Work Text:
The music was so loud at Flux that night, she had to ask him to repeat himself.
"Care for a little company?" he said again.
She shrugged. He was decent-looking enough, and it would be nice to have somebody to talk to tonight.
"I'm Ed, and you are?" he said as he sat down on the barstool next to her.
"Oriana," she said, trying her best to smile.
Ed wasn't buying it, though. "Bad night?" he asked.
"Just... I was supposed to meet somebody here," Oriana said. "Ended up being too busy to show up, so here I am."
"Somebody stood you up?" Ed said. "He must have been a real idiot."
Oriana leaned forward with both elbows onto the bar. "She is my sister, and yeah, she can be an idiot, too."
"Sucks when you can't even depend on your family, huh?" Ed said. "What are you drinking?"
Oriana told him, and he ordered two more from the bartender. "So, Oriana, you feel like..."
Ed's pick-up line was interrupted by a finger tap on his shoulder. "You're in my seat," said a woman's voice behind them.
"Find another one, then," Ed said dismissively.
"I'm asking nicely here, pal," the voice behind them said. "Don't make me ask again."
Ed turned in the stool. "Look, you crazy bitch, I don't..." was what he got out before he was hurled bodily from his seat, biotic energy flaring around him as he tumbled through the air. In the crowded nightclub, only a few people noticed him hit the ground and immediately turn to run away, and most of them didn't care enough to pay it any mind.
"Asshole," said the voice. Oriana turned to see a slim woman with a shaved head and upper torso covered in tattoos claim the seat and immediately take a swig of Ed's drink. "You should thank me," the woman turned to Oriana, fixing arresting brown eyes lined with jet-black eye-liner on her. "Guy got shot down by half the bar before you came in. You had gone home with him, you'd need to douse your snatch in disinfectant afterward."
"Uh, okay," Oriana said. "Thanks, I guess. If you don't mind, though, I'd rather be by myself."
The other woman leaned casually against the bar. "Eh, don't worry, I ain't staying long. Knock back a few and then hit the sack before waking up bright and early to head back to the Normandy. Shepard can be such a slave-driver sometimes, I swear."
"The Normandy?" Oriana asked, suddenly interested. "You're here from the Normandy?"
The woman shrugged dismissively, the sleeveless leather jacket she wore rustling with the movement. "Stopped by for our fearless Commander to do a little sight-seeing. Or was it taking out a crime syndicate? I forget; I almost never get invited along for these things."
"Do you know Miranda Lawson?"
This got a loud, harsh laugh. "Do I know Miranda Lawson? Oh, there's a hell of a question right now. Let me tell you something about..." A thought occurred to her and she stared at Oriana carefully. "Yeah... yeah, now that I look closer, I definitely see it."
"See what?"
"You're the clone, ain't you?" she asked, her tone cold.
Oriana frowned. "I'm Miranda's sister, Oriana."
"Well, I'm Jack. Don't suppose Miranda's ever mentioned me."
Oriana shifted in her seat. "Once or twice."
"And?"
"Uh..." Oriana broke eye contact as she said, "That you were the most difficult person she'd ever had to deal with in her life?"
Jack nodded. "Sounds about right. So, I guess she was supposed to meet you here, huh?"
"Some important mission came up or something," Oriana said, the bitterness apparent in her voice. "She went to all the trouble of getting me here to the Citadel, and she can't even bother to show up."
"Yeah, Shepard always brings her along when there's something important going on," Jack said, finishing the drink and waving the bartender over to order something five times stronger. "I'm a much better biotic than Miranda, but it's always the little cheerleader who gets to go."
Oriana smiled. "Not much fun being second pick, I guess."
Jack waved it off casually. "Well, just means I get more time to knock back a few while everybody else is off saving the world."
"But you must have gone on some missions with them, right?" Oriana asked, her eyes wide.
