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When Samara had been young, not even old enough to truly be considered a maiden, she’d asked her mother:
“Why did you marry an asari?”
They had been sitting in the garden. Her mother had been tending to the colored coral-grasses that she kept on the front step, tipping water over their porous, bony fronds. Samara had been sitting beneath the anemone-vines that wound up the porch, watching their translucent purple tendrils float about in the sunlight. At night, she knew, those tendrils would glow faint blue with the eezo that let them ignore the planet’s gravity. She’d been old enough, then, to know what the word pureblood meant, but not quite old enough to understand the vitriol behind it.
Her mother had sighed, tapping her fingers on the pitcher.
“The other races,” she’d said, setting the pitcher down and reaching for one of the starfish-blossoms, “are - like flowers.” She ran her fingers over one of the petals, thoughtfully, ignoring the way it flinched from her touch.
“Their lives are beautiful,” she said, calmly, “worth living, worth cultivating. They add to the galaxy, just as my starfish-blossom adds to my garden. But just as this plant will die in the winter, the younger races are transient. Short-lived. I do not think that they are of less value than the asari, but I do not want to build a garden on a foundation that will be gone at the first freeze.”
Samara had nodded. It had seemed logical to her, at the time. She hadn’t wanted a father that would be gone before she hit the end of her maiden stage, not really.
“Your father and I,” Samara’s mother said, “are like the atoll-tree at the center of this garden. Our love will someday fade, but we will live together through many winters. And when we are gone, the bones will remain.”
Even centuries later, that was how Samara thought of love. A circle of stone, layered and grown with every year of life lived together. A shell of bone, living and lasting for centuries both. A monument, to exist long after everyone involved was gone.
-
The first time Samara sees Shepard’s face is, very technically, the second time they meet. Samara sends Shepard to find the name of the ship on which Morinth departed the planet, and when she returns, she’s holding her helmet under her arm. Samara cannot see from a distance, but judging by the silver scratches that have torn the paint off the back half of her armor and the bruises on her face, she didn’t remove it by choice.
“Shepard,” Detective Anaya greets her, “you look like shit.”
“You should see the other guy,” Shepard says, with cheerful malice.
“She picked a fight with a gunship,” Shepard’s quarian ally explains, long-suffering. “And then we went and cleared out your Eclipse problem.”
“Your fugitive,” Shepard says, turning towards Samara, “is leaving on the HMS Demeter.”
Samara inclines her head in thanks. There are further considerations from here, not least of which is why an undead Spectre and an agent of Cerberus is seeking her out.
But those are unpleasant, and so she indulges herself in the opportunity to take a good look at the woman in front of her.
She’s attractive, though not conventionally so. Her hair is an unnatural shade of red, almost certainly dyed. Her eyes are the same color, so brilliant they stand out almost violently from th rest of her face. She has faint, spidery scars splitting open the brown skin of her cheeks, where that skin isn’t already marred with bruises and scrapes.
But there is something magnetic about her, some undefinable charisma. Samara would attribute it to her aura, the faint electrical traces that living things leak into the air around them, but it’s apparent that less sensitive beings feel it too. Detective Anaya obviously likes her, trusts her, even, when she has little reason to do so. And there is, of course, the matter of her companions. It is difficult even for asari to lead fully multicultural teams, but Shepard’s turian and quarian companions show no signs of tension with each other or with her.
And so, once Shepard delivers her evidence to Anaya, she turns the full weight of her attention on Samara.
“Welcome to the team, Samara,” Shepard says. There’s nothing discourteous in her tone or expression, but her body language and biotic aura betray some wariness. “Is there anything you need before you join us on board the Normandy?”
“No,” Samara says, “though I do have a question, if you’ll indulge me.”
Shepard inclines her head at Samara, but the wariness becomes more acute. Shepard’s companions are just far enough away to be out of earshot.
“You did not kill the Eclipse sister,” Samara says, watching her, “Elnora, you called her. I was curious - why?”
Shepard blinks at her. Whatever she was expecting, this wasn’t it.
“I didn’t kill her,” Shepard says, “for the same reason you agreed to join me on this mission.”
It is Samara’s turn to be wary. She would not like to have this question turned back on her.
“I didn’t have to,” Shepard says, watching Samara intently. “Most of the time, I have to kill people to get my job done. So, when I can, I avoid it.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” Samara says, because she has to, “but I don’t think that has anything to do with me.”
