Having a bad day, Shepard?
-March, 2186
"Is that all you have to say for yourself?" Mikhailovich stared at Shepard. "That the man had erectile dysfunction?"
"That came out wrong." Messalina tasted blood in her mouth as she sucked on her cracked lower lip. The morning sessions with Mikhailovich had began to wane on her. Since she hardly had any company other than James Vega and David Anderson, Mikhailovich had become her regular punching bag. She could see that some of her tales had begun taking a toll on him as well. Perhaps she abused him too much, as she could see the abuse was finding its way back to her. As Zaeed said, Karma.
"If it weren't for your Spectre status, Shepard, I would assure you that you would have been tried for crimes against humanity!"
Messalina rocked back on her chair. He had a point. Some of her activities could be registered as bordering on the edge of insanity. After all that time she still couldn't rationalize what had driven her to try and earn the trust of every single member that threw themselves at the Omega 4 relay. It was an impossible mission borne of impossible consequences, and drastic measures had to be taken to ensure survival. She should have been able to accept that some of them would not be able to return. Yet somehow she tried and did the impossible.
-October, 2185
Everyone had dispersed upon the wind following that ordeal. When the Normandy limped back to Omega she had gathered the crew to Afterlife. Aria had emptied a lower meeting room for them, chasing away curious eyes by personally lending out guards. Most of the crew had signed on based on a contract, now fulfilled. There was nothing that drove them forward, and everyone seemed to know that this was the end. There were tearful good-byes and a lot of toasting, but in the end everyone knew that none would appreciate the full extent of what they had accomplished. They had betrayed the Citadel and its associated governments by participating in Cerberus, and in the end they had betrayed Cerberus as well.
"We never followed Cerberus, Shepard." Jack came over to Shepard, emptying a bottle. "I don't think that even the Cheerleader followed Cerberus."
"What are your plans, Jack?"
"I dunno. Enjoy freedom a bit. It's been a while since I've stretched my legs. Maybe I'll hijack that ship of yours."
"Huh." Shepard laughed. Somehow Jack's eyes didn't show the erratic directionless wandering that she used to show. "You've mellowed."
"Yeah." Jack shrugged, closing her dark leather jacket around her.
"Feeling a bit cold? I could tell someone to jack up the temperature a bit."
"Nah," Jack tossed the bottle to the floor. "I know you just used me, Shepard, to get to the Collectors."
"Yeah," Messalina nodded. Circumventing the truth didn't seem to help in these situations.
"All those pep talks in the basement, all those rallying cries, you know, like team spirit and stuff. Normally I'd want to kill you if I'd thought you'd manipulated me like that. Pass me another one, will ya?"
Messalina opened another bottle for her. Jack gulped down hard, as if talking had dried her mouth.
"I have to admit, sometimes I felt like I had to force myself to have you follow me." Messalina admitted. "You're a really difficult person, sometimes."
Jack leered mischievously. "Anyways, you got me my freedom, so let's say our debts are settled."
"Sure thing, Jack."
"Look, I'm not very good at these things." Jack fidgeted.
But Messalina shook her head. "I know, Jack. Thanks anyway."
Embarrassed, annoyed, and unsure of her newly found empathy, Jack frowned. "And f*** you, too."
-March, 2186
"Do you know where she went?" Mikhailovich narrowed his eyes.
"Lost track of her." Messalina shook her head.
"Zaeed Massani, Subject Zero, Thane Krios, Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor. These are all wanted men. And you're telling me you had a party before you just let them go?"
"No," Shepard cooed, sarcastically. "Wanted to bag them all and present them at your doorstep, Mikhailovich. Besides, I want you to know that I've PARDONED them with my rights as a Spectre."
"The Alliance-"
"The Alliance as a Council race will respect the decision of a Council Spectre." Shepard sat back.
Mikhailovich sweltered with rage, but Shepard's pulse barely rose. She waited for him to cool down. As much as she despised Mikhailovich, she had nothing to do when she returned to her quarters. Never allowed to set foot without an escort, who in turn had to receive permission from Mikhailovich, the days were long and sunset only beckoned sleepless nights.
"And the Cerberus Officer?"
-December, 2185
"I brought the wine, Shepard." Miranda entered their cohabitat, bottle of wine in hand.
The Normandy had just finished dropping off a sizable portion of crew on Ilium, and awaited rendezvous with the Alliance. The ship was empty, with the entire crew now having scattered on the wind. Miranda and Shepard had managed to divide their last funds into a modest severance package for the crew. Liara had helped them off to the destination of their choice. Before the New year struck, Shepard would surrender the Normandy to the Fifth fleet, as was arranged with Hackett. Miranda had asked to be the last off the ship.
