(Sorry once again for the late update, work has been killing me lately. They will be coming more rapid fire as I have more time to write. Additionally, if anyone is interested in beta-ing/editing this story's new chapters, I would love to talk with you via message. With my crazy work schedule I would be able to release content faster with help editing. Enjoy the Miranda/Jack about to enter in this!)
And It All Seemed Harmless: Chapter 7
Miranda stared blankly into the green flashing lights of her console, irritation creeping into her movements as her blank tapping on her desk became a grating soundtrack to her frustration. Ever since she had been a child, the operative had always prided herself on her unrelenting focus. Despite almost constant emotional trauma at the hands of her father, the biotic had always finished what was required to get done due to an uncanny ability to shut down those paralyzing emotions that lesser beings always allowed themselves. And yet, in the midst of what could possibly be the most taxing mission of her life, that ability seemed broken. Miranda felt broken.
Miranda was never one to doubt Cerberus. She didn't have reason to. Though the organization was certainly guilty of using the ends to justify morally gray means, its mission was simple. To protect humanity, as it had protected Miranda.
And yet, that protection had not extended to Jack. And it had not extended to David.
Miranda had been able to hold her stoic composure on Pragia. She had been able to hold judgment on the hard beds and arenas where children had lost their lives for research because that, that wasn't Cerberus. Not really. It was an rogue cell, a diseased limb on a perfectly functioning body she had come to trust. And even though it had been hard, mind-numbingly hard to see Jack's fiery eyes cloud in that place, Miranda could not mentally afford herself the luxury of doubting her employer and former rescuer. And she didn't grab those shaking tattooed hands like she had wanted to. And she didn't tell Jack how hard it was not to believe her.
Because she had to continue to believe in Cerberus, and that everything she had done for them had been for a greater good after all. The operative had never gone so far as to hurt a child, but she was no stranger to the unethical for an organization she trusted to do the right thing in the end. And on that planet, at that time, she could not face the truth. And she didn't have to then. As horrific as it was, the fact the project was exiled had been convenient. It wasn't Cerberus to her. And that had allowed her to sleep that night.
Overlord however, had been Cerberus. The Illusive Man himself had held his cigarette to one end of the project, threatening to burn those unable and unwilling to progress. Sure, the Illusive Man hadn't tortured his own brother, causing a man suffering he would likely never recover from, but his hands were not clean from the blood of the project. And now, the Operative could not shake the feeling her hands were no longer clean either.
Miranda took a deep sigh and reached across her desk for the small class of liquor of which she usually only allowed herself sips of when it took more than a pillow to rest from plaguing dreams of her father at night. The blue liquid burned against her tongue as she drank from the slender glass, but the burn was almost therapeutic, as if she could burn away the guilt she felt.
After a long drag, the operative finally retired the glass to her desk, releasing a long sigh as if it was possible to audibly remove a lingering pain from her mind. With her breath the biotic resolved to try and escape her thoughts once again, turning her attention to the console before her. Clicking on her first message humming with a low green light, the Operative frowned as a long sarcastic report spread across her terminal. Much to Miranda's distaste, Shepard's close friend and obnoxious personal pilot, Mr. Moreau, clearly hated writing reports on his ship for Miranda, and with each tech and status report, it was more apparent.
What'll it be this time, a long report focusing on the mundane just for the sake of wasting my time, or a satirical report with humor that never ceases to fall flat.
With another sip from her glass, Miranda decided to pass on suffering through Joker's report for the moment, and scrolled to the next message, resisting the urge to outrightly trash the pilot's message in her moment of frustration. The next message is quite a bit shorter, but just as pointless in the mind of the strict operative who held a substantial distaste for information she believed to waste precious time in lieu of potentially critical messages that almost always existed in her inbox.
