"Can we please stop talking about Shepard?"

Miranda swerves as a nurse pushes past her with an armful of compression bandages. Her eyelids sting. She breathes through her mouth and wants only to sit for a minute, just a second, but no one's coming to relieve her for another twelve hours. If they come at all.

And Garrus simply won't drop this line of questioning.

"She's almost certainly dead. I couldn't make her tough enough to survive a bloody Reaper beam."

The entire right side of Garrus's armor has been blasted away. He doesn't seem to have noticed.

"We don't know that. If she activated the Crucible and made it, there's no way a pile of rubble could take her down."

"That pile of rubble was the entire Citadel coming down above her. In the meantime, I do know that this turian is going to die if you don't stop arguing and start compressing her chest."

Miranda ignores the screaming that's started up again, outside the makeshift hospital, and grabs the nearest medic. He sags alarmingly easily into her grip. "You- get me another packet of medi-gel now."

"Ma'am, there's no more-"

"Then get off your arse and tell the c-wing to send us whatever's left of their supply. And if they start any bullshit, remind them that Alliance orders are that servicemen take priority over civilians." Her voice softens. "Please hurry."

"Right away, Ms. Lawson."

Between the sickening tang of blood and the heat of a London summer, the field hospital is as close to collapse as Miranda's ever seen. Gunfire rings out periodically. A dozen babbling voices come from the rubble beyond, where emergency pallets are spread like so many butter pats on blackened toast.

Their makeshift morgue takes up an entire city block.

"Why are you even here? You don't need my approval to leave the hospital."

"Alliance orders not to approach the Crucible until we get confirmation that all the Reapers are gone. I'm giving them another ten minutes. If I don't get the go-ahead by then I'm striking out on my own, regulations be damned."

"Of course you are."

"If there's a chance that Shepard survived, then we need to start looking now before it's too late. It's only been three hours since…it's entirely possible she made it. We owe her at least- at least - that much. Come on, Miranda."

"Does it look like we have even a single set of hands to spare right now? You're talking about digging through thirty cubic miles of debris. The Commander's last known location was broadcasted before Hammer even landed- the Crucible was blown to bits, she could be anywhere. It's out of the question."

The patient shudders and goes still under her hands. Garrus ceases compressions. Miranda curses and reports another open bed on the server. It's filled almost as soon as she lifts her bloody fingers from the datapad.

"The Normandy had a lock on Shepard's position before we made a run for the beam. If we could just find them and get their scanner activated, it'd make it a hell of a lot easier. Did they even make it out of the Sol system? Is anyone looking for them?"

"Not a priority. You're asking questions that no one knows the answer to."

"And I'll keep asking them until someone does. What's the word from the Council?"

"The last asari survey team said there's no trace of debris beyond the relay. The Normandy either made it out or they're dead too."

Turians can't frown, but Garrus's mandibles contract in something that might be sadness and might be fury. Miranda can't tell. His rifle is unloaded but there's a pile of confiscated heat sinks nearby. If he goes for one, there's no way they can take them all away from him in time.

Instead, he follows Miranda to the next occupied cot.

"We can't just sit here and do nothing."

"I'm not. That remains to be seen for you." Miranda snaps. "Now either help me hold his leg in place while I re-attach it to his body, or go somewhere where you can do some good. Damn it, where the hell is that medi-gel?"

She takes a deep breath and re-sanitizes her hands. Her datapad flashes and the hourly casualty report begins its steady scroll down the screen.

"Ashley's doing recon at ground zero. I'm going to contact her. Coordinate the recovery effort whether the Council considers it a priority or not."

"Fine."

"When you're done you should join us."

"Fine."

"I'd like something more than 'fine'."

"I can't promise anything, I have too much to do here. With people who actually have a chance."

"Your confidence is downright inspiring, Lawson." Garrus growls, pushing another application of medigel into the Alliance soldier they're working on. No use, too much blood loss. He'll be dead within a minute. Exsanguination, that's what the humans called it. Damn humans had no survivability whatsoever-how did something so weak and delicate ever beat the Reapers? How did one of them save the collective ass of the entire galaxy? How did she save trillions of lives in this cycle and the next- and how stupid was he, to believe she could keep her own life in the bargain?

"I don't think you've thought this through." Miranda looks away from the dying man and picks up the datapad again. Another bed emptied, another filled. Repeat, repeat. "I think your loyalty to the Commander means you'll throw everything that you have at an unsolvable problem, wasting resources and quite possibly building up hope that isn't there."

"As if just loyalty could have kept anyone with Shepard every time she went to hell and back. You know as well as I do that loyalty was only good for making us show up, not getting us to stay. You wouldn't even be alive if loyalty was all that mattered to you."

"Loyalty and a little bit of mental instability. Reckless desperation. Should I go on? I don't even know what you want me to say here. You want to leave, leave. Go find Spectre Williams."

"The stoic act isn't fooling anyone. If you're trying to convince yourself that it's helping, you're doing a piss-poor job of it."

"Whoever said that it's working?"

Garrus slams his fists down and throws something across the room. He paces the same tense steps that he has for the last hour. Miranda actually jumps when he pushes his scarred face up against her own.

"Damnit, Miranda! You can't just give Shepard up for dead, you can't act like she didn't mean anything to you! If it were you under there, wouldn't you want us to go through hell to save your life? What if it was Jack? What if it was Oriana?"

Miranda pushes him in a wordless fury. Never mind that he weighs about a hundred pounds more than she does, or could easily overpower her in this exhausted state. She puts her hands out and shoves with all her might, moving him by exactly zero inches. She's just so bloody tired of all of it.

Shepard would be searching. Shepard wouldn't let something as idiotic as fear keep her from the truth, as gruesome as it might be. Shepard wasn't afraid to fail.

Garrus's mandibles flex again. She brings one trembling hand to her face.

"Stop. Get out of my hospital."

"It's not about me." Garrus says, softly. "I don't need your approval, or your resources, or even your help to find Shepard. But Shepard does, if she's alive. If we manage to bring her back, I need you to believe that she can be saved- and then I need you to do it. You know her body better than anyone."

She closes her eyes and sees the blueprints, the biometric scans, every iota of Shepard's construction as clearly as it was yesterday. Wilson, the med-bay, the pistol without a thermal clip. The first words Shepard ever said to her.

Shepard, wake up.

"But I'm a believer in intent, Miranda, and if a soldier doesn't believe something can be done, there's no way to help him. You'd just be hoping he'd get lucky and succeed anyway. Shepard needs more than luck. Shepard deserves more than luck. Don't you get it?"

Miranda's eyes are stinging again.

"I'm not a bloody soldier, Garrus. I'll be here if you need me but I can't come with you. The Reapers may be gone but there's still so much that needs to be done, before we can recover. And I can't make myself useful if I'm worrying about Shepard. If I'm thinking about how she might be-"

Clone or not, I'm the only Shepard left.

"Even if she's alive. Even if you needed me to rebuild her again…I'm afraid I won't know how. No one gets a miracle like that twice. Not even Shepard."

An Alliance private walks in just as Garrus is opening his mouth again.

"Mr. Vakarian?"

They turn at the same time.

"Someone made an inquiry about Commander Shepard. You asked to be informed if-"

"Go ahead." Garrus says. Miranda keeps her face stone.

"A source identifying themselves as Alliance. Someone called Specialist Traynor?"

A/N: Some differences from the extended Destroy ending: Garrus and Ashley were taken to the beam and not picked up by the Normandy, but survived. Other details will be explained in later chapters. Eventually, will be Shepard/Traynor, implied Jack/Miranda. Please let me know how you like this if you've got the time.