"Sure, yeah, Shepard likes to mix it up a bit on occasion. There was this one time, a ship was about to crash into..." Jack's eyes suddenly went wide. "Oh, fuck."
Oriana turned around to see that the doors to Flux had opened again, and into the club stepped two C-Sec officers.
"You think they're here about you attacking that guy?" Oriana asked.
"Whether they are or not, doesn't matter much," Jack said. "Did I forget to mention I'm a wanted criminal with a handful of life sentences hanging over my head?"
Oriana turned back to Jack. "Are you sure you're part of the Normandy crew?"
"Yeah, and I'm usually out with Shepard, so nobody fucks with me. But here by myself..." Jack gave Oriana a hopeful smile. "You wouldn't happen to have a car, would you?"
Oriana nodded. "Miranda rented me one."
"Tell you what, then. You get me out of here, I'll tell you all the stories you want about Shepard, your sister, whatever. We have a deal?"
Oriana answered by grabbing Jack's head between her hands and kissing her. As several onlookers let out catcalls, Oriana shifted Jack so that her head and face were hidden from view as the C-Sec officers passed.
"What was that?" Jack said in surprise.
"Saw it in a movie once," Oriana said. "So, you wanna get out of here?"
* * *
By the time they'd sped away from Flux and made their way back to Oriana's hotel room, Jack had thrilled Oriana with exciting stories of encounters with geth and mercenaries. She and Shepard blasting away through whatever came, death a heartbeat away. It was all Oriana could do to keep her attention on the road as she prodded Jack for more details.
When Oriana tried to find out about her sister, however, Jack couldn't offer much.
"As I'm sure you guessed, me and your big sis don't really see eye-to-eye," Jack said back at Oriana's room, the two of them sitting side-by-side on a small couch. She took a long pull from a bottle of whiskey they had ordered from room service and put on Miranda's tab. "So Shepard really doesn't put us together on many missions."
"But you're around her on the ship, right?" Oriana said, gesturing with her hand for Jack to hand the bottle over. She fumbled with it and almost dropped it, but managed to raise it to her mouth and attempt to duplicate Jack's drinking style. After a few swallows, she coughed and pulled the bottle away.
"I pretty much keep to myself around the ship," Jack said. "But I see her every so often when I'm up getting some chow or something."
Oriana leaned against the back of the couch on her elbow. "So, what's she like?"
Jack hesitated for a minute, as if aware she should choose her words carefully around Miranda's sister. "She's... I dunno. There are times where she's a pompous bitch, and others where she acts like she's the biggest fuck-up who ever lived. I'll say this for her: she's a lot better off now that she told the Illusive Man to fuck off and die. Shepard's been a good influence on her. If only the Commander could convince her to stop wearing those suits that show off her tits and ass so much, maybe I could take her seriously."
Oriana drunkenly giggled. "So, you've been checking out my sister's tits and ass?"
"Hard not to, the way she goes parading around in that outfit," Jack said. "Tell you this, babe, you're going to grow up to be pretty damn hot."
"Grow up? I'm almost 21. And are you saying I'm not hot now?"
This comment drew Jack's attention. She quirked an eyebrow at Oriana. "Well, kinda hard to tell. Like I said, your sister's always strutting around like a goddamn stripper. You, though, you're all bundled up in that dress, I can't really judge.
Staggering a bit as she stood, Oriana reached up to her chest and slowly undid the fasteners on her outfit. After a few seconds, the dress dropped to the ground, and Oriana stood in a black lace cupless bra, matching thong panties, and black hose attached to a garter belt.
For a moment, Jack couldn't help but wonder who the hell would wear this sort of lingerie for a dinner date with their sister, but shrugged it off. "Hmm... not quite there yet," Jack said with a joking tone. "But you definitely got Miranda's genes. Here's hoping you didn't inherit her stuck-up attitude along with the rest."
Oriana smirked. "I just undressed in front of a near-total stranger. You'd call that 'stuck-up'?"
