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It seemed like the right thing to do, bringing Miranda down to Horizon with her. She hadn’t stopped to think about how it would look: the optics, as Udina would put it, never were the first thing to cross her mind. She solves problems. And in recent years, she’s also been creating them.
The dreaded optics begin to form as she searches out the survivors, who are all beginning to peek out of their hiding places. She’s planetside with a salarian mad scientist and Cerberus’s top dog. This is henceforth to be known as mistake number one.
“I’ve had enough of this place,” she whispers. It’s carried off by the breeze as Mordin begins to scratch away at the soil by her foot. There was a time in her life when she survived almost everything by letting herself be ignored. Now, she really wants to kick the sample he’s collected, to send the tin skittering across the field and the dirt up in a cloud. “I’ve had enough of this place,” she repeats, and he stills, his skin tightening over the top of his head. It’s too loud and too harsh, but that’s the kind of person she’s supposed to be now.
Miranda doesn’t say anything; she just shepherds her onto the shuttle while he takes a little more time to himself. She sits down, but Shepard’s still got this restlessness boiling in her, and she busies herself with shuffling the gear in the cargo compartment.
“Things are so black-and-white to the Alliance,” Miranda sighs into the silence. She crosses her legs deliberately at the ankle, every inch of skin covered by her suit.
“I’m Alliance,” she snaps.
She’s quiet for a moment. “I wouldn’t go around shouting that.”
“Can’t whisper it either,” she mutters. There are ears everywhere on that ship. She can never slip up, never forget they’re listening before EDI’s slippery voice crawls down her spine.
“Often, people will not understand the choices we have to make." Shepard is sure she ripped that straight from a handbook. “But this is for the good of humanity, Shepard. You know the threat we’re facing. No one else is willing to believe it.”
“That’s not it.”
Miranda leans forward on her knees, her eyes deceptively soft. “What, you want someone to tell you how awful and wrong you are?”
She kind of does. She really does. She wanted to get off of Horizon, but now she’s thinking it would have been good to stay there for a bit, to let it all wash over her, the guilt and the rage and the betrayal she knows she doesn’t deserve to feel. Maybe everyone else moved on already, but Shepard lost her good friend today. It feels like something she can’t voice aloud, a concern that can’t be taken seriously.
“That person’s not coming, Shepard. And I don’t believe in pity.”
“They wouldn’t have let me leave,” she deflects. “If the Alliance really wanted to stop me? They wouldn’t have let me walk away. They’d have arrested me or something.”
“You’re such an idealist.” Miranda almost sounds disgusted. “You read into everything.” When he shuffles back in, even Mordin can tell the ride back is reserved for silence.
“You got so motion sick,” she laughs.
“Yeah, ‘cause you’d drive that thing up cliff walls—”
“That’s not possible.”
“Sure felt like it.”
“I’d keep a photo of that thing in my wallet if I could.” She cuts a glance over to the end of the table. But Miranda doesn’t bite, doesn’t ask for clarification, just continues to push Gardner’s mystery stew around her plate.
“The Mako,” Garrus offers anyway. She glances at him, annoyed, but he doesn’t seem to care. Shepard is with Miranda, and by extension, Miranda is part of the group. Miranda is a person to whom glib details such as this can be extended. “That’s not any good either, huh? Here I thought he just couldn’t make dextro food.”
It’s petty, all of this. She knows. She thought that lonely little girl she used to be died, but she’s more alive than ever, just twisted; she haunts her and has to be appeased with cheap shots and the chance to stir up trouble.
“Sergeant Gardner is doing his best with what he has.” Shepard suppresses an eye roll and shovels another mouthful up off the plate.
“You can’t call up your boss and get us something better?” Quiet. “So what is your deal, Lawson?” Garrus tries one more time.
“I know!” she interrupts. “She is here… to keep me on track. Which is why we’re eating this. Citadel’s out of the way for now. It is a waste of resources to go.”
Miranda finally drops her spoon against the plate, metal hitting metal deliberately. “I really don’t need two of you, Shepard. Is that what this is going to be?”
