Chapter Text
Miranda doesn’t wait for the Normandy to return before she heads to the Citadel. She doesn’t even wait for Hackett to give orders for a search party; she just goes .
Thankfully, Satellites on Earth are still functional. As a result, she has access to any of her contacts still in Sol. There’s only a handful she would want for this task— only a handful she trusts. Or knows who she would trust.
Her comm rings for a solid twenty-five seconds as she pulls her ship from the docking bay, rising just high enough to see the toppled reapers in all directions. The video feed on the right-hand corner of her vision shows a similar sight, but the noise is deafening. Krogan all cheering and chanting and headbutting. One laughing low and deep, red scarred face close to the camera.
A second participant appears just below it. Cheering still, Alliance blues just barely visible. Biotics going off like fireworks in the middle of a decrepit street. Miranda allows neither of them to speak. “Send me your locations for pickup,” Miranda says as she inputs commands on an alternate screen, “you can return to your drinks later.”
Another krogan appears next to Urdnot Wrex. This one, Miranda knows extensively beyond one night, and his rumbling ‘heh heh heh’ would be a reassuring sound, if not for the fact that he was the only Normandy crew member excluded from the call. Intentionally and with good reason. “Grunt. This does not concern you.”
“Awww, can’t even say hi.”
Wrex shoves Grunt out of the way, his grumbles fading into the background din.
Both nav points appear in blips on her map. Wrex is closest, only a mile away from her location in Birmingham. She can get there in a minute flat. Jack, however, is— “You gonna tell us what the hell we’re sitting here for or not?”
“No. Not when I can’t ensure the line is secure. Wrex, I’m landing near you now. Look for a Cerberus transport shuttle.” Stolen, of course. With her “permitted” Alliance activity, Miranda now finds herself with more credits than she knows what to do with and equally as many new toys. She's lucky everyone has been too busy celebrating to notice a Cerberus vehicle flying directly overhead. “Have either of you managed a QEC call?”
The transport shifts violently onto one side, nearly brushing the ground Miranda has it hovering inches above. It teeters back and forth while Wrex makes his way into a seat, his face disappearing from the call. “First thing we tried to do. Never went through, to Tuchanka or the Normandy.” Wrex scratches his chin and looks to the side. “Grunt threw it out a window.”
“Same here. ‘Cept ours is still here because fucking someone thinks they can fix a QEC remotely !” Jack leans back to yell at someone off-camera, presumably one of her students. An honest to god shotgun goes flying over Jack’s shoulder, the camera abruptly pivoting as she dodges it. “Ping me when you get here.”
Short-range communication is still in effect, but not QEC. Shepard’s doing, no doubt. Collateral damage always tended to follow her around despite her best efforts. Thankfully Miranda does not need QEC functionality or off-planet transportation. She arranged her ducks in a row nearly a month ago, after intel on her end suggested that the Crucible was more than ready for deployment.
The shuttle is silent without Jack on the other line, save for the rattling of wind on the hull as she speeds through the sky. “So…mind telling me why the kid can’t come?” Of course. Miranda’s hands tighten against the wheel until her knuckles start to turn white. She breathes evenly in, and evenly out. Why would she pick the krogan she doesn’t know over the one she spent months on the same ship with? It doesn’t make sense.
Her problem is that she only wants to tell them what they’re doing once. Dwelling on it for much longer, for any of them, is a recipe for disaster. Three stubborn, fiercely protective people in one shuttle, unable to act for an hour? It would be a miracle if the ship didn’t crash with all of them in it. Even Miranda’s anxious to get going as fast as possible and she’s been waiting for months now. “There are two possibilities that I have prepared for. One of them is… the best-case scenario. Everyone walks out fine. Few scrapes, but nothing a nurse can’t handle. The other is what I’m expecting. Grunt can’t be there for that. I don’t think I could live with myself.”
