The Council invited them to have an open session in one of the few still standing palaces, the Royal Palace of Aranjuez in Spain, near Madrid. It would be Jo's first official public appearance in the Reaper-free galaxy, she would have a chance to speak to the Council, ask questions and answer some in return, and then the journalists would be allowed to have a go at her. It sounded good enough to Joker. Sit through it once and then have some peace.

It turned out that getting through the night until then would be a challenge in itself. The resident reporters had finally left to set up in Spain, which left only the four of them in the whole lab. Link didn't need sleep. He connected to the extranet and spent the night learning about the world. Vega discretely retreated to a bedroom in another end of the building. Jo walked the rooms restlessly for a few hours, alone and in silence. She'd specifically asked him to give her some time alone. Joker was in bed when she came to the bedroom. He'd waited for her in the dark, wondering what her first night would be like.

She climbed under the covers without taking off her clothes, pressed her front against his back, buried her face between his shoulder blades and spent a few hours alternating between weeping and shaking. She clung to his shirt with a death grip, clawing at the material so tightly that he couldn't move even if he wanted to, couldn't even reach behind him to touch her. She wouldn't let him, her grip like a deadly vice. While she cried, he held his breath. Whatever was ripping her body and soul apart was not something he could help her with, that much was clear. She didn't need a hug, in fact, she was probably beyond such a simple human connection right now. It looked like she simply wanted to hide behind something or someone, hide from whatever demons were torturing her. She didn't choose to hide behind Vega, for instance, the clearly stronger and more dangerous man right now. She came to Joker when she couldn't deal with the pain on her own, and that was all he ever needed to know. She came to him, she needed him. She gripped him like he was a shield she held in front of herself, and if that was what she needed, she would get it. Always.

Even if Jo seemed far away from him as she wept, they were still as close and intimate as ever. There would be other times in the future, when she'd be more receptive to a human touch. He would hold her then, and he would tell her that everything was going to be just fine. But tonight was too soon for that yet.

She only dozed off when the sun was almost up, and Joker finally released a shuddering breath.

In the morning he insisted that she talk to him about the weeping and the shaking. He needed to know if she was experiencing the same torture she'd gone through the first time around, and if yes, he needed to be prepared for dark consequences.

"No, it's not that," she said while getting dressed. "I just don't know who I am anymore. I lost my fight and if someone points a gun at me, chances are I'll just cover my face and hope they don't shoot. I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of Vega, for fuck's sake. I feel like I've lost what made me me, you know. Talking to that AI on the Citadel, then to the Reapers... It was mind boggling. I don't know if it's already dawned on you that I've committed one genocide for each Reaper I've killed. Do you have any idea how many genocides that was? Me, who wouldn't commit genocide even if it endangered the galaxy! It rips me apart that they wanted it that way, that there was nothing I could do, that it wasn't my fault, I just released them from their pain, but I still pushed that button. I killed so many people there... Whole cycles, countless people within each Reaper! My body count didn't just go through the roof, it became astronomic! I'm a murderer with the highest body count in the history of this galaxy! The magnitude of that is beyond comprehension."

"Second highest body count, my dear. Don't flatter yourself. The AI that created the Reapers has a much higher body count than you."

She turned to him and chuckled through a sob:

"Thank god for small favours, then? On the other hand when I saw Hackett, something inside me hardened, like a steel rod in my spine. I'm definitely not afraid of him."

"Give yourself time," he advised. "It's a new life in a new world and you're a new person inside it. You have a choice now, you can determine your own future, if you leave your past in the past and somehow find it in you to move on. You can ask for anything and the galaxy will have to give it to you, after what you've done to save it. You can become someone completely different from Commander Shepard, if you choose to. It's a lot to take in, so you should definitely take your time and weigh your options."

"Damn right I'm becoming someone different from Commander Shepard," she said energetically and held up her hand with the engagement ring. "For starters, I'm about to become Commander Moreau, am I not?"

Joker froze in the middle of buckling his belt.

"You'd... do that?" He wheezed through his suddenly dry throat. "Put aside the whole Shepard persona?"