“You didn’t want to kill Anaya,” Shepard says, softly, “so you made it so that the Code wouldn’t compel you to. I don’t doubt that the Collectors are a worthy foe for a Justicar, but I don’t think you’d have been so quick to join me if it wouldn’t have saved her.”
Samara gives her a long look. She is used to having more insight than others find comfortable, having someone else look at her, for once, and see her motives when she would rather they did not, is unnerving.
“I will still kill you,” Samara warns her, “if you ask me to do anything too dishonorable.”
Shepard smiles at her, the first unguarded expression Samara ever sees on her face.
“Good,” she says, and inclines her head towards the door.
-
“You hate this ship,” Samara comments, with perfect equanimity. She is sitting on the floor of the Starboard Observation deck, her legs folded, her eyes directed towards the void outside the Normandy.
Shepard has only just stepped through the doors - when she hears Samara speak, her footfalls halt.
“Should I take that as a question?” Shepard asks, her voice guarded.
“If you like,” Samara says. She is - curious, perhaps, is the best word for it.
“I thought you’d learned the dangers of curiosity,” Shepard parries. She’s making a commendable effort at neutrality, but Samara can hear the undercurrents of emotion beneath the words.
She is still wary of Samara’s intentions.
“I have,” Samara says. She hadn’t lied. “However, if you are going to ask me to turn on the people with whom I am fighting, I would like to know in advance.”
Such a thing would constitute a violation of Shepard’s end of their bargain.
Shepard makes a soft noise. It is almost a laugh, though it is entirely devoid of humor. “No,” Shepard says, softly, “if I had made up my mind to kill my way out of this mess, I would never have met you.”
“I suppose not,” says Samara, and files that away in the list of things she has learned about Shepard.
Shepard doesn’t say anything. Samara can see the woman in her mind’s eye, leaning contemplatively on one of the uncomfortable sofas.
“I am curious,” Samara says, into that silence, “why exactly you chose to stay here.”
Shepard hums. When Samara glances up at her from her position on the floor, Shepard isn’t looking at her. She’s staring out the window as though her life depends on it.
“We’re passing through the Shadow Sea relay on our way to the Citadel,” Shepard says, abruptly. “They’ve been building a memorial on Akuze. You should come with me to visit it.”
Samara turns her head to meet Shepard’s eyes for the first time in this conversation. This could be a non sequitor, but somehow Samara thinks that there’s an answer to her question somewhere on that planet, should she choose to take Shepard up on her offer.
Should she choose to take the risk of getting to know a person she may one day need to kill.
Despite everything, she does want to know Shepard better.
“I will go,” Samara tells her.
-
Akuze is a pale planet. Its bone-white dunes are crusted with salt deposits that shine like snow in the sunlight. The sky is a pale, pinkish color that does nothing to obscure the too-harsh light of its blue giant star.
The Shepard memorial does little to help. It’s a massive statue, nearly three meters tall, depicting Shepard in white marble. The statue holds an assault rifle - a weapon Samara has never seen the real Shepard touch - and looks straight ahead with a solemn expression.
With the real Shepard standing at the base, a living point of comparison, Samara can tell it is a poor likeness. Samara is no artist, but if she wished to capture Shepard in stone, she knows that she could not do it without color. The vivid crimson of her hair, the golden brown of her skin, even the deep navy of her fatigues - in ordinary circumstances, these are the first things one notices about her.
On a planet like Akuze, they are even more striking. In this moment, stark against the memorial and the sky beyond, Shepard might as well be the only point of color on the entire planet.
“You know,” Shepard remarks, her fingers resting lightly on the square base of the statue, a few inches away from tracing the inscription, “I got some pretty nasty scars from this place. The thresher maws burned off nearly ten percent of my skin.”
“You got away,” Samara points out.
Shepard shrugs. “I had to go back. I didn’t know how long I’d be stuck here, and as far as I knew our camp had the only potable water on the planet.”
Shepard sounds utterly casual, as though she’s talking about the weather rather than a nightmarish survival story.
“Grunt’s rite of passage must have been difficult for you,” Samara tries. Samara had felt her own heart stop in her chest when the maw had burst forth from Tuchanka’s scarred soil. She cannot imagine what Shepard must have felt.
“Not particularly,” says Shepard. She’s looking at the memorial, her chin tipped up, her expression calm. “I never hated the thresher maws for this. They’re just animals - and if you know they’re there, you can kill them like anything else.”
She takes a deep breath. Samara feels the tension in her aura, and knows even before she speaks that what Shepard is about to say will be an answer - to questions Samara is not sure she should have asked.
