0440 hours, Galactic Standard.
The lab was always quiet that time of morning, between shifts. Miranda liked it best, being the only one there with her. There were no useless techs underfoot needing constant supervision and direction. Just Miranda, and Shepard laying on the operating table.
Shepard, who was beginning to look a lot less like a charred and mangled heap of meat and tubes, and more like the woman from the vids. A regular Sleeping Beauty in silent repose, waiting for the curse to be broken by her prince.
Well, this wasn't a fairytale, and Miranda Lawson wasn't Prince Charming. She was a scientist, and she had work to do.
"Let's have a look at you, Commander," Miranda murmured aloud, talking to her as she often did during those quiet hours. Shepard didn't respond, of course; it was far too early as yet. She was still in a coma, and her higher brain functioning wasn't quite there. But perhaps there was a small part of Miranda that spoke to her all the same because she wanted that response all the same; perhaps even craved it in a way.
She pressed a button on her omni-tool, activating the epidermal scanner. With cybernetic reconstruction of Shepard's organs complete, and her vitals stabilized, it was time to focus more on the outer shell. And as she slowly waved the device over and around Shepard's body, her sharp eyes followed, only pulling away to glance briefly at the holographic displays. Miranda trusted in the instrument's accuracy, of course, but she had to appraise Shepard with her own eyes and their meticulous attention to detail. Miranda knew every mole, every freckle, every line on Shepard's body. She'd studied her medical records in detail, after all. She spoke into the device as she scanned, and made her observations in a cool and clinical tone:
Appearance: melanogenesis is proceeding steadily; activity has reached eighty percent of normal levels for Shepard. Her complexion is pallid but improving and responding well to increased circulation. Previous cosmetic gene therapy she underwent to alter her hair color appears to be aiding the process. Keratinocyte production has increased threefold since introduction of the latest cybernetic augmentations. However, overall cellular regeneration within the epidermis remains sluggish. Facial tissue is showing the greatest level of improvement. Scarring is prominent, but healing.
Miranda pressed the button on her omni-tool again, and ended her recording. She took a long drink from the mug on her desk, the espresso invigorating her brain as she poured over the overnight scans and updated Shepard's chart in the database. It was an incredibly delicate process, this reconstruction, and even with Cerberus' near-unlimited resources and cutting-edge tech, it was grueling work. For every step forward, every hard won bit of progress made, it seemed there were two or three more setbacks.
But there was progress being made. The decision to incorporate cybernetic augmentation into the process was deeply controversial, and Miranda was concerned that the Illusive Man would veto her. The directive had been to revive Shepard precisely as she had been, after all. Not even "as close to it as possible", but "precisely". Fortunately, precision was what Miranda specialized in. The process was taking too long, though, and for every moment Shepard lay dormant in the facility, more colonies were disappearing. They didn't have the luxury to ignore the potential for cybernetics in speeding up her recovery. So Miranda argued her case, and the Illusive Man agreed.
Still, she couldn't help but dance around the edges of that directive. There was the control chip issue, of course, but she'd also upgraded Shepard's biotic implant. The Illusive Man had approved that-unlike the control chip-because Miranda argued that she would only enhance Shepard's natural potential, and it was necessary to level the playing field against those who threatened humanity. So she tweaked the eezo nodules as delicately as possible, poking and prodding with care, applying the data on biotic neuroscience obtained from the organization's other scientific cells.
It was that level of dedication, of stubborn persistence, that had paid off in this project-one unprecedented, and one that Miranda nonetheless approached as she did everything else, with supreme confidence and an iron will. And it had long since become a matter of personal pride to her. Miranda had a keen and penetrating mind, one uniquely suited toward solving the unsolvable, and there wasn't a single aspect of Shepard's reconstruction that she hadn't spent hours upon hours turning over and over in that sharp mind of hers. That was why Shepard didn't look like a bag of meat and tubes anymore.
