Paying Respects

Paying Respects

The monument on Akuze wasn't even half-finished. The structure was still framed by skeletal iron girders; there were still a few dozen turian, human, and, somewhat surprisingly, batarian workers milling about. But the important part had been completed three days ago. A stark marble pedestal with a bronze plaque read: "Commander Myla Shepard—friend, protector, and champion of Citadel Space and all its inhabitants." It had been commissioned by the Council.

Alliance Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau snorted angrily and wiped at his eyes, suddenly teary from all this construction dust. The Council never gave a damn about Shepard. When the first human Spectre had saved their sorry asses from Sovereign and his puppet, Saren, they had gone through the obligatory motions of gratitude and then shoved her under the rug as soon as they'd managed to suppress the truth of the Reapers. If they hadn't—no, this wasn't about them.

He limped over to the pedestal and gingerly sat down, his back against the cool and comforting solidity of the marble. A dead bouquet of flowers lay inches from his left hand. The others had already paid their respects. The flowers—Kaiden's, probably. He'd been an old-fashioned romantic for as long as Joker had known him. Shepard's gentle rejection had hit him hard, but her death had broken him. Alenko didn't speak for a week after it happened.

Liara, Jeff noticed a silver charm lying in the dust at the foot of the pedestal, couldn't stop talking. She hadn't seemed to notice that her relentless denial and pointless optimism grated on everyone's nerves until Wrex had bluntly told her to hold her tongue or to lose it. She'd been very quiet after that.

Tali had left some scraps of metal—no, wait. Jeff squinted at the little slate-gray figure. She'd fashioned some spare parts into a tiny Normandy. He closed his eyes. The young quarian had shut down her audio transmitters but he could still see her shoulders hitch, her form shaking with sobs. That was after his escape pod had landed. He'd had to tell them, tell them all, that she'd died for him, for nothing. He remembered wondering numbly how Tali's envirosuit disposed of her tears.

Wrex's token, a fresh varren skull, had been deemed inappropriate and unsanitary. It was removed by site supervisors as soon as it had been confirmed that the burly krogan was offplanet. He'd been the most frank about Myla's death. Moreau rubbed his shoulder, recalling the heavy claws of the mercenary who had pushed him into a wall (relatively gently, mind you, but still firmly enough to break three ribs). The dark ruby eyes glared from beneath the blood red skull-plate and his deep gravelly voice had shattered Jeff's detached state of shock.

"She knew what she was doing. I guess she thought you were worth saving. Don't waste it."

Garrus's old C-Sec badge lay in the dirt. Surprisingly, the turian had been requested to speak at the ceremony the Alliance had put together. Joker didn't go, couldn't, but had watched the holofeed.

"I didn't know Shepard for very long, but she taught me more about honor, respect, and responsibility than I'd learned in all the previous years. She was a remarkable fighter, an exemplary commander, and a compassionate being. I— " the turian had seemed surprised to lose his thread, "I will miss her and I will not be the only one."

Anderson had also been asked to speak, and Joker had been ashamed to see tears trickle down the captain's proud and grizzled cheek. Jeff presumed the medal, carefully placed beneath the plaque, was his. Chakwas and the rest of the crew had said their goodbyes at the Alliance funeral to an empty casket.

Jeff took a deep shuddering breath and pulled the dark blue cap from his head.

"Okay," he looked up at the clear sky, past the rusty framework and black support girders, "It's my turn. I'm sorry, okay? I know I should've left with the others, but I never thought you—I thought that I could…shit."

He scrunched the cap's soft material, kneading and rolling it automatically.

"It's my fault you're dead. We—it should've been the other way around. I would've died for you in a heartbeat. What I mean is…"

It was coming easier now, but he still felt stupid, "I loved you, Shepard. I'm sorry. I'd fix things if I could, but I can't. Hell, I can't even walk right. I wish…I don't want to forget you, I don't think I ever will, but the dreams…"

He closed his green eyes as flashes of intense brightness—the shattered Normandy against the backdrop of a giant red star, Shepard's impossibly tiny silhouette writhing horribly for a minute, two, and then going suddenly and irrevocably still. Pounding against the thick, unrelenting glass even after he knew it was too late, even after he'd broken four fingers and fractured a radius. Screaming until his voice was too far gone to do anything but sob brokenly. The utter stillness and solitude of the pod, the mantra that pulsed with his heartbeat, that built to an unavoidable cacophony in his mind, roaring "YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER YOU—"

"I know!" he yelled at the clear sky, the unfinished monument, the rusty dirt beneath him. Then, quietly, as the tears began to fall, "I know."

The workers, who had surely heard, ignored him, whether out of compassion or unease, Jeff neither knew nor cared. He didn't care what they, or anyone else thought anymore. He watched the dust flatten and darken in little circles as he cried silently.

He'd been too proud before. His pride, his arrogance, had kept him in the seat of the Normandy, had gotten his commander killed.

Dead. She was dead. Joker wiped his cheeks, dimly registering that his beard had definitely grown past Alliance regulations. To hell with it.

He looked up to the sky again.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "but it's done, you're dead, and I can't do anything about it. There's no point in wallowing in guilt or self-pity, it's bad for my complexion anyways, and you…you wouldn't want me to."

A light breeze caressed his face, inexplicably carrying a familiar scent. He breathed in hesitantly, then hungrily, disbelief widening his green eyes. Warm leather, the slightly bitterly metallic smell of weaponry, clean fabric, and, mysteriously, a teasing hint of peaches. It was hers.

Joker sat quietly for a moment, letting it fill him one last time. When he stood up, he felt ten years younger and the pain in his lower legs, which had been increasing in the month since Shepard's death, had receded to the point where he barely noticed it at all. He laid a hand on the cold bronze plaque.

"Okay, Commander, I'm done bothering you." He gently placed his old blue SR-1 cap down in the dust before the gleaming marble pedestal.

"Thanks, Shepard."

He walked away and didn't look back.