Homebound Pilgrimage (Or: Quariantine)

Mass Effect

There's been an increase in the number of Self Insert fics recently, so I tried to give a different spin on them once or twice myself. This one is based on the main character ending up in the body of a Quarian - I haven't touched it in more than a year, but when I came across it again I figured it belonged in here. (P.s. Hiver writes self insert fanfiction, I reference him in the story.)

Part 1- All His Fault

It all started with a splitting headache, a stabbing pain that went so deep that I couldn't even keep my eyes open against the glare of electric lights. I was pretty sure my glasses were gone, and there was a strange buzzing in my ears. My breathing was laboured, with a distinct hiss to it, and the whole world seemed to sway violently from side to side as I tried to make sense of what was going on.

The distant thought that I'd managed to drink myself into a stupor briefly flashed into my head, but I'd only ever done that kind of thing once, and I wasn't about to break a six-year dry spell on a whim. I was pretty sure I hadn't been mugged, either - I distinctly remembered getting on my bus, driving towards home. So where the hell was I?

Oh. Fuck.

I'd never gotten off that bus, had I?

In a burst of renewed panic I tried to right myself again, but there was something wrong with my arms. They felt like they were too long, too stiff. I tried to see what was going on, but my vision was terribly vague and almost purple in hue, smeared out beyond recognition. I whimpered in confusion, trying to calm myself down, which wasn't helped by my heartbeat thundering in my ears in a strange, unusual rhythm. Too slow for how upset I was, as if it couldn't quite keep up, but still weirdly regular. And my fingers… god, I couldn't even feel half of them as they slipped across the ridged metal floor.

"Is anyone there?" I called out in a strangled voice, but something else flowed from my lips - something unintelligible and strange. For a moment I was stunned into silence, before I tried again more urgently. The same gibberish came out, not at all like the words I'd intended. "What… is going on?" I declared in words that made no sense. I'd lost control of my tongue. What the hell would I do without speech?!

Desperately I wracked my mind for some kind of logical explanation. I couldn't remember getting off my bus, or walking home from the station, which was less than five minutes away at a decent pace. I remembered the other passengers, though - a tired mother with a small child that had been blubbering the entire way, who had been sitting next to an elderly man with a cane and a scowl that could scare adults, much less children. There had been a wiry-looking fellow with glasses opposite a guy who might as well have been as wide as he was tall. And there had also been an odd woman with a yellow hat, smiling out the window blissfully - I'd seen her before. I'd never paid much attention to the night bus, for fear of catching the wrong stranger's eye, but those people stood out.

Distantly, like in a dream, I remembered pain. And - light. The harsh glare of headlights coming right at the bus from a dark side street, the high-pitched wail of a horn an instant before it was upon us. I didn't remember a crash - but that's the only thing that made any sense to me. That truck, or whatever it was, had to have hit me at speed. So, did that mean I was laying somewhere on the pavement, bleeding out into the gutter? Was I dying?

I sought for something to grasp onto as gravity seemed to waver back and forth around me. I didn't feel any particularly sharp pains, so I was pretty sure I was still deep inside an adrenalin haze. I haphazardly managed to get myself into a seated position, and it was then that I realized something else that was very, very weird.

I was wearing body armor.

I couldn't tell exactly what it looked like through my watery eyes, which could still make out little more than tints of blue and purple, but I could feel the hard plates on my legs and my chest - thick and heavy, with rivets and bolts holding them together. Even my face was covered by some type of helmet, complete with thick cloth down the back of my head, like a fancy beekeeper's suit. I considered the possibility that they were some kind of casts, but that thought made no sense either; I was pretty sure I wasn't in any hospital I'd ever seen.

The stabbing pain behind my eyes slowly made way for a rain of pins and needles, as if I'd been sleeping too long and my body couldn't keep up, much like my heart. Instead of an arm or a leg that tingled through, my brain was doing the recovering this time. I gingerly felt around me for fluids, for the telltale signs of blood and open wounds, but I couldn't find anything like that. I seemed to be - pretty much intact. How?

