Chapter 5

Becoming Shepard's lover had many advantages, Miranda mused, stripping off her body suit and undergarments and throwing them into the small clothes cleaner in the bathroom. But surely at the top of that list was that she no longer had to share a shower with the other crew members of the Normandy. She pressed a button and the shower in Shepard's personal bathroom hissed on, instantly hot water soaking her skin.

Of course, Miranda had more privacy even in the shared crew showers by virtue of being Shepard's second-in-command. All she had to do was tell EDI to lock the bathroom door and it was done—however, that didn't stop annoyances like Jack banging on the door and shouting obscenities until she was done.

Miranda rinsed the last of the soap suds from her hair and quickly dried off with a towel. The clothes cleaner wasn't finished, so she grabbed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from Shepard's drawers.

She was combing out the tangles in her hair when the door to the captain's cabin hissed open and Shepard walked through, face pensive. He brightened when he saw her.

"Hey," he said, coming over and pulling her up in a hug.

Surprised but pleased, Miranda reciprocated, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her fingers playing with the hair on the back of his neck.

"Mmm, you smell like the sea," she said.

"And you smell like my shampoo. If I'd have known you were going to take a shower, I'd have come back sooner." Shepard pulled away, grinning.

Miranda laughed, giving him a quick kiss. "My clothes are in the cleaner so I had to wear some of yours. Hope you don't mind." She tugged on the waistband of the shorts. "Though the shorts keep threatening to come off."

"All the better." Shepard leaned in for another kiss, then held her against him again with a sigh.

"Are you okay?" Miranda asked, muffled against his shoulder. Shepard wasn't the type to be overly demonstrative—neither of them were.

"Yeah, just…" He shook his head. "Thane left a memory for me in an asari social worker at the hospital. It's… still kind of lingering." Shepard cupped her face with his hand, eyes serious. "Would you stay with me tonight?"

"Of course." She made a move to take off her borrowed shirt, but his hands stilled her.

"Not sex. Not right now," he said, eyes falling away from her, as if embarrassed. "I just… I just don't want to be alone right now."

Miranda's eyes caught on a thin cut on his hand. "You're bleeding."

"Hm? Oh, it's nothing. Scraped my hand getting back into the shuttle." Shepard moved to sit down on the couch, rubbing his face with his hands.

"Do you have any medi-gel?"

"There's a small first-aid kit in one of the desk drawers."

Miranda opened a drawer only to be greeted with not the first-aid kit, but a picture of a dark-haired woman with a mischievous grin tugging at her mouth. The former Cerberus agent had never met Ashley Williams, but she knew enough about her—after all, she'd spent the previous two years learning everything there was to know about Koen Shepard, and that included the people he interacted with the most.

"What's taking you so—oh." Shepard came around the corner and saw Miranda standing at the desk drawer, holding the holo of Ashley.

"First-aid kit's down here," Shepard said, leaning around her to open the bottom drawer.

"Is this out on the desk when I'm not here?" Miranda waved the holo a little.

"What?"

"A photo sat openly on the desk indicates the subject is constantly in the other's thoughts. In the drawer means something else entirely—you're hiding from her or hiding her from someone else. Which is it?" Her voice had slipped into that professional tone she once used with him, the one that reminded him that she used to be the Illusive Man's most trusted operative.

"Neither," Shepard said with a slight frown. "Ash… was a good friend. I miss her sometimes. That's all. I don't have her on my desk because it… well, because it felt weird now that you and I are… together."

Miranda's grip on the holo tightened. "Do you love her?"

"What?" Shepard took a step back in surprise.

Miranda folded her arms across the borrowed t-shirt she wore. "It's a simple question: do you love Ashley Williams?"

"It's hard to love a corpse, Miranda," Shepard said, his words clipped.

"Semantics," she snapped. "Answer the question."

Shepard paused. "Yes, I loved her."

Miranda stared at him, then away, shaking her head. The Illusive Man had warned her, and she had warned herself: emotional entanglements are dangerous. Niket had proved that if anyone else had. Let someone in under your guard and they only have a closer reach to stab the knife in your back. She shouldn't be jealous of a dead woman, but everything about this screamed one thing: if Ashley Williams was alive, Shepard wouldn't even be looking at Miranda Lawson.

"Miranda—"

"Not now, Commander." The old, familiar mask was in place. It was harder with him in front of her, with his scent on the clothes she wore, but she willed her expression into place. "I… I have some things I need to take care of."

She pulled her clothes from the cleaner—finally finished—and stepped into the bathroom to change. It felt wrong, now, to have such easy intimacy with him. Shepard was sitting on the edge of his bed when she emerged, elbows on his knees. He was watching her, a disbelieving look in his eyes.

Miranda hesitated, seeing the distress in the hunch of his shoulders, but she remembered just in time that she was little more than a pleasant diversion for him—a warm body to fill the hole where Ashley Williams once resided.

She had been used too many times: first by her father, then by the Illusive Man, and now this man. No, she would not let it happen again.

Miranda placed the borrowed clothes on the desk beside the discarded picture of Ashley Williams and left the cabin.

Ten-year-old Koen burst through the door of the community center, breathing hard, and slammed the door shut behind him. A small cut on his face bled salty blood into his mouth and his cheek ached where that older boy from the Knives had walloped him a good one.

"You chose a good place, kid."

Koen almost jumped out of his skin as an old black man shambled out from what looked like a small kitchen area near the back of the room. He seemed unfazed by the pocket knife Koen brought to bear, sipping at something in a mug he held in one hand.

