Beta-read by Saberlin.

-J-

He was wearing his dress blues. They had made him shave, despite his protests. Shepard wouldn't have recognized him without the scruffy beard and BDUs, not until he opened his mouth. But for once he had nothing snarky to say, so it was entirely likely she wouldn't recognize him at all.

It was ironic, Joker thought morosely, his thoughts retreading familiar ground.

Gina O'Connor died going back for a soldier separated from his unit.

Jalissa Shepard died going back for a soldier who wouldn't leave his post.

Best friends who did almost everything together…and then died in more or less the same way. Going back for a fellow soldier, knowing the rescue might result in two dead bodies instead of one. Only Alenko voiced the accusation that Shepard's death was his, Joker's, fault.

Joker agreed with him.

Unreservedly.

-J-

Garrus Vakarian was one of the few turians present. The other two were C-Sec officers, playing security for the stage full of brass and politicians. One was the Spectre requisitions officer, Livion, the other…he didn't know, but the kid looked as though someone had just killed his cat.

He suspected the younger turian knew Shepard, somehow, though he could not speculate.

It was only here and now that Garrus knew he had hung around the humans too long. He could imagine Shepard, as a see-through spirit, like a ghost in the stories occasionally bantered about on the Normandy, walking the ship's wreckage in a frozen wasteland...

Things in general had been going so well…but now they were getting tense. When the news broke, someone had asked 'isn't that the crazy one?'. That hadn't ended well, but he was the one who walked (was dragged) away. Arguments with his bosses were, at least, back to normal…except he found himself more and more irritated by them.

And it was only a few weeks since the incident that claimed Shepard's life. The low level of malcontent about Shepard's choices regarding the Council was growing palpable as the dust started to settle.

And still no one was doing anything about the Reapers.

It did not bode well for the future.

-J-

Kaidan Alenko spent most of the funeral with his head bowed, eyes closed, and face scrunched as through wading through a migraine. But it was not his head that hurt. Or if it did, he couldn't feel it for the ache in his chest. He had hoped, even knowing there was no point, that it would be like after the battle on the Citadel, that Shepard would turn up, pinned or otherwise trapped, but alive. That she would somehow pull a miraculous escape. She was good at those...

But too much time had elapsed. He knew that.

He also knew that the Reapers were coming, but could not bring himself to care. He knew someone had to step up to the plate, to fill her shoes…but he wasn't that person. He couldn't be…even thinking about stepping up to the plate seemed to crush him like a bug under a concrete block.

Was that what it was like for her? All those months?

Attempts to rally himself to do anything more than basic daily tasks ended under the crushing weight of loss. All he could seem to do was exist, and mourn her.

Without her, the galaxy was a darker, colder, emptier place. And without her, without someone to take her place, it was also doomed. The galaxy just didn't know it yet.

-J-

Liara T'Soni sharply refused to go to the funerary ceremony, just as she had refused to give up in those awful days after the news broke. She'd cast the dice, and all she could do was wait. Wait, and sublimate grief into purpose. Someone was going to die…and that someone would deserve it.

Someone was going to live…she had to think like that, or what was all the effort for?

-J-

Tali'Zorah vas Neema cried. Howled, if truth be told. She had never called Shepard 'Captain' out loud, but she accepted that was what Shepard was. A captain and a friend. She made Tali feel welcome, like a valuable part of the team, from the very beginning. Tali never thought of herself as vas Normandy, but she would have been proud to wear the name, even though she wanted to go back to the Flotilla.

Shepard had led a rescue team like a heavy rock slamming through thin ice just to rescue a quarian she had never met. But she had done more. She kept Tali close at hand, worried one of Saren's agents might not have given up silencing the one person who knew about the Conduit and the Reapers. She took Tali along for the mission, took her on ground missions even, treated her like an equal, not as a second-class citizen as most of the galaxy would.

Acceptance and trust, and she still a Pilgrim at the time. Little more than a child.

It was a small comfort that Shepard's last actions succeeded—that Joker was saved. It was a small comfort that the pilot was still alive. But small comforts did not go far to easing the grief…and it was hard watching Joker stagger under the weight of his.

She closed her stinging eyes, swallowing hard, glad her facemask obscured her from the sight of anyone and everyone in her vicinity.

She was not invited to the 'official' funeral, but she was not sure she could have gone even if she had received an invitation. There was nothing of Shepard there…and even if there was, she did not want to see Shepard dead. She didn't want to see a coffin with the Alliance flag draped over it. She didn't want to think about what happened to a person who died in space after suffocating and burned up upon reentry.

Better to remember her alive and whole…and better to honor her life with actions rather than words.

Shepard liked words, but she liked actions backing up those words much better.

Still…it hurt.