scream away your sickness (silently)

by Shadows of a Dream

You do not use your voice among the Chozo (but the screaming never stops, like a mourning song unsung.) One-shot. A character study regarding the silence of Samus Aran.

A/N: I bought "Corruption" for the Wii this week to give the Metroid franchise another shot (the original "Metroid Prime" for GameCube frustrated me.) "Corruption," on the other hand, is quickly becoming my favorite Wii title. I did some reading on the Metroid Wiki and feel reasonably equipped to write something about Samus, but please realize that any inaccuracies are due to how new I am to Metroid.

I'm drawing from the Prime Trilogy mostly, with a touch of the manga and some inspiration from the emotional layers of "Other M." (From what I've seen, the majority of that game was poorly thought out and astoundingly sexist, but allowing Samus to have some human weaknesses is far from a bad thing, and her possible PTSD is a believable — and fascinating — piece of her character.)

My first exposure to Samus was in "Super Smash Bros: Melee." I was ten years old, I think. Samus was the first character I clicked because she seemed "cool," and my enthusiasm knew no bounds when I learned that within the powerful suit was a girl, like me. I played exclusively as Samus on "Melee" for months. I played her moveset terribly, but she was a woman. And I wanted to be her. And I think that's exactly why we need more women in video games that are well-rounded characters — it's certainly why I'm writing this one-shot. I want to believe in the strength of Samus Aran. I want to believe that women, too, can be the heroes of epic narratives.

~x~X~x~

scream away your sickness (silently)

~x~X~x~

1.

Your name is Samus Aran. You are a child, and your naiveté transfigures your rugged world.

The caverns of K-2L are great jewel cases, the Afloraltite ore an unearthly gem. The miners are treasure hunters, your mother (Virginia) and father (Rodney) among them.

"My little princess," says your father, tying your blond hair into a ponytail. The front pieces are stubborn, always refusing to be pulled back, so he decides to let them fall loosely to your shoulders. With a soft laugh, he smiles. "You look like royalty."

You are sweaty, dirty, and baby-faced, but as you are a child (blessedly foolish,) you believe him. You are a princess, and the K-2L mining colony is your kingdom.

All you know of boundaries is the jagged rock formations in the distance. All you know of endings is sunsets and lullabies.

Your name is Samus Aran, and you want to embrace the planet — the entire galaxy — with open arms.

~x~X~x~

2.

A dragon, dark and hideous, strikes the blue-black heavens with fire, kindling the dark into a terrible day.

Ridley, the miners shout as they scatter. Ridley, world-devourer, species-slayer.

But a princess might yet soften a dragon's heart, so you lift your chin and walk closer to the fiend. One step. Two. Three.

Your voice quavers like a harp string. "It's all right," you breathe, extending an open palm towards the monster. You pray that your eyes hold only entreaty, not a shred of the primal fear that churns in your chest. "I don't want to hurt you."

There's an unearthly noise, something between a scream of the living and a haunted wail of the long dead. Grotesque wings, darkly violet, lash at the horizon. Hot breath, reeking of blood and smoke, blasts against your face, and the reptilian noise splits the sky again, filling your ears, louder, louder, louder —

"Get away from my daughter!"

Your mother (the queen of your small, small world) tackles you to the ground. All at once, the dragon is upon her, tooth and claw and wing, and so much wailing —

"Run —!"

And then all the soft, warm, fleshy parts that were once assembled into Virginia Aran are something else entirely (nothing at all, nothing no one nothing) and there's something hot and sticky splashing on to your arms, on to your skin. You shield your face with too-small hands.

The dragon crouches over the mangled thing that was once your mother, its razor-deadly tail whipping back and forth, back and forth. Its visage is like a grinning skull.

In terror — childlike terror, not of the endless lonely years that stretch before you but of the dragon itself — you run, and run, and run.

Above, amidst the fiery sky, a starship explodes like a bloated firework. For an instant, Rodney Aran is color and light and beauty; for an eternity, Rodney Aran falls as silent as the stars.

When you cease to run, you find blood, hot and sticky, all along your arms, pressed into the creases of your palms. You huddle in the crevice of a rock, your head cradled between your knees, and rock back and forth (like the dragon's tail, back and forth and back and forth).

"Mom?" you gasp, the syllable little more than a sob. The wall bites into the soft skin of your back. "Dad?" The sky is fire. "Mom!"

A shadow passes across K-2L's sun. Ridley, world-devourer. Ridley. A shadow, a shriek, then nothing at all.

"Mom? Dad?"

Silence.

You open your mouth, and the unnatural sound that comes out steals your voice with every second — screaming, screaming, screaming — setting your jaw and stilling your shaking bones and steadying your uneasy heartbeat with every strangled, animal cry — releasing fear and pain and emptiness until there is only a name, faint, fading. Samus Aran.