They had arranged one last get together to celebrate the end of the most unappreciated mission of their lives, and Christmas.
"I see Doctor T'Soni hasn't arrived yet."
"I'm never sure when she comes or goes. I assumed she'd hang around, Christmas and all. I never asked her." Messalina scratched her head.
"Shepard," Miranda admonished with a sigh as she walked over to the kitchen looking for the cork screw.
"Huh?"
"You know Doctor T'Soni isn't human, Shepard." Miranda uncorked the bottle and let it rest before taking out the dishes. Shepard groggily joined her, shoving the dehydrated storage food into the processor. Miranda eyed the food processor disapprovingly. "Processed food, again?"
"I'm sorry, Miranda." Messalina replied in a tone that betrayed no apology. "I was ensured that it has all the vital nutrients for us to survive until the New year."
Miranda ordered Pizza even before the thirty second dehydration finished with a chime, producing a very dry brittle lump of tofu-meatloaf. Messalina stared at it for a moment, before Miranda swooped in and promptly discarded in the bin.
"Heroes of the Galaxy," Messalina muttered.
"If it's any consolation... " Miranda drummed her fingers, looking for something to say. "Aria seems happy that the Vorcha have settled down."
Miranda poured the wine, toasting.
"I won't be joining you on Christmas Eve," Miranda stated. Messalina had grown used to having her XO around. The months they had spent together had drawn them closer than any professional relationship she had had to the point where Messalina wouldn't know what to do alone. She knew it was coming. They had talked about it without pinning down a specific date. Where she was going was obvious; Miranda had family, now.
"Buy something pretty on your way off." Messalina suggested.
"Shepard," Miranda shook her head. "It's Omega. Everything's tawdry."
They moved over to the large plexiglass window staring out into the smog filled jagged horizon of Omega's Eezo refineries.
"What about you, Shepard?" Miranda asked. "Have you ever been to Earth?"
Messalina suddenly realized that Miranda might have never been to Earth before. Spacers, drifting among the stars since birth, eventually had to go to Earth once in a while to update their registry. It was an outdated system, but the Alliance held on to it to keep Spacers from drifting off to the stars. Colonists were different, and having a solid earth beneath their feet which they called home and distanced themselves from both the Earth and the Alliance had been the instigator of Earth's leash around their Spacer children.
But then there was Miranda. A sisterhood of altered clones of her father, yet unlike the variations of less perfect copies before her became the heiress of an empire. Miranda always talked about her selection, and more now about Oriana, the last copy of Henry Lawson, but little about those who preceded her. Messalina had learned that some were successful, and Henry Lawson had been able to create clones of himself rapidly in a vat to near perfection. But for some reason he had preferred to create X doubled female clones. Had there been a rebellious XY clone? Or was he simply a perverted narcissits?
Few people could perfect cloning. Poor defective and unstable specimens were common. Even Okeer could only produce one perfect soldier. Simply doubling the X chromosome had initially resulted in horrible consequences. Epigenetic silencing went haywire and conflicting alleles emerged in disfiguring mosaicisms that ranged from mental retardation to ambiguous genders. Henry had terminated these defective copies. Instead he began designing the characteristics one by one, gene by gene, while altering only so much as to vary from his own X chromosome as his ego allowed, yet allowing generous changes in epigenetic imprinting to help stabilize his artificial touches. The final result was Miranda, the perfect feminization of himself. Messalina could only imagine how infatuated her father must have been for Miranda. She had no doubt that Oriana was pretty much the replacement after Miranda escaped his cuckoldry.
Hence Miranda was something of an enigma. Her Earth was her Father, and her Space had been Cerberus. Had it not been for Oriana, Miranda would have been truly alone... like Shepard.
"Of course, Miranda." Messalina replied. "I've been there to register my address when I turned eighteen." Messalina scratched her memory. "Prospect Creek, Alaska. Never been there myself. Mom wanted some name we could remember clearly, and the town was virtually abandoned so we could avoid situations where some Earthborn might mistake us as a compatriot."
"Why not take your grandparent's address? Surely there must be somewhere you could trace the Shepard lineage back to."
"What would be the point, Miranda? It's just names, dead things and people who aren't there anymore."
"And your mother? Aren't you going to see her?"
