Making A Mistake
Walking In Her Shoes
After several minutes of working out the details of the plan with Miranda, Kasumi went down the elevator to the bottom of the ship and ran down the flight of stairs that led into the lower reaches of engineering. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
Jack was stretched out on her cot, and she sat up to blink blearily at her unwanted visitor. "What's got you all worked up?"
"It's Miranda, she's gone crazy!" Being a good actress was a helpful skill as a thief, and Kasumi was playing her part to the hilt tonight. "She's in the hangar and she's got a gun to her head!"
"Really? Make sure to get a vid if she blows her brains out," Jack said, although her acting skills weren't nearly as good. "What happened? She fucked her way through the whole crew and got nothing left to live for?"
Kasumi shook her head. "She was saying something about how she was tired of being controlled or something. That she was going to finally be free, but not before she told the truth about what was happening."
Jack rose to her feet. "The truth?"
"Said she remembered something that made everything clear. That she'd called Shepard to meet her there so she could hear the truth before she ended it all. Shepard might not make it in time, though, the state Miranda's in. You're the only other person around who might be able to stop her!"
Jack dismissively waved Kasumi away. "Fuck off, I don't give a shit if the cheerleader shoots herself a hundred times."
"Please, Jack, I can't..."
"Get... the fuck... out of here!" Jack snarled at Kasumi. Putting on an air of resignation, Kasumi turned to the steps and dashed up. As she hit the top of the stairs, she triggered the door to the hallway but stayed inside, engaging her cloak and waiting. Sure enough, seconds later Jack came dashing up the stairs, heading for the elevator. Kasumi followed her inside and watched her pace and curse as she waited to reach the fifth floor.
As soon as the doors started to slide open, Jack sprinted out into the hallway. Kasumi waited inside as the doors shut. She had told Miranda that she had her back in this, but Miranda insisted that she wanted to deal with Jack alone. While Kasumi could have easily reneged on her promise and followed Jack out with her cloak, she remembered what it had felt like to see Donovan Hock's face as his ship went down in flames. Who was she to deny Miranda her own chance at revenge?
Heading back to her quarters, Kasumi sat on her couch and waited for word from Miranda, who'd told her she'd call once it was done. Even now, she knew it would be one of the longest waits of her life.
* * *
Miranda watched as Jack dashed across the hangar bay in panic. "Miranda!" she called out. "Miranda, where the fuck are you?"
"I'm here, Jack," Miranda said, raising the pistol in her hand to aim at Jack's back. "Make one wrong move and I'll kill you where you fucking stand."
"So," Jack asked without turning around. "Guess Shepard isn't coming after all, then?" No hint of fear in her voice, though, just the usual tone of wry amusement. "That fucking Jap bitch..."
"Kasumi isn't involved. This is just between you and me." Miranda said, voice filled with steel. "Turn around, I want to see your fucking face when I kill you."
Jack turned to face Miranda and, despite the gun in her face, laughed out loud. Attempting to regain some of her dignity for this confrontation, Miranda had tried to squeeze herself into one of her old Cerberus uniforms. With her recent enhancements, however, she'd been forced to leave her jumpsuit half-unzipped, and her heaving tits were nearly spilling out of her outfit. It ruined the intimidation factor a little, Miranda knew, but Jack wouldn't live to tell anybody about it, anyway.
"You're not going to kill me, cheerleader," Jack said with a confident grin.
"And why shouldn't I?" Miranda yelled. "You fucked with my mind and body and turned me into your plaything! All those things you forced me to do..."
"Sucks, doesn't it?" Jack said. "Not having control of your own life, being somebody else's slave." She ran a hand across her arm, feeling the scars etched across her flesh. "Maybe now you've had a taste of what my life has been like thanks to your buddies in Cerberus."
Miranda barked out a harsh laugh. "So that's what this has all been about? Your petty attempt at revenge? I told you, I didn't have a goddamned thing to do with what happened to you."
"Right, right, I was a 'mistake,' as you put it," Jack filled the word with bitterness. "I never forgot you saying that, by the way. Having my entire life called a mistake by a perfect little bitch who'd never had a single setback in her entire fucking life."
"I didn't mean..." Miranda started to say, before gritting her teeth and gripping the pistol tighter. "Why the fuck am I explaining myself to you? Especially since you'll be a fucking corpse in a few seconds."
Jack shrugged. "Beats me. Before you take me out, though, just wanted to ask you one more question."
"Do whatever the fuck you want."
"Be honest with me, now... you enjoyed it, didn't you?"
The words caught in Miranda's throat. She'd wanted to shout out her denial, but the best she could manage is, "Only because you made me."
"So what? Fun is fun, it doesn't matter if it was your decision or not. And I sure as fuck never told you to fuck as many people as possible, that was all you. All I did was make you horny as hell and opened you up to all the options; you could have easily just kept banging Jacob or picked somebody else to be your monogamous fuck-buddy. Maybe I had to drag you to the amusement park, princess, but you were the one who wanted to go on all the rides once you got there."
Jack crossed her arms as she said. "Let me ask you this: ever since you put that gun to me, you haven't once asked me to undo the hypnotism. Now why is that?"
