I finished Mirror's Edge a long while ago, and it disappointed me to see that there were so little stories for it. Miller was one of my favorite characters, and seeing as we never see what happened to him after the entrance to the server rooms, I thought I'd offer this little piece to show what he might be going through. One sided sexual situations abound, as do slight spoilers for the end game.
Of course I don't own Mirror's Edge; it belongs to Dice.
He used to remember, before the November Riots, reading that book as a young man. The one about the city that was taken over by the government and abused until it fell in subservience to the government whom held the psychological reigns. He remembered the main character being brought into a building with no windows, barbed wire fences and turret nests where he suffered arcane torture by the idle hands of the police.
It has been banned since then.
Lieutenant Miller extended a finger and ran it down the cold, metal wall of his prison cell. Much like the building in that book, his prison had no windows, but whether that was on the count of it being for added terror or another reason entirely he was unsure. He remembered nothing from before he woke up there; the last thing being seeing Faith to the server room in the Shard. He was hit from behind and after that his mind went as white as his uniform. Although to call his uniform white would be hard after his scuffle, it was now stained with his blood.
The walls were smooth. Always smooth and cold, and white like milk. It gave the forced impression of order. Like every city in town the hue was bright and vibrant, even though it held no discernable colour. He imagined that if one building would be devoid of any and all semblance of life, it would be the jail, but this wasn't any part of it he frequented. Where he worked it was usually far more comfortable than this, but behind a desk he wasn't a prisoner being detained for treason against the government by helping a Runner. With a small sigh he resumed tracing patterns around the wall with the ever looming realization that it might be the only thing he would be able to do. Although he had been in there what must have been many hours, the only contrast in colour he received were the deep black armored suits of Pirandello/Kruger's men occasionally walking in front of his tell and scaring him half to death with the sudden change in scenery. It was enough to drive a person absolutely mad; white walls, white ceiling, white floor, while cell bars…and then a figure in a hard black walking through the bright light just to unnerve you. Miller found that if he closed his eyes it fixed the problem somewhat. He wouldn't have to see them but the light glared beneath his eyelids. Only after a few agonizing minutes of staring up into the light through them would make his vision splash with red, and he imagined that this must be how Faith sees all the time.
Faith was often on his mind. He found himself wondering if she had completed her mission and rescued her sister. He had been hoping she had, not just for Kate anymore. She was an excellent and capable cop, but her sister deserved a great deal of respect for what she had gone through to get to her. Miller had only slept a few times since he arrived, he hadn't any idea how long he had been there, and every time he closed his eyes he saw her behind his eyelids; the same determined, hateful and aggressive look that distorted her features when he officially betrayed his place of power and murdered his bodyguards. She asked if he was going to shoot her too. No, she had too much fire in her eyes to shoot it out. He saw it ages ago, back when she put his arm in a disabling hold and stole his gun's twin with which she would then threaten his life. Attempting arrest the Runner seemed like a good enough idea at the time, but he couldn't help but feel a tad foolish on the drive home that she had overpowered him so easily and then left with her back to him, rather condescendingly in his opinion. He knew that he could have taken her in easily if he hadn't expected a reaction out of her upon arrest. He expected her to use words, attempt to talk more about Kate's predicament, or at the very least, hijack his car or knock him unconscious to be found the next morning by the first civilians to head to work. She was a Runner, not a fighter, and even she knew that she couldn't dodge his bullets. Then, to be emasculated in such a fashion and then left awake at the end of the ordeal; Miller found that it disturbed, infuriated and excited him all the same. He found himself sweating his drive home from the encounter, his mind racing with the motions and alternate ways it could have gone. Luckily by the end of the night he went to bed only mildly perturbed instead; but that didn't stop the dreams and the unexplored questions the situation had dropped into his lap.
Miller had never been one for relationships. He'd been married once, and then divorced just as quickly. A mutual loss of attraction, it seems that when it came to marriage most women his age wanted nothing to do with a man who looked twenty years older than them. He blamed the premature whitening of his hair. Still, it was alright, he had a lot better things to do with his time and being the lieutenant of the city took up all of it. He rarely slept, but when he did his dreams were non-active and reminiscent of walking through the city, they were dull, uneventful and he grew to accept them. He saw them few and far between anyway, those that he remembered when he woke up never irked him.
Just like the first night he saw Kate's sister, she didn't irk him, but the second night and beyond he found himself more and more agitated simply by knowing she was out there. She was indeed a, perhaps the only, entity protecting Kate in the city besides him, but what got to him was the fact that she wasn't an entity he could control. She was nothing that anything in the city could control unless it was through a bullet between the eyes and it made him squirm restlessly when he thought about it. She left a harrowing impression on his dreams. The night of the incident in the carpark he dreamed she had been stalking him through his copy of the city, across the rooftops with only a subtle pattering of footsteps echoing in the empty reaches of the island to prove that she was in fact watching him. When he caught an occasional glimpse of her shoes he fired at her, only to find that she was already across the street when he had done so. A physically impossible movement in the real city, it didn't stop him from haunting his dreams at night. He would then wake to his alarm clock and Faith would, mercifully, be gone.