"I dunno," Jack said, standing up and walking over to the half-naked girl. "Depends on how much else is going to come off tonight." She carefully raised a hand to Oriana's breast, rubbing her thumbs around a nipple until it stood stiff and erect.
"As much as you want," Oriana said, before moving in for their second kiss of the night.
* * *
Miranda Lawson came back to her office and sighed. It had been a grueling mission, ending in a prolonged fire-fight between them and a pack of Eclipse mercs the local crime syndicate had brought in to manage their expanding red sand distribution racket. Not normally the sort of thing the Normandy would stick its nose into, but she'd convinced Shepard that it would be a nice good will gesture to the Council. Plus, it allowed Miranda to arrange a meeting with her sister.
But then, Shepard had decided that he needed extra backup for the mission, and Miranda was enlisted. She hated disappointing Oriana, especially when they had so few opportunities to meet up in person, but Shepard needed her.
She walked to her desk and hesitated before activating her terminal. She was ready to type up a big apology letter to Ori, when she noticed she already had a message.
It was from an anonymous sender, and had a great deal of attachments. Normally, Miranda would delete such an obvious attempt at a virus attack, but then she saw the text body of the message.
"JUST GOT DONE EATING YOUR SISTER'S PUSSY! SHE SAYS HI, BY THE WAY."
The mention of "sister" got Miranda worrying. Did her father send another band of mercenaries to abduct her while she was distracted? Now that she was no longer with Cerberus, it was going to be a lot harder to make sure Ori was safe.
Feeling terrified now, she opened the attachment. Inside were about twenty still images.
The first was a close of image of Jack staring into the camera and giving a sarcastic smile and wave. From what little of the background Miranda could see behind the tattooed convict, it appeared to be a hotel room.
Miranda frowned. Was this just another one of Jack's mean-spirited pranks? What did she mean about her sister?
And then Miranda went to the next picture, and she knew.
With Jack out of the way, Miranda could see the entirely of the hotel room. And especially the bed, where the camera was focused.
On the bed, Jack was on her knees, holding another women and kissing her deeply. The other woman's back was mostly to the camera, and it gave Miranda a split-second more of denial, before she moved to the next picture.
It was Oriana, all right. In the next picture, she was on her back, her head thrown back in a silent moan of passion, as she arched her back and raised her hips up to Jack's mouth. Between her thighs, Jack had her lips wrapped around the top of Oriana's crotch, her tongue no doubting working away at the younger woman's clit.
The next shot, Jack was sitting up on the edge of the bed, with Oriana kneeling on the floor between her legs. With Oriana focused on Jack's cunt, she probably didn't notice Jack smiling and waving again at the camera.
Next shot: the two women had their legs intertwined, their pussies rubbing against each other, each of them with their mouths hanging open in passion.
Next shot: Jack had obtained a strap-on dildo somehow, and had Oriana in doggy-style position, fucking her from behind. Again, smiling and waving at the camera while Oriana wasn't looking.
Shot after shot after shot, of her sister and Jack in every possible position. Nearly every one with Jack looking at the camera and giving a friendly wave, like a vacationer taking holiday snaps.
And then came the last shot. Oriana asleep with her arms wrapped around Jack.
And Jack looking into the camera one more time. But this time, only waving with one extended middle finger.
Miranda went through the pictures over and over again. Reaching the last picture only to cycle back and look again.
After some time, she closed the window and went back to the main menu of her terminal. In the messaging software, she entered Oriana's address.
"Come to the space-dock and meet me on the Normandy," she wrote. "We need to talk NOW!"
* * *
"I'm a grown woman, Randa!" Oriana shouted at her sister, the argument starting almost as soon as she was on the ship and in Miranda's office. "I can do whatever I want with whoever I want! It's none of your damn business!"
Miranda rubbed at her temples from behind her desk. "She was just using you to get back at me, Ori!" she exclaimed. "She took pictures of you while you two were... she took pictures and sent them to me! Just to taunt me about it!"
