#Alchera

[swaps55]

Cover art by the utterly phenomenal @legionofpotatoes!

Mezzo

Pairing: mshenko | Rating: M Tags: Canon-typical violence, trauma, dealing with your problems poorly, body autonomy struggles   Summary: The twists and turns of ME2, through the eyes of everyone but Commander Shepard. Chapter Summary: Death was the only way

Chapter 1: Stars | Read on Ao3

At first, you think you can survive this. Your ship is in pieces, your momentum catapulting you away from the wreck, the planet you call Alchera watching serenely as your life burns. You tell yourself, you’ve faced worse. The first time you fought death was the first breath you took, into lungs that weren’t ready, in a body too small and fragile to survive on its own. You struggled for days in a vessel adrift between our stars, an insignificant speck of heat in our cold universe, determined to burn as bright as a sun. When your mother finally held you for the first time, she showed you to us and asked if we were what you were in such a hurry to see for yourself. You have always been ours. You were ours when your father sang you to sleep while we gleamed through the shutters. You were ours when you rose for the first time on unsteady legs because you wanted to see us. You were ours when you felt our power come to life under your skin and understood that we are part of you in ways you’d never imagined. How many times did you palm the glow of dark matter in your hand and imagine you were one of us? But no matter how bright you burn now, it won’t be enough to save you. There is fear, now, but you swallow it back.    The second time you fought death it wasn’t your life you were fighting for. You begged, pleaded, to march into the unknown and rescue a father who didn’t come home, and when no one listened, you turned to us in the dark and begged to take his place. That was when you learned we could be cruel.   We felt your pain, we heard your anger, we wi ditnessed your tears and did nothing. And you forgave us. We wonder if you will forgive us now.

Read the rest on Ao3 | The Mezzo Playlist

[bagog]

N7 Month, 2023 - Day 18: Pack

Was stumped. A thin little angsty pre-relationship mshenko drabble about a mourning Kaidan after Alchera.

++

The debrief with the Citadel Council had been bad enough, but the debriefing under Admiral Hackett on Arcturus had completely wrung out the last of Kaidan’s patience. He and Joker had been the last to see Council Spectre and Alliance Commander Shepard alive. As ranking officer, Kaidan was getting most of the attention.

Search and survey missions above Alchera had come back negative for any other survivors. Many of the deceased crew had not been recovered, and neither had Shepard.

A burial in space. Kaidan wondered if that would be what Shepard would have wanted. He’d been in and out of meetings for the last 9 hours, telling the same story again and again. He wasn’t allowed to speak with Joker, or anyone from the Normandy. The isolation had galvanized his grief into such a thin point, he wasn’t even aware he still felt the prick of it. How many times could you describe the last moment of your Commander’s life before it became just another story, no added emotional weight. Just recounting the facts.

The small apartment he kept for himself on Arcturus Station felt foreign to him when he finally got back that evening. The Normandy, it’s claustrophobic sleeper pods, had begun to feel like home. He stripped off his uniform and lifted his shirt over his head, sat on the stiff foam mattress and sighed. He’d had friends on the Normandy, pretty good friends who he’d been through hard times with, and they were dead now. Too cold and too small in space to be recovered.

That was one thing he hadn’t gotten a chance to say in all the debriefs: he had lost friends. He had lost Shepard. And the loss was killing him. In a dim corner of the room sat Kaidan’s old brown pack: one of the straps sewn on haphazardly, numerous patches covering holes in the canvas. The sight of it forced a heavy huff out of him.

He walked over, picked up the pack carefully. The zipper stuck, but Kaidan knew how to pull it open anyway. There were civilian clothes inside: just a couple t-shirts, some slacks. There was a pair of swim trunks, sandals. In a separate bag was a menagerie of toiletries—cologne, hair products,--things he didn’t get to use aboard a starship.

The bag was packed for vacation. For shore leave, with Shepard. The two had agreed to spend shore leave on the Citadel together, and Kaidan—ever the boy scout—had packed ahead of their sweep of Alchera, it was supposed to be their final engagement before the well-earned break. Kaidan realized only now, looking at his ready pack, how excited he had been for the opportunity.

At the bottom of the pack was a data-pad: books Shepard had asked Kaidan to recommend to him. It was a task Kaidan had thrown himself at with unexpected fervor. Now that Shepard was dead… he couldn’t remember why.

He pulled the zipper back around, dropped the pack with a thud onto the deck, and returned to the bed. He didn’t need anything out of the pack. Didn’t want to smell like fine cologne, couldn’t stomach the soft civilian clothes, didn’t need to style his hair. All of that could wait, maybe forever.