Or so he thought. Where Miller found he should have been going through his daily routine, thinking about the CP or of Kate, his mind would inevitably end up reverting back to the elusive courier. Between being thrown into prison and her stealing his weapon he found himself thinking a lot about Faith during his waking hours. He assumed it was out of concern for Kate, nothing more, but the rush that accompanied him every time she weaved her way into his brain began to become too strong for him to ignore. Every time a an officer filed a report involving an escaped Runner he would scan it meticulously for a description that matched Faith's. Dark hair, dark eyes, slender and black tattoos. It was never her in any of them; it was always blonde hair or green eyes or the wrong tattoo. He began to fear that he was becoming obsessed with them, not just Faith, but Runners in general.
One night, much earlier than the official backstabbing he committed at the Shard, he stood in front of a long mirror and undressed himself down to the skin. He examined every inch of himself, even muscle and mark, and determined that if he was a tad younger he could have been a Runner. If they had gotten to him before the Civil Protection had, he might have even preceded Faith. Now though, he was middle aged, and looked even older, and would be laughed out of the city should he even express the littlest interest in the job. It wouldn't sit well with Callaghan either and he was a bit disturbed that he hadn't thought of him first. In truth he had been thinking of Faith, and what she would say about expressing a sudden desire to take on a Running life. He wondered vaguely how the city in his book would have been effected by the existence of Runners…he wondered how Faith would react to his thinking of that. He climbed into bed late that night, naked and alone, and more upset about that fact than he ever had been before in his life.
A loud clanging on his cell bars shook him from his reverie. Another one from PK. His helmet obscured his face, but it wasn't like Miller was in the mood to see what he looked like anyway. He was bringing him a tray of food; a white tray with something on it that passed as food for the prisoners in the dungeon they were kept. Placing it on the floor the guard left Miller to his own devices, to which he did not jump to automatically indulge in. The food was of low quality, he knew that, and was served on trays that blended in with the floor and gave the impression of throwing meat on the ground and expecting the prisoners to eat it like animals, the obvious perception of the enemies of the state. He let it sit there and rolled onto his cot to face the wall. He was trying to get back to his bed.
That was the first night, he remembered vaguely, he had thought of Faith in a way that truly brought terror to him. It was the first in his series of increasingly alarming hallucinations where he actually got a hold of the woman. By then her visage was beginning to torture him and when he grabbed hold of her he held her tight and would not let up no matter how relentlessly she struggled within his grasp. He had anticipated her movements and climbed the building she would be arriving from through the inside, he almost missed her. He had outwitted his own dream. She kicked him multiple times, only to find that he wouldn't respond to any of it; his adrenaline pumped hard through him and it only made him dig his fingers harder into her wiry arms. She wouldn't get away again; he'd be on the floor bloody before he let her out of his control, but she was hard to hold onto, it was like trying to get a cat into the bathtub. As an alternative measure of keeping her with him he pressed her back firmly to a nearby surface, a smooth, flat wall, and pushed his body up tight against hers, further restricting the amount of movement she could exert. It was invigorating; his heart leaped into his mouth and beat rapidly against that of her own dappled chest as the light played harshly on her skin.
His mouth ran dry, "I'm not going to let you go again." It came out barely higher than a whisper and her lips twitched at his attempts to sound intimidating. Her hands slid upward, creating a barrier between them that he closed viciously upon thinking that she would push him away and escape, but she didn't. She closed her calloused fingers over his tie and pulled it from his vest. It took a few moments from him before he noticed that she was untying it. To strangle him with? To taunt him? He brought his head down, touching and closing his lips over hers lightly. The longer they stood together the more fervent he grew until he was passionately kissing her and her body began to wriggle in his arms. She wasn't trying to flee, she wouldn't have made such an effort to tear his vest off if she was. No, this was a positive reaction, to him and his advancements. A surge of pleasure went through him, one that he hadn't remembered having in a long time. The two of their bodies began to work against each other but it was when Faith put her hands to his belt did his head begin to swim. His neglected libido took control over his rational thought, the part of him that told him she was a Runner and off-limits. He needed this, he needed her more than anything at that moment. It grew hot and damp between them whist they shed each others clothing, her arms wrapping affectionately around his waist and their mouths intermingling once again.
"They will know we did this," he whispered hotly against her face, into her mouth before she silenced him. There was no doubt in his mind that they would do it- his body ached longingly and he would lose himself if he had to lose her for a reason as ludicrous as that the city was watching them. One of her hands came up and found it's way into his hair, brushing her thumb across his temple.