Imani Shepard, who after all, was known as much for her appearance as for her heroism. It was something that had been dismissed as frivolous by many of her subordinates-Wilson, chiefly among them-but it had been on Miranda's mind from the moment Shepard's charred and mangled body had been placed upon the operating table, just as every other aspect of the recovery had. This, too, was something Miranda was uniquely suited to deal with. She'd made an in-depth study of Shepard's psychology, not just her biology or service record, and had before Dr. T'Soni even recovered her for the project. Night after night, following long hours in the lab, Miranda retired to her quarters on the station and poured over personal correspondence and archival news vids, classified Alliance records and sealed reports, seeking to understand just what made Shepard tick, what made her the woman she was, and why she'd become such a symbol for humanity. And Miranda understood perhaps more than most that Shepard's appearance played as powerful a role in her rise to prominence on the galactic stage as any other aspect of her person. Miranda's own appearance had been deliberately engineered to give her an edge, after all. And it had, countless times.
Imani Shepard was a beautiful woman, make no mistake. Humanity's shining star could be no less, as far as Miranda was concerned. Her supermodel-quality looks were as iconic as her valor on the field: dark, flawless skin like polished mahogany, impossibly high cheekbones, thick and lustrous red curls, full and pouting lips forever in that shade of plum, perfectly lined sunset brown eyes shining with courage and defiance in the face of any threat. She was Amazonian in stature, standing a full six feet tall in bare feet, her martial artist's physique lean and toned, yet she still filled out Alliance dress blues in the vids like no one Miranda had ever seen. In the vids from Elysium, when she accepted the Star of Terra from Admiral Hackett for her unprecedented defense of the colony in the Blitz, she looked like an old 20th century Hollywood screen siren at the dinner held in her honor.
That classic, glamorous beauty was as crucial a part of Shepard's mystique as her biotics or her diplomacy. It was what made the galaxy fall in love with her, and by extension, with humanity. It was part of what made Shepard the kind of charismatic leader that people would follow into the depths of hell. Beauty was its own kind of currency, and Imani Shepard had an embarrassment of riches. She knew it too, as Miranda discovered in her studies of the commander. It wasn't always something she'd been comfortable with, but she'd learned to accept it and use it to her advantage when needed. She knew it made people more comfortable with her, more willing to trust and believe in her when she was an unknown quantity to them.
And that beauty was a shell of its former glory, just as Shepard herself was a shell of her former glory, lying in pallid repose on that operating table. But Miranda would restore it, just as she would restore everything else about Shepard. It was too important to ignore. When she finally awakened, Miranda needed her to look in the mirror and recognize what she saw, to feel at ease in her own skin. Miranda believed it would make her far more amenable to the task Cerberus had for her. It wasn't a control chip, but it would have to do.
Miranda pursed her lips, letting her critical gaze fall over Shepard once more. It was time, sufficient progress had been made in her eyes. Miranda opened the requisitions app at her terminal, and began to place the necessary orders.
0400 hours, Galactic Standard.
Miranda rolled her chair over beside the operating table, smiling at her silent subject. "Let's get you fixed up, shall we? You'll look like two billion credits when we're finished," she said with a light chuckle.
It had become a daily ritual, this. In the silence of the lab between shifts, Miranda opened a kit full of cosmetics and got to work. With her standard precision, and with the eyes and hands of a skilled artist, she tended to Shepard's face with brush and pigment, blending thick earthy browns into her scarred skin to mask the cybernetics glowing menacingly beneath the sensitive, ashen tissue. She lined her closed eyes with liquid black and dusted the lids with smoky dark greys and a hint of mauve. There was a deftness to Miranda's hands as she worked methodically to layer the cosmetics, but a gentleness nonetheless, one almost reverent, respectful of the quiet intimacy of the moment, no matter how one-sided it may have been. And it was immensely and unexpectedly soothing to Miranda to do this, to transform this product of science and engineering into something resembling a human woman again, warm and soft beauty to sheathe the coldness of cybernetics and steel inside.
The poetry of it always struck Miranda the hardest when she got to Shepard's scarred lips, for some reason that escaped even her. In soft, short strokes, she filled them in with that matte shade of deep purple, Shepard's signature color without which she was never seen. Miranda thought it suited her, dark and beautiful and rich. Beyond the aesthetics of it, however, was what that color meant to Shepard-that was what moved Miranda the most. Plum Passion, a tube of Star Radiance Matte Lipblend, was the only item Shepard had on her person when the crew of the SSV Einstein rescued her from a basement shelter on Mindoir at age sixteen. According to the counselors' reports from the group home on Arcturus Station, methodically putting that lipstick on had become a coping mechanism for Shepard to deal with the trauma, particularly when she was still incapable of speech. Correspondence dating from Shepard's time in ICT indicated that, after she'd enlisted, she began to wear it in remembrance of the tragedy, of her mother-from whom she'd borrowed the original tube, for prom night-and as a reminder of her own strength and resilience.
