When Miranda opens her eyes she immediately feels the need to shut them again. The light burns and her head feels like it has been hit with a club repeatedly. She feels something on the corner of her lip and wipes it away. Vomit. Lovely. She remembered now why she didn't like to drink much. That's about all she remembers.

Miranda bites the bullet and opens her stinging eyes and sits up. That's when she feels the free shifting of weight on her chest and looks down to find herself completely naked. Instinctively she covers her breasts up with the blanket and takes a look around her cabin. Her underwear is strewn about with her bra laying on the black and white couch and her panties on her desk. Her catsuit is in a heap on the floor.

"Bloody hell." She mutters to herself. What the hell had happened last night? Everything was a blur after Shepard left. There is a few fleeting memories swirling in her head, she recalls making the terrible decision to continue drinking after puking in the mess hall kitchen sink. She remembers Jack being by her side. And she remembers kissing the convict as Jack slid her hand inside her panties. "Oh God." Miranda groaned and buried her face in her hands. Had she and Jack had sex last night? Or had it been another one of her vivid dreams about the woman. It was impossible to say. The whole evening was lost in a drunken haze.

She throws the covers off and steps out of bed. Her hips sway as she makes her way to her dresser, breasts freely bouncing before she can slip into a fresh set of bra and panties. She zips up her black catsuit and goes to the mirror hidden in her wall compartment that houses her private items. She takes a good deal of time getting her raven colored hair right and exhales. If she and Jack made love would the biotic remember? Part of her wants to ask EDI what happened but she's terrified of what she'll learn so she decides against it. Jack was easily as drunk as she was last night. She probably wouldn't remember. But then she remembers two people who might. The only sober souls she encountered that evening. Tali Zorah and Garrus had been around her at some point.

She figures she can get to the bottom of this herself and heads to see the turian in the main battery first. The door swooshes open and Garrus turns, his eyes dropping when he sees it's Lawson who has come to visit him. "Miranda." He greets her.

No sign he's hiding a secret she notes. "Turian, I came by to see if you're performing your duties to a satisfactory level." She lied.

Garrus chuckles. "I have a name Miranda. Why don't you use it?"

"Not here to make friends...Garrus."

"Oh you were the picture of professionalism last night." He jokes.

So he does know something, she thinks. "We all need to unwind."

"Is that what you humans call it? Well I suppose there was an certain grace to the way you threw up on Grunt."

"Grunt?"

"Spirits, you don't remember do you?"

A disgusting thought invades her mind for a moment that Grunt may have been her partner last night. "Not entirely." She admits.

"Well I'm not going to be much help to you. After I stopped Grunt from going blood rage on you, You're welcome by the way. I left you, Tali and...Jack I think."

"Jack?" Miranda says a little too eagerly.

Garrus turned to fiddle with his console. "Yeah I remember because you two weren't trying to rip each others heads off for once. Are we done here because I'm in the middle of some calibrations."

"We're done." Miranda said coldly and left the main battery.

Great, so Jack was with her and they were getting along. Stupid Miranda, very stupid. You can't allow your childish crush to impact your mission. She reminds herself. She worries about what the Illusive Man will say to her. Especially if she and Jack had been intimate. She'd spent too much time subtly manipulating the man with sex appeal to lose all that progress now if she was found to be gay. The Illusive Man was brilliant but he was still a Man. Once he knew she was off the table she worried where her position in Cerberus may end up. She's sacrificed too much, given too much for this organization for a drunken one night stand to ruin it now.

She needs to see Tali, and avoid Jack at all costs. She strides past the Mess Hall and is distracted by a strangely weak sounding Commander greeting her from the table as she moves by it. "Shepard?" She asks and turns to face her Commander. "Not feeling well today? Perhaps you should see the doctor we have a big day ahead. The crew is still not nearly ready for..."

"Miranda, I get that I'm in charge here. But I'm also still just a woman."

"We didn't bring you back so you could be just a woman. We brought you back to be Commander Shepard."

"Well sometimes Commander Shepard has bad days. And even worse hangovers. So if you don't mind stowing the attitude I'd appreciate it." She snaps in a husky voice.

Miranda is impressed. Shepard rarely loses her temper with her. She was beginning to worry she was too soft to be up to the task. "Understood Commander." she says back cooly.

Shepard gestures to the seat across from her. "Sorry. I don't want us to be at each others throats. We need to work together and trust each other if we want to have any hope of pulling this off."

"Just do your job right and we'll be fine. I'm not looking for a friend, Shepard."

"Clearly." Shepard responds. "You know having a friend isn't the worst thing in the galaxy."

"I don't like relying on anyone."