"We're already in trouble." She rose her legs and wrapped them around Miller to allow him to crush her against the wall. Unable to stand it any longer he pushed deeply into her inviting body and held back the cry he was about to let out. Faith was a virgin, he couldn't believe it, and her face screwed up from the pain of his entry. He forced himself to calm down while inside her to prevent more difficulty but soon created a rhythm between them that made his body quake with ecstasy. Faith seemed to be doing fine, better than fine, after a quick recovery she put her lips to his neck and let his pelvis do all the work. He quickened his pace and continued to hold Faith against the wall; her back arched and his tongue flicked over a nipple as he lustfully pumped in and out of her, climbing ever higher until he lost all sense of himself. He was no longer Lieutenant Miller of the Civil Protection Force; he was just a man. A man who was breaking a million city laws by making love to a Runner, and public enemy number one, in broad daylight atop a building by the New Eden Mall, his badge discarded out of his line of vision with the rest of his clothing and Faith's tabi, among other things. He was going to reach his peak soon, but a whine of protest from Faith kept him going even though he didn't have it in him to come inside her, he just wasn't that bold. He curled his hands tightly and left two crescent moon marks in Faith's sides as they cried out and held together, flesh rolling across flesh and sweat intermingling with saliva as it dripped down their faces and rolled down their forms streaked with red. His head clouded and his hands grabbed onto Faith with all the neediness of a person who had been deprived contact their whole life, her airy voice panting harshly, blood drumming past his ears as he reached his climax…
He woke up before he could obtain it, however, at the sound of his insidious alarm clock. Like an electric shock all the reason and rigidness of his daily routine came flooding back into his life, but more unbearably into his bed. His hair was askew and falling in his face, his body hot and panting from what he had just undergone. Had he really lusted after the Runner so badly that it would drive him to this? One look under the sheets were enough confirmation. He was positive that it would only be a one night occurrence, but he was deathly wrong about that. Three times a night he would be visited by Faith, each time he hoped would be the final one. It was no good for anyone, especially a superior officer, to allow rampant eroticism to go unchecked like that. Thought as much as he sought to rid himself of the imagery it only flowed with more freedom and more intensity. He began to daydream too, and unfortunately could do nothing to cull the wilily advances of his mind. No matter where he was he was in fear that he would act on these impulses with his own hands, he would be watched everywhere, except in his head. He didn't know why he helped Faith in the Shard; whether or not it was because of Kate, because of his repressed hunger for Faith, or because he was genuinely exhausted by the current methods of the elite but he had not expected to see bullets spray behind him and crash the monitors from which he watched her nor did he expect to be relocated to this pristine hell after being knocked out. He should have, but more so he thought he would be beaten to within and inch of his life an then interrogated.
Like many in times of stress Miller retreated to the sanctum of his mind when it became too much to cope with. Thought stronger than he looked, he had expected more than a single cell, cut off from the rest of the facility, in a stark white chamber. He knew he shouldn't have. With a heaving sigh he pressed his back flat against the wall in a sitting position and attempted to get the strain out of his eyes from the oppressive light. As ironic as it was to be in this position, he knew he would have to focus on a much greater irony to survive in what PK called a jail cell. He would need to call on Faith again, to be a loving distraction from what he really needed to be focusing on. Perhaps it would be in vain, maybe Faith was dead and Kate being prematurely executed for her sister's crimes. Right now it the possibility would be too much for him to tackle at once. He was a strong man, quite so in his opinion, but to have something one worked so intently on go so awry at the cusp of success would be enough to bring any man to his knees. Instead he blurred his mind and recalled upon the dark haired Runner; her legs pumping across rooftops, her calloused hands. They were so rough but any amount of contact from them could elicit some of the most powerful reactions from within his affection choked body. She would always be there, in his head, to remind him that worlds apart they still had each other in the furthest reaches of his mind. She would top, sometimes, straddle his muscular stomach and lean forward, telling him that he was not crazy. That it didn't mean anything. Sometimes she was cruel enough to remind him that she wasn't even really there. It didn't matter anymore, because she was with him in that cold, white cell, unzipping the pants of the bloody uniform they left him in as a mockery of his previous standing…
Miller slammed against the wall of the cell upon receiving a crack to the side of the head by a guard wrapped in a bullet proof vest. He fell to the floor and unintentionally rolled into his slop of a meal to further disgust his uniform (although it would be hard to call it a uniform now). He forgot before his foray that they could see everything, including the meanderings of his mindful hands. From where, he couldn't say, but his face was skewed in swathes of red when the guard beat him as punishment. He had never gotten caught daydreaming before, but he was careful not to let desperation cease hold before. Now was different. He heard the guard muttering something, possibly over a mic in his helmet, to bring prisoner of an undetermined number a one piece jumpsuit to change into indefinitely, as prisoner of an undetermined number couldn't keep it in his pants. He left, but not without glancing back at Miller in what the former lieutenant could only assume was an intense antipathy. He lay on his back, staring up into the blinding light; exhausted and full of resentment for the insolence he received at the hands of the people who once protected him, and were supposed to protect his city. Nevertheless, it wasn't his city anymore.
Faith Connors loomed over him where he laid, unable to do anything about his plight but press her gloved hand against the bruise on his face and whisper that everything would be alright.