Miranda had been captured only once in her twenty years with Cerberus. She had gotten reckless when dealing with a gang of asari and turian pirates who had stolen Prothean technology the Illusive Man wanted for himself. The pirates had taken one look at her and decided she would fetch a fair price at the flesh markets of Omega. Escaping had been a relatively trivial matter—being willing to kill the entire crew if necessary had expanded her options marvelously. But being captured by C-Sec? That complicated things.

She paced the length of her cell. It was spare, little more than a hard bed, a metal desk, and a toilet, but it was clean. That made it better than most the places she had slept in the last six months. Some of the officers had shot her amazed or murderous looks as they passed by, but none of them had so much is spoken to her, let alone try to murder what most of them would have seen as humanity's greatest traitor. The food was bad, but no worse than what Gardner had served before Shepard had found him some decent ingredients.

Gardner. One of the reasons she had to get out of here. She'd known there would be repercussions to refusing the Illusive Man's improvements and helping Chambers and a few other members of her former crew leave Cerberus. The assassination attempts weren't even a surprise, really. The Illusive Man didn't brook doubt, dissension, or defection. That Rupert Gardner had been one of those assassins had shocked her. She had hadn't even known the man knew how to use a gun. But this hadn't been the Gardner she had known. His eyes had been the cold unnatural blue of a husk, and he had moved with grace and speed equal to Miranda's, and there had been enough power behind his blows to give even Zaeed pause. Only her barriers had saved her, and he'd still managed to graze her with a knife before she got away.

After that, it hadn't been enough just to avoid Cerberus. She had to find out what is truly become of them. Bit by bit details begin to emerge: scientists—some who had been loyal operatives for almost as long as Miranda herself—disappearing without a trace. Cerberus had always had small squads of well-trained commandos, but there were whispers of an army. Lazarus and the SR-2 had nearly bankrupted them, but now their resources had seemed infinite. And then she had found the datapad.

Her contact had told her only that Cerberus was studying Reaper technology at a base on Sanctum. What she has found were dozens of soldiers, some barely out of their teens, in the same state as Gardner along with a half dozen scientists. And the logs:

I believe I can repurpose Operative Lawson's designs for a control chip and combine it with the Grayson experiments… subjects will be loyal but not suffer the degradation found with standard indoctrination…also replacing several organs with cybernetics along the lines of Project Lazarus to increase efficiency and speed the integration process…L calls me a fool, says he would have fewer casualties…works best in humans between the ages of sixteen and forty-five.

They had taken her work and perverted it. The control chip had been a failsafe in case Shepard had come back as a raging beast or decided Akuze and Kahoku mattered more to her than tens of thousands of faceless colonists. But indoctrination was the most terrible, insidious weapon of the enemy she had fought for the last three years. It was a slow death of everything that made you what you were. Using that to create loyal troops was the sort of thing her father would have done. She had believed Teltin and Overlord to be outliers, but this was beyond anything Archer would have dreamed of doing. The Illusive Man had either lost his mind, somehow fallen under the influence of the Reapers within the last six months, or… Miranda swallowed. Or Cerberus had always been like this and she had just been too blind to see. How many other cherished projects that she had intended to advance humanity and its place in the galaxy had been twisted into instruments of oppression and needless cruelty? She had shrugged off calls that she was a terrorist and a monster. Someone had to work in the shadows and do what the Alliance could not. Humanity could learn much from the other races, but it had to be able to stand on its own world would end up like the volus and elcor, begging for whatever scraps the Council deigned to give them. Of course the Council would hate any organization that could threaten their cultural and political hegemony. Lies and propaganda were par for the course. Miranda had not joined Cerberus for glory. She had wanted neither more nor less than the defense and preservation of humanity.

And now Cerberus had betrayed humanity. They would have to be dealt with as all traitors to humanity were dealt with. As Miranda had dealt with Wilson. They had taken her desire for a cause and used her own blindness to further their ends. The Illusive Man had told her that she could use her talents for more than feeding her father's ego. So she would. She would use them to destroy the very organization she had helped build. As soon as she found a way out of here.

C-Sec was filled with hotheaded twits that made Garrus look reasonable, but they would still be the first line of defense when the Reapers inevitably attacked the station. Anyone she killed or injured in her escape were soldiers who wouldn't be able to fight that battle. They were obstacles, not the enemy. A brute force approach would be disastrous. What resources did she have? There were still a few trusted contacts that she might be able to bribe, threaten, or cajole into giving her transport off the station once she escaped. There was the omni-tool implanted into her very bone. There was her knowledge of Cerberus and the experiments they were performing that would make a valuable bargaining chip if Bailey or someone who was actually important visited her as she had requested. And, if it came to that, there was her looks. One or two of the guards had looked at her like she was a steak dinner. Lust made people terribly stupid.