“I didn’t learn that Cerberus was responsible for the mission to Akuze until nearly seven years later.”
Samara blinks.
Shepard’s tone is cool, but it is no longer neutral. Beneath the words there is simmering, vicious anger, wound as close to Shepard as her own blood and bones.
“When I woke up,” Shepard says, “before I even saw my own face, I knew that they’d taken the burn scars off my skin.”
She smiles. It’s not a kind expression. Her fingers are tugging at her sleeve, wrapping around the place where her scars must once have been.
“It’s almost like they wanted me to forget the whole thing.”
From a purely tactical standpoint, Samara understands why they might try that. The barely-contained rage in Shepard’s face and voice did not bode well for Cerberus’ survival in the long term.
Samara also knows that the person who made that decision was not a warrior, not in the sense that she and Shepard are. It is almost unthinkable to her, that taking the scars from someone’s skin would make them less angry.
“The Illusive man nearly killed you,” Samara says. “It is ironic that he would spend so much to bring you back after that. He must be desperate.”
Shepard doesn’t seem convinced. “He did kill a lot of people. I don’t particularly care how he feels about me.”
Samara suspects that it’s not that simple, but she can tell Shepard would prefer not to say anything more on the subject. She’s already turning away, looking back at the memorial, at the list of names etched on the base.
It gives Samara another opportunity to study her. The image of Shepard, vivid and crimson against the pale sands is - reminiscent.
Every spring, in her mother’s garden, the first plants to bloom were the red algae-blossoms. They were deceptively delicate plants, easy to tear apart with even the smallest touch of one’s fingers.
Samara’s mother had hated them. Every winter, she would try and eradicate their spores from her garden. She’d bought pesticides, she’d enlisted Samara to help her dig up their threadlike roots, she’d covered the ground in plastic sheeting to keep them from pushing through.
But every year, Samara would wake up one morning and find them, blooming crimson against the sparkling snow.
The galaxy had tried to kill Shepard before they could meet. Time and again, it has tried to rip her up by the roots.
Yet, here she is.
Here they both are.
Samara tries, and fails, not to find meaning in it.
-
Samara is well aware that they won’t be able to pursue Morinth immediately. It will take time to reach Omega, and there are other tasks on the path, each as urgent in its own way.
So, she does not expect it when Shepard walks into the Starboard Observation deck and sits beside her, knees drawn up against her chest.
This, in itself, is much less unlikely than it used to be. Shepard has been stopping in every few nights to chat, and Samara has started inviting her to sit by her side. Shepard is utterly unafraid of her, in a way that speaks to either arrogance or ignorance of the true scope of a Justicar’s duties. Either way, it makes causal conversation possible, in a way that it has not been for Samara in centuries.
If Shepard does wind up asking her to do something beyond the pale, Samara knows, then it will hurt to have to kill her. But - Shepard seems to value their relationship just as much as Samara does, in her own way. Trust does not come easily to a justicar, but Samara - hope, perhaps, is the best word for how she feels.
Hope that this might not end in betrayal.
When she looks back at Shepard, Shepard’s cheek is pressed to her knees, and she’s watching Samara.
“What are you going to do,” Shepard says, softly, as though the words are a secret, “once you’ve killed Morinth?”
Samara tips her head to the side. “Shepard, what an odd question. You know as well as I do that we will be going through the Omega-4 relay.”
“And on the other side?” Shepard asks, not dissuaded in the slightest.
“Then I will return to being a Justicar,” Samara says, softly. “There will always be injustice in the galaxy, Morinth or no. I will be needed.”
Shepard seems satisfied.
“What about you?” Samara asks. “What will you do once the suicide mission is over?”
“Well,” Shepard says, “it’s mostly the same as you. The Alliance will always need soldiers. The Reapers will still need stopping - and, well…”
She fingers the Cerberus logo on the sleeve of her uniform.
“It seems,” Samara says, softly, “that you will have regrets if we don’t come back from this mission.”
Samara is sure that Shepard knows this, but given the amount of effort Shepard has put into making sure that no one else brings their baggage with them to the other side of the Omega-4 Relay, it seems odd that she would so readily admit to her own.
“You know,” Shepard replies, her chin tilted up to look at the ceiling, “the last time I died, I would have said that I went without regrets. I’d gotten Joker to the lifepod, I’d gotten as much of the rest of my crew out as was going to go, and I’d beaten a Reaper invasion like, a month and a half earlier. I thought it would never be better than that.”