Wrex ‘humph’s, but does not comment further. Either he got the answer he wanted or he doesn’t feel like trying to pry one out of her. It’s smart— Miranda would do the same if she were him. Simply bide her time until she got explicit details.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Jack. No matter what happens Miranda knows with absolute certainty that they won’t be getting anywhere, let alone off Earth, without a straight answer. She spends the flight to the southern end of London dreading it. Mentally playing through conversations that always end in one of them at the other’s throat. It is, at the very least, a constant she can depend on. Though she dreadfully hopes they can cooperate for one fucking mission. Just one. They set aside their differences for the Collectors. Surely this is no different?
Below Reaper corpses stand tall and defiant, stationary and a threat no longer, or tipped on their sides and crushing buildings. It’s a proud sight. She imagines the ground is even better, all families reuniting and soldiers crying and embracing, fight finally behind them. They get to rest.
Miranda’s fight is only just beginning, and it truly begins when she lands a few feet away from Jack’s biotic students, camped out in the rubble of a diner. She can see them through the windows, tearing through MREs and protein bars like there’s no tomorrow. Jack herself is already approaching before they reach the ground, hands on her hips and that ridiculous ponytail flailing wildly.
She presses a button to her left, opening the door. Jack does not get in. Again, as expected. “Tell me what’s happening. I’m not going to follow you into this blind as a fucking rat, Cerberus .”
Honestly! Throwing Cerberus at her like it isn’t common knowledge that she cut ties the same night as Shepard. Any other time she would take the barbs in stride but they simply don’t have time for their typical song and dance.
Wrex shifts in his seat, shotgun clattering against his armor. “It’s about Shepard.” Miranda whips halfway out of her seat to balk at the krogan, who stares back at her blankly. Jack steps into the transport shuttle seemingly satisfied. “What? That’s the only reason you wouldn’t want Grunt. Kid’s more help than me, that’s for damn sure.”
“Was wondering why he wasn’t in the call.” Jack’s covered in mud, dirt, and blood, about just as much as Wrex but more condensed across her skin. Her leather jacket and bandages are torn in places. How it remains plastered to her skin Miranda can’t tell. One wrong move or a strong breeze and it could fall off. She takes another steeling breath as she punches the coordinates into the autopilot, unbuckling to join the others in the back. “So, we the rescue team? Shepard get her ass stuck somewhere the Normandy can’t follow?”
Miranda opens a transmission on her Omni-tool. Liara, covered head to toe in grime and blood, still in her damaged armor, and chest heaving like she sprinted the entire way over. She favors one of her legs more than the other, and her eyes are frantic. Hands shaking as she grips either side of her console. There’s faint yelling and bangs off-screen that she glances towards like she locked herself in her office. “Miranda, she’s on the Citadel.” Voice warped by the Shadow Broker’s modifier; too much time to turn it off. “She’s on the Citadel! Get her, please , I can’t—“
The Normandy shakes, rattles on all sides, and then the feed abruptly cuts out. “I have access to early Alliance records of how Shepard won the war. All of them believe her to be dead, along with Admiral Anderson.” A sharp intake of breath, though Miranda doesn’t know from who. She smiles as warmly as she can manage. It must look more of a smirk. “Fortunately whether or not Shepard is still alive is irrelevant, though I will admit it makes my job a lot easier if she still draws breath. However, I cannot operate alone. And there are few people I trust— let alone trust that Shepard shares— enough to bring her home safely and in secret.”
This is, after all, a mission from the Shadow Broker herself. “Jacob was still in Sol last I checked, but Shepard doesn’t fully trust him. Doesn’t fully know him. Samara is in Asari Space. I haven’t been able to get in contact with Kasumi. Everyone else is aboard the Normandy . We’re all she has, whether she likes it or not.”
“Yeah, we’re sure not her terrifying little girlfriend.” Jack picks at the edges of one of her torn bandages. “But I still think we’re pretty fucking good. Three strong biotics and one of them a krogan? Come on . Not even a challenge.”
