Starlight glints on the snow underfoot as she steps down from the shuttle. It is beautiful here. Exquisite and desolate. She has never felt so utterly alone.
The sky yawns overhead, aurorae of purple and green washing across the stars. She cannot breathe. She does not know if the beauty steals her air, or if it is the task that lies before her.
Her feet crunch through the icy terrain, slow and reluctant. Almost immediately, she sees the wreckage. It feels like being punched in the solar plexus. She falls into a crouch, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Too many memories.
Light falls across a small piece of metal half-buried in the snow, her eye drawn to it even as she tries to look away. The first of the fallen. She reaches out and runs the chain through her hands, the tags loose and clicking together until she stills them with a finger, reads the name.
Hector Emerson. She feels sick that she cannot remember him. One of her crew, and she can't even picture his face. This entire world is her failure. She should be lying here beneath the snow with them, not digging around for an inadequate reminder of their lives.
Addison Chase; Harvey Gladstone; Monica Negulesco; Rosamund Draven.
One by one, the names write themselves on her memory, the tags go into her pocket. Some she knew well, some she can barely picture. All of them her crew, all dead. Just as she was. Why she is here now, and not them, she cannot understand.
When she stumbles over her old N7 helmet, battered and broken, she finally collapses, retching desperately behind her visor. She lies in the snow for what feels like hours, silence washing over her and tears pouring down her face. She imagines her corpse lying in just this fashion, still and cold. She knows she has to continue.
Helen Lowe; Mandira Rahman; Raymond Tanaka; Caroline Grenado.
She picks up an old datapad lying in a grave of twisted metal. Incredibly, it still works. Damaged, but still useable. Just like her, she thinks bitterly.
The voice in the datapad is unmistakeably Charles Pressly. Her XO, an officer she often found difficult to work with. The words he has recorded show her a man who became someone better for serving on the Normandy; someone more accepting and tolerant. She wishes with all her heart that he could have lived so she could have told him how proud she was.
She doesn't understand how there could possibly be more tears to cry.
Jamin Bakari; Talitha Draven; Alexei Dubyansky; Orden Laflamme.
Talitha and Rosamund were sisters, she remembers. She wonders who told their parents that neither of them were coming home. She wonders how the heart can bear so much grief.
Carlton Tucks; Harvey Gladstone; Germeen Barrett; Abishek Pakti.
She touches a finger to the distorted, blackened steel, remembering the way the Galaxy Map had hung suspended between the poles, sparkling and almost alive. Remembering the brusqueness of her stride as she would hurry towards the cockpit after each mission, remembering how Joker had always swung his chair round at her approach, as if he knew the sound of her feet on the polished dark tiled floors.
She'd had to go back for him, that day. She knows she couldn't have gone on living if she had left him there in the flames. She knows she would do it all over again to keep him safe.
Snowflakes are falling again, drifting lazily from the sky and melting on her visor until she cannot tell if the blurring of her vision is snow or tears.
She wheels the memorial statue from the shuttle awkwardly, setting it down in place beside the torn hull of the ship that had been her home and her life for so long. It seems insufficient, a token gesture for so many lives lost in the void of space. She presses her hand to the golden surface of the statue, seeing herself reflected in the shining metal.
I am alive, she thinks, and she hears herself laugh hysterically.
She isn't sure if she feels alive. She isn't sure what she feels.
Marcus Grieco; Silas Crosby; Amina Waarberi.
Slowly, she makes her way back to the shuttle, her steps heavy. Her fingers play over the tags in her pocket. They are all that is left of twenty brave souls who gave their life for her cause. She knows she should be as dead as they are. The only thing that stops the guilt she feels is the knowledge of her purpose. She must honour them by her actions, now that she has a second chance. She must fight, and she must live.
Habit sends her heading towards the cockpit as soon as she steps through the airlock onto the Normandy; the new Normandy. She hesitates when she sees Joker on his feet, standing beside his chair and watching her approach with an unreadable expression on his face.
They stand there for many moments, separated by the walkway and their memories.
It is the pilot who moves first, walking towards her with a hitching but steady stride. He takes her into his arms without saying a word and she folds into him, the pain of what she has just experienced tearing hotly through her chest. He holds her while she cries, great lung-bursting sobs which dampen his shoulder and break his heart, his eyes squeezed tight against the onslaught of his own tears. His fingers thread through her long dark hair, and she hears him murmuring quiet words that she cannot quite understand.
No, she thinks, I could never have left you behind.
That night, she invites him to her cabin. That night, she finally feels alive. That night, she sleeps without dreams for the first time since she died.