The fleets were gathering to engage the Reapers in the Sol system. Jo had no reason to stall. She ordered the ship to move to the rendezvous point. ETA - two days.

In those two days she coordinated with all the fleets and worked almost without sleep, but she still found some time to settle her own affairs. Yes, she even wrote a will, in which she made a list of people who would inherit her ship in case she died and the Normandy remained intact. With Joker as number one and the recipient of all her possessions, she then named Garus, Tali, Wrex, Vega, Grunt, Liara and finally Ken and Gabby, in that particular order. If none of those people survived, the ship was to be destroyed completely. If the ship was too damaged, no parts of it could be used to create another.

Jo settled her finances by making Joker the primary beneficiary, but divided part of those millions Liara made her (or all of them in case Joker died) between all her children. Someone out there could suddenly find themselves quite rich by the end of that battle. Jo didn't know what happened to Kolyat and Alice, since they'd definitely been on the Citadel when the Reapers moved it, but she named them anyway.

When they arrived and met with the rest of the fleet in Arcturus System, she coordinated knowledge between all the ships. She made sure all captains and fighters knew about all known Reaper weaknesses and strengths. She made a public announcement about a Leviathan that would join them in the fight very shortly, and not only made sure they knew it would be on their side, but also made everyone realise that this alliance would not last for long, given the Leviathan's way of thinking.

When all was said and done, Jo made her last round across the whole ship to have a few words with all her people before she would head to her cabin. As always, Vega was the last she visited. Like so many months ago, she found him working out in his private gym with a certain air of doom around him. To be frank, she didn't know how to talk to the man any longer. So much had happened between them...

He'd been a young, naive but determined soldier with a fan-crush on her when they met, but then they got stuck together on Earth and forced intimacy brought them a lot closer than Jo had wished. And then he got his ICA invitation and stepped up. Right about now Jo could honestly say that he'd earned his N3 and was well underway to earn N4. He still had that maddening flirting issue to get over and he'd showed a spectacular lack of judgement when he tattooed an N7 badge on his back, but one thing could not be denied: In battle Vega had become her equal. He'd trained like a man possessed and soaked up her every lesson and it showed. Still, there was that lack of judgement that prevented her from truly feeling close to him.

And then there was the issue of him being in love with her. Joker knew about it, in fact, he was the one who told Jo, and the rest of the crew probably knew as well. Jo had ignored it as long as she could, but it still made her a little uneasy in his presence. She would never be with him, but she knew she was hurting him my flaunting her relationship with Joker at him, and that gave her no pleasure whatsoever.

"Got something for you," she said and gave the young man a datapad.

"Oh, yeah?" He sounded grim. "What's on it?"

"Everything you hadn't had a chance to learn about ICT. Everything that I would have required you to do before I considered nominating you for the honours."

He slowly took the pad and activated it. She put text there, but also a lot of vid footage from her own training times. She knew when his brows knitted together that he was scanning the labels. Torture. Hostile interrogation. Interrogation under drug influence. Command. Conduct. Strategy. Tactics. Honours and Morals. Psychic training. Therapy. Profiling. Manipulation. Motivation. Character reading. Decisions. Psychology and much more. The stuff of advanced N levels, those she'd hardly spoken to him about so far.

"So, if you have time and wish at some point later in your life, you can watch this and educate yourself. I can't guarantee there will still be an ICA, but you could use this to become something greater." She turned to go but his hand was suddenly on her wrist.

"Lola, is this goodbye?"

"Just in case," she shrugged.

"No. Not like this."

"Neither of us has a choice in this matter. Take it or leave it, it's up to you."

He thought about it, then held the datapad against his chest like a precious treasure.

"Just make sure I don't need to use it. Come back alive and teach me."

"I'll try." Jo wanted to leave, but the desolation in his eyes made her linger a little. He put the datapad aside and started cleaning a pistol. "So, any plans for tonight? I hear everyone on the ship is pairing off somewhere. Nobody wants to be alone on a night like this."

"No plans," he turned away and hid his face in the shadows. He wasn't looking in her eyes, she realised. He hadn't been looking straight into her eyes for some weeks now.

