Face It

Lazarus

The ultimate Hebrew translation of Lazarus:

"One God has helped"

Miranda had seen a lot of things in her day. Gruesome, disturbing, gory, but this one definitely took the cake. She'd never seen something as...broken as the sight before her. The men carrying the remnants of Shepard in weren't looking at her. They were all subconsciously leaning away from the case as if they were afraid of disease. Miranda didn't blame them. It wasn't pretty.

There weren't any parts that were identifiable. Everything important had been melted. It was just meat on a slab. Considerably less meat than originally filled the suit. Pieces of said suit were the only indication that the pile of pink and red inside of their makeshift glass casket had once been something else, something alive.

It was going to be a long time at work to try and make that...meat human again.

…

Originally, Miranda had wanted to completely revamp Shepard's body- make her taller, better built- but The Illusive Man had specified that she needed to be as close as she could be to the way she was before she died. Miranda, having her own body as reference, added a few things here and there, to make Shepard slightly more attractive in the hopes that there would be one less fight because of Shepard's new body.

The brain control was also denied. (Much to Miranda's dissatisfaction. You can't trust free thinkers.)

After a year, Miranda still wasn't convinced things were going to work. They'd only gotten her lungs and kidneys replaced. They were trying to reconstitute Shepard's body as naturally as possible- less scars. But there were some things that you just couldn't do.

Six months later, she was singing a different tune. She must've not been paying attention because, suddenly, Shepard was filled of working parts, including the brain. Still, the readings weren't all good. She seemed to be healing on her own- a good sign, usually- but she was also more likely to wake up. She told Wilson to up the meds Shepard was on about three months later. When he didn't listen, they nearly lost everything. Not that it would be particularly hard to get it all working again- especially since they'd built most of her themselves- but it was the principle of the thing.

…

"On Virmire, you left one of your crew, Ashley Williams, to die. Why?" Jacob asked.

Miranda watched the pain flash across the woman's eyes. She answered as best she could, though Miranda could tell she didn't really believe all the hot air she was pushing. How could she? She'd left a friend to die, some would feel guilty about that.

When the Commander left to talk to TIM, Miranda tried to hide her smile.

Two long years of her life was up and walking. The galaxy could now take a deeply awaited breath. There was at least one person guarding the stupid idiots.

A/N: Sorry I'm putting all these out in one day. It's just that school's about to start and I don't want to hear anything about it so...