"All I'm saying is if you want to talk sometime my head doesn't feel like I got on the bad side of a krogan I'm here."

Miranda rolls her eyes. "Noted." she says and strolls away. Shepard is ridiculous. The "Hero of the Citadel" spends too much time worried about making friends for Miranda to be comfortable but she has to trust Shepard is up to the task. She saved the galaxy from the Reapers once before so perhaps there is a thing or two Miranda could learn from her even if she hates to admit it.

She catches the lift down to engineering. Hopefully the quarian can shed some more light on the evening. As she makes her way to the engine room she spots Grunt heading out of his quarters. The krogan glares at her and growls. Miranda scurried inside the engine room.

"All I'm saying is Shepard is a pretty lass." Donnelly is in the middle of his sentence and Gabby doesn't look thrilled as usual. Miranda doesn't understand how someone as undisciplined as Ken Donnelly has found himself in Cerberus but the pair has kept the ship flying so far.

"Just stop right there Kenneth." Gabby advises.

"I hear she prefers the lassies herself. Maybe you and her could..." He stops when he notices Miranda and snaps her a salute. "Operative Lawson." he greets her.

Gabby can't help but smile. "What can we do for you mam?"

"Nothing. Get back to work." she tells them and she notices Tali is down by the drive core. She walks up behind her and clears her throat.

Tali groans. "What do you want?"

"Excuse me?"

"I asked what you wanted? Perhaps Cerberus should teach it's people to listen before they teach them to plant bombs on the Migrate Fleet."

Miranda is tired of her bringing that up every time they interact but being hostile with her will not get her what she wants. "I came by to talk."

The quarian laughs. "Talk? What about?"

Miranda smiles. If Tali knew she and Jack had been together she would have recognized it by now. "Never mind. I won't bother you any further."

"Please don't." Tali says and turns back to the drive core's console.

As Miranda walks back by Gabby and Ken she notices that Donnelly is now silent and she makes here way out of the engine room. Miranda sighs and realizes there is only one more person she should visit. She glares down the subdeck stairwell. Swallowing hard she starts down and rounds the corner to find Jack staring at a datapad. The convict looks up from her bunk. "Goodie. If it isn't my favorite Cerberus Bitch."

"I came by to talk." Miranda says and stops herself from admiring the beauty of the roguishwoman.

Jack laughed. "Bet you don't have a fucking clue what happened last night do you?"

"No I don't." Miranda admits.

Jack smiled and turned her attention back to her datapad. "How frustrating for you. And how not my fucking problem."

"What did we do last night?"

Jack looked back up at her. "We?" she shrugs. "Dunno. Got fucked up and you puked on Grunt. Don't remember anything else. Don't think it changes shit between us."

"That's all?"

Jack sat up. "Why are you so concerned about it?"

Miranda looked away. "I'm hardly concerned. Just curious."

Jack pursed her full lips. "Nah. What do you think happened last night?"

We finally had the sex i've been dreaming about for the past two months. Miranda thought. "Nothing."

"Then get the hell out of here."

Miranda did as advised and returned to her office. She flopped down on her office chair and sighed. She decided to get a concrete answer on this issue and did what she didn't have the courage to do earlier. "EDI." she called out.

"Yes?"

"Play the surveillance footage from last night in my office on my private terminal."

Her console lit up as footage of her empty room appeared in front of her. She scrubbed through the video before all of a sudden she saw herself stumble into her officer in the early hours of the morning. She watched herself drunkenly twirl around her office before unzipping her suit and letting it fall to the ground. Miranda cringed as she watched herself stroll about in her underwear alone calling out Jack's name as she unclipped her bra and tossed it aside before stepping out of her panties and shooting them like a slingshot to the opposite side of the room. She collapsed on the bed and began vigorously masturbating. Miranda instantly shut off the video. "EDI delete all this footage."

"Yes, Operative Lawson." EDI replied.

Instead of the relief she should feel Miranda was disappointed. She was hit with a suppressed feeling of loneliness. She sighed and buried her face in her hands. She had been alone for years, but recently it had been unusually painful. She was adept at working alone but she was beginning to realize she didn't enjoy being alone as much as she used to. "EDI?" she called out again.

"Yes?"

"Where is Shepard?"

"The Commander is in her cabin."

Miranda rose to her feet. Shepard may be ridiculous and too friendly for her own good, but right now Miranda hated to admit that maybe she needed a friend.


Notes- So I wrote this simply because I can't sleep as usual. Nothing special but I wanted to show Miranda starting to be friends with Shepard. So I think I will focus a bit on that if I ever decide to form this series into an actual story. Also I just like writing Ice Queen Miranda.