I had intended to keep this mostly canon-compliant, but I couldn't resist adding a bit more sweet to the bittersweet ending.

He was half in the world and half out of it. Matt could travel the extranet like a river and scale security measures as if they were garden walls. Nothing, not the darkest military secret nor the most trivial gossip, was hidden from him. He wasn't a ghost, a machine, or a man, but something of all three. And he was watching Miranda sleep.

Matt could count on one hand the number of times he'd gotten to do that when he was made of flesh and blood. They hadn't a relationship as much as a collection of stolen moments. He'd been her student and then her commanding officer. And then she had been on the run from Cerberus. He had always had to leap from her bed before anyone found them together. But now? Whatever Matt had become when he threw himself into that wall of green light, he was a man permitted to watch the woman he loved sleep. And for that, he was grateful.

The war had left its mark upon her. The thick, glossy hair Matt had loved to run his fingers through was short and ragged. Her cheeks were hollow. She was thin, not in the lean, athletic way of a woman who kept herself in shape, but in the way the teeming mass of refugees had been thin. Worst of all was the pallor. The first time Matt had seen Miranda, her skin had reminded him of carved marble. It was still pale, but sickly now in a way he hadn't seen in over fifteen years. And for all that, she was beautiful. If he looked he could see other marks, signs of the transformation he had caused. A subtle light twisted and pulsed like veins beneath her skin. Such a strange, alien beauty he'd brought into the world.

She stirred and blinked against the light peaking over the horizon. The green glow had faded from her eyes, dimmed to tiny flecks in the iris. "Matt?" Disbelief flitted across her face, but then she smiled. It wasn't the cocky smirk he knew so well, but the open, unguarded grin she reserved for Oriana and the chosen few she allowed into her charmed circle. "So, I'm not hallucinating."

He smiled at her. "No."

She tossed back the covers. Matt drank in the sight of her. All the little details he'd forgotten: the scar on her chest, legacy of a surgery that had given her biotics and nearly killed her. The mole on her shoulder. Even her breasts had dimmed in his memory. Lust spiraled through him like electricity. One night in a rented apartment didn't make up for nine months of only having his right hand and imagination for company. But Miranda was here. He could gorge himself on her.

Her eyes glittered. "Enjoying the view?"

"You have no idea." Her skin drew him forward like a magnet. Miranda had been designed to drive men mad with lust. She certainly drove Matt crazy. He reached for her…

…and his hand went right through her shoulder.

Matt looked down at his hand. They were solid-looking enough at first glance, but the sunlight revealed them as the holograms they were. Yes, Miranda drove him crazy. Crazy enough to forget what he was. He had come back, but only partly. He was just a mind that could give itself the illusion of a human form thanks to technical wizardry he didn't even understand. He couldn't lose himself in Miranda. Couldn't run his fingers through her hair or graze her nipples with his teeth the way she liked. He couldn't… "I—I'm sorry."

There was no pity in Miranda's gaze, and that Matt would be forever grateful for that. "I promised you yesterday that I wouldn't let you stay like this. I'll bring you back." But her movements seemed checked and restrained as she got out of bed and began dressing, as if she were managing a heavy load.

"But first I need to…" Her stomach growled.

"But first you need to eat," he offered with forced cheer. "I'll help. That tech I can control? Pretty sure it includes stoves."

"Are you sure you want me eating in front of you?"

Shit. Eating was another thing he wasn't doing for the foreseeable future. No more quiche or medium-rare steaks. But Miranda had looked so thin since leaving Cerberus. Being on the run didn't leave time for three square meals a day. And, if he knew her at all, Miranda hadn't stopped working since the destruction of the relays. Matt might be denied the pleasure of an omelet, but he could help Miranda get her life and body back to normal. "Stuff yourself. That's an order, Ms. Lawson."

Her lips twitched. "I don't take orders from you, Commander. Remember? We both resigned."

Matt followed her, careful to match his illusory stride with hers. Walking, he discovered, was a chore. His body kept wanting to rush on ahead, straight into the stove or toaster. He kept walking. Not a ghost. Human. Matt. Humans walk. The kitchen was large and spotlessly white. He could imagine Henry ordering a dinner for dozens prepared here. Cooking breakfast for one seemed like showing off. "I'm surprised this place is still standing."

"The town was too small for the Reapers to bother with it. Good enough base of operations for now. And you've seen what I've done to the old offices. Say what you will about Henry. He spared no expense stocking the labs. Brynn's ecstatic." She brushed an errant hair from her face. "Chasing our tails trying to figure out what's going on while reducing misery as much as we can. Not nearly as much as we'd like, I'm afraid. But you? You've given me answers. And a thousand more questions. And something to work for."

Her face transformed as she spoke. Fatigue and worry were swept away by passion. Energy crackled in her eyes like lightning. Matt wished he had breath to hold. This was the Miranda he loved best of all, brimming with ideas and enthusiasm. There were times he had thought that part of her was dead, buried under her terror for Oriana and hatred of her father, but here she was again, returned as surely as he himself had been. "What have you done to us? To yourself? A fusion of organic and synthetic. We already have confirmation of poison resistance similar to what I gave you with Lazarus, but there's no telling what else has changed.

