Come Back to Me
London Ruins- Earth- 2 Weeks After the Crucible Detonation.
Miranda Lawson stared out at the devastation that surrounded her. Even her perfect body with its perfectly sculpted and tailored genes ached from the work, positively groaned at the slightest movement as she tried to lean against a street lamp to rest for a few seconds before their next work detail began.
The war was somehow over; Shepard somehow had done it, despite the impossible odds, despite everything going against the two of them he had won. A blue wave of energy had passed over the Reapers and they…left…magically like out of a dream. Then their soldiers died, just withered in the streets leaving their rotting husks sitting there.
But leaving the Relays destroyed and the fleet in orbit catching its breath, figuring out what their next move was. An entire Galaxy was sitting and waiting milling about Earth, leaving a planet to wonder what was going to happen how they were going to rebuild, how they were going to take care of all the ships in orbit, and whether or not those ships and their crews would ever make it home.
It doesn't really feel like a victory does it? Miranda sighed. The future was far from certain.
And she was left knee deep in bodies, and jagged rocks and pieces of concrete blasted apart from whatever weapons had done the blasting, leaving her to toil and labor, and to use her extensive biotics to help in the rebuilding effort of the home of humanity.
But none of this mattered. All that mattered was the question that had occurred to her a million times since the Crucible had detonated, Where are you, Cameron Shepard?
She missed him. She resented him that he had, for now, broken his promise to her. Despite everything else, despite refusing to make that promise to her on the lead up to the Suicide Mission, and despite all that had been through together he had gone missing.
Officially anyways.
They had searched the Citadel extensively. Found Admiral Anderson's body, and some ash that they compared the DNA to Cameron's. They matched.
This had started her in a process that she never thought she would be in, a process that she both wondered at and resented.
She smirked, Well Cameron you certainly know how to bring out emotion in me?
The first time she had loved, the first time she had opened herself up, beginning a slow and arduous change from the woman she was, to the woman she believed herself to be, all because of him. All because he had cared about her.
Despite how I treated you my love.
And now he was gone.
Or was he?
She had to wonder since she saw his image, a ghost, a hologram, a VI just a few days after the Crucible event. After the Galaxy had changed again and after Cameron Shepard had been a part of that change.
He explained what had happened to her.
Everything, in bitter and nauseating detail. It had all seemed so impossible.
Everything from the Catalyst, to the choices he had to make, to the choice that he believed was the right one. She doubted his sanity, wondered if he was indoctrinated, but the fact of the matter was he was standing there, and making these proclamations.
Thus making the Reapers go away.
It may've been a terrible and uncertain life, but it was life. They now had a chance to live free of Reaper Tyranny, to make their own destiny, even if it was to starve, he had bought them time.
Then he had renewed his promise to her. Told her that this was not the end, and even filled her in on his plan. They would be together again he first had to take care of a few errands. Make sure the Reapers wouldn't get all uppity again if he decided to leave them.
His words, not mine, Miranda smiled.
And then he left, in a wisp of dissolving blue light, saying goodbye but that he had to go, he could feel old resentments stirring. And he had a lot to take care of, or so he said.
But this left her alone.
The sky was black, the roads were strewn with debris, the cities and tall skyscrapers were blasted apart, toppled, cast down. Krogan and Turians, Humans and Salarians, Asari and Drell, all were ambling about the streets. Most of them helping, but without any official Government it was difficult to compel all the disparate groups to rebuild a foreign world. Not with their own worlds in such desperate shapes.
The Conduit to the Citadel was suddenly black, so not even that lit the sky, and the fleet officers…Hackett, Victus, Zal Korris, Han Gerral, were too busy worrying about affairs of fleet and state to worry about this one specific planet.
This left a broken world, but humanity had been broken before and had used that to rise to the stars.
Miranda felt it in her bones. Connected with her species for the first time in her-
"Hey." Ashley touched her arm causing her to jump, nearly off the ground.
"Oh sorry Ash, hi." She tried to smile.
"Oh don't be I should apologize for sneaking up on you like that, I was just worried."
"Worried?" Miranda asked furrowing her brow.
"Yeah, you just looked…so deep in thought."
She cast a look around the desolate former capitol of the United Kingdom, "I was."
"About everything…the war…the state of Earth…the state of the Galaxy…Shepard."
"You miss him?" Ashley probed.
Miranda nodded slowly trying to hold back the tear welling up in her eye.
She chuckled; Miranda shot her a fierce scowl.
"No it's not like that just…when I found out about the two of you. When I read his private e-mails admitting that he loved you and wanted to be with you and had pretty much given up on me. I was so…lost. Mad at him, mad at you, guilty at myself for treating him so poorly on Horizon."
She sighed looking at what was left of the city around her. "But a Galactic war and the need to rebuild your home world is no time to hold any grudges. No time to keep up with petty hates."
She smiled wistfully, "And you can't help but love the man…"
Miranda scowled.
"Oh don't worry he made his choice and we didn't…re-connect…during the mission. Not romantically anyways. But even through it all, he is a dashing hero, like some Knight of old. Riding into battle on a steed of biotic energy, carrying Revenant Machine Gun, mowing down all those before him."
Miranda smirked. "He always told me that you liked your poetry."
Ashley laughed for a second but quickly controlled herself, shooting her a curious look. "Do you really believe that story that you told me that he told you? I mean do you think he'll come back?"
Miranda sighed casting a look at her feet, and then looking straight ahead. "I don't know…God I hope…I hope so much…but it all seems so fantastical."
"Tell me about it…may you live in interesting times."
Miranda nodded and cast a look skyward trying to take in the entire breadth and scope of the Galaxy, trying to gain some clue. Even though the ash kept her from seeing the sky, from penetrating and seeing the universe.
"Still we have lived in fantastical times. Just eighty years ago none of this was known. No FTL, no Relays, no extra solar colonies…no biotics. And then suddenly it changed and humanity just shrugged its shoulders and...adapted…trying to find our place. And doing pretty good at it to."
"Cerberus would beg to disagree with you."
She looked at her shoes and sighed.
"Sorry that was mean."
"No," She admitted, "you are right. We're not perfect, not as a species, as an organization…not even I am." She smirked wryly.
Ashley nodded smiling. "Well Ms. Miranda Lawson…should we get back to work?"
"After you Lieutenant Commander." Miranda smiled as they both walked into the distance.
AN/AC: Well this is it. I thought it was fitting that I give the story started in On the Run its own personal ending. Though this follows along closely with the canon established in ME 3 and does to some extent ignore Miranda being captured in On the Run.
But again I decided to throw in a little bit of everything, the IT, references to On The Run, and Ruminations of a Woman Changed, and some of the more vocal critiisms over the ending to ME 3.
More to come.