"Everyone's trying to spend this time with their loved ones," she mused. "Is there really nobody who would keep you company tonight?"

"Commander, the woman I love isn't available right now," he said casually, but Jo detected an undertone of dull pain in his voice.

"I'm sure," she said and stepped closer to be able to speak softly. "There must be someone else except me on this ship who would appreciate your company tonight."

"Don't flatter yourself, Lola," he said with every effort to sound nonchalant. Jo searched his eyes:

"Oh, James, I have it on a very good authority that you're in love with me."

"Whose authority would that be?"

"It's the way you don't look at me right now."

To prove her point, he continued assembling the pistol in silence.

"James, I'm sorry you're in pain. I wish you were not. It gives me no pleasure at all watching someone suffer like this. Especially since it's my happiness that causes you pain. But as you have well learned by now, we can't choose who we fall in love with. Our hearts just go for it and no rational reasoning can ever explain why it happens."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged slightly, still not looking at her.

"Tonight's not the night to keep lying to each other. I'm going to come clean with you. From the day we met I kept doing a number on you, proving my superiority, subduing you, emasculating you in every sparring match we had. It's what my instincts tell me to do with you, because we're so much alike. I told you time and time again that you were not man enough. Truth is, no matter who wins in those sparring matches, you are good enough. You are man enough. That is the reason why my instincts keep firing up every time I see you. They warn me that you're potentially very dangerous. It's just my luck that I'm more experienced in hand-to-hand. What I need you to know is that you're not a pushover or a loser. You deserve better than me. You've proven yourself enough times. Life is just a tricky bitch like that – my heart belongs to another guy."

"Just tell me one thing, Lola," he whispered, as if to himself. "What is it about him that makes you so happy?"

Jo leaned back a little, giving it some thought.

"Apart from rocking my world every night? Very simply put, he's the strongest person I know. He's the biggest asshole and the kindest heart. He pushes against all rules and authority, but he follows the call of his duty to the extent nobody in the galaxy can even imagine. After all, he's the man who will have to bring the ultimate sacrifice."

"The ultimate sacrifice?"

"Send me into the final battle. If I die, the galaxy will move on without me. Each of you guys will mourn and find comfort in each other's arms. But not him. If I die, the pain he'll feel will be his alone, he will lose much more than even you would. I bet that he'd love to drag me off to the most forgotten corner of the world and hide me there safe and sound until the war is over, but he'll never even mention anything like that. He'll send me into battle tomorrow without a fuss. That kind of strength makes him everything good and right that this galaxy has to offer. In my books it makes him a god. People like him make this world worth saving, and every day I thank whatever fate brought him into my life."

There was a long pause between them. Then James sighed:

"I hope someone speaks that way about me one day."

"So do I, frankly said. Anyway. Get some sleep, if you can."

"Save it, Lola," he grinned at her, a new sparkle in his eyes. "You're not my mum to tell me what to do."

"Don't push it, Stripper," she grinned and punched him in the arm. Painfully.

Back in her quarters she found Joker sitting on the edge of the bed.

"You almost made me cry there, Jo," he grinned. He had been listening to her and James. Or EDI had been, and told him.

"What's true is true." Jo came into the room and suddenly found herself at a loss. With her rounds finished, guns cleaned, everything prepared, there was nothing else she was required to do. Nothing else she could do about the war. Still, there was restlessness in her that made her blood pump faster than normal. How could she hope to get any sleep that night?

"Hey, do you want me to take your mind off things?" Joker asked, got up and came closer.

"Please," she nodded.

He reached in his pocket and produced a small box. Before Jo could even realise what was happening, he opened it and held it to her. Inside sat a platinum ring with a little twist and a tiny diamond in the middle.

"I want you to marry me, Jo."

The importance of the question hadn't even registered with her. The answer was so easy that she didn't bother making any scene about it. She took the ring and slid her other arm around Joker's waist, inspecting the simple but graceful object.

"Of course I'll marry you. After." They both knew what "after" meant, and they both knew why he had asked her today. Jo looked inside the ring and found some words engraved. "J+J written in the stars" As she looked at the phrase, she teared up. When she remembered all they'd been through together and apart, she sobbed:

"Written in the stars. Couldn't have said it better. Put it on," she gave him the ring and offered her finger.