He lay back in bed, telling himself “not forever.” The grief would pass away some day soon, and he’d be back to everything-as-usual.

The pack sat there in the corner for years.

[lonesurvivorao3]

Shenko Snippets - Alchera

They’re a hundred feet away from the next escape pod when an explosion rips through the bridge below, shattering it into pieces and violently shaking them.

It’s not about winning.

Kaidan is ahead of her, but he knows she’s stopped running, so he does, too, and turns. Impossibly large chunks of the hull float through the vacuum of space, isolating Joker from any rescue effort. If he’s still alive, and there’s no way to know that.

It’s about being decent.

What’s left of the SR1 strains and keens beneath their feet. Without hesitating, she orders him to go, get himself and the others to safety. Of course she’s going to try and save him.

More importantly, its kind.

An acrid taste fills his mouth, but he nods, mirroring the swift and decisive actions of his wife. It’s the least he can do.

It’s the only thing I can allow myself to be.

After sealing the door, he programmes the navigation system, removes his helmet, staring fixedly through the small round window along with the other six crew members.

Maybe there’s no point to it.

He knows where the closest escape pods are, thinking she’d made all the right moves during the last few months, becoming someone who would no longer be a terrible disappointment to her grandmother, just a few more good moves in the next few minutes.

But this is who I am now.

He sees the strange ship swing back around.

I will stand here, fighting to be kind until I fall.

He sees the beam aiming at the skeleton of the SR1 a second time, in the vicinity of his wife and their pilot.

Until it kills me.

The acrid taste spills from his mouth and onto the grilled floor.

[monowires]

we are all but echoes of things gone by.

[kyratittyfish]

Hello everyone!

I’ve been rather silent for the past month or so- to make a long story short, October started with a new job as a teacher, went on with a close encounter of the awful kind with Covid, and ended with me being accepted into a PhD program.

But I’m back, and with news: after months of work, I’m proud to announce I’m finally publishing my first multi-chapter fic ever, Between The End And The Beginning.

I posted snippets, I’ve raved about it… and now it’s finally here, so enjoy the read!

A special thanks to my muses @painterofhorizons and @commander-krios (who also did an amazing work as a beta reader), and to @spaced0lphin cause of course this fic will eventually evolve into pure Shoker, and the HatBoy mod has provided the best inspiration for it.

[laelior]

The scars are no longer there, but they still ache.

Late at night, sometimes, when the cabin lights are  off and the environmental systems are just a quiet hum against the hull. When she’s just grasping at the first strands of sleep.

That’s when she absently rubs her thumb across the ache that wells up in her left leg, or the twinge on her forehead. Simple acts that had once been habit. Only to startle to full wakefullness when her fingers encounter only smooth skin.

Phantom pains, Chakwas had called it the one time she’d brought them up. The pain felt in a limb that’s no longer there. 

But phantom pains are for what has been taken, not what has been given. A new body, one that has none of the memories she’s earned. Something perfect and smooth like she’s never, ever been. A freshly pressed uniform for a solider to step into on command.

That’s all.

Just another weapon with the serial numbers filed off.

[acciokaidanalenko]

Bitter Grief

100 word drabble written for the MEFFW prompt: bitter.

Summary: April 11th has new meaning for Kaidan, especially as he faces the day, and his grief, alone.

CW/TW: Brief mention of alcohol. Grief/mourning.

Pairing: Kaidan Alenko/Commander Natasha Shepard

AO3 link: here.

[infiltraitor-n7]

I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | VIV | X | XI | XII

After Alchera, Kaidan starts to forget.

Kaidan is tired today. But tired isn’t quite the right word—fatigued? Exhausted? Depleted? Gutted? As his mind ticks through the possibilities, each word becomes more visceral. Gutted becomes eviscerated, eviscerated becomes vivisected. And he realizes that he isn’t simply tired, or drained or depleted, but rather he is consumed—his current state is not a simple equation of no sleep equals exhaustion, but rather no sleep plus the ever-festering absence of something that, with each day, becomes less and less defined, divided by memories of before multiplied by memories of after, the migraines that still come and kick him while he’s already down, until his life is no longer defined by what is, but rather what is missing, a negative image instead of positive contours, and he lies awake in his narrow bed and feels—devoured.

He feels and feels and it’s so heavy. He feels so much that it compresses, gains its own gravity, expands and expands, mass compounding mass, until it’s all too heavy, until he is collapsing, the clichéd black hole, and he is the negative image, the entity that people are aware of not because they see it, but because of all the objects around it that can be seen, and there he is, the void at the center, proven by inference instead of observation.

