When she woke up, Ashley's chest hurt like a bitch, which at least meant she wasn't dead. You probably didn't take your stab wounds with you to heaven, and she didn't think hell would look quite so much like the Normandy's med-bay. It was an impression that was further reinforced when she saw Samantha Traynor sitting next to her bed, the specialist's chocolate eyes lighting up at the sight of Ashley moving.

"Ash!" Without thinking, Sam reached over and put her hand on the Spectre's knee. "Oh thank god you're awake! It's been a day and a half and I was starting to get worried."

"Hey." Ashley blinked, her eyes still acclimating to the light, her voice raw. "You been here this whole time?"

"Not all of it. I mean, I still had to work. And sleep. And eat." Ashley laughed, winching at the sudden pain in her chest it caused, and Samantha continued, "But I was here a lot. You had me worried. You had all of us worried."

"Did we…" Ashley coughed, reaching over for a glass of water by the side of the bed. It was all coming back to her now: the battle in the temple on Thessia, seeing her commander's face behind the Cerberus leader's visor, the omni-blade sinking into her flesh… The last thing she remembered was the searing pain in her gut as Shepard broke cover and ran towards her. "Did we get the VI?"

Sam looked down uncomfortably. "No," she replied, her voice a regretful whisper, "That clone or whatever it was stole it."

The Spectre slumped down into the bed. "It was my fault."

Sam's heart ached along with Ashley, but accompanying her empathy was another, harder to define feeling. The Spectre was normally so tough, and while that was definitely a turn-out, it was also a little intimidating. Seeing Ashley like this, vulnerable physically and emotionally, made her seem more accessible. "Ash," she protested, squeezing down on the Spectre's pale hand, "You were stabbed. In the chest. It's not like you handed the VI over to Cerberus without a fight."

"You don't understand," she replied wearily. "I had a shot at her, the clone, but when I saw Shepard's face under that helmet, I couldn't take it. I was just… I was so confused that I froze, and then Shepard got distracted helping me. I messed up and now we're totally screwed."

"Hey," Sam offered, "Shepard doesn't give up that easily. She's got a plan to try and find the clone and maybe get the VI back. We're not out of this game yet."

Ashley brightened a little at Sam's words, smiling back at her friend. She was grateful for the cute specialist's reassurances, more than she quite knew how to express just then. "Thanks a lot, Sam. I'm really lucky to have you here for me. I mean it."

Sam didn't quite intend what happened next. Well, she kind of did; it's not like she was indoctrinated or something, but she certainly didn't plan it. There was just such warmth in the way Ashley was talking to her, and unconsciously, she started running the pad of her thumb up and down the Spectre's hand, caressing it intimately. For an instant, she was lost in the feeling of the smooth skin and strong muscles and then Ashley looked up at her and Sam panicked, unable to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry, Ash," she mumbled, pulling away abruptly. "I didn't mean… I mean, I have to go. My shift starts in a few minutes."

"Wait," Ashley started to protest as Sam got up from her chair by the bed, "You don't have to leave." The specialist barely seemed to hear her though, back-peddling towards the door, and the Spectre was too weak to make any further effort to stop her, sliding back instead into the relative comfort of the med-bay bed, trying futilely to make sense of everything that was going on.

Miranda Lawson didn't pace. She didn't tap her fingers on the table. She tried her best to keep her face even. And yet, as she starred at the sterile metal walls of the room she was in, it was hard for her not to feel some apprehension. It wasn't that she was unaccustomed to interrogations. Ever since being placed in Alliance custody, being debriefed was mostly what she did. Something was different about today though, a buzz on the station that told her she wasn't going to be meeting with her normal interlocutors. Still, she had to admit she was a little surprised when she saw who walked into the room.

Commander Shepard looked older than she had on Mars, her beautiful freckled face lined with cares, but her gaze was still as fierce as Miranda remembered. The Spectre took a seat across the metal table from her, regarding the operative with barely restrained hostility.

"Shepard. To what do I owe the pleasure?" She hadn't heard from the commander since her incarceration began and Miranda knew that hadn't changed because Shepard felt like a social call.

The Spectre narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on the reason she was there. The stakes were too high for her dislike of Miranda to get the better of her but she still had no patience for exchanging pleasantries with the woman. "A few days ago, Cerberus interfered with a mission of mine on Thessia. They stole data vital to the war effort."

"I'm sorry to hear that." She almost sounded sincere, Shepard thought. "Why come to me though?"

"There was something unusual about the woman who led the Cerberus team." Shepard paused. "She looked exactly like me. As the former head of the Lazarus Project, I thought you might have some idea of why that might be."

Miranda was hard to read, but Shepard suspected the surprise she saw on her face was genuine. "That doesn't make sense."

"Does that mean you don't know anything about who she might be?" The commander tried to keep the anxious edge out of her voice. Miranda had been her best hope for some answers and if she was a bust, the commander was back to square one.

"No, it means that project was supposed to have been shut down."

Shepard bent her head in confusion. "What project?"

"Project Mirage. The Illusive Man wasn't certain that the Lazarus Project was going to work. He knew there was something special about you, something relevant to the fight against the Reapers, but without understanding what it was, he pursued a number of possible avenues for exploiting it."

"Like your 'modifications,?'", she growled. Liara may have taught her how to take pleasure in her new cock but the violation of her bodily autonomy by Miranda still infuriated the Spectre.