“Why the secrecy?” Wrex breaks his silence. Any question he asks, any comment made, is always tactical. Picking up subtle clues. It’s not a talent Miranda’s seen in many krogan. “Shepard just saved the fucking galaxy. We could have our search party funded.”
Miranda tilts her head, hand on her hip. It’s not a plan she hasn’t considered, just one that she considered no man’s land a near month ago when she had found Shepard running herself ragged in the Armax Arena. “The galaxy might be better off with a dead Shepard than a live one. At least, that’s how the Council might view it. Her purpose was to fight, to do what no one else has to. What worth is she when there’s no more dirty work? Not to mention the threat she poses to them now that she doesn’t need their help to save the galaxy. I can’t let them stop us.” Jack scoffs, like the mere thought of the Council letting Shepard die sounds entirely reasonable for them. Wrex’s hard stare says he agrees. Good. She wouldn’t want to fight them on that particular point. “ But , Shepard might think the galaxy would be better off thinking she’s dead. I don’t know. What I do know is that she deserves the chance to chose what life she wants from here. God knows she hasn’t gotten it before.”
Even from Cerberus. Everyone from the Alliance to the Council to Cerberus had been crawling over each other for the chance to use Shepard for her very unique talent of getting shit done, like the woman herself once put it. Miranda could never tell if Shepard cared, but she knew she noticed it. The only reason she never chewed Miranda out for it sooner was the sole fact that Liara was the one to ensure she got a second chance at life.
And who was Shepard to deprive Liara of anything?
Watching them stumble around each other in the weeks leading up to the strike on the collector’s base were ones that Miranda privately admits to being her favorite. Not for any private joy she may have at seeing them reunited, but for the sheer fact that it is Shepard doing what she’s always done. Proving Miranda wrong. She thought Shepard no worse than a brute, only to be met with soft-spoken words and help without question. She thought Shepard to be a butcher, only to see her stop in her tracks to save a Batarian from the plague, even if she held hatred against them for what they did to her family. The last to be proven wrong was the belief that Shepard was only good for war. Fights molded her, shaped her into the best Infiltrator and Commander the galaxy’s ever seen. How could she be anything else?
Yet she could and that, more than anything, gave her pause. Shepard could be a lover, helplessly sighing over video calls in the mess hall and animatedly waving her hands around as she tells stories, or racing across the ship and out the docking bay to lift Liara in her arms as if it had been years since they last spoke rather than three days. She teaches Grunt with patience, bringing him through the motions of writing, something missed in all his imprints of great battles. When Miranda gets the notification that Shepard is named his next of kin, she’s hardly surprised.
Shepard has a way of bringing in strays it seems. Just take a look at her rescue team.
None of them talk for the remainder of the flight. There’s no need. While Miranda wracks through every physical and digital copy of Project Lazarus in the pilot’s seat, Jack hops into the co-pilot’s seat, glares out the window as if it wills Shepard into existence. Or, perhaps, she struggles with the real possibility that Shepard is dead on the Citadel. Wrex doesn’t seem equally as troubled by the predicament. He doesn’t seem to be under the belief that Shepard is capable of dying. Or at the very least staying dead. It’s a unique situation to come to terms with.
The Citadel rests in the atmosphere over Earth, still hooked to the Crucible. Half of the arms are snapped off, free-floating in space. Rubble and debris float in a field that Miranda not so expertly weaves through, to the displeasure of both her passengers. “We’ll start at the Citadel’s docking bay,” she explains, “there’s gear in the overhead compartment. Mag boots under the seats. I’ll link our Omni-tools with signatures unique to Shepard.”
“Signatures? Plural? The fuck is in Shepard?” Jack asks, bewildered. “A homing beacon?”
“Several different, strictly illegal heavy skin weaves, cybernetic bones, implants in her brain meant to keep her from falling comatose after a prolonged injury—“
“—Okay we get it.” Wrex grunts as he slams a helmet over his head. “…Those meant to be temporary?”