But that is just today. Just today, a bad day. It has been a year already. The bad days, like the missing thing, have faded somewhat. There are some days where he is not a black hole. No, not so much a black hole. Many days he is a brown dwarf—a quiet, failed thing, with neither the mass to combust into starlight nor to collapse into the sucking vortex. Neither planet nor star, neither living nor dead, he is simply there, floating, simply there, existing.

But those are just some days. Other days, other days he wakes up, he showers, he makes himself coffee without any whiskey at all. He has an appetite, he eats a big breakfast, he ticks through the news sites. He lifts his hand in greeting passing coworkers in the hall. He still mostly eats dinner alone, spends quiet evenings watching mindless dramas, re-runs of Blasto movies flickering in the dark as he drifts, still unable to sleep that well. As he drifts, he can imagine a day, sooner rather than later, where he will leave Arcturus and he will work again, really work, not just sitting behind a desk but doing what he had always intended to do with the Alliance: some good. When the other days outnumber the bad days.

What jettisons Kaidan from a decent day into a bad day? What is the equation that one solves for renewed devastation? The absence, it’s the absence, and the speed at which the absence simultaneously softens and sharpens. He hadn’t known Shepard for that long, after all. A small, hitched breath, there and gone before you know it, almost silent in comparison to the great cacophony of the rest of his life. What is one year stacked against thirty? The math is simple. He begins to forget. Small things. The exact texture of Shepard’s hair. A joke shared, and he can’t remember who told it. Did Shepard tell him? Or did he tell Shepard? Who laughed the hardest? The exact ratio of gun oil, coffee, sweat, and Shepard’s skin that made up the scent that used to soak Kaidan’s sheets, his hoodies, his own skin. Every detail that fades is a new loss, grief compounding grief, mines on a timer, buried in the dirt. The right steps don’t matter; he could navigate the minefield perfectly, avoiding every single trigger, but in the end he is still in the field, because it is never-ending, and the numbers are ticking down. One morning he wakes up, and he has to watch a vid to remember Shepard’s voice. A decent day gutted and skinned, stripped to reveal a very, very bad one.

Because every picture, every recording, the tangible things Kaidan must rely on to remember, to remember, lose their effectiveness over time, until it is not Shepard under his shaking fingertips as he traces over the lines of Shepard’s face in some battered photo, but rather the idea of Shepard, a Shepard construct, a collection of fading facts that fail to constitute the whole of who Shepard was, really was, as a person, and who Shepard was to Kaidan. Every memory aid is a collection of diminishing returns, red sand to an addict, each hit packing a weaker high. Kaidan, as he lies awake at night, worries about the clock running out, a day he wakes up and can’t remember much of anything at all. Just a name, some photos, the vague feeling of being carried to safety slung over strong shoulders, a hitched breath in the dark. He knows the math is simple, and the hits will just keep on coming. Because he knows that the clearest memory at the end of it all will be the one he wants the least—the one that remains while Shepard’s laugh, scowls, scent all fall away: the picture-perfect image of a body struggling in space, and the long fall into a bright planet.

Today, Kaidan is devoured. But that’s just today. Tomorrow is another day. And the day after that, the math tells him, is yet another. He will do what he has always done; he will muscle through. Through Jump Zero manslaughter, being a messed up kid with a jack in his head, lost amidst the apple trees under Canadian grey skies; through boot camp and clawing his way up through Alliance ranks with the migraines pounding behind his eyes as steady as the pounding of the SMGs; through the comms going dead on Virmire and the Council turning its back, through fists lifted in victory amidst the burning cherry blossoms of the Citadel. His mind blanks after that. In theory, the days continue after that halcyon period post-Saren, the Normandy awash in success and its crew flush in confidence that whatever the galaxy had to hurl their way, they would prevail, because they had each other, and they had Shepard.

Until they didn’t.

The days did continue. He knows this. Today he’s just tired, that’s all. Tomorrow will be another day, and then one after that, stacking and stacking, and he will muscle through each one, as he has always done, and each new missing memory will render guilt, yes, and the gaping, stomach-heaving loss, but also-yes, he must be honest with himself if with no one else: also, relief. As each memory fades, so does the pain. A kind of cosmic debt collection. He is paying his dues, one dulled recollection at a time, coins falling from a ripped pocket, unintentionally paid but good currency all the same. He will get through each day. He will pay and pay. Until finally someday, some not so special day-not a good day, nor a bad one-he too will get to rest. His friends will do as he asked, and there will be another escape pod. They will lay him gently in the small space, a softer occasion than the last time he was in one; this time, no sirens wailing or fires burning bright. This time, they will jettison him into that dark night, high over the curving horizon of Alchera, and he’ll finally get to rest, as close as he’ll get to matching grave plots, but he figures it’s enough. Finally, enough.