"I think after we save everyone, we deserve a whole planet for ourselves," he said, putting the ring on her finger and tugging her to the bed. "Just you and me, and all our friends who constantly visit."

"Call me strange, but I want to live in a simple, small house on that planet of ours," Jo curled up at his side, hugging his arm.

"We'll grow our own food in the garden that you'll plant and take long walks through the untouched nature. I'll be flying a shuttle between trees and you'll use tree trunks for target practise or something."

"We will have a huge hangar for our baby with everything she might ever want."

"And then we'll have a few other babies. Flesh and brittle bone this time, though. A boy and two girls. All blond, just like you."

"I insist on the boy being a striking green-eyed redhead."

"We'll name them Carmen, Josephina and Caleb. And when you and I are old and wrinkly, we'll sit on the roof of our house, watch the sunset and annoy the fuck out of each other with old stories of our great deeds."

"And die on the same day, after we've seen our great-grandchildren."

"All twenty seven of them."

"Twenty seven? That's right there on the way to populate the whole planet."

"That's what I was going for."

"Then we should have more than three children."

"Maybe we will."

"We'll have a special day of the week when we only tell each other nice things."

"And a day when we watch porn."

"And one of those days we'll take the Normandy and fly through one of the inactive mass relays. Maybe we'll find a whole civilisation."

"And tell them we're their technological gods."

"Oh, no, I don't want any hype about me again."

"We'll manage. We're written in the stars, after all."

Jo was crying.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for a lifetime together. For the kids. For growing old. For the target practise. For everything."

"Thank you, too."

The morning came too soon and yet Jo was tired of waiting. Better to get this whole thing over with and go home, she thought.

But the morning also brought the necessity of a choice she had put off for so long. How would she go into this battle? As a feeling, caring woman, who'd just probably lost two of her children, a sister and the whole foundation of the world she was trying to save - the Council? If nothing else, the experience with her sister had showed her that such deep emotions made her not just vicious, they made her unpredictable, even to herself, even at the age of thirty (two) and with all the training and experience. Some things just hurt too deeply.

In case of doubt, the right thing to do is the right thing to do, that's what Mr Σ taught her and right now Jo knew that she could not be emotional. Not this time. And that meant ripping her own heart out.

She and Joker got up and dressed and then Jo took off the chain with the ring EDI had given her and the new engagement ring and put them all in Joker's hand.

"I can't wear jewellery in battle, I could break a finger if I punch someone, and anything that could lessen my chances of safe return will have to stay here. Keep them both safe for me, will you? I'm coming back for them."

Joker looked like he understood, but he toyed with the ring with some regret:

"No one has seen you wear it yet," he complained. Jo thought about it and held out her hand again:

"Give."

So they went to the mess hall and sat down for breakfast, but nobody seemed to pay attention to her hands, so at some point she just waved it in the air:

"People, what does a girl have to do to get her engagement ring noticed around here?"

Instantly they were swarmed by well wishing people, who pretty much all confessed that they'd been waiting for this from the day the Reapers attacked Earth.

But the fleets were waiting outside and Jo had a lot to do, so breakfast was cut short.

She gave Joker the ring again and sent him to the cockpit. She needed time alone. When she returned to her cabin, she asked EDI to give her complete privacy and locked herself in the bathroom. She leaned her hands on the sink and looked in the mirror. She'd been trained well in this. She'd done it before, but never had it been so difficult. Never had her heart been engaged so fully.

Never had it hurt so much.

She took a deep breath and looked inside herself. There it was - the love she felt for Joker, for her friends, for her kids, for the whole galaxy. What she was about to do would break her heart. It was like cutting up her own chest, ripping the tender organ out and slicing it in ribbons, voluntarily. Tears welled up in her eyes and started falling. Harder and harder. This was the last thing she wanted to do because she could remember how it felt being a person without love. She'd fought so hard to earn her current situation, to keep it, to maintain it, and now... She mourned the person she had become because even if she came back from this battle, she would never be the same.