"We didn't end our last transmission on a good note." Messalina replied, embarrassed.
-November, D-1, 2185
The chime rang again from her secure hotline to the Shadow Broker.
Messalina put down her armor, and walked over to reply. Curious, as she had just got off from a long tearful farewell with Liara. She smiled to herself, thinking Liara must have missed something to nag about.
Instead Glyph's voice rang clearly through the speakers.
"Patching you through to the SSV Orizaba, Commander. Secure channels established."
"Glyph! Get T'Soni on line, now!" Messalina barked angrily.
"Talk to her!", interrupted the Shadow Broker's booming baritone voice.
The screen immediately lit up to show the Alliance insignia and the letters of the SSV Orizaba briefly before being replaced by Hannah's anxious face.
"Honey!" her mother exclaimed. "I finally got through to you!"
"Hey Mom." Messalina replied. She really didn't know what to say. Hackett had been able to relay Hannah's letter to her with extreme difficulty, but Messalina could only request that he let her know that she was alive. The extremely fickle situation of where Messalina's loyalties lay would have endangered both Hackett and her mother. While she had no doubt that Hackett would be able to twist the Intel's right arm to have his way, the stalwart Hannah would probably have stubbornly vocalized support for her daughter.
"You couldn't contact me yourself?" her mother vented off immediately.
"It would have been difficult." Messalina trailed off, vaguely.
"I'm your Mother!"
"Yeah, it's a bit difficult to explain, Mom. Are you sure this transmission's secure?"
"I certainly hope so!" Hannah finally leaned back, studying her daughter through the screen, now scrutizing. Suspicion immediately spread through her features.
"I am Me, Mother." Messalina felt short on time, and Hannah wondering of her daughter's identity seemed flagrantly wasteful, considering the lengths to which both the Normandy and Liara exposed themselves to make this connection.
"What's your first-"
"Valeria, okay?" Messalina interrupted.
"Okay." Hannah, reassured. "Why haven't you contacted me? Hackett told me you were alive a few months ago. He said you went undercover into Cerberus. Is that why you couldn't call?"
"Sort of." Messalina wondered how tactful Hackett had covered for her.
"But it's been two years! You could have made some effort to contact me. Considering that your cover story involved the apparent destruction of the Normandy. They told me you were Dead!"
"Um, yeah."
"'Um, yeah'? Is that all you can say? After two years thinking you were dead, all you can say is 'Um, yeah'?"
"It was Complicated, okay? Let's leave it at that."
"The least you could do is apologize."
"You want an apology? Is that why we're relaying our messages off twenty stations? Fine! 'I'm Sorry', okay? Makes you happy?"
"Put yourself in my shoes for one minute, dammit." Hannah snapped. "I buried you! News reporters hounded me for interviews about your death. What sort of operation have you put yourself into?"
"I can't talk about it, Mom."
"Ugh!" Hannah screamed. "You're so frustrating. You're still angry about me about your childhood? Is that still the issue?"
"No, Mom!" Messalina groaned. "Calm down. I didn't go off to spite you, okay? I'd like to think we've past that, too. I'm over it."
"You're over it?" Hannah gasped. "Well thank you very much, dear lady. You just toss yourself into the maw of death everyday like a habit and mouth off to me that you're over it?"
"What do you want, Mom?" Messalina scowled. "Want me to quit? Settle down in Arkansas? Alaska? Whatever? Marry a nice Alliance officer? This is my life, Mom. I do this for a living. If you haven't noticed, I'm quite good at it, too."
"Yes, you're certainly good at it. Risking your life everyday, like that. How many fake funerals do I have to go through now? And you're telling me your life in the Marines had nothing to do with it? That you're over it? I might have believed you if you'd just settled down with your laurels, but you had to just jump into the fray again, hadn't you?"
"It's not like that!"
"It's not? Oh, then tell me where you're off to now, young lady!" Hannah demanded. "Tell me to my face that you're not going off to some no-return death wish. Tell me you're going to come home next week. Tell me! Dammit!"
Messalina couldn't. She started at the screen, gaping, as she saw her mother melt into a puddle.
"Why?" Hannah implored. "Why aren't you telling me anything? Why can't you just simply tell me that you'll be home next week? Next Month?"
"I..." Messalina stumbled for words. "I can't tell you that, Mom."
Hannah burst over crying. "Please, Messalina! I'm sorry. Please, come home. Please."
"Be safe, Mom." Messalina choked.
"No! Don't go-"
Messalina hurriedly switched off the communicator.