“Just trying to be friendly—“
“I don’t need my XO to constantly be against me.” She doesn’t mean to cut Garrus off, but to be honest, she didn’t really hear it. “This is a suicide mission, Miranda. I don’t get you, you don’t like me, sure. We just need to get through this. If there’s anything after…”
“I can play nice,” she shoots back. “I’m just waiting for you to realize that you’re doing this to yourself.” With that, she shifts her focus to her yogurt, and Shepard tries to slip back into her softened memories.
Each time she goes to speak with Miranda, she hovers at the threshold of her office, always waiting for the woman to acknowledge her.
“I need to go back to Omega.”
“Why?” Miranda’s nose wrinkles up at the thought.
“If I don’t get them this part, all of Engineering might vent out into the port side. They said not to worry about it though,” she says flatly.
“I won’t worry, then. Right, I’ll get a report on the area.” Shepard nods, and when it becomes apparent there is nothing more to say, she turns to leave.
“Wait,” Miranda calls out. Shepard grits her teeth as she turns back around, conversation already filed away. "There’s a leak up there,” she continues, pointing to the ceiling near her desk. “I was going to call Engineering to look at it, but since you’re here...” Miranda turns back to her computer as if that’s enough of a request. The worst thing is, to Shepard it is. She’s used to orders; asking is a formality.
She really wants to say no, but it’s been a while since she’s worked a problem like this, something mindless and of relatively little consequence. And at least Miranda is quiet the whole time, the light buzz of her keys against the touchpad of her computer the only sound between them. So she pulls over a chair and gets to work.
It’s cold in the room and even colder up near the vent. She fumbles through the inspection with clammy hands.
“How’s your fish?”
She nearly bangs her head on the vent at the sudden interruption. “What?”
“You brought another fish back the other day. When you went down to the Citadel.”
“What, do you watch everything I do?”
“Yes.” Her bluntness catches her off-guard. Suddenly the sound of her typing is all she can hear.
“Come here.” Miranda glances up at her. “I found the problem.” She pushes out her chair and strides over, craning her neck to where Shepard is pointing.
“You have fluid built up here. Something’s not connected properly, and the cooling water is draining out.”
“Do we need to replace something?”
“It’s a quick fix.” Something about the word we almost stops her, but it’s an impulse like nothing before; she tugs sharply on the metal, and the water pours down right into Miranda’s face. She shivers immediately, blinking up at her.
“Do you feel better now?” she asks slowly. She’s annoyingly calm, only Shepard doesn’t know why it should annoy her at all.
“Kind of.” It’s a big lie. This frustration is so deep inside her, it’s become a part of her now.
“Okay." She flicks her on the calf and disappears into the back bedroom. Shepard connects the tubes and seals up the vent. It’s all easy enough.
“Can I fill the work order on your computer?” she calls.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
What’s privacy to someone who’s had her hands inside her, she wonders. “Thanks!”
There’s a notification of new mail flickering in the corner. Everything she might need to know to understand Miranda could be here in this mainframe. She could make her feel just as invaded and known and raw as her.
She fills the log and leaves without saying goodbye.
They come back from Tuchanka and she realizes she’s shaking.
“I’m fine,” she keeps telling them, but it’s not until Wrex sees her that she’s forced to stop.
“Go rest, Shepard.”
“I’m fine, Wrex.” He grabs her shoulder then, the slightest press of claws into her armor. She knows Grunt is watching it all with keen interest.
“I’m not saying you’re not tough. I’d have to be stupid to say that, and I’m not stupid. But I know you, Shepard. And you need a rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Bullshit,” he laughs. She has to laugh too.
She goes to the medbay because if there’s anyone on this ship she can trust, it’s her doctor. Besides, the longer she stays still, the more she realizes her ankle hurts quite a bit. The sterile scent of a spaceship has always been an indication of safety to her, even this one, and between that and Dr. Chakwas’s practiced manner, it’s not hard to fall asleep against her will.
When she wakes up Miranda is there. She thinks she’s still in her dream at first, sixteen years old in the belly of the SSV Hamburg, waiting for the psychiatrist they picked up from the Citadel.
“What were you thinking, Shepard? Going after a thresher maw on foot like that…”
“I’m sure you got some excellent data from that again.”
She begins quietly, which immediately unsettles her. “That was a rogue cell—“
“Don’t.”