Shepard sighs, letting a hand fall to tap her fingers on the hollow metal of the deck.
“As it turns out,” she says, “that was bullshit. There was so much I’d left undone, so many people that needed me, so much work that needed to get done - and I’d never even thought about it. This time around, I want to fight harder. I want to know what I have to live for.”
Samara blinks at her. If this was the human attitude towards self-sacrifice, then - it was certainly unique.
“You too,” Shepard says, suddenly.
“What?” Samara tips her head to meet Shepard’s eerie crimson eyes.
“You should fight hard,” Shepard says, looking back at her intently. “Before we go through the relay, you should think about what you have to live for.”
“Shepard,” Samara says, as gently as she can, “I appreciate the sentiment, but your situation and mine are different. You had spent the past year putting together a team - and I have spent the past centuries cutting what few ties I had in the first place.”
It’s Shepard’s turn to look surprised.
“Come on,” she says, softly. “You have to know that I, at least, would miss you.”
Samara blinks at her.
Shepard lifts one of her hands, and reaches out, setting her fingers on Samara’s wrist.
More precisely, they sit on the armor plating outside of her wrist. It’s hardly an intimate gesture. Samara can barely even feel the touch. Still, the searing intensity of Shepard’s eyes is - compelling.
Samara had, without her own permission, begun to think of her heart as ice. A garden frozen over, no longer a place where seeds might grow. She’d thought it would remain so for the rest of her existence.
But, Shepard’s hand - the culmination of their talks and the friendship that they have been building, quietly, almost without Samara realizing - is like the rays of Thessia’s sun in the springtime. Like warmth, beginning to melt the winter snow.
Samara is again reminded of the red-algae blossoms in her mother’s garden. A bright, crimson herald of spring to come.
“Anyways,” Shepard says, withdrawing her hand and clearing her throat. “I’m going to do everything I can to help us survive the mission. I - want to see you on the other side.”
She gets to her feet, and Samara watches, turning her head, as Shepard walks out of the room.
-
Asari were a longer-lived species than most and their proclivity for picking up mates outside their species often threw that difference into sharp relief. It had been said, by asari philosophers and alien ones alike, that asari could cope with everyone’s mortality except their own.
Unable to banish the image of Morinth’s body, lifeless and twisted, from her meditations, Samara finds herself agreeing with them.
Samara has always known that life is fragile, and that asari life is no different. She has killed more than her share of asari criminals, more than any other species.
And yet.
Morinth was her daughter, still. It is impossible not to know that she was still young for an asari. That if things had not turned out the way that they did, she would have had centuries, perhaps millenia, more of her life to live.
It is not, perhaps, the best time for Shepard to step in.
Samara is fully aware that this is a uniquely asari sentiment, but she’s always been surprised at the members of the younger races who are willing to throw themselves into the field of battle. Their lives are already so short - and they’re so willing to risk what little time they have.
They have killed so many humans - it is hard not to imagine Shepard as one of them, blood blooming her like crimson petals.
“Why are you doing this?” Samara asks, into the suffocating silence of the Starboard Observation deck.
“Huh?” Shepard doesn’t seem to understand the question. Of course she doesn’t, it wasn’t as though Samara tried to explain herself.
“This mission,” Samara says, “the Collectors must be stopped, but you need not be the one to do it. There are others who could, other species, other times.”
“Do you really think the Illusive man would have taken no for an answer?” Shepard says, ruefully. They both know the answer to that question.
“Do you think I know that little about you?” Samara asks, in turn. “If you had wanted to, you could have taken the ship and fled from him by now. I was wondering why you had not.”
“Samara,” Shepard says, a teasing lilt to her voice, “are you worried about me?”
Samara glances up at her, and has to look away from the happiness in Shepard’s expression.
She doesn’t understand.
“I am,” Samara admits. “You have assured all of us that it would be no shame to decline the mission. Has anyone said the same to you?”
“Sure,” Shepard says. She steps forward, her boots clicking on the metal of the deck, until she’s standing in front of the window, starlight glinting off the curls of her hair. “I could get away. The Alliance would figure out how to fight the Collectors, and they’d eventually get to the same place we’re at now. But more colonies would be abducted in the meantime, and who knows how many people would die before they managed to take them down.”
Shepard raps her knuckles on the window.
“I won’t die,” Shepard says, calmly. “None of us will. That’s why I have to be the one to do this.”
She turns her head to shoot Samara a smile over her shoulder.
