A/N: Well, it's been awhile, hasn't it? 34 days to be precise. Ah well. That's what happens when you get suddenly in a Star Wars mood and forget about your ME fanfics.

Liara's chapter is still in progress, and I don't know when it will be done - but for now, here's my favorite chapter so far.

I hope you enjoy.

Joker is guilt-ridden.

He can't look anyone in the eye when he emerges from the shuttle on Alchera's surface. He clutches his broken arm - the one she'd grabbed him by while trying to drag him towards the last shuttle - to his chest and struggles to keep the tears at bay. When Kaidan demands to know where she is, all Joker can do is shake his head slowly, not trusting himself to speak.

And then Kaidan is screaming at him, and he's screaming back, and it looks like the biotic is just about ready to punch him, and it takes Lucas and Liara working together to keep the enraged man from jumping at him. Once Kaidan has calmed down enough to regain control of himself, he throws a deadly glare at Joker and turns his back on him. Lucas, too, looks angry as he stares at the pilot, though to his credit he doesn't flip his lid like his fellow tech did.

Joker doesn't blame them. They're right, after all; Shepard's death was his fault. If he'd gone straight to the shuttle like he was supposed to, she wouldn't have had to go back for him and she would be alive right now. Instead, he had stayed behind like an idiot, desperately trying to save what he'd known, even then, was a lost cause.

And now she's gone.

His guilt is so huge that he almost doesn't go to the memorial service. It's not until he gets a vid-call from Ashley (who tells him in no uncertain terms to "get up off his sorry ass and go pay his respects to his friend") that he begrudgingly agrees to go. During the whole service he does nothing but scowl at anyone who makes eye contact with him. Maybe it's irrational and extremely childish of him, but he's determined to wallow in his own self-pity for as long as possible.

Returning to the Alliance doesn't bring the relief that he wants. Kaidan has cut off all contact with him, and Lucas won't say more than a few terse sentences to him at any one time. Ashley goes out of her way to talk to him when she can, but with her promotion and her new duties in the Alliance, she's so busy that she doesn't often have the chance to.

All of that he can deal with. It's not like it's unexpected. But he is absolutely not okay with being grounded.

He's probably being punished for standing up for Shepard. Or maybe he's just being punished for being a royal pain in the ass (not that those stupid bureaucrats don't deserve it…). Either way, instead of letting him flying again after everything is said and done, after the papers have been filed and the case wrapped up, the Alliance puts him behind a desk.

Not cool.

So yes - Joker is frustrated; he's angry; he's guilty; and he's desperate. So sue him; his friend just died, the press is currently trying to make her look like a madwoman, and to top it all off, they've taken away the only that things that makes his life worth living. You can forgive him for not feeling particularly friendly towards the Alliance at the moment.

Exactly nine months after the Normandy's destruction, a mysterious message appears in Joker's inbox:

I know how the Alliance is treating you. I have an offer you can't refuse. Meet me at Purgatory Bar tomorrow at 1300. Come alone.

The Joker from nine months ago would have written it off as spam and deleted it without a second thought. He never would have bothered with it again.

But the Joker from nine months ago hadn't been grounded. He hadn't witnessed one of his closest friends get spaced. He hadn't been sidelined like a piece of trash by the very people he had once believed would never, ever betray his trust. The Joker from nine months ago still had something to fight for.

But now? Joker had nothing left to lose.

The very next day finds Joker downing shots of whiskey at the bar counter as he waits for his mystery contact. He hasn't been to this place since shore leave right after they destroyed Sovereign. The memories wash over him, bittersweet reminders of how things used to be. He inhales sharply as the guilt bombards him again.

That had been Shepard's last shore leave, after all.

"Jeff Moreau?"

Joker jerks as the new voice pulls him out of the memories. Glancing to his right, he watches in surprise as a pale, dark-haired woman in a white jumpsuit slides into the seat beside him. The smirk on her face is strangely off-putting. The pilot eyes her warily.

"I thought you'd come," the woman continues confidently. She extends her hand. He stares at it like it'll bite him if he so much as pats it. She ignores this. "Miranda Lawson. I'm here representing a privately funded human group known as Cerberus."

Joker chokes on his drink. "Cerberus? As in those creeps who turned their own guys into creepy zombie monsters?" He snorts derisively. "Do you seriously think that I'd ever help people like that?"

"You will when you see what we're working on," Miranda says cooly - and places a datapad into his hands.

Joker stares at it for a full five minutes, trying to make sense of what he's seeing. Numbers, schematics, diagrams and notes dart across the screen, overloading his brain with a torrent of information. His heart contracts sharply in his chest. If this is saying what he thinks it's saying… his mouth goes dry.

"Is this for real?" he whispers.

"It is," Miranda replies.

Joker knows he should walk away right now, but.. after all the shit that he's dealt with over the past nine months, there's no way that he can pass something like this up.

Finally tearing his eyes away from the data pad, Joker looks Miranda in the eye.

"I'm in."