Jo couldn't wait to feel the first signs of the geth presence in her brain. Something was bound to happen eventually, right? She knew that Joker, Karin, Garrus, Tali and Vega (the only ones aside from EDI who knew about it) waited just as impatiently for her report. In the meantime the Normandy remained on Rannoch, only lifting off once to help the geth to dump the dead Reaper into the sun. Jo remembered all too well how even a dead machine could affect the minds of people working near it. She'd met Legion on the carcass of one such Reaper, after all. The only way Jo could think of to get a clean break from the thing's strange powers was to incinerate it.

Xen protested vehemently, almost violently, against such an action. She wanted to study the Reaper. It had taken the collective and united body of quarian admirals and captains, geth and the Normandy crew to overrule her and make sure that she hadn't stolen and hidden any crucial parts from the carcass.

Jo insisted on Gerrel's trial and made sure to speak publicly in front of the entire Rannoch population. It wasn't her goal to have him banished, but she needed the rest of the quarians to see the error of his ways and to learn a very valuable lesson about war and peace.

Not every quarian was embracing their newly found friendship with the geth. Some still held on to their hatred and bigotry. This was still very much a war, but Jo put down all her weapons and appeared among the people in her everyday uniform, making herself softer, approachable for complaints. People came to her, spoke to her, asked her opinion, but most often they asked her what they were supposed to do now. There was no longer one big conflict to solve with a grand gesture. There were a million small fires to put out and Jo took the time to address them, one at a time. Every calmed and reassured quarian was a victory.

Her whole crew helped. They were quite surprised to find out how well the quarians knew the Normandy, but realised soon enough that Tali hadn't been shy with praise when she returned home after serving on the famous ship. And the quarians listened. They valued their opinions and admired their ease when it came to dealing with the intimidating Primes.

The geth in turn found this interaction with organics incredibly fascinating, just the way Legion had. Now that they knew they would be heard, they started making suggestions for how to cannibalise the quarian fleet in order to create a well-functioning settlement for the large number of organics in the shortest time possible. Jo encouraged them and made the quarians listen.

Ending a war was often easy. Making the peace stick was one of the hardest jobs in the galaxy and it was exactly what Jo loved doing most. She immersed herself into this thankless, yet gratifying experience for almost two weeks before duty called again. In all that time nothing out of the ordinary had happened with her new 'passenger'. It was not until the second night of their flight towards Benning when Joker asked her why she was sitting in the co-pilot's chair and doing nothing when only a few hours ago she'd complained about the incredible amount of reports she'd had to read.

"I already finished reading them," Jo said.

"If there was so little to read, why'd you complain?" He snorted. That made her pause. There hadn't been 'little' to read. She'd complained for a reason. It had looked like a week's worth of reports that Hackett, Anderson, the Council, Nyreen and Jo's countless contacts had dropped on her while she was busy on Rannoch. How the fuck had she managed to finish it all in less than one hour? She checked her datapad and confirmed: she was indeed done with the files, and she could remember each report in perfect detail.

"My love," she reached over to touch Joker's bicep. "I have a suspicion I've developed a case of fast reading. Really fast reading."

"Like... geth kind of fast?" He turned his attention to her fully.

"Could be. We need to test this."

"Commander, I could devise a simple test for you," EDI spoke up from the ceiling. Her synthetic body was down in the cargo bay helping Vega with his latest assignment: they played the shell game until he would learn to move his hands quick enough to fool a synthetic. Jo did not expect to hear back from him for another few days at least.

"What kind of a test?" Joker asked. The console in front of her came to life and showed a long procession of pictures, text and schematics. Jo had some difficulty following it all, but when after ten seconds the flow of information stopped, she found that she could recite everything she'd just seen word for word.

"Geez, EDI, warn a guy before you blind him," Joker complained from his seat, rubbing his eyes. "I could fly without my sight, but I'd prefer not to! What the hell did you just do?"

"I showed Shepard the Quantum Entanglement Communicator developer's manual, at a speed that is known to be beyond any organic being's ability to process. What was just a flash for you, Jeff, was quite slow for me."

