[Personal logs of Commander Victory Shepard, SSV Normandy SR-2]

[0800 hours, March 23 2185]

I... I can't believe it. I know who my real father was. I hate him even more now, but I know who he was, and I am more proud of who I chose to be than I have ever been before. I am so fucking glad that I ended up a kid on the streets with no name and no one but the family I made, because my father was a cruel and heartless bastard who raped and killed thirteen women. He died in a shoot-out in June of 2156, barely a month after I was born. My mother was one of the lucky ones, she survived what he did to her, but she wasn't strong enough and only lived long enough to give birth and somehow get me through the first six months of my life. I think that hearing about his death helped a little, but she was still sick and she still died. His name was Vivek Chilukuri. I still don't know what her name was, and I don't think I'll ever find out.

I can be proud of who I am now, because there are some theories that things like that are hereditary, but I came out okay. You know, other than a temper that is scary and hard to control, though people make excuses for that what with my past and shit. It's just... knowing who he is feels worse than not knowing anything. This is a real 'sins of the father' kind of scenario, and I feel like I have to make up for everything that he ever did and I'm not off to a great start because I've left more bodies in my wake than he ever did. I mean, I may have saved some people here and there, and I may have had a reason to do what I did, and I may have stopped a bunch of slavers, but I am the Butcher of Torfan, I am the woman who went to a research station on an asteroid that a few batarians had decided to turn into a weapon and killed everyone there without caring about the consequences. I am the one that parents tell stories to their children to in order to frighten them into going to bed. 'Do as I say or Shepard will get you!' Still though, I am also a hero. The Hero of the Battle of the Citadel, the Hero of Eden Prime, the Hero of Virmire, and the first human Spectre. I guess that counts for something...

Anyway, how I came by that information. I went to the Citadel to see my real dad, the man responsible for where I am today, even if he didn't really get to raise me. Miri wouldn't let me procrastinate anymore, she told me that the scientist we were looking for on Omega would be fine for another couple weeks, so there was no reason to hide anymore. When I protested, she said that I have a team I can trust and that I had said I'd go see Anderson when I did. Then she hugged me. I couldn't say no with her ample chestage pressed against my face, so I mumbled something that she interpreted as orders to head to the Citadel which she then commed up the the cockpit without letting me go. I swear she did that on purpose.

That reminds me... very off topic, but she's changed her behavior patterns a bit. What I mean is, when I met her, she tried to remain professional and detached, though with me she was always invested and she was always warm. After our last confrontation en route to Omega to get Garrus though, she's less distant. She's also taken to spending a lot of time in my cabin, conducting most of her work on a portable tablet while sitting on my couch. At night, she stretches out on it to sleep, pulling a blanket that she keeps tucked away underneath so that she can stay warm. I've offered to share my bed, mostly out of guilt, saying that it's more than big enough to fit two people comfortably and still leave room, but she refuses when I do and tells me that the couch is more comfortable than what she slept on for the entire period of time she worked on me. She is even less willing to leave my side than before, and she makes jokes now. They're still a little rare, but she makes jokes and they display her wit. She's sarcastic but funny, and she's... so much more than I realized. I knew she was beautiful, I knew she actually cared more than she let on, I knew that she was smart, but I didn't realize that she was so warm, so human. She denegrates herself, says that what I do is so much more impressive than what she does because I chose my path in life while hers was chosen for her by her father. I made myself this way, while she was engineered to be this way. She hates what she is, even while she is more than willing to use it to her advantage. Miranda Lawson is more a member of my crew lately than I ever thought she'd be until Cerberus was out of the picture, and in her I see a shadow of Ashley. I... I can't lose her. I can't lose Miri the way I lost Ash, and I have to let her know that as soon as I can. As soon as I have the words, I need to tell her that. She's... I don't know what she is, but she's important.

