AN: ...of all the pairings/fic ideas/bizarre genfic I've ever written, this is...well, probably not quite the strangest, but it's up there. Also, totally not what I'd planned on posting first in this fandom. Uh, hi?
'Ware spoilers - mostly for Noveria but there's other stuff too, if you're paying attention. Also, mild and mind-boggling subtext. Sorry.
The One does not hate the pale-tasting biped who rips into her mind, searching for information the One has no reason to conceal, lost in grief for her Many, deaf to her cries.
It hurts, this unwelcome invasion, but there is something beautiful in the shape of the alien's mind - asari, it calls itself, and the One knows the word from before she hatched. The One reaches back, tentative, wary, tasting the unfamiliar patterns of this new species.
This asari is broken, the delicate coils of thought and memory turned back on themselves, twisted to another's will and crying out in silent agony with every step it takes - it is many times older than the One, and it was wise and compassionate, once.
The One cries out as it plunges into her mind, ruthlessly single-minded now, in the moment of its victory.
But as their minds mingle and blur, the One learns much, unable to shrink away from the violent, uninvited contact.
The asari is One among its own people, protector of its own Many. The word Matriarch means nothing to the One, but she understands in spite of herself. What she would not do to have her Many back, to hold their song close to her own and keep them safe from harm -
It is the same instinct that drove the asari, once, before its song was twisted and broken, before something ancient and ugly shattered its bright mind. The One, heir to the memories and knowledge of countless generations of Ones before her, remembers that menace, old and singing with stale malice, and it makes her shake.
The One sees their faithless silence ripped ragged through the asari, their return writ large on the beautiful chaos of the mind pressing into hers. And it is curiosity more than compassion that moves her in that moment - she sings, low and sweet, as she would to a smallest Many, fitting her wordless query into the asari's shattered consciousness, conveying her awe and sorrow that such an exquisite being could be brought so low.
She tastes shock, metallic against her antennae, and the contact is severed abruptly, unceremoniously, the sudden lack of connection deafening against the One's mind.
She retreats into herself, her own song quiet against her skin. The asari One cannot hear her like this, cannot understand her without the primitive blending of their dissimilar minds and the One is too young, too weak to initiate contact.
Time passes - the Many cry out and she hears them, cannot keep herself from answering, even though they are deaf to her, blind with rage - and the asari returns.
It brings others with it, its own kind and intruders, synthetics void of song or pattern, sleek voids against the One's well-honed perception.
And when the Other cuts them down, swift and brutal as a krogan butchering Many, the One sings the asari's dirge, feeling its mind go incandescent, shadows of its former glory lit up suddenly, a symphony of strength and wisdom the One can only hope to someday match.
As its song dies out, beauty flaring fitfully against the backdrop of its own death, the One reaches out with all her strength.
Be remembered, she sings, pressing close as the asari slips away. This One will remember.
Endnotes: So the brain has definitely handed me strange plot bunnies before, but this one takes the cake. At least, for now. Feedback, plz?