Her knees went weak and she collapsed, weeping and heaving as hard as on the day Thane died, mourning herself this time, but the choice had been made. She looked inside herself, found that all-consuming, warm feeling of love, the fear of losing it, and breathed in and out deeply, cutting it off.

It felt like a knife to her gut, but the more she breathed, the less she felt the pain. All the meditation she'd done in her life made her quite efficient in this. Each breath she took blocked more and more of her emotions, cutting them off from her brain, sealing them somewhere so deep inside that they wouldn't come back today or even a week from now.

And the scariest, saddest part was that with each breath it was becoming easier and easier to do this.

When Jo got up to her feet again, she was a different person. She put a block on her mind so strong that nothing could break it for the foreseeable future. She would have time to fight this fight, and until it was over she would no longer be a woman in love. Oh, the emotions were still there, but there was now a deep disconnect between them and her rational side. She was not cold, no, she still cared deeply, but the crippling fear of losing Joker was gone. The emotions simply didn't register with her brain. The unpredictability was gone. She would go out today and fight this battle like the most efficient killing machine and the most charismatic leader she could be, without any weaknesses.

When she looked in the mirror again, she was calm, focused and determined. Nobody would know the difference just from looking at her.

And nobody did. But when she geared up and stepped into the CIC a few minutes later, she didn't see her friends and the love of her life. She saw talented people with precious skills who would help her achieve the goal. She would be able to send them into danger.

Joker had probably been doing the exact same thing she had just done to a milder degree ever since he'd met her, just to be able to let her go into battle and not go crazy with worry.

"Commander," he spoke up in the speakers. "Orizaba has lined up for docking. Admiral Hackett is requesting permission to come on board."

"Denied," Jo said from her bridge at the galaxy map.

"They... They have already extended and hooked the claw," Joke sounded a bit concerned.

"Denied. Shoot that claw off if you have to and move away from the dreadnaught. Open a channel to Hackett."

"Yes, Ma'am," now he sounded smug. A second later Jo indeed felt one of the small cannons go off and the ship moved aside from the gigantic shadow looming over them.

"Shepard, what are you doing?" Hackett sounded exasperated.

"What have you planned, Hackett? That you would come on board the Normandy, the flagship of this entire united galactic fleet, and make some heroic speech from my bridge, claiming all my achievements for yourself? Keep dreaming. All these different races didn't come here for you. They came for me. I'm the one they will fight for, so I'm the one who will give the order and lead this attack. You may return to your post as the leader of the human fleet as one part of many and wait for your orders. Off you go."

"Shepard!" Hackett roared. "This is hardly the time!.."

"Off you go, before I publicly demote you. I do have the authority, you know."

"What authority?!"

"The kind where half of these races see me as their saviour, and the other half is led by my best friends. If I tell them you are demoted, you will be demoted. Off you go."

"This is not over, Shepard, we'll be talking about this."

"Remember what I told you back in the day: when the war is over and the Reapers are dead, you will step down from all your positions and retire to a nice quiet place, Hackett. You are useful as a leader right now, but I will not tolerate you as a usurper."

The CIC was quiet. Hackett was quiet. Whoever listened to this conversation on Orizaba chose to remain as quiet. Then, without further fuss, the dreadnaught moved aside.

Jo stepped on the bridge, locked her hands behind her back and asked Traynor to patch her through to the entire assembled fleet.

"Peoples of the galaxy," she addressed them. "I don't care much for speeches. I do instead of talking. That's why we are all here today: we put politics aside and acted together to save ourselves. That is what the Reapers will never understand. That is why they can never win. We forgot our differences and became one - one family, one galaxy, one outcry of rage against an oppressor who knows no mercy. Today we make our stand against them and we will show them that while one insect might sting a little, a swarm kills. We will show them that they should not have messed with us. We will defend what belongs to us and we will not waver. Stand strong, my people. Stand fast. Stand together. Shepard out."

The plan was simple. The Sword Fleet would engage the Reapers surrounding the Citadel and the planet to create a big distraction. Hammer ground forces would land and cut a way through to the beam going from somewhere in London to the Citadel. As soon as someone reached the station and opened the arms, Shield Fleet would escort the Crucible into the system and get it to dock. And then... whatever the Crucible was designed to do would happen. Since nobody knew what that really was, they just hoped for a miracle.

