InsaneJournal

Hawke had spent her first few weeks on the ship completely alone, and that was the first time in her entire life she’d had permanent rooms in a place with no one else to talk to. She didn’t like being alone with her own thoughts. That was ironic, when it came down to it, since there had been plenty of times when they’d all been growing up together that she’d wished for a room of her own away from either of her siblings, or even an entire house she didn’t have to share with anyone.

So when it was announced she was getting a roommate on the ship, Marian couldn’t wait to make a new best friend. Of course it took a few days of passing like ships in the night before she could nail Shepard down to begin with.

Finally managing to catch Shepard in the common room one afternoon, Hawke waved. “I was beginning to think you were a ghost! Stay and chat for a bit, I smuggled a bottle of Tequila from the Lounge while no one was looking.”

Shepard’s time in the med bay had been a little longer than usual--her insistence on letting her wounds be allowed to scar had certainly raised a few eyebrows. For her part, she expected it was the only way she’d be able to handle a completely new universe. Sleeping...well, with sedatives sleep was good. She didn’t dream about that kid anymore, at least. That was an improvement.

She glanced up to see Hawke--her roommate--wave, and she smiled slightly, giving a small wave in return. “Sometimes I kinda feel like one,” she said. “But I like the sound of that tequila.”

"Brought you back from the brink, did they?" Marian asked, as casual as possible. It was best not to give too much weight to conversations like this, though she'd certainly been back from something close to the brink a few times herself. Nothing like what she imagined Shepard had been through though, given her scars.

At the moment the only mark on Marian was the swollen redness of her hands, along with a few split knuckles. She'd completely forgotten there was a healer aboard the ship to go to after she'd gotten done beating the shit out of Lucifer, and wasn't really the type to just go and get herself healed up anyway. Marian poured them both a big glass, "Do you want to talk about it? I feel like we've got similar life experiences, though mine seem to be more medieval, given Thedas's lack of advancement. Or we can ignore all that and just talk about ourselves in vague ways while getting pissed drunk.”

Shepard nodded. “Basically. At least I wasn’t actually dead this time.” She took one of the glasses of tequila and took a swig. Whew. It hit good. “The universe keeps seeming to have it out for me--suit malfunctioned after my ship was destroyed. Apparently there was enough left of me after...whatever happened after my oxygen ran out that a couple of different entities want to get a hold of my corpse. One group did and spent two years putting me back together. Which is only one entry on the list of ‘Examples That Seem Like the Universe Is Out to Get Me’.”
She took another swig and sighed. “Looks like you got into a fight lately,” she noted, pointing her glass at Hawke’s knuckles. “Getting pissed drunk does sound good, though.”

Marian blinked, then looked down at her knuckles. In her lexicon, 'a fight' usually involved flung spells and slicing people up with a staff blade. "Oh these... Uhm... well. There's this man aboard who seemingly cannot be hurt by any living thing and we decided to test my magic on him. Which turned into me pummeling him with my fists. Though I'm the only one that came away with any damage."

"And you certainly sound like you've been through more than enough of your own. Damage, I mean. Running out of oxygen and your suit, whatever that is... that sounds bad, considering the two year bit. I can hardly believe that all of that is simply one example, except that I actually... do. Because you've got things like - the Blight showed up on a whim at random and then decided to chart its course directly through my village, where I was just barely eking out an existence hiding from all the local religious folks. I was illegal, you see." Marian motioned to all of herself, and added, "All of me. Just for having magic. And then my sister died trying to escape the beasts, and my mother decided to blame me for it for the next... ten years? I think?"

"Not that it's a contest. It isn't. Just... I understand, a little bit."

She knocked back her own glass of tequila and poured them both some more.

Jen blinked. “Huh. Guess he makes for a perfect punching bag.” This was definitely a strange place to end up in, but it seemed like it was at least strange for everyone else, too.

She held her newly refilled glass as Marian spoke about her life. They really did match up surprisingly well in the traumatic life experiences department. “I was born on an agricultural colony--Mindoir. It got hit by slavers when I was sixteen--they destroyed whatever they didn’t take. Lost my parents and everyone I knew. Might have died, too, if an Alliance patrol hadn’t found me. And that patrol is why I joined the Marines when I turned eighteen--wanted to be like the guys that saved me.”

After a couple more swigs of tequila, she continued. “Few years into my service, I lost my whole unit in what turned out to be a twisted science experiment to learn about…these things called thresher maws...and what kind of shit happened when you subjected a bunch of ground troops to fighting them.” She paused. “Almost my whole unit. Turns out the scientists captured one and spent the next several years experimenting on him.”

"Slavers, those are a nasty sort in any place," Marian said, wincing a bit. "My... on again off again love of my life sort, we had all kinds of run ins with slavers because of him. Up to the north a bit there's this place called Tevinter where magic isn't illegal and they get up to all sorts of nasty business up there. It's be the equivalent to your awful experiments with science. Killing whole swaths of slaves just to perfect magical spells, doing all sorts of things just to learn what the Blight does to healthy skin. That sort of thing. Quite creepy."