"Without a moment's doubt. You said it yourself: it's a new world and I can have anything I want in it. The only question is: will you follow me in whatever I choose to do?"

"Don't be silly, I don't have to follow you," Joker said softly, coming up to her from behind and wrapping his arms around her waist. "We've had this conversation years ago, before we even went after Saren, remember? I told you. You're uncompromising and honest and true. Your do and say what I would have said and done if I was completely honest with myself. I don't have to follow you around for some incentive. I believe in you because you speak from my heart. Whatever you choose to do, we've both chosen it." He kissed her under her ear and whispered: "Except for one little thing. The clone."

"You have to know that it works the same way for me, don't you, my precious love?" She leaned her head back onto his shoulder. "You speak from my heart. Whatever you decide, we've both decided it. And we'll talk about my sister soon. I'll convince you yet."

"We'll definitely talk about it," he agreed.

Vega knocked on their door. Their appointment with the Council was approaching. When Joker gave Jo a quick once-over, he realised that she was about to leave the facility and her hair was still open, falling in slightly tangled tresses around her shoulders.

"Open hair?" He pulled at it gently. "It's funny how your mood can be determined by your hairdo. When you're professional, as in when your feelings are locked away behind the mask of the leader, you make that bun on top of your head. When you feel more playful and want to let people see your emotions, when you're comfortable enough to open up, you make that ponytail in the back. When you're really playful and out to have fun, you make a braid over one shoulder. But when your hair is open, you're either playing a role of someone who isn't you at all, or you're showing the naked truth about yourself, the undiluted, uncensored heart of Johanna Victoria Shepard."

Jo's frown showed him that she'd never made that observation about herself and her hair. Then a shadow fell on her face:

"I don't want to be professional anymore. They can have the whole truth if they want it, warts and all."

So he'd been warned. When the four of them got into the shuttle and left Greenland for Spain, Joker knew that she'd decided not to pull any punches anymore. She would tell the Council things she had never dared or bothered to reveal before. Oh, the galaxy was about to experience something truly spectacular.

As he flew, Vega explained to Jo exactly how Anderson had gotten to the beam ahead of her, and showed her the footage Joker had already seen.

"Well, that makes sense," she said. "He was their end game. The Reapers indoctrinated him a long time ago and while he pretended to be my friend, he was subtly trying to undermine me. That's why he was so keen on taking the Normandy from me when I was locked up in Vancouver, that's why he tried to keep me there. They let him lead the resistance on Earth to give him credibility because they needed him to stand before me when I got to that chamber. The Catalyst knew that I would get there eventually and it prepared long ahead. Anderson was supposed to influence me, stop me from using the console correctly. The Catalyst had calculated that I would follow the advice of an old friend. It probably hadn't calculated that I would put a bullet in his head."

"Remind me to never get on your bad side," Vega muttered.

"Right back atcha," Jo muttered back.


When Joker landed the shuttle in one of the smaller gardens of the palace, it seemed that a whole army of reporters had descended on the place. There were thousands of people buzzing around. Everyone was excited about Jo's arrival but Vega made short work of everyone who wanted to get the first exclusive footage of her exiting the shuttle. He moved people out of his way and then smuggled her quickly and efficiently through.

However, as soon as they stepped through the doors into a beautiful sitting room, Jo suddenly had an arm full of pale skin and auburn hair, and a nose full of oil and stale, ventilated air.

"Gabby," she squeaked and wrapped her arms around the other young woman tightly.

"Jo," Gabby hugged her with everything she had. "I'm so glad to have you back."

"Same here," a heavy dialect drawled into her ear from behind and Jo found herself firmly sandwiched between Gabby and her husband, who smelled of the same oil and stale air.

"Ken, Gabby," Jo exhaled and relaxed in their arms, nuzzling Ken's cheek. Unlike with Vega, she had no reservations at all greeting the Donnellys. "I've missed you."

"Hello, Commander," another voice spoke up from nearby and Jo jerked at the sound of it. She quickly disentangled herself from her techies and flew right at the other couple waiting to get her attention.

"Oh my god!" She almost shouted when she collided with Kolyat and Alice. "You're alive! You survived the Reapers taking over the Citadel! How did you survive? What happened to you?" She kept hugging them both and running her hands over them to reassure herself that the kids were really alright.

