Miranda wiped the sleep from her eyes. She wasn't sure why, but she hated today's date. She knew she's hated for as long as she could remember but she couldn't remember what it was that she hated. She had been staring at the screen of her terminal for the last few hours, updating the Illusive Man with all the new information and findings that their mission against the Collectors, was spewing up to the surface. The Collector campaign had been one of the craziest missions that Miranda ever had the honour of being a part of. A team of multi racial specialists held together by one man, the same man that Miranda had spent two whole years putting back together, the same man that seemed to be finding his way to the forefront of Miranda's mind, more often than she would like: Commander Alexander Shepard.

Not only was Shepard an unstoppable force of nature when it came to finishing his missions and tasks, he was also incredibly frustrating to work around, especially when he either completely disregards or ignores almost all of Miranda's objections to his plans. Miranda says no to allowing the mentally unhinged biotic in the basement to go scrounging around in the databases, Shepard says go and set off a nuclear bomb in the middle of the old Cerberus facility where she grew up. Miranda says no to releasing a supposedly perfect tank bred krogan, Shepard says yes to celebrating groundside on Tuchanka alongside Wrex and Grunt when Grunt passed his rite of passage. It didn't even seem to be a matter of time to when the Commander would eventually come around and see that Miranda's logic was sound with the recent development of the Commander bringing a live Geth onboard and allowing it to wander the halls unsupervised.

Miranda sat back in her chair and started to rub the bridge of her nose. As frustrating as the Commander could be at times, there were many more times where he simply left the seasoned Cerberus operative lost for words. When he stopped at nothing when it came to helping Miranda reach Oriana and keep her safe or stopping his best friend from assassinating a former comrade in broad daylight, stopping the Quarian witch hunt against Tali, or helping Thane reconcile with his long-lost son, Alex had this way of making sure that every single member on board the Normandy, his Normandy, feel appreciated and cared for. However, Alex could also be incredibly terrifying when he wanted to be, and even with the terrors that Miranda had witnessed alongside him, even she would wither when his burning fury was cast in her direction, and by far the worst situation was when they were sent in to investigate what had happened to Project Overlord.

Despite her position as second-in-command, Miranda hated how most of Cerberus' dealings were always on a need-to-know basis and she really would have appreciated going into that situation with a lot more information than the Illusive Man decided that she was privy to. Maybe that would have helped her control the situation better and not have it blow up in her face quite as spectacularly as it did. She had never seen Shepard so angry, so cold and furious with Dr. Archer over what he had forced his brother into. When he pulled that gun on Archer, Miranda could see in his eyes just how badly he wanted to pull the trigger, to eliminate and discard of this piece of human filth that had fallen to the ground before him, and she wonders if that was the same look that Shepard saw in her eyes that day in the Illium docks as she stared down Niket. It still annoyed her how right Alex had been that day, she would have hated herself if she had been the one to kill Niket that day and she felt in that moment, she had to return the favour to the Commander. She caught up with them and pulled Shepard's hand away from Archer, forcing him to look at her. She watched the fury and bloodlust fade from his eyes before he signalled for Garrus to take Archer away and put him somewhere far away from them. He had gone to try and remove David from the barbaric machine but after a few minutes relented the task to Miranda as he admitted that he really hadn't a single idea on how to remove David without killing him.

They worked in silence for a few minutes before he told her that after seeing all this and how the Illusive Man and Archer were able to condone all this, that he truly believed that Cerberus was truly evil, possibly on par with the Collectors and the Reapers with their almost complete disregard for life. Miranda had wanted to defend herself when Alex took her hands and looked her in the eyes and told her that he trusted her and the crew wholeheartedly, but it was their employer that was vile and monstrous. His words had been so sincere and heartfelt that any objection to his earlier claim had died in Miranda's throat. Her mind went back to all of their idle chats in her office, how they would talk about both of their achievements and how whenever Miranda would bring up her genetic tailoring, how Alex would remind her that it was what she did with her gifts that made them special, not the fortunes of credits that went into making them, and she felt a warm sensation begin to blossom in the pit of her stomach. Once Miranda had finally released David from his metallic prison, Shepard had carried him back to the shuttle, all the while trying to calm and comfort the tortured soul. It had even happened that Miranda imagined Oriana and herself in a similar situation and it had left such a horrifyingly sick taste in her mouth that she had gone to the bathroom to throw up not long after returning to the ship. Alex had stayed with David in the med bay the entire time he was on the ship and had even personally handed him over to a Ms Kahlee Sanders when the Normandy had docked for no more than five minutes. Alex had sworn from then on, that he would no longer give the Illusive Man the time of day, let alone a report.

Miranda went to take a sip from the mug on her desk when she came to the realisation that her coffee was ice cold. Standing up from the desk, she grabbed the mug and headed for the mess, hoping that Gardner had the clairvoyance required to know that she would want a fresh cup. As her door opened however, Miranda found herself face to face, or rather face to bouquet, with the very man who was torturing her mind.

"Shepard?"

Placing the mug down, Miranda parted the bouquet down the middle to find the smirking face of the Commander staring back.

"Hey Miranda."

Her face knotted in confusion. "What's with the flowers?"

"Oh, they're for you. Happy Birthday!"

Miranda was dumbfounded for a moment before she remembered why she hated today. It was her 'birthday'. Can a tank bred clone have a birthday if it's technically never been born? Wait a minute? The only way Alex could have found out about her birthday is by reading her Cerberus personnel file! And that was heavily encrypted, and heavily password protected! Miranda took the bouquet from Alex's outstretched hand.

"How did you find out- "

"One of the galaxies most closely guarded secrets? I'll just say that having the Shadow Broker as a personal friend has quite a lot of perks. Oh, here! This is for you too."

Alex held out a case which Miranda took. "I remembered you talking about liking Nielson's fifth, so I asked Liara to help me track something down. It's a compendium of Earth's greatest classical composers and musicians. Thought you might like it…"

Miranda stood there in the light of her office; her mind having been shattered into a million tiny pieces. It was obviously not the first present that she had ever gotten, but it was the first one that she had ever been given by someone that never had any ulterior motive attached to it. Sure, Henry Lawson showered her in everything she had ever wanted but every single gift he gave her, or rather his aides gave her, always had a hook back to the egotistical maniac's master plan. It was like Pavlov and his conditioning. She got a treat when she did well, the stick when she did not. Even the Illusive Man for all her high praises only gave her the resources to do something when he got a benefit from it. Treat and stick, treat and stick.

"Do you like it or?"

Miranda came crashing back to reality, feeling bad for having left the Commander in such a strange position. "They're beautiful Shepard. Thank you…"

"No worries Miranda. Everyone should enjoy their birthday, perfect human or not."

'The only perfect human here is you, you ass…'

The awkwardness finally hit it's head when Shepard shoved his hands in his pocket and turned, heading for the elevator. After a second, he stopped and turned back.

"Keep up the good work, XO."

With a lop-sided grin and a light-hearted salute, Shepard left Miranda standing there alone with her thoughts. Running on auto-pilot, Miranda returned to her office, long forgetting her earlier task of caffeinated sustenance, and placed the vase of flowers on her desk, absentmindedly stroking the scarlet petals. The feelings that had been causing her so much frustration were back, and they brought their friends to the party. Not wanting to dwell on that possible can of hormonal worms, she left her task of report filing since she wasn't capable of doing the damnable task anyway and sitting on her lounger, loaded the holo. Lost in the music, Miranda couldn't help the heartfelt smile from splitting her face in two.

Maybe she didn't hate today as much as she thought…