“Except for her skin and bone weaves, yes. Everything was meant to dissolve and absorb out of her skin as micro nanites when they were no longer needed. Unfortunately for her implants, Shepard is under constant duress.” During the war, Miranda frantically juggled her Cerberus manhunt with tracking live feeds of Shepard, cross-referencing with Dr. Chakwas any time one of her facial scars showed signs of re-opening. They never turned into the gaping chasm Miranda knew they had the potential to become, but they always came back after a time.
Both of them had separately gone to Shepard to ask her to consider the reconstruction surgery.
Her response?
‘I miss my old scars. These aren’t them, but damn if they aren’t cool. And chicks dig ‘em.’ Dr. Chakwas was insistent Miranda knows she made smooching noises at Liara through the med-bay window immediately afterward.
“So they’re still there,” Jack says, her eyes wide under her helmet and locked on Miranda’s when she gets the shuttle stationary. Almost frantic, if Miranda didn’t know better. “Everything you built to keep her alive is still in there, right?”
“Unless she broke it.”
Wrex locks his shotgun across his back. “She definitely broke it.”
Jack sighs as the shuttle door slides open and Miranda jumps out, landing harshly against the extended metal ramps of the docking bay. “Worth a try.”
The docks are eerily empty, with half-abandoned bags and tablets scattered between terminals and seats. Only a handful of ships remain docked above and below their transport, an ill omen for the fates of those pilots in the least. The scanners flicker sporadically when they cross through. At the elevator, Wrex wrenches the doors open before Jack or Miranda could consider any alternatives. One of the doors snaps clean off and goes flying into the dark chasm of the elevator shaft. Miranda turns to give him a look as Jack, unperturbed, launches herself onto the opposite wall and locks her mag boots to the surface with a hand glowing with biotics to balance her. “What? Not like half the Citadel won’t be beaten to shit anyway.”
“There were easier methods.” Unlike Jack, Miranda plants her right foot flat against the shaft interior closest to the door before activating her mag boots and places her left just below the shaft.
“Yeah, to you .” And Wrex, unlike either of them, simply jumps down the shaft and activates his mag boots when he’s nearly sixty feet below them, slamming against the wall so harshly it rattles the entire thing.
They cross the elevator shaft in silence, stopping only when Miranda’s map indicates they’ve reached the Lower Wards. “It goes unsaid,” she says as she sends a false signal to the elevator system indicating a stopped car on their level, “but finding survivors is not our priority. Help them if you want, but the time we spend looking for anyone that is not Shepard is time that may mean life or death for her.”
And, because the universe seems to have a divine sense of humor, the sight that greets them in the Lower Wards is a corpse half-collapsed face-first against the button console. Smoke and fire fill the air, violently filtered through fans that roar louder than a jet engine. Some advertisements still run, same as lights. Most flicker in and out rapidly. Most of the bodies in the lower wards are civilians, some with gunshot wounds littered across their bodies. Evidence of full-blown infighting just to get off the Citadel. It becomes clear after a cursory check of Chora’s Den that Shepard wouldn’t be in the Lower Wards; the reports indicate that she accessed the citadel arms controls, but not where it was or where she went afterward. Considering that communications went dark merely five minutes later, Miranda wouldn’t put her approximate location in the Lower Wards. Anywhere higher, perhaps, especially when granted room for error and the potential of any blasts or destabilized structures.
So they head to the Higher Wards, and when that, too, shows no sign of Shepard and far too many dead civilians, they breach towards the Praesidium.
The scene on the Praesidium, even from the first five minutes spent in relative open-air, is near identical to the Wards. Bodies on the ground, rubble having knocked trees and sidewalks and buildings over. Signs of activity from before the Reapers hit. Dinners half-eaten, dog toys in a park. The only difference this time is that Miranda spots more Alliance blues and armors than civilian attire.
Avinas in every direction flickering rapidly, glowing red with an emergency alert. Keepers that still scuttle on the ground, though Jack shoots one when she finds it dragging a child’s body.
They turn over any Alliance soldiers with methodical precision, every armored figure just charred enough to be Shepard. None of them are.