"We weren't technically on the Citadel when the attack came," Alice blushed and cast her eyes down.

"We were having a private picnic..."

"Making out," Jo corrected Kolyat, who blushed as well.

"Making out in the engine room of one of the fighters docked for repairs, so when the Reapers moved the Citadel, we simply disengaged the clamps. We floated in space for a little while, but then a salarian ship found us. The battle around Earth was about to begin, so they couldn't give us a lift to some colony. We stayed on board with them. And then it became handy being Commander Shepard's kids, you know."

"How so?"

"Remember that picture we took at your party?" Alice jumped in. "We're all in it. It convinced the salarian captain that we knew you, and it helped us find a way from ship to ship, from one city on Earth to another until we got to the Normandy. Gabby and Ken took us in then."

"It almost killed me to think that you two could be dead," Jo confessed. It was a huge relief to find them alive.

When she finally let go of the kids, she found a whole bunch of other people in the room waiting for her. One of them was Hackett. Next to him stood a tiny Japanese woman of Jo's age in a smart suit, surrounded by four armed guards.

"Shepard," Hackett nodded.

"Hackett," she carefully nodded back.

"Allow me to introduce you to Miss Jessica Akiyama, the Prime Minister of human colonies."

The Japanese woman stepped forward and offered Jo her tiny hand. Despite her size she didn't really appear any smaller than Hackett and her bulky bodyguards. Jo sensed a power of personality in the black haired woman.

"It is an honour to meet you, Commander," Akiyama said.

"Likewise," Jo shook her hand.

"May I have a word in private before you meet the Council?"

"Of course," Jo nodded and took Joker's hand. She was not going anywhere without him. Akiyama waved off her guards and led Jo and Joker to an adjacent room, which was a small library.

"Ma'am, this is my fiancée, Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moreau. I do no business without his presence," she introduced. Akiyama measured them both with a calculating gaze, then nodded.

"I'll cut to the chase, Shepard," she said. "For fifteen months after Shastri and the Parliament were killed humanity was in a political limbo. For the last seven months the Alliance dominated all the power channels. I was a Minister of Economy in the New Okinawa Area before the war, ambitious but too new to the scene to have real influence. There were close to two thousand people ahead of me on the succession list for the office. Imagine my surprise when last night I got jerked out of my bed, whisked off to some bunker and sworn in as the new Prime Minister in front of six witnesses. In my pyjamas."

Joker snorted. Akiyama shot him a look:

"I just hope they didn't mind my morning breath."

Joker's face split in a shit eating grin:

"Oh, it's so nice when someone answers with sarcasm instead of being offended," he nodded. There was clear appreciation in his face. Akiyama allowed herself a little smile before she got all business-like again.

"The Alliance never even released the information about the survivors on the succession list, and suddenly you come back to life and things start moving?" She narrowed her eyes at Jo. "I know you did this. I don't know what power you have over Admiral Hackett, but you somehow did this. I never expected this, but when duty calls I am bound to answer. However, I need to know one thing. You obviously have a lot of power and favours with the mightiest of the galaxy. Do you intend to make me some sort of a public figure, a puppet, while you rule everything from the shadows?"

"I have no such plans, Ma'am," Jo answered her with all sincerity. "The last thing I want is political power. I've paid my dues to humanity, to the Alliance and to the galaxy. What I want is to get married in peace and live the rest of my days without being asked to sacrifice myself for the greater good again. I would prefer to neither support nor to oppose any political figures in general, but I realise that the galaxy will look up to me for my opinion regardless. Whoever the leaders of the races are, I'll probably still end up associating closely with them. I mean, half of them are my best friends, so there is little choice. I give you my word that I am just a citizen like any other, who is loyal to the people, and only to the people. I am loyal to the office, not to a person, to the Council and not to specific Councillors. If you do your job honourably, if your first priority is the welfare of your people, then we work together. If not, we part our ways."

Jo saw determination and a sparkle of pleasure in the other woman's eyes.

"Good to know."