"So? It's not like I was going to ask her out on a date or anything! She got to fuck with you, and I got to get fucked. So we both got something out of it."
Miranda stood up from her chair. "God, I didn't even know you... I mean, not that I have a problem with you being with women. But her? Of all the people in the world, you had to hook up with her?"
"She was fun, Randa," Oriana protested. "And unlike some other people, she at least acted like she wanted to hang around with me for a while. I wasn't a chore to her."
"Ori, that isn't true! You know I want to get a chance to be around you, but..."
Oriana scoffed. "Yeah, but. There's always a but. Always another excuse why you have to cancel. Another crisis to be solved, another mission to go on."
"I have duties, Ori. People depend on me."
"Yeah, I know. So they get to have you around, and I don't. I have to be with Jack, when I really want to be with you."
There was a moment of silence, and Oriana quickly added. "Not that way, though. I mean, be with you like..." Oriana's face turned beet red, and she almost felt into one of Miranda's chairs. "Oh, what am I doing?"
Miranda took a seat beside Oriana. "Talk to me, Ori. What's going on?"
Oriana inhaled deeply, seeming to steel herself for something. "You know, when I was younger," she finally started, "I never really knew why my parents acted weird sometimes. Why they got so worried if I came home from school a little later than usual, why they always wanted to know where I'd be."
Oriana stared at the floor as she spoke. "When I turned 18, they finally told me. That there were bad people after me, and that we had to be careful to make sure they didn't find me. And they told me that somebody out there had kept me safe for my whole life, had been risking themselves looking out for me all this time."
"I tried to find out more from them. What this person's name was, why they wanted to protect me so bad. They didn't know, though. I guess back then, you were keeping them in the dark, too. But ever since they told me, before I went to sleep I would picture this mysterious person. Some nights they were a tall, muscular man. Other nights a slim, beautiful woman."
She turned to look at Miranda. "Whatever they looked like, though, I knew that I loved them. And that when I finally got the chance to meet them, I would tell them that, and that if they wanted me, I was theirs."
"Ori, I don't..." Miranda started to say
Oriana held up a hand. "And when you came to meet me on Illium, and I saw you walking toward me and my parents... I knew right away it was you. That you were my protector, the person I loved without even knowing what you looked like. And then you told me you were my sister."
She clasped her hands together. "I thought that was it then. All my plans to fall in love with the person who protected me were over, right? Except they weren't. I still had the same dreams at night, the same visions of telling my protector that I loved them, and that I would always love them. Only now my protector had a face." Oriana smiled as she added. "A face a lot like mine, actually. And one that, more than anything, I wanted to kiss."
Standing up, Oriana moved to the window. "So... I guess maybe that's why I had sex with Jack. Because it was the closest I was ever going to come to being with you, to live my dream. Even if you did show up and even if we did get to be friends... we would never be together."
There was a long silence in the room. Finally, Miranda spoke up. "I've been so horrible to you, Ori."
"No, you're right," Oriana said as she turned. "Your duties here are important, and I shouldn't..."
Miranda was shaking her head. "No, no, I have been avoiding you. I always told myself that it was about the missions and the duties, but anyone on this ship could have handled those. The truth is... I didn't want to be around you."
Oriana stared at her sister in shock. "You... you didn't..."
"Because ever since I met you in person, and I saw the woman you've grown up to be," Miranda said, a tear dripping down her cheek, "I... the feelings I had were... I didn't think they were appropriate."
Oriana reached up to Miranda's face to wipe the dampness away. "You mean, you..."
Miranda nodded. "But it isn't right, Ori. Even if we both feel the same way, we shouldn't..."
Moving in close, Oriana kissed Miranda gently. Miranda didn't resist as her sister wrapped her fingers around the zipper to her jumpsuit.
"Miranda Lawson," Oriana said as she pulled away from Miranda's lips. "I love you. I will always love you, and if you want me... I'm yours."