She’s breathing too hard, and Miranda looks too perfect next to her. The white of the medbay lights washes her out a little: this is how she tries to console herself. Her lashes cast this dark shadow on her cheek. Shepard tries to pick the whole scene apart, the colors and the textures and the fact that she’d just have to tilt her head a little bit and then she could kiss her. Miranda’s looking at her like she has an idea of what she’s thinking. Finished with her observation, she gets up.
“Karin says you’re doing better.”
Karin? The name scrapes at her. “Doctor Chakwas.”
“I operate by different conventions.”
Yeah. She can still smell the maw blood, like burning, like licking a penny. She’d almost forgotten that smell. She’s going to scrub her skin until it’s raw and she knows she’ll dream of this next tonight, of Akuze and the iron tang and the way Miranda could use a bit of blood in her.
“Anyway, she says you’re good to go.”
“You don’t need anything from me?”
Miranda tilts her head to the side. “No.”
Shepard begins to wonder why she stayed by her side for so long. Because all the answers that come up make her uncomfortable, she eases herself off the table.
“Good night,” she says, practically running back to her cabin. She locks her door behind her, then wonders if the lock really does anything. She’s barely in the shower when it begins, the steady climb of her pulse each time she closes her eyes, the crawling frustration she can never shake. The sense that she’s spiraling towards something she shouldn’t.
It’s always been a problem for her. She was told that this weird sense of attachment was a leftover from what happened on Mindoir, but it has always seemed a part of her life. She can’t remember a moment growing up when she wasn’t clinging to one of her parents, hiding behind a pant leg while they tested soil samples or fixed communication wires.
When she was in N-school, they learned how to go diving. For a colony kid who had never been in an ocean, it was life-changing in the way of a first love. Irreparable. They went in pairs, and her partner’s respirator malfunctioned; they had to take turns dragging slow breaths off of the tank, staring at each other to time them as they slowly worked back up to the surface. She was half in love with him by the time the light was filtering through. And when they broke the surface, the spell broke with it. He left around stage four; she only sees his name on intel reports now.
She wraps her towel tight around her body, swaddling herself. Then she leans back on the bed and closes her eyes.
“You seem distressed, Shepard.” EDI shocks her back to reality. “Your heart rate has been elevated for an extended period, and your behavior is erratic from my records.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I'm obligated to inform Yeoman Chambers. I thought it may help you lower your heart rate to know that.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“You are welcome. I can also contact Dr. Chakwas or Operative Lawson—”
“No!”
“Pardon?” She finishes tugging up her sweats and tries to collect herself.
“No. Don’t tell Miranda. Or the doctor, but.” Mainly Miranda. “That’s it, EDI. I’m going to rest. Please save the updates for urgent matters.”
“Would you like to define ‘urgency’—”
“Good night, EDI!” She flops back on the bed and shuts off all of the lights except for the emergency light by the door. She’s not allowed to turn that one off, so it coats the edge of the room in a ghostly glow. It’s just enough for her to see one fish swimming in uneven circles, round and round and round.
Years of existing with humans have not made Tali any better at reading their expressions because she disappears to the front of the shuttle as soon as she can, leaving Shepard alone with Miranda, who’s looking fixedly out the window.
“Thank you,” she says, firm, like she’s been thinking about it for a while.
“Your sister looks just like you,” Shepard says because she’s incapable of letting a good thing be.
“She’s my clone.”
“…Right.” She rubs the back of her neck. “But they cloned a cat once, right? And uh. The kitten looked different, I think.”
“Shepard, we don’t have to keep talking.”
Yes, I do. “I’m sorry about Niket,” she sighs.
“It was my own fault. I’ll learn from it. I know it’s not worth it now.”
“That’s not—“ she blurts. Miranda looks over at her. “I’m not sure if that’s the lesson to take away.” She feels like she’s too open like this, like the words are nothing but a mistake.
“Oh honey,” she drawls. “I didn’t mean you.” Shepard huffs.
“Whatever.” She wants to take everything Miranda has given her and turn it around on her. “Are you going to keep in touch with her?” She doesn't know why she cares so much. But something about it unsettles her. All she knows is that if she had a sister, if she had anyone but herself, she’d never let that person go. Not ever again.
She’s gearing up for another cutting remark, but it doesn’t come. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do. She has a normal life.”