"I do have a few ideas I'd like to run by you, though," Jo added. "You're right, I spoke to Hackett last night and told him to resign by the end of my session with the Council, or I'll do it for him. He has become a little too comfortable in his position of power. I don't want humanity to be ruled by a militaristic dictator. So yes, I'm responsible for you being jerked out of your bed last night. Sorry about that. There are two things, though, that I will push for and use all my power to achieve. It would please me if you supported me."

"What things?"

"First: Systems Alliance has to go. I've worked within that organisation for half of my life and know it intimately. It needs to be cleaned, rearranged and separated from the civil government."

"It's the dawn of a new era, we can easily push for a restructure based on our losses, on the new cooperation between the races and on the economic crisis on the planet. A new government can be formed easily, people will support it if we stand together. I can work with that. What's the second thing?"

"The Council has to expand and include representatives from all species. And I do mean all of them. Krogan, rachni, vorcha, volus, hanar, elcor, batarian, drell, quarian, geth, and if we have a first contact situation, then they shall be given a spot after an adjustment period as well without having to jump through the same hoops we had to."

Akiyama's lips parted.

"You think big, I'll give you that."

"I've accomplished a lot bigger already," Jo shrugged. "This has to happen. We can not dismiss most of the galactic population as second class citizens any longer. The elitist way of thinking of the old Council has to stop. As you said, this is the dawn of a new era. I have a chance to push for what I've always believed in. Peaceful cooperation. So when if not now, when there is a real chance of success?"

"In principle I agree with you. Details can be worked out."

The two of them stared at each other with new appreciation.

"Jess," Akiyama offered her hand for another handshake with a smile.

"Jo," Jo shook it and nodded at Joker: "Joker."

"Pleasure."


Hackett rolled his eyes when Joker and the two ladies came back to the sitting room. The eyeroll translated easily: Good heavens, now there are two of them. Joker understood the sentiment. Jo alone was a force of nature, but when she joined forces with another strong-willed woman in power, the galaxy had better watch out.

"Shall we?" Vega said, opening a door for them. A security detail led them through lavishly decorated corridors to a big room somewhere in the middle of the palace. Joker could hear the buzz of people and cameras well before they reached the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Commander Johanna Shepard," someone said inside and the doors opened.

Joker was glad he was wearing his cap, it was the only thing that protected him from blindness. The room was already brightly lit and all the cameras flashed at the exact same moment. At his side he felt Jo falter and stop. One look at her face told him she needed support. She was suddenly white as sheet.

He'd seen her deal with reporters many times before. Her favourite punch bag, Khalisah, was a frequent guest, but there had been others, serious journalists. Never, not even once before today, had Jo hesitated or showed a single sign of uncertainty. She was a professional.

He reached out subtly and took her hand. As if woken from a bad dream, she jumped and tore her gaze away from the cameras. She looked at him and instantly calmed down. Together they entered the room.

"Commander, it's a pleasure to see you again," the turian Councillor separated the sea of reporters and shook Jo's hand. "We thought you'd want to meet in private first, but if this is how you want to handle it, then this is your spot," he led her by the hand to a table with three chairs at it. There were more tables just like it arranged in a circle around the room. The walls were covered in tapestries and beautiful stucco, but instead of paintings a long row of screens was erected. Those screens showed live all the important people who wanted to be there but geographically couldn't. Garrus was on one of them, next to him was Primarch Victus. Wrex was on his other side, followed by an asari matriarch, admirals Raan and Tali, a volus, an elcor, Nyreen Kandros, a blank screen that Joker suspected was Liara, a young asari with a vacant gaze standing in front of the rachni queen, the salarian Dalatrass, a couple of humans Joker didn't know, Bakara and Wrex's brother, and last but not least Bailey.

Jo elected to sit in the middle chair. Joker sat at her right and sprawled almost indecently with his knees spread wide, one arm leaning loosely on the back of his chair, the other arm lazily on the back of Jo's. Several people shot him confused and irritated looks. This was not the way to behave in a royal palace. Joker ignored them.

