For the @hatboyexchange , I wrote this piece for the lovely @ginbiscuit
A whole load of feels before the final battle for Earth. MShep and Joker is one of my favorite pairings so I was delighted to have the chance to write this.
Special thanks to @doodlinglisy for betareading this ❤️
Read the whole thing on AO3
So here they are. The night before. You have to wonder why there is always a night before, the slow hours before something happens, where you can just endlessly churn your thoughts trying to speed the clocks up.
Tomorrow they will reach Earth. It’s what they have been working for, all these years, the goal for which they sacrificed all they could. Here goes nothing.
The Normandy is especially quiet, everyone is too deep in their thoughts to even share small talk.
Joker has lost count of how many times he has run the numbers, hoping that even the smallest, irrelevant details could give them any sort of edge against the Reapers. But now everything will be played on the field.
He can’t think about anything past tomorrow: for all he knows, they could all be dead in a few hours, and all of this could have been for nothing.
No one left to remember their names, everyone turned to dust, swallowed by the darkness of space, waiting for the cycle to start again while the silent stars go by.
He’s never been an optimist, and he’s not going to start now: he knows you can only rely on your abilities, on your capacity to pull yourself out with every means you have. And they are going against those bastards, all guns blazing, so if they go down, he will have nothing to regret.