Archive of Our Own ^beta

Disclaimer: The universe and canon characters of Mass Effect belong to BioWare, Demiurge Studios, and Electronic Arts. This fanwork was created for my own enjoyment and the enjoyment of other fans. No challenge to copyright is intended. Special thank-you to the commenter who pointed out my story notes had vanished into the Sock Dimension. Hopefully, that's fixed now. Further details at the end of the story.

The door chimed, announcing Miranda's arrival.

“You wanted to see me, Commander?” The ex-Cerberus operative fell into a reflexive hip-shot pose. The aquarium cast a soft blue glow over her skin, bringing out the deep blue-violet highlights in her hair. She lingered at the top of the steps, waiting for his permission to enter.

He loved how much Miranda could say with just the way she stood. She looked pin-up sexy, Download of the Month from one of Joker's extranet bookmarks, but those sea-blue eyes gleamed with an intelligence few could match. She might pose like arm-candy, but she moved like a trained Sentinel, one who'd guarded his back more than once.

“Didn't ask you up here as your commander,” he said. He turned to his personal locker, fiddling a bit with the code lock.

“Oh?”

He couldn't see her expression, but the warmth in that one word raised the temperature in the cabin by at least five degrees. Her bootheels clicked on the deck plates, a languid, easy stride that spoke of her ease with her surroundings. Good. If she wouldn't welcome him into her private space in the XO's cabin, at least she felt comfortable in his. Her training might have taught her how to make any space she occupied her own, but that was a far cry from being comfortable.

That much of his life on Mindoir stayed with him: a responsible adult did not court another unless he or she could provide a roof and a place to rest for the beloved. Reaching inside the locker, he took out two chilled bottles and a small box. He tucked the box into one of the deep pockets of his off-duty vest.

“Have a seat,” he invited.

More brisk clicking noises, then the soft sigh of leather cushions giving under body weight. Miranda curled into the corner of the L-shaped couch. She'd changed from the snug bodysuit that fit best under tech armor into a looser indigo blouse and pants set. She wore no jewelery, no makeup, but she needed neither.

Two glasses already stood waiting on the glossy table, etched with a delicate pattern of frost. For a long moment, he'd debated changing into the Solomon Gunn outfit Kasumi had picked out. The only casual wear Cerberus had provided him made him look, in Joker's words, like a hustler who'd gotten kicked off Omega. Formal wear would have given the wrong impression, however. Most people wouldn't believe it, but Miranda Lawson was sensitive. She'd sense the undercurrents and raise her guard, and then all he meant to say would fall on deaf ears.

He held up the bottles. “Name your poison.”

“Hmm.” A faint smile curved her full lips. “Asari honey mead, or 18-year Glenlivet Why, Jean-Paul, I do think you're trying to seduce me.”

Shepard widened his eyes in mock-hope. “Is it working?”

Her throaty laugh sent a warm wave cascading through his blood. He wanted to put his fingertips to her throat, feel the vibrations against his skin. That 'best education money could buy' included voice training, he felt certain. Miranda didn't laugh enough. Flat out didn't relax enough. She carried her father's debts like they were her own, seeking endlessly to purge the red from a karmic ledger never given into her custody.

Not for the first time, he wondered what Miranda might have made of her life if she'd been free to choose for herself. She'd first joined Cerberus seeking protection for herself and her sister, only later finding pleasure in the 'no limits' put on her intellect and curiosity. Her aesthetic pleasures ran to classical Earth music and art, intellectual puzzles and mysteries. She looked at the brilliant towers of Nos Astra and saw an ingenious cultural marvel. She'd raised the dead. Contrary to her own opinion, she deserved a free life as much as Oriana.

“Let's be traditional,” Miranda decided. “Single-malt, neat.”

“As the lady wishes.” He put the bottle of mead back in the locker and carried the whiskey to the table, pouring a generous amount into each glass. Setting the bottle on the table, he settled onto the couch, tucking one leg under him, mirroring her pose. The leather cushions creaked as they accepted his weight. The glass felt very fragile in his hands, though he knew it for a specially designed material meant to withstand the rigors of a starship's whimsical gravity.