There was a moment when three people bee-lined for the chair to Jo's left: Vega, Hackett and Jessica Akiyama. Since Jo didn't bother to look up, there was a little standoff. Hackett shot Vega an evil look, but the younger man grabbed the chair first and invited the new Prime Minister to sit in it. Hackett retreated gracefully to the wall behind Jo, where Ken, Gabby, Link, Kolyat and Alice already stood. Vega folded his arms on his chest and froze into a statue just two steps behind Jo. His message was clear: who tried to mess with her would have to deal with him.

Finally everyone found their seat or a spot along the wall and the room became almost silent.

"Commander," the asari Councillor began. "First and foremost allow us to welcome you back to the land of the living and to express our gratitude for everything you have done. The galaxy owes you a great deal. Thank you for meeting us here today to have a talk. How are you doing? We've heard that the surgery was quite extensive."

"I'm a bit overwhelmed," Jo shrugged. She didn't sound like the confident officer from a few years back when reporters used to corner her on the Citadel. She sounded, indeed, overwhelmed. She raised her left arm, flexed her fingers and turned the wrist this and that way: "They tell me my whole arm is cloned and sewn on. I'm still waiting to see if it tries to strangle me in my sleep."

People chuckled and the atmosphere lost a lot of tension.

"Commander," the salarian Councillor took over. "We appreciate you coming here. When you asked for this meeting, I think it was so that you could answer a few questions only you know the answers to. Questions about the day of the battle against the Reapers. So please, tell us what happened."

"To answer that I'll have to start with the mission on Rannoch. Legion - and I sincerely hope all of you know who that is - took me inside the geth consensus. The war between the quarians and the geth was raging all around us and we weren't certain if a genocide wouldn't happen that day. I didn't know if I'd be able to stop the madness, but I could absolutely not let the quarians kill all geth. I asked Legion to hide a geth seed inside my brain. I called it a seed all this time, but really it was an installation file, which, when transferred into a proper synthetic body, would install itself into a geth individual and become self-aware. Legion simply used my brain as storage for that software."

Murmur broke out and people started exchanging glances.

"What Legion and I had done was unheard of until then and I didn't know what would happen, so I only told my closest friends, who monitored my behaviour for possible changes."

"Were there any?" A reporter jumped in.

"There were a few cognitive changes. I could suddenly read extremely fast, memorise things perfectly, my aim got a lot better and I could fall asleep on demand. Stuff like that. But most importantly: the geth seed helped me fight indoctrination. So, jumping to the day of the battle, I can only tell you what I know, and even I don't know everything. I jumped into the beam alone, or at least I thought I was alone. When I landed on the Citadel, Admiral Anderson contacted me. He was up there as well, and so was the Illusive Man. The way they spoke to me..."

Her voice broke and she looked down. Joker knew that normally Jo was a world class actress. Was she playing the crowd right now? Or was the distress in her face real? He admitted that he didn't know and he couldn't discredit her by reacting to it in any way. He remained in his sprawled position right next to her. Whenever she needed him, she could take solace in his presence. So far she held herself together.

"I had reason to believe that the two men were hallucinations. I'd hallucinated before."

"You hallucinated?!" Several people exclaimed and the noise rose.

"Of course. I was quite indoctrinated. Come on, people, I've spent more time chasing Reapers than anyone else. I've spent more time around their artefacts than any of you. Of course they put their feelers inside my brain. That's why I... Well. I was in a room and in front of me was a console which would have opened the Citadel's arms and allowed the Crucible to dock. And between me and the console were Anderson and the Illusive Man. They both wanted a long conversation. The Illusive Man wanted me to believe that he could control the Reapers. Anderson was talking about fighting their control. What I knew of the situation was that they were both trying to delay me. Thousands of people were dying every second right outside, I could see the ships burning, and those two men stood between me and the only solution we had. I made a choice."

"You killed them both," the turian Councillor said as if it was understood. For him, like perhaps for most turians, it really was.

"But they weren't a hallucination, were they?" A reporter jumped in again.