Jack and Miranda resort to biotics, lifting and tossing rubble without a care in search of anything. A sign of life or a corpse with the right signature. Wrex just tosses them with his bare hands.
After the first five hours, Wrex breaks the silence. “Hard to believe Shepard got soft.”
“What do you mean?” Jack, ever curious. Already of the opinion that Shepard is as soft as she can get. Honestly, if Commander ‘Forces a Bartender to drink his own lethal poison in public’ Shepard was the queen of the Girl Scouts Miranda shudders to think of what she’d have to do to convince her otherwise.
“Ehhh… Alright. So. The first time I saw Shepard she was breaking a man’s wrist for looking at her wrong. The second, she’s threatening C-Sec knowing full well they can’t convict a council Spectre just to recruit me to take down Fist. Nearly beats me to the shot, too, and only complains that she could have gotten more information before I blew his brains. Woman full-on brings Liara to fight her own damn mother knowing she’d probably end up dead. Only time I ever saw her be nice was to this one colonist and even then she threatened the guards transporting her. kid’s fucking brutal, and not just in the field.” Wrex launches another piece of rubble. “Thought her getting my family armor without asking for payment was a mixup. She never smiled, never laughed. Never showed much of anything, actually. Until Virmire.”
Wrex turns a soldier’s body over, grunts when she turns out to be blonde. “I was there when she had to pick one of her friends to die. Think she’d shoot me if she knew I saw, but she shed a tear when the link dropped.” He shrugs. “But then we were too busy shooting Geth to cry.”
“Woah Woah Woah, wait, Shepard can cry?”
Miranda pauses, a transport half-lifted with her biotics, to turn to Jack. “She’s cried several times. Never in front of us, but the evidence was there. Horizon? Illium?” Shepard always carried on with a stoic face, but she’s seen it… shift, now and then. And it was no secret among the Cerberus Normandy crew that Shepard would stock the ship like a ghost at night, eyes red-rimmed. The transport drops once she confirms Shepard isn’t beneath it. “Were you honestly so focused on your own hurt you never noticed hers?”
“Like you can say any different. Ever stop doing Cerberus’ dirty work to help her?” They pass through alleys but do not go below the uppermost ward of the Citadel.
“It was important work!” Essential work, at the time. Besides, comfort was never her strong suit. Best to leave it to Joker, who draws Shepard into a useless argument, or Garrus, who indulges her incessant engineering questions poorly disguising her need for distraction. If there was anything good to come from Joker killing her the first time, it’s that his guilt means Shepard never sought comfort in ill-suited targets.
“Seriously? You’re still standing by that? After everything you saw?”
She has to. She can’t have done all that work for nothing. And some of it was good. Project Lazarus most of all. If the rest of it were worthless, Lazarus voided all of it. But Miranda takes a deep breath, says none of this. Instead, “It’s not important right now.” Prioritize. Compartmentalize.
How true her words ring, then, when Miranda lifts a neon sign from just outside the Citadel tower and finds The Illusive man, warped with Reaper technology and cybernetic blue eyes forever trained on the sky, a hole through his head. Miranda turned in her resignation letter over a year ago. She felt any loyalty towards him— towards Cerberus— shrivel up the moment she knew the truth of Sanctuary. But a part of her hurts, seeing his corpse. The part that spent years working for him, knowing him. Believing she understood him.
The rest of her pushes it aside, turns to a still fuming Jack, and says, “Look. Christmas came early.”
When Jack spots his body she spends a whole minute laughing until she turns blue, hands on her knees then her stomach. Their argument was forgotten. Irrelevant, now that the man behind the strings is dead and cold in the rubble of his own making.
It feels good to have something other than hatred and Shepard to share between them. Not that Miranda will ever admit it. Just as she’ll never admit just how relieved she is to know the Illusive Man can’t cause any more damage. He’d been wise, once. But that time had long since passed.
