"I love you and I want you to remember that… I don't know where I'll end up, or for how long I'll be gone but I'll come back to you. I told you we'd start a life together and I promise I'm doing everything I can to get back to you once I've settled the score with the thugs that came into our home. Keep me in your thoughts—know that you'll be in mine," Jacob Taylor exclaimed in a hushed, reminiscent tone. He regarded the audio file with saddened eyes before pressing send. The message would be transmitted from the MSV Erebus and sent to the nearest comm-buoy nexus. With any luck it would be operable and eventually continue its journey back to Earth. He felt it was necessary to keep Brynn in the loop. And he was surprised by just how much he longed to see her.

Miranda Lawson entered the cramped compartment after a stiff knock at the entry hatch. Jacob scarcely had time to beckon her in before she was already sliding it open and stepping inside. "Jacob," she greeted casually. "Not interrupting anything I hope." There was a hint of a smirk on her face. The joke was lost on Jacob—Miranda rarely made such remarks.

"Just sent an audio log off to the Brynn," he told her nonchalantly.

"You miss her?"

"Of course."

"Well, with any luck we should be able to sort all of this out once we reach Virmire," she told him assuredly. Oddly enough she had slid into the leadership role almost seamlessly. This entire gig was Jacob's from the get go. He had convinced her, recruited her and brought her aboard this ship and yet it was Miranda that was keener to reach their destination and get to the bottom of the mystery that began in Jacob's living room. The more time they spent in space, the more distant they were from Earth, the more reluctant Jacob seemed.

"Can't happen soon enough," Jacob said emphatically. "Any change on how you feel about Zaeed since your talk with him?"

"No," Miranda stated with resolution. She trekked across the small compartment in three steps, her heels clicking on the deck below. She took a seat on the bunk she occupied for the journey, arranged directly across from Jacob's. There was a brief period in time where they would have shared the same bunk—but that was a long, long time ago.

"So you still don't trust him?"

"No."

"C'mon, Miranda," Jacob pleaded half-heartedly. He was tired and emotionally depleted thanks to his thoughts of Brynn and the birth of his child that he was likely to miss. "Zaeed is here to help."

"Zaeed is an uncertainty at best. A liability, or an outright traitor at worst."

"That's harsh."

"The more I consider it the more worried I get. This Diego guy saved Zaeed's life, Zaeed introduced him to the mercenary lifestyle, he runs a successful private army so he has money and money is incentive to Zaeed," Miranda explained at length as she tugged off her thigh-high boots with some effort.

"His loyalty has to count for something," Jacob argued weakly.

"His loyalty was to Shepard, not us. Besides, I'm not sure even Shepard could sway the man from a large enough paycheck."

"Well he didn't side with the Illusive Man after we destroyed the Collector Base. Lord knows the Man tried to pay for his allegiance," Jacob recalled. He leaned back and stretched out his lower back. The squat little stool that had been provided for their small cabin certainly hadn't provided much comfort.

"There were extenuating circumstances. Zaeed was never very warm towards Cerberus. Things only deteriorated after the Omega-4 mission," Miranda pointed out correctly. She sighed. "I think it might have been a mistake to bring him, Jacob."

"It's too late to worry about bad decisions now," Jacob told her seriously. He was reminded of the words from a senior NCO he'd served under in his early years in the Marines. He had always professed the importance of being decisive; if you made a bad decision then you dealt with the repercussions as they arose, but to worry or second guess your choices only invited indecisiveness. "We'll just have to hope for the best and plan for the worst."

"My sentiments exactly," Miranda agreed as she slipped out of her combat uniform and slid under the scratchy wool coverlet that was draped over the lumpy old mattress. "I don't want to think about it anymore tonight."

"How much longer until we reach Virmire?"

"The Captain said a few days. Five at the most," Miranda told him after some fidgeting to get comfortable, which was proving to be difficult.

"The sooner the better."

"Come now, Jacob. It's just like the good old days," Miranda said pleasantly.

"Those weren't the good old days, Miranda," Jacob stated somberly. "At least they don't seem so good now. I have something better on Earth."

"You mean you don't miss gallivanting across the galaxy putting an end to evil and nefarious plots?" There was a condescending humor in her tone, but she was serious.

"Not anymore," he admitted. "I've got a kid coming. I'm going to be a father. And if there's one lesson my dad taught it was that I need to be there. I need to be a father to that kid. Anything less and I'd just be repeating the mistakes of that broken old man we found in the Alpha Draconis." Ronald Taylor had been a good man, or so Jacob had thought. Instead the man they had found on that remote planet was acting as the overlord of his crew whose minds were poisoned by a mysterious fruit, taking advantage of the women and attempting to live in a veritable paradise… it was so deplorable to Jacob that he shuddered at the thought. Maybe an argument could be made that the position his father had found himself in had compromised his morals and corrupted him. But the more salient truth, at least to Jacob, was that that darkness always resided somewhere deep in his father's soul.