“Because,” Shepard says, “I’m the only one who could survive it. Don’t worry about me, Samara.”
Samara looks at her for a long moment. Shepard’s life is fragile, here and gone in an eyeblink of the cosmos. Yet, she speaks with more confidence and authority than many asari matriarchs.
Despite her better judgment, despite herself, Samara cannot help but believe her.
“Alright,” Samara says, looking at the light caught in Shepard’s hair and burning behind her eyes. “I will not.”
-
The inside of the Collector Base is utterly unlike any place Samara has ever been. The strange mix of organic and inorganic architecture, as though steel and stone had grown from the same root as blood and bone, could only be described as haunting.
The human Reaper was even more so. Samara, well acquainted with the depths to which sentient life could sink, did not lightly call something an abomination. That thing, however, more than earned the title.
She is glad that they destroyed it.
She is also glad that they will be leaving this base.
The three of them: her, Shepard, and Grunt, are running. Samara can still feel the ache of the piece of the platform that had nearly crushed her. She suspects some of her ribs are cracked.
There is no time to slow down and check. She and Grunt are mere meters away from the Normandy and the relative safety it offers. Shepard has lagged behind - taking potshots at the Seeker Swarms chasing them. Samara skids across a convenient piece of metal and hops the last meter or so to stand in the Normandy’s airlock. Grunt follows - and the base quakes again.
The hexagonal Collector platforms tumble from their anchors at the sides of the cavern. Rock shakes and pods break free from the ceiling. And the piece of metal that Samara and Grunt used to make the jump - falls.
Shepard is facing the other way at first. She stumbles, a bare moment after taking out one of the Collectors chasing her
Then, she turns, and Samara sees the calculation in her eyes. It’s the same one Samara had made seconds prior. It will take too long to reposition the Normandy, and she is at the closest point to the airlock.
Shepard takes a running leap, and despite everything, Samara’s heart still stops in her chest. Her fingers catch, barely, on the edge of the ship, and before Samara can stop herself, she’s knelt to wrap a hand around Shepard’s arm and pull her to safety.
A few seconds more thought might have stopped her. Grunt would have been the logical choice, if she was gambling on the sheer likelihood of being able to get Shepard into the ship. He would have been more than able to lift her. Samara, if she’d thought about it, might have been able to use her biotics to prevent Shepard from falling.
Yet, Samara cannot bring herself to regret it. The feeling of Shepard’s armor, solid and whole in her arms, warms her in some way that she cannot identify.
Shepard shifts, from all but embracing Samara to leaning on her, an arm across her shoulders. They step back into the airlock as Joker rushes for the cockpit, shouting for EDI to make the jump to FTL.
Shepard makes no move to let Samara go as they follow after, and Samara does not shake her off.
Samara watches Shepard fumble one-handed with her helmet, taking it off and dropping it to the floor. Her face is plastered with sweat and her breath is coming short and heavy.
“Shepard,” EDI says, her mechanical voice even, “the Illusive man wishes to speak with you.”
Shepard laughs, breathless. “I bet he does,” she says, satisfied, and removes her arm from Samara’s shoulder with an apologetic glance.
“What now?” Samara asks, as Shepard stumbles her way to a steady gait.
Shepard half turns to answer her, still smiling.
“Now?” Shepard says, breathless. “Now, the fun begins.”
She winks at Samara.
Shepard turns around moments later, limping down the bridge to the comm room. Samara stands still, caught in that moment, in that crooked smile that managed to warm her to her bones.
It is then that she comes to the overdue realization of just how much trouble she’s in.
-
The monastery on Lesuss is a place trapped in eternal winter. Falere and Rila have written about it, when their letters reached Samara. The snow lifts only for a few scant months in the high of summer, and even then the sun rarely manages to light their home through the blanket of clouds that shrouds it.
Now, the snowfall muffles Samara’s footsteps, even within the confines of the monastery.
Samara herself feels cold. The monastery is worse than she’d feared. The bodies of the commandos sent to defend the place are strewn about like ragdolls. She has seen the bodies of some of the staff, bloodied and broken against windows and piled in shadowy corners.
But there are no ardat-yakshi to be seen, and no matter what she knows of her daughters, there are no good conclusions to be drawn from this.
She is halfway through checking the bedrooms for people she knows she will not find when she starts to hear the screaming.