“But she knows she has a sister now.” And that that sister might give up on her.
“So you’d do it?”
“Yeah,” she shrugs. Miranda nods at that, her gaze fixed on the floor. And then she looks back up at Shepard and there’s something like understanding there, something that shoots through her, makes her feel seen. She swallows and glances away. If Miranda would be willing to let go of her sister that easily, what the hell kind of chance does Shepard have?
“Shepard?”
“Hmm?”
“That cat is old news.” Her face is beautiful like this, when she’s searching it for any bit of laughter, of joy. It’s the gap between her teeth that always draws her focus. It’s cute. The realization makes her limbs feel heavy, and she turns to her favorite consolation: it’s a one-way trip. She’s not coming back.
She thought it would be better, being off of the Normandy, but it’s ten times worse on Illium. Worst here in the office where Liara, too, has unceremoniously left her.
“Hold on, Shepard. We have work to do. We can’t afford to—”
“She sold me. She was my friend and she sold me.” It’s barely a whisper, but it stills Miranda. There’s a line of tension that arcs through her body as she turns away. She follows her into the stairwell, flinching away when she catches the glint of a camera.
“There,” Miranda says, taking off for a shadowed corner two flights down. Because they are her orders, she follows her. She tucks herself into the wall next to Shepard and begins to whisper, her lips at her ear. “Pull yourself together. Please. If I could do this, I would, but it has to be you.” Her voice dies a little by the end of it. Shepard turns a little, seeing her out of the corner of her eye. The whole is always a little less than the sum of the parts.
She’s always just been lucky. Been in the right place at the right time even when it felt the opposite. Been lucky to be surrounded by people she can trust. When they leave, she’s no one. She can continue because she’s good at her job and she’s good at surviving, but she’d like to feel like someone at the end of it.
It’s a bad idea. She knows it’s a bad idea, but she also knows the weight of Miranda’s glances at her and the feel of her hands on her waist during armor checks. She knows she really can’t trust her but she’s here and she wants to feel like someone. She leans forward just a little, and Miranda lets go just a little, and together, it’s enough.
She lets her lips crash against Miranda’s, brash and clumsy. There’s nothing there for a second, the slow burn of shame, and then her mouth relaxes, opens up for her. The woman brings her hand to Shepard’s throat, cups the side of her neck, lets the heel of her hand press into the skin a little. Like she needs some kind of grip on herself, right where Shepard’s pulse seems to slow with every breath they share. The yawning gap in her begins to seem like it could knit back up.
She’s leaning farther, farther forward, until Miranda breaks away, and suddenly there’s nothing there. She’s falling like she’s in a dream.
“No,” she sighs. Miranda’s got her hands on her shoulders, propping her up.
“No,” she responds, and the haze begins to clear.
“Oh.”
“This can’t happen.”
“Why not?” she asks, even though it makes her feel skeevy as hell. She’s expecting something about duty or chain of command or the fact that in the not-so-distant past, her main goal was to make her regret the loss of that control chip as much as possible. Nothing can prepare her for the truth.
“I don’t have any friends, Shepard,” Miranda says plainly. She doesn’t mean to laugh, but she does. The woman frowns a little, that lovely wrinkle crossing her brow again.
“You think we’re friends?”
“I think you think we’re friends.”
“Jesus Christ, Miranda. You don’t even trust me,” she laughs again. She really shouldn’t be so defensive, but the shame is pooling in her chest again.
“I think we could get there.” The hope seems to spill out of her reluctantly.
You sure you can handle a friend again? The words are right there, but even she can recognize them for cruelty.
“All right,” she says softly. She can’t quite keep herself from brushing away a lock of Miranda’s hair. “Friends.”
“Okay, so back on—in school. You know we had like four good computers at a time? The dust storms would always fuck ours up. And it’d always be at the worst time, like when a new episode of Shangxi Lights was out.”
“What is that?”
“Cinematic masterpiece, that’s what,” Tali adds, crossing by them to rifle through the selection of snacks behind the bar.
“So there was this girl. And her house got hit in a storm.” Miranda gasps at that, and she starts giggling, which sets her off too. She’s already such a lightweight, and they’re too far into a bottle of tequila for her to keep any semblance of grip on herself. “No, no, it was good! Because their new house, the service never got wiped out. So this girl and I, we became real good friends. And she was so cool. God, she was so cool.”
