It's the highest point in his life, when Shepard crawls out from under its corpse. She's bruised, her arm looks broken, but she's smiling.
Anderson has a hard time remembering the last time she's smiled.
Hundreds of Alliance soldiers are dead. The Citadel is in ruins. He's got to be a politician, but still. It's the highest point.
It's the absolutely fucking lowest point, when the Normandy comes back and she doesn't.
He's got to make a speech, because everyone expects it. He's the god damned Councilor now. He was her teacher. He's onstage, waiting for his turn. They ask the Normandy crew if they want to say anything, at the funeral. The quarian, Tali'Zorah, cries so hard they can still hear her after she shuts off her auditory emulators. Ashley is stone-faced and pale, mute. Dr. T'Soni rocks herself gently. Vakarian shakes so hard he has to sit down. An entire detachment of hardened marines are reduced to ugly, noisy tears.
Urdnot Wrex answers for them all.
Words will not honor her memory, he says.
Everyone from the Alliance is dressed in their very best blues. Everyone else is dressed in unrelieved black. It makes the crowd look like one huge bruise, sickly, seething, spread across every tiny bit of floor space in the Presidium Tower like mold. Like flies on a carcass. The Council wanted to hold the funeral here, to remind everyone that she was victorious. All Anderson can look at is the spot where she limped her way out from under a world-eating monster, smirking.
His apprentice is dead. He doesn't realize she was family until sometime in the second half of Hackett's speech.
Afterwards, the crew goes to a bar to drink until they can't remember. Anderson joins them. When they're done there, he's going to go back to his apartment and drink until he can't think anymore. Can't see anymore. He's going to drink until he can't hear anymore. Can't hear the sympathies of an entire galaxy. Can't hear Joker breaking. Can't hear all the things he's never said to her.
He's going to drink until he can't feel anymore.
Maybe then he'll forget that Shepard's…
...gone.