I have a few little things I've been doing in the world of Andromeda, mainly when I'm struggling to sleep (so like ALL the time XD) which I've decided to tweak and upload here. Mostly inbetweeny small scenes set during my first Andromeda fic. I'll try and get everything in chronological order and dump them here :) Enjoy!

There was an AI talking inside her head.

Sara shifted to the edge of the hard metal slab she had been lying on in SAM node on board Ark Hyperion, gripped the edge tight until her knuckles grew white and her fingers throbbed with the strain as though to ground herself. She stared down at her feet, concentrating on the pulse she felt throbbing in her hands. She ached all over, as though she had run a marathon and then gone several rounds in a ring with a krogan warlord. As though she had fallen from a great height, almost suffocated to death… She felt fuzzy and unsteady, and breathing still hurt, a faint scraping in her throat and lungs with each intake of breath. The synthetically cooled air of the AI node ghosted around her and she shivered as it crept beneath the collar of her hoody. It helped to sharpen her mind, to push back the fog of drugs, of near-death, of shock. Machinery hummed and whirred around her, the only sound save for the insistent pounding of her pulse in her head, the rasp of her shaky breath.

This was... A disaster.

The events of the last few hours had unfolded so fast; too fast to process. The Pathfinder team had been forced to merely react without thinking to everything thrown at them and hope later that their choices had been the right ones. The mission had been a catastrophe. First contact had been an absolute shambles, and they were probably now at war with an unknown alien race. Kirkland was dead, her father was dead, hell, apparently, she had even died, albeit briefly. Scott was in a coma. Habitat 7 was anything but a golden world. Her father had... Done something to some sort of atmospheric processor that seemed to clear the storm out, but it could be months, years, decades before humanity could find a home there. And in his dying moments Alec Ryder had made his daughter humanity's Pathfinder.

Sara felt sick, felt her heart begin to pound hard against her ribs, a nervous throbbing that no amount of deep breathing would soothe. Panic took hold and her fingers trembled as she clenched and unclenched them in the heavy fabric of her trousers. At least Liam seemed to believe she was up for the job. Cora had been supportive enough too, but... Sara hadn't trained to be Pathfinder. Had no idea where to even start. She was 'recon specialist' not Pathfinder. She was anything but leader material. Humanity was doomed.

And now there was an AI in her head. SAM. Her father's creation. She 'knew' the AI well enough, of course she did. But now it was embedded in her consciousness, so entwined with her that apparently removing it could kill her. So, it would stay there, an ever present presence within her mind.

Cora, Liam, and Lexi had left her here in SAM node to recover from the damage officially becoming the Pathfinder had wreaked through her body, and she was glad. She could feel herself unravelling fast and didn't want anyone to witness it, especially not her future crew and the eternally unruffled asari doctor Lexi T'Perro. Didn't want them to watch her come undone. Show weakness.

Her father, Scott…everything…

She felt a lump forming in her throat, pain, fear, anguish building in her chest in a tight knot. She and her father had never gotten on. He always seemed to have a stick up his butt about something while Sara usually found everything to be a joke, no matter how serious the situation. If you couldn't laugh, well… She hated herself for it now. For sassing her father every chance she got, for pushing him, for allowing the distance between them to grow. They hadn't been close. And she had wasted so much time being angry at him, bitter for the way he had disgraced their family name with the very thing that was buried within her brain now.

"SAM?" She sniffled, feeling tears prick her eyes and blinking them back as her vision swam. She would not cry. The AI, he could do things. Impossible things. Block the signals in her brain to make her move faster, to unlock the full potential of her muscles. "Can you make it so I can't feel?" She glanced up pathetically at the glowing blue image in front of her, the shifting lines of code that made up SAM. It bathed the room in its soft glow, flickering faintly. She felt like an emotional wreck, knew she looked a mess. Maybe if she was numb to the pain she could become the leader people needed her to be.

"I cannot, Pathfinder," came the answer, soft, robotic. He spoke on their private channel within her mind. It was unnerving, and yet comforting all the same. He would always be there, something from her father looking over her, guiding her.

She swiped a hand across her eyes angrily, feeling the tears come. Of course, he couldn't. Or rather, wouldn't. If she didn't acknowledge the problem, overcome it, then she couldn't grow, adjust, adapt. Trust her father to build a damn…wiseness algorithm into his AI. She flopped backwards, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes as a sob escaped, like a whimper. She hated herself for it.

"Would you like me to call someone to you?" SAM offered.

"God, no!" Sara saw stars as she pressed her hands further into her eyes, trying to force the tears to stop. Her voice sounded thick, wet. "Just…I just need a minute."

Alone. She felt so alone. Back home, in the Milky Way, whenever anyone spoke of the trip to Andromeda it had been with such joy and hope. A new home, filled with opportunity. So far it had been nothing short of a nightmare. Over six-hundred years had passed. What if Habitat 7 wasn't the only golden world that had been wrecked? What if some disaster had made the whole of Andromeda inhospitable? What if those aliens they had found down there on Habitat 7 were the last of a dying species, scavenging, and murdering any who might take their valuable resources for themselves. Had the Andromeda Initiative already failed?

Sara shoved herself upright, wiping the tears from her face and taking several deep breaths to calm herself. It only failed if she lay down and cried about feeling sorry for herself. She sniffed loudly, dried her face with her hoody sleeves and steeled her resolve. She could do this. She would do this. If only because she would die of shame if anyone found her in such a sorry state.

"I'm gonna Pathfind the shit out of Heleus," she announced, climbing to her feet. She wobbled, limbs feeling shaky and weak after her ordeal on Habitat 7. She quickly righted herself and waited a beat for the nausea to pass.

"Pathfinder?"

"I need food and sleep. Ping me when we get to the Nexus," she said, leaving SAM node. Her father's quarters were nearby, she could crash there until she was needed.

"Of course, Pathfinder."

This will be an ongoing thing, so stay tuned!