Shepard inhaled the fumes from his glass, closing his eyes. Maybe his Cerberus upgrades had boosted his senses, or this second chance at life had just sharpened his perceptions. He could detect layers of scents wafting up from the pale golden liquid, fruity, earthy, and the faintest lingering aroma of peat. He took a sip and the flavors burst over his tongue, with an after note that fell somewhere between pears and ambergris smoke. Rich, sweet, earthy, with a stark jolt to his system. That described Miranda, now that he thought of it. Good whiskey, like good perfume, played over an individual's tastebuds the way perfume mingled with individual pheromones. One day, he'd get her a bottle of that Peruvian stuff. She'd appreciate the delicacy, he thought.

One day, if he didn't land himself in front of a firing squad.

Miranda took a small sip, her eyes half-closed as she savored the taste and scent. Who would believe Miranda 'Ice Queen' Lawson was a sensualist? Anyone who spent more than five minutes in her company and took the time to look past the surface. Wilson had been an utter idiot.

“The first time I tasted 18-year Glenlivet, I'd made the N7 program. The next time, it was in honor of Gabe and Elysium--” He paused, tilting his head at her in question. Miranda's information gathering skills rivaled those of the agents of the Shadow Broker. Still, even his squaddies hadn't known about Gabe. He'd intended to meet him on Elysium, even traded for a crap assignment with a gunny he didn't particularly like to get leave. Then the Blitz, all leave canceled, and he'd gotten there too damn late to do anything but identify the body. Miranda nodded, her expression sobering.

Shepard took another sip, saluting what might have been. Gabe had deserved better. So had the people of Akuze, Zhu's Hope, the crew of Lazarus Station. So had Mindoir. He stared down into translucent butterscotch amber of the whiskey.

“Later, I bought a bottle for my squad on Torfan—not that those swill-mongers would've appreciated it.” His lips twisted into a wry smile, considering his glass. “I don't remember much after the fourth glass.”

“The great Commander Shepard, a lightweight?” Miranda teased, her brows arched.

He grinned, tapped the rim of the tumbler. “I said glass, Ms. Lawson, not shot.” The grin faded. “So, this is something special to me.”

“It sounds like something you save to say good-bye.” Some of the music leached out of Miranda's voice. “Is that why you called me up?”

Shepard shook his head. “I drink this to mark accomplishments, to pay homage to those I've lost, to seal promises I've made to their memories, vows I've sworn. I asked you up here offer you a promise.”

He took another swallow of Glenlivet, holding it in his mouth until all the sensitive tissues tingled, burned, then went numb. He swallowed, then reached inside his vest and withdrew the box and slid it towards her.

Miranda looked wary, eying the box with suspicion. Then she set her glass down and picked it up. She didn't make any anxiety-defusing jokes about marriage proposals or apartment keys. She had enough respect for his intelligence to know he'd never buy her some useless bauble she'd never wear. Pushing up the hinged lid with her thumbs, she frowned at the contents. Shepard took another small swallow of his drink, watching her.

She lifted out the long, slim, silvery object, holding it between her thumb and forefinger, turning it to examine it from different angles.

“Is this... a bullet?”

“Museum quality,” he said with some pride. Having the new Shadow Broker as a friend came in very handy. “Don't worry, it's not a live round. It's a 7.62 mm, from one of the last semi-automatic sniper rifles used by the original United States Marine Corps.”

She gave him an exasperated look. She tolerated his gun-fancying in much the same way she tolerated his model ship collection. Guns were tools to her, not art.

“It has a name on it,” he explained.

Miranda's frown deepened. She examined the bullet's jacket more closely. “I don't see--”

“I know your original surname isn't Lawson,” Shepard said.

Naturally pale-skinned, Miranda's face turned a ghastly gray-white. Her fingers closed around the bullet. For a moment, Shepard thought the beginning of a Warp ripple across her knuckles.

“Shepard...”

Shepard. Not Jean-Paul, not even Commander. Well, contrary to common belief, an Infiltrator didn't get into the N7 program by having a heavy hand and a rough step. (That was the Vanguards...)

“It's an offer, Miranda, and a promise, if you accept it. Soon, I'm going to have to turn myself in at Arcturus because of what happened with Kenson and the destruction of the Alpha relay. But there's still time for this.”

“You're not making any sense.” Her biotic corona spangled her body in electric blue and purple, but she kept her hands still, not even a restrained twitch of a mnemonic.