[astorythatwritesitself]

I HAVE to know what’s going on with I Get It But Like, What The Fuck Dude

And for @aceghosts !

Congrats on both picking the one that isn't explicitly/implicitly Shep/Thane by the way xD No this one is going to be for Grunt's loyalty mission 👀

Or, more specifically: Adrian and Wrex's reunion - they were surprisingly close on the original Normandy and Wrex was one of her more frequent companions on ground missions, and got the dubious honor of being around a drunk Adrian on the anniversary of the Akuze incident. She wasn't gone enough to spill the entirety of the story to him, but Wrex got closer to the truth than most people did, and a better understanding of why Shep was dead set on taking out any and every thresher nest they stumbled across.

Point being - Wrex knows Shepard isn't afraid of thresher maws, necessarily, but she gets... different, around them. Extremely detached and almost robotic, there's nothing but strategizing to take it down, and take as much of its attention as she can. And tradition demands the Rite remain unknown... and as much as he cares about Adrian, and does feel bad throwing her into this without warning, he's a clan leader and trying to unite his people, even the most extraordinary human doesn't quite outweigh that.

As far as Adrian's concerned - it's not exactly a betrayal? Like the title says - she gets it. But What The Fuck, Man. But it's a painful little moment for everyone involved, that's all.

[baejax-the-great]

I think after the Reaper War, they should have put a little statue of a Mako right next to the Conduit.

[topaz-carbuncle]

the difference in 2 years

[springagainafter]

Pointedly taking Liara along for all the Cerberus quests (particularly the Toombs one) in ME1 whenever I get around to playing Merrick's LE run so Liara has an excellent idea of Exactly What Cerberus Is Like and no illusions about them maybe not being that bad.

I'm debating how often Liara gets to go on missions in ME1 (in terms of headcanon; for gameplay she's going on all the missions this time :D) because Shepard and co. have exactly one Prothean expert who can decipher weird beacon visions and her getting killed off would be Very Bad. (A little like Mordin in 2; I always mentally go "squishy scientist - even if he is former STG - who is Necessary to stop the seeker swarms" and leave him on the ship except for his loyalty mission).

[lonesurvivorao3]

Post Alchera Grief

He woke again, properly this time, his body drenched in cold sweat. The searing pain in his head was unbearable, as if someone had split his skull open and scooped out chunks of his brain. He stumbled inside and collapsed onto their bed, only to realise that the bedding no longer carried her scent.

Finding grief to be a constant onslaught of innumerable thorns, he took a gun from the bedside table, venturing outside in the dark. Standing amidst the orchard with a bottle of TM88 in his other hand, he took aim at the apples, firing bullets that went wildly astray.

It took his mother's frightened shouts of his name several minutes to cut through, and when he turned, she demanded to know what he was doing. He bowed and proclaimed. "It's called getting drunk and shooting shit, Mom."

She rushed towards him. "You're behaving like a lunatic!"

He laughed bitterly, scratching his forehead with the butt of the pistol, using Eris’s favourite phrase. "It's an entirely proportional response to being a widower at thirty-two, Mom."

Kaidan's eyes widened, and he gulped huge breaths, dropping both items. "I'm a widower, Mom."

[wrathbites]

Alchera

“We really don’t have time for —“

“And whose fault is that?”  He’ll give credit where it’s due, Lawson’s got a spine on her to stand firm against a vampire’s rage, raise her chin in defiance rather than tuck it, guard her neck, raise a barrier and shove him back.  But this is an argument she has no hope of winning, and he leans in close to emphasise the point.  “Get out of my face, or I’ll rip yours off, Lawson.”

She looks set to argue, gaze flitting back and forth across his features, frown an imperfect breach in her mask, but even her confidence has limits, fragile human heart taking off at a rabbit sprint.  Whatever she finds in his stare must trigger some inkling of self-preservation because she backs off a step, then two, none too happy about it.

“Just make it quick, Shepard.”

“Fuck off,” he snaps, and barges past her at last.

~

Where a Cerberus operative fails to stop him, one of his own people...

Well, two, actually.  They’ve been forewarned, forearmed, suited and booted and ready to go, though the weapons are probably overkill.  Alchera’s only home to ghosts.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, surprised more than he’s annoyed.  He doesn’t want the company, but —

“We’re not about to let you go down there on your own, Shepard,” Garrus says.

— but he’s been alone down there before, and it cost him two years of his life.

“They were our crew, too, Shepard,” Tali says, gentle as a spring breeze, patting the seat beside her and he... he caves.

