Jacob stood standing just outside the Medbay. Kelly had come by wanting to know how Shepard was. He hadn't been concerned about her so he simply let her pass. He had another person he was setup for someone else. A hellion only he could handle, and he didn't have to wait long. The mess hall was quiet, and vacant of anyone else besides Gardner and himself, and he knew the recreant would turn up soon.
He was pissed. Pissed at the Alliance, but that was nothing new. He would have been pissed at Cerberus, but that was taken care of. But right now he was pissed for who he was waiting for. Honestly he didn't even want to deal with the being, but if they showed up, he would.
His patience was unfortunately rewarded when the figurine slumped out of the Executive Officer's cabin. It was dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and a black jacket with the arms cut off. Oddly enough, it also 'walked' around barefoot.
"Evening...do you need something?" A be wildered Gardner tried to speak to the teetering jumble. But it responded not at all as Jacob continued to watch it move towards the medbay using the Mess Hall walls and rails table to steady itself.
"Just go away. You look like hell. Do us both a favor and go back to your room..." Jacob spoke softly as he stood in front of the medbay doors like an Overlord, and paid no heed to the miscreant as they stumbled forward.
"I wan..speak to...Sheepard..." The drunk spoke as she stood in front of Jacob.
The stench of drink assaulted Jacob's senses. This wasn't the woman he had known over the years. Respected. This creature was a wobbling shell wearing her face.
"No." Jacob responded as he bard his arms across his chest and widened his stance.
"I'm second of...command...I order you." The creature stupidly growled.
"I said no. Get some rest Miranda." Jacob said flippantly trying to brush her off. But he was losing his patience.
"Move...Jacob." She said as she tried to slip around him. He simply grabbed her and pushed her away.
"Get..you fuukin..han off me!" She cried as she rushed him again. This time he 'pushed' her gently back with his biotics. She landed hard against the wall.
"Your not seeing Shepard now. Kelly is with her currently." Jacob said with a stony confidence.
Miranda's face screwed up in anger. "Sooos Kellys screwing Shepard, and not her little blue whore huh? Out of the way!" Miranda chortled as she tried to us her own biotics on Jacob. But he was faster as he 'grabbed' her feet and 'pulled' them out from under her. Her back slammed on the metal panels of the floor and she was dazed as Jacob stalked up to her.
"I've had enough of your bullshit..." He said as he grabbed her back the neck of her jacket and startled to drag her across the mess hall. He looked over to a shocked Gardener. "Coffee, black, strong and hot."
"Ahhh right...sure thing!" Gardener quipped as he crashed in to action swinging open cabinets.
Miranda started to struggle under his hold as he rounded the corner to the bath rooms. "Jacob let me go this instant!"
Jacob stopped and quickly hauled Miranda over his shoulder. "Ah so knocking some sense in to you does work! Your starting to form complete sentences now." He retorted.
"Fuck you!" Miranda yelled as she proceeded to slam her fists on his back. Not the it did any good.
The door to the crew quarters opened and Operative Wallace stumbled out, and wide eyed by the spectacle. "Everything all right?" She asked.
"Just peachy. Director Lawson just needed some help getting to the showers.": Jacob responded as he strode past the Operative and walked in to the showers with Miranda still hung over his shoulder like a coat.
"I DO NOT!" Miranda screamed as the bath room doors closed behind them.
"All...right.." Operative Wallace said as she turned around and went back to bed.
Once inside the bath room Jacob unceremoniously dropped Miranda in to the shower. She continued to hurl more insults as he kept her pinned in place with his biotics.
"Jacob. These are the woman's bathrooms." EDI responded smartly.
"EDI." Jacob said annoyed.
"Yes Jacob?" EDI responded.
"Do me a favor and just shut up right now." Jacob said as Miranda struggled to get up, and he quickly retrieved a hypo-injector from his tool belt and slotted an emetic in place, and he let Miranda go.
After a moment of stunned silence the AI responded. "Of course Mr. Taylor."
When he looked up he was eye to eye with an enraged woman. Miranda quickly spanned off a punch to his face, and his head snapped taking the blow with ease. S'all good. Let her get off some steam...
Miranda sent off a second strike, but he was waiting this time. But number two is going to cost ya. He grabbed her right arm with his left, and he quickly struck with the hypo injector into her arm. She recoiled back and hissed at the pain. At first she was able to steady herself, but the drug's effect didn't take long. She soon found herself on her hands and knees heaving the contents of her stomach on to the floor of the shower.
"Your getting predictable and sloppy Miranda. Your pissing me off with how unglued you have become." Jacob said as he wiped a bead of blood from his mouth.
Miranda shivered. "What do you know about it! Look at what Shepard has done!"
Jacob tossed a disgusted look at her as he stepped forward and slammed a fist down on the shower's controls not responding to her.
Miranda howled as liquid spikes of freezing water began to drench her. In turn she dry heaved again. "You...bastard..." Is all she managed to get out.
"Yeah tell me about it." Jacob said flippantly.
Jacob turned off the water before hypothermia set in, but only after he was satisfied that Miranda had been thoroughly soaked. He stepped in and gruffly hauled Miranda to her feet, and in the process gave her another hypo-injection.
"Ow! What the fuck was that for now?" Miranda yelled between her chattering teeth. As she struggled under his hold.
"A shot of vitamin B and D, because God knows that your 'sunny' disposition could use it." Jacob spat as he reached for a towel and wrapped it around her. She tried to let out a knee shot in to him, but he easily blocked it. "Now now. Behave, or I'll continue carrying you around like the sad sack you are right now. He said as he proceed to cuff her hands behind her back. "I can't believe I'm having to treat you like a child."
"Oh like you would really do this to a child." Miranda hissed.