"Visitor." The force field deactivated and a pair of conspicuously armed officers entered. Miranda submitted to their examination of her cell and her person with as much grace as she could muster. Bailey at last, thank God. If she were fortunate, she would be out of here and back to making sure Cerberus didn't get even more of the Reapers' work within the day.

But it wasn't Bailey who walked through the door. It was Shepard. The past six months had not been kind to her. She looked as if she hadn't slept in a week or eaten in two. She no longer wore the subtle blush or lip gloss that Miranda had become so accustomed to during their fight against the Collectors. She was, however, wearing her dress blues; and those were immaculate, of course. That made Miranda smile despite herself. Shepard had hated every moment of working for Cerberus, but she had insisted on wearing what passed for formal officer's dress at all times while on duty. Every polished button and straightened collar had been a salvo in a war against a universe that no longer made sense. Clearly, the universe still made no more sense to Shepard than it did to Miranda these days.

"Thank you," Shepard said with a cheerful smile. "You two can go. I can handle it from here."

"But Commander—"

"I can handle it." The smile remained, but there was steel lurking just below the surface now. Miranda knew that tone well. Friendly, warm even, but scratch away the pleasant veneer and you would find the woman who had survived a thresher maw attack by sheer force of will, sacrificed over two thousand human lives to save the Destiny Ascension, and destroyed an entire star system.

The two officers had more brain cells than Miranda had given them credit for because they turned on their heels and left.

Shepard let the silence linger, either out of a genuine loss for words or a desire to make Miranda sweat. Either was possible. They hadn't been friends. Shepard had believed too much in the Alliance and Miranda had believed too much in Cerberus. Though Shepard deciding to awake the big, angry krogan without telling her hadn't exactly helped matters on that score either. The one inexplicable moment of grace had been her encouraging Miranda to talk to her sister. But there had been no mutual defrosting, no discovery that had made them the best of friends. Shepard had handed Cerberus the base with many threats about what she would do with the Illusive Man if he so much as thought about misusing it. Miranda had accepted her assignment to another cell, and that was the last she ever expected to see of the woman she had spent two years rebuilding.

Shepard shook her head. "This was not how I expected to see you again, Lawson."

"I got careless. Wasn't expecting my omni-tool to set off the scanners."

"Ah." Shepard's gaze cast around the room nervously. She didn't look like the best hope for the galaxy. She looked like a fish flopping around on dry land. "Is Oriana okay?"

"She was the last time we spoke. As far as I can tell, Father had stopped all attempts to locate her." Which worried her more than it should have. Henry Lawson never gave up, and Oriana no longer had Cerberus to protect her. Perhaps he was simply focusing on survival for the time being, but his inaction made Miranda uneasy. "But you didn't come here to ask after my family."

"No, I didn't." Her entire face changed. Nervousness melted away to reveal the quiet anxiety of a woman accustomed to having the fate of the galaxy on her shoulders. "I saw the bugs on the wall and ceiling. Any others?"

So it hadn't been just nervousness that made her refuse to meet Miranda's eyes. "Under the desk. Audio only."

Shepard marched over and removed it with a quick, efficient movement. "Sometimes I love being a Spectre." She sat down in the metal chair, angling it to face Miranda. "I…God this is hard… I had this whole speech prepared."

"Shepard?"

She took a deep breath. "I'm fine. No, that's a lie. If I were fine, I'd be out there kicking Reaper ass." Her gaze dropped to the floor. "After you left the Normandy, Hackett contacted me asking to rescue an old friend of his who had been studying Reaper technology. Big surprise. That technology indoctrinated them."

"I do manage to watch the news," Miranda said dryly.

"But what the vids won't tell you is that I was their 'guest' for two days. Kenson wanted me patched up for God-knows-what reason. Whatever they did gave me a hell of a headache, but it made my biotics more powerful. When I got back to the Alliance, the docs pronounced me as healthy as a horse. And I was more or less okay for a while. But ever since the Reapers showed up, the headaches have been getting worse. I haven't been sleeping. My biotics are even more powerful, but I feel like death after every battle. And so I need to know…" She looked up then, and her eyes were fever bright. "I need to know if that Reaper tech you stuck into me to make Lazarus work could be indoctrinating me."

"No!" Miranda said quickly.

Shepard managed a half-smile. "You sound really sure of yourself, Lawson. You sure that's smart considering Cerberus' track record with Reaper tech? Hell, everybody's track record with Reaper tech?"

Pride flowed through Miranda like rushing water, scraping away defeats and misjudgments. "Unlike those idiots at the derelict Reaper, I'm a competent scientist. I double and triple checked those implants before I even thought about putting them into your nervous system. Those implants won't indoctrinate you any more than a Thanix cannon would. And have you ever known indoctrination to increase biotic ability?"

Shepard shook her head. "But the docs cleared me for duty. And I can't go back for anything other than the usual after-battle patch job." Her voice turned bitter. "Can you imagine what would happen if word got out that Commander fucking Shepard, professional Reaper killer and the last, best hope of humanity said she was indoctrinated, crazy, or whatever the hell it is that's wrong with me? People need hope right now. They need the legend who was so badass that she refused to die, not the woman being held together by cybernetics."

