Character(s): Commander Nolan Shepard and Miranda Lawson.
Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing. The Mass Effect series belongs solely to BioWare and EA.
Okay, so I've decided to publish a little angst. A little different from my normal fare, but this fic also takes place in the same universe as Wishful Thinking, Elevator Revelations, and To Build A Home. My thoughts on this one: What if Miranda had her doubts about Project Lazarus? What if Shepard really hadn't wanted to come back? This is how I imagined that little conversation would go in a sort of behind-the-scenes kinda deal from ME2.
I really like this one. Drawing the parallels between the legend of Prometheus, the story of Frankenstein, and Miranda Lawson was pretty fun, if I do say so myself.
UPDATE : Thanks to torexile and the confusion s/he pointed out, I have gone back and added in some additional information on their location. Hope that helps. :-)
Constructive criticism is welcome. Please, no flames.
Enjoy.
Prometheus
oOoOo
They were on the SR-2 Normandy's observation deck, and Shepard's fingers clenched around the railing, knuckles turning white as he stared out into the void. "I was dead," he said hollowly. "I should have stayed dead. What can you possibly say to make that all right?"
Miranda blinked, her stormy eyes revealing nothing. "There is nothing I can say, Commander," she told him evenly, "except that I did what I thought was best for humanity. You were our best hope of saving the galaxy, and you were dead. We - I - brought you back, and I'm sorry."
He nodded to himself, but still refused to look at her. "I can remember dying, you know," he breathed. "Every torturous moment of it. Every night, I relive it and I'm there again, floating helplessly in the void, watching the Normandy burn and knowing I'm going to die. It feels like it happened only yesterday, but I know better. I've lost two years of my life, Miranda." Only then did he meet her gaze and his emerald-green eyes were hard. "How can you justify it?"
Miranda said nothing. If she could, she would have removed those memories from his mind, but knew it would have proved too much of a risk. She could not afford to destroy precious memories, memories and experiences that made Shepard Shepard. She understood this, and regretted the limits of scientific possibility. Regretted the limits of being human, even if she had been genetically engineered to be perfect.
"Sometimes, I can still feel my insides clench up and my lungs begin to burn, like I remember just before dying. Doctor Chakwas says there's nothing there, that it's simply phantom pain, but I don't know. All I do know is that this isn't my ship, this isn't my crew, and I don't feel like me anymore."
And all Miranda could say was, "I'm sorry." Over and over again, until that phrase lost its meaning in repetition.
Miranda awoke with a start, her mind racing with the things she'd seen and heard behind closed eye-lids. She knew that it hadn't been real, that it had been merely a dream, but still she could not shake the truth from his words.
Now, it frightened her to realize that she'd never once considered what he would have wanted. Whether he had wanted to be brought back at all.
And while it was true that Commander Nolan Shepard had been despondent ever since Freedom's Progress and his running into that quarian, the very one who'd helped him track down Saren, she hoped that he was slowly but surely regaining his bearings. He'd been dead for two years, after all. There must be an acceptable amount of time allotted for recovery.
Still, she was the overseer of one of the most illustrious projects ever attempted by any species in the galaxy, period. To imbue life in the lifeless, to reanimate a corpse after a lengthy span of a year and a half. By all accounts, a modern case of Prometheus. In all that time, she had never stopped to consider that he was happier without life, contented without the pressure galactic societies forced upon him. Never did she consider the possibility that the Lazarus Project had overstepped its bounds, intruded upon the immoral and unethical. She had forced a dead man to return, to fight a war that he had already lost and, by right, was no longer his to fight.
Might she not be a modern Prometheus at all, but another Dr. Frankenstein? Who was to say that her brain-child of two years would not ultimately ruin her life?
And now, she did consider it, and she was afraid.
I care about you, Ashley - I MEAN, Miranda!
Gotta love Gamer Poop. ;-)
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