"Your right I wouldn't. A child would actually listen. And your too old for me to put you in time out." He responded as he roughly corralled her through the door.
"I don't get it Miranda. I don't get it. I would think right now after all we have been through, you would at least be smiling like a lunatic. But No. You have continued to act the same way as you did after we came back from the Omega 4 relay. You have the look of death on you."
"And your not the least concerned over what happened in Bahak." Miranda seethed as Jacob walked her back to her room. She was still shivering and sopping wet. Again he didn't respond.
The doors to her cabin opened and Jacob turned around a chair and forced her to sit down. Miranda just glowered at him as she tried to kick him again, and yet again her maneuver was checked. But Jacob had to admit she was feeling better, or at least had better control over her body then she did before.
"So what. Are you putting me in time out now?" Miranda hissed.
Jacob uncuffed her hands, but then latched them both to her chair. "Something like that. Just sit tight and cool off for a moment. I'll be back and then we can talk."
He turned on his heel and walked out of her cabin as Miranda continued to scream hurl obscenities at his back. At least this time he could understand her completely. Yes she is feeling better...The doors hissed shut and Jacob gave out a relieved sigh, and he walked over to Gardner.
"Everything alright Mr. Taylor?" Gardner asked still wearing a look of bewilderment on his face.
"Just peachy. Do you have that coffee ready yet?" Jacob asked as he sauntered over to the kitchen island.
"Right here sir!" Gardner quipped.
"Good. Two cups, and a thermos." Jacob said.
"Any sugar or cream? You know how much she likes her sugar and cream." Gardner said.
"No. Tonight she will have it straight and black." Jacob responded.
For a second Gardner stopped in his tracks and held a look on his face as if he wanted to say something, but instead he thought better for it and held his tongue. Soon Gardener had the tray ready for Jacob.
Jacob took the tray and started on his way back to Miranda's cabin, and then he looked down at the tray. "Gardner. One more thing. I'll need a straw. A long one."
"A straw?"
"Don't even ask..." Jacob said with a heavy sigh.
"...Ah...right!" Gardner replied quickly as he fetched one from a pantry.
Jacob was soon on his way again and when Miranda's doors obediently opened he was greeted by a sobbing wet lump where a fiery raven had once been. Great. Now she's crying...I almost wish she was kicking and screaming again. He thought as he came in and set the tray down on a near by table stand.
"I failed...I failed...I created a monster...I tried my best...but I failed..." Miranda kept repeating between heaves of air.
The image of self pity was grating on Jacob's last nerve as he set the tray on the desk. He then sat down across from Miranda. "You think you failed. What do you call the woman that lies in the medbay? A failure? Did she 'fail' just because she brought everyone back from the Illusive Man's 'suicide' mission? Is that really failure?"
"Doesn't what she did to that star system mean anything to you?" Miranda short back as she just continued to sob and shiver.
Jacob took a deep breath and relaxed for a moment. "Over three hundred thousand people gone. An entire solar system gone." He let his gaze fall to the desk. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. Yet, considering that she is the Butcher of Torfan, and now had added the Collectors to her score card, I can't say that I'm surprised." He responded somberly. "But at the same time; doesn't what she did for you and your sister mean anything to you? Doesn't that tell you something about her?"
But it seemed as if Jacob's words fell on deaf ears as Miranda just sat in front of him.
Petrified. She was stark raving petrified. That would get him no where and nothing.
"I should thank you..." Jacob breathed. "You know, for helping me with the Gernsback. Thanks to you, Shepard and I were able to help the remaining crew members off that planet and get some help." He finished as he stood up and walk to over to prepare some cups for them both.
Miranda looked up at him with red eyes. "But I thought...Shepard said that you found your father..."
Jacob let out a joyless and callous laugh. "No." He walked back to the chair and set both cups down, one, which had the straw, in front of Miranda. "I found a man that called himself Ronald Taylor, supposedly he was 'the acting Captain'. Hell, he even looked like my father, if my father would have been as old as that guy was." Jacob said as he took a seat across from her. "No Miranda. What Shepard and I found was, to put it mildly, a gross breach of Authority and Trust." Jacob looked down at the cup of black coffee, and he clinched it in his hands as he continued. "The man had set himself up as some kind of Feudal Lord. Using the women as he saw fit."
"What...what did you do..." Miranda asked breathlessly.
"Truth is though, while I was disgusted, Shepard embodied rage. I have never seen her so pissed." He said as he took a drink. "I can't even tell you where that came from with her. Usually she colder than you when we're in action. Calculating. Always the tactician. But something about that entire situation made her nearly lose it."
Miranda shifted uncomfortably in her chair and she listened.
"Now what happened to Captain Taylor? Shepard and I left the guy surrounded with the demons of his own creation and a pistol with a half clips worth of thermal power." Jacob let a smile crawl across his face. "If you ask me Shepard was merciful to him. He was left with an option; which is far more then what he ever gave his crew."
Jacob sat back in the chair. "Now Miranda tell me. Would Shepard had been that angry if she was the monster you think you have created?" He said darkly.
Miranda shivered, and she took a sip from her straw."...Niket. She stopped me from killing Niket."
"I know Miri. I was there. I for one am glad she stopped you. Like Shepard said, you don't need that weight on your soul. She also said that you needed to talk with your Sister, even when you didn't want to. Don't tell me for one second that was not the right thing to do." Jacob responded.
Miranda broke down again as another wave of emotion broke over her. "I should...I should have listened to her, damned Asari. Damn their foresight! I should have listened to Liara. Shepard should never have...She's not human..." Miranda slurred as she slumped forward, fast asleep.
Jacob let out a heavy sigh. "I know." He said as he stood up and walked around Miranda's desk and undid the binders. "There is no way that she ever will be, and I have a feeling that Humanity wouldn't stand a chance if she was."