Joker happily lounges in his chair, or more accurately melts into it. The alcohol has numbed his limbs sufficiently enough to render walking a danger for him. He is in no hurry to leave, but regardless, when Shepard offers him another drink, he requests water instead. He has learned his limits over the years through painful trial and error. She returns from the desk with only one glass of wine. Shepard hands him his water. She curls up comfortably on her chair, takes a sip of wine, and looks at Joker with a blissfully inebriated smile. The infusion of alcohol in their veins had loosened their tongues and encouraged conversation beyond their normal levels of comfort.

"You know..." Shepard says. " You said I must know everything about you by now. I definitely don't. You may talk your ass off, but you're like a politician. You can talk for an hour without really saying anything meaningful. Funny, yes. Meaningful, not so much. I don't really know anything about you either, the person. The 'Joker' behind the 'Flight Lieutenant.'"

"What burning questions do you have about your kickass pilot?"

"Well... why do they call you 'Joker?' Where did your nickname come from?"

"Flight school," Joker explains. "One of the instructors used to bug me about never smiling. She started calling me 'Joker.' And… It stuck."

Shepard frowns slightly. "Why didn't you ever smile?"

"I was too damn busy working my ass off. I had to. It was an uphill battle considering my stupid disease." Joker's brow furrows at the memory. "A lot of my asshole classmates told me to give up and spend my tuition money tricking out a custom wheelchair to use for my inevitable desk job back home on Arcturus Station."

Shepard arks an eyebrow and nods. "Kids can definitely be assholes. I'm sorry to hear they gave you such a hard time."

"That's alright." Joker shrugs off her pity. "By the end of the year, I was the best pilot in the academy. Even better than the instructors and everyone knew it. They all got their asses kicked by the sickly little kid with the creaky legs."

"Hell, yeah, they did." Shepard agrees. "Hmm… That's not the story I expected. 'Joker' suits you."

"Yeah. Better than 'Jeff.' Bleh. I was named after my dad, so I actually prefer the nickname."

Shepard smiles and watches as her right hand swirls around the plum-colored liquid in her glass. She looks contemplative.

"What about you?" Joker motions with his head toward her direction. "Commander Jane Shepard. Got any nicknames, embarrassing or otherwise?"

Shepard shakes her head no slowly.

"Jane is too generic to suit you."

"Yeah, I hate 'Jane.'"

"So, surely someone thought of something more fitting to call you along the way, besides 'Jane,' or 'Commander.'"

Shepard shrugs.

"Your silence betrays you." Joker prods. "What is it? Come on. This informal game of Truth goes both ways."

Shepard looks at her glass. "Jane." She spits the name out. "Do you know who named me?"

"Your mom."

"A nurse." Shepard responds.

"Your mom was a nurse?"

"No. My mom was a fucking red sand addict. The nurse was just working that day."

Joker, ever uncomfortable with super sensitive issues and with a slightly alcohol-fuzzy brain, just replies: "Oh…"

Shepard sighs and explains, "My mom was high when she went to the hospital in labor. Somehow being sand-blasted had induced her labor early and in order to save me, they had to perform an emergency c-section, which inadvertently killed her. They said it was a 'miracle' that I survived. No one knows who the fuck my dad is. So, in the absence of family, a nurse just recorded the generic name given to all unidentified or unclaimed females on my birth certificate: Jane. That's the story I was told anyway."

"Son of a bitch. If you didn't have any family, then…"

"I lived in a girls' home run by the state until I got fed up with it, ran away. I enlisted when I was 18."

"Damn, Shepard."

"Yeah… I didn't want to end up a fuck up like everyone around me. I saw a lot of shit, did a lot of shit. The Alliance was my only out from the gang I got tangled up with, the only way I could escape that life." Shepard shakes her head. "Literally, you are the only person wearing Alliance uniform that I've told this to. I decided to completely restart my life when I got accepted. Hell, I used some of my drug money to get veneers for my teeth and allele therapy to change my hair color."

Joker thinks on her words and a slight smile begins to tease his face. "Is it naturally red?"

Shepard gives Joker a sharp glare. "You can put the pieces together in your head, but don't you dare say the name."

"So, you did have a nickname."

"Seriously, don't fucking say it."

"But I can say… 'The sun will come out, tomorrow...'"

Shepard looks flabbergasted, teetering the fine line between standing up to punch him in the face and running away crying. He stops because he knows she's more a fight than flight responder.

"Foot, mouth." Shepard says sharply. "Now is the time, if you still need help figuring that out."

"Hell, Shepard. Lighten up. I won't tell anyone. Your crippled pilot is just singing to you to make you laugh. You can't take shit too seriously if you're going to survive this fucked up journey we call life."

Shepard unclenches her jaw. "At least that's been your life's mantra, it seems."

"Basically." Joker agrees. "I take flying serious. Dead serious. But the rest. Meh. Someone doesn't like my beard? Tough. Doesn't laugh at my jokes? Their loss. I say, just do what you want and don't give a damn what others think."

"You could be right," Shepard concedes.

"Hell, yeah, I'm right. Can you imagine where I might be right now if I listened to those kids back at Academy? Or let Vrolik's dictate my life? I probably would be sitting at that desk job, hating my fucking life, instead of cruising the galaxy, snuffing out the bad guys with my badass commander."

Shepard smiles at Joker in spite of herself. She really can never stay mad at him.

"Looks like we have more in common than a surface glance would reveal." Shepard says. "Two people, dealt a shitty hand of cards, worked their asses off, rose in rank, and are now out saving the galaxy."

Joker smiled back. "You got it, Shepard. Two losers turned heros."