Then I reached my legs.

Oh, god. I knew I'd gotten my hopes up too soon! They were so horribly broken! Both of my legs were warped out of their proper shape, probably dislocated. I was fairly certain, just from the angle they were in that I'd be in a whole helluva lot of pain as soon as the panic wore off. I let out a pathetic whimper. I felt entirely justified in continuing to freak out.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckshit!

It took several minutes, at least, before I again managed to string a few coherent thoughts together. I realized that the air tasted stale, recycled, too thin to properly breathe, and everything was just - weird, off-kilter. It couldn't be real. It really couldn't.

I had to be hallucinating.

I'd seen weird-ass things before while I was doped up on whatever fancy drugs the doctors had for me as a kid. As I understood later, hallucinations were an uncommon side-effect of the medication, but I was always lucky that way. I'd had some of my favourite artists pay me imaginary visits at my hospital bed for the better part of a week, and that'd been kind of awesome. I'd never quite forgotten about that particular trip.

Some of my friends had convinced me, much more recently, to try and recapture those bizarre visions. I'd gone along with them, too cowed to deny the peer pressure, and I'd taken what they offered me. I had spent entirely too long being terrified of everything around me, feeling like I could dissipate at any moment and float away, in a hallucination that was more terrifying than comforting. I'd sworn never to try that shit again. Fucking Salvia.

Was that the reason for all of this? One stupid mistake with a few friends, and I'd screwed up my psyche enough to toss me into wacky wonderland at the first sign of trauma? I would be pathetic enough to be one of those people...

My self-pity was forcefully interrupted when the ground shook beneath me. I wasn't imagining it either, this time. The floor shivered as if reverberating from some mighty hammer blow, and I could see the lights swing back and forth as vague smears in the corner of my eyes. An earthquake, maybe?

ZING! That sensation I instantly recognized. A bullet flashed by overhead and I cringed down in reflex, far too late to actually get out of its way if it had been headed for me. The projectile smashed into the wall over my head with a shower of sparks, and I sagged back onto the floor in shock, my breath frozen in my throat as I tried to rationalize getting fired upon. The last time I'd even seen a real gun I was twelve.

I didn't have much time to process what happened, as whoever had fired at me was screaming something, his voice gravelly and indistinct. After a few moments he came into view as a vague blob with an uncomfortably familiar squarish object aimed in my direction, an oversized rifle that seemed to glow in anticipation. I desperately hoped that the figure wasn't going to actually shoot me - I raised up my hands in a sign of surrender, aware that I couldn't hope to stand up, much less flee. "Please don't kill me!" I murmured desperately.

Despite my worst expectations, the man with the gun didn't actually fire. He lowered his gun slightly, turning back to face where he came from, spitting harsh words that I couldn't understand in some language that felt familiar, though I couldn't figure it out. After a few moments he spoke up again, more urgently. Wait - was he expecting some answer from me?

"I don't - I can't understand you," I slurred, wincing at the nonsense that vomited from my mouth. "Oh god, please don't kill me…!"

The man muttered something new after that, fiddling with his arm for a moment. An orange glow flared into existence and then vanished again, but I couldn't make out what it was. He looked at me and frowned. "I thought you were one of them," he said, in two distinct voices. One of them was his own, still in that strange language - but the other was mechanical and understandable. "How did you escape?"

"Please don't kill me," I begged again, still staring at the man's gun with undisguised fear, and it took me a moment to realize what I'd been asked. "I don't… Escape from where?" Escape from the bus? I didn't imagine he was talking about that. "I don't… understand. Where am I?"

The man cursed colorfully at that, and whatever gizmo it was that translated for him had trouble making sense of it. He gestured behind him and grimaced. "We'll figure that out later, we've got some incoming company. They'll be on us in a minute, and they won't look twice before shooting. I doubt they'll pass you by." His teeth flashed momentarily in some twisted grin. "Come on."