"It was not a flash," Jo frowned. "I saw it, I read it all, and I remember all the details."

Joker eyed her for a moment.

"Try it again, faster," he advised eventually. "Let's find out how quickly you can go."

They tried back and forth for a while until what EDI showed her eventually turned into a blur and Jo called for a break.

"You are now eighty seven times faster and more responsive to visual stimuli than an average human being, Commander," EDI summed it up. "However, you are still by far not as fast as an artificial intelligence."

"My hardware is probably limiting me," Jo shrugged. Joker rolled his eyes.

"So what next?" He wondered. "Are you going to start moving with Superman speed? Shoot faster and more precisely? Become even stronger than before?"

"I do not believe that any physical improvement is possible," EDI concluded. "The geth unit is situated in Shepard's brain and has access only to her nervous system. As Shepard says correctly, her hardware is still the same. Only the software could get an upgrade from this symbiosis. I do not believe 'Superman speed' is possible, but Shepard already has the muscle memory necessary for aiming and shooting. The geth processing speed might help her utilise this basic knowledge to achieve a better result."

EDI seemed to have grasped exactly what Jo had imagined would happen when she's asked Legion for the seed. Now Joker was hearing it from an outside source.

"I guess that's... manageable," he said eventually. He sounded like he was grudgingly admitting that he was wrong and Jo was right all along. "If that's all there is to this geth pregnancy, I can live with that. I'm sure some more abilities will pop up soon enough, but it sounds... acceptable."

"You've been holding your breath all this time?" Jo rubbed his shoulder in an attempt to give him some comfort. "It's going to be fine, you know. It's not going to take over my personality. It's just a handy upgrade for some of my senses."

"Of course I've been holding my breath!" Joker exclaimed, caught her hand and pressed the inside of her wrist to his lips. "You couldn't have known what would happen when you got the thing, and I had the right to be worried! But... as long as the effects stay along the line of fast reading or better shooting, I'm fine with it. More than fine. Anything that helps you survive on the battlefield is my best friend. And if you get more free time out of this fast reading thing, well, who am I to complain if you spend it with me?"

"You are an amazing man," Jo felt a little knot in her throat and her heart melted in her chest. "The most amazing man in the universe. I love you."

The look he gave her told her everything she needed to know to be blissfully happy.


James had real trouble concentrating. His forehead was sweating, his knee jumping and a swarm of gunships was practicing manoeuvres in his guts. Oddly, no one else paid much attention to his predicament, which was a miracle because at the moment he sat at the nightly poker table in the recreation room with Ken, Garrus, Tali, Gabby, Rodney, Javik, Campbell and Westmoreland as his opponents. For a bunch of people who played poker regularly they sure seemed to be good at ignoring his obvious nervousness and discomfort.

Or perhaps... Perhaps they all knew exactly where it came from.

It came from across the room and by the evil turn of fate James was the only one at the table who had the direct line of vision at the source. Everyone else at the table ignored the couple on the couch entirely.

Or perhaps... they didn't.

Shepard had been banned from the poker table this evening. The ETA to Benning was still over twenty hours and the crew had some time for poker, but when Shepard and Joker showed up in the rec room together, everyone groaned. Those two usually cleaned out everyone else and then ran off giggling to their cabin to celebrate. Or to pay off their debts to each other. Tonight his table companions asked Shepard to stay away from the game and give everyone else a chance. She took it in stride. Ever since she and Joker reported the first signs of activity the geth unit in her brain showed, she seemed in a far better, relaxed mood. Joker was the same, probably having accepted the reality of it. So, after being banned from poker, the two of them settled on a couch across the room and were spending the evening finding creative ways to make out. The view was now burned into James' retinas.

The two of them weren't even doing anything obscene. Both perfectly clothed, they were intertwined in a cosy and comfortable way that had almost nothing sexual about it. Even their hands stayed chastely above their necks. It was the pure joy of their leisurely kisses, the innocence of their caresses and the ecstatic delight in their eyes, which made the sight worse than any porn for James. They were in their own little world on their couch, far away from everyone else, and deliriously happy enjoying each other, basking in their togetherness.