"My name is Samus," you whisper, your throat raw, the words collapsing into silence like embers burning out. "My name is Samus Aran."

~x~X~x~

3.

When the Chozo find you (excavate you like a fractured artifact, awaken you like a ghost among old graves) among the K-2L ruins, an alien hand grasps your own, cold and slick with life. A low voice says, "What is your name, child?"

"Samus Aran." A voice (yours?), faraway.

The Chozo kneels beside you in the dust. "What happened here?"

(A dragon's roar is high and clear in your ears, rattling inside your skull.)

You stare at the broken line of the mountains, a tremor seizing your hands as theyclench and release and clench again. Your untrimmed nails draw blood from your palms (blood like the thing that used to have a name and hold your head against her chest and whisper silly promises into your ear —).

A sharp inhale. "My name is Samus Aran."

"Child," says the Chozo, gently.

Your eyes clamp tightly shut. Blood and stars and fire. Ridley. Quiet (that is not quiet, that will never ever be quiet again.) "My name is Samus Aran."

It is the first, the last, the only thing you say aloud to the Chozo. They are a warrior race. They accomplish; they do not discuss.

It is the reckless spark in your eyes that speaks, I will not be broken; the gasp of renewed life that speaks, the Power Suit is my breath and my pulse and my bones; the steady arm and the accurate charge shot that speaks,I was born to be strong; the sharp intake of oxygen that speaks, I love you, in some way or another.

You do not use your voice among the Chozo (but the screaming never stops, like a mourning song unsung.)

~x~X~x~

4.

Silence is your ally.

It is your armor and your sword, your greatest defense and your most trusted weapon. It is your voice where words would only echo what has already been said.

When you leave the planet Zebes, wishing the Chozo well, it is not because you do not love them (they are a seal upon your heart,) not because they haven't taught you well (you are the daughter of their DNA, the heir of their battle-craving blood.) You go to seek where the silence ends, to see what exists where noise begins.

You go to delve into the stagnant pool within yourself, to see if there is a bottom (or only the dragon's fathomless eyes.)

And in the end, you find what you have always known: that if those you have lost are stars amidst your darkness, theirs is a hideous constellation, ever shifting, never ending, stark and sharp against the black sky of your soul.

Where your quiet ends, an unholy sound begins, consuming you from the inside out. But lonely wanderings only serve to stretch your inner silence further, further, until you fear it will tear in two. You need to orchestrate your silent storm, or it will flay you alive. You hunger for the blood and the fire — darkness to match darkness.

It almost feels like fate when you join the Federation forces. At last, a channel for all that the silence keeps at bay, a purpose for the fury that makes you wake with the rusty tang of blood on your tongue.

You now stand among the ranks of galactic saviors. With weapons, not words, you exist to destroy to the darker denizens of the stars. You wear your silence not as bandages, not even as scars, but as a brand upon your skin. I have lost, itmight read, if eyes could decipher its invisible lines. I will rise.

But not every Federation soldier sees strength in your quiet.

One day, after you return from a particularly strenuous mission, an upstart soldier named Darek follows you through the halls of the starship Olympus. "Say something, damn it! Anything. The great Samus Aran, silent as a Metroid."

You increase your pace, focusing on inhaling, on exhaling. You have nothing to prove to Darek.

But then he asks one of his allies, "Why would they let such a broken soldier into the Federation? And a woman, at that."

Something awakens within you, like a long-dormant disease. You are not so battered as to simply snap— you take the emotion in your hands and examine it, dissect it, welcome it. The nameless cold that courses through you is seamlessly calm; it turns the Power Suit into a mere extension of your pounding heart.

When you turn to look Derek in the eye, unflinching — when you step towards him, every step in the Power Suit click, clack, clicking on the metal floor — when you seize his throat in your fist and hoist him against the wall — when through your visor, you watch him gasp, struggle, and finally stare in horror at the cool certainty in your face — it is not a breakdown, and it is not an impulsive reaction. The exact pressure in your every finger on his throat, his height above the floor, the angle at which you slam his head back, is all deliberate.

You could kill him, but you don't. You could swear in his face, could threaten or taunt, but you don't. You open your clenched hand and send him crashing to the metal floor.

As Derek sprawls, coughing, at your feet, he does not ask you to say something, Aran. He lies there, trembling, until another soldier helps him to stand.

And he never questions you again.

~x~X~x~

5.

Your thoughts are strange lately, colorless; the voice of your inner observations, the sound of words on a page as you read to yourself, is flat, monotone, detached. It is no longer your voice.

You cannot remember what your voice sounds like.