She reaches to refill her glass, and Miranda swats her hand away. “That’s the dextro bottle!”
“Aww," she laughs, and everything is so loose and watery now. Miranda’s starting to melt together, the planes of her face softening. “You really care.”
"Can’t let all my hard work go to waste.” She runs her hand down Shepard’s cheek, and there’s something sharp in her gaze that has her feeling very warm. She’s trying not to look at Tali, who’s looking at her with what she assumes is disapproval and will probably walk back over here if she doesn’t get any quieter. The fact that Shepard herself is the one trying to tighten up is a testament to how profoundly drunk she is.
“So you wanted something from her,” she says.
“No—well, yeah. But I was like twelve!”
“I see,” Miranda says slowly. “So you told me this…” she takes a long sip of her drink. “Because I remind you of her.”
Shepard snorts with laughter. The way Miranda’s satisfaction dissolves is a glorious thing.
“What, I can’t be the cool girl?”
“You wish! You wish you were the cool girl. I thought you were, but no, no.” There’s a scoff from the corner, and she laughs, feeling way too out of control for a weekday night.
“The point is—“ she leans forward, her hand heavy on the woman’s shoulder. “I’d borrow your computer anytime,” she whispers into her ear, and Miranda laughs loudly at that.
“I think I need air,” she proclaims.
“You’re in the wrong place for that,” Tali mutters.
Bad idea. Bad idea. She really should stop doing this, though whether the drinking or the trips to the observation deck is the right thing to stop, she has no clue. But she follows her out of the crew lounge, like she follows her everywhere, and they sneak out to Starboard Obs where the starlight filters over every surface until it all looks flat, like a photo. It’s the way she remembers things before the holograms, and that nostalgia plus the alcohol has her feeling too young, has her pulse picking up speed as the view washes over her.
“Tell me something else,” Miranda says softly. When she pulls her gaze back to her, she’s so earnest, and Shepard stares out the window and lets her voice settle over her, two things that never fail to send her heart racing.
“About what?”
“About you. About—your family.” There’s not much there that won’t make this feeling at least a little bit worse. “Tell me about your family,” she says again, surprisingly firm for someone who should be drunk out of her mind. There’s a little belt of debris circling some planet out there, and while she’s sifting through memories for one without a raw edge, she’s flirting with the idea of radioing Joker to scoot over there, get it cleaned up a little. But maybe it’d be a mistake. Maybe they’d clean it all up just for more toxic shit to get swept in there. Maybe the planet has that junk to keep something else balanced at the far edge of the galaxy, some cosmic rule she’d kill herself trying to understand.
“My mom used to cook with so much ginger,” she blurts out. “There were a lot of crops we couldn’t grow there, but ginger took to it like nothing else. I used to hate it because she’d put it in everything. I never thought I’d want to eat ginger again.” She inhales sharply then, looking straight up at the ceiling as something pierces through her. That’s the worst kind of hurt: when you don’t know the memory will cut you until it’s too late.
Miranda settles her hand on top of Shepard’s, and she looks back, and there’s an expression she’s never seen before on her face. Something hollow. Like grief with some teeth. It’s weird seeing it on Miranda’s face because she’s grown so used to having it on her own. Otherworldly. She has no clue what to do about it. Strangest of all is the fact that she does want to do something—anything at all.
The only thing she can say about Miranda is that she’s efficient.
That’s not true. She can say a lot of things about Miranda, but not while she’s on the Normandy. That’s why she sticks with efficient.
She’s efficient with her gun, with her words. With the way she can look at Shepard and make it slice across her, changing the way she sees something. She hates how her words burrow under her skin. She can’t think like her. She doesn’t want to survive it.
“They made you take you a number?”
She squints up at Miranda, silhouetted by the soft Citadel light.
“Pretty much. Just stuck here until they have time for their favorite walking corpse.” She shouldn’t be this cavalier about Anderson, but she’s been in this kind of mood all day. For the last few months if she’s being honest. Even to Anderson, who’s been there since the beginning. Maybe she’s a little pettier than she thought if she’s still mad at him for keeping all that information to himself. For following rules. For doing the right thing instead of letting her run into everyone’s lives and start kicking up dust.
