Summary: During the attack on the SSV Normandy, Shepard sacrifices herself to save her crew, to save Joker. After the hatch closes, between the commander and her pilot, things go sideways.
a/n: This was written as a Holiday Harbinger 2016 gift for spacemomnephmoreau.
Discreet Static
Small electrical fires crackled around the cockpit, hissing and spluttering, while new ones tried to spark to life. The Normandy usually handled smooth as silk, but the initial attack had left her hobbling along. And her pilot struggled right along with her, fighting to maintain a stable heading so that the escape pods launching wouldn't be aimed at one another. Though part of him was certain he could guide the Normandy through an emergency landing despite the hull damage and constant shuddering.
Throughout his battle with the controls and sensors, quieting alarms as he went, Joker kept up the emergency hails. Someone would hear them, someone had to hear them, or so he reasoned. The questions sometimes whispered through the hazy process of his reactionary flying—how did they see us? Who are they? What were they after?
There hadn't even been a warning. No hail. No chance to retreat or discuss whatever infraction prompted this. Nothing.
When his seat rocked again, his attention shifted from the panel, but only for a moment. The hand on his shoulder was gentle, the weight of it far too familiar. She shouldn't be here. She should be gone.
"Come on Joker! We have to get out of here!"
Stubbornly, he rolled his shoulder out from under her touch. "No!" he insisted. "I won't abandon the Normandy. I can still save her."
Her hand returned almost instantly, with a gentle, comforting squeeze. "The Normandy's lost. Going down with the ship won't change that."
It wasn't the words, it was the tone in her voice, the hint of pleading. He turned and looked at her. The helmet hid her face, even her eyes. Shepard gave him a small nod, and he returned it.
"Yeah … okay. Help me up," he relented.
Her hand shifted, gripping his upper arm under the armpit and giving a gentle lift. Even as Joker climbed out of the chair with the assistance, he noticed the enemy vessel repositioning on the monitor feeds.
"They're coming around for another attack." That revelation seemed to more fully commit him to his decision to get the hell out of there, and hers, if Shepard's crushing grip on his forearm was any indicator. "Ah! Watch the arm."
Once upright, she pulled his arm over her shoulder and all but lifted him by his belt. He was sure this wrestling match would leave him with a few extra broken bones that couldn't be blamed on the attack alone.
The arm around him loosened only enough to punch the panel on the bulkhead, which controlled the door to the emergency pod. Given the movement of the ship, a soft landing was too much to hope for. But it was gentler than it could have been. He pushed himself into the seat as Shepard stumbled. Joker gave her a wave. "C'mon Shepard!"
Another blast rocked the Normandy, an electronics panel near the hatch exploded in sparks and a burst of flame. It left him curling away from the door for cover, when he turned back, he saw her foot lose contact with the deck. Then the other. He lurched forward as her hands scrambled for a hold. "Commander!"
Joker sought his own grip as he moved toward the door. "Shepard!"
Before he could reach for her to help, the enemy ship's weapon sheared through the bridge, not far from the entrance of the pod. Somehow, she managed to grab the bulkhead, but light of the beam seared his vision, burning into his memory. He felt like it should be hotter, but it didn't seem to do more than inch between them with a cold, yellow-white light. It lit up everything in the usually dark cockpit, even Shepard's face. Well, not her face per se. That detail he couldn't see at all, but the light gleamed off her visor.
Joker knew what was coming even before it happened. He watched it though the slim window between the edge of the beam and the open hatch. With a shift of her shoulders, one hand let go of the bulkhead anchoring her within yards of the pod, then the pod's door snapped closed and he knew Shepard had hit the pod release; sacrificing herself to save him.
Joker launched himself toward the hatch, but just as he pushed himself out of the chair the gravity faded. Desperately, he clawed at the door for a hand hold. His arm ached, pain searing through the limb with every clench of his hands, but he ignored it. "Shepard! No! Goddamnit Commander!" he yelled frantically. "You can't do this! Shepard! Shepard!"
Joker screamed himself hoarse; scratched and grabbed at the door until his grip faltered. His hands scrambled for purchase against the slick metal. It didn't make sense for it to be so slippery. Glancing down, the blood on his hands, which oozed from beneath his fingernails, shocked him into releasing the hatch completely. He expected to fall backward against the deck, but when it didn't happen his eyes darted around. The incessant beeping of the alarms poked through the silence, as the flashes strobed within the small escape vehicle.
The pod lost gravity almost as soon as it left contact with the Normandy. The explosion of his ship set off a myriad of sensors. The sound flipped a switch in his brain.