When Jack finishes laughing, Wrex ambles past them with determination in his step. “There’s only one person who could have killed him,” he grumbles, and they both freeze wide-eyed and stare at each other.
Miranda and Jack begin covering twice as much ground in search of Admiral Anderson. He had gone through with Shepard, after all, and Shepard had confirmed his death minutes before the Catalyst went off.
They find him in under five minutes, sprawled awkwardly beside a tower of rubble in the center of the indoor garden and just below a massive crater in the roof. Miranda marks the location on her transponder. Sets it to be sent the moment they return to Earth.
Now it’s just a matter of finding Shepard. Already they found two needles in a haystack. What’s a third?
Still, it takes them another hour. Another hour of lifting in silence, turning body upon body over and pretending the raw stench of death in the air isn’t suffocating in the faux atmosphere. In the end it isn’t even Miranda that finds her, as preoccupied as she was with being Shepard’s salvation a second time.
It’s not even notable enough that she knows Shepard is found the instant it happens. She simply hears another bit of rubble get shifted, and then… silence. Deafening silence. Footsteps, when Jack approaches to investigate further. Then— “holy shit . Holy shit!” Hands on her head, the widest, most genuine smile Miranda has ever seen stretched across her lips. “She’s fucking breathing!”
And then Miranda’s running across the Council Chambers. She nearly crashed into Jack’s back, doesn’t even apologize as she elbows past her, Omni-took at the ready. Not only does it pick up her cybernetic implants, but a heartbeat dances across the top. Irregular and slow, but certainly there.
Shepard herself is worse for wear. Her armor is charred, unrecognizable, and burned into her skin. Her scars are fully reopened, angry even, and blood splashed across her smoldering and nearly unrecognizable face. Half of her right cheek is torn away, revealing bloodied teeth and a tongue just peeking out. Her hair, stark red, is burnt on one end and missing in chunks. Part of her left ear is missing. The only thing fully untouched are her N7 tags, which rise and fall with her chest. At the bright light, Shepard’s eyes flutter, not quite opening, and the remains of her brow furrow as her heartbeat picks up on Miranda’s monitor. The small opening of Shepard’s eyelids reveal no eyeball beneath, simply a mass of red and pink to pair with her completely absent eyelashes and half-there eyebrows. A low, gurgling noise bubbles in her throat, pools of blood from an insurmountable number of injuries gathering there. She twitches as if meaning to move, but no limbs shift.
Miranda reaches forward to grab her, but Wrex hauls her abruptly backward by her collar. “ No .” He growls. Though his voice wavers, it holds a significant amount of severity that, paired with the intense fire behind his eyes, has Miranda obeying without a second thought. She doesn’t consider herself particularly afraid of Krogans, especially after so much time spent in proximity with Grunt, but just for a second… Wrex made her doubt.
She Watches as Wrex carefully pulls Shepard into his arms, one hand cradling her neck so it doesn’t loll unceremoniously backward. He touches her gently, lifts so dreadfully slowly as if he’s afraid to touch her. Like a father holding his child for the first time, terrified of dropping it the moment he has it. There, nestled in an embrace, Shepard closes her eyes and sighs deep through her mouth. Her heartbeat returns to a slow and steady pace. Wrex turns and begins the trek back to the shuttle with Shepard securely tucked against his chest with a deep downturned twist to his mouth and a wet glint in his eyes.
If Miranda catches a tear slipping down his jaw, she doesn’t mention it.
She doesn’t envy herself. There are going to be long nights going forward, cut down only by the sheer fact that Shepard is still alive. It could be months, maybe another two years before she’s fully put back together, but Miranda’s willing to do whatever it takes. She’ll spend all of the old Cerberus funds she’s ‘reallocated’ if she has to, will even hunt down Kasumi and have her drain the Illusive Man’s credit accounts once QEC is back online. If she’s lucky Shepard won’t look like someone ran her over and then backed up for a second hit by the time the Normandy can return to Sol. Wherever they may be. Regardless, she won’t stop until Shepard can return to Liara.
She promised her as much, after all.