Shepard reached across the table and refilled his glass. “You said you threw away everything your father ever gave you. That'd include his name, the marker of his proposed dynasty. The only family Oriana knew was the one you'd placed her with. 'Lawson' couldn't be their name, because you wouldn't want him tracing her through you, but that's how she signed that letter to me.”

The glass clattered on the tabletop, as if Miranda's hand shook “Jean-Paul...”

Her voice didn't shake or tremble, but he could hear the strain. It felt like placing a shot while biotics played merry hell with his line of sight. He could sense the threads of this conversation, like the threads the asari spoke of before initiating a meld. If he picked the wrong word, he'd ravage Miranda's psyche, destroy her trust, even if his attempt was to save. The wrong word... the right word... the first word.

“You said a few other things that got me thinking. He isolated you, even from his socio-economic peers.” Pursing his lips, he gave the whiskey in his glass a gentle swirl. “It wasn't even known he had children, was it?”

'The only one he kept.' Plain, stark words, for a plain, stark truth. It took a keen ear to hear the fear and horror beneath that plain-speaking. An Infiltrator knew how to listen. He kept his eyes down, giving Miranda what privacy he could.

“No,” Miranda whispered, her lush voice roughened by whiskey.

Shepard nodded, rubbing his thumb along the rim of the glass. “'A businessman', you said, who favored a human-centric agenda. A businessman with a private security force that didn't hesitate to fire on a teenage girl with an infant child. That means a private enclave, with a genetics lab, one willing to expose embryos to element zero. Just a guess, but your older siblings were probably commissioned from Binary Helix labs on Noveria.”

The silence deepened, but he could feel the spike in her biotics. They teased at his own senses, stimulating the eezo nodes in his nervous system. The times he'd spoken with Liara, with Shiala and Samara, had warned him of this: biotics with even minimal attraction had a tendency to flare around each other, an echo of the asari melding. Embrace eternity... One nervous system. One entity.

Miranda's talents ran towards removing obstacles, Warp, Throw, and the sheer concentrated force of her signature biotic Slam. His ran towards killing, a one-trick biotic pony with a near-vampiric hunger that battened on his chosen targets. Hand-in-glove, their skills. A Sentinel was a protector. He was a killer, a bloody-minded Reaver who could send good people to their deaths, then send still more to climb over their corpses to take the objective. The step he'd take for Miranda, and exult in the deed.

Shepard steeled himself, feeling his gut clench as he prepared to speak the worst of the truths he'd worked out. An Infiltrator's skills did not rely on a rare biotic talent, or even steady hands. It lay in the ability to identify a target, to calculate the angles, and aim true. That didn't make it any easier to apply them to someone he knew. His flesh buzzed, the eezo nodes spiking in their output of dark energy. Calm. Control.

“I thought it was strange that a man who wanted a dynasty created only daughters. Sons could sire more children in less time, secure the bloodline. Yet he didn't even choose an individual donor to provide genetic material, or a woman to incubate and mother the child.”

That much Miranda had told him herself, a truth she'd come to terms with long enough ago that she could speak of it before Tali in Nos Astra. The rest...

When he'd worked that out, he'd gone back to Liara's office, as a client, not as a friend. He'd paid her significant fee without even blinking, then asked her to pressure Miranda's asari contact for a name. Not a personal name, a corporate name. A target the Butcher of Torfan could focus on. He didn't think it was just the bleed-through from his cybernetic optical replacements that had put that worried look on Liara's face.

“Odd, too,” Shepard continued, “that you didn't run from him until you were 'brave enough and strong enough'. Until you were sixteen, and he commissioned Oriana's creation. Until you were old enough to have conceived a child yourself.”

Miranda gasped, and the backwash of her biotic corona made the fine hairs on his necks and arms stand up. Shepard met Miranda's shocked blue eyes, unflinchingly. Her biotic corona flared in snaps of dark energy, spangles of brilliant blue lightning that jumped along the metal fasteners of her clothing. The scent of ozone and hot metal wafted through the air. Neither moved.

“Somehow, something in your carefully sculpted DNA failed him, which he didn't find out until you were of an age to conceive." He didn't allow himself to think about that route of discovery. 'My father gave me everything I ever wanted, but there was always a hook.' Grooming behavior. Social isolation. Financial dependence. Kept captive, under armed guard.

