Story [Mass Effect 2] Lost Shepard (Joker, FemShep, Miranda)

Title: Lost Shepard
Fandom: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst?
Rating: PG-13
Timeframe: Beginning of Mass Effect 2
Characters: Jeff "Joker" Moreau, Jane Shepard, Miranda Lawson
Disclaimer: Don't own Mass Effect or the characters, those are owned by Bioware and Electronic Arts.
Summary: The offer is entirely too good to be true, but he was willing to find out for her.
Notes: Written in an effort to get out of my writing slump, so I'm trying something in a new fandom just to get things going. I'm pretty sure none of you have played Mass Effect 2, so please don't feel obligated to read this

Based on a Mass Effect Head Canon tumblr image that made me cry

~*~

He really, really wasn't interested.

When Cerberus' agents approached him initially, he had been repulsed. There was nothing they could offer him to leave the Alliance, even if his superiors had reassigned him to piloting cargo haulers through civilian traffic lines. That was their loss. If they wanted to waste his skills but wanted to keep sending him a paycheck, that was fine by him. Frankly, it would be nice to get away from danger for a while. He'd never admit it, but there was a large part of him that wasn't ready to race back into heavy fire zones and conflict areas. There were still nights where he'd wake up in a cold sweat after reliving those last few, terrifying moments on the Normandy.

The ship disintegrating around him. The hand on his shoulder. The plea to give up the ship and get to the escape pod. The frantic scramble to carry him to safety. The sight of the Commander staring back at him as she was being sucked into hard vacuum.

The nightmare would always end the same way. Just as the Commander closed the door, he would bolt upright, screaming her name. A few times he'd gotten up a little too quickly and cracked a rib in the process. Not that it mattered. It wasn't as if he was going back to sleep any time soon, not with the overwhelming sense of nausea that nightmare gave him. That was just another reminder that he wasn't ready to go back on the front-lines. Whatever the Alliance thought front-lines were, anyways. No one seemed to know that the real danger was out there, beyond the borders of civilization and even the most remote colonies. Either that or they didn't care. The Commander had warned them, but no one gave her the respect she deserved.

Suffice to say, he wasn't interested in Cerberus' offer. Sure the pay would be nice, but they'd want to throw him right back into the fire. There was also the whole associating himself with a fringe, pro-human terrorist organization, but really, who cared about the details? He wasn't the slightest bit enamored with the idea of joining them. His answer was no, and he figured that would be the last time he'd hear from them. For two blissful weeks, he stuck to his daily routine of sleeping in, limping to the helm, checking to make sure they hadn't gone off track and into the path of a nearby star or black hole, and limping back to his room. Cerberus' failed to jump back into the forefront of his mind.

Until Pretty Cerberus Agent somehow managed to hack into his ship's communication relay again.

She asked him to reconsider and said that Cerberus would make it worth his while. By now he was getting angry. How much more explicit could he get? He didn't care if they paid him more. He didn't care if they were going to give him the helm of the most technologically advanced ship in the Galaxy. There was no way he was going back on to the front lines and there was definitely no way that he was going to do it with them. Whatever they were sweetening the pot with this time didn't matter. The answer was and would remain an emphatic "hell, no."

"How would you like to work with her again?" the Cerberus agent asked, a coy smile playing on her lips.

Now that wasn't fair. How dare they play him for a fool like that? He wa

This was awesome. You really captured Joker there, and the realtionship between him and Shepard.

Well done.