A/N: Like the title says, these are variations directly after Virmire. Because of this, the beginnings of each short are pretty much identical, but they veer down their own path soon enough. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.
As much as she told herself it was the filters pumping oxygen into the ship's controlled environment, the air still smelled off. Humming a staleness throughout the cockpit, it reverberated in the imagined empty cavity inside her guts.
Commander Jane Shepard wanted to claw her skin off.
The Normandy was too quiet. So much so that the silence began to buzz in her ears. Tali was right. There was something inherently wrong and unsettling about the lack of sound. It provided too many opportunities to drown in one's own thoughts.
So instead of finding the stones to say anything, Shepard was left staring at the back of her helmsman's head, despising herself for daring to feel like a child. For his part, Joker did his damnedest to pretend everything was normal. He kept his eyes glued to the viewport and muttered a barely audible, "Hey Commander" as his hands twitched across the controls.
The right thing would have been to nod her head and let the man go about his business without the added pressure of her eyes burning a hole in his skull. The right thing would have been to leave Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko back on Virmire with the bomb. So much for the right thing; the all too easy thing would be to fall back on the excuse of human error. Would that amuse someone like Wrex? Human error?
Wrex could kiss her ass.
"Joker, can I—" She brought a hand to her hair and tugged.
He still wouldn't look at her. With the way his fingers rigidly tapped at the controls, she'd wager if it weren't for his legs, he'd have lunged out of the cockpit and away from her. "There a problem, ma'am?"
Shepard planted herself in the co-pilot's seat before she could change her mind. "I'm hiding, Joker."
"Right." He sighed and turned his head to her. "Look, Commander, about what happened back there…" Joker's eyes snapped back towards the viewport. "Williams gone is just weird. I don't think I'd have been able to do that if I were you. Make a choice like that, I mean."
"Yeah." Maybe she was supposed to say something self-sacrificing, something brave. Reassure him that the person in charge actually knew what the hell she was doing. Shepard fisted her hair. "I should have saved them both."
"Hey, no one's blaming you for Williams' death," he said. A clear sign of his discomfort was the speed at which his hands danced across the Normandy's controls. Not that he could really hide his expression behind that mangy beard of his.
She could almost believe him. Despite his well-earned reputation as a cynic, one thing she could rely on Joker for was his honesty, so maybe he actually believed it himself. Some of the off-duty chitchat she'd overheard, however, had been polite enough to just say, "preferential treatment," but there was nothing that took the cake quite like, "if you want to save your ass, give the Commander your balls." If it had been just a couple crewmembers maybe Shepard could have brushed it aside and tried to do better. But it became problematic when she agreed with them.
"I am," Shepard said. "I never liked her."
"No offense, Commander," Joker said as he forced his gaze to a navigational chart, "But I think maybe you should try to get forty winks and then never talk to me about this again."
"I didn't," she continued. "I thought she was a brat. But Jesus, Jeff, you don't kill people just because they're bratty."
"We're soldiers, Commander. Sometimes soldiers die. It sucks, but it happens."
"Yeah, it does." She swallowed. "And if I was thinking in a professional manner it would've been Alenko and not Williams."
Joker waved a hand. "You don't want to tell me this. Talk to Lieutenant Alenko, you know? I don't need to—"
"He can't talk to me. He's too busy trying to pin this crap all on himself." Shepard yanked her hands away from her hair and wrapped them around her arms. "It's not his fault. I was the one that was too weak to put the mission before myself. I was the one that ran back to Kaidan instead of rescuing Ash and the salarian troops. I'm the one calling her 'Ash' now, trying to pretend like we were closer than we actually were. It was my choice and it was for all the wrong reasons."
His nostrils flared. "With all due respect, ma'am, if you keep whining like this in my cockpit, I'm going to literally break my leg in your ass." In his chair, Joker swiveled his upper body to face her. "You're our commanding officer and if Saren's still out there and you're a weepy wreck, what does that make the rest of us? The correct answer's fucked, ma'am. And Sorry Commander, but I like getting bought a drink first if I'm going to be fucked."
"You are so out of line right now—"
"Yeah, yeah," he snorted. "Save it for someone who cares. You want to trust this ship and this mission to some ass-kissing pilot or the best?"
"Goddammit, J—"
"Goddammit yourself," Joker cut in. "You keep saying it's your fault; damn straight it's your fault. You're in charge and everyone put their faith in you and their lives in your hands. It's fine and dandy that you regret your decision, it makes you human. But if you head out there and let anyone see you like this we might as well just bend over and let Saren ream us for how effective we're going to be against him."
Shepard stared at him a long while until he grimaced and glanced down with a muttered, "ma'am."
"Goddammit," she murmured again as she pushed her hair back. "I think I need a drink."
"We'll be docking at the Citadel in approximately two and a half hours," he told her.
Shepard nodded. "I'll be ready by then." She stood up and stretched her legs. "Thanks, Joker."
"All right, sure." He was already busy pretending not to pay attention to her. "I'm going to have to start charging by the hour. Why not tack on counseling and psychiatric evaluations onto my resume? It's not like I do anything important like fly the ship and make sure we don't all die. Oh, wait."
"Do you know how many regs you've broken just now?" Shepard asked.
"Let me list them to you alphabetically."
When he didn't continue, she raised an eyebrow, "Well?"
"Take care of yourself, Commander," he said.
"Back at you," she replied. "Let me know when we get there."
"Aye-aye," he said to her retreating back.
The silence of the ship enveloped her; the tension of things unsaid crawled up in the cracks beneath her fingernails. She sighed. Kaidan would be where he always was.