Miranda drew her back in to the kiss, as her jumpsuit fell to the floor.
* * *
Jack's head was throbbing as she stumbled back to the ship. What a fucking night. The biggest surprise had been in the morning, when she'd woken up to find that Miranda's sister was already gone.
"Fuck," she'd thought to herself as she'd gotten dressed. "I was supposed to be the one to fuck and run on this one. Bitch beat me to the punch."
But whatever. When she stepped on deck, Joker turned around in his chair. "Uh," he said, "don't rip my head off with your mind or anything, but Miranda said she wanted to see you as soon as you came back to the ship."
Jack smirked. "I'll bet she does. You might want to be ready to call Shepard. There's probably going to be another fight to break up."
When she got to Miranda's office door and it opened, Miranda was sitting behind her desk. Jack was immediately put off: the cheerleader wasn't wearing the expression of anger or hurt that Jack had been aiming for. She looked... was she smiling?
"Hey, bitch," Jack greeted Miranda warmly. "Checked your messages lately?"
Miranda nodded. "I know why you did it, Jack."
"I bet you do," Jack said with a smirk. "Your sister's quite the little slut, isn't she?"
Miranda stood up, and Jack's biotics flared up. "Don't worry, Jack," Miranda said. "I'm not going to start anything."
"Better not," Jack said as she relaxed.
"You know, I was talking to somebody lately," Miranda said, still with that calm tone in her voice. "A very close friend of mine. They were saying something about how they went to bed with somebody because they knew they could never be with the person they really wanted to be with."
Jack rolled her eyes as she leaned against the wall. "Fascinating. Can we get to the point now?"
"And it got me thinking... why, of all the ways to try to get to me, would you have sex with my sister?"
Jack started to look nervous as Miranda walked closer. "Hey, she was there in Flux, I took the opportunity when it came to me," she quickly said.
Miranda shook her head. "No... you knew she was going to be there. Don't think I didn't notice your clumsy hacking into my private mail account. You knew we were supposed to meet there, you knew I had cancelled."
Jack edged back against the wall, Miranda now only a foot away from her. "Okay, you got me. I planned it. What difference does it make?"
"Again, I'm thinking," Miranda said. "'Why have sex with her?' There's any number of other things you could have done to Oriana to mess with my head. Hurt her, put her in a dangerous situation, humiliate her. But your mind immediately went to seducing her."
Jack didn't like where this was going. "I dunno. Maybe hanging around with that sap Shepard's made me go soft."
"Maybe. Or maybe, you had sex with her because you couldn't be with the person you really wanted. Somebody who looked an awful lot like her."
Miranda's fingers brushed against the outside of Jack's arm, and the bald-headed woman jerked away. "You crazy? You saying I'm really out to fuck you?"
"I don't know, Jack," Miranda moved her face to within an inch of Jack's. "Are you?"
Jack couldn't take it anymore. She grabbed Miranda and kissed her, hard. Miranda returned the kiss with equal fervor. It was a long time before either of them were willing to move away.
"Dammit," Jack said, finally coming up for a breath. "Nobody ever finds out about this, understand? You tell anyone about this, and the next time I run into your sister, I'll..."
"You'll do what?" said Oriana from the corner where she'd been hiding. She strolled confidently out, in the same underwear Jack had seen her in last night.
"What the hell is she doing here?" Jack exclaimed. Her next question died in her throat as Oriana reached Miranda, and Miranda turned to embrace and kiss her sister, their tongues dancing against each other. "Holy fucking shit!" Jack exclaimed.
Pulling away from Oriana, Miranda smiled at Jack. "Come on," she said with a smile. "Why have one of us..."
"...when you can have two?" Oriana replaced Miranda in front of Jack and gave her a deep kiss of her own.
Jack was completely speechless, as the two sisters each took one of her hands and led her over to the bed.
That day, everybody got to be with who they wanted to be with. Plus a little extra.