"You look like hell," comes the voice of the other man who makes me feel like a child. His eyes take in the awful sight of me, roaming over my swollen face and blood-stained clothes; the smell of alcohol emanating off me reaches him and it sets him off.

"I don't even know what to say to you," he spits at me.

"Nice to see you too, Dad," I respond, a bit timidly.

"Stow it, Miranda," he chides, but his look alone is enough to silence me.

He starts to pace, rolling grandad's pipe around in his hands, and says nothing for seven seconds.

"I came here to congratulate you," he begins slowly; controlled. I can see his temple throbbing as he clenches his jaw. "But instead I'm cleaning up your mess."

My voice is back now, along with my anger. "I didn't ask you to clean it up." I don't need his damn help.

His voice is low and dangerous. "When I hear that seven officers were involved in a bar fight on Reach, I don't want to wonder if my daughter is the one who started it!"

Beneath my anger, I'm scared; I've never seen him this mad.

"And what?" my father continues, "Because he said something to hurt your feelings?"

The scorn and mocking that lace my father's words make me feel as pathetic and worthless as any drill sargent or Admiral ever could.

He scratched at the greying stubble on his head. "Damn it, Miranda, you need to stop doing this!" he yelled. "It's never going to stop the whispers."

His blue eyes go over my wounds again, from the gash on my eyebrow to the seven-shaped cut on my cheek.

"At least I don't have to slap some sense into you," he says, but the derisive tone of his voice is enough to have the same effect and I dropped my eyes to the floor.

"What the hell were you thinking? This nearly got you demoted. You're extremely lucky you know that? That you have loyal men who stick up for you, a good CO who-"

"Who probably picked me to be on this ship because of you!"

"Me?" Only he could state a question instead of ask it, and everything finally catches up to me. The months spent alone in the school dormitories when he was deployed, the lack of a mother's love, the lack of my father's love, the whispers of nepotism at every corner. Everything.

"Yes!" I finally admit, and everything floods outs; my words, my anger, my tears. "You. It's always been about you. I can't earn a pat on the back without a comment that it's given to me because of you. I deal with it, like a good soldier, a good daughter. But I'm sick of it," I spit, pausing to catch my breath.

In the silence, my father says nothing.

"Why did you come here?" The question is choked out amidst my sobs.

He blinked at me, the only sign of movement on his chiseled features. "You know the reason, Miranda."

"To lecture me about my actions?"

Commander Jacob Keyes, CO of the Lafayette, inclined his head to deem my answer.

"No," I correct him, angrily, for the audacity of his hollow and detached response,"To lecture me about my actions because it makes you look bad!"

I can't stand to look at his hardened face, which remains unfaltered to my emotional rant.

No more tears, just a weary sigh.

"I'm tired of drowing in your shadow, Dad, especially when you hold my head down."

"So why did you join the Navy then?"

His apathetic words sting more than the antiseptic in my wounds, cut deeper than shatttered glass, and pulse harder than Lucas's punches.

I'm not even going to say anything, because I can't. The shock that I was right in believing my father to be the cold-hearted bastard I once though him to be is too overwhelming. Should I have listened to my mother's letters and not enlisted? And yet, she had left me in his care.

My body moves closer to the door one step at a time, and also farther away from him as well. It can't come fast enough. I've had years of his emotionless bullshit hastening my retreat, but in turn, years of silent pining, childish dreams of garnering his attention and love, hold me back.

Suddenly it's not my dreams holding me back, it's his hand, about-facing my retreat straight into into his arms.

I want to push him away, my mind screaming at myself to stay detached from this statue of discipline and protocol, but, Little Rand wants to stay in Daddy's arms, to be pressed closer to his heart than the medals on his chest.

"Miranda," he croaks into my hair, his deadpan tenor breaking, "'I never told you it would be this hard."

Little Rand says, "It's okay Daddy, You don't have to cry," but I know that half the blame is mine. Can you blame a daughter for wanting to follow in the footsteps of a father she admires? Really, the only person she ever has or had to admire.

And that's why my cheeks aren't dry anymore, they're covered again by tears; tears as foreign to me as my father's embrace.

I finally pry myself away from him, to show him I'm still the strong Lieutenant he raised, but I can't stare up at his eyes for approval, only drop them to the new medals he's gained on his uniform.

Tears to match the stripes on his shoulder, and a bloodied seven to accent the Purple Heart.

We stand awkwardly in Commander Morgan's quarters now, embarassed by our display of emotions; his apology, my tears.

We have a lifetime of things to say and yet nothing to say. Our eyes dart back and forth the room to obscure things that catch our attention so that they don't have to meet.

"So, the Jumpers won."

Finally, I force my eyes to lock on his, just in time to see a chunk break off the Statue and reveal a stony smile.

"The Galaxies never stood a chance."