-
Samara had, for many years, thought of her life in terms of seasons. As a maiden, she’d lived through her spring years, growing and blossoming, learning to love and fight in equal measure. The early days of her matron years, settling down with her wife and raising her children, had been as warm as summer. Then, the fall had come and with it her training as a Justicar, learning to harden her heart and prepare for the years to come.
And then, it had been winter. Samara had frozen her heart over, hardening herself against the things she saw and the things she did. Preparing herself to feel nothing when the time came for her to right her final wrong, the one that had driven her to this in the first place.
She had never thought about after.
The issue of Shepard had stayed at the back of Samara’s mind through the rest of her time on the Normandy. Samara didn’t look at her own feelings directly, lest she be blinded by an intensity of emotion she’d thought she was no longer capable of.
Samara, for the first time in centuries, had encountered a scenario that the Code did not govern, and she found herself paralyzed. She had clung to the ice around her heart even as Shepard, warm as the spring sun, had come close enough to thaw the soil in the barren garden of her heart.
And then, the Alliance had shown up to take Shepard into custody, and Samara was leaving, without so much as the opportunity to say goodbye.
Shepard hadn’t contacted her since. Samara understood that she had no way to reach anyone outside of the Alliance, but it still stung.
Then, the Reapers had taken Earth.
Not two weeks later, Samara received a distress signal from Lesuss, and found that her heart was no longer hard enough to refuse.
-
The shuttle lands as Samara finishes off the first of the Banshees, the creature’s body crumbling inward into dark matter and dust.
It is a gruesome thing, but not, in fact, a surprise. Samara has done battle with Marauders and Husks - she knew it was only be a matter of time until she found out what the Reapers would do to her species. She is, in truth, glad that it is not worse.
Samara looks up, in the aftermath, to see a shuttle trail across Lesuss’ gray skies. She moves to the window to see it land, her boots unsettlingly loud against the monastery marble floors.
And out of the shuttle steps Shepard, helmet in hand, her hair blooming crimson and fragile against the snow. The storm does not stop as she steps towards the relative shelter beside the building, but for a moment, Samara can no longer see the snow.
Shepard’s presence is a fragment of hope, blooming bright in her heart like the first red algae-flowers in spring. Alone, Samara had no illusions about her ability to defeat a Reaper strike force. A single Banshee had come chillingly close to killing her.
With Shepard here - she might be able to bring Falere and Rila home.
Samara realizes she’s been staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts, for nearly a full minute. She shakes her head, smiling a little at her own folly. It is fortunate that Shepard has arrived, yes, but the danger is still fully present and she has work to do.
Shepard will catch up to her in time. Samara believes it wholeheartedly.
-
After, when Falere has gone inside the monastery to assess her supplies and make contact with Asari High Command, a task she had insisted she take on alone, Samara has a moment to speak with Shepard.
Garrus and the unfamiliar male human Shepard had brought with her are standing back by the shuttle. Under the eaves of the monastery’s entrance, just out of reach of the snow, Shepard is leaning against the building and smiling at Samara.
“I have heard about Earth,” Samara says, gently.
“Believe me,” Shepard says, with a grimace, “I didn’t want to leave it behind. Earth isn’t - it’s not my favorite planet, but there are people I care about there.”
“You had to leave them behind to protect them,” Samara says. She’s not sure what reassurance she can offer - that is no longer within her capacity - but she hopes she can at least understand Shepard’s feelings.
“Yeah,” Shepard says, ruefully.
“There is no one better suited to it,” Samara assures her.
Shepard shoots her another smile, bright as the breaking dawn. “Thanks,” she says, “that means a lot, coming from you.”
Samara inclines her head, willing herself not to blush.
They stand there in silence for a long moment, looking at each other.
“You must have other obligations,” Samara says, finally.
“Yeah, unfortunately,” Shepard sighs. “Samara - will you-?”
She doesn’t seem to know how to finish the question. Samara takes her meaning though.
“I will be heading to the front lines of the fight,” Samara says, “as soon as I am sure that Falere will be alright. I will likely be on the Citadel before then, however. If you would like to catch up.”
Shepard smiles again, fleeting and wry. “I’ll hold you to that,” she says. “For now, good hunting.”
“You as well,” Samara says, and watches her walk back to the shuttle, her head held high.
It is that image that Samara thinks of, when she takes the time to catch up with the news of the Reaper war on her next shuttle. Shepard has the fate of the galaxy resting on her shoulders, but she will not crumble, nor will she break.
She is as confident as ever, Samara thinks, that they will all get out of this alive. And despite all rationality, Samara thinks, fighting a smile, she is still reassured.