Like a child on a jungle gym, Joker pulled himself, hand over hand, the length of the pod to the panels. Strapping himself into one of the forward chairs, his shrewd eyes scanned read-outs and checked the alarms. Thankfully, or not, they were all superficial and due to the proximity to the Normandy when she finally came apart. At least, the hull of the emergency pod hadn't been breached in the explosion, though that wasn't much of a consolation.
With that handled Joker pulled the communications panel up and started checking channels. "Shepard," he called out with each change, then waited, listening for anything. His voice sounded loud in the silence, soaked in grief and weakness. He dropped his head into his hands. A rhythmic beep chimed.
That shouldn't be the only sound, he thought. I should hear that devilish chuckle of hers. Most of the time that laugh set his nerves on edge, or made his spine tingle. But now he'd trade anything to hear it again.
Joker pulled the rolled-up cap out of his pocket. His fingers played over the gold stitching, as he repeated her name into the silence with every new channel. Normandy was gone, and so was Shepard. "I failed them both," he mumbled.
"Why didn't you see it?" His eyes scanned the panels. "Why didn't you respond faster? His head landed in his hands, fingers clutching at the helmet he still wore. "Why didn't I see it sooner?"
His voice weakened, as the grief swelled his ire ebbed. "They're gone. It's all gone." He launched the cap in his hand toward the bulkhead of the pod.
His girl and the woman he … A memory of the first time he met her flashed through his mind. Shepard had dazzled him from the start with her sense of humor and those emerald green eyes; eyes that sparkled when she laughed. Closing his eyes, he could see her face with its wide smile and almost hear that confident cackle—even laced with the kind of menace Wrex's chortle carried, it was a sound Joker came to crave hearing.
He shook his head, anger flaring with denial. "No! Not Shepard! She didn't give up on me. I'm not giving up on her." His hands raced over the panels with renewed determination. "If I just boost the signal, and redirect …" he mumbled as he started looking for a way to increase the reception and transfer of the pod's primitive but functional communications. Maybe if she knew he was looking.
"Shepard. I'm still here," he said over the usual channel she used on missions. "Don't give up. Hang on. I'll make them come back, or I'll steal a ship and come back myself. I won't leave you out here alone."
He refused to believe she was gone. Not her. Not yet. I never told her.
"I'll find you," he swore. Only the low crackle of static crossed the headset. Even so, he listened for ... he didn't know how long—waiting to hear any minute sign he could attribute to her.
"Why didn't I just suck it up and tell you? At least then you would know. Fuck the regs, seriously!"
He must have wasted hours in his frantic attempt to prove the looming reality wrong. Joker continued to connect and reprogram systems in an attempt to prove his theory right when the hatch warning lit up prior to sliding open. It didn't register past his dogged obsession.
The first voice to break through his concentration belonged to Chief WIlliams. "Where's Shepard?"
Joker didn't answer, couldn't admit it to her-of all people.
The echo of her boots on the deck carried her closer, and her voice became more frantic. "Joker! Where the hell is the commander?"
"I'm looking," he growled back, staring into her wide eyes. "I've almost got it. I'll find her." He turned back to the panel, mumbling. "I always find her."
The readings went hazy, and he blinked frantically to try and clear his vision.
"Joker," Liara said. Her voice always held that strange mix of kindness and condescension when she talked to him in the past, but it wasn't there now. It was genteel, sympathetic. "What happened?"
He didn't think about what he told them, just relayed information. He needed to locate Shepard, needed a bearing for the rescue. Surely, her suit should be pinging a beacon. "Then they came around for a second pass. We were at the pod. Both of us. We were right there!"
For a moment, he turned and looked at Ashley. "I thought something like that would be hotter, but it wasn't. It was so bright though. Almost like looking into the sun." His eyes locked on hers and he barely processed the way they shimmered. "Lit up everything, but even though I couldn't see her face, the look in her eyes, I knew what she was going to do before she hit the button."
"Oh, God," Williams gasped. She stumbled back as if the pod had been rocked.
"Goddess," Liara whispered from behind her hand.
"But I'll find her," Joker insisted. "Why won't this panel clear up?" His raised voice was punctuated by a kick at the underside of the panel. A mistake, he realized only when the pain shot through his leg.
The hand on his shoulder was as gentle as the voice of the quarian. "There's nothing wrong with the controls, Joker," Tali insisted. "We should get you to the med bay. Come on, that arm looks bad."
His gaze dropped to the limb in question. The dark bruises blazed in contrast to the pale skin around them. Smallish handprints where Shepard had grabbed him just a little too hard. "Shit! She broke my arm," he said, huffing out a quiet laugh. Even to his own ears it sounded maniacal. His other hand covered the marks made by hers as if somehow that would help anything.
Suddenly it all crashed around him. "It's my fault," he sobbed, finally. "I thought I could save her."