Summary: A look at the reconstruction of Commander Shepard, through Miranda's eyes. Two parts.
Pairings: F!Shep/Miranda, but not necessarily in a more than friends way.
Warnings: I tried to be as scientific as possible without knowing how a body wrapped in state of the art armor with shields would react to reentry on a planet with -22 degree Celsius temp and a methane-ammonia thick atmosphere. I hope I didn't do too badly.
Author's Note: This story is told in two parts. They can be taken as two different tellings of the same event, or two different events with similar tellings. I started one, then had to stop and write the other before going back and finishing. They don't deserve individual postings, but I can't pick one over the other either. So, they both get to go in the same story.

Construction Deconstruction
by wayfaringpanda

Part One - Spaced

Miranda hadn't been prepared. It didn't happen often, and she'd never admit it happened at all, but this was completely out of the realm of what she'd expected.

Clinically speaking, she knew what to expect when a body died by being spaced and going through reentry. She'd done the research as soon as the Illusive Man had tasked her with Project Lazarus. The bodies internal pressure was used to the countering of atmosphere to keep a delicate balance. Once the atmospheric pressure was taken away, the blood in ones veins essentially burst out. Reentry, of course, would burn you to a crisp.

It was a miracle that there was anything of Shepard to find. The chances of her surviving if she hadn't of had a suit rupture were slim, but possible. The best armor Council and Alliance money could buy, the latest shield upgrades, and Alchera's atmosphere could have all contributed to her living. Of course, the impact would probably have liquified her insides, but there was a slim chance she could have hit with a modicum of her shields intact. There were too many factors to determine. Regardless, the woman had died long before impact.

When Miranda went to look at the body for the first time, she thought she knew what she would find. It would be a mess, not even a person really. A bunch of flesh and pulverized bone, in a vaguely human form, crisped.

The armor had been good. The shield had been phenomenal. She had landed at just the right angle, or the fall had been softened somehow, because what lay on the slab before her still looked human. Not good. Not by a long shot. But suddenly, this was a person laying here, and not clay to be molded into a doll, not pieces to be put back together again. This was no Humpty Dumpty.

There were entire chunks missing. A large part of her breastplate was gone, along with the flesh underneath. When the helmet was cut off, everyone in the room had to struggle not to react. Between the decompression, the heat of reentry, and the flash freezing from the planet's subzero temperatures, the features were unrecognizable. The eyes were gone, having ruptured after the suit lost pressure, and there was black, solid blood around every orifice. Most disconcerting, though, was the hair. Most of it was a bloody, matted mess, but one lock of it fell across the ccommander's face in pristine condition. The bit of hair seemed almost lustrous, a healthy sheen that made it stand out starkly from the rest.

Miranda never could explain why she had carefully cut the piece away, sealing it in a glass case in her personal desk.

Removing the suit was harder, both physically and emotionally. Pieces were missing, and the rest seamed to have been seared to Shepard's flesh. Each time they heard the sound of skin tearing away, it seemed like it was their own skin. In a way, it seemed they were peeling back the essence of what made the commander so much of an icon. This armor was Shepard's soul, the very makeup of her being. They were taking it from her.

It took them almost a month to completely clear the body of all foreign material. It was a painstaking process, one handled by both VI and human eyes, but there could be nothing left to contaminate the body. After that was complete, it was decided how much of the dead flesh could be safely excised while replacements were cultured. It had been decided beforehand that while the brain was not to be augmented in any way (despite Miranda's opinions otherwise) the rest of the body was fair game. Scanners were used to produce an accurate model of the commander's physique at the time of death, and they proceeded to carefully mend the structure.

Slowly, as the months moved by, the body look more... human. Which was strange, because a lot of what was visible was clearly metallic in nature. Strengthened bones, a reinforced spine, a skin weave. Cybernetic eyes were created, and it had taken Miranda nearly four days of staring into pictures and tweaking the implants before she was satisfied that they would pass as the originals.

The hardest part was the brain. Regrowing organs and limbs was one thing, but being able to reconstruct a brain that had been turned to soup was another thing entirely. Cerberus tapped the most brilliant minds in the galaxy: salarian, asari, human. All through front corporations, of course. By having access to all the best minds in the galaxy, they were able to combine the intelligence and finally reach a breakthrough. It was a shame that none of the scientists ever knew.

Soon, it seemed that they were actually connecting all the pieces, smoothing away the seams. Shepard was coming together, the pieces of the puzzle finally clicking. It had been two long years, and they were so close to completion. They were doing it. They had done it. They'd managed to raise the dead.

Miranda could have practically crowed in triumph. The Illusive Man had told her to bring Shepard back, and she'd done it. She'd managed to do what no one had ever done before. It was a heady thing, to be responsible for returning life to one who had lost theirs so early. She'd felt that no one could claim she had not earned her place at the top now.

And then Shepard had awoken. She and Wilson had been running some routine tests, starting up their morning in the usual fashion. When Shepard's eyes had actually opened, Miranda had ordered Wilson to give her a sedative, to keep her out of it. It was too soon, too much damage could be done by her waking up. It had scared her.

She hadn't been prepared for Shepard to reach out to her. When those eyes she'd spent four days perfecting had met with her own, she had seen nothing but pain and confusion. But the hand had risen towards her, reaching out to touch her.

Are you real?

Miranda grabbed the hand, carefully laying it back down on the table. She'd gone to monitor one of the terminals, and when Wilson had informed her the commander's stats were going back to normal, Miranda realized her entire body was shaking. She quickly returned to the commander's side, capturing those confused eyes with her own.

Miranda hadn't been prepared for the fear she had seen before to simply vanish. She hadn't been prepared for the relief that had flown through the commander's body as she'd stopped fighting the sedative. She hadn't been prepared for the hand that reached for her, just barely, before Shepard was gone to the dark again.

She hadn't been prepared for how badly she wanted to hold it back.