness. He would never be ashamed to say that he was a believer. Yes, he would follow her anywhere, do anything for her.
He set course for Illium to pick up two new team members. The whole crew was in good spirits, even EDI. Except later, when he stayed at his work station way too long to go through systems check with EDI and realised most people were already asleep, he found Shepard sitting alone in the mess hall. It was almost dark there and she sat at the dinner table with her eyes closed and feet raised onto a chair next to her, as if she was asleep, except she wasn't.
"Shepard?" He asked carefully and she cracked an eye open. "What are you doing here?"
"Resting."
"Why here?"
"Because I don't sleep and I'm sick of my cabin."
Joker's chest tightened. She was a great actress, a fantastic one. The inspiration and grandeur she'd been oozing earlier today was gone and he could see the empty shell, the shadow of the woman she used to be. The difference hit him like a brick wall.
He grabbed a chair before his legs gave in. Everything had its price. She was paying for being the hero of the galaxy and she would continue to pay for the rest of her days. Yes, she was the pillar of the world, she carried the whole weight of it, but nobody was asking if she was strong enough. Nobody was offering her help. The galaxy took her for granted. Even the closest and strongest of her friends, like Garrus and Wrex, always looked up to her for guidance.
Joker wondered if he really was the only one who could see any of this. She wasn't hiding, for fuck's sake, she was sitting right here in the mess hall! He remembered her primal screams from last night. It was all a part of the picture and he shivered at the thought that he was the only one blessed or cursed with the ability to see. It made him wonder about his own role in this apocalyptic tale.
"You need to sleep, Joker. Go to bed," she interrupted his heavy thoughts with a smile. "I'll be fine."
Joker wished he could do anything else right now, but in the end he simply got up and left for the dorm without another word. This was getting too big for him. Yes, he was a believer. Yes, he was loyal and would go with her to the end of the world. But the magnitude of what was happening suddenly rolled over him like a tsunami.
His legs barely carried him to his bunk. He fell on it, breathing erratically, holding his chest as his heart pounded away. His mind was racing a mile a minute. He was having a panic attack. What was he doing here? Yes, he was flying the ship because nobody else could do it better than him. But on the grand scale of things, where the whole damn galaxy's salvation depended on one little human girl, what was he doing here? Why him? He was a cripple, not even a warrior. What could he possibly do for the galaxy? Did he even care about this stupid, ungrateful galaxy?
They were in the middle of an apocalypse and yet only the people on one tiny ship seemed to be aware of it. The rest of the world was blissfully ignorant. Shepard had always been the one destined to pay the price for saving those ignorant fools, mostly from themselves. But he was right here, on the same tiny ship, a speck of dust in the big picture. He was one of those few who knew of the apocalypse and tried to stop it. What would be his price to pay?
Whatever it would be, he knew it would be the end of him, when the time came.
Joker didn't know if he could do it. Flying the ship – easy. Flying the Normandy – anything but easy. Normandy stood for so many things. He didn't know if he was ready for any of this.
His chest heaved, trying to pump more oxygen into his system, but he still felt like he was suffocating. He was about to start screaming, just like Shepard did, when suddenly a ship-wide alarm blasted in the speakers and threw him and the rest of the sleeping crew out of their beds.
