Chapter Fifteen

Revan was vaguely aware that she was feeling pretty buzzed. She was sprawled along the length of one of the couches in Starboard Observation, her boots, gloves and belt off, her tunic hanging loosely by its inner ties. The armoured jumpsuit Miranda had lent her was surprisingly comfortable, and she didn't feel self-conscious about it at all around Shepard.

"… and poor Bastila looked so personally affronted, I couldn't laugh," Revan continued her story. She paused for effect. "But Mission just gave her the brightest smile and said, 'so you're in for two hundred then?'"

Shepard burst out laughing, loudly and obnoxiously. It was infectious. Obviously, she was just as buzzed as Revan. "She didn't!" she gasped in between breaths. "Bastila must have been pissed." The commander was across from her on another couch, her feet up on a table, also sans boots and gloves. She had thrown the rest of her armour haphazardly against a wall, leaving her in just a grey undersuit that reminded Revan of a flight suit.

Revan found herself laughing too as she remembered that night. "She was very, very… pissed." She wasn't entirely sure what that word meant, but she could take a pretty good guess from the context. She took a long sip of the drink the commander had mixed up for her. It was strong and sweet and made from a type of alcohol called 'tequila'. Revan was now fairly certain that this galaxy had the best alcohol she had ever tasted. Even if the cocktail was orange. She was more accustomed to normal colours, like blue and green. "But she saw the funny side, too… eventually. Tilly was starting to loosen up a bit by then."

"'Tilly'?" Shepard repeated. "You called her Tilly? That sounds like the name for a horse, not a," she drew herself up on one elbow, stared boldly into the distance and put on a theatrically deep voice, "heroic Jedi, defender of peace and justice!"

Revan made some sort of noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a giggle, but she was too drunk to care. "We only called her that as a joke," she explained defensively. "To tease her. Most of the time she was just Til. To me and Mission, anyway. Sometimes we called her B. She hated that one even more. She was fun to tease." She frowned, brain finally catching up with what Shepard had said. "Wait, what's a horse?"

"This," Shepard swiped clumsily at her omnitool, bringing up a picture of an elegant, long-nosed, four-legged animal, "is a horse." She held it out to Revan, leaning so far out over the edge of the couch that she almost fell off. Revan stifled another snort-giggle. "People ride them," Shepard said firmly, gathering her dignity as she recovered. "For fun. Although, a few hundred years ago they were used for work and transport too. On Earth, my home planet," she clarified, tone turning more wistful.

Revan leaned over to take a closer look, prompted by that tone. "It's beautiful," she murmured. It really was: the animal was sleek, streamlined and muscled with a flowing tail. She had seen similar creatures back home, but something about this one was just… majestic.

"Isn't it?" Shepard sat back and reached for her drink, which was orange too, but also a little purple. "I love animals. Which is strange, I suppose, because I grew up on ships – wherever my mother was stationed at the time – but I had friends dirtside and one of them had a couple of horses. He took me riding one day, and I just fell in love."

"That does sound romantic," Revan agreed, drunk brain unable to prevent her from wondering if Darth Revan, or Revan before she turned to the dark, had ever experienced romance like that.

Shepard waved her hands in the negative, a little of her drink sloshing over the side of the glass. "No no, it wasn't like that. I fell in love with horses that day, not my friend." She gave Revan a reproachful look. "Not everything is about sex, you know."

"Some things are," Revan protested, chagrined. "And I was talking about romance, not sex."

Shepard must have caught the wistfulness in her tone, because she eyed her curiously. "Do you remember something? About your past? Involving romance?"

"No," Revan told her, and took a quick gulp from her glass to cover a sudden pang of sadness. If she was going to recover her memories, a romantic one would be nice… but unlikely. "And we were talking about you, not me. What was the last romance in your life? Do you have one now?"

Shepard sat back, crossing her legs beneath her, and seemed to draw in on herself a little. Revan could sense her sudden sorrow, and immediately regretted asking. She opened her mouth to apologise and withdraw the question, but Shepard beat her to it. "I had one. I lost him a couple of months…" she shook her head, "No. Two years ago."

"Oh, Shepard, I'm sorry," Revan said, and meant it. Force. Something terrible must have happened for her to lose track of time like that.

The commander sighed, eyes fixed on the stars as they whirled by outside the viewport. "It's all right. It was a long time ago. I just… miss him, sometimes."

Revan hesitated, but asked the question anyway. "What happened?"

"I lost him. On a mission. I had to make a choice, and… I couldn't save him." She paused, and her tone grew softer. "His name was Kaidan."

Virmire. Revan sat back, thinking over everything Shepard had told her tonight. They had been talking – and drinking – for what felt like hours now. They had started off cautiously, talking about safe and necessary topics like Revan's abilities in combat and how Shepard could best utilise them, how biotics worked, how an omnitool could be used as a weapon, and a more in-depth discussion about the Force and how the dark and light side – and fights between the two, to satisfy Shepard's curiosity – worked. Then the conversation had turned to history of their respective galaxies, major battles, military differences, and finally stories from Revan's search for the Star Forge and Shepard's search for Saren and Sovereign that became increasingly wilder and more exaggerated the more they both drank.

