"I'm sorry to keep dragging you along but I need...sod it!"

Shepard wrenched the white hankie from around her neck which she had been trying to tighten, but it was a pointless endeavour. The rag was soaked with blood and a small but deep gash across her neck was easily visible. Miranda rolled her eyes, took pity on her ineptitude and applied some medigel before retrieving an adequate bandage from her drawer.

"You were saying...?" Miranda prompted as she carefully examined the wound.

"Erm..." Shepard spluttered as Miranda examined her; she did not enjoy being poked and prodded and Miranda was exceptionally close to her so that she could feel her breath on her neck, "if you don't mind I'd quite like it if you'd come with Garrus and myself to the Citadel."

Miranda straightened up, "while you see Anderson? Is that wise?"

"Probably not but I'm not going to hide you or Jacob away as though I should be ashamed of working with you."

"Or perhaps you wish to flaunt the second-in-command of Cerberus to show that if they won't take action you have a backup which most of the galaxy fears?"

"First of all," Shepard started, through gritted teeth as Miranda cleaned the cut, "you are more than Cerberus, and secondly, I am proud to work with you and I don't think I should be made to apologise for that."

"We've barely started working together and you are already proving to be impossible."

Shepard noted that Miranda seemed to relish that opportunity to pat the new bandage down in place rather more hard than she needed to. Miranda then chucked the red stained cloth back at Shepard with a smirk and resumed her usual position behind the desk.

"And yet we've already got Garrus..." Shepard responded.

"After he took a missile to the face-"

"-and your wonderful intervention, and the good doctor's skills managed to save him so a job well done from the team." Shepard retaliated playfully. "And we have got a brilliant - and talkative- scientist who will probably come up with some virus to kill the collectors so we won't actually have to do anything. We could all end up being able to just slope off and go surfing in Hawaii."

"Dream on," Miranda snorted, and then softened, "but I will admit this mission has gone better than I expected."

"The team is coming along." Shepard stated proudly.

"As Cerberus operations go-" Miranda started.

"As my operations go," Shepard corrected and they stared at each other for a moment.

"Fine, I'll come along. If only for the opportunity to watch you yell at the Council in person, Garrus said it's quite entertaining." Miranda replied, amused.

"He did not!" Shepard responded hotlu.

"No, you're right; I think his exact words were 'thank the spirits she isn't part krogan or they would all have been hospitalised for concussion'."

"If he had a bit more loyalty he'd have concussed them..." Shepard grumbled.

"I think that would have made any diplomatic progress impossible." Miranda retorted wryly.

"Any progress from them would be nice...but anyway, is my neck going to be hideously scarred along with my face?"

"No, your neck is fine and all your scars will heal with time and a positive outlook according to Chakwas, which shouldn't be too difficult given your insistence on chatting away to everyone we meet- even the vorcha." Miranda scolded.

Shepard remembered how impatient and irate Miranda had been when she had insisted of chatting with Aria about more than the essential information. She'd also sighed in a bored kind of way when Shepard helped a quarian pay to complete his pilgrimage and get off the rock that was Omega.

"Being a little friendly never hurt anyone. I might even try it on the reapers, ask them for dinner or something. I bet the protheans never tried that". Shepard mused.

"Kelly will be most devastated to be replaced." Miranda commented quietly.

"I did not go to dinner with Kelly." Shepard laughed. "Got to be honest, she kind of scares me a little."

"Yes, she can be quite forward." Miranda stated showing her prowess for spin.

"And you can imagine how happy that makes me that our onboard therapist is going to hit on everyone she's meant to be helping." Replied Shepard sarcastically.

"Some say a little romance can be therapeutic." said Miranda, with only mockery in her voice.

"Yeah, that's why Garrus spends all day calibrating just to avoid her." Shepard muttered.

"Well, after the Citadel we are picking up a murderous convict so that problem might end up being taken care of." Miranda teased.

"Don't even joke about that; I've already hired someone responsible for genocide. I don't need my crew killing each other on top of that." Shepard rolled her eyes.

"Mordin is..." Miranda tried to protest at the idea that Shepard was tainting her own morals.

"...what we need to defeat the collectors and, ultimately, the reapers." Shepard finished reassuringly.

"Ahhh, yess, the Council!" Shepard exclaimed in mocking.

"Here we go." Garrus whispered to Miranda under his breath, at which she nodded with understanding.

"A body designed to protect us all and yet here you are doing absolutely nothing! The reapers are coming and they're going to kill us all if you don't take action!"

Shepard was livid. They were still wasting their time blaming the geth. It was obvious the geth were not advanced enough to have had anything to do with creating or using Sovereign. Idiots, she cursed.

Now she was somehow expected to be grateful for being made a spectre again- like that was going to change anything. She accepted the offer but beyond begrudgingly. She knew she'd need them in the end but having to say thank you was unthinkable and to top things off, Udina strolled through the door once that meeting was over.

"Oh great. Just who I wanted to see." Shepard spat sarcastically.

Anderson calmed Udina down quickly enough but Shepard was sick of the lot of them. They were all out for their own interests: coming here had been a mistake. Even Anderson didn't seem to trust her and would tell her nothing about what Williams was doing. After saving the galaxy she was treated as though a threat to them all.

Finally, and almost in spite of herself, Shepard asked Anderson to come with her.

"I'm too old Shepard and I don't trust Cerberus." Anderson answered.

"We're the only ones doing anything!" Shepard yelled at her old mentor, and with that Shepard stormed out without so much as a backwards glance.

"Look, Shepard..." Garrus started.

"Oh, don't." She pleaded irritably.

"They're scared and they'd rather believe in what they have here and now rather than some distant worry." Garrus reasoned.

"I hope that reasoning comforts them as they watch the galaxy burn."

"It's not going to, not with us and not with you. We're stopping the collectors. They tried to kill you once and that just pissed you off. We're going after them and they'll beg for mercy before the end -even if they are machines." Garrus insisted.

"What do you think of them?" Shepard turned to Miranda who had so far remained silent.

"I'm with Cerberus, Shepard," Miranda reminded her, "because I'm used to expecting nothing from them and having to go after things for myself."

Shepard found herself heartened by Miranda's lack of interest in the council's decision. If Miranda wasn't worked up about them then Shepard took that as a positive sign that maybe she just thought Shepard could finish this thing without them.

"Like we all are now- together." Garrus reaffirmed.

Shepard in her heart believed Garrus but it was just so difficult to imagine surviving this and saving the galaxy when nobody was preparing but she couldn't dwell on that. She had more recruiting to do and worrying was just going to distract her from getting things done, like she always had.