James' face and neck were sweating. He tried to concentrate on the game because his assignment from Shepard was not only to win, but to report all the tells his companions had, including his own. She already knew them, so she would know if he was not attentive enough. The other players had no idea he was supposed to study them, but still no one had commented on his nervousness. Perhaps he had never been successful enough trying to hide his true feelings for Shepard. Perhaps they all knew exactly how looking at her and Joker was affecting him. Perhaps they were better friends than he realised, for not one of them had ever mentioned it. After all, they were all very much aware of the shameless public display of affection - oh, such affection... - on the couch.

It wasn't like PDAs were tabu. Shepard had put her foot down and romantic relationships on the ship had been accepted. If anyone was against it, they kept it to themselves. She and Joker kept civil while they worked, but all bets were off when their shift ended. Tonight's making out was actually quite innocent compared to some other... incidents.

James' face heated up immediately when he remembered last week, when he, Garrus, Esteban and Ken came to this very room after helping the quarians dismantle one of their ships, and found Shepard and Joker playing poker against each other. James remembered how his brain went completely blank for a second before it registered what it was he was seeing. Shepard had been topless. Completely. Not even a bra. Unfortunately, she calmly collected her shirt from the pile next to Joker and donned it before James could really have a look.

Funny thing was that she hadn't even gasped or made any sudden movements. Had she done that, he would have paid a much closer attention. As it was, he froze and didn't remember seeing anything much more than an expanse of porcelain-white skin and a few orange scars, before the other three men bumped into him and distracted him. By the time he caught up the skin was gone. Garrus and Ken teased the couple a little about taking their strip poker sessions to their own room, while Shepard smiled enigmatically and Joker grumbled. They sounded like such a thing was commonplace on the Normandy. James and Esteban had both been stunned, but for different reasons, of course.

So yeah, compared to that night the happy couple was being very chaste today.

Key word - 'happy'. It was amazing how the entire ship - not just the crew, but the ship itself - seemed to be fine-tuned to the relationship between Shepard and Joker. The day she ended the war between the quarians and the geth the two of them had had a fight over the geth in her brain. It unsettled everyone. Even though they seemed close and tight the next day, something was still amiss and everyone felt it. Everyone knew something was wrong on the Normandy.

Today they seemed to have made up for real and their kissing in public was clearly good for the moral. A dark cloud above them all disappeared and everyone felt lighter, more energetic, secure. Everyone at the poker table visibly ignored the making out session, but they all basked in the glow of what it meant. James really tried not to use terms like 'ruling couple' or 'parents' when he thought of Joker and Lola, but this experience showed clearly that their relationship set the mood.


Benning was a disaster. Jo's reports said that when the Reapers hit the Arcturus station they sent troops to disrupt communications on Benning to render the planet with its shipyard useless. Now, a few months later, there were only a few survivors left from a huge and blooming city. Jo, Vega and Tali helped evacuate the last batch of humans who had been cornered by the Reaper forces. Jo showed no mercy decimating those attackers and by the time the humans reached safety there was no enemy left standing. Jo put her rifle away and took a little breather.

The city had been thriving only recently. Now there was scorched earth and blood stains rusting on stone and metal everywhere.

Jo turned around to scan the horizon. The part of town where Silvia Moreau had lived was barely visible from here. She wondered if any of those kids she'd met there in autumn had survived at all. She knew Joker wouldn't ask her, but this wasn't just about him and his mother's home. Jo wanted to see for herself.

"I'm going to check it out," she radioed Joker and gave Steve directions. Joker said nothing, but she could feel his laboured breath through the com.

Steve landed the shuttle in he middle of the street. Jo stepped off and took in the ghost town surrounding her. Most of the houses were intact, but the wind tore freely through the broken doors and windows. Its ghastly whistling showed that there was nobody around. Nobody at all.