"And you, so insistent on walking beside me even though there's no reason you couldn't just appear somewhere like you did in the QEC. If what you said is correct, you were reconstructed as data. Scarcely different from an AI with its blue box. And AIs have been nothing if not efficient. And yet, you choose the harder path." She cocked her head to one side. "Trying to hold on to your humanity." Her eyes widened. "That's what you've created. Even at their best, the geth sought isolation. EDI was a singular anomaly, and even she knew humans and organics were separate kinds. Dr. Eva shared nothing but the late Eva Corré's name. But you're Matt. You aren't an AI, not as we understand them. You're a human mind in digital form. If the human mind can be digitized so effectively, then we can do with it what we can do with other digital information: copies, backups, transferals to other platforms. And if I can transfer your mind into a body, this Lazarus could mean so much more than the resurrection of one man."

"You think that's possible. It seems—" Dread settled over him as he processed what she'd said. "You said that EDI was an anomaly. What happened?"

The fire in her faded as Miranda hugged her arms to her chest. "The Normandy disappeared sometime during the battle. The ground team is fine, but Joker and the rest of the crew are missing and presumed lost. EDI relinquished control of her body. It's no more alive than your average toaster."

"Oh, God." The Normandy,gone. He'd never been quite as close to any of his crew as he had Kaidan, Thane, or Miranda; but they had been his friends. Traynor had been his intellectual sparring partner, someone to bounce ideas off of in Miranda's absence. Chakwas and Joker were old friends he had loved as much for their familiarity as for themselves. And EDI...so curious about her existence and wanting to be responsible with her newfound freedom. Matt had done his best to help her, warning her away from Joker the same way he'd warn any woman whose heart he didn't want to see broken. All of them. Snuffed out like a candle flame. "Fuck the Catalyst. And fuck his damn Reapers."

Miranda stayed silent. If he had had a body, she might have wrapped her arms around him in a wordless hug. As it was, her hand hovered just over his shoulder. "The Crucible wrecked the relays. The Normandy's gone. I'm a ghost who can't even touch his girlfriend. Sure as hell doesn't feel like victory." He bowed his head. "You really think there's hope?"

"For you or Earth?

"Either."

"Oh, Matt," she whispered. "We all knew there would be losses. I thought that call in London would be the last I heard of you. I was half-convinced the Crucible would burn Earth to a cinder while the Reapers laughed in our faces. It'll take decades to rebuild, but we're rebuilding. And that's something no other cycle can claim. Oriana will never be pulped like the colonists." Her free hand traced the outline of his cheek. "You came back when I'd given you up for dead. I'm expanding my definition of possible."

Oriana. He'd been an idiot, wallowing in self-pity. Miranda had lost someone too. He turned to face her. "I am so, so sorry. If I'd known Ori was going to be stranded on Eden Prime—"

"You'd have done exactly what you did. Eden Prime has a strong agricultural economy, and the resistence movement ensures security. Ori can be happy there. As for me…" Her voice caught and she gave Matt the same sad smile she had when she'd talked about breaking in to see him. "We knew each other for a year. More than I de—than I could have hoped. This is just returning to the status quo." She turned away from him, and Matt wondered if she was wiping tears.

Her shoulders straightened and she turned back to him, smile in place once more. "For now, breakfast. Eggs benedict, I think. And then, let Liara, Mordin and the others know you're alive. Can't keep you to myself forever."

Matt zipped through the Lawson Biomedical security system. The cameras were his eyes and the microphones were his ears. At first glance, the lab looked like an unusually large Cerberus cell. He recognized most of the staff from Gellix. Here and there, though, were an asari or salarian. That never would have happened under the Illusive Man. They were spread out before him like a painting. He saw a lone scientist inject something into a syringe while a group on another floor examined a cybernetic arm. And he heard them as they whispered together. Even with Miranda's insistence that he not show himself to the staff before Kaidan and the others could see him for themselves, there were rumors that Commander Shepard had returned from the dead a second time.

He was the last to arrive in Miranda's office. Miranda sat behind her father's desk, leaning forward in her chair expectantly. Kaidan looked as if he had aged ten years in the last two weeks. Silver streaked his hair, and there were wrinkles around his eyes. Someone had found him a dress uniform to wear, and he fiddled with the cuffs absently. Liara paced the length of the office, nibbling her lip as she did so.

"So Shepard's some kind of holographic ghost or something?" Kaidan asked. "It seems a little crazy, almost too good to be true. He just appeared to you?"

"There are legends across almost all cultures of the dead returning to those they love as some kind of non-corporal energy being," Liara said. "Most myths have some basis in fact. Misremembered encounters with other species or their technology. Is it so far-fetched that something similar happened here?"

Not so far-fetched. Matt concentrated on the QEC. Yesterday had been a Hail Mary, an impulsive, desperate gamble to return to the woman he loved. Today was different. He had time to notice the transformation. He went from looking at the room as if were a painting to looking at it as it were a film. He was no longer watching a dozen different things, but only one. He limited himself in space and time, becoming human once more.

But of course, all they saw was the green light. Liara and Kaidan gaped at him, and even Miranda's eyes widened a bit. "Hi, guys," he said.

There were no tears this time. Liara beamed in a way he hadn't seen since she learned that her rescuer had been touched by an actual, working Prothean beacon. Kaidan just stared for a long moment. And then they were peppering Matt with questions and thanking gods and goddesses he hadn't even known they believed in. Matt answers the questions as best he could. As he watched their smiling, astonished faces, it occurred to Matt that he had been wrong. Miranda was not all he had. There were others who loved him, and they were here in this room.

He was neither ghost, nor man, nor machine. He was his own kind, but he was not alone.