Mar. 8th, 2005

[identity profile] hawk-shay.livejournal.com
OK! I'm sick as a dog today, so I'm not going anywhere, so I might as well do this while I'm all laid up.

A brief (or not-so-brief) bio of Shayera Thal, the alien formerly known as Hawkwoman.

Shay was the product of an affair between a lecharous politician and a 13-year-old girl. As the whole thing threatened to ruin both their reputation and abortion wasn't an option on their planet, they abandoned the newborn Shay in a slum, leaving her to die.

She didn't. (this sort of set the theme for the rest of her life.)

Instead, she was taken in by a gun smuggler, until he was busted and shot down in front of her by several Wingmen (Thanagars answer to a police force) - one of whom was a very young Katar Hol, incidentally. Feeling guilty about leaving her with no one to look after her because she looked like a native Thanagarian, the wingmen sent her to an orphanage. When she was twelve, she was adopted by an old man with no legs, who'd lost his daughter several years ago in a terrorist bombing. She looked like his daughter, so he gave her his daughter's name - Shayera Thal. (Years later, it came out that this man was her biological grandfather, and her mother was Shayera Thal the first.)

Shay did not adjust well to life in the utopian High Towers. She'd spent the first eleven years of her life in a brutal slum, and it showed. She cleaned up nicely, but that was about it - her ruthless attitude stuck, and as soon as she was old enough she joined the Wingmen, landing an assignment back on the downside.

That's where she met Katar Hold for a second time. This time, he was an exile, having been framed for the murder of his father, and a recovered drug addict, running a makeshift hospital for downsiders using black market medical supplies. He and Shay managed to put aside their mutual distrust to expose the weapons smuggler Byth to the Thanagarian government and clear Katar's name, upon which - much to their dismay - they were assigned to partner each other on a mission to Earth, to retrieve the escaped Byth and smooth over relations between Earth and Thanagar.

One captured alien criminal (Byth) and one dead lover (shay's) later, they were fast friends. With their government being a crooked as it was, they really could only trust each other, so that's what they did.

They got involved in smuggling alien slaves off Thanagar, which resulted in them having to flee the planet as exiles. Their presence no longer sanctioned by the government, they relocated to the metahuman community of Netherworld in Chicago, applying for political asylum and operating as costumed heroes. After an epic battle with Count Viper, they admitted their feelings for each other, and for a while everything was looking good.

Then Katar was posessed by the hawk avatar, which changed his personality completely. He destroyed Shay's wings and renounced his love for her, saying he wasn't the man she loved or the man who loved her anymore. Shay, not being a masochist, left. She moved to Detroit and worked as a cop until the avatar got out of control and she felt she was needed again.

To make a long story... not as long, there was a huge battle with the avatar involving J'onn and Arion, Katar realized that the only way to stop the avatar from wreaking major havok everywhere was to banish it to another dimension, along with himself, so that's what he did (or rather, had Arion do). He and Shay re-declared their love for each other just in time for him to vanish in a burst of light.

Fast forward a few years - Carter Hall returns from limbo and spreads the news that Katar Hol is dead. Shay tracks him down for some answers, and winds up taking Byth down for what has to be the fiftieth time, finally able to accept that her partner is gone.

Right now, she's "mostly retired", meaning she'll take out her old uniform if she feels it's necessary, but she's not officially Hawkwoman anymore. She works as a cop and moves back and forth between Chicago and Detroit.

I've glossed over a lot, because -as with most characters - if I went into detail we'd be here all day. I posted an IC thing in her journal to clarify how she differs from the various other Shay's that have existed and/or been retconned into oblivion, so you can take a look at that - it's kind of amusing, or at least, it should be. Maybe I'm just not very funny.

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