Shepard had told her about Virmire, and how she had been forced into a choice that resulted in one of her team being left behind and killed. She hadn't mentioned that this teammate had also been the man she was involved with, however, and that from the sounds of it, they had been very close.

"I'm sorry," Revan said again. It didn't feel like enough. She couldn't imagine having to make a decision that directly resulted in the death of someone she loved… though she had a sick feeling that if she got her memories back one day, she would likely be able to relate.

"It's all right. It's been months… years, I suppose. Sometimes it just… and with your Carth around…" Shepard trailed off, and it was her turn to look apologetic. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to step on your toes."

"Step on my… What? What do you mean…?" Revan trailed off as a memory surfaced. Shepard, standing on a bridge on the Citadel, staring at Carth as though someone had punched her in the gut. "Wait… does Carth look like him?" she asked gently. "Like Kaidan?"

The commander shook her head ruefully. "No. Not particularly. His voice, though… put them in a dark room and I couldn't tell the difference."

Oh. Now it made sense. Revan winced. In some ways, the fact Carth sounded like Shepard's lost love was even worse than if the two had just looked similar. The voice could be a very intimate thing.

Shepard met Revan's eyes with the earnestness of someone fighting the effects of alcohol to make sure they are fully understood. "I'm sorry, I know you can sense my feelings when I… when I look at him. Well, all the time, really. But I know you two are… or were… something, and I don't mean to—"

Revan was caught off guard at that. "No, no, you didn't, I mean, how? How did you know we were…?" She suddenly found herself scrambling for words.

"I didn't know, I guess, but I suspected," Shepard confessed. "The dynamic between the two of you is a little… strained sometimes. And there are a lot of sideways glances. And… I heard about an argument in engineering…"

Revan found her cheeks warming. "Sorry about that," she mumbled.

"What happened?"

She sighed and swallowed another sip of her drink. She supposed this was going to be a night full of painful revelations for the both of them. "Carth and I were… something for a little while. We were starting to grow close. And then… he found out I was… I am Darth Revan."

"Was," Shepard quietly corrected her back again.

Revan cleared her throat. "Darth Revan ordered the orbital bombardment that killed his wife. I don't remember it, but he was – understandably – unable to look past that. He ended things before we wound up here, in this galaxy, though. The argument in engineering was about me insisting we need to help you fight the Reapers." She paused. "It was also the point where I finally came to terms with the fact that things will not change between us, and whatever we had was over."

"Ah. So you've moved on?"

Revan nodded slowly. "Yes." It was true. "It's for the best, I think. One day, when… if I regain my memories, I don't think he'll be able to handle it."

Shepard fidgeted in her seat and took a long drink. "That's the problem with good, kind, nice people. They often can't handle it when things get heavy. I loved Kaidan, and I miss him… but I don't think he could have handled what happened to me."

Revan could tell this wasn't going to be good. She drained her glass and got up to refill it. Strength in the Force had the unfortunate side effect of making it very difficult to both get and stay drunk, and she wasn't quite ready to be sober again just yet.

She decided against a simple refill when she spotted shot glasses stacked beside a bottle of tequila. She grabbed both and returned to her couch. "What happened to you?" she finally asked, dropping gracelessly onto the cushion.

"Cerberus," Shepard murmured bitterly. "I died. They brought me back."

Revan stopped in her search for somewhere to set the glasses down and stared at Shepard. Was that a… metaphor? Or was she too drunk to get the joke? "What?"

"I died," Shepard repeated, as though she was testing how it felt to say those words. "Two years ago, Collectors or Reapers – whoever the fuck it was – destroyed the first Normandy. I got ejected into space, and my suit seals failed. My oxygen…" she made a flailing motion over one shoulder, and Revan assumed that was where her oxygen supply had been stored. "I died." Shepard shrugged, but the feelings pouring out of her made Revan feel as though she had just been stabbed in the chest.

She winced, fighting a reflex to recoil. Shepard's presence in the Force had suddenly become a sucking whirlpool of confusion, anger and despair, and no wonder, if what she said was true. Had she been hiding this the whole time? What Revan had felt from her on Omega was nothing like this. The sheer strength of will it must take to keep all of… that hidden was mind-boggling.

She forced herself to stay calm – outwardly, at least – and keep moving. She gave up on finding somewhere to set the shot glasses down and instead balanced them in mid-air with the Force between the two couches. Carefully she filled each one to the brim with tequila as she sifted through the dozens of questions she wanted to ask.

Finally she settled on one; but first she passed a shot glass to Shepard. "Shepard… does your galaxy have the technology to raise people from the dead?"

Shepard snorted as she took the glass. "No. Cerberus invented it just for me." She downed the tequila in one quick swallow and cleared her throat. "It took two years, a purpose-built space station, and four billion credits. When they found me… there wasn't much left. I was just meat and tubes when I was brought onboard their pretty new station. Meat and tubes." She shook her head bitterly, as though that was some sort of inside joke Revan wasn't in on.

