At the Edge of Heaven

“Almost there.” Miranda slumped back into her seat, stretching her arms above her head, and sighing. Two years of mind numbing work and constant, tedious anxiety left her drained. Still, stretching her aching muscles and grunting as several loud and coarse cracks snapped down her spine, she smiled. She had been given the impossible and she had soundly stomped that impossibility into the dirt. Granted, she was sore, she was tired, and she really needed a vacation... not that the last one was ever going to happen, but she had succeeded. He was still alive.

Yawning, Miranda wiped her hands across her face and leaned back over her desk, settling on crossed arms. She stared blankly at the monitor for a few moments, letting her mind flit about without any real purpose. The last two years, her sister, her father, Jacob, Cerberus… her life swirled inside her head, images and memories bobbing to the surface before quickly sinking. Brief smiles, fleeting anger, or bitter pangs of sorrow flashed at each memory. They lasted only a moment before vanishing with each memory. She could not sustain any of those emotions. She was numb, surprisingly empty. She shivered before quickly shaking her head at the thought. The whirlpool stilled and her mind calmed. Taking one deep breath, she turned back to the reports on her monitor and pushed the memories aside. She started to read again.

For long minutes she sat there, making small notes and corrections as she read. Data and observations from the last few months flashed before her calm gaze and her quick mind dissected and re-dissected every anomaly: spikes in temperature, small fluctuations in implants, the blaring explosion of instability when Shepard had briefly woken. As she read the various notes and read-outs of that final incident, she remembered. She saw his wild and confused eyes again and she froze, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.

His panicked gaze blazed in her memory and her eyes widened as the once clear observations and notes jumbled together in a mess of letters. She shook her head, trying to dispel the memory, and tried to read again. But the words blurred together with the memory of his raspy breath shuddering in the air between them and his hand twitching feebly. With a growl she shook her head again, blinked in exhaustion, rubbed her eyes, took one deep breath, and dove back into the final few reports one last time.

“Ash.” She heard his broken and hurt voice again after his one last desperate lunge to simply move his body. She closed her eyes tightly, shoving and kicking at the memory. She could not get it out of her head. It scared her. Why would her emotions roil with one simple moment? Again Shepard’s trembling body flashed in her mind, those damnable eyes gazing at her with such wonder before being smothered in agony and confusion. She felt the unfamiliar sting of tears burn her eyes and gasped. With a grunt of disgust she kicked away from the desk and shot to her feet.

“Stupid!” She grumbled. She paced back and forth as she closed her eyes and shoved at the memory and emotions with all her might. He was just her job. That was all. That was why she was so worried. “Pull it together, Miranda.”

She muttered to herself and plopped down on the nearby bunk. She had poured two years of her life into Shepard; of course she would get so stressed. It was that simple. She took several calming breaths as she slowly and rationally explained her own anxiety away. The memory faded slightly with each breath and soon her mind was calm and centred once more. It really was nothing more than that: two years spent hovering over his body and toiling to bring him back, to do the impossible.

She sighed again. She had taken a broken and burnt mass of flesh and made it whole, made it human. Bone after bone, muscle after muscle, and his smooth skin… she had rebuilt him. She smiled at the first moment when the mass of flesh finally transformed into the wonderful smooth curves of a human body. Despite the scars and army of implants, she had marvelled at the beauty of Shepard’s body as it slowly healed… his fair skin damp with sweat, his muscles twitching under the artificial stimulation, and the slow, methodical swelling of his stomach and chest with each breath. She remembered the velvety smoothness of his skin under her diligent fingers during the various tests, the hard lines of his chest, the rounded firmness of his calves, the soft plumpness of his lips…

Her face slackened in a blissful and tiny smirk as a new warmth swelled in her body as her fingers relived the sensations. She closed her eyes and inhaled, loosing herself in the memory. A light moan escaped her lips. Her eyes shot open with a strangled cry.

“What the hell was that?!” she panted heavily, her eyes wide as she stared dumbly at the floor. She had just lost herself in that memory. She had moaned. “O god. “ She groaned, rubbed her hands across her face, and shook her head in embarrassment and shame. First she couldn’t shake the memory and now she was moaning. Still shaking her head at girlish tangent and her apparent frustration, Miranda stood and stretched. The job had demanded and drained her more than she thought if she was moaning over that. She had moaned… she rolled her shoulders and chuckled, her cheeks blushing a slight pink before finally admitting “I desperately need a vacation.”