~

He’s not sure what hits worse — the missing bodies, or the skeletal remains of the Normandy no snowstorm can hope to hide.  And she is skeletal, gutted and broken, the most advanced ship humans and turians alike had to offer... left to rust and ruin.

The Mako, at least, survived the attack, though he knew that already, his shelter from fire and vacuum alike.  A near perfect landing, too, aside from the missing wheels and buckled panelling on her left side, the circuitry left exposed by the “recovery” team sent after his body.

No, he thinks, cradling three sets of dogtags in his palms, the missing bodies are definitely worse.  He’s still unsure of the exact number of dead — no-one aboard the false Normandy can agree on the figure, but it doesn’t matter.  They were his crew, they were alive, they mattered, and... now they’re gone, and he’s not, stumbling blind in their graveyard, looking for something, anything from their time under his command to send home.

“You find something, Shepard?”

He jolts, yanked from the snare of his own thoughts as Garrus cuts across the static buzz of silenced comms, glancing down from his perch to find him with a hand braced against the Mako’s hull, taking advantage of the limited shelter she offers from the wind.

He turns his hand to let the dogtags swing free, careful to keep hold of each chain lest they be lost to Alchera’s wilds again.

“... Ah.”

“I don’t think we’ll find any of the others, not in this.”

“Maybe not today, but someday.”

“You... planning on coming back here, Garrus?”

“I told you before, Shepard: I’ve got your six.  Even if it means tromping through the cold.”

“Could be worse,” Tali pipes up, armed with a datapad that’s seen better days.  “I distinctly remember rachni attempting to melt my faceplate on Noveria.  With any luck, our next visit will also be free of that horror.”

Next visit...

“Thank you,” he rasps, and she stretches up as far as she can to pat his boot.

“Ride or die, Shepard.  Preferably ride, but you get the point.”

Anywhere else, on any other day, he’d have laughed.  But a brief smile... that he can almost manage.

[kyratittyfish]

Shiny And New (But I'm Still Me, And You're Still You)

Read on Ao3

‘Please let it be empty’ was the mantra playing in Angela’s head as she stood in front of the door to the port side observation deck, waiting for it to slide open. 

If there was a god of spaceship bars, she must not have been on his good side. Either that, or he was too busy with drunken privateers to answer her pleas for solitude.

She walked in anyway, but the figure slumped in front of the large window didn’t react to the door sliding open or her approaching steps, seemingly lost in thought. 

Angela herself often let her mind roam freely across the stars, forcing herself out of the cold and motionless spaces her brain usually took her to.

Aimless drifting across her mindscape happened without effort here, with the endless blanket of space extending out in front of her. It was almost as easy as actually being out there, floating away like a leaf on a pond. 

Like the body of a spaced woman.

She hoped the imagination of her fellow deck occupant was kinder than her own, but with a start, she realized his daydreams were probably as nightmarish as hers.

“Joker?” she asked.

He turned to face her, and perhaps it was the later hour or the different light, but she didn’t recall him looking so tired earlier that day at the helm. The dark circles under his eyes and unkempt stubble on his cheeks betrayed too many awake hours spent in his chair and a stubborn reliance on caffeine as a stand-in for sleep.

“Commander.”

“Your shift ended three hours ago, shouldn’t you be in your bunk?”

“Yeah, well. You ever heard Donnelly snore? I swear the man’s part combustion engine.”

She suspected this was only half the reason why he was still awake, but pointing out the obvious would’ve written her name in bold letters in the little book of hypocritical jerks, right on the front page. Her shift ended an hour ago too, and yet here she was, roaming around the deserted ship in her off-duty tracksuit, looking like the reanimated zombie she was. She dropped the matter, snorting instead.

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” Angela chuckled, shaking her head.. 

“Well, consider yourself lucky.”

“Fancy a drink?” She offered, propping her elbow on the counter. “It’d be a waste to sit next to the bar without making use of it.”

“Nah, Doc is going to kill me if she figures out I mixed alcohol with my nighttime meds. Last time I did that, she had me sleep in the infirmary for a week. As far as relaxing resorts go, I wouldn’t exactly recommend the Medbay. You go ahead and have yourself a beer or something if you wanna, as long as you drink one on behalf of your favorite pilot, of course.”

“And who might that be?”

He smirked despite his visible exhaustion. “You tell me.”

She ambled towards the bar to examine the array of bottles neatly arranged on the refrigerated shelves. The little bar wasn’t lacking in alien beverages; a surprising fact, given the Cerberus logo eloquently painted on every corner of her ship. She counted a Turian brandy, a couple of bottles of batarian wine, some colorful asari spirit, and even a small flask of ryncol.