"Apparently not," Jo looked down again and took a small shuddering breath. Whether her emotions were real or an act, the audience was eating it up and asking for more. They were all breathing with her, shuddering with her, even though most of them were shocked to see the woman famous for her cool composure unravel like that. "Anyway, I activated the console, the Crucible docked, but nothing happened. I've been told that many of you out there experienced a minute of doubt in that moment. My own crew did. I definitely did. I was badly injured and lost consciousness. However, I regained it a little while later and found myself in a chamber I've never seen before. Now, I believe I've informed everyone before that battle about the origin of the entire debacle. The Leviathans created an AI and asked it to solve a problem. The problem being that organics created synthetics and those always rebelled against their creators. It was clear to me before the battle that the only way to stop the whole thing was to find that AI and get it to stop somehow, but I didn't have time for that anymore. Well, it turned out that there was no need to look any further."

People gasped.

"Yes. I landed in a chamber with a console in the middle. That chamber was the AI's seat, and the console was its interface. The AI appeared to me and we spoke. It tried to push visions into my mind, but that's when Link came in." She looked over her shoulder and Link stepped away from the wall to stand right behind Jo. "Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Link, the geth that I've carried in my mind in form of a seed for about a year. I have put him into a geth body yesterday and he became self-aware. If you wish so, he can provide you with transcripts of the entire conversation I had with the Leviathans' AI. To avoid confusion I'll call it the Catalyst from now on."

The murmur rose again and cameras flashed again, focusing on Link.

"The Catalyst wanted me to believe that the console had three functions. It told me that the left side of it would allow me to control the Reapers, the middle of it would initiate a pulse that would merge organic and synthetic lives, creating one symbiotic life form in the galaxy instead of all the variety. And the right side of the console was supposed to destroy the Reapers. I'll let you chew on that for a moment."

People exchanged confused glances and Jo waited for a few moments before she declared:

"It was a lie. Link fought the indoctrination and when I approached the console, Link analysed it. Well, you see, the Catalyst and I had a long and tedious philosophical conversation that I'll spare you right now. I needed to know what it really wanted, why it was so set on destruction, and I found that out quickly enough. It was only concerned about its own survival. It insisted that whichever option I chose, I would be required to die in every scenario. It also strongly pushed me towards the middle of the console, saying that synthesis was the ideal solution. Link discovered, that if I chose to do that, the console would have simply exploded, destroyed the Crucible and me. So, quite by accident, I came within range of the console and Link was able to hack the whole system. Not for long, but it was long enough for me to enter the entire collective Reaper consciousness and to speak to them without the Catalyst's influence."

Chaos broke loose in the room. There were cries of outrage, of disbelief, of shock and disgust, of confusion and anger. Jo let them work through their stress for a few minutes. Even if she was acting right now, she was still working the crowd to the fullest. Joker admired that about her.

"What happened, Commander?" Primarch Victus spoke from his screen, effectively shutting up the unruly crowd.

"As I said, I entered their collective mind. They told me that they were indoctrinated, completely controlled by the Catalyst from the moment of their creation. Each of them represented a destroyed cycle and all of them suffered a great pain. They demanded that I kill all of them and end their miserable existence as slaves to the machine that was supposed to save them. I said: no, I'm not committing genocide. No matter what happens, I couldn't do that. They argued that they were already dead and it would be an act of mercy on my part to release them and let them rest in peace. They really wanted to die, each and every one of them. But there was a catch."

"There always is," the Dalatrass nodded. There was silence in the room now. Everyone stopped breathing to hear the end of the story.

"The Reapers explained to me how the Catalyst's console worked. The left side of it was meant for organics to directly interface with the Catalyst. That was what I accidentally stumbled into. The right side of the console, however, was meant to be a system administrator's back door. New commands into the Catalyst's coding could be entered there. I had to go there and choose from the following. Option one: Do nothing and leave everything as it was. Another harvest, a new Reaper, the end of our cycle. Option two: give the Catalyst a new question to solve. Option three: Enter my energy into the data stream and replace the Catalyst with my own mind, becoming the new Catalyst in control of all the Reapers. That would obviously require my body to die. If I chose that option, I could either give the Reapers free will or order them to kill themselves, which was what they wanted, but I would have been dead, too. Option four: initiate a pulse that would sweep across the galaxy and kill all artificial intelligence. All of them."