Silvia's house had taken a rocket from what Jo could tell. Only half of it still stood. Jo assumed that her neighbours had put up some fight before they'd been killed or displaced. Joker's breathing became faster and more uneven as she approached the door. By some miracle it still stood, a laughable guard to the ruins behind it. It wasn't even stuck when Jo opened it. Her throat grew tight. This hadn't been her home, but since she'd never had anything resembling a home, this was as close as it got for her. She'd played in this yard with the kids, freed this door from the snow, cooked in this kitchen, slept in that guest room, laughed, argued, had sex and the first bit of normalcy in this place. Now it was gone.

The charred remains crumbled under her heavy boots. Memories of Joker yelling at his mother for being shallow swarmed in her head. What wouldn't Jo give to keep this place safe from the ugliness Joker was warning Silvia about. What wouldn't she give to not be standing here in her full battle gear, covered in Reaper blood. Her work caught up even with this idyllic place where she'd sought refuge from it.

The living room survived a little better than the bedrooms, perhaps due to the fireproof insulation Silvia had put in the walls. Whatever the reason, most of the bookshelves and things along the west wall were still whole. Jo picked up two items.

A photo album Silvia had shown her with lovingly collected and printed pictures of Joker and his family. He should have it, she thought. The second item Jo picked up for herself. A sewing chest. Personally, Jo had absolutely no use for the item and no concept of what most of the things inside it were for, but the chest was so Silvia, wooden, with carvings, old-fashioned like everything else in the house. Jo wanted to keep it even of only to preserve this nostalgic feeling Silvia surrounded herself with. Jo didn't share the nostalgia, but she wanted to preserve the memory of it, a piece of family history. If for the rest of her life Joker's family would remain the only family she ever got, she would stick to that and be proud.

James and Tali gave Jo some privacy as she walked around. When she exited, she looked down the street. The house with the blue roof where little Harriett had lived with her family was gone completely. The Janet house still stood, but showed more damage than Silvia's. Jo wondered what happened to the Janet siblings as she walked towards it.

She didn't have to wonder for long. All that remained of the house where she'd had a dinner once were burnt walls. Everything else had been consumed by fire, including a group of humans in the bedroom. Jo found the scorched bodies of at least seven people huddled behind a makeshift barricade. The Reapers hadn't bothered to take them alive, just burned them and left the house. There was nothing Jo could do for the bodies, either. They'd burned almost to ashes and the weather had stripped them down to nothing but bones. Burying them seemed pointless at this point, unless Jo wanted to go through every house in the neighbourhood and bury everyone.

Somehow she didn't really feel like doing that. The sickening pile of bones in the corner was a statement to the tragedy of Benning in itself. Beautiful Kat Janet and her eager, excitable brother Kevin were no more, along with a bunch of their friends. Little Harriett and her friend Kimali, their parents and everyone else - dead or gone.

Jo left the house and stood in the middle of the street, looking around. She could do nothing here except speak the last blessing for the departed.

"Those who give love are loved. Those who keep the light in their heart are blessed. May the morning star guide you gently to the Golden City beyond. A white stallion shall greet you, a proud eagle show you the Gardens of Eternity and the black serpent be your companion to the depth of the Endless Sea."

When they were halfway back to the Normandy and Joker was still silent, Tali spoke up quietly, as if afraid to break the sombre mood:

"It was beautiful, what you said down there. Is it an Earth blessing?"

"Not from Earth," Jo shrugged. "A little colony far away. I heard it from a local wise woman as she helped us collect the bodies of my fallen soldiers after we saved them from the batarian slavers."

"I shall remember it," Tali said. Vega was very quiet. The sights on Benning probably reminded him what was happening on Earth and what he was training for right now.

The crew was very quiet that night as the Normandy left Benning and took course to another place Hackett needed Jo's help with. There were numerous places like that and Jo wanted to help as many as she could, even though saving everyone wasn't possible. The crew knew that Joker's mother had lived on Benning, they noticed that Jo had taken some private time on the planet to visit a familiar place. What they saw through her helmet camera feed killed all merriment. Nobody felt like vid night or poker or even dinner. Instead people busied themselves with work, sought solitude or, like Jo and Karin, sat at the mess hall table in silence, reflecting on everything in heavy silence.