Miranda had never been one for that sort of sentimentality, but it moved her nonetheless, and it was the sort of thing that made her begin to understand why Shepard was the kind of person she was. Perhaps it even reminded her of a time when she herself was an adolescent girl adrift in a harsh and cruel galaxy, seeking purpose after leaving behind the only life she'd known. Shepard hadn't let the cruelty she'd been subject to define her. It only made her stronger, more determined, and that was something Miranda could relate to. It was something she could respect. Her smile grew a bit wider then, and she reached for the blush compact.
The lab doors slid open as she was bent over the table, stroking Shepard's cheeks with a wide brush, and Miranda instantly stopped smiling, though her back was turned to the door. She knew exactly who it would be, at this time of morning, and the thought filled her with no small amount of irritation.
"Billions of credits over budget, and this is what you're blowing money on? Playing dress-up with her?" she heard Wilson scoff from behind her. "She's a Spectre, not a doll."
"If you're so concerned with how I manage this project's finances, Wilson, take it up with the Illusive Man," Miranda snapped, her eyes still firmly fixed upon Shepard's features. "Or I could just deduct the expense from your salary."
She couldn't help but smirk in satisfaction at the silence that answered her rebuke. Wilson was nothing if not predictable. She knew he was seething as he passed through to the adjacent lab and went to his workstation, but she didn't especially care. She never did.
"Besides, whoever said a Spectre can't be a doll?" Miranda said primly, smiling slyly again at Shepard, running fingers through the silent woman's curls.
0300 hours, Galactic Standard.
Miranda read over her mission report a final time for grammatical errors. There were none, of course. There never were. She clicked send on the terminal, then stretched, stifling a yawn. Bed, perhaps.
The door to the XO's quarters opened, and Shepard stood in the entry, leaning against the frame. She was the picture of absolute exhaustion, with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Miranda was concerned; was she not sleeping properly again?
"Have you got a minute, Miranda?" Shepard asked.
Miranda nodded. "Of course, Shepard. Come here."
She led Shepard to the armchair, and took a seat adjacent on the sofa. She stretched out languidly, arching her back against the leather to work out an especially stubborn knot between her shoulders, then crossed her legs and gave Shepard an appraising eyebrow. "What is it?"
"Something's been bugging me for a while," Shepard said, as she sunk into the chair and absently ran her fingers through her crimson curls. Miranda idly noticed that they were beginning to grow out a bit; they were a bit looser then, not as tightly wound as they were before when they were more closely cropped. She found herself with sudden memories of razor-sharp shears gleaming beneath harsh fluorescent lights snipping the dead ends-but above all, she suppressed the memory of how soft those curls were when she ran fingers slick with shea butter through them, and the way that deep red swirled as she coiled glistening ringlets around her finger.
"Oh?" Miranda asked a bit curtly, and shifted slightly in her seat.
"About when I woke up," Shepard explained. "With all the drama that went down on the station, we kind of had bigger things to worry about. And I'd forgotten about it until just now."
"What's that?"
Shepard's expression turned bemused. "Why did-how the hell did I have makeup on?" she asked.
Miranda shrugged at her. "The Illusive Man's directive was clear. You were to be revived exactly as you'd been, and I knew what you favored from your credit statements. Besides, image is everything, Shepard. You and I both know that."
There was more to it than that, of course, and Miranda finally came to that slow realization that in the weeks since their mission had begun in earnest, with the benefit of hindsight framed by truly getting to know Imani Shepard-the living, walking woman, as opposed to Commander Shepard, science project and collection of facts and statistics on a terminal. She understood then, once she was actually able to look into the brown eyes she'd carefully reconstructed, and lined day after day with black gel pigment and the passion of a perfectionist's touch.
It was just as foolish now as it was then. And Miranda was no fool. There was a mission to complete, one with very little chance for survival-she'd run the numbers, projected the scenarios over and over again, she knew this better than anyone else-and no one could afford the distractions that sort of foolishness inevitably led to, least of all Shepard. Horizon had been tangible proof enough of that, if any was possibly required.