"So he recycled your DNA, but without the eezo exposure, to create Oriana. And you found out.” Because that was what happened when you gave a genius a superb education: they put the pieces together. They solved puzzles, even the puzzles of their own existence. He took a larger swallow from his glass, letting the numbing fire spread out from his belly. The damned Batarians used the same tactics for their breeding pens. Miranda's father just took a more cosmetic and clinical approach. Until now, he hadn't thought a human could be lower than a Batarian. Until now.

“I know what he took from you and what he wanted from her, and why you called it a 'rescue'.”

Why Niket's actions were such a deep betrayal. He'd seen only the money and the lifestyle, not what lay beneath.

Miranda's raw silence seared along his nerves like the energy rush his Reave poured into his system. Her hair stirred in the static-driven wind. Guardian, protector, defier of fate. Maker, he wanted to reach out, let his own talent be guided by hers. Instead, he touched a finger to the box.

“This is my offer, Miranda: no matter what happens between us, no matter how things play out in the future, you can send me that bullet.” He shifted his gaze to where his Widow hung, a-gleam in her locked brackets. Geth design, heavier than most human Infiltrators could carry, but Miranda's work had made it possible for him to carry the Widow with ease. Without question, she was the best rifle he'd ever touched, fitting his hands, his purpose, his skills. She was an extension of his will, his beautiful girl who delighted in vengeful destruction.

“Send that bullet to me, or even just the name, and the man will die.”

“I'm not a damsel in need of rescue,” Miranda snapped. Anger, a life-long rage at being dismissed for her looks, her intellect overlooked, downplayed.

“No. You saved yourself. You rescued your sister.” More than he had managed. He half-turned to face her. She sat rigid, hands wrapped around her glass. Her back pressed against the leather cushions, both feet flat on the floor, ready to leap into action if the provocation came. He had no intention of providing it, keeping his body language loose and open.

“You're a leader, a pioneer, and the woman I love, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all alone, be it science or vengeance.” Not that he was shit-hot at the science, even that sleeper of Benezia's had managed to go over his head with just a few sentences. But to lay the opportunities of the galaxy at her feet, to see her light up in joy at the prospect of seeking answers, of exploration, free of that devouring shadow... he could do that.

He would've been damned happy as a farmer, a rancher, living with his family, his community, building a place for humanity among the stars with each day of labor. Good, clean work he could lay at the Maker's feet and say that he'd cared for the scattered children of Earth to the best of his skill. The Batarians had set him down along the path of vengeance, of the ugly choices that had to be made. Choices he could make for a woman who'd proven again and again she could bring in viable results.

“You're the woman who chose humanity when she had every example to compel her otherwise. I may end up in jail for the rest of my life, a Batarian prison if I'm unlucky. Or maybe I'll be executed as a war criminal.” He shrugged. Every hour since that bloody morning on Mindoir had been stolen time. The bill had come due above Alchera, except for the intervention of Lazarus and Miranda Lawson's laser-keen focus and determination. Extra time, to do what needed doing. “Either way, I'm facing dishonorable discharge, expulsion from the Spectres, even exile from Alliance space. But I can rid the galaxy of one more stain. That's my offer, Miranda.”

He picked up the glass, downed the contents in one swallow and smacked the glass down. “Sealed with the drink I reserve for the honorable and the worthy dead.”

She stared at the bullet lying across her palm, still pale. A minute trembling shivered through her, making the curling ends of her hair shake. Then she curled her fingers over it, knuckles showing white for a moment before she sat back, resting that hand in her lap. She lifted her glass in a silent toast.

Between them, nothing more needed to be said.

-end-

Notes: According to the Mass Effect wiki, Miranda's original surname was to be Solheim. It made no sense to me that Miranda would keep the surname of a man she loathed and feared, especially when she (and Oriana, and the ones who came before them) were created not be children, but pawns in political-genetic dynasty. That Oriana signs herself as 'Lawson' after the reveal of Miranda's identity (the Guardian Angels letter), and that Miranda uses 'LawBringer' as a play on her surname in the intercepted files in the Shadow Broker dossier makes me think 'Lawson' is a name Miranda chose for herself. Of course, ME3 threw a big ol' wrench in that by giving her father the same surname...but ME3 threw a wrench in a lot of storylines.