Miranda scoffed. "Like you would do it, anyway."
Another shrug from Jack. "Revert," she said.
A wave of agony passed through Miranda's body, and it was all she could do to keep the gun leveled on Jack as the pain flared and, just as quickly as it had come, receded.
"What the fuck did you just do?" Miranda cried out.
"I proved you wrong, princess," Jack said, "I took it all away."
Even as Jack said it, Miranda noticed that the almost constant tingling that had been coming from her hips was gone. She felt strange, like something had been extracted from her forcefully. "Everything?" she said, trying to keep the sudden nervous quiver out of her voice.
"The horniness, the swearing, the stripperiffic clothes, all the changes I made are gone," Jack said. "Gone, along with the self-confidence and the freedom to do whatever the fuck you wanted. You're back to who you were before I laid a finger on the device in my pocket here."
Jack took a step forward, ignoring the gun that was still pointing in her face, "And now, my sweet little bitch, you're going to beg me to let you have it back."
Miranda shook her head. "No... no, why would I?" she said without much confidence. Everything felt so wrong about this. She should have been happy that Jack's influence was gone, but the knot in her stomach was wringing itself tighter.
"You're missing it already, aren't you? Remember that first time you came in the shower? It's amazing how much of what your body does is controlled by the mind. When I'd planted the suggestion that would make every orgasm you had be better than the last, I wasn't really sure it was gonna work, but damned if you didn't near pass out on the bathroom floor that day. I want you to remember that day, princess, because unless I say the word, you're never going to cum that hard again."
"It's just..." Miranda said, "it's nothing more than a chemical reaction. I can learn to live without it." She wanted to believe it. Had to believe it. She couldn't really be considering giving in. "I don't need you or your twisted idea of a gift."
Jack gave her a doubtful look. "Who knows, maybe you're right. If you're so sure, than pull that trigger and we'll find out. But know that with me dies your one chance to feel even half as good as you have over the last few months. See, there's one more hypnotic suggestion I planted in your head the last time I had you under. A single word that, if I speak it, will reactivate all of the other triggers in your mind. You'll go back to the way things were, but with one difference this time."
"What?" Miranda asked, trying and failing to keep the desire out of her voice. She wanted it back. God help her, she wanted it back so bad. The aching need was tearing her apart inside, clouding her rational mind and making her feel like she would go insane.
"This time, princess, I'll be there with you. We'll fuck our way through the rest of the Normandy and after that... who the fuck knows? You and me together, princess, we'll be unstoppable."
"Together?" Miranda said, the gun in her hand feeling more and more pointless as the seconds ticked on.
"I always wanted you," Jack said, her smile suddenly fading. "From the first moment I met you, even as I hated your guts, I wanted to fuck you, too. But when you called me a 'mistake,' I knew I could never have you. Not until you'd seen things from my perspective, until you'd lived life as a 'mistake' like me."
Something clicked in Miranda's mind, and suddenly it all made sense. The tattoos covering her body, the revealing clothing, the foul language. She remembered something Kelly had mentioned once, about how Jack was the type to treat sex casually, as little more than a game.
"You turned me... into you!" Miranda exclaimed.
"And you loved every fucking minute of it," Jack said. "Just say the word, princess, and you can have it all back again. You and me together, we'll show this galaxy just who the fuck they're messing with."
Every part of her conscious mind, her newly restored mind, wanted to tell her no. She wasn't some immoral sociopath like Jack. She was Miranda Lawson. She was herself again, and the idea of allowing Jack's mind games to take effect again seemed insane.
But Jack was right. She had enjoyed it. No... she had loved it. Loved every second of fucking, every amazing orgasm, every new conquest that warmed her bed. Enjoyed the freedom she felt not caring about what other people thought of her, feeling like she had the power to do whatever she wanted. So what if they weren't her own desires to begin with? She had made them hers, and the time she had spent indulging them was nothing short of heaven. Why should she go back to her boring, humdrum life? Why couldn't she live life like she had been before? Live life like Jack did?
"No," the last shreds of her resistance called out in her mind, "this is what Jack wants, not you." She summoned up images of Commander Shepard, her resolve and willpower, trying to follow her example but finding herself feeling pathetic in comparison.
She thought of Oriana, and what her sister would think if she'd seen Miranda acting like she had over the past few weeks. Saw the tattooed slut with overinflated tits sandwiched between two men with their cocks inside her, while she drove her tongue down into another woman's snatch. But remembering how good it had all felt, how *right* it had all felt, even her sister didn't seem to matter as much anymore.
"No, you're better than this," a rapidly fading voice was saying in her mind. "You're Miranda Lawson, and you're more than just your body and its urges. You don't want this. You don't want this. You don't..."
Brushing the pistol aside, Jack moved in close to Miranda. "So... what's it going to be, Miranda? What do you want to do?"
The weapon clattered to the floor as Miranda wrapped her arms around Jack and roughly kissed her. Their tongues fought against each other, while Miranda's nails raked across Jack's back. Pulling away, Miranda said the words that Jack was waiting for.
"I want to be a mistake."
Jack smiled, rested her hand against Miranda's cheek, and said the last trigger word left in the recesses of Miranda's subconscious.
"Victory."