"That's right. We thought that if your gift was genetic, you might be able to pass it along to your offspring. Anyway, for obvious reasons, it would have been better if you came back yourself, but if that failed, another alternative we considered was cloning and training a new Shepard. Whatever the Reapers feared about you, it might transfer to her. On the other hand, it might not, which is why when you were brought back to life, the project was supposed to have been shut down as redundant. It's why I never mentioned it to the Alliance."

Shepard slammed her palm down on the table, making Miranda jump slightly. "Well, you were wrong. And now that thing is out there wrecking havoc and I have to find her as soon as possible."

Miranda took a deep breath. "I may be able to help with that. But I need something from you in return."

"You want something?", Shepard snarled. "You agreed to tell the Alliance everything you knew in exchange for your sister's life. I sent you the proof that she's safe. You don't have the right to make any more demands."

"I know." Unexpectedly, Miranda's shoulders fell and Shepard could see a pain behind her cool veneer. "But I'm going to ask anyway. I want in on this. I'll help you find your clone, but in exchange, I want to help you bring down Cerberus."

Shepard's green eyes widened incredulously. "Are you serious? You worked for them, killed for them. Why should I believe you won't just shoot me in the back to earn their forgiveness?"

Miranda sighed and her fatigue seemed to deepen. "Because I made a mistake." For months, her captors had been showing her reports about the evils that Cerberus had been committing. At first, she had wanted to think it was merely Alliance propaganda, but over time, the evidence had become undeniable. The organization that she had devoted much of her adult life to was out of control. "Cerberus has to be stopped. They're undermining the war effort against the Reapers and killing innocent people for no good reason. What kind of a woman do you think I am that I could support that?"

"What kind of a woman are you? I don't know, maybe the kind who operates on people without their permission, tries to drive them crazy, and then, when that doesn't work, kidnaps their girlfriends so that they can control them."

The operative laughed bitterly. "You know, Shepard, for a long time, I didn't understand you. I saw the womanizing in your file and I thought that if I just shook some attractive ass in front of you, you'd do whatever I wanted. But I was wrong. You're a hero. You want to do the right thing and do it for the right reasons. It's an admirable trait I suppose, but I think it explains why you don't understand me either. You believe that only monsters and lunatics do bad things, but sometimes, you have to make the tough call, not with a gun to your head and the Reapers five minutes away, but far in advance, to make sure that it never comes to that. Some of what I did may have been cruel, but I was doing it for the greater good."

Shepard's reply was harsh. "How'd that work out?"

"Not well," Miranda admitted. "I've made terrible mistakes. But I always did care about helping humanity and that's not what Cerberus is doing any more. So I'm asking for a chance to make amends for what I did, to achieve some good instead of rotting away on this ship while the fate of my species hangs in the balance."

Shepard took a deep breath. The thought of having Miranda back on board the Normandy didn't exactly make her happy, but it was hardly the first unpleasant thing she'd had to do to win this war, and she knew it wouldn't be the last either.

Ashley had been out of the med-bay for two days now, two days that Sam had spent trying to avoid the Spectre. What could she have been thinking, putting the moves on a woman who'd just been stabbed in the chest? "Bad little lesbian," she kept telling herself, while not finding the nerve to tell Ashley anything at all.

Now, though, she had just lost her little game of hide-and-seek. Shepard had given the crew some shore leave on Triton Station while she was meeting with Miranda and Ashley had used hers to track the specialist down to the Alliance bar she'd been hiding out in.

The specialist started to get up from the table where she'd been nursing a beer alone but Ashley stopped her. "Wait, Sam. We need to talk."

Sam swallowed hard and sat back down. "Um, okay. What about, Ma'am?"

"Ma'am?" Ashley looked a little wounded at being addressed in such a formal way. "I thought I told you to call me Ash some time after Tuchanka."

"Yeah, you did. Sorry, Ash. Just nervous I guess."

"No worries. Anyway, I thought we should deal with what happened the other day."

Sam hoped she wasn't sweating too hard. "I figured that. Look, I'm really sorry. I don't know what I was doing."

Ashley shrugged. "Well, that makes two of us." Sam looked frightened and Ashley laughed. "No, I don't mean I don't know what you're doing. You're interested in me. I figured that out a while ago. I mean I don't know what I'm doing."

The specialist tried not to sound too relieved that she hadn't revealed her secret in the most embarrassing way she could think of short of getting caught touching herself moaning Ashley's name. "Oh. Well, now I don't know what you mean."

The Spectre laughed and Sam relaxed a little bit more. "I mean, I've never been into women. I don't have anything against people who are, but it just wasn't my thing. Or so I thought." She waited for a second before she continued, considering her words carefully. "I like you, Sam, and for a long time, I wasn't really sure what to do with that. I mean, you're a girl, I'm your superior officer, but you know what? I almost died and the world may be about to end, so carpe diem. What do you say we have another drink and figure things out from there."

Sam's emotions had soared and crashed so many times over the previous few seconds that she wasn't quite sure how to reply. Still, somewhere in whatever babble came out of her mouth, she was pretty sure she managed to get in a "yes."

So, I'm curious what people think about Miranda coming back on board and I hope you're enjoy Sam and Ash's awkward little dance. Thanks to everyone reading, faving, and reviewing, and there's plenty more violence, smut, and awkwardness to come.