"Your nothing like your father, Jacob," Miranda assured him, looking over at him and leveling genuine blue eyes upon him.

"I know," Jacob nodded and glanced down at the palms of his hands. "But being absent when my kid is born—not being there when he or she grows up—it's just as evil."

Miranda knew there were unseen forces at work that dictated how Jacob would perceive things in this regard. After all, he had been essentially abandoned by his father for the sake of work in deep space. He grew up without a father figure and undoubtedly suffered from some sort of abandonment issues. Yet Jacob sought to do better for his progeny rather than repeat the mistakes of the father. It was an admirable quality. His integrity was one of the things that had endeared him to her. It was true they had enjoyed a very brief affair, but like all men Jacob failed to excite or entice the genetically engineered beauty. Things lasted barely longer than a month.

"We'll get you home to Brynn soon enough," she told him confidently, now more certain than before that this was her mission to complete. Jacob had been sidelined by his own desire to be home. The life that appealed to Miranda, the one that had kept her feeling restless back on Earth, was one that Jacob didn't want to be a part of anymore. His time far afield was over and his presence now was more to do with personal convictions and duty rather than any real desire. It was like he said before they came aboard the Erebus "A man has to draw the line at some point."

"And what will you do when we're done? Go back to Switzerland with your sister? Looked like life was pretty good there."

"No, I don't think so," she replied with a sigh. She gazed up at the cabin ceiling and pondered the question herself. She didn't really know. All she knew was that as sublime a life as it was to be living on the northern shores of Lake Geneva, it was not for her. "I thought I could do it. For so long all I wanted was a normal life, but the truth is I never really knew what a normal life was. Or how boring it could be."

Jacob cracked a grin. "Boring can be good. You can't be storming around the galaxy blasting bad guys all your life."

Miranda shot him a glare, eyebrow cranked up. "Why not?"

"Well… I don't know. Don't you want to have a family at some point? A husband? Kids?"

She laughed, perhaps more heartily than he'd ever heard from her in the past. "And who would I start a family with, Jacob?"

"No clue," he shrugged. "There's got to be someone out there for you."

"You're just the type that would believe in that—soulmates—like Plato said. We were all created with four arms and four legs and we will never feel whole again until we are reunited."

"I don't know about all that," Jacob mused, scratching at the back of his scalp. "All I know is that until I met Brynn I never thought much about it. But when she came along—things just—they just changed. I used to get giddy when I'd talk to her, even after weeks of knowing her. Me. A veteran of a dozen gunfights in the Attican Traverse and twice as many in the Terminus and some little scientist gave me butterflies in my stomach. I knew then she was the one for me. And I never wanted to be away from her." His eyes seemed to be fixated on the deck near his feet, eyes lost in some distant memory—an embrace or a kiss with the woman he loved and longed for.

"I had that once," Miranda murmured, thinking back to the way she felt aboard the Normandy. But it was unrequited. She never knew how he truly felt, because she never put it out there. She never made it known how she felt. Emotions were a weakness. She manipulated the emotions of men for long enough to know just how weak they could make you. Personal connections were an opening for your enemies to take advantage of. And it would have been unprofessional. She sighed.

"What'd you say?" Jacob asked, suddenly torn from his internal memory.

Miranda smiled half-heartedly, her face a little flush. "Nothing."

Jacob rose from his spot on the little stool and stripped off his t-shirt, casting it onto the rickety little bed he slumbered on. He'd use the t-shirt as a makeshift pillow case, not trusting the one provided by the ship's crew. It smelt a little of mildew and body odor and though he was a Marine and well-accustomed to such distinct odors, he didn't feel the need to endure it. "Where's Zaeed?"

"Probably gambling with the crew. He's been doing it almost every night since we left Earth."

"Yeah?"

"Yep. Fleeced them pretty good the other night," Miranda said drily.

Jacob climbed into his bed and pulled the covers over his muscular frame. He yawned and then tucked his hands behind the back of his head. "Maybe he'll win enough money to keep him loyal," he said with a chuckle, staring up at the ceiling.

"Jacob…"

"I'm kidding," he cut her off. Then he glanced over at her, his face all business. "Look, Miranda, whatever happens when we get to Virmire- we can handle it. I'll be right there with you. And I owe you for coming with me on this."

"It's no problem, Jacob," she assured him.

"Yeah, well, I didn't think you'd have a problem joining me to begin with."

"Oh? Think you know me that well, eh?"

"It's not that," he said confidently. "It's that line you threw me when you told me where you were living and to get in touch in case of an emergency."

"What? I was only being thorough. Who knows what sort of elements are still out there with a grudge against us."

"Yeah but it was like a life line, encouraging me to rescue you from that normal life you were after for so long. You didn't sound happy then and you don't sound happy now," he told her, a slight tinge of concern in his voice.

"Maybe someday," she breathed sleepily. "Get some rest. We might need every minute of it in a few days."

"Good night, Miranda."

"Night, Jacob."