“You need to eat.” She holds out the container she’s been wondering about, then sits by her side while she uncovers it: spicy garlic noodles with cubes of tofu and a mound of pickled ginger on top. The smell itself is enough to make her eyes water, her mouth already wet.
“You’re not hungry?”
“I already ate. Didn’t have much to do.”
“Finished all your paperwork? You’re efficient like that.”
She bites into a slice of ginger and tries to remember it. It’s not the same, like chasing down a memory, because her mother wouldn’t ever pickle the ginger. She’d bite into it and there’d be nothing to dull it. This is an echo of the memory, but it makes sense like that.
Suddenly she wants to know how much Miranda thought before choosing this meal, if she hesitated, if she remembers at all.
“You’re pretty good at this friend thing,” she says instead. It feels hollow, it feels electric, it feels like a bad, bad lie.
“I’ve been practicing,” she says quietly, and Shepard lets the warmth of that settle inside her.
“You were really good out there," she says, her hand tight around Miranda's as she pulls her through the crowd. Once again, it's really Miranda holding her up as they push through to the Normandy, always docked too far away. She was good, swaying and dancing, the perfect distraction. For a fact, it would have worked on Shepard. But she’s her own special case. They clamber up the ramp and duck low to fit through the door, their limbs only tangling further.
Shepard spins them around and leans Miranda up against the side wall of the airlock. She still has the club beat thumping in her head, and it freaks her out. She always hated places like that, how they knocked her off-balance. Maybe she’d have fun. and maybe she’d drink a little, and maybe she’d get lost in her own head, but she’d come back and look at herself and feel grimy. Doesn’t even know where she’d get that kind of guilt from.
“Shepard?” Miranda’s eyes are bright and curious. They carry laughter in them, the sharp kind she’s cut herself on before. But she thinks she knows what she's doing this time.
She’s always been a weapon, but she can feel herself getting dull. She kisses Miranda because she misses it, the act of loving. And Miranda’s here, and she’s smart and cold and beautiful, like a snowflake. She’s actually not a snowflake at all, she’s a brain in a jar. She’s a clay pot with a hole in the bottom. Shepard could give her all her love, try to fill her up with it, and maybe it’d all leak out like it never existed at all.
Miranda is the one to pull away again, and Shepard doesn’t even steel herself for it. She’s ready to bleed some more. If she's bound to get hurt sometime, at least she'll choose how to do it. Her breaths are slow and ragged against Shepard's temple.
“I cut your bangs myself,” she says. Shepard blinks. Her heart, her traitorous heart, swells a little.
She doesn’t really want to survive it. She won’t.
She follows her up to her cabin to check on her, she says. She wipes away the dirt from her forehead, sponges away the blood from her knuckles. Dr. Chakwas could have done it, but Miranda insisted. And then, she lays her down on the bed.
When Miranda starts to kiss her way down her neck, all Shepard can see is the square of empty space above her. She falls asleep to this every night. At first, she tried to cover it—she bought scarves from a trader on Omega and tried panels from Engineering. EDI wouldn’t shut up about how the boards could fall on her. But it would always haunt her, the knowledge that that pocketful of sky was barely concealed. Only one sharp tug and it would be revealed to her. She had to uncover the skylight then, and she seizes up each time she sees it, this sort of dull fear, paralyzing. She feels a little numb, feels a little bit outside herself, feels like that now even with the hot ghosting of Miranda’s mouth on her skin.
Maybe it was like this all those months her body laid prone on the table while Miranda sliced and inserted and wiped, explored her surgically, clinically, and maybe that was where it all started.
Her legs are heavy, and she focuses on the way her fingers flex inside her and the gentle scrape of her nails instead. She’s heavy and she’s burning up and she’d wonder if she were dying if she didn’t know what that felt like so intimately. Intimate, she thinks, and Miranda stops then.
Shepard, she says.
Hmm.
Can you look at me? She turns her head and Miranda’s eyes are cool, brighter now. She cups Shepard’s jaw in her hand, firm in place. You’re gorgeous.
Thank you. It’s a weird enough thing to say without the history between them, and Miranda’s mouth quirks up but she doesn’t say anything. She lets her fingers slip into Shepard’s mouth for a second, and she takes them eagerly, desperate for anything to focus on. And she thinks yeah, she can do this without losing it.