She was glad she didn't have to witness that last part, and only heard about it second hand via one of Varric's letters. There was really only so many horrifying things a person could deal with seeing in their lives. "Lets see... A serial killer targeted my mother's face for his patchwork abomination undead creature?"

Shepard blinked at Hawke when she mentioned the last bit with the serial killer. “That is...fucked up. I had a bitter, jealous clone try to steal my identity, but that seems mild in comparison.” She took another drink.

“The group that sicced the thresher maws on my unit, Cerberus, claimed they had humanity’s best interests in mind, but they did a helluva lot of human experimentation--and I do not for a minute believe that all of those were done by ‘rogue cells’, fuck that--turned people into husks and other things, even experimented on their own families.” She paused. “Husks--and a lot of other things, depending on the original species--are...were what was left when humans were indoctrinated with Reaper technology. Mindless techno-zombies that target any organic lifeform that gets near ‘em.”

Jen sighed and ran a hand over her face. “I spent the last...several years of my life facing one threat to the galaxy after another, mostly the sort of thing you don’t know if you’ll come back from or not. Had some people I...might have asked if I had a chance with, if things had been different. Sometimes I wish I’d said something anyway.” She let out a rueful chuckle. “Don’t know that even I buy my excuses for not doing it.”

Without saying a word in reply for a few moments, Hawke went ahead and topped off both of their glasses. The bottle was probably going to be empty at this rate, but the more that Shepard recounted the tales of her life, the more Hawke was certain they were living the same life but in separate universes. "First it was the Blight. We escaped that only to end up on the shores of a city that wouldn't welcome us in. I sold myself - Ah... rather, I mean, I indentured myself for a few years to a local band of smugglers and such, in order to get my family and myself into the city. We had to protect them all from the Templars, too, since I was an apostate. Illegal Mage. Kirkwall is cursed, I'm quite certain of it now. Always crawling with things that need killing."

She took another long sip off her glass, and then continued, "Blood mages mind controlling people or summoning demons, and that was only the start. Cleaning the streets at night of all the local riff raff. WORKING for the local riff raff. Anything I could after they let me free to keep the Templars of my back and raise some funds. We lived with my Uncle Gamlen, and he used to watch me sleep at night. It was... quite creepy. I wanted my own place, to reclaim our family name. I eventually did, after a lovely expedition into the Deep Roads where a friend's brother betrayed us, stole most of the treasure, and left us there to die. We escaped, of course. And then there was the Qunari problem. And then it got really bad. So yes... it's rather like we're twins only you're in the future where problems are larger and everything sounds absolutely terrifying. Techno-zombies? Real zombies are enough."

After a pause she added, “You know, I don’t recommend having love affairs in lives like ours. You think you’re missing out, perhaps you did, but my own adventures in that field were enough to rip my heart out regularly.”

Shepard took a deep breath. They really were two of a kind, from the sound of...everything. She looked at her glass of tequila, then back at Hawke. “There’s a toast, back on Earth, that fits us too damn well.”

She held her glass up slightly. “Here’s to us; who’s like us?” She paused a moment, then concluded, “Damn few! And they’re all dead.” She took a drink after the toast and leaned back in her chair.

“Maybe you’re right, about people like us and love. One I lost; one I almost lost twice; and....well, really, any of us could have been dead any moment.” Miranda’s death still stung more than Jen would have ever admitted to any of her crew.

It was one of the most appropriate toasts she'd ever heard in her life. Marian lifted her glass and nodded her head emphatically. Then she frowned, and nodded again. "I almost did lose one. Not to death, that time, but because she'd gone and done a few things that she probably shouldn't have done. But then, with Isabela, I think we all sort of expected it. A ship's captain and a pirate, not exactly the type to stick around. Almost... Almost everyone lived, except for my family. The rest was just us all falling apart. I've really only got a few dependable people left in my life at this point."

She scrunched her nose up, "And neither of them are actually IN it. Aveline captains the guards back in Kirkwall, and Varric spends his time trying to be Viscount and pissing everyone off on purpose. But I was far away from there when I ended up here. Stirring up some sort of fire with the Wardens - they're a... I suppose a sort of military organization, special people who fight the Darkspawn and end the Blight. Only recently in my timeline they'd all gone bloody insane. Their headquarters is far north, up in the mountains."

Shepard sighed. “We make quite a pair. ‘S good to have someone to drink with, even if I wouldn’t wish what we’ve been through on anyone.”

"Neither would I," Hawke admitted, with a long sigh of her own. "But it IS good to have someone to drink with who really understands. I doubt you'd be surprised at all to learn that there are few enough people on this ship with a similar level of life experiences."

She topped off both of their glasses again, and then toasted, "Here's to all the people who shared all of that shite with us, who aren't here now. We'll remember you. We can't forget."

“We can’t forget,” Shepard echoed, toasting again before downing the tequila. There was no forgetting any of them, or what they’d done for her or for the galaxy. The memories were a pain she was used to, in a way, a wound that ached even if it looked healed. But at least she wasn’t alone in that feeling, which made the ache a little more bearable.