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Ever since Commander Shepard had been given command of the SR-1 Normandy, she’d taken to hanging around in the cockpit. Sometimes she asked questions or just talked with her pilot, but most of the time, she just kind of hung around. This gave Joker a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, he got to show off just how knowledgeable he was about his baby, just how well he could make her dance. On the other hand, though, it made him nervous being watched. He enjoyed the solitude he usually was left in in the cockpit. Nobody needed to hang around unless they were making Mass Relay jumps or in battle, leaving Joker to browse the extranet, nap, watch the stars, whatever he felt like doing.
With Shepard around, though, he was a little too nervous about fucking up to do any of that. He didn’t hate her company. She was witty and down-to-earth, beautiful, or as Kaidan had put it, ‘pretty without being stuck up about it,’ and he’d gotten pretty good at parsing out her footsteps from the others among the crew. She walked surprisingly softly. When he didn’t hear her coming, he quickly caught a flash of her hair in the discreet mirror placed at the top of his workspace, so usually, he wasn’t surprised.
And he’d learned a bit about her during their quiet moments. He knew the basics when she was first assigned: family killed in a slaver raid on Mindoir, war hero of the Skyllian Blitz, decorated, first human spectre, yadda yadda, but he’d gotten to know a few other things too.
First of all, she hated coffee with a burning passion. The only way she could even stand it was by making it more milk and sugar with some coffee than the other way around. And, since she liked to maintain a strict diet, that meant she woke up with a nice cold glass of water rather than a cup of joe. Couldn’t have been him.
She also cut the tags out of her clothing if they, unfortunately, had them. Most Alliance digs had printed labels, so it hadn’t come up until she started wearing civilian clothes, but when Joker had bitched about his cap’s tag itching at his scalp, she’d pretty masterfully pulled it out without ruining a single stitch. She said they bothered her, made her skin break out in red, bumpy, gross rashes. He’d joked that shaving had his face doing the same thing.
Shepard’s favorite food was noodles that came from those pop-up stands that cropped up around stations, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember what the name of her favorite drink was. It was incredibly sweet, she’d said, and filled with these little gummy black balls that you had to have a super-wide straw for. She’d had it at a noodle stand on one particular station on shore leave and hadn’t found it ever again. The way she’d described it, groaning at the memory in a pretty erotic way, had made Joker crave sweets like he very rarely did.
Joker hated sweets, but damn did the way she described it, groaning at the memory in a pretty erotic way, had made Joker crave one of those super sweet coffee drinks his sister loved. Maybe next time he went home for shore leave. Whenever that was.
So when Shepard turned left from where she entered through the airlock and decontamination room that connected the Normandy to the Citadel, he wasn’t surprised. What did surprise him was the look on her face. Typically Shepard was pretty stoic, reigned in like she had to make a good example, but this time she looked haunted. It made his stomach clench and his muscles tense. The minor fracture in his tibia twinged and reminded him he was late for a dose of his meds.
Shepard stopped just shy of his peripherals, and for once, she didn’t stand at attention. Her shoulders were sloped downwards, giving her an exhausted look that was mirrored in her eyes. That was honestly all he could see from the mirror. She didn’t speak.
Joker hated when people hung out just outside his vision, but he didn’t feel like he could turn to look at her. And not just because his chair had limited swiveling capabilities.
After a few long moments, he broke the silence. “What’s up?” It was informal, he’d always had commanders get on his case about his informality, but Shepard hadn’t yet, so he didn’t try to curb it. Shepard stared out the front windows without really seeing them.
When she didn’t respond, Joker figured this was one of those ‘I need company but not conversation’ moments. He turned his attention back to engine readouts but kept an eye on the mirror. Shepard didn’t move, but her breathing was deep, like maybe she was as tired as she looked.
“You know who Lieutenant Girard is?” She finally asked, voice just a little hollow. He racked his brain for the name, he’d met a lot of soldiers during his career, but the name didn’t ring any bells.
“Can’t say I do….” He let the sentence trail off, an unasked question of ‘why’ that he wasn’t going to force on her. If she wanted to explain, she would.
