"Oh, Keelah!" Tali'Zorah said. "It's worse than I thought."

Ellen looked about her, and from what little he could see of her eyes in her helmet's narrow glass strip, he noted the creasing at the corners as she alternately opened and clenched her eyes shut to hold back the moisture that glistened there. He followed her gaze to huge piles of wreckage, largely intact sections of ship that scattered over a far larger area than he'd anticipated. She'd had the monument placed before the old ship's side paneling—the letters stood mostly intact in a language he couldn't read, but that he recognized from the second ship. Normandy, she'd said when she first brought him aboard months before, it's a region on Earth. The monument itself seemed dwarfed by the lettering, let alone the ship's side wall that towered far overhead. He didn't know human art well, but something in the monument's almost gaudy simplicity galled him, and struck him as almost disrespectful where souls had parted for the final shore.

"If you want to look around, to say personal goodbyes, go ahead." She leaned against him at his side, her arm around his waist as she spoke to the crew who gathered with her. "We've got nothing but time."

Garrus patted her on the shoulder and his helmet nodded with him. "Come on, Tali."

"Not now, bosh'tet," the quarian said, her voice thick with the same tears he'd heard her shed on the Alarei. "A fallen ship must be mourned."

"I need to feel the spirit of the place." The turian's voice cracked amidst its low vibration.

"Well, then, go! Keelah!"

"Tali, he's grieving too. All of us are."

"I know, Shepard, but…"

"We're here for each other, even though we couldn't be here for the dead. I wish I could have done better…"

"Commander, you did what you could. Jeff lives because of you."

"I wish I could believe that, Doc. We'll meet up here when everyone's finished."

"Jeff told me never to tell you this, but he's months overdue in sharing a drink. Not long after we lost you, he said, 'She saves my life, loses hers, and the last words I say to her aren't, "Thanks for my life, Shepard," but "Watch the arm!"' He tortured himself with that for months."

"Joker not actually joking? Never thought I'd see the day…"

"I'm sure he wishes he was down here with us. If you'll excuse me, Commander, I want to visit what's left of Medbay."

Even Operative Lawson wandered off to visit other parts of the wreckage while she stood beside him, her eyes affixed to the monument. What did she see when she looked upon it? Not the ugly representation of a ship's speed rendered as a simplistic spiraling wave in a hideous deep gold, he hoped. Or the primitive version of a tiny Normandy that seemed as if it might be swallowed whole by the wave.

"Just a sec," she said, and the monument dwarfed even her speaker-amplified voice. "I…"

"Whatever it is you need from me is yours, Siha."

"Just a little time. A little prayer…"

She fell to her knees before the monument and bent her hand to a faint curve. She brought the hand to her helmet just above the eye-shield. "In nomine Patris." To her chest, "et Fili," and then in a sweeping motion, touching each shoulder, "et Spiritus Sancti." None of the words made sense, but he felt her feeling behind them, and the sense that she invoked something far greater than all of the galaxy's gods.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen."

The gesture again, and the words spoken faster, "In nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti."

He joined her on his knees and folded his hands. "Guide them well, Kalahira, goddess of oceans, friend of the dead."

"At least the skies are beautiful," she said as she looked up. "I've seen vids of the Aurora Borealis on Earth, and this is even more amazing. There are worse places to die, I guess."

He stood quickly; the ice burned him through the leather he wore. "I've never seen anything like the patterns. The ripples remind me of the waves in the colorful lit fountains the hanar insisted on keeping in their spaceports. Lovely, but painful to behold for too long."

"Thanks for praying with me, querido."

"Has your faith returned?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. But at least I can give them what Sil taught me. I learned that prayer from her and her father."

"What did the words mean?"

"'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.' The Father is God, the Son, Jesus, and I'm damned if I understand what the hell the 'Holy Ghost' is. Sil didn't either when her dad taught us."

"I've read some of the lore of your 'Christianity,' but much of it escapes me. I find it far too esoteric. Do humans grasp the intricacy?"

"Not really, especially not Catholics. That prayer was Catholic. Most of the rituals are wrapped up in the clergy, and they're the only ones that understand them."

"I used to think humans a simple people until I read a few of your myths and histories."

He helped her to her feet, and slipped his arms about her waist. She still stared at the monument, motionless, but for small gasps from the speaker that tore at his heart.

"Siha…"

"I'm ok. Really."

"Is there nothing I can do to ease your pain?"

"You're here, querido. It's my own damned fault. I got Hackett's message months ago, but I just couldn't… But if we're going to die on that damned Reaper, I owed the dead this much."

He felt like a fool when he pressed his filter-covered lips to her helmet's speaker, but a smile seemed to reach her eyes as he did, and the faint tracery of her gloved finger over his covered frill more than made up for it.

"Would it have been easier if you had visited sooner?"

"Hell, I don't know. But it would have been over with, which is about the best you can ask for."

"You've been staring at the statue."

"Yeah."

"Is it adequate to honor the lost?" A question, perhaps less offensive than his opinion.

"It's the best I can do. You don't like it, do you?"

"It's… simple."

"Is that like saying Miranda's 'round?' Whatever the hell that means."