"You aren't indoctrinated," Miranda repeated. "And those doctors don't know anything about your implants. Fortunately for you, I do. There are tests I can run, but I can't do them while I'm stuck here."

"And fortunately for you, I'm a Spectre." She took out a datapad and lightpen. "I asked that you be transferred into my custody indefinitely, and frankly, right now Bailey will do the polka if I ask him to. You can do whatever the hell you want after. I just need to know that I can still fight this war. Sign here."

Well, that was one way to escape.

The med center in Tayseri Ward was slightly run down, the off-white walls a sharp contrast to the gleaming chrome of the Presidium and the filth of the refugee camps. Tayseri was still recovering from the last war, and there were signs of reconstruction everywhere: metal framework hastily patched over, a tile not quite the same color as the rest of the floor. And if the geth and one Reaper could do damage that was still being fixed three years later, what hope did they have against an entire fleet?

The lab was deserted. Rachel had decided she didn't want to know how Miranda had managed that. What looked like an oversized sleeping pod with lots of flashing lights on the front stood in the center of the room. A quantum imaging device, Miranda had called it. To Rachel, it was mostly a very strange looking brain scanner. The cold air bit through her hospital gown.

Miranda walked in. She was thinner than she had been as Rachel's executive officer, and her hair was a ragged mess. She wore no lab coat, but her movements were as brisk and her mien as professional as the doctors who spent their days rushing from patient to patient at Huerta Memorial. Garrus and Joker had called Miranda an ice queen when they thought she wasn't listening. And she could be cold, prickly, and ruthless enough to leave the crew to die to increase the chances that the ground team made it to the heart of the Collector base. It had made her almost impossible to like. But that cold efficiency had its strength now. Here was someone who knew what they were doing. It was safe to stop being Commander Shepard and start being Rachel. Miranda would solve this problem the way she solved the problem of refueling permits or docking fees, and they would both go about their business.

She looked Rachel up and down, and Rachel could almost feel the thin gown burning away under her gaze. It wasn't lust. Rachel would have known what to do with lust: roll her eyes. But no, this was unfamiliar: the possessive, searching calculating gaze of someone who knew her body better than she did. Was this how Frankenstein had looked at his creation? No wonder the creature had gone crazy and tried to kill everyone in sight. Rachel shifted from foot to foot. A joke. Jokes were nice and safe. Break the tension. "How come I'm always the one who's wearing next to nothing? Have to get you in one of these things just for a change of pace. Not fair that I haven't seen you naked."

"If it's any comfort, you make a dreadful corpse." One side of her mouth curved upward. "I much prefer how you look now. If you could step inside." She pressed a button, and the container opened. "And try not to fidget."

The inside was cramped, like a coffin. A glass pane permitted her to see out, but Rachel kept her eyes screwed shut. Miranda's voice was muffled as if it were coming from underwater. Knowing Miranda, it was probably a bunch of variations on "Stop fidgeting, Shepard!" A low buzz filled her ears, and there was nothing to do but think.

Miranda was so sure that it wasn't indoctrination. And, to be sure, there were no strange voices in her head, no feeling of being watched. There were whispers, but only the anguished cries of those she could not save. But the pain scraped against her head like a dull knife. Maybe it was a brain tumor. That was what had killed Dad. But why wouldn't it have shown up during the routine physical? Healthy people her age didn't get brain tumors. Right?

The buzzing died away, and the door opened. "All done. I should have the results for you in a few hours." Miranda peered at her. "And, for God's sake, try to relax. I don't have the resources to run another Lazarus Project if you give yourself a heart attack from stress, and humanity needs you right now."

No, humanity needed Commander Shepard, but Rachel was the only one they had ever found to play the part. "Don't worry, Lawson. I'll keep myself out of trouble." In a few hours, she would know. Maybe she was doomed to an early death like her father. But the entire galaxy was doomed to extinction if the reapers weren't defeated. She wouldn't spend time worrying herself to death.

Miranda's hand brushed lightly over her forearm. Without gloves, her fingers were surprisingly warm. And soft. Not at all like Rachel's. Rachel's hands were hard with calluses from years of service to the Alliance. Heh. Funny to think of anything about Miranda being soft.

The heat vanished all too quickly. "I'll let you get dressed." Miranda vanished as swiftly and silently as smoke. Rachel started to call after her, but closed her mouth. What would she say?

She dressed quickly, girding herself in the armor of her dress blues. Anxiety receded back into the wrought-iron box where she kept all the other emotions she had no time for. Jondum Bau was waiting. There would be time enough for fear later. And for the feel of a warm hand on her.

This is part game novelization, part fix fic, and part dealing with my newfound adoration of FShep/Miranda and female Shepard generally. It goes without saying that this is AU, and not just in the obvious way.