Author's Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all associated characters are the property of Bioware. No infringement is intended by this work of respectful fanfiction.

Author's Note: Honoring the Dead takes place in the Rose Shepard story continuity, following Loneliness of Command and The Fan, and before Shepard goes to see the Council the first time to accuse Saren of the attack on Eden Prime.

The Citadel

Bachjret Ward

Cerulean Hotel

Room 582

Steam still clung to the edges of the bathroom mirror as Commander Rose Shepard dragged a brush through the heavy length of her still-damp hair, smoothing the waves into ruthless order before twisting the lot of them into a regulation-neat bun. She grimly studied her own face in the mirror, noting the paler than normal skin, the faintly purple circles under her dark brown eyes. "Warpaint it is," she muttered to the worn woman in the mirror. "You look like shit, Shepard."

Five minutes later, concealer and kohl applied, a light coat of gloss over her otherwise unpainted mouth, Rose nodded to her reflection before striding out of the bathroom. Her dress blues had been pressed and laid neatly over the back of the single chair in the stingy, stubbornly generic hotel room. Dressing in them took five minutes, far too little time before she turned to confront the small, rectangular case sitting on the bed behind her. She reached for it, but then hesitated, her hand hovering outstretched just above the small black handle. Her fingers clenched into a fist, and Shepard closed her eyes for a second.

Alliance N-level operatives, especially the 7s, were supposed to be made of titanium, cruising through life silently like bipedal sharks; when presented with a goal, they were expected to fall upon it with arms and armor and sheer bloody-minded determination, and they were damn well supposed to succeed. It was everything she'd always done in her life; succeed beyond expectation, survive beyond reason, and Shepard was very good at what she did. The flip side of that equation, of course, was that Shepard was always surrounded by death.

She fucking hated death.

It was an insane thought for someone like her; she knew that. Shepard was someone who dealt in death, or with it, every day. Even if she didn't have her hands on a high caliber sniper rifle, she was well aware that every decision she made on a battlefield, every time she led a shore party or sent out a squad, she was dancing with death. Either hers, theirs or their enemies'. Someone was going down into that long, dark, bloody night and not coming back.

Shepard had been thinking about that a lot since Eden Prime. Maybe it was the beacon's visions, boiling like a nest of maddened insects in her mind whenever she wasn't paying the strictest attention to something else. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, because the Maker knew she hadn't had any decent rest in days without shuddering awake from bloody nightmares.

To be honest, she knew she was thinking about Eden Prime because it was still too painful to think of Akuze. Eden Prime was the more recent mission. It had definitely been the more political mission. The stakes had been infinitely higher on Eden Prime, and it was a mission she had technically failed.

But Akuze had seen the start of what she had started to call The Ritual.

Shepard hadn't been the only officer who'd gone to Akuze. She certainly hadn't been the only marine. But by the time they'd extracted, she had been the only officer, the only marine, the only sentient thing living on the surface of that damned planet, and the "living" part had been a little touch and go. She'd managed to live when she hadn't really been expected to, like she'd managed to survive everything else that had happened in her life, and in the end, she'd been the only one left to stand over the empty coffins, to salute with hands that still bore the marks of battle as the melancholy notes of Taps played those fifty brave souls into eternity.

So, no, Shepard didn't like death, but since that day, she'd developed her own way of dealing with it.

The hand that had hesitated over the case unclenched, and grasped the black handle firmly. The case was as light as ever. It was just the lump in her chest that seemed too heavy to carry. That was Rose's burden. It was Commander Shepard who opened her hotel door and walked out into the corridor.

Commander Shepard stopped dead, for once, completely surprised.

Decked out in immaculate dress blues, Williams and Alenko were side by side in the hallway of her hotel room, at parade rest. Waiting for her.

Alenko inclined his dark head respectfully. "Commander."

Shepard's fingers tightened around the handle of her case. It was the only sign of her unease that she allowed to show. "I thought I gave you two liberty for the night, Lieutenant."

"You did, ma'am." Now it was the gunnery chief who spoke. "This is what we're choosing to do with it." She touched her comm. "Captain? The commander is ready."

"Commander." The deep voice that resonated in her comm implant was unmistakably that of Captain David Anderson. "Bring your squad and report to my office."

Only her very deep respect for Anderson made Shepard bite back a comment about being on personal time. "On my way, Captain." She pinned her officers with a look. "All right. Let's go."