"I mean no offense, but it seems unfitting somehow."

"Standard military design. The 'artists' come from the same recruitment classes as soldiers."

No irony. No humor. A military mindset, and one that had taken him too much time to understand, especially in combat.

"It's better than nothing," she said finally. "Not adequate to represent the true cost of their loss, but something to show that they're remembered."

"You honor them and their memories, Siha. They must have died proud and with honor for all they accomplished under your command."

"Not enough honor."

"Is there ever enough for those that lose their lives to bring light to the galaxy? And yet we do what we must, as best we can."

"And then whack ourselves over the head with guilt later when no one's looking, because it can't ever be enough."

"Commander!" He shuddered as Operative Lawson's clipped accent cut through the frozen air.

"What is it?"

"Ms. Zorah needs your assistance."

"Hey, you ok?"

"I am… fine, Shepard." Though her voice seemed to indicate otherwise.

"She didn't say anything, did she?"

"I tried to help her but…"

"But you're Cerberus. Yeah, I'll take care of it. And I'll let her know later that you were just trying…"

"There's no need, Commander. It's all in a day's duties."

"Don't give me that, Miranda. I know why you're here, and I know that it's probably the last place you should be in some people's eyes. I want you to know that it's appreciated. Very appreciated."

"I… Thank you, Commander. She's over by the wreckage of the CIC."

"For Pressley." She put a hand on Operative Lawson's shoulder.

He wondered how Tali'Zorah might mourn a man who had once despised everyone not of his own species. But you love a woman who once claimed to believe the same things. Ellen moved sure on the ice, and quickly, as if she'd grown accustomed to the slick footing of this world toward an open section of wreckage. A streak of purple and shadow resolved itself into the quarian as they approached, who stood, helmet cast down in front of the galaxy map's ramp. Garrus stood off to the side, his mandibles twitching and arms folded. Dissaproval.

"You ok, Tali?"

"I just… Keelah, I didn't expect to… I thought it would be easy seeing the Normandy again." Her voice had thickened as much as it had when they'd discovered her father's body.

"I know. Except I didn't think it would be easy."

"It's never easy for a captain, Shepard vas Normandy."

"This was more than a ship and more than a crew."

"It's so different now. Horrible. The ship looks the same, but it's just a copy, and the crew…"

"Is one of the finest I've served with."

"Really, Shepard? There's no 'Pressley' in this crew. No Adams. No Kaidan."

"No, but there are others, each with their own strengths, Tali'Zorah," he said.

"You remember how Pressley was when you first met him, and I hate to think about what you first thought of me."

A sniff beneath the helmet and then a small laugh. "I joined to defeat Saren, not for the bosh'tet who only saved my life for the information I had and then didn't want me on her crew."

"Ouch! Walked right into that one."

"Shepard objected to me too," Garrus said. "And this time, she came looking for me."

"Well, for 'Archangel.' But you were a damned good surprise."

"Hm. I seem to be fortunate in missing your endless 'objections,' Siha."

"Even though you went looking for them." He heard the amusement in her voice, though he couldn't see any traces of a smile in her eyes.

"Operative Lawson seems upset—something strange for a woman with a soul colder than the frozen ground here. What was said?"

"Tali here drove her off when she asked if there was anything she could do. I'm not Lawson's or Cerberus' biggest fan, but her offer was genuine."

"It's just… I just…"

Ellen put her free arm about Tali'Zorah, and the other had never left him. The last shared embrace he'd enjoyed had been with Kolyat and Irikah far too many years before.

"Hey, it's ok. This isn't easy for any of us."

"Comforting blindly without confronting irrationality isn't the best thing for unit cohesiveness," Garrus said.

"Come on, Garrus, Tali's been through a lot lately."

"And I haven't?"

"Dios mio… Are we really going to have a competition about who's been through the most? Because if so, I win. I died."

"And you look much better for it."

"Bosh'tet," Tali'Zorah muttered.

"Look, we're all here for the same reasons: because the old Normandy and its crew mattered, and because we need to share that with others who care as much as we do."

"You're saying the spirit of the old Normandy is here with us in its resting place?"

"Well, not quite so poetically, but, yeah. Kind of."

The turian patted Tal'Zorah on the back, but gingerly as if he feared she'd attack. "The spirit seems to be affecting me too, and in all the wrong ways. I'm sorry, Tali."

"It's all right, bosh'tet."

"Still insulting me?"

"Maybe it's the old Normandy's spirit, idiot. But thanks."

"Sibling rivalry," Ellen said and patted Tali'Zorah on the back. She slipped her arms fully around him.

"I see no siblings, Siha. Weren't you a sole child?"

"You don't? I see kin here. My sister, my brother, my querido…"

"Something nice from you, Shepard?"

"Don't push it, hermano. My elbow's still tingling."

"Er-man-o? Another of your 'Spanish' words?"

"It means 'brother,'" Tali'Zorah said.

"Sí, hermanita."

"Little sister? Thank you… Captain."

"Are you ready to say goodbye?"

"Yes, I think so." A nod of the helmet.

The turian nodded as well, encased in his hood of ceramic and glass.