Joker was never supposed to have found out.

It was Liara's fault. Well, it had more to do with the fact that she chose the ship for her heated "discussion" and that the ship had ears. Auditory programs, rather. The bottom line was that EDI heard everything and didn't quite yet understand the human practice of withholding information for the sake of others.

Of course she told him. That's what girlfriends do.

Liara was pissed. It wasn't like Shepard could deny it; the Shadow Broker knew everything. Morale at Huerta Medical had taken a huge blow when an asari commando decided to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger. It looked a little unsettling on the surface, sure, but Liara knew better. The asari suffered from post traumatic stress and survivor's guilt and had been denied several requests for a gun permit. She would have kept being denied had it not been for one Spectre by the name of Naomi Shepard okaying the permit.

Now the medical staff was traumatized, the asari councilor was left shaking her head disgustedly and Liara was mad as hell.

"What were you thinking, Shepard?"

That was a good question, actually. Shepard's insides felt frozen, things weren't moving properly. She opened her mouth and thankfully words came out. "There's a war going on. We need every trained and able body available."

"Able body? That woman was sick!" The disdain in Liara's voice made Shepard's earlobes tingle. "Staff had to pump her full of sedatives just so they could give her supervised showers."

"So she was a little smelly." Rancid and overwhelming. How long did that asari need to sit in her own waste to accrue that odor? Shepard shook her head. "She could still hold a gun just fine."

"Fine enough to wrap her lips around the barrel, I see," Liara said. She paused and let the accusation fade into the air. When she spoke again, she was quieter. "This... it's not like you. What happened?"

Met with blue eyes, Shepard searched for anything other than anger in them. "Did you read the file on the commando?"

"Aeian T'Goni."

"Please don't make me remember her name, Liara," Shepard whispered. "This commando? She was on Tiptree. They were overrun by banshees and she panicked and killed a fifteen year old girl named Hilary to save herself."

Liara brought a hand to her mouth. "By the goddess..."

"Joker has a fifteen year old sister named Hilary that was on Tiptree," Shepard continued. "Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I don't know. The commando said she wanted to make it right."

"Oh, Shepard."

"I guess in my mind, a lot of dead banshees was making it right. I never thought..." Shepard couldn't tell if she was sincere or not. She sounded sincere, even to herself. But somewhere, in the darker recesses of her mind, there were whispers of justice, of retribution. How dare anyone make her pilot, her friend, suffer after he and everyone else had already lost so much.

As Shepard stood there, suffocating in silence, Liara's face began to soften and it seemed like they were making a sort of progress. Then EDI stepped up and hammered the final nail into the coffin.

"I have retrieved the files on Aeian T'Goni and have uploaded them for Jeff," the AI's voice echoed through the corridors.

Shepard closed her eyes.

"You should speak with him," Liara said. Her hand rested on Shepard's shoulder. "Smooth things over."

"Yeah," Shepard sighed. "He needs to be functional."

Maybe the reapers would come. Something would happen to delay the conversation. That's what reapers did, right? Interrupt at the most inconvenient of times and rip away everything and everyone that was important to Shepard.

Space was painfully quiet.

In the cockpit, Joker's gaze was glued to his screen. "Hey, Commander."

"You shouldn't have had to find out like this." There. The words left her mouth. Clear, final.

"Okay?" The tone had his usual glibness, but he still wouldn't look at her. "First you had to stop Samara, now this chick? Is it the asari in thing to blow out your brains all of a sudden?"

"We're all under so much pressure," she tried again. "These things always work out better in my mind."

"It's no problem," he said. Only as his shoulders relaxed did Shepard realize just how tensed he had been seconds earlier. Joker flipped a switch and the "Vaenia" soundtrack began to play in the cockpit.

"Sorry about your sister," Shepard murmured.

That comment got Joker to turn around. He raised an eyebrow. "Sure...?"

"It's not fair." Once she started, she couldn't stop. The words continued to pour from her mouth, they filled up the cockpit and threatened to drown them both with their finite certainty. "I didn't want you to know because we need you for this mission, but I am so sorry."

He shook his head. "Just stop."

"I was going to tell you. As soon as we won or I don't know, we were dead or something. It was a call I made as the commanding officer, but as a friend, it made me feel like shit-"

"I said stop!" It came out as a snarl, but as soon as his upper lip dropped, he laughed. "Jesus, Commander, do you know the size of Tiptree?"

Shepard blinked. "Joker?"

"It was a decent sized colony," he said. "I appreciate the concern, but this Hilary could've been anyone."

Shepard's jaw flapped, useless.

"The name 'Hilary' accounts for 0.014% of the population of Tiptree," EDI's voice cut through the wall of silence. "If I input your sister's age, I assume the percentage will be even smaller."

"No!" Joker snapped. He took a breath, but his eyes were beginning to narrow. "No. Not helping, EDI."

"Joker, she had the name, she had the age, she wanted to be a pilot-"

"Gunney never wanted to be a pilot." He lurched forward and gripped the arms of his chair. Hoisted up by fragile, knobby bones that had been broken countless times before, he stared her down. "She thought I was an asshole for taking off in a ship and leaving her on that backwater rock."

"Joker..."

"I mean, what kind of an asshole abandons a kid sister like that, right?" He gestured so fiercely with his hand that it sent his weak frame staggering forward. Shepard stepped forward to catch him, but one look from his steel-blue eyes kept her at bay.

"I'm sorry."

"No!" He struggled back to his chair. "You always have to be right about everything. Saren, the Illusive Man, the reapers- you're always right! Well, you don't get to be right about this! Not this time!"

"Joker, I'm sorry."

"And you gave that poor idiot a gun? And for what?" His cheeks were flushed scarlet as he crawled and pushed himself back into the pilot's chair. "Was that for me? Was that in my name? I didn't want that! Why would I want that?"

"Jeff, I am so, so sorry."

"Fuck you, Commander." He was quieter, then, like death. "You can't always be right. You need to be wrong about this."

Shepard nodded and retreated out of the cockpit. What had Garrus called it? Ruthless Calculus? It wasn't fair. Maybe Joker was right, maybe she really was wrong. It would feel so good to be wrong.