Sins of the Father, Sins of the Flesh

In the armory, Jacob, far from stupid, thought again about Miranda’s remark, how he worked best when he didn’t have to think too much. It stung. He knew he wasn’t stupid…though it was hard not to feel that way sometimes, when he considered the company in which he found himself.

So he re-read the dossier in his careful, thorough way, considered the discussion so far, and turned to his guns. He knew his limitations; knew that the deductions, the leaps of logic of which some of the others were capable were beyond him. Best to turn to the work he did best, then; no matter what, they’d need their guns, when the connections were made and the planning was done.

He picked up the Commander’s pistol first. She favored her Carnifex over almost any other weapon. He didn’t quite understand it—give him a solid assault rifle any day—but sometimes you just fell in love with a gun, and you couldn’t really explain it any more than you could explain how you fell in love with a person.

Shepard kept it in good repair, but she’d be the first one to admit she was hard on her weapons. So she left the precision work and delicate adjustments to Jacob. When she’d handed it over to him yesterday, she’d smiled and said “You’re the man with the hands, Taylor—take good care of her for me.” The memory felt like a flicker of warmth in his chest.

He hefted it, turning it over, checking the balance, checking the sight. He set it down and deftly disassembled it. He rarely looked down as he worked; this task took very little conscious thought, and he stared at the stars while his hands seemed to move of their own accord. The feel of the gun beneath his fingers, slick and smooth; the warm smell of gun oil and the cool whisper of air from the Normandy’s vents; all these things he registered subconsciously, and found himself soothed, the flicker of warmth in his chest spreading. His breath slowed; his pulse rate dropped. Had Samara been watching, she would have known exactly what was happening; it was the same thing that happened while she sat, cross-legged, holding the energy of the universe between her hands.

Samara, however, had honed her meditative abilities over long centuries of practice. She could not be startled from them; rather, her consciousness simply rose as smoothly to the surface of her mind as a dolphin to the surface of the ocean. Jacob, having had rather less time, and having never really thought of it as meditation at all, could be. He didn’t hear the door hiss open; he didn’t hear the click of high heels crossing the floor. He did, however, react rather spectacularly when he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice say, “Jacob?”

His consciousness returned in a manner rather like that of a crashing spacecraft re-entering atmosphere. He yelped and jerked, spilling a bottle of gun oil over the table. As he turned around, his left hand knocked a sonic screwdriver off the table. It hit his foot hard, making Jacob curse, jump, and lose his balance. He tried to grab the edge of the table, but the liberal coating of gun oil made that a very bad idea and he ended up flat on his back on the floor. His foot hurt, his head hurt, and to top it all off, he found himself looking up at Miranda.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, closing his eyes tightly.

When he opened them, Miranda was still there.

She bent down beside him and gave him her hand; as she pulled him up, he was reminded again of just how terribly strong she was. “Are you all right?” she said.

He shrugged. “Nothing damaged but my pride.” He picked up the screwdriver and grabbed a rag to start cleaning up the oil. He hoped that Miranda would take the golden opportunity to leave while his back was to her, giving him the chance to die of embarrassment quietly and alone.

She did not. He could feel her close behind him. And when she started making little choking sounds, he turned to face her, alarmed.

The little choking sounds turned out to be Miranda biting her lip and trying to hold back laughter, which wasn’t really working for her, because she started giggling as soon as he turned around.

He stared at her, open-mouthed. Miranda giggling? That was like reaching down for your sidearm and finding a kitten in the holster instead. The look on his face set her off, turning her giggles into deep, full-throated laughter. She stumbled back and sat down on the table in the middle of the room, arms crossed over her stomach, bent double in hysterics.

When she raised her head again, he could see tears streaming from her eyes. As she wiped them off, she said, “Oh, God, I am so sorry…” and promptly got the giggles again, which triggered more tears, more wiping, and more attempted apologies. After six or seven repeats of the cycle, she finally wound down enough to speak coherently.

“I am sorry, Jacob. You’ve got to give me credit for at least trying not to laugh, though.”

He smiled. “Nothing to be sorry for. It was pretty funny. Guess if you’d been the one on the ground, I’d have done the same thing.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“On second thought, probably not,” he said. “Anyway, what did you want?”

She looked down at the floor. “I wanted to tell you that you were wrong.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Seriously, Miranda? I thought we already had this conversation. No, I know we already had this conversation, and it’s over. Thanks for stopping by to let me know how wrong I was again. Door’s that way.” He nodded curtly, turned his back to her, and started to clean the rest of the mess.

“I’m sorry, Jacob.”

She saw his back stiffen. “You’re what?” he said.

“I just…started all wrong, there. I’m sorry.”

He turned around. Hearing Miranda giggle was strange; hearing her apologize was even stranger. It made him nervous.

“What’s going on here, Miranda?”