Back on topic though, she stayed with me until we reached the Citadel, though I guess you already figured that what with what I just said about her behavior recently. The journey took two days, and I swear it didn't used to so Joker must have been doing something else that I wasn't aware of, but we got there all the same. She didn't even ask once we got there, she just met me at the airlock already in her black armor. I'll admit, I like that armor. I like it because I know what's underneath, the perfection of the woman that wears it, but also because that armor is protecting my friend. I like that armor because it means that I have Miranda at my back, and no matter what else happens that means that I'll be able to make it to wherever I'm going. She won't let me fail, and she'll make sure that everything works out for us. That armor means that we'll win. I just grinned when I saw her there, and when I could hear Garrus' footsteps I turned to have a look at him and see how he was healing, only to see that he had new armor. His visor was red now, and his armor was silver and pristine. He even had a com mic at his throat that pretty much made up for his lost mandible. He looked... powerful. He looked like the turian that I knew two years ago. We left as soon as Joker got us clearance to land, though we were relegated to the Zakera Ward instead of Alliance Control. We knew we would be, since we were just another civilian frigate, but it was still weird.

Our shuttle landed at customs and the first thing I noticed was that things are tightened up, at least superficially. They can't really be that much improved since the second thing I noticed was a... striking face belonging to a woman who was obviously Japanese. She accosted me across the room and asked for my passcode, which itself triggered a brief flash of recognition. The chat we shared after that was enlightening, though once again I was told that Cerberus had made commitments to do something without telling me, the person expected to fulfill those promises. Still, I told her that we'd get it done when we had the time and welcomed her to the crew. Kasumi Goto is her name, a professional thief that I won't trust with anything not nailed down but who seems fun enough. That's another thing I'm noticing, I have a lot of women on board my ship. I wonder if Timmy did that on purpose, hoping that it might make me more pliable. If so, he's in for a real surprise if Tali ever manages to get onboard, because she'll likely throw one hell of a fit seeing as how a lot of the women are actually kind of pretty. She's not going to be happy about it... hmm, now that I think about it, I'm a little worried about that. I may be the big bad Commander, but she's Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, and she was there when we brought down Saren, so she's plenty scary herself, especially with a shotgun in her hands. Anyway... I keep getting distracted. She is pretty sexy when she's like that though... [chuckle]

Kasumi practically dove into the shuttle to go back to the ship and it was just Miri, Garrus, and I again. Walking through the checkpoint seemed easy enough until I found myself the target of a genetic scanner and I immediately wondered what it was going to show. The turian at the station had a short and very terse conversation over his comlink, then turned to me with what I assume was a rueful smile to say, "Sorry ma'am, the scanner seems to think that you're dead. My captain should be able to fix that, he's at the desk just through the door." I talked to his captain, a man named Bailey, and told him to leave the records alone. He messed with the system so that it would just ignore my status and let me through anyway, and then we were on our way. A short taxi ride to the Presidium ring was not enough time to prepare to see my dad again, and it was only made worse when I walked in on him arguing with the other councilors about me. They wanted to ask me all kinds of questions, they abused me to my face, they told me that the Reapers aren't real, and they questioned my loyalty. That above all else made me think that it was probably a good thing that they weren't actually in front of me because I might have killed them. I yelled at them for a few minutes, and only settled down when Anderson pulled me back and spoke to them himself. They did reinstate my Spectre status, though they said it was only provisional and they couldn't publicly support me with my ties to Cerberus, yadda yadda yadda, basically they said do what you want and leave us alone. That's the thanks I get for saving their lives. Fucking ingrates... Though even dad had his reservations.

