Chapter Text
The six Marines and sailors are silent. Two wear the blinding white of the Navy, four the near black blue of the Marine Corps. Four of them wear blood stripes down one arm. They stand in two rows, a coffin between them of deep mahogany, the lid almost complete covered in metal pins - little gold knives piercing through black lettering - N7.
The flag has been sharply folded, three old-fashioned gunpowder shells slipped in between soft blue, and pressed into the white-gloved hands of Captain Hannah Shepard, whose eyes fix somewhere no one else can see.
Lieutenant Ashley Williams’ ears are ringing still, and she’s not sure whether it’s from the honor guard’s three volleys or the slap of each N7 on the cargo deck of the SSV Everest driving their insignia pins into the top of the coffin.
“All hands, bury the dead!” Anderson’s voice booms but a crack runs down the middle of it.
The weight on her shoulder is far too light when she and the other five lift the casket onto their shoulders and slowly pace to the airlock chamber and gently slid it inside. There was a viewing port and Ashley is frozen staring out of it.
For the month since that awful day, she had been consumed by a roaring fire. A rage that scorched her from the inside out and hurt and lashed out at anyone whom could be assigned a scrap of blame. Joker, the captain who’d refused to stay and search, Anderson. Now the flames have flickered and died.
“We therefore commit this body to the void, looking for the resurrection of the body when the stars shall give up their dead, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ashley wants to laugh with the insanity of it. There is no body, just some leaden weights in the bottom. Instead she watches as the coffin that has no piece of Emilia Shepard within it shoots out into space and towards the nearest cold-burning star.
“O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: accept our prayers on behalf of thy servant Emilia, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
Shepard had been a terrible Catholic, Ashley thinks. She would have been annoyed to be called by her first name.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
There were people who burnt so brightly you couldn’t help but watch them. Try to edge closer to their warmth. But sometimes they burnt out all too quickly.
She thinks she can see a flash of light in the midst of the deep dark as the coffin begins to burn. The last flash of Shepard’s brilliance, fading.
“Good night, dear heart;” Ashley Williams whispers to the glass, “Good night, good night.”