Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Post-war. Post-reconstruction. Post-heartache. A few years down the line for our duo.
Rotted from Misuse
"She remembers – all too starkly and intimately – how she had loved this woman once." - Jack and Miranda. What time wears away.
"Well, you look like shit." Jack shoves her hands into her hoodie's pockets and nudges her chin at Miranda. They stand before each other in a nameless corridor on the Presidium after nearly colliding and it is the first they've seen each other in years.
Years better off forgotten, Miranda thinks.
Miranda only heaves a long-labored sigh at Jack's greeting, her hand moving to pinch the bridge of her nose. It has been many shouts and many dented walls and many acid-lined words since they were anything but might-have-beens to each other. And Miranda doesn't have the strength to remember what it felt like to love Jack, because then she'd have to remember what it felt like to lose Jack and she had stopped believing that was better than never loving her at all a long, long time ago.
Not since Oriana's death.
Not since her own depression and self-hatred had settled slowly between them, wedging itself in like the slow creeping of dawn, until suddenly, she couldn't even see her from the other side of it. Until it had reduced them to an angry fuck and slammed doors and desperate, cruel digs into pasts they had always promised never to use against each other.
She blames herself mostly.
But then, Jack hadn't tried to stop her when she walked away.
And by then they both knew they had well past drowned. Their lungs were sodden with their pain. It frothed in their mouths until they choked on it.
Miranda thinks walking away might have been the best and worst thing she's ever done in her life.
Jack sniffs and swipes a hand across her nose, before shoving it back into her pocket. She rocks back and forth on her heels, her loose brown hair trailing past her shoulders, the bustling Citadel in the background, and for a moment, she looks just as she did those many years ago.
Disinterested. Antagonistic. Unapologetic.
Miranda wonders how two people such as themselves could ever go about loving each other in a way that didn't also kill them.
"Guess the private sector's not been too good to ya, huh?"
Jack's voice brings her back. Miranda blinks, brushes a stray dark strand behind her ear. She cuts it short these days. She cuts it short and still doesn't recognize the face in the mirror. "Everything is fine, thank you, everything is…" Her voice stops suddenly, a slow choke, not loud enough for Jack to hear but the vibration is there in her throat and instantly she knows that there's no point to lying anymore. So she just stays quiet.
Jack's eyebrows rise slightly in expectance.
Sighing, Miranda clears her throat and looks around. "What are you doing here?"
Jack scoffs. "You don't own the Citadel, Icecrotch, so come off it."
Miranda's chest tightens at the old nickname and her jaw clenches.
Jack seems to catch it belatedly, opens her mouth, closes it, then shrugs noncommittally and looks off to the side, to some nondescript, neon advertisement. Across the flashing board an asari promises the soothing embrace of eternity. Jack lets out a short, rueful chuckle and looks to her scuffed boots.
Miranda cocks her head at her former lover, adjusting the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "I suppose you're here for the symposium. Some of your former students are presenting, are they not?"
Head snapping up, Jack eyes her suspiciously. "Been checking up on me?"
"Hardly." It feels so familiar when the derision slips seamlessly into her tone. She licks her lips and continues. "I'm coming from a meeting with the board myself."
"Didn't ask." Jack shrugs her disinterest. "And don't really care, princess."
Miranda frowns, her brows dipping down. "Alright, then." She bites her lip to keep from screaming.
They stare at each other for long moments, Jack with her hands in her pockets, and Miranda clutching at her purse strap.
"I guess I – "
"The thing is – "
They both clamp their mouths shut. Jack swallows thickly. Miranda barely breathes.
"Look, prin-" And then Jacks stops, clicks her tongue, heaves an angry sigh and shakes her head, eyes fixed to Miranda's shoulder because she can't look her in the eye. She won't. And then her shoulders sag and she rubs at the back of her neck. "Look…Miranda."
Miranda nearly bolts right then. The way Jack's boot scuffs along the too-clean tile. The way she scratches at the nape of her neck. The way her mouth is a familiar thin line.
The way she says her name.
Her name.
She remembers – all too starkly and intimately – how she had loved this woman once.
"Stop."
Jack looks up at Miranda's whisper.
Miranda has backed up a step, one hand raised. "Let's just…not do this."
Jack's brows angle sharply down, her lip curling.
There. That's familiar. Yes.
Now say something rank and foul and maybe this will all make sense again.
"You'll only embarrass yourself further." Miranda swallows back the bile when the words hit air, and she surprises herself with the evenness of her voice when she says it.
Jack's growl eases lowly in the back of her throat, her hand coming down from her neck to rest in a tight fist at her side.
Yes, she had loved this woman once.
And she had also ruined her.
"Ah, that's right. Can't be seen to actually feel something." Jack's sneer is only half amused. The other half is something Miranda no longer recognizes. If she thought too hard about it, it might look like longing to her.
"I feel plenty of things, Jack." She crosses her arms and digs her fingernails into her skin. "I simply no longer feel them in relation to you."
A sound leaves Jack's mouth that's part scoff and part laugh. But there is too much anger behind it for it to be anything but heady indignation.
Miranda squares her shoulders. It is all coming back. And somehow, that makes this easier.
"Fine," Jack spits. She shakes her head, lips peeling back into a sneer. "Fine."
"Let's not run into each other again." Miranda begins to walk past her, because there is nothing more to be said that hasn't been said before and if she doesn't leave now, she thinks she might take it all back and then she'd find that love had never left her.
Only that it had rotted from misuse.
Jack's hand on her elbow stops her.
"I just need you to know," she grinds out, her fingers gripping tightly to Miranda's arm, but Miranda has long been acquainted with bruising and she knows eventually the marks will fade.
They always do.
"The flowers," Jack continues. She swallows tightly, eyes falling to the floor. "Every year on her grave – the flowers…"
Miranda stiffens. She knew they were from Jack. She'd always known. Because how could she not? She'd only ever mentioned Oriana's favorite flowers to one person in the galaxy and back then it wasn't for laying on graves.
Every year she finds them there, and every year she clears the dead petals from the grey stone and remembers to breathe.
She stopped crying long ago.
"I didn't do it for you," Jack nearly seethes. She lets her go then, because Miranda might notice her trembling and then more would be spilled between them than regret and resentment and long-held exhaustion. "I did it for her."
Miranda closes her eyes. "I know."
"Good."
They stand with their shoulders nearly touching, their breaths heavy, their gazes averted – until they very nearly fracture beneath the silence. Then Jack is gone.
And Miranda finds that nothing has changed between them. There is still a dead sister between them. Still a palpable antagonism. Still the long stretch of empty years.
Everything Miranda has ever touched in this life has broken beneath the weight of her festering love.
Pulling a deep breath in, Miranda opens her eyes. She finds her nails have dug half-moons into her skin from her fierce grip. She pulls her shoulders back, lets her hands fall limp to her sides. She takes a step forward, and then another.
She walks away.
What's already rotted isn't meant for keeping.