She decided against the heavier stuff, grabbing a bottle of red ale and a can of non-alcoholic soda.

“Here,” she said, sliding the can over the smooth surface of the table in the general direction of her pilot. “Suppose Chakwas won’t mind you having a, uh…” she squinted as she deciphered the name written on the label in an overly flourished font, “... a Red Varren Sodalicious with your favorite commander?”

“Eh, she’d probably scold me about the amount of sugar in it, but no complaints about interaction with my meds. I think.”

No quips about who his favorite Commander would be? 

“Only one way to find out,” she said, cracking open her beer. 

One and a half drinks and twenty minutes later, their idle chat had shifted from a discussion about the latest Dog Or Not episode (during which an Elcor contestant had correctly recognised a Shi-tzu and a Corgi, only to mistakenly identify a baboon as a Cocker Spaniel) to a ranking of the various installations of the Blasto franchise.

“Come on, Shep, Blasto IV has a guy biotically controlling a vorcha into flying a Mako through an asteroid belt.” Joker exclaimed, his appalled voice half an octave higher than usual. “You can’t look at that scene and tell me, your pilot, that this isn’t the best Blasto!”

“Alright, I give in,” Angela conceded, “but only because of the improbable use of biotics.”

“Score!” He exclaimed, slapping his can of orangeade onto the tabletop. The carbonated drink didn’t appreciate the sudden impact, though and erupted in a bubbly stream that quickly trickled down the table and onto the pavement. His eyebrows shot up under his hat as he scanned the mess. “Whoops,” he muttered with an apologetic grin as he tentatively poked the sugary volcano. “Just like Therum all over again!”

“Yeah, well, Gardner is not going to be happy about that.” Angela hoped her amusement wasn’t clear in her voice as she played the part of the scolding Commander. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” she continued, shaking her head. “He’s probably gonna make you lick the floor clean.” 

“I’m in!” he exclaimed overenthusiastically. “I bet it tastes better than that clump of sawdust and hot glue he tries to pass as meatballs anyway.”

“Hey, it wasn’t too bad! Now, the so-called sausages and mashed potatoes he cooked up the other day... That makes me suspect he’s a little too comfortable with mixing his cooking and toilet cleaning duties.”

“That a fancy way of saying it tastes like shit, Commander?”

“Looked like it, too.”

He chuckled, and her alcohol-impaired gaze followed his fingers as he absentmindedly rolled up the right sleeve of his sweatshirt to scratch a spot on his forearm. Her light dizziness turned into the much less pleasant sensation of ice-cold fingers running down her back as she spotted a long surgical-looking scar running along the outer side of his wrist and disappearing under the hem of his hoodie. It looked relatively recent, and she didn't remember ever seeing it on his skin before back on the original Normandy. 

“That looks gnarly.”

Confusion lingered in his eyes for an instant. Then, something different took its place. Something darker, that made his lips twist into a sour grimace and his shoulders drop.

“Uh, that. Yeah.”

“What happened?”

He lowered his gaze again and hastily pulled down the rolled-up sleeve till the hem almost touched his knuckles. 

“I, uh, slipped in the shower. I tried breaking the fall with my hand but ended up breaking my arm instead. It was pretty dramatic. Needed surgery and some shiny new hardware to fix it.”

Joker was many things: a stellar pilot, a surprisingly decent cook, and master of pop culture references, old and new. He wasn't, however, a liar. His gaze was about to burn a hole through the wall next to the bar shelves with how hard he was concentrating on avoiding Angela’s eyes, and the napkin that until a few moments ago had been collecting condensation under his can was now reduced into tiny scraps of balled up paper. 

“It was Alchera?” She asked, her question more of a statement than an inquiry. She was there when he injured his arm. She did it to him. 

He turned towards the window panel, his left hand tightly holding his other arm over his chest and a pained wince painted on the reflection of his face. 

“Yeah.” he nodded, his gaze locked on some distant star.

“How bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

“Shit. Joker, I’m sorry…”

“Yep,” he cut her short, “me too.”

“What happened the two years before I, uh, woke up?” Angela asked when the silence finally got so heavy it was threatening to have its own center of gravity.

“You mean beyond unfathomable levels of suckiness? Like I told you, the Alliance practically disbanded us, everyone went their own way, and they swept everything you did under the rug. Made you out to be crazy! Bastards knew you were right about the Reaper threat, but they would’ve rather kissed a yahg than admit it. So yeah, it sucked balls. Krogan ones. All four of ‘em.”

“Yeah, I figured as much, But… that’s not what I meant. I wanted to know what happened to you.”

He sighed without turning around, and in the drawn-out silence before he finally spoke, Angela’s heartbeat pounded louder than a roaring cannon in her ears.

