Normandy SR2

FTL flight to Tuchanka

Operative Lawson's office

PPS: Miranda, stop reading Shepard's messages. Oh, don't give me that look. It's what I'd do.

Miranda Lawson smiled ruefully. Oriana was every bit her twin - snoopy, control oriented, and too intelligent by half.

She loved that girl.

Miranda tabbed her messages closed. Shepard's messages, really. She still peeked on them from time to time, mostly because she found them fascinating. Shepard inevitably read her messages - Yeoman Chambers was forever going on about whether or not she had any - but she consistently kept certain ones active in her inbox. Anything from Cerberus was dealt with and filed away. The occasional request from the Alliance was also dealt with in a timely manner, and then appropriately filed. The plea for help from the mother who'd lost a son and brother to the Collectors, the thank you from the mother of the murdered artist on Omega, the thank yous from half a dozen people all over the galaxy. The message about Horizon. These Shepard kept. As if she needed to touch them on a regular basis.

Miranda's fingers hovered over her terminal for a moment. She didn't really need to access Shepard's messages to remember them, and more and more, doing so felt like an assault against the commander herself. It made her... Miranda sighed. It made her regret. And regrets were not things she was used to feeling. Satisfaction at a job done, and done well, yes. Pride. Sorrow at how things had worked out with Niket. But regret...

Miranda Lawson regretted two things in her life. The first was leaving Oriana to grow up without her. The second was living down to the image Shepard had of her from the beginning.

Miranda was under no illusions. Shepard had not initially liked her or trusted her. Any of them, really. Not even Jacob, who had been specifically chosen for his previous ties to the Alliance and an easy, open demeanor that should have put Shepard at ease. Miranda sighed. Which Shepard had undoubtably realized, and so trusted Jacob no more or less than she trusted anyone else on the ship. But all of them, perhaps barring the idealistic and sheltered Yeoman Chambers, fully trusted the commander.

She'd turned a corner, and she knew it, when she told Shepard that the only people she knew either worked for Cerberus or the commander. She'd called out the difference, because the two were not the same, no matter what The Illusive Man wanted or thought. Maybe Cerberus had built the SR2, and maybe they were all on the Cerberus payroll, but at this point, the Normandy and her crew were all Shepard's, and they all knew it. She'd admitted as much to Oriana when she'd said she was working for the commander on an important mission. Not working with. Not working for Cerberus. Working for Shepard.

A flash on her monitor alerted Miranda to the opening of the elevator, and she watched as a familiar figure strode out. Shepard's hair was neatly in the customary Alliance-regulation bun that made her look more like a dancer than a soldier, her shoulders were back, her stride confident.

And she was wearing Alliance fatigues.

Miranda stifled the smile that tugged at her lips as she watched Chambers' eyes go wide. The yeoman greeted their commander with her customary politeness, but turned back to her console as soon as Shepard walked into the armory, fingers flying furiously.

"EDI."

The AI's voice issued from the comm on Miranda's desk. "Yes, Operative Lawson?"

"Please route all of Yeoman Chambers' communications through me for review before sending them to the Illusive Man."

"Shall I inform the yeoman of this change in operational procedure?"

Miranda bit her lip, briefly. "No."

There was the barest hint of a pause. "Yes, Operative Lawson."

Apparently, even the damn AI was on Shepard's side. Fascinating. "Thank you, EDI."

"Logging you out, Operative."

Miranda waited until the unsent message from Chambers started scrolling across her screen and made a few judicious edits before scrubbing all traces of her presence and sending the report into the queue for the next data burst. Then she flipped the surveillance feed over to the Armory and watched Jacob and Shepard chat as they cleaned and reassembled Jacob's Carnifex and Shepard's beloved Widow.

"You had my back on Illium, Shepard," she murmured. "Now I've got yours."