She sighed. “He was transporting freed slaves from a Batarian encampment in the traverse. His ship just berthed. He messaged me when I got down the elevator to C-Sec.” His stomach sank. He opened his mouth to say something, but what was he going to say? ‘Oh man, that sucks’? No shit, it sucks. People were literally enslaved, tortured, slaughtered. It made his skin crawl.
“One of them was born on Mindoir.” And it just kept getting worse. “She got away from them, got a gun…” Oh god, he didn’t know if he wanted to stop her from continuing, but he knew he couldn’t even if he wanted to. “He knew I’d just arrived and called me to try and talk to her. She said she wanted to die.” Shepard sounded like her heart was breaking without even an ounce of inflection in her voice.
Joker, for once in his stupid life, decided he really shouldn’t interrupt her story. For a long time, though, she didn’t continue. They sat in awkward silence, he filled with dread and anxiety, her looking even more hollow and exhausted with every passing second. He was caught between turning to face her and wanting to slink away to the medical bay to get his medicine. A shot was better than the tension and knowledge of just what that girl had gone through.
“God… She... “ Shepard’s face finally cracked; she looked devastated, close to tears. It made him uncomfortable and upset; for some stupid reason, Joker wanted to hug her. That was most definitely edging a little close to a breach in protocol, he figured, but seeing her look so… broken made his heart sink. “I can’t even imagine what she went through….”
Joker didn’t want to.
She hung her head and sighed. She took a few steps forward and sat beside his chair, resting her weight against his side. The weight made his seat lean slightly. He could feel her warmth on that side of his thigh, even through his regulation trousers. His breath caught; she looked so vulnerable, so bereft. She let her head lean back against his armrest and his arm where he’d rested it. Her hair tickled his skin.
He felt the need to speak. “That’s why we’re out here, though, isn’t it? Save people like her?” He kept his voice soft, glancing down at the top of her head. Shepard tipped her head back against his arm to look at him. “Help people who can’t help themselves… protect humanity and its allies, ya know, the whole schpiel.” He shrugged his other shoulder, and she smiled just a little. Joker smiled, just a little, back at her.
“Yeah… I guess you’re right.” She muttered before looking forward again. He nodded. “What would all those people think, seeing Commander Shepard, first human spectre, having to have a moment just cus of a rough mission.” Shepard gave a humorless laugh, the kind that was more of a hard exhale through her nose, and shook her head.
“I mean, they’d be devastated. You’re supposed to be a machine, right? Completely unaffected?” He gave much the same humorless laugh, bumping the back of her head with his elbow to make sure she knew he was being sarcastic. “Being affected or whatever is a part of being human. I think I’d be more weirded out if things didn’t affect you, Commander.”
This time, Shepard’s laugh was a lot more genuine, even if it was just a soft sound on another exhalation. The tension in the room seemed to have lifted a little, even if Joker couldn’t stop thinking about the girl from Mindoir. He frowned.
“Talitha.” Shepard breathed the name.
“Huh?”
“Her name is Talitha.” When she looked up at him again, she had that same small smile, but her gaze was soft, if still tired. “Thanks, Joker.” She pat his thigh gently, and he tensed up out of instinct because some people weren’t so gentle, and he always feared a femur break. She grabbed ahold of the railing next to his chair to haul herself up from where she’d sat beside him and stretched out, taking a deep breath.
Shepard rubbed at her face, focusing on her eyes for a moment, even if there wasn’t any sign that she’d shed a tear. Maybe she wished she had, though Joker felt a little silly for thinking that, even for a moment. “I should go.” She nodded at her decision and cast a glance down at him. “See ya.” And she walked away.
Joker was left sitting, alone, in the cockpit, staring out at the citadel wall in front of the Normandy, feeling tired but not as upset as the talk of humans taken as Batarian slaves usually would have left him. “Talitha.” He repeated. He felt like he should remember her name, even if he’d never meet her in person or hear about her again. She’d meant something to Shepard, even if their meeting had been brief, and that felt important.
Shepard felt like she was important, and that meant Joker thought she was important. That was probably a weird way to think about it. He shrugged to himself.
He’d been called worse things than weird.