“Is this some sort of test?” He slurred, narrowing his eyes at his fingers and fiddling with the tab on his coke can.

“Why would it be?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” He snapped. “You’re asking the guy who got you killed what he did while you were dead.”

He stood up and staggered towards the bar, grabbing the first bottle he touched. He poured some of the brown liquid into a glass before shuffling back to his stool.

“Shouldn’t you…”

“Fuck the meds,” he declared. Clearly, the kind of pain he was dealing with tonight wasn’t one that could be quieted with a dose or two of analgesics.

He swirled the liquor a few times around his glass, then downed it in a single gulp. He poured some more. 

“695.” He muttered, his knuckles whitening around the glass. “That’s the number of days you were dead. I know ‘cause I counted ‘em. That’s how long I had to live knowing it was my fault. And honestly, Commander, out of the two of us? You had it easier,” he snarled.

“I was dead!” 

“Oh yeah? Well I spent every one of those 695 days wishing it was me instead,” he shot back. All at once, his bent shoulders sank along with his gaze. He looked so small. “And what’s worse… I deserved every second of that hell.”

He stared at the table, reaching for the bill of his hat, trying to hide beneath its shadow. If his gesture was meant to hide the watery glistening at the corner of his eyes, it didn’t work. Angela saw it. Angela felt it, the familiar prickle of incoming tears that made her tear ducts sting and her throat burn. 

Her pilot, her friend, couldn’t stand to look at her. Of all the pain and frustration during the last few weeks, this hurt her the deepest.

“Alright, then. You’ve obviously been thinking about this for a long time.” She stated after a drawn out breath, voice steady despite the growing ache of the black hole that had swallowed her heart whole and taken its place in her chest. “What would you have done different, then? If it really was your fault, if you made a bad call, there must have been a good call, right?”

“I…” His voice caught in his throat as he tried to force the words, but his only confession was a drop of blood falling from his bitten lip. He wiped it away and studied the red stain it left on his finger.

That’s what he sees each time he looks at his hands. Blood. Mine. The black hole between her lungs expanded at the thought, sucking air in until breathing felt like a hot blade piercing through her ribs. 

“There’s nothing you could have done that would have changed the outcome. Nothing that could have kept me from dying. Had you acted differently, we almost certainly would’ve died. Would it have been better? They would’ve brought me back anyway… and I would have been stuck in Cerberus’ hands without you.”

Her voice turned into a brittle whisper as the last words left her lips and the heaviness of her heart felt a little less suffocating. 

“They would’a found someone else to take my place,” he grumbled “Hell, I’m sure Mister Creepy Eyes has dozens of replacements ready for me just in case he wakes up in a bad mood one morning and decides I’m not worth the trouble I cause.”

“Well, can’t say you’re wrong on that,” Angela conceded. She was confident that the Illusive Man had countermeasures in place in the event that the good, righteous Commander Shepard turned out to be a bit too good and a bit too righteous for his plans. Still, the idea of some nameless, mindless Cerberus lackey sitting at the helm felt ten times more terrifying than that knowledge. “But someone else wouldn’t be you. And there’s no way in hell I could do this with anyone else instead of you. And trust me about that, I know a thing or two about the afterlife.”

He chuckled, raspy and low and bitter, and Angela sighed, wishing that he could just believe her, that he would just give up the grief and guilt that had been weighing him down since the day she died. But life can’t just be that simple, can it? 

Joker’s stubbornness was one of the things about him that made him such a fine pilot and a good friend. He never shied away from telling shit as it was. If he believed in something, he fought for it with all he had - teeth, nails, crutches, and Thanix cannons. Now that it was holding him under the muddy water of his own despair, though, it was so damn frustrating.

She’d done the impossible so many times before: she’d saved an entire colony from slavers without losing a single man, she’d granted humanity a place in the Galaxy, she’d protected the Citadel from the attack of a sentient AI older than time itself. Hell, even death had a go at keeping her down, and she showed it her ceramic-plated middle finger. So why couldn’t she do this one simple thing and make things right with the man sitting next to her? 

“Can I ask you a question?” Joker finally asked.

She arched her eyebrow at his words, breaking the silence that had fallen over them like a blanket of snow. 

Snow. Heavy over the debris of my old ship, my old life, my old body.

“Sure,” she replied.

“Why?” He asked, his head bowed down over the glass, his eyes hidden by the shadow of his cap. Was he looking at her, now that she couldn’t return his gaze? Had he been doing that for the whole duration of her new life, watching over her from a distance, torturing himself with the weight of guilt he couldn’t free himself of?

“Why what?”