I pushed myself up again on trembling hands. They still seemed - off. Misshapen. My breaths were coming hard and fast, but it didn't do me much good; the air was too thin to keep me going, and spots of white danced in the corners of my eyes as I swayed. It was like I was on a trek in the mountains, high enough that breathing became difficult. It had to be that damn helmet, too restrictive and tight.

"Who are… they?" I asked with difficulty, wondering if my nonsensical words were getting through to the other man, or if he was just guessing.

The man looked at me strangely. "Who do you think? Slavers!" he barked irritably at my question. Before I could protest or ask anything else he dragged me upright by my arm with more strength than seemed humanly possible. I winced, balancing on my far too spindly legs, confused beyond comprehension when they didn't immediately fold in on themselves in horrible agony.

"What did you say? Slavers?" I murmured under my breath, still stunned by the lack of pain, and I tried to focus on the man's words. Even for a twisted little fantasy of mine, this was pretty damn out there. Slaves, guns, what was next? Ninjas? Pirates? Ninja pirates?

The gunman ignored my muttering, dragging me along without comment. It took me a few dozen meters to realize that even though my gait lagged a little behind what it should be, and while I still felt as if everything was bolted on the wrong way around, I wasn't actually falling down. My legs, my freaky backwards goat legs, were actually supporting my weight!

"How in the fuck?" I asked to the ether in that bizarre babble, feeling a wave of terrified confusion take over from rational considerations. "What is GOING ON?" My voice came out ever more terrified, and the gibberish that came out instead of English wasn't any comfort.

"Could you keep it down?" my rescuer warned sharply, grasping his gun so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I get that you're confused. Obviously you've been through more than I can guess at. But right now I need you to focus. I can't promise miracles if you keep fidgeting, alright?" He gestured onward with his rifle. "The slavers are going to be funneling in here in droves, and just between the two of us, I don't think we can take them all. I'd be hard pressed to manage it with a small army, and you move like a drunk - you're in no state to use a gun. Must've gotten hit pretty hard at some point..."

"Who are you?" I asked desperately, realizing that I was leaning entirely too much on the man for comfort - but I didn't have much of a choice.

He blinked in surprise. "Ah. I'm Eliezer Ramos, Alliance Navy. Biographies can wait until later." He tightened his grip on his gun. "That is, if there is a later."

I nodded weakly, realizing I was finally started to make out some detail around me. Eliezer was a rather big guy, broad-shouldered and with the kind of chin that a superhero might want. He also had the ugliest mane of dirty brown hair I'd ever seen, bound together at his nape and tangled all to hell. It looked downright repulsive.

"Haven't had much chance to clean up," Eliezer answered the unspoken question. "You're a recent arrival, right? A captive?" he added. "I don't see any wounds on you, but that suit's pretty flimsy, and internal injuries wouldn't show up… Are you bleeding in there? Do you remember where they took you from?"

"I don't - I…" I frowned, wondering how I'd ended up lying where I did - in some tunnel, probably somewhere underground. It didn't make any sense. The sewers? "I was safe… and then not," I said clumsily. "I was taken? Maybe…? I don't..."

"A kidnapping - I figured as much," Eliezer agreed darkly. "I know the Bats can be pretty brutal to your kind, so I won't ask details," he added after a moment, though I didn't understand what he was talking about. Bats? My kind? "You might even be hurt and not know it. We should -"

He didn't get to finish his sentence before another gunshot resounded from behind us - it impacted with a sizzling sound against an inexplicable wavering glow around my rescuer. Eliezer didn't hesitate to drop me like a sack of potatoes, turning on a dime to fire back. Judging from the startled scream, it'd worked. "Hide, quickly!" Eliezer cried in warning.

I followed his order without a second thought, rolling away from the gunfire into a branching sidepath and stopping against the sloping wall of a rounded hallway which resembled a subway line - just as grimy as one, too. My breath still came in short puffs as I took in what seemed like ever thinner air - I saw stars flittering around in my vision, sharp points of white.

It took me a long moment to realize they weren't going away. They weren't even in my head. I was seeing actual freaking stars.

