Time period: ME2, after the Collector Base, before Arrival.
It was late into the Normandy's night cycle. Despite the exertion of the Collector base and the victory sex that followed not being too long ago, Shepard still couldn't sleep. Only now she wasn't sure if it was due to bad habits she'd learned over the years, or Cerberus' meddling cybernetics implants. She healed faster, ate less, worked more, and it was starting to look like she wouldn't need to sleep as much as she used to. Which, admittedly, wasn't a lot to begin with.
A quiet sigh escaped as she sat up. A quick look back to her bed mate let her know that she hadn't disturbed the him. She moved as silent as she could to the bathroom, quickly sealing the door behind her, again to ensure she wouldn't wake Garrus. She needed solitude for a few minutes while she let her thoughts ruminate.
She couldn't pinpoint why now she was thinking about her resurrection. Long talks over tea, brandy, and a few solid meals had helped her work through some of her issues concerning wait, I was dead for two years? as best as they could; there probably isn't a support group I could go to for that, she'd admitted. Regular check-ups with Chakwas, Miranda, and Mordin all helped reinforce the fact that yes, this is indeed her body and not a clone or some very advanced cyborg/VI amalgamation.
The hard-earned friendships she'd gained eased the fears that yes, she still had feelings and could operate as normal as possible, given the circumstances.
And Garrus… Garrus somehow had wormed his way into a part of herself she didn't know existed. Somewhere soft, shy. Warm. Comfortable. Alive.
Standing in front of the mirror, she tilted her head for a better look at her healing skin. Her lips turned up slightly as her thoughts crept back to him sleeping in her bed. The smile quickly disappeared as she turned her body around to inspect her backside. The scratches from their last tie-breaker on top of the healing burns and bullet holes were less severe than she expected, but they weren't what she was looking for. Reaching her arm across her chest, Shepard winced slightly as she grabbed the raw skin on her back and pulled it taut. Her muscles protested the further abuse, and when she finally caught the faint glimpses of red and black lines down her spine beneath her newer scars, she let them rest. In fact, she even gave into her beaten body's demands for once and slid down the wall to sit on the cool floor.
Huh. If that wasn't proof enough that this was indeed her body, she didn't know what was. A cursory glance over her forearms and calves reminded her for the hundredth time that yes, the rest of her tattoos were gone. It was oddly comforting to know that one had survived. Sort of.
Unlike the ones on her arms and legs, she did her best to cover the one on her back after she joined the Alliance. It was deeply personal, one that wasn't meant for show. It was her life story; it was all that mattered to her when she ran with the Reds, but once she moved on, she hadn't the heart to get it removed. And then with death and subsequent resurrection, she didn't have a choice.
Absent mindedly tracing where the sleeves on her arms used to be, she let her thoughts drift to the back piece that was. It was clever really, how they managed to disguise the Reds logo with it.
The kid they caught trying to break into their headquarters in the middle of the snow storm was more of a danger to a sandwich than anything else, but Marik let him live once he realized just how quickly the kid - Amir - had broken through their locks. Shepard remembered being endlessly pissed that her encryptions were so quickly undone.
Amir turned out to be the best asset that ever dropped into the Reds' collective lap. He had access to areas of the city the Reds didn't know existed and could walk among turfs the Reds would be shot on sight for. His skills with a gun left something to be desired but no one seemed to care too much. It wasn't long before the Reds found themselves continually one up on their rivals, well-fed, and with more credits than they knew what to do with. And for a time, it was good.
But Shepard couldn't deny that she was jealous of Amir's new found fame amongst her Reds, her gang, her family. When it used to be her they would go to her with broken omni-tools, wanting the latest hacking software or bootlegged data, now they would talk to Amir. She felt replaced and she was going to make him pay for it.
Marik teased her constantly for it. Seems our resident tech junkie just cracked the Cobra's nest, he told her one day with a peculiar pride. Shepard remembered how she gaped in disbelief. That fucker was taken on the job she had spent two months working on, and he managed to crack their mainframe?
That was it.
It took two weeks of sabotage - programs suddenly inaccessible with insanely complicated encryptions, intel vanishing without a trace, thirty-five omni-tools simultaneously wiping themselves every three hours (a new personal best) - before Amir confronted her. It was another two days before their tempers had cooled, and when it did, Shepard realized they had more in common than not. And eventually found it nice to have someone to talk to – shop, life, whatever. Someone who treated her like an equal, not just a tool to be used. Someone dangerously close to becoming her friend.