“I had everything worked out in my head,” she said, quietly. “I had a plan. To talk to you, I mean. Then you…ah…fell down, and I started laughing like a lunatic, none of which was in the plan, of course, so when I started to say what I came to say, it came out…badly.”

Exasperated, Jacob threw the rag down. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Miranda. It’s late, I’m confused, I’m tired, my foot hurts, my head hurts, and my patience is shot. Say what you came to say or get the hell out.”

She glowered at him. “I’m no good at this, Jacob, and you know it! Dammit, give me some time, here!”

He shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you, Miranda. You insult me, you piss me off, you keep dancing around whatever point you came to make, and I’m the bad guy? It’s my fault you can’t say whatever it is you want to say? Jesus Christ, woman, what is wrong with you?”

Silence fell. He’d thrown the gauntlet down, crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. Her eyes grew wide, and he could almost see the anger radiating from her, like heat-shimmers from an open flame.

For the first time in a long time, Miranda Lawson had no idea what to do. She’d been thrown off-balance, found herself in unfamiliar territory. A voice in her head told her to run for what she knew, run to the place she found comfort: in her anger, in her pride. Explode, walk out, leave.

But a louder voice said that was the coward’s way, and for all Miranda’s faults, cowardice was not among them.

So she drew a deep breath and forced herself to stillness. “You said I’d never come to you,” she said. “But I did. I came here to the armory, to you. That’s what you were wrong about.”

He took a step forward. “Why did you come, Miranda? What do you want?” he said, anger fading, curiosity rising.

She turned her head to the side, avoiding his eyes, and answered his question with one of his own. “If I went missing, who’d look for me?”

Surprised by the sudden turn of conversation, he said, “I would.” After a pause, he said, “So would Shepard.”

“Of course she would,” said Miranda. “I’m one of her crew, after all. But it would be from duty, not from love.”

“What? You think she loves Garrus?” said Jacob, completely lost now.

“Of course,” said Miranda. “But that’s not the point. The point is that she searches for Garrus out of more than duty. Tali, Thane, even Jack…if one of them went missing, she’d go looking for them out of more than duty. She cares so deeply for all of them…all of you.”

“And you don’t think she cares about you? After what she did for you and Oriana?”

Miranda stayed silent for a moment. “I’d like very much to think so. I just…can’t quite believe she does. It’s been rather a long time since I’ve been able to believe someone could care for me without some ulterior motive.”

A brief, tired smile crossed her face. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to believe it.”

“Do you know what I’m afraid of, Jacob?” she said, changing the subject abruptly again.

“I never thought you’d be afraid of anything,” he said. “This is one of the craziest conversations I’ve ever had. Did I hit my head harder than I thought I did?”

“I’m afraid of storms,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “When I was a little girl and a storm came up at night, I’d run out of the house and onto the lawn, screaming at the sky that I wasn’t afraid of it, or the thunder, or the lightning. But I always broke before it did. I’d crawl back into bed and cry until I fell asleep, and wake up hoarse and ashamed. And the next time a storm came, I’d tell myself that this was the time I’d be able to outlast it, that I’d finally show it I wasn’t afraid at all. But it never happened that way.”

“My God, Miranda,” he said. “That’s…”

“Crazy?” she said, raising one eyebrow.

“No. It’s…terrible. Nobody ever noticed you were out in the middle of the night screaming your head off? Nobody ever asked why your voice sounded strange the next day?”

“No,” she said, that tired smile coming back. “Why would they? My father didn’t even sleep in the same wing of the house. My tutors came during the day. The only people there at night were the housekeeper and the servants. And my father forbade me from speaking to them. He felt it might foster attachment.”

He could only shake his head. “I don’t even know what to say, Miranda. My God.” He found himself utterly unable to reconcile the girl she’d told him about with the woman in front of him; he would sooner have been able to believe Shepard a slaver or Chakwas an assassin than Miranda a frightened child.

She took three steps toward him, her whole body tense. “There’s a storm coming, Jacob. You were wrong when you said I’d never come to you. You were right when you said I…needed someone.”

As carefully as if she were a Dresden doll, he put his arms around her. She lowered her head to rest on his shoulder; her hands were by her sides, clenched into fists. Holding her was like holding a bundle of live wires; he could feel her, tense and trembling.

He found he could see her as a frightened child, after all—in his mind’s eye, he saw her, a slight, pale figure in a white nightgown, dark hair whipping in the wind, running from a great lightless house to stand in the middle of the storm, drenched to the bone, howling defiance; a little girl given everything she wanted and almost nothing she needed, trying desperately to win a fight with an enemy that couldn’t be beaten.

He held her as tightly as he dared, and when she pulled away, he was not surprised to see her eyes were dry and her face composed as always.

“I’ll be going now,” she said. Then she paused. “Would you come with me?”

It was late. He was tired. He was confused. His head hurt. His heart hurt. But he nodded assent.

She needed him. Nothing else mattered.