Across the hall from me, lighted up occasionally by the bright flashes of whatever crazy gun Eliezer used, was a rocky, jagged cliff that stretched out under a midnight sky. A window took up the entire side of the rounded wall, like a gigantic observation platform, and the stars were points of light that burned in the distance without flickering or distortion, impossibly sharp, very slowly moving upwards until they vanished behind the opaque ceiling. They seemed, in some way I couldn't quite identify, both closer and more distant than I'd ever imagined them back home. Where was this place?

"Come and get some, assholes!" Eliezer yelled loudly, and suddenly the world jarred back into motion - bullets soared over his head, blasting holes into the walls and ceiling when they weren't diverted by the blue glow around his body. My rescuer had a freaking forcefield. I recognized what it was, but I'd never imagined those things could actually exist. "I'll shoot out all of your damn eyes!" he added viciously from behind the dull glow, his gun firing bolts of something that glowed as it left the barrel.

This was impossible - but that didn't matter. This had to be my dream, my hallucination. Maybe I was dying, sure, but I wasn't dead yet. I knew I wasn't quite thinking straight, but I was certain I could do something for this imaginary person, if not for myself. For a moment, the distinctly Jewish origin of his name tickled at the edge of my mind. I was Jewish - if only by ancestry. Was this some kind of half-baked symbolism?

Was I trying to save myself?

Wavering on my feet I took an unassisted step in Eliezer's direction - I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do, but it involved helping him, and that was enough. My knees didn't want to cooperate - they were weak, shaky, refused to bend in the right directions. Stumbling over my feet, I fell hard and couldn't catch myself my head rebounded against the metallic floor with an ominous cracking noise. For a long moment, I just lay there, groaning.

Although my helmet had protected me from any real harm, the glass-like front had cracked and fragmented, leaving me with white spider webs in my sight as I stumbled back to my knees. My vision cleared as I tried to catch my breath, and I brought a shivering hand into my field of view. Warped into a hundred kaleidoscopic images by my destroyed faceplate, I saw a three-fingered, gauntleted hand that moved sluggishly at my command. An alien hand.

That's… when it hit me. Alliance Navy, and 'Bat' slavers, and those damn venting guns… I recognized it. That all came from Mass Effect. The Systems Alliance, Batarian Slavers… Oh, for fuck sake. Everything suddenly made a terrible amount of sense. I'd read this damn scenario too often for my brain to forget it, and my addled psyche had to have latched onto it. I'd spent too much time contemplating this stuff for my brain not to use it.

This was all Hiver's fault.

Part 2 - I, Useless Alien

"Can you stand up on your own?" Eliezer called to me as he kept firing into the hallway, clouds of vented steam puffing up around him as he let his weapon cool between bursts. "There's fifty of these buggers or more on the station, and the only reason they haven't stormed us is the narrow passages. They'll figure out a way through soon!"

I didn't know what the hell to think, except that I had to get the hell out. Later, maybe, I could think, panic and curse out the internet for giving me these ideas. "I can walk," I responded, uncertain of the truthfulness of my answer. My goat legs slowly cooperated. I wasn't used to them even slightly, but they worked - they were still mine. Sort of.

I was… an alien. I wasn't human anymore. My ears were different, I'd noticed - they didn't work the same way. Sounds seemed almost artificial - simpler, clearer than I was used to. More precise, maybe. My eyes still refused to focus, but I could see a strange, purple-like glow around some things, perhaps ultraviolet pulled into a visual spectrum. My fingers and legs were worse than before - it felt like I'd forgotten how to control the muscles, maybe because I hadn't had most of them before. It was perhaps a small blessing that I was still humanoid, still physically recognizable after a fashion.

Rounds blasted themselves to bits only a small distance away from me, but refused to rush, knowing that I'd just toss myself back onto the floor if I did. The main problem was that I couldn't see worth a damn, and that would get problematic. Before, things had been blurry, indistinct, probably because my brain was trying to play catch up with my senses - now my sight was blocked by a web of white lines across the helmet I was wearing; I was effectively blind beyond a foot or two from my face. Unfortunately, if I was correct about the species I'd been turned into, then my options were very limited. I'd be picking between ways to die.

