"I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news." His voice was steady, but the subtonals cracked a little, here and there. He kept talking, not allowing a silence to build. "I was in Shalta Ward."

"You know how much paperwork you just created, Garrus?"

"Did you see another option?"

Sorono shook his head, mandibles flexing and smoke trailing from his mouth. His orange colony paint was bright against his darker skin. He reached up and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth, gesturing with it as he walked. "Look, I'm just saying that it's one thing to discharge your weapon, it's another to discharge it into a suspect, and an entirely different thing to discharge with intent to frighten or coerce the suspect into discharging his own weapon into his foot. That's at least four more pages of reports, maybe more."

"So what you're saying is I should have shot him." Garrus nodded, satisfied. "Got it."

"No, you stubborn-"

"No no, I read you. Message received."

"Yeah, well, fuck you too, Vakarian," he said mildly, replacing the cigarette. He stopped suddenly, looking past Garrus. "Hey. Isn't that your friend? The human?"

"What?" He turned to follow his gaze. On a large vid screen, with a small crowd surrounding it, was a red haired human woman with steely eyes. It was Shepard alright - a pretty awful picture, too.

And beneath it, two dates.

"If I had any doubts, they were dispelled when I found Anderson waiting outside my apartment that night. Remember what I said about him? Heart sewn into his sleeve?" He ran a hand across his chin and tapped a knuckle against the bottom of his mandible. "All I had to do was look at his face and I knew."

The clouds deepened outside. It looked like it might rain. Not storm, just rain.

"I won't dwell on the funeral," he said, staring out toward the kitchen. "It wasn't like the second one. No weeping crowds, no pomp and circumstance. No statue. Just an empty casket and a flag draped over it."

His hand flexed, fingers rubbing together in front of his face. They moved slowly, but I saw the muscle and the tension. He might as well have been making a fist. "They held it on Earth. Stupid. She'd only ever been there a handful of times. What crew had survived the attack were there. Anderson. Her mother. Us.

"Wrex did the krogan thing. A moment of solemn respect for the dead, then twenty minutes of shouting and wrecking the place. Liara had to drag him outside and talk him down. Somehow she was the most together of all of us. Took it hard, but never shed a tear. Tali sat next to me and cried. Held my hand for most of it."

His hand dropped to the table and he started pressing one thumb against his other palm. His hands were always moving, but his eyes were steady, always forward, away from me.

"Kaidan looked... hollow. Like someone had scooped out whatever was inside and he was just a shell of a man. Didn't seem like he really believed it yet. And Joker?" He shook his head very slowly. "Joker was the worst of all. He was pale and sobbing through most of the service and looked like he was about to be sick at any moment. He was consumed with guilt, I heard later. Felt like it was his fault she died."

Garrus clasped his hands, laced his fingers together, and there was a noticeable vibration as he pressed hard. He sighed. "Never seen him look like that before. Or since."

He finally halted and closed his eyes. Gave himself a moment to breath. I took my chance.

"You've talked about everyone else," I said carefully. "How did you feel?"

He didn't open his eyes, and when he spoke, it was as steady as before, but edged with fury, diamond hard and bitterly sharp.

"How do you think I felt."

He might as well have raised a hand to strike me. I visibly flinched and shrank away from him. I couldn't tell if he was angry with me or the memory or the galaxy at large, but it set me back on my heels. He had been angry to start, I hadn't forgotten, but once we had begun to talk he just seemed... sad. I figured that thirty years would have at least dulled the pain, especially after what I saw last night.

You shouldn't have thought about that, Alisa. You assumed, and it bit you in the ass.

He opened his eyes. I swallowed any words that might have threatened to come out my mouth. His voice had lost it's fury, but it still carried a brittle, jagged edge. It was only enhanced by his flanging tones.

"Shepard made an impact on everyone she met. For a few, she'd done more than that. She'd become a part of us, a fixture, and when she died there was a hole that we couldn't fill." He raised his laced hands in front of his mouth again, leaning on his elbows. "Not that we didn't try. I certainly did. I threw myself into my work, but all it did was make the hole larger. Everything that frustrated me before, made me furious after she died. And so much frustrated me."

His jaw clenched and I heard his teeth click together. "The only reason I pulled out of Spectre training and tendered a resignation to C-Sec was so no one would come looking for me when I left. I went anywhere. Everywhere. And when one day I ended up on Omega, I looked around and knew that this was the place where I would die.

"Initially, I was content just to pit myself against the underworld, alone and unafraid. It's freeing, in a way, to be concerned only with your own survival. Living day to day, hour to hour. No complications, no time for introspection or solipsism. Eventually, though, they came to me. Men and women who were tired of being beaten down by Omega. Who wanted to fight back. I should have refused, I knew it then just as much as I know it now. But I didn't. And I let my guard down. I let them get close. And in my weaker moments, I thought of Shepard."

His voice gradually began to crack, breaking against the force of his pain like water on rock.

"I tried to do without her. I tried to forget her. Finally, I tried to become her. In the end..." He gasped and exhaled a slow, shaky breath. "I failed at all three."

The first drops of a summer shower hit the window. The pitter-patter of raindrops mingled with the crashing of the waves. In the dim light, his blue eyes looked an almost cloudy gray.