The message is a report from Kelly Chambers, detailing her most recent psychological evaluations with the crew. Though Miranda was not arrogant enough to dismiss the importance of crew morale, she was frankly, tiring fast of Chambers' reports. Week to week, there were less than ten words of variation between them, her report glossing over more stable members of the team such as Samara and Garrus, and focusing on Jack's violent resistance to a formal psychological evaluation for pages. Truth be told, Miranda did not care if Jack did not want an evaluation. The criminal seemed attached enough to Shepard to complete the mission, and that was all Miranda cared about. It was not her responsibility to pay mind to what could happen after the fact. The only psychological evaluation Miranda bothered to read religiously was that of the Commander. Though Miranda had complete confidence in Shepard's mental resilience, in a mission like this, even cracks in the mind of their leader could widen and swallow their team. It was Miranda's job to make sure those cracks stayed shut. Or as thin as the cracks in the mind or a soldier could be.
Scrolling through the document, Miranda quickly found the small section on Shepard. Though Miranda was quite aware of Shepard's history with a certain asari information broker, and had been present at the uncharacteristically unprofessional exchange between the two shortly ago, it was obvious Chambers was not. Shepard was not an open book, though she did allow her crew to read specific chapters on a need to know basis. Liara did not classify as such. The Operative herself would have little knowledge of the relationship had she not been informed prior to the Lazarus Project. And even then, she would not have bee aware the Commander had continued to harbor such intense feelings had she not witnessed the rejection in the asari's office. Miranda cringed, remembering Shepard during the exchange. The usually stoic and slightly menacing Commander had let her emotions guide her words, revealing a vulnerability only Liara could bring out in the Spectre. Though the soldier's military career had been constantly touched with rumors of the attractive woman using shore leave to find pleasurable company, Shepard had never said a word to address the rumors or her sexual history in any way, never confirming any of her partners or the constant rumor she preferred the company of female bodies in her bed. And yet, she had spat her sexual history with Liara at the asari in front of a squad, and in front of whoever could have been listening in that Illium office. It was a move atypical for the professional and cautious Commander, and that frightened the operative.
However, Miranda's memory did not allow her to fully distrust the asari, Liara had done her an incredible favor finding Shepard's body for her, risking her life and protecting Cerberus secrets on behalf of her passion for the spectre. Though Liara was not a Cerberus sympathetic, she would likely never pose danger to the organization on purpose as long as the Commander for which she had sacrificed so much was employed with them.
Chambers did not mention Liara in her report, or the compromised mental state to which Liara had most certainly become an addition to in the soldier. Miranda almost wished Shepard had opened up to Chambers, so the operative could at least know if the soldier had made progress in letting the information broker go. But Shepard had not. And Miranda was left with a vague, uninformed psychiatric evaluation.
SHEPARD, JANE
2185 - 0202
Subject reports no mental/psychiatric concerns. The subject is not on any psychiatric medications in need of monitoring.
From observation, the subject has dark bags under her eyes and slightly reddened sclera of the eye. Suggests lack of sleep. Unclear as to whether this is from overworking the Commander on the behalf of Cerberus, insomnia, or a mental condition. Subject did not comment on observation and reported sleeping fine.
Subject's history includes a bout of PTSD after an incident dating back to 2177 on Akuze (see notes 3100-SJ). In addition, alcoholic tendencies were reported by the subject's commanding officer when the subject was at the rank of recruit. Mild drug use speculative while on earth before Alliance enrollment.
Miranda rolled her eyes at Shepard dismissing Chambers' confrontation about her lack of sleep. In Miranda's opinion, the Commander was working beyond human capability, but not overworked in her own capabilities quite yet. Which meant there had to be another reason the Commander was not sleeping. Miranda was aware of Shepard's history with PTSD, Chambers typically included the same few sentences on Shepard's history of alcoholism and mental disorder on every report. Though to Chambers' frustration, the counselor had been unable to collect recent evaluations on Shepard's relationship with the two as their mission progressed. The most the yeoman was able to report nowadays was her own professional distaste for Jack and Garrus for so frequently taking Shepard out to drink.
Miranda tapped a few buttons on her terminal, the information screens transforming into an array of video feeds, each from the operative's camera laden throughout the ship. Though Shepard was likely aware of the majority of Miranda's cameras monitoring the crew, she clearly was unaware of the one Miranda had used to EDI to hide in the Commander's quarters.
A piece of Miranda felt guilty for invading the spectre's privacy, she had originally conceptualized the hidden feed as a way to monitor Shepard's free will and to test if the Commander's initial disdain for Cerberus would become betrayal. Even after Shepard had proven herself to be loyal to the mission, the operative had convinced herself not to remove the feed, telling herself comfort was dangerous, and women like Shepard were more dangerous still. To the mission, the crew, and herself.