Not that I had much of a choice.

Reluctantly I wrenched two strange fingers behind the edge of my helmet, and pulled - there was a lot of strength in those wiry muscles, even if I didn't really have much finesse. With a damning hiss the faceplate came free, shattering in my hand as it did. A red light began flashing in the corner of my eye as something sealed off inside the suit - perhaps compartmentalizing most of my body to protect against the outside - but it was too late.

Despite a distant awareness of how terribly I'd just screwed myself, I took in a deep breath of the disgusting reprocessed air - still far better than the stuffy recycled amount that'd been keeping me on the edge of fainting. My head stopped spinning though as I greedily sucked in the oxygen, and my legs seemed to stabilize under me, too. Eliezer heard my eager breaths, and his expression was momentarily etched with horror, and a desperate sort of understanding. Our eyes met, and he nodded warily. We both knew the stakes.

There was one Mass Effect species that had these freaky legs, and three-fingered hands, and a suit that kept everything from bullet to bacillum away from the body. And that species also happened to be one of the least appreciated minorities in the entire damn universe. Exiled from their homeworld after war with the Geth, they lived on a migrant fleet, searching for a new colony, their promised land. The Quarians.

I was a freaking Space Jew. Go figure.

With renewed strength, though still feeble at controlling my errant limbs, I forced myself to set a step towards Eliezer, using the wall as support. "Where… do we go?" I asked as loudly as I dared, while the man fired again from his partial cover. "Is there a ship?"

Eliezer nodded sharply, launching another quick volley before he grasped at his hip. "It's incoming. ETA - five minutes. Alliance scout - it won't have time to hang around. If we're not on it before the Batarians get their big guns aligned, we're dead." He removed a pistol from his belt, throwing it towards me. It clattered to the ground at my feet. "Just go for suppression - we need to pin them down until we can get to the west wall. That's behind me."

Fuck - he'd tossed me a gun. I'd fired one before - but that was years ago, and it sure hadn't been a pistol. Gingerly I reached for the weapon, aligning my three fingers as best I could. I held it up to eye-level, and though it wavered back and forth slightly, it held. It was a lot lighter than I expected - almost like a toy gun. Or maybe Quarians were very strong?

"Right - there's two on the left, one on the right," Eliezer noted. "Shoot for the left ones from cover," he instructed carefully as he gestured. "Doesn't matter if you hit them - just shoot in that direction and make sure to keep cover as much as possible."

I nodded, edging towards the corner and gathering my courage, trying to convince myself that hallucinations couldn't actually hurt. It was more difficult than I expected - my hands were shaking violently. I took a deep breath, and then held it. I leaned around the corner to fire three quick shots, wildly off target, before I dove back rather faster than I intended, shuddering at the painful shocks that had rippled down my arm. Recoil, right. Had to remember that.

"That's it. Doesn't matter that you haven't shot one of those before - I'm not picky right now," Eliezer snapped from behind his barricade, consisting of a few dislodged pieces of wall and a segment of the floor he'd ripped upwards. "Again, alright? I need to get at least one or two of the buggers, or we'll just be shot in the back…"

"On three," I agreed, and now my heart was finally thundering in my chest as I was sure it should. With a cry that was halfway between panic and anger I dove out of cover, lined up my weapon - and pressed the trigger. Although I didn't hit anyone this time either, I was close enough that the Batarians ducked away with a curse. The rightmost one didn't have the time to do that before Eliezer's bullets found his forehead. He went down without a sound.

"Excellent," he crowed, grinning at me as I retreated behind the corner, breathing heavily. "Two more of the bastards are in range - the rest are probably trying to find a way around via the access tunnels. They'll be on us in two or three minutes." He grimaced, and then he tossed something. With a deafening explosion the Batarians were engulfed in a growing cloud of expanding smoke, and Eliezer released his trigger.

"Quickly!"

I loped after Eliezer with wide, clumsy steps. As soon as I forgot to pay attention to my legs, they would certainly tangle up, but I forced myself to ignore those useless instincts. It took more energy than I expected to keep up, and I was panting as I reached Eliezer, who had just ducked into another side-passage like the last.