Hades cannons were covering the ground access and Hammer transports could not land. It was agreed that Jo and a small team would land and deal with them.

Armed with that plan, Jo walked up to the cockpit. Joker was ready for action.

"Do you know what today is?" He asked with mischief in his eyes.

"What?"

"November, the 7th."

"And?"

"N7?"

"Oh, god, don't tell me you're one of those. The groupies!" Jo sighed, but smiled. N7s always had groupies among the Alliance, and many of them unofficially declared that particular day the N7 day and celebrated it, honouring known N7s in whatever way they could. The ICA found it adorable and slightly annoying, but they could stop it only as much as they could stop being awesome.

Joker only shrugged:

"Just saying. And then there was nothing left but one word," he said, looking at her expectantly.

"Go," she answered. He immediately sent the signal to the rest of the fleets and moved the ship towards the relay that would throw them into the biggest battle the galaxy had probably ever seen, in any cycle. The transit was smooth despite the overwhelming number of ships going through at the same time.

"All fleets are reporting in. The turian fleet," he checked them all off on the screens. "The asari fleets. The salarians. The volus. The geth. The hanar and drell. The humans. The quarians. The rachni. The krogans. Nyreen Kendros and... half the Terminus Systems, it seems. Is that vorcha I'm seeing? Anyway, there are the batarians. Shadow Broker forces. Elcor flotilla. The... Citadel Defence Force? They're still alive, that's good. A Spectre Unit. Ex-Cerberus Fighter Squadron. Five Leviathans, brr..." He shuddered at the sight of the creatures. "Their infiltration teams with artefacts, and here come the private armies. All accounted for, Commander. Ready to engage on your command."

Jo looked out the window and shuddered in awe. Years ago she'd stood over a holo desk in command class, moving digital armies with a flick of her fingers. Today she moved a very real army, the one she personally assembled and was now leading. This was the day every Admiral dreamed of and feared most in their life. She never got that high on the career ladder, but sometimes friends and favours meant more than rank. These were her soldiers. This were her people. One people. One heart and one soul.

The Reapers noticed them and turned away from the burning planet to face them. Jo felt that cold steel pole of determination straighten her body along her spine. This was it.

"Fire," she commanded.

The fleet released the first volley. Then the dreadnaughts launched one-man-fighters. Space itself burned in a few minutes. The dance of the dead had finally begun.

Then it was time.

"Breaking off. Preparing for descent," Joker reported, turning the Normandy away from the battle. From now on he, Liara, Javik and Tali would monitor the battle from the Normandy. Jo, Garrus and Vega would be groundside, pushing the Hammer forces towards the beam and dealing with opening the station's arms. Today was not the day to leave Garrus behind. Today he was needed most at her side.

Jo turned to go to the cargo bay and strap her guns onto her armour, but Joker called after her. He got out of his chair and saluted her - a highly unusual thing for him to do.

"Be careful down there," he said almost gently.

"I will come back," she promised. She didn't need to feel the depth of her love for him to know that she would do anything for him still. "In the meantime - take care of them."

"Aye, aye."

She turned away from him quite easily, without last hugs or kisses, and walked towards the elevator. She'd paid a great and terrible price in the bathroom earlier just to be able to do this. Leave him behind and walk away without breaking to pieces. Today it was worth it. Whether it would still be worth it tomorrow... She chose not to think about that.

In the cargo bay her team was waiting. Jo stepped to the rack and started pulling gun after gun.

"What are you taking with you today?" Vega asked. He knew all these weapons intimately.

"Everything. Why take one heavy weapon when I can take them all?" She would hardly need a pistol or even an SMG, but she would definitely need the Collector particle beam, the Avalanche, the missile launcher, the Arc Projector, the Firestorm, her sniper rifle and her assault rifle with a shitload of incendiary rounds.

When she stepped into the shuttle, she did not think about this possibly being the last time she was touching her ship. She had a mission and no emotions to hinder her.

Soon enough the Alliance shuttle that was carrying heavy weapons for the Hades cannon was shot down, leaving Jo and her team the only forces in the vicinity. She had Cortez get them on the ground and discarded all notion of looking for the wreckage and heavy weapons within. She unfolded her own missile launcher and shot the fuck out of the Reaper destroyer that was guarding the tower. She had no patience today.