-
It takes longer for Samara to make it to the Citadel than she anticipated.
Transit in a galaxy at war is more complicated than a galaxy at peace, and she is obligated by the Code to lend her aid to whomever she can. She repels more than one Reaper boarding party, then gets stuck fending off a Reaper invasion on an asari colony, and then, finally, weeks later, she pings Shepard that she has arrived on the Citadel.
Shepard, being Shepard, replies immediately. She’s holding a party, she mentions, if Samara would like to catch up with old friends.
Samara, of course, agrees.
-
Shepard spends most of the party floating from person to person, chatting with each of her guests in equal measure. Samara appreciates the opportunity to catch up with her former teammates, and get to know those that have joined Shepard since. She’s particularly interested in the Prothean - while his outlook is brutal, his experience fighting the Reapers would make him a worthy opponent.
It’s a shame the apartment isn’t set up for a proper spar.
She also enjoys joining Miranda in gently teasing Shepard about her misadventures - Samara has lived for three centuries without seeing someone do battle with their own clone, after all. It is unique, fascinating, and very funny.
And yet, for all the fun she’s having, Samara is still deeply aware that the circumstances of the party make it all but impossible to get a moment alone with Shepard.
That is, perhaps, why she doesn’t leave as the party winds to a close. The small hours of the morning find herself and Shepard the only ones awake, the rest of their comrades asleep on the couches or the guest bedrooms (or, in the case of Urdnot Wrex, curled into a defensive lump on the floor).
Shepard stands in the doorway of the master bedroom, leaning her shoulder on the frame. The neon lights of Silversun Strip are still filtering through the window, casting Shepard’s face in pink and blue and gold.
“Well,” Shepard says, softly, “it looks like we’ve filled up every other bed in the house.”
She shoots Samara a smile, glancing up at her through lashes dyed pink by the lights outside the window.
“Want to join me in mine?”
Samara almost laughs at her. All the agonizing she’s done and Shepard just-
“Was that a come-on?” Samara asks, putting some mild incredulity into her voice.
“Yep,” Shepard says, bluntly. “You know, I’d have liked to do this the right way. The way where we get to go on dates and get to know each other, and figure out our romantic trauma and shit. But - well, I’m leading an assault on Cerberus’ headquarters the day after tomorrow. And after that - we’re probably going back to Earth, and who knows how things will work out after that. So, before everything goes to shit again, I wanted - well, I wanted to ask.”
“I thought you wanted to die with regrets,” Samara says, wryly.
Shepard takes a step closer. “I think,” she says, softly, “that I’d regret leaving you behind more than I’d regret never having you in the first place.”
And, well, there’s nothing Samara can say to that. Instead, she bends down and Shepard stands up on her tiptoes, and the two of them share their first kiss. It’s soft and slow and smooth - as gentle as though they aren’t running out of time. Shepard’s mouth tastes like the awful soda she was drinking in place of a cocktail and like the neon light cascading across her lips.
Samara breaks free and Shepard slides her hands down her shoulder, twining their fingers together.
“Come on,” she says, and tugs Samara back towards her room.
“I haven’t said yes yet,” Samara says, gently untangling one hand to shut the door behind them.
“You haven’t said no,” Shepard points out.
“I feel that I must warn you,” Samara says, because she must, “I cannot commit to a traditional relationship. The Code must come before everything else, even the ones I love.”
“I know,” says Shepard, “I could same about me. The Alliance and the galaxy will always be my priorities. I’m never going to settle down and I’m probably going to die in a fight and not in my bed.”
“So am I,” Samara says, softly.
“So we understand each other. And besides, that doesn’t matter right now. See, you have your Code, and I have my people. But tonight,” Shepard says, with gravitas, “I’m as free as dust in the solar wind.”
Samara gives her a look.
“I got that one from Tali,” Shepard says, without a single ounce of shame, “See, there’s this movie called Fleet and Flotilla-“
Samara can’t help it. She reaches out and puts a hand over Shepard’s mouth and shoves the other woman back towards the bed.
“You are ridiculous,” she says, when she pulls her hand away to let Shepard cackle unimpeded.
“You like it,” Shepard retorts, reaching up to trace the edge of Samara’s mouth with her fingertip, “see, you’re smiling.”
So Samara is.
She’d forgotten, in the way that she’s forgotten so many things about her life before the Code, that love could be a place for laughter too.