This war was becoming a rollercoaster Jo wasn't sure she could handle. The moments of blurry action were separated by days upon days of uneventful flight from one place to another. Moments of delirious happiness she could find in Joker's presence could instantly turn into deep grief and sorrow. Moments of absolute power, like ending the geth-quarian war, became moments of petrifying helplessness, like the sight of the charred bones in the Janet house.

In a way this was a familiar territory. Jo had trained for this at the ICA and spent two years living this exact rollercoaster life between becoming an N7 and getting the assignment on the Normandy SR1. Two years of being the perfect instrument, hard to break, always ready to fix herself, precise, talented, forceful, calculating. She could deal with incredible amount of pressure. During those two years she'd developed a way to keep going, no matter what life threw her way: by being a little less than human.

Jo had shut herself off from many feelings, mostly anything that had to do with love. She had found a way to separate herself from anything that would shake her. The result was the kind of person she had been when she'd first met Joker, Garrus, Tali, Liara and Wrex. Not exactly cold and unfeeling, but definitely alien to many human traits. That had been the reason for her successful career. She remembered now how Alenko's flirting, Garrus', Wrex's and Tali's friendship and Joker's mere existence had literally made her think about romantic love for the first time in her life.

Many things had changed since then, and Jo didn't mean being dead for two years, either. She'd learned how to be human, how to feel, how to give herself and accept the gift of another person's heart. She cherished every moment of her own humanity now and didn't want to surrender even a small portion of it.

But the world was working hard against her. The only way to fight this war was to become the person she'd been. Driven, calculating, meticulous, slightly inhuman. Garrus had asked her the other day how they were supposed to make those decisions: let ten million people die so that twenty million somewhere else could live? She couldn't give him an answer. She would have loved to tell him that calculating losses like what he called a 'cold-hearted dictator' would make them worse than the Reapers. It would have been a nice sentiment, had she not destroyed Bahak with all those batarian lives just to give the rest of the galaxy a little reprieve. She could have told him that this ruthless calculus of war was essentially an unavoidable necessity, but the idealistic optimist in her, who felt for every single person in the galaxy, didn't want to admit to that harsh fact. There was no right answer to his questions and Garrus was one of those very few people for whom Jo didn't need to pretend. She could admit that she didn't know any better than he did, and somehow she knew that he loved and respected her more for admitting it than he would have if she'd given him another speech. There was no bullshit between them.

Fact was, that conversation and what she saw on Benning made her think hard. She could return to being a cold-hearted dictator who would calculate the losses and let those millions die in order to let others live. She could also remain the compassionate mother to every living thing in the galaxy and spend herself completely trying to save everyone. What she couldn't do was be both at the same time. It was taking too much out of her. The rollercoaster of feelings and emotions was tearing her apart.

It was a decision she would have to make eventually, and she would have to do it alone. Joker couldn't help her here. He represented one side of this divide, the human and caring side. Had it not been for him and their love, Jo would have easily become the dictator the Alliance, the Council and the rest of the galaxy needed her to be. But had it not been for the war, Jo would have embraced her humanity and her lover fully without ever looking back at her career as a calculating killer. Had it not been for the war, she would have become someone very different from Commander Fucking Shepard. A gardener perhaps, or a business woman, or even an actress.

Dreaming of what could have been was useless. People looked up to her for answers, solutions and miracles. Jo could postpone making the decision for a while yet, but her strength was starting to fade ever so slowly. It was almost funny how many people believed she could do anything. If she truly could, she would have found a way to be the dictator and the mother all at once. Alas, despite having found solutions to many impossible situations in her life Jo saw no way out of this one.

Sometimes she returned in her thoughts to the conversation she'd had with Joker when he learned of his mother's death. She told him that she would do anything for him, even if he asked her to give up the fight and let the galaxy die. Sometimes she even wished he would do that. Make the decision for her. Make it easy for her.

She knew that would never happen. No matter what people thought of Joker, Jo knew that he was a hero in his own right. He was selfless enough to let her go fight this war to her death, no matter how hard his heart would break. Usually Jo admired that strength more than anything, she cherished it.

But sometimes she hated it. Him. Because he would never be so selfish. He would do anything to make her life easier, but he would not do that.