Once the Hammer forces landed, an Alliance shuttle picked her up. It took her to the Command Centre in a slightly quieter part of the city, where she finally stood face to face with Anderson.

After all these months.

Jo shot her fist forward and crushed it into Anderson's skull. Before the old soldier could recover and bounce back, she hit his neck with her carbon-armoured elbow until he fell to his knees and curled in on himself protectively:

"You wanted to make my ship your mobile command base?!" She grunted with such viciousness in her voice that all the people in the vicinity, her team members and soldiers alike, froze and gawked at the most unexpected confrontation. They were all collectively too shocked to move a muscle. "You put me in the brig and tried to take over my ship while waiting for me to be court marshalled?!" She roared now, landing a powerful kick in Anderson's groin. "Traitor," another blow to his neck, sending him to the ground. "Hypocrite," a kick to his stomach. "You tried," another kick. "To get your dirty," kick. "Greasy," kick. "Greedy little fingers," kick. "on my ship, you fucking bastard!" She stepped away from the cringing man on the sandy ground and crossed her arms on her chest. "If we weren't out to kill us some Reapers, I'd dismember you for that right on this spot. Nobody touches what's mine, do you understand? NOBODY!"

There was dead silence around her. Human soldiers on one side of the street, a krogan army on the other, with rachni approaching and turians watching from the broken windows, she had at least five hundred spectators at once. They all fell silent, uneasy in their own skin.

"Get up, soldier!" Jo yelled at Anderson, and he began getting up. She didn't help him.

"Shepard, I…"

"Save it. I know treason when I see it. I'm not interested in your explanations. We have a war to fight, so move."

He looked at her from a bleeding face, holding his stomach, and said nothing. He was finally wising up. Jo looked around, finding some confused, surprised, disapproving faces. She spoke up louder to be heard far:

"Whoever pisses me off, learns my wrath. Don't worry about this, it was just me and my former mentor clearing a little misunderstanding about who is the Normandy's real captain. I destroy those who make me angry, and right now I'm really angry at the Reapers! Hell knows no wrath like what I'm about to bring down on those bastards! Who is with me?!"

Wrex roared first, joined by his army, and a second later everybody raised their rifles into the air and yelled:

"Yeeeeeah!"

Jo shouted again:

"Who said our chances were slim? I laugh at chances! Today I'm the most vicious bitch the galaxy has ever known and I will show them no mercy! We will show them no mercy! We are not pushovers! We will not roll over and be fucked! Today is the day when those fuckers learn the wrath of the entire galaxy's population, and they will know this day as the day when we tore them a new one!"

More roars shattered the air, and suddenly Jo heard more cheers, roars and shouts in her earpiece. She shook her rifle in the air just like the rest of the soldiers, until they calmed and began assembling into troops with new energy. This was when she touched her ear carefully:

"Joker, did you patch me through to the entire armada?"

"Yes," he was grinning, she could hear that in his voice. "I thought: why waste such a powerful rallying speech?"

She just chuckled and returned to her duties.

Anderson nursed his bruised face when he resumed command of his soldiers, but he said nothing. Thank heavens he seemed to be catching up on the fact that he was truly in the doghouse with Jo and there was no sense pretending that he cared about her. He left her alone with sappy speeches and she let him live. For now.

The fight to the beam was brutal, taking them through a dead zone right up to a Reaper guarding the contraption and EDI barely managed to correctly calibrate some missiles to finish that thing off. But when they were about to make the last, mad dash towards their goal, Harbinger descended on their heads.

Jo had done that before: face a Reaper firing at her, and live through a simple duck-and-roll tactic. Sadly, makos and gunships weren't so lucky. The gigantic machine destroyed them one after another as whoever could still move ran for the beam. About half way there their progress stopped. Jo barely evaded one overturned mako when another one came flying. She dodged but it would never have been enough - if Vega hadn't tossed his entire might into it, stopping the rolling tank right before it squashed her.