She slips back down between her legs and presses her mouth to Shepard’s folds, her soft mouth and her flashes of teeth and her tongue pinning her down. Shepard lets her eyes drift back up to the skylight, which is probably a mistake, but she makes those all the time. There’s a reason she’s here, isn’t there?
She could tell her to stop, but there’s something about it, stuck here staring up at all that open space where she died and feeling so caught between life and death, her tongue still swirling lazily around her fingers. Something’s rolling in her stomach like she can’t wait to bolt, but then the pleasure begins to lap over it like water on the sand, and the feelings come and go like that, the way waves will interfere with each other until everything flattens into a line.
That’s how she feels when the orgasm finally washes over her, flat and hollowed out, Miranda still lapping away at her clit until she starts to feel something again, a little sore. She scratches at the woman’s scalp and she stops. Her thighs are shaking and she didn’t know.
You still here? She comes back into view, head over hers eclipsing the window, lets her lips hover a breath away from hers, and Shepard arches up to meet that gap, featherlight. Soft skin and pressure and a little flicker of hunger.
She tastes herself in her mouth and it’s enough to spark something in her. She rolls them over and tugs down at Miranda’s shirt, lets her mouth close around her nipple, and when all she can hear is the woman’s ragged breaths, finally, Shepard feels like she might be able to breathe again.
“You don’t regret working for them at all?” Even now, she wants to probe at the wound, always invested when it’s too late.
“I’m done now, Shepard.” Miranda looks so defeated, her perfect mirror, and that’s enough for her to sit next to her, hear her out. Every moment inside that Reaper was like giving up something new, some unknown bit of innocence.
“I brought you back,” she says faintly. “How can I regret that?” Her blood is rushing in her ears. She always smells so clean, sterile like soap. Like she scrubs everything away in the shower like a layer of skin. She wonders if Miranda feels clean because Shepard sure doesn’t. Feels like the state of that thing left some grime on her. “We’re going to be okay,” she continues, and it sounds like a question.
Before she knows it, she’s collapsing into Miranda, sharp bones and soft skin and after two years of that endless sleep, anything else is a pale imitation. She hasn’t slept well since. She wanders these halls instead like a ghost, the observation deck her moor. She wishes she had stayed dead. She wishes she didn’t like living so much, because her very existence is wrong. And she wishes Miranda wasn’t so good at keeping her alive.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do. That’s not how this works.” Miranda sounds hesitant, but she’s just so tired.
“Yes it is,” she whispers, because it’s starting to feel like a comfort.
“I don't like that you’re going alone. At least let me put a bug on you.” She’s not sure if it’s a joke or not.
“I promised Hackett,” she says bluntly.
Miranda has to have control over everything, and it's annoying, and it’s why she thinks she loves her. If everything else falls apart, Miranda will put it back together. Miranda can piece her back together with her steady hands and her wicked mind. And it’s why she likes to flip her over and watch her fall apart under her, all that careful control utterly wrecked on standard-issue sheets. She dreams about that, making love to her on Alliance sheets, maybe the stupidest thing she’s ever wanted but also the most tangible.
“Come here,” she says, pulling her tight against her. “It’ll be okay.” She lets her hand slide down her thigh, soft little strokes, trying to make them both believe it.
She arches back against her, and Shepard laughs, hand pressed tight to her stomach. She knows Miranda could break away, could send her flying across the room if she wanted, but it’s the fact that she doesn’t that sends her stomach fluttering.
“Just come back,” she murmurs. “Just get it done and come back.”
It will go to shit. Fantastically. And she will make her choices, and maybe Miranda will play a part in them. Afterward, she will entertain several ideas of going on the run together, flipping through them for a second each. It won’t really happen, she will know, because they both love duty too much for that, but she would like the idea. And she would like the way Miranda’s hair would look flying in the wind and she would like the way her forehead wrinkles when she’s annoyed, which it does often around Shepard.
For now, she seals her mouth over Miranda’s, and it’s like breathing the life into her again, her stomach hot and tight like she’s on the edge of something. Like she’s sipping air on a slow ascent. And maybe this time, she’ll get to stay under the water.