So she leans down to press Shepard’s crimson hair and scarred golden skin into the white sheets of her bed, to taste the bright laughter on the other woman’s lips and feel the warmth of her skin underneath her bare hands.
And down in the dark and quiet corners of her heart, she feels the snowy shell of centuries of loneliness begin to crack, like flowers pushing through winter snow, like sunshine on Lesuss’ rooftops.
Like the end of winter, thawing into spring.
-
Shepard and Samara say their goodbyes the next morning.
Samara allows herself to be teased gently by Liara, and pretends not to hear the rather more intense ribbing that Shepard receives from James and Garrus.
But the morning cannot last, and they are each indispensable in their own way to the war. So Samara and Shepard clasp each other’s hands, and Shepard wishes her luck.
Samara hitches a ride aboard an asari cruiser bound for Earth’s surface. The next day, it’s announced that the galaxy’s fleets will combine forces to fight the Reapers where they’ve massed at Earth.
Samara is in orbit over Earth when she next hears from Shepard.
The radio connection is shaky, occasionally interspersed with bursts of static, but it is persistent.
“Samara,” Shepard says.
“You defeated the Illusive man,” Samara says. She would not be here if she had not.
“Cerberus is gone,” Shepard tells her, her mouth turning upwards in a tired smile. Samara can make out no colors in the image of her, but she suspects that the dark spots on Shepard’s cheek are blood. “How’s Falere?”
“She was well last we spoke,” Samara says. It was days before the party, but the Reapers should not have gone to Lesuss, focused as they are on Earth. “You are on Earth.”
“Yeah,” Shepard says, “I can’t say more over an unsecured channel, but there’s a plan. We’re going to take the Reapers down.”
“I do not doubt it,” Samara says.
Shepard smiles, faintly. “Hey Samara,” she says, softly, “after we’re done here, will you let me buy you a drink?”
“Of course,” Samara says, “I will look forward to it.”
She means it. It’s been too long since she spent time in a bar, among other soldiers. And perhaps when all this is over, even she will need a drink.
-
Of course, it doesn’t end that way.
The red pulse that emanates from the Citadel hits as Samara’s trapped between two Brutes, covering the escape of the commando unit at her back. She’d certainly endured more desperate situations in her centuries of experience as a Justicar - though at that moment she’d had trouble remembering a specific one.
It’s not an unpleasant surprise, to see the Brutes and the Banshee behind them simply - stop. As certainly and suddenly dead as if a switch had been turned off.
It is, however, a shock. Samara wastes nearly a full minute just looking around, trying to determine what had killed them, and if it was a threat to her.
There are no answers to be found. As the Alliance and the other militaries present on Earth start re-establishing the disrupted communication network, it becomes evident that no one has any.
The Reapers are dead. No one knows what killed them.
Fully ten hours later, Samara gets a call from Admiral Steven Hackett.
“Justicar Samara,” he says, “I have a request for you. You’re free to decline if the Code demands. That said, you’re the closest of Shepard’s comrades to the area, and you’re needed.”
“What is it?” Samara asks, calmly.
“Well,” Hackett says. “They found her.”
-
Two days later, Samara is sitting vigil by the side of one of the very few clean hospital beds left on Earth.
Shepard, all but mummified in bandages, is lying on it. Unresponsive.
Were it not for the steady noise of the heart monitors and the faint sound of her breathing, Samara would think she was dead. She is injured still, gravely enough that it would be no surprise if she simply succumbed to them.
Samara is ostensibly here to guard, but Hackett has kept her location secret enough that the only visitors are other members of Shepard’s crew, and they can do so only rarely, consumed with the efforts to rescue survivors and rebuild Earth and the Citadel.
There is nothing for her to guard against.
So, Samara is spending most of her time sitting. She has lately taken to reaching out and holding Shepard’s less injured hand, feeling its fingers still and cold between her own.
Shepard has always been so confident that she would survive - not only against the Collectors and the Reapers, but against the mundane hazards of a soldier’s life that could have killed her just as easily. She has always survived - the destruction of Earth, the Collector base, her own death, Sovereign’s attack on the Citadel.
The world has tried to kill her so many times. Even if it did not succeed, her short human lifespan will do the job in a handful of decades.
Still.
Samara wraps her fingers around Shepard’s unresponsive hand and holds tight. She wants more time.
She wants, for the first time in many centuries, to hope.
That Shepard will achieve one more miracle. Will survive certain death one more time and come back to her.
That spring will come, and the red algae-flowers will break through the unforgiving snow, even if only one more time.