He was the one who suggested her tattoo. All members of the Reds are marked with the logo in some way, right? Why not make it worthwhile? It was dangerous to have anything distinguishing when she was meant to be invisible, but she relished in the challenge. Besides, crude drawing or no, she had to admit what he came up with was ingenious.
The Tenth Street Reds symbol, a stylized, inverted omega, that covered her shoulder blades and up her neck bordered by two thick rectangles on its lower sides. They looked like a necklace (a menat, Shepard remembered him calling it, a necklace from a long dead civilization) with two long strands following the curved sides of the logo, and multiple colorful horizontal 'beads' sandwiched between another band that ran parallel to the first, with an empty space in between the two shapes for the width of her spine. Filling the inside of the logo was a large golden circle – which, upon closer inspection, was meant to be a stylized sun. She didn't comment on his terrible art because she was too flattered to speak. The horns of Hathor, Amir told her. A long dead goddess for a long dead civilization. Her stories are crazy and full of contradictions, but she's always been called the Mistress of the West, the one who welcomed the dead to the afterlife. Sounds a bit like someone we know, yeah?
She was the Reds' token plainclothes and he was particularly tickled with the story of her initiate job: get into the bar on the edge of their turf undetected and draw out a member of a rival gang. Didn't matter who. Of course, the location she was given was also the one with three different rival gangs in it, all vying for control over the spot. Fantastic.
The poor fool she'd managed to convince to follow her was drunk beyond belief, and ripping red sand like there was no tomorrow. He knew what he was doing was dangerous and life-threatening, he had told her in a ramble, but he didn't care.
Besides, he had said, grabbing and groping Shepard whenever he had the presence of mind. When death does eventually come for me, I can only hope that may she look so lovely. It only took a few seconds of unfortunate kissing to distract him from the knife. His brain was still trying to catch up with what his body was telling him while he bled out in the alley.
Hathor, Amir began calling her every time a job went off without a hitch, with each new body to add to the pile. The name stuck, much to Marik's displeasure, but still she continued to use it.
The memorable kills, the good ones as Jack would eventually put it, were rewarded with a tassel against the menat. Right side for girls, left for the boys. The sleeves on her arms came later after too little deliberation and too much drinking, littered with references to jobs pulled by her gang and a few helpful suggestions from Amir. Her legs had followed suit eventually, though Shepard made sure Amir got matching ones that time.
The first mark on her spine between the menat was for Judith, shot and killed during a raid. A boxy, inverted 'u' to reflect the omega of the Reds. The second, beneath the first, were parallel lines for the two who died from their injuries a week later. Shepard couldn't remember their names, but they were still family, even if distantly.
Amir became the third. Another inverted 'u'. His killer was the sixth tassel on her left side.
She continued to be called Hathor, job after job, like a cruel joke. It didn't sound right dropping from Marik's lips. It didn't feel right once Amir was gone.
It was two years, many more tassels and marks, a series of unfortunate circumstances and the first serious brush with death that finally convinced Shepard to leave it all behind.
And now, like them, their stories were gone, leaving her feeling as though a part of her was missing. She didn't particularly want to be reminded every single day about each experience, but the reminders they represented had helped her get her act together after the Blitz. She felt like she owed it to Amir and the others to not leave the skin untouched during this second chance.
Shepard contemplated where she should start again, staring beyond her plain limbs to the cool grey floor beyond, not really seeing it. She stopped when she realized that she didn't have enough skin for all the marks she'd need. The thought froze her blood and drove the breath from her lungs.
She stood up too quickly, inducing a slight vertigo, and left the bathroom. The absent minded glance to the clock told her she'd been in there for almost an hour. She paused before her bed, hand hovering over the blankets, unsure of whether it was worth it if she wasn't able to sleep any more.
Fuck it. She got in, and not a moment later felt a reassuring turian arm slide across her waist. Its warmth brought her back to reality better than any cup of coffee could. She turned into its owners embrace willingly, the small smile from earlier finding its way back as well. A tired, but welcome, feeling sunk into her bones the longer she stayed there.
Somewhere in the depths of her mind, she resolved not to be bothered by what no longer was. The Illusive Man, bastard that he was, gave her the second chance she never knew she'd been looking for. Hathor was put to rest now, her horns burned up with the body over Alchera. There would be time to get new marks if she wanted. Later.