A captain is supposed to go down with her ship. And she did. She did. It isn't fair that she's here now, alive among the wreckage. She never asked for this.

Her boots crunch through the snow and each footprint seems like a violation of sacred space. She shouldn't be here. No one should be here.

Her entire body feels frozen, a chill that has nothing to do with the outside temperature. Her armor protects her from that, at least. It can't do a thing to keep her safe from the guilt that haunts every move she makes among the twisted remains of the Normandy.

She was responsible for this ship, for these people. She is responsible for them, still.

The glinting of sunlight on metal calls her attention, and she sinks to her knees, feeling for the object that's slid between two rocks: a battered chain, and buried in the snow on the end of it, the familiar rounded rectangle of an Alliance dogtag. She has to yank hard to get it out from under the rocks, but miraculously it doesn't break.

She sits down on the snow-covered stone, and stares at the dogtag in her gloved hand. She was supposed to get everyone to safety. That's what the escape pods were for. But she knows that some of her crew, like Navigator Pressly, had died in the initial wave of the Collectors' attack, before they'd even known what hit them, before any escape pod could've saved them.

But she was responsible for them. Even still.

She stands again, and walks through the broken ship in a daze. Memories flash behind her eyes even when she closes them. Every now and then she finds another dogtag, wrapped around a bit of jagged metal or in the narrow gap between seat and console or inside of a half-broken crate.

She wanders from one resting place to another, for what might be an hour or more. No voices crackle over her radio. No living creatures intrude on her solitude. She isn't even sure anything lives on this rock.

The silence is deafening. She thinks she can hear echoes of other sounds, like the hissing of escaping air. A panicked silence. She shakes her head and tells herself to get it together. She can't fall apart. She's Commander Shepard.

And Cerberus is watching her, just a call away, on the Normandy that is not the Normandy. They are waiting for her to crack, watching her for any sign that she is broken beyond repair, a failed investment.

Why would the Illusive Man send her here, except to toy with her? She won't give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled.

Gentle wind blows snow over her boots and up against the partially recognizable pieces of her old ship. She turns back to the shuttle, glad to hear Joker's voice, responding immediately to her call. She can always count on him. At least there's that.

"Ready to go, Commander?" he asks, and she nods even though she knows he can't see it.

She shouldn't have come here.

There is nothing here but ghosts, and she is one of them.

A captain is supposed to go down with her ship.

And she did.