The Commander was far more empathetic than Miranda, and though her renegade shell was deceiving, Miranda had been able to use her feed to review when Shepard was at risk to turn to her old habits and a bottle after those missions so strenuous the Commander could only storm to her cabin after returning to the Normandy. If Miranda was watching on those nights, and Shepard was holding the bottle she kept tucked under her bed, usually a visitor such as Garrus or Joker would wind up at Shepard's cabin, with little explanation other than Miranda told them Shepard had to speak with them.
With a click of a few buttons, Shepard's room filled the screens. Miranda expected the Commander to be distraught, possibly already drinking, due to the delay in the Operative's had check in while she confronted her own feelings on Overlord. What Miranda didn't expect however is exactly what she finds, a room empty of the soldier altogether. Miranda squinted at the screens, moving in closer as if in any system that would work to magically cause the Spectre to reappear. After a few shocked seconds of staring blankly at the bed where the soldier should be resting, the Operative surveyed the room for clues as to where the Commander could have gone. Shepard was not authorized for shore leave though the ship was parked on Illium for Shepard to make good on her promise to help Miranda protect her sister later in the upcoming days. Dr. Chakwas had informed the soldier earlier that afternoon she was to take a medi-gel bath and rest for the night as she recovered from a few brutal shots sustained from the mechs on Aite, directions Miranda had thought Shepard intelligent enough to heed.
Almost all of the medi-gel canisters Chakwas had issued were sitting on Shepard's desk, only about 25% depleted, as if the soldier had only slapped on a bit of the substance before abandoning the ship instead of following the doctors orders. Miranda scanned the room for the container missing, a part of her hoping it was not there, and Shepard had found the good sense to take it with her wherever she had traveled. However, Miranda is disappointed as she sees the canister poking out of Shepard's small trash can. The blue liquid of the unused container almost completely filled the translucent bin, though a patch of the gel was starkly discolored around a wad of trash made up of a paper roll of model ship instructions Shepard had wrapped to fit in the trash. Or, it seemed. Miranda frowned as she scrolled into the picture, the clearer frame allowing for a closer look at the papers that were not bound to fit in the trash can, but around a thin brandy bottle Shepard was clearly trying to hide, the source of the discoloration.
Goddammit Shepard!
Miranda practically screamed in her head, her fist slamming against the desk in frustration. There wasn't much in the bottle, resulting in minimal discoloration, and Miranda silently prayed it was an old bottle that hadn't held much to begin with at the beginning of the night. The agent frantically scrolled across the picture, trying to find any other hints to where the Spectre could have gone to no avail. For a moment, the biotic considered breaking into the Commander's quarters to search further, but decided against the idea as she remembered EDI would tell the Commander immediately if she returned from just blowing off steam. There was a possibility Shepard would understand the invasion of privacy in the context of Miranda's concern, but it was far more likely for the Commander to be incensed by any entrance into her very private life. After a minute of unenlightening search, Miranda decided she may have better luck finding the soldier by cycling through the feeds she had placed monitoring the rest of the crew. If she was lucky, at least one of them was safeguarding the inebriated soldier.
With a touch of a button Miranda flips first to her feed of their frequently calibrating turian, a decent educated guess as Shepard and Garrus were no strangers to spending time together a bottle deep. However, Garrus is alone in his machinic room, his talons tapping the buttons in equal rhythm with no spectre perched on the grates near the room entry. At least some of us can use our work to move on Miranda thought with a small pang of jealousy before switching to Jack's feed, trying to stay calm as a wave of desperate hope that Shepard would just be sharing another nasty batarian bottle while talking through the mission with the criminal. The operative is immediately met with a screen full of static and deafening frustration at the loud white noise. Though Miranda is not surprised Jack found and disabled the camera, she is enraged in the situation. Throwing her glass across the room with a biotic fit, Miranda barely paid attention to the crash the colored liquid as it oozed onto the floor of her office. If she was going to find if the spectre was with the damn criminal, she would have to check herself. Hopefully she could avoid destroying the bulkhead if met only with her least favorite Normandy resident.
