The last thing he needed to do was have a breakdown over the intercom. “I mean-” Joker’s eyes flicked to the comm link with a sudden flash of paranoia. Those dreams had been replaced lately by fields of fire. He didn’t wake from these as often, they only repeated like some terrible loop in his mind as he tossed and turned, but when he woke the next morning his pillow would be damp, as if he had cried in his sleep.
In other dreams, he tried over and over again to grab Shepard’s hand, but he was never close enough. They always changed – in some of the dreams, the Normandy exploded around him, causing him to shoot upright in the dark, heart pounding against his rib cage like he would burst through his chest. For months after Shepard was spaced, Joker had been plagued with terrible dreams of the Normandy going down. Shepard wasn’t the only one who was having nightmares lately. Joker sighed, rubbing both hands over his face wearily. But it wasn’t the homeworld, it was just some agricultural hamlet in the middle of Boonfuck Nebula…so nobody cared. Earth meant almost nothing to him, wasn’t anything but a planet he had seen in school vids growing up. How helpless, how useless his rage was hundreds of lightyears away from its source. Maybe you’re wrong, ever think of that?” he snapped back, hating the way his voice sounded. Joker whirled on EDI where she sat in the co-pilot’s seat staring at him, suddenly furious with her unflappable calm and not knowing why. “Tiptree Station, this is Normandy, does anybody read? Over.” “Tiptree Station, this is the Normandy, do you read? Over.” All he could hear was the sound of the dog’s wagging tail, smacking the base of the fridge, and the quiet incessant hum of the generators. His father sitting hunched at the kitchen table in his houserobe and slippers, flicking his finger idly over datapad news and drinking a cup of coffee as sunlight burned fog off the dawn fields. All he could see were sprawling plains and farmland under an arching blue sky, colonial houses popping up like mushrooms between the homesteads. Joker stared at the interface of the Normandy without seeing it. Somebody’s got to protect the illustrious and infamous Commander Shepard, right? Who better than her trusty pilot? “Make It Stop (September’s Children)”, Rise Against So stay awake with me, let’s prove them wrong.
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