More confusion broke out and people specifically looked at the few geth units present in the room. They were AIs and they were quite obviously alive.

"Yes," Jo nodded. "That's what I told the Reapers. I wouldn't kill all geth. Not after they just made peace with the quarians."

"So how did you do it?" People urged.

"I didn't. Link did. The Reapers explained to me that the geth seed in my mind would allow me to follow the Pulse across the galaxy, identify each AI as either geth or not, and skip all that were. That meant death for every AI that wasn't a geth."

And that was when she really came unglued. She wasn't acting, he knew it now. She would never have sobbed in front of the cameras, never would have let a tear out, if she could help it. And everyone found out the reason why he was sitting like a vulgar slob, slouched next to her, his arm on the back of her chair: all she had to do was lean back a little and she was in his embrace.

She leaned into him now, seeking his support. He was a nobody to all these strangers, even to the Council members, and he didn't care what picture he made for the cameras. He wasn't here for them, only for her. She needed him and as long as he lived, she would always get what she needed. He put his arm around her and rubbed his thumb over her upper arm. She shuddered, trying to stop the tears before she continued with the story:

"There was still a catch. I had an artificial intelligence on the Normandy. Cerberus made her from parts of Sovereign. Remember Sovereign?" She fixed people with a gloomy stare and they all nodded. "Well, EDI was created from his tech and coding. She bore the Reaper code, not the geth signature. And she was also one of my best friends. She saved me, my crew and my ship a thousand times. She learned how to be a good person from interacting with us. She was an AI, but hell, she knew what love was because she loved us. She knew what hate and disgust were because she felt that for the Reapers, for what they were doing."

Hands flew to cover mouths and for half a second Joker scowled: none of them had known EDI, not the way he'd known her. They couldn't possibly mourn her now, all these strangers, they couldn't possibly care.

But then he saw in their faces that they understood. All of them had lost somebody in the war. Friends, family, lovers, children. They understood perfectly what Jo was trying to tell them and they all could imagine the pain.

"In the end I had to make a choice," Jo spoke and a tear rolled freely down her cheek. "Kill myself or kill one of my best friends." She leaned forward again, out of his embrace. He watched her pull herself together and produce a stoic mask: "I've thrown myself into mortal danger many times before, mostly for people I didn't know. It was my job and my conviction that I did it for the greater good. I actually died once saving my crew. Sacrificing myself for EDI should have been my first instinct, but it wasn't. I killed her because I wanted to live. Selfishly, maybe, but I needed to live."

Dead silence followed that statement.

"I did as the Reapers instructed me. I initiated the pulse and Link identified all the geth. The Reaper tech Cerberus had used to restore my body the first time around was destroyed and I clung to my life until help arrived. You know the rest."

It took a while for people to stir again. The asari Councillor finally wiped away her own tears and remarked:

"That's incredible. I don't know what to say, Commander."

"How about nobody says anything, then?" Jo suggested grimly. "I don't need commentary, condolences, sympathy, gratitude or accusations. It's done. I've committed 22381 genocides that day, one for each Reaper I killed. The magnitude of that action... What I'm saying now is that I need you to understand, all of you in here and those who are watching this transmission. I'm done. Done making those kinds of decisions and sacrifices. Don't come to me with problems anymore, I'm done doing the impossible. If there is trouble, I'm not your girl anymore. Find someone else."

"We understand..."

"I hope you do," Jo interrupted the asari. "I've paid my dues. The scientists who saved me this time around have my eternal gratitude, of course, but I called this conference with all of you present at once to inform you: I'm resigning from all kinds of active duty. I'll never risk my life again, or the lives of those I love. I've given two lives to the wellbeing of this galaxy and I'm taking the liberty to spend this third life in whatever way I want. I've earned that."

"We understand, Commander," the three Councillors nodded solemnly. "You have accomplished what most of us deemed absolutely impossible. Nobody can ask you for more sacrifices." The salarian stole a quick look at his colleagues before addressing Jo carefully: "So, what is it that you want?"

Jo took a deep breath, composed herself and tilted her head, letting her glance slide across all the faces in front of her. The man had asked the right question.

"That," she said. "Is a whole new story."