Revan stared at her for another moment before finishing off her own shot. Force, she didn't know enough swear words for this, in any language. 'Meat and tubes'? And Cerberus had invented the process just for her? Actually, one of the swear words she had heard in this galaxy would do the trick nicely. "Fuck," she said vehemently.

Technology that could bring people back from the dead was… insane. Pure fantasy. Nothing came close to it in her own galaxy – unless you counted Force ghosts, but they were still dead. Not even the Force could bring someone back from the dead, although there were always rumours about some new dark Jedi giving it another shot.

With a flick of her finger, she pulled Shepard's glass from her loose fingers with the Force and brought it over for a refill. "Why?" she asked bluntly, passing the glass back and refilling her own.

"Why me?" Shepard repeated.

Revan shook her head. "Why, in general."

Shepard raised her hands and shrugged before grabbing her glass from Revan's Force-grip. "The Illusive Man – that's what the megalomaniac who runs Cerberus calls himself – thinks I'm important. My team and I killed a Reaper, and he thinks I can do it again. He thinks I can rally a team behind me to go on this suicide mission to stop the Collectors, and rally the whole fucking galaxy against the Reapers or something. Apparently that's what it takes to be worth resurrecting." She was starting to ramble a bit, and it sounded like more than just the tequila talking. "It doesn't make sense. Cerberus is a human-supremacist terrorist group, for fuck's sake, not some altruistic do-anything-to-save-the-galaxy humanitarian organisation. Not to mention that when we took out Sovereign my team was full of different species, and it's gonna be this time too. I'm not going to suddenly decide humans are the master race or whatever bullshit he believes." She stopped, eyes opening wide, then grinned and started laughing. "They're trying to make me into some sort of superhero," she said. "Like I thought you were. They want me to be some kind of human superhero."

Revan watched her through a slight haze of alcohol, feeling absolutely no urge to join in with her laughter this time. The aura of despair that surrounded her hadn't changed; if anything, it had gotten worse. She had to do something to help. Anything. Shepard could force herself to joke and laugh as much as she liked, but it was suddenly crystal clear to Revan that she was barely hanging on.

Allowing the Force to guide her, she reached out a hand and grabbed one of Shepard's, forcing her to slow down, stop laughing and refocus. "You're still you, Shepard," she said quietly, but firmly.

Shepard blinked, then without warning her eyes filled with tears. "What?" she croaked.

"Your presence in the Force is whole and undamaged," Revan explained slowly. "I can sense that parts of your body are artificial, but your mind is not. Your mind is working exactly as it should be, with no outside influences and no… corruption. You're not a clone, either," she added quickly, squeezing her hand. "We have those in my galaxy too, and they feel… different. I would be able to tell. You're all human. You're… you're Shepard."

Shepard stared at her and a tear trickled down her cheek. "I'm not some… glued-together abomination with a control chip in my brain and cameras in my eyes?"

The sudden vulnerability made Revan's heart ache. Where she herself had been through the worst violation of her mind, Shepard had been through a comparable violation of her body. The parallels were eerie. Perhaps that was why the commander was lounging around drinking with her rather than tossing her off the ship. "No, you're not," she told Shepard firmly.

Shepard nodded silently, taking her hand back and swiping it across her eyes then staring at the shot glass she was still holding in the other as though she had forgotten it was there. She drank it quickly, then set it on the floor, seeming to draw from some hidden well of strength to pull herself back together. "I think that's enough drinking for tonight," she muttered. When she looked up at Revan, her eyes were still bright. "Thank you."

Revan set her own glass down on the floor too. Shepard was right, it was enough for one night. Enough drinking, and enough talking. They both needed time to think, now, and regroup. To pull themselves together again. "Of course," she replied faintly.

But the commander shook her head sharply. "No. Not 'of course'. You… you were a good friend to me tonight, Revan. I'm glad to have met you."

Suddenly Revan felt a lump in her throat. She missed Bastila, and her surrogate little sister could never be replaced, but she was beginning to feel like she had found a kindred spirit in this woman from another galaxy. Words failed her as she realised just how valuable and rare it was to find such a strong kinship with another person, and how improbable to find it in a whole other galaxy. Maybe that was the alcohol talking, but she didn't think so. She could do nothing but nod in acknowledgement.

Shepard pushed herself to her feet, swaying only a little before catching herself. "I'm going to head up to my cabin. I need to sleep. We'll be travelling all through tomorrow so don't worry too much if you, uh, don't feel so good in the morning."

Revan smiled briefly. "That's probably a good thing."

Shepard grinned back. "Yeah." That whirlpool surrounding her seemed a little lighter now, a little gentler. "'Night, Revan."

"'Night, Shepard."

Revan watched her go, then turned back to watch the colourful starry vista of FTL travel through the lounge's viewport. She sat and stared at it, thinking, until her eyes grew too heavy to stay open.