Eliza Shepard looked at herself in the mirror. All of her seemed to be there: green eyes, full eyebrows, a crooked nose Cerberus couldn’t bother fixing. Even that pock mark on her chin from basic training was still there. She touched it, smirking at the memory of another recruit ejecting a spent thermal clip right into her face; he’d looked like he was going to piss himself. The only thing that was different -- glaringly different -- was the tracery of scars glowing orange in the dim light.
They weren’t scars, Miranda just called them that; it sounded nicer than what they actually were: cracks where the skin graft hadn’t finished knitting itself together over the implants that now made up most of her face, most of her everything. Miranda said they had woken her up too early. She still wasn’t complete.
She dragged her fingers over the cracks, feeling the hard cybernetics that lurked just under her broken skin. Not for the first time since she’d woken up, an unnamed something settled in the pit of her stomach, like her whole body was trying to convince itself none of this was real.
“Enough of that,” Eliza muttered, hanging a towel over the mirror before she exited the head.
She didn’t want to look at her face, didn’t want to look at the orange glow spreading like fire across her cheek and down her neck. The Normandy had glowed that same angry orange as it exploded in the sky over Alchera. Remembering made Eliza’s chest tighten the way it had then, air leaking out of a rupture in her pressure suit, her lungs gasping for oxygen that wasn’t there. The unbearable heat of re-entry was the last thing she felt before it all went dark.
She was on her knees just outside of the head, not sure how she got there, her hands clawing at the back of her neck for a pressure suit’s valves but only feeling hard metal nodules under her skin. She slammed her fist into the deck, the pain sharpening her senses, and she felt embarrassed by the last however long she’d been wallowing. Commander Eliza Shepard did not wallow.
She pushed herself up off the floor, taking in the still-strange surroundings of Cerberus’ Normandy. The cabin was too spacious for her Alliance sensibilities, outfitted for civilian comfort instead of military focus. A work desk was tucked into an alcove by the head, surrounded by glass display cases. Glass that would shatter during combat, she thought. Short stairs led to a living area bigger than any apartment she’d ever had on Earth. There was a wraparound sofa and coffee table, another desk -- who the fuck has two desks? -- and a queen size bed.
She sat down on the bed, wrinkling her nose at how soft it was under her weight. She was accustomed to sleeping in craters, caves, crammed into the Mako, always in her armor. The last time she’d slept in a bed this soft was with Kaidan. Kaidan, pulling her away from spectre duties after the Battle of the Citadel, telling her she’d saved the galaxy, let other people pick up the pieces for a little while. Kaidan leading her to a hotel room in the undamaged part of the Presidium, their calloused fingers interlacing. Kaidan laying her down on the soft bed like she was something precious.
She shook that thought out of her head, turning her attention back to her surroundings, to the most egregious waste of resources in the whole cabin: an entire bulkhead taken up by an aquarium. There was enough water in it to keep a frigate crew hydrated for months in deep space, enough water for a year’s worth of crops on Mindoir. The Illusive Man sure loved to show off his wealth.
Eliza’s eyes settled on a crate next to the foot of the bed. She picked up the datapad attached to it.
Shepard, I took the liberty of obtaining some of your personal effects from storage. -- Miranda
More civilian bullshit -- personal items took up valuable space, distracted from missions - but coming from Miranda, the gesture felt...thoughtful.
She popped open the crate, finding everything packed with regimental neatness, and wondered if Miranda had also been responsible for that. What Eliza had seen of Miranda so far -- she was calculating and killed in cold blood without flinching -- made Eliza question her motives, but Miranda was rapidly becoming a lifeline as Eliza got her feet under her. Maybe that was the point.
The first item she pulled from the crate was a grubby Alliance-issued field jacket. It smelled like too many familiar things at once. She ran her fingers over the tarnished lieutenant’s bars on the jacket lapels and over the name patch over the right chest pocket. It read “Anderson” in black block letters.