One night, the dragon visits you again, as true and real in its horror as the chair that suddenly vanishes beneath you, replaced by a pool of blood. You try to run, slipping in the slick scarlet, legs and arms scrambling in vain.

The dragon leans close, thick with the smell of death. Its shadow obliterates all else.

Samus Aran, says Ridley, in a very soft voice.I always wondered what you would have tasted like.

And the great mouth is open to swallow you whole —

There is a noise, like a wounded animal in the throes of death, and the nightmare shatters around you, replaced by sheer cold and dim light and the awful, awful noise that is rising, rising, rising —

It takes almost half a minute for it to register that the noise is a scream, and the scream is your own, and you didn't know that lungs could ache like this, and you jam a fist between your teeth to make it stop, and after a solid minute, it does.

But you're sweaty, and shaking, and you rest your head between your knees, rocking slowly back and forth. (And the screaming never really stops.)

~x~X~x~

6.

One night, you wake with a hatchling Metroid's shriek ringing in your head, and after hours of failing to steady your breathing, you find yourself fumbling around your ship's cockpit in the dark, seeking an item long forgotten. When at last your hand closes around the thin tablet, a chill shoots straight up your spine.

It has been years since you accessed this file. It belongs to another lifetime, to a girl with a voice that would have laughed at eternity. Upon the edge of the tablet, the inscription's color has faded, but you trace the outline of the symbols with a fingertip: K-2L. Wasteland. Graveyard.

Home.

The tablet is severely burned, and a large crack slashes across its screen, but when you press your palm to the interface, it gives a sputter, a whir, a hum. And all at once, it is awake.

The tablet's robotic voice splits the stale air of the cockpit. Please confirm your identity, Samus Aran.

You swallow hard. Your throat is scraped raw from screaming, clenched tightly by wordless days, weeks. months (how did this happen to you?) With a sharp breath, you sit up straight, square your shoulders, and find the will to speak.

"Samus. Aran." Your voice is broken, the syllables jagged, like gravel crushed carelessly beneath a soldier's boot.

The interface blinks. Identity not confirmed.

Your heart clamps. "Samus Aran."

Identity not confirmed. Please confirm —

Your knuckles go white around the tablet. Slowly, recalling the shape of each sound on your tongue, you repeat, "Samus. Aran."

Identity not —

Suddenly, you remember how to shout. "Samus Aran," you snarl —and then again, desperate, pleading, "SAMUS ARAN," — but the interface has already activated security protocols. The screen flicks to absolute dark.

You brace your palms against the control panel, blinking away the tears that threaten, a string of curses slipping unbidden from your numb lips, "Damn it, damn it, damn it all to hell," because you will always be Samus Aran, the bounty hunter.

You will always be Samus Aran, unsearchable, unbeatable, impenetrable, a legend incarnate.

But Samus Aran, of Rodney and Virginia — Samus Aran, the girl who believed in redeeming even dragons, the girl who hoped to touch the sky without fearing its shattering around her, the girl who recorded her thoughts in a thin tablet journal on K-2L — that young, naive girl is locked away, smothered beneath dutiful silence.

Your answering sob stays caught in your throat, unheard (like everything else.)

It's better this way.

~x~X~x~

A/N: I set out to accomplish several things in this (more depressing than I originally intended) one-shot.

First, I wanted to rely on 2nd person POV to replicate the behind-the-visor view of the Prime Trilogy. It's the literary equivalent of seeing through the eyes of Samus Aran.

Second, I wanted to acknowledge PTSD as a real struggle for Samus, particularly in the form of nightmares.

Third, I wanted to look at the wordless nature of Samus throughout the Prime Trilogy. From a gameplay standpoint, it makes the series immersive, but from a plotline standpoint, I wondered why none of the other characters ever seemed surprised by Samus' unbroken silence. It is possible to develop selective mutism as a result of trauma. I don't know of anyone else who theorized Samus having such a condition, but it makes sense to me. Samus can speak, but elects to remain silent far more often than would appear normal. She has suffered greatly in life. And no one ever pushes her to answer them audibly, perhaps out of respect for her struggle with PTSD. The only time the player hears Samus scream during the Prime saga is if the player/Samus actually dies. That seems very telling.

Fourth, I wanted to allow Samus to have human weaknesses — namely, PTSD — without slaughtering her strength like in "Other M." Even her silence, which might appear to make her broken, is in fact a constantly active resistance to falling apart. In the deliberate, willful quiet, she continually tells herself, "I will not break. I will act, not brood." This is not to say that Samus never considers her past, never cries, or never feels lost; it is merely to say that when push comes to shove, Samus fights with her plasma beam, not with words.

Reviews (constructive criticism included) are greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.