"Stay in here," Eliezer ordered, keeping an eye out for the Batarians. "The enemy is not dead - that grenade was just meant to stun 'em. Odds are they have a few new friends by now, and we can't really spare the explosives."

I agreed nervously, glancing down the new hallway that seemed to stretch out endlessly. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it; much like the last, it was rounded like a subway passage, with glassy walls that looked out over… I paused, staring in surprise. Where before there had been ground - rocky mountains, grey stone - there was nothing. The stars stretched out above and below, and only on my left could I see stony ground, a considerable distance away. The rest was just space. I was on an actual spaceship?

"What is this place?" I asked nervously, more to myself than to Eliezer.

"Valhallan Threshold - Micah system," Eliezer answered swiftly. "Supposed to be a mining operation on an aberrant asteroid, but obviously it's used for other purposes. I suppose I should've guessed they wouldn't have told you. Where are you from?"

"I…" I didn't even remember most of the names of the systems… "R...Rannoch?"

I'd have taken back that word if I could, but it'd slipped out. Rannoch was the lost homeworld of the Quarians - and in the middle of Geth space, now. Eliezer gave a strange look, and after a long moment he nodded with a tired expression. "I suppose that's true for all your kind, in a sense. You're not from the Flotilla, are you?"

The Flotilla - the Migrant Fleet. "I've never been there…" I said, hesitant.

"Yeah, I expected as much." Eliezer tapped his wrist with his chin, refusing to let go of his gun, and an orange construct came into being, holographic or close enough. An Omni-tool. "This is Ramos. Requesting immediate evac - do not pass go, do not collect tax credits. Get down here right now, or I'm toast!"

"We are on final approach," the Omni-tool responded mechanically - it also dutifully translated its words into whatever language Quarians spoke. "Docking ports are hard-locked."

"I know that," Eliezer said shortly. "Track my signal, and be ready to play catch - we're taking the scenic route out of here."

"We are?" I muttered, at the same time that the Omni-tool asked for clarification.

"Yeah, you know what I mean," Eliezer muttered to his arm. "Get the med-kit ready, too - and contact the nearest proper ship for intercept. We're gonna need it. I've got a Quarian here, and he's lost containment. Got that? Yeah, there's no telling what's crawling around in this godforsaken hellhole…" He grimaced. "Let's hope he didn't catch that."

Well, that sounded reassuring.

"Forty second on my clock - you know what to do," Eliezer said, and he muted his Omni-tool before there could be a response. "Hey -" he gestured. "Have you ever gone diving? In water? I don't know if that's just a human thing..."

I nodded hesitantly, staring at him. "...Why?"

"This will be exactly nothing like that." He reached for his belt, detaching something and tossing it at me. "That - attach it to the wall, a couple feet away from us. Press the yellow button when it's in place, and get back here on the double."

"...Okay." My hands shaking, I stared at the device as I dutifully hobbled over - I didn't have much reason to protest Eliezer's orders. I raised the thing to the glass, and it seemed to attach without any visible means as I hit the button. Then it started beeping ominously. Like a bomb.

Fuck, seriously?

"Exhale, close your eyes," Eliezer hissed as he grasped my arm and pulled me back towards him. It took a few seconds before the beeps reached their crescendo, and then the grenade blasted outwards into the void with enormous force - a shaped charge, it had to be. I had just enough time to obey my saviour's command and contemplate what the hell had just happened before…

Total silence.

I opened my eyes the slightest bit as an impossibly strong force pushed me outwards, sheerly out of reflex, and I flailed in a panic as they suddenly seemed to boil. Something sleek and white flashed into the center of my field of view as I tried to inhale - and it was as if someone poured molten metal down my throat. Reflexively I clamped down on my fear, squeezing my eyes closed.

Darkness.

My eyes seared like fire, I couldn't take a breath, couldn't even cry out. All around me was nothing but emptiness.

Then the world flickered out of existence entirely.