He asked me about why I was with Cerberus, and so Miri and I told him what we could. He wouldn't tell me where anyone was if he knew, and he certainly didn't want to give me any information that could help Cerberus by accident or something, but at least he believed us about the Collectors and their ties to the Reapers. Just before I left his office, he handed me an information packet and made me promise to wait to open it until I was on the Normandy again because it contained some very sensitive information about an Alliance Officer. I never dreamed that he meant me when he said that. I did as he asked and waited until I was back home, then I dragged Miranda with me to my cabin because what the hell else was I supposed to do? I needed to know what the packet said, and I trust her so I wasn't going to keep her out of it. Not to mention that she's my unofficial roommate, though that arrangement is still a little odd. And the fact that it can cause some awkwardness when one of us doesn't check the lav? Well, let's just say that I happened to get a VERY comprehensive view of her physical perfection a couple days ago when I walked in to take my morning shower only to find that she had the same idea about fifteen minutes before me. That also means that she got a refresher on where all of my scars are, and I uh... I behaved improperly. Very improperly. I didn't realize what I was doing until about five minutes after I pinned her to the wall and began licking droplets of water from her pert and perky breasts and her quite toned abdomen. Thankfully for both of us, I snapped out of it before I moved any lower, because she is gorgeous and judging by her reaction she was enjoying it quite a lot. Oh dear, there I go getting distracted again... ON TOPIC! Okay, so we opened the packet and read it together. It had all the information you'd expect for a dossier on an officer, previous engagements, mission details as long as they weren't redacted and so on, but there was a new section added recently. In that file, there was information about a recent DNA match showing paternity of the officer. That's when I found out about Vivek and everything he ever did and was convicted or suspected of. I found out that my father was a monster, and the one who told me was my dad. Big distinction there, father and dad. One made you, and the other made you who you are. Vivek got one of his victims pregnant and failed to kill her, but David Anderson saved me from a life on the streets and gave me something to aspire to, an example to live up to. He may not be my biological father, but he's more of a dad than the man who was.

[Personal logs of XO Miranda Lawson, SSV Normandy SR-2]

[1130 hours, March 23 2185]

I am now in possession of some information about my commanding officer that I know my boss would be very interested in. The thing is, I no longer trust the Illusive Man. I do not believe that he can be held accountable for the safety of the human race, nor do I believe that he can be held to the same system of justice as the rest of us. He at the very least believes that he is above the systems of government, if not above humanity as a whole. As such, I cannot in good conscience tell him anything about Commander Shepard that he does not already know, including and most especially who her biological sire is. I cannot give him any possible blackmail material. I- oh bugger proper log protocol.

Look, I had a crisis of faith of sorts during the process of regenerating the tissues of Commander Victory Shepard. I knew that what I was doing, I was doing for the benefit of the galaxy, but there was also a personal stake in it. A couple of them to be precise. The first and probably initially the biggest personal stake was to just see if I could. To see if the genetic engineering that made me into who I am physically and mentally was capable of allowing me to surpass what anyone else had ever done. I mean, if I succeeded then that alone would have made it all worth it, not to mention it would have made me into a legend among the scientific and medical communities... if they could ever be allowed to know. Which of course they wouldn't have been. Still though, to know that I did it, that I led the project that resurrected one of the greatest heroes the human race has ever had, that would have been enough. However, somewhere in there it changed and I developed another personal stake in it. You see, I felt like I knew her by the time we were even halfway finished with the process. We had established the basic neural integrity and had begun tissue regeneration and repair after making some improvements to her physiology and replacing her tech mapping when this happened. I began to see her less as a project or a subject and more as a patient, even a friend though I couldn't know how she'd see me. For all I knew, she'd only see the logo on my uniform and put a bullet in my head the second she got the opportunity. I held to that one shred of hope though, that she could hear me even though her brain barely registered as functioning and that it would somehow be enough to establish an affinity.

By the end, I didn't even see her as a friend anymore. I had read her files so many times by that point that I knew them by heart, and I'd even gone looking for more. I'd found it. I had the official reports that the Illusive Man had been able to reach of course, and some of the encrypted files that were out of reach of the ordinary civilian or organization, but I found my way into places even he hadn't. I had gotten ahold of her personal mission logs, her journal logs, the redacted personnel files of the Alliance, even the files from the Council archives that took top-level access to reach. I had everything anyone knew about her, and I'd read it all, though I kept it hidden behind a dozen different layers of encryption with shifting cyphers and fluid keys that changed every twenty minutes with anywhere from thirty characters to two thousand. Most of them I'd made myself just to protect what I knew about her. I know that the Illusive Man isn't happy about it, and I also know that he's tried to break through each layer, but he can't. He doesn't know how, and no algorithm he can come up with will ever be up to the task. That's how important every last scrap of information I have on her is to me. I took to scrambling audio on the surveillance cameras when I was in talking to her, and I would talk about everything. I talked about Tali as much as I could, how Shepard felt about her, how her logs described her, the most intimate details I had of their time together and wondering what it was like to feel that close to someone. I talked to her so much and for so long that by the time Wilson betrayed us and tried to destroy the station, I saw her as another sister, one closer to my age than my biological twin. I still do, and I'm certain that I always will.