"The church is neutral territory."

"So?" Koen's voice rang across the space between them. He couldn't help but notice the smells coming from the kitchen now—coffee, toast, eggs. His stomach growled.

The old man smiled. "Tenth Street Reds, right?"

Koen gaped at him and then narrowed his eyes. "How'd you know I was a Red?"

"The red paint in your hair kinda gives it away."

Koen put his hand up to his short-cropped hair and looked at it. Drying red paint streaked his palm. "Stupid Digg," he muttered. "I knew he was doing something. They wouldn't tell me what." He rubbed again at his head, but the paint was too wet and smeared on his hair even more. Being a "scrub"—a new initiate to the gang—was the worst. Digg said it wouldn't be bad, but before he knew what was happening, the older boys, with hard eyes and scarred hands had blindfolded him and slapped that paint on his head. Next thing he knew was the retreating laugher of the full members of the Tenth Street Reds and when the blindfold came off he was alone, and in enemy territory: the Blood Knives. If he could get out alive—he was a full member. If not, well, the weak didn't deserve to be a member anyway.

The old man interrupted his bitter thoughts and limped over to a table. "You hungry, kid? I just made myself some breakfast, but there's plenty here for both of us. By the way, my name's Josiah. Josiah Shepard."

"Commander Shepard?"

Shepard's eyes opened unwillingly.

"We gotta work on your timing, EDI," he grumbled. Shepard glanced at the clock. It was only little more than an hour after he'd fallen asleep and that had been hard enough after Miranda left the cabin. What was she getting at bringing Ash up out of the blue?

"I apologize for waking you, Commander," EDI said, intruding into his thoughts, "but Kolyat Krios is… distraught."

Shepard froze. "What do you mean?"

"He is attempting to destroy sensitive equipment in Life Support." EDI's calm modulated voice seemed to carry a bit of a pique.

Shepard pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants and, barefoot, walked out of the cabin and into the elevator. When he reached the crew deck, a muffled banging sound was indeed coming from the Life Support room. Jack was also standing in front of the door, fingering her shotgun.

She turned as the elevator opened. "Good thing you're here, Shepard. I was about to test whether the kid has his old man's reflexes," she growled. "I can hear him all the way down in Engineering."

"Go back to bed, Jack, I'll make him settle down." Shepard yawned.

Jack gave the Life Support door another scowl and a colorful expletive, and shoved past Shepard for the elevator.

Shepard stood at the door a moment, hearing the banging, and wondered if Kolyat had worked through whatever was eating him. Through the door he could hear a muffled voice—was he talking to someone? Palming the console, Shepard stepped through into a scene of destruction. The cot was flipped over, frame dented; the table was shoved against the rear wall and the chair was lying on its side just in front of the door. He stepped over it, noticing a faint alarm going off on the controls to his right—one of the oxygen producing environmental canisters was punctured.

Kolyat was huddled against the wall just ahead of Shepard, mumbling to himself—no, Shepard amended, seeing his too-wide eyes, he was trapped in a memory.

"I watch the door all evening, but still he doesn't return. I ask Mother why isn't Father home yet, and she lies to me, says he's on important business; says he'll be back soon. But there are tears in her eyes, and I don't know why he would make her cry. Why is he always gone?"

Shepard's irritation at the destruction faded. "Kolyat?"

The young drell's secondary eyelids nictitated, but he didn't look up at him. "What do you want?" he muttered, glowering at the floor.

"If you need a place to let off some steam, Jacob and Garrus set up some punching bags in the cargo hold. There's no need for this unnecessary violence toward my ship."

"Leave me alone."

Shepard frowned and went to stand over the recumbent drell. "I'm not going to leave you alone, because you're going to tell me what the hell is wrong with you."

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Koen stared up at his "father," resentment growing within. He wiped the smear of blood off his lip, ignoring the usual smell of alcohol in the other man's breath.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you!"

Koen snapped out of the memory, shaken. Large dark eyes glared up at him. "I don't have you tell you anything," Kolyat spat. "You're not my 'commanding officer' and you're not my father."

Shepard scowled. "Fine! Wallow down here for all I care—but you will clean up this mess, and then you're going to tell Rupert—in the morning—what you broke so he can fix it. And you're going to help him."

Silence was his only reply. Shepard bit back his frustration and turned his attention to the more immediate concern of the punctured canister.

"EDI, is this thing going to be okay until the day shift?"

"No, Commander," EDI replied from the speaker above his head. "The canister must be isolated to prevent contamination. Also, oxygen production may go down. Mess Sergeant Gardner has the technical knowledge to patch it for the time being though I will need to do a more thorough diagnostic to determine the extent of the damage."

"So much for waiting until morning," Shepard grumbled. He turned to Kolyat and jerked a thumb at the door. "You heard the lady. Go to crew quarters and wake Rupert and tell him to come fix this."

Kolyat looked frightened. "But Rupert hates me! Ever since I told him his Kahje baklava tastes like dirty toenails, he's had it in for me!"

"Your problem; not mine." Shepard stood, arms folded across his chest, wondering if he would have cut a more authoritative figure if he'd opted for his fatigues instead of a t-shirt.

Kolyat muttered a drellish curse that his translator didn't know what to do with and pushed past him. He had just palmed the door when klaxons began ringing through the ship. Kolyat jerked around to look at Shepard, eyes wide.

"I didn't do it!"