The young man roared in fury and inhuman effort, holding the tank's weight to give her the needed second to toll away. And then the mako fell on him.

"Normandy! We need evac!" Jo roared into her earpiece as she frantically grabbed the armoured vehicle and pulled up. Each and every one of Cerberus implants and improvements strained, screaming through her body, but she managed to lift the unmovable tank and give Garrus the chance to pull Vega out from under it. The young man was barely conscious, his armour cracked like a nutshell, but that shell had saved him from being crushed. Bruises would heal.

A safe shadow fell on them and the edge of the cargo ramp touched the dirt half a meter away from Jo's feet. Joker's precision was a stuff of legends for a reason. Rodney, Campbell, Westmoreland and everyone else on the ship came running with their rifles up, as Karin, Liara and Tali lifted Vega the half meter needed to get him on the ship. Garrus, bloody and limping himself, was about to stay with Jo, but she sent him inside with no room for argument.

"Jo, get on board!" Joker shouted in her ear when he realised she was not going to make the last step needed to take her away from here. She was staying.

"I'm finishing this," she said, barely hearing her own voice over the roar of battle. "Otherwise it was all for nothing!"

"Jo, please, don't do this!"

"Wherever I am, I will be waiting for you," she said, looking up at the cockpit where he sat. She couldn't see him but she knew he was there. "But today you have to save them. You have to take care of them. I love you."

"Jo..."

"Take off, Lieutenant, that is an order," she barked and watched with satisfaction that he obeyed. The ramp started closing, taking everyone she knew and loved away with it. The ship lifted off and flew directly at Harbinger, without stunts, just plain playing chicken, daring it to shoot it down. Harbinger missed twice before hitting. The astronomically expensive shields held beautifully. Joker's last fuck you to the Reapers before the Normandy disappeared.

And then a red beam hit right next to her.

Jo's eyes opened and she stared up at the dark, rainy sky. Marines from Anderson's unit were talking in her ear, reporting complete loss of Hammer forces, confirming hat nobody had made it to the beam. Jo looked up and saw that the beam was just a few dozen meters ahead of her and Harbinger just took off, probably believing her dead. But Jo was dying, she knew that. Half of her armour was just a crumbling piece of charred carbon and her body was burned and broken. But then... Something else took over.

Objective: reach the beam. Primary weapon: lost. Secondary and all remaining weapons: lost. Secondary objective: acquire a weapon from the dead bodies nearby.

Her body might be broken, but her will was not. She'd been trained for this, she'd been here many times over, and each time she survived. Hell, it had been just as bad on Akuze, and she'd made it to the LZ back then, even when she had to gnaw at rocks to do it. She would never stop. Never give up. Her fight was far from over.

Under her own charred and torn skin she could actually see those implants Cerberus put inside her, tech replacing her ulna and radius. Right now the foreign material in her left arm was firing up like crazy, shining a bright orange in the darkness. The organic parts of her body were dying, but the tech was holding her together, in an oddly... coordinated way.

She pushed herself up and stumbled towards the next dead soldier. She took his pistol and slowly moved towards the beam. Husks came at her but everything seemed to slow down. Or maybe it were her reactions that became too fast for the ordinary world. She killed the husks easily and lifted her hand to touch her earpiece. By some miracle it was still there and working.

"Tell me a joke," she said, moving forward through pain.

"Jo, you're there!" Joker shouted victoriously. "I knew you wouldn't die on me like that. So, a joke. Okay. Why is it bad to be a penis?"

Jo startled, some of the slow-motion haze leaving her at the surprising beginning. She hadn't seen that one coming.

"...why is it bad to be a penis?" She asked honestly.

"You have a hole in your head," Joker started smugly. Jo took step after step towards the beam, the last of her power leaving her rapidly, but his voice tethering her to reality. "You shrink in cold water." Step and another step. "Your owner is constantly strangling you." Dodge a husk and shoot a marauder. "And you are always forced to hang around with two nuts!"

Jo laughed, even though it caused her additional pain.

"Whoah, that was a good one," she grinned. "How long have you been saving it for?"

"All my life, and only for you, baby."

And just like that Jo stood at the beam. He got her there.

"See you on the other side," she smiled with all her love and stepped into the light.