Miranda rose to her feet, rubbing her temples, almost as if she were physically trying to make herself focus. "You should get some rest, Commander," she said, clinging to the sense of stoic professionalism that had been a security blanket for her for so long, especially of late where Shepard was concerned. She couldn't afford to lose it, not now, not with so much at stake. She had to be the perfect Executive Officer, Shepard's right-hand. Nothing else mattered.
"You too, Miranda," Shepard said. "And hey-I've never had my own personal makeup artist. You did a great job."
Miranda felt the blanket slipping, crumbling before her eyes when Shepard's darkly tinted lips curled into a warm smile.
1100 hours, Eastern European Summer Time.
In the shade of a deliberately nondescript white house along the shore, Imani stood in silence waiting for Miranda to come back outside, leaning against a metal railing. Jacob had been accepted with a wary kind of caution by the defectors who ran it, but Miranda found herself a far tougher sell-as she'd mentioned on the way there, it was her job at one point to sniff out and take down these kinds of safehouses. Imani didn't especially blame her fellow ex-Cerberus agents for being paranoid, but it was another reminder to Imani of the tremendous price Miranda had paid for her unwavering loyalty to her own convictions-and her unwavering loyalty to Imani, in defiance of the very man who'd given her a place and a purpose and meaning in her life. Walking away from an organization she'd spent half her life in service of wasn't going to be easy, to put it mildly, and Imani had nothing but empathy and admiration for her. Miranda Lawson was nothing if not determined, and Imani knew she'd be alright, whether or not she stayed in Santorini.
After an hour or so, Miranda emerged from the house, silent, but considerably less tense than she was when she entered.
"Everything alright?" Imani asked her.
"It's sorted. I'm not staying though, it's too risky for me and Jacob to stay in the same place. I'll be leaving in a few days time, once word's been passed along to some other contacts."
"That makes sense. Any idea where you'll go next?"
Miranda shook her head, and Imani could have sworn she caught a faint flicker of sadness in her eyes. "Plausible deniability, I'm sorry-it's better for both of us if you don't know," Miranda replied. She paused suddenly, tilting her head, staring at Imani intently. "Come here, Shepard," she said.
Imani went to her obediently, and allowed Miranda to fuss with her uniform, smoothing out the wrinkles with soft hands, and straightening out the pips.
"Just like old times, hmm?" Imani said with a grin.
"It was better when you were comatose," Miranda replied archly. "Stand still."
Imani behaved herself and tried not to laugh, and instead stood straight and tall, her head thrown back, smiling at every pedantic adjustment and appraising glance. She wondered then if this was what it was like, there in the lab before she woke up, and tried to imagine Miranda doing the same thing then. Imani wondered if her hands had been so meticulous, her steely blue eyes so intense. Imani shut her eyes when Miranda lifted her hand, gently working a tangled bit of curls free with her fingers. She smiled faintly in spite of herself, and had to disagree with the assessment that it was better when she was comatose. Not remembering any of this…that was disappointing.
"Thank you, Miranda," Imani said, opening her eyes to see Miranda smiling back at her. "For everything. I couldn't have done any of this without you. I wouldn't even be here without you."
Miranda's eyes widened a bit then, and she nearly spoke, but stopped herself in hesitation. Her nose crinkled a bit sheepishly, and it seemed uncharacteristically unguarded of her. "You've got an appointment in Vancouver. I don't want to make you late."
"Of course," Imani said. A long, pointed silence followed in which they simply stood there staring at each other; neither quite knew what to say, for once. Bathed in the warm glow of the Mediterranean sun sinking into clear blue water behind them, it was easy to think some moments were so perfect they didn't require a Cerberus scientist's steady perfectionist's hand to fuss with them. Imani didn't especially want to say anything at all, not to ruin it.
She didn't especially want to leave, either.
"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," Miranda finally said. "I always have a plan."
"I know," Imani said quietly. "But take care of yourself anyway, Miranda."
She started for the shuttle in the distance, willing herself to take long strides even though her feet felt like lead beneath her all of a sudden; like the pit that formed in her stomach as she turned from Miranda.
"Shepard?" she heard Miranda call out from behind her.
Imani turned back to face her again. "Yeah?"
"Don't let yourself go this time. I won't be there to fix it."
The smile on Miranda's face was a stark contrast to the roiling turmoil in her eyes, and Imani flashed a rather forced one of her own before turning too quickly back toward the shuttle and the fate that awaited her, a fate without the perfectionist hand of a Cerberus scientist to guide it.