Because of that shift in perception and personal feelings, I couldn't treat her the same way I had originally intended to. It wasn't supposed to be personal, it wasn't supposed to be familiar, it was supposed to be all business and focused on the mission. Instead, I heard the alarms on the station go off and the first thing I did was start screaming over the intercom into the medical suite, trying to wake her up and get her moving. I was worried, not for all the work I'd done, but for her as a person, and as someone that I had come to love without even really having the time to spend with her that I felt necessary. When she made that first joke, it just... made my heart soar. She was alive, and she was going to be okay. At that point, I stopped worrying about my safety or anyone else's, because Shepard was moving and there was nothing on the station that would stop her now. I did my job and found the traitor, and even though I didn't have the luxury of due process, I felt ashamed when she reprimanded me for my actions even though she understood them. During the shuttle flight to our satellite station, the way she looked at me made me think that some part of my conversations had made it to her. She'd said something earlier that lent more evidence to that, but during that flight she really made it stick. I felt so stupid asking her the questions that I did, trying to make sure that she retained her memories and some sense of self. The emotions that ran through her voice as she talked... When she spoke of Torfan, she made my blood run cold. I'd been having nightmares of that mission for the last three months by that point since I'd become so well acquainted with her report and her logs on it, but hearing her voice as she remembered it...her words were ice water splashing against my soul. When Ashley Williams was brought up in conjunction with the Virmire mission, I could hear a rage burning behind her words that was so strong and so clear the air should have ignited. Her hatred for Saren and Sovereign was still so thick. The final piece of the puzzle though was her reaction to being asked who she nominated for the Council position. The lines of her face smoothed out and she had this calm feel about her, and when she spoke, the reverence she named David Anderson with was balm on our frayed nerves.

Our mission to Freedom's Progress added another wrinkle. The mission itself was routine if quiet at first, but what we found waiting... who we found waiting... changed everything. The quarian team that was planetside wasn't the issue, but their leader was. Their hostility was understandable, their mistrust practically necessary, but their leader and the effect she had on both Shepard and myself... I saw her and I recognized her immediately. Tali'Zorah vas Normandy being there changed our priorities and our mission parameters from a simple information gathering op to a search and rescue, and gave the Commander information about Cerberus' movements over the last year. The assessing look she gave Jacob and I saw more than I would have liked, I am sure. Still, the way she spoke to her about us was shocking considering what the Illusive Man had done. Even at the end of the mission when she countermanded me and made a decision I had to live with, she did it gently and with someone else in the forefront of her mind. That mission made me question the motives and actions of Cerberus for the first time, and I began to go back over everything I knew, looking at it in a different light. I did not like what I saw.

Time and time again, Victory has surprised me and turned even my perceptions of her on their head. Can I really continue to work for the Illusive Man, or should I allow my loyalties to shift entirely to the hero of humanity? If I am to follow her above all else, how long should I continue to try and use Cerberus resources and how should I use them for our benefit? How do I help her, how do I support her, how do I make sure that she trusts me and lets me get as close as I want to be?

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A/N: So, uh... sorry for the long wait? ^^; I've been wanting to give you guys something to read for while but I just couldn't get the words to flow onto the page. However, having these two talk in the same chapter seems to be the solution I was looking for, and we get to see a bit more of each. Vicky obviously is feeling a bit out of sorts, since she was having trouble focusing for her log entry. I'll let you decide what contributed to that.

Miranda on the other hand... we get to see into her head and see some of her motivations and feelings, and it's more than you ever see in-game. Which is quite sad, because she's awesome. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, tell me what you think?