Now that, that didn't sit right. It was a speech she'd gotten before, that even if she didn't remember, if she lost the fuzzy edges of her falliable human memory, wicked away into the scouring winds of life, and death, her effect was real. As if she needed to be told that-- but there wasn't time to work through it the way they both deserved. There wasn't time!

It was maddening, the cowardice of this man. For all she liked and respected him, it was only more maddening; she cared if he understood.

Shepard put out her hand, braced on his shoulder, a last moment then, to give him words, to carry him forward, stern and burning-sure, "Listen to me, Sigma Klim. None of that matters to me."

That's not how it works, she wants to shout, and shake him for it. Memories don't live in your head like a hard drive, there and then gone, dropped in or deleted like clean digital organization, file folders and discreet packets of data. What you did got into you, changed you, made you more or less, even if the resulting person wasn't aware of the change, it was as impossible to leave the past behind as it was to escape the future.

It comes for all of us.

"You do not die for this, got it? Not for some fucked-up legacy of mine. You've done good enough work here, but you've got more to do. And I can't be here to back you up; this isn't my world anymore."