“Why did you come back for me?” he asked, his voice for once as small and fragile as the rest of him.

And there it was, the question that lingered unspoken between the two of them since the day she died, seeping through the cracks like poison gas. Or like oxygen slipping out of a punctured breathing tube...

“Why wouldn’t I have?”

“I mean, come on, let’s be real here,” he spat as if his words were thresher maw acid burning his lips. “Yeah I was the best pilot in the Fleet, but I’m no Commander Shepard. I’m replaceable. You’re not, and the fact that they literally resurrected you is  pretty damn good proof of that. You are a hero, a leader, the only sliver of hope this galaxy has to live to see another few years. I‘m just a cripple with a bad attitude. It doesn’t take a genius or a philosopher to see which life is worth more.”

Replaceable. 

No.

“And which one would it be?”

“Come on, you wanna hear me say the answer is yours? We both know it's true.”

She took one last sip of her beer- the now warm beverage tasted almost as bitter on her tongue as Joker’s words felt to her ears.

“And yet it was your life I chose to save.”

“Can’t say I follow your logic on that one.”

Angela sighed and rubbed her fingertips over her eyelids. Heavy. It’s all so heavy. For all their cyber tech and medical miracles, Cerberus couldn’t mend fissures that ran soul-deep. 

“Alright,” she began, sitting up straighter. “You look at yourself and you see what? A cripple with a bad attitude, your words… I look at you, and see a skilled professional, with rock solid work ethic, excellent decision-making abilities, and no problem in speaking his mind to let his superiors know when their plans are really just a horrible idea.” 

Angela paused, and bent lower to meet his gaze through the shadow of his hat. No more running away from this, no more running away from you, she thought as she continued. 

“I see a man who is 100% committed to what he does, who never lets bad odds stop him from reaching his objective, and who knows what it means to make sacrifices.” 

She took in a slow breath, catching herself aching just to lay her hand atop his closed fist. “I see somebody I’m lucky to call a good friend, and whom I hope feels the same way towards me.”

“A friend, huh?” He asked tentatively, wide eyes shooting furtive glances at her from underneath the bill of his hat. She held his hesitant gaze with a soft smile.

“Of course.”

“Even after…?”

“Especially even after. You could be safe on the Citadel, or on Arcturus, or back with your family, or at the helm of a different ship… anywhere else but here. Yet, here you are, on a Cerberus vessel, working for a terrorist organization, following your undead commander on what’s most probably a suicide mission. If this isn’t the epitome of loyalty, I don’t know what is.”

Joker nodded slowly and let out a long, deep breath.

“Alright, then. So... friends?” he asked. 

“Friends. If you want to, of course.”

He looked up from his glass with a soft, genuine smile that lit up his eyes and set her heart on fire. 

“Yeah,” he finally responded. “I do.”

It was rare to see him smile. True to his name, he sure laughed a lot, but it was always so guarded. 

This time, with a simple smile, his defenses were down and all the rest of him shone through, naked and true. 

She felt her lips curl up and with a last flick of its tail, the little black hole inside of her twisted and curled before swallowing itself. Her heart, now back where it belonged, felt lighter than solar dust.

“Oh and, Joker, one last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Permission to hug you?”

As he slowly stood up from his stool, she braced for him to just leave, to walk through the door and abandon her here with a whole bunch of feelings she couldn’t quite make sense of.

But he didn’t.

“Uh, yeah? Uh, granted,” he said, taking an uncertain step towards her.

She walked closer until his breaths tickled her neck. They were almost hesitant; as if one puff of air might blow her away like smoke.

She could almost count the stars reflecting in his eyes.

She never noticed how green they were before.

Carefully, she wrapped one arm around his shoulders, feeling his muscles tense underneath hers for a brief instant. 

She assumed he’d pull away almost immediately - the last time she touched him was the reason why they were having this talk right now, after all. She’d dragged him to safety and traded her life for his. The sickening crack she felt under her fingers when she grabbed him by his arm had been the least painful way she hurt him that day. 

Instead, he took a long, shaky breath, and took her into his own arms, drawing her closer until his chin brushed against her shoulder.

Although his embrace was a gentle one, it took her breath away all the same. 

She laid her free hand on his back, rubbing light circles over his shirt, feeling the tension in his limbs fade away and his breaths slow down, and for a moment, she was at peace.

Special thanks to...

@commander-krios, for being my muse, source of inspiration, and listening ear to my ramblings. @spaced0lphin, for your amazing work as a beta- your precious input made this fic 100x better. @nightmarestudio606, for helping me come up with a title that actually makes sense.

[bowl-of-fruit-loops]

thinking about her….

(the mako from mass effect 1)