Author's Note: I've redone this chapter a bit since it was originally published. It's purpose is mostly to give some context to the rest of the story and Samus as I write her. She's certainly not the all-powerful, infallible Samus Aran from a lot of stories, but she's not the Samus from Other M either. I wanted to create a more human sort of Samus, someone not perfect or necessarily even "badass" in the traditional sense, but someone who is possibly relatable and clearly flawed. That's the goal anyway.
Chapter 2: Outsider
Samus stared out the window as the spacecraft descended and the Earth came more clearly into view. There were so many things she was dying to say to Adam, so many things she knew he should know if he were going to be spending so much time with her. Still, they were sorts of things for which she could not find the right words, if there were even any words at all to describe them.
Nothing had been quite right since the end of the Space Pirate War, and though she knew the whole galaxy celebrated as they entered a new age of peace, she could not help but feel alienated by it. As she pressed her palm up against the window, she thought perhaps that would be the best way to describe how everyone felt to her: as though she were watching the rest of the universe celebrate from behind a wall of glass. Though people congratulated her and the media sang her praises, it frustrated her that she could not feel their so obviously infectious joy, as if the part of her that felt those things had withered and died during her years of isolation. It was a dull ache deep in her chest, and sometimes it was downright hard to breathe. The war may have been over to the rest of them, but it didn't feel that way to her.
As she glanced over to her companion, she was glad he wasn't looking at her. She wondered if the General ever felt the same way, like this peace was an illusion and the Pirates could come back at any minute with some new bio-weaponized lifeform or worse.
She wondered why Adam had insisted on accompanying her to Earth, but she had a couple of theories about it. First, she figured he would want to see his family. His wife and his two daughters lived in a town not far from where Morrigan Sinclaire had contracted Samus for this new mission. As a General in the Federation Army, Adam was often away from home for long stretches of time, sometimes whole Earth years. While he could telecommunicate with his family, he had often lamented to Samus how he hated not being present for so much of his daughters' lives. As a result, when he heard Samus was going to be traveling not only to Earth but to an area so close to his town, he had jumped at the excuse to accompany her.
Although she couldn't confirm it and wouldn't bother asking, Samus also suspected he was still "on the clock", so to speak, for the Federation Army. Probably acting as her chaperone or keeping tabs on her or some such nonsense. It was no secret that the Federation distrusted her and the power she wielded, and there were some higher-ups who considered her a dangerously unstable individual. It was amazing how people who had acted as though she were a savior during the Space Pirate War now basically treated her like a time-bomb now that her skills were no longer relevant.
Other than that, she supposed Adam wanted to accompany her because of her last mission to Zebes. Or rather, how she had returned from her last mission to Zebes. Nothing had gone wrong, per se, but nothing had really happened at all. After the planet had blown up, she had briefed the Federation officials on the destruction of the main Pirate stronghold, and a brief legal battle had ensued in which clueless attorneys had argued over whether or not she had the right to take the level of action she had taken unauthorized.
There were a few charges pressed, but none of them stuck, save for a few nights in jail she had gotten for punching out one of the reporters who had tried to get in her face. It had been a strange but not unfamiliar incident. She couldn't even remember striking the person, just that one moment she felt someone coming up behind her, and the next moment they were on the ground and she was being read her rights. But she wasn't even convicted on those charges, though she was glad to hear that the reporter was expected to make a full recovery.
After that, she realized that she was too on edge around other people and had taken off for deep space hoping to clear her mind for a little bit. No one heard from her for several months before Adam finally managed to get in touch with her. Even then, she still refused to speak of what had happened on Zebes, and even now she hated to think of that mission.
It hadn't been long after she had returned from her trip to SR-388, when she had eradicated the last of the Metroids on their home world. All except one. A hatchling. It had imprinted on her while she was escaping the explosions on SR-388. After killing the Queen Metroid, she thought she was done with her mission, but on her way back to her ship, she stumbled upon one last Metroid egg.
Samus had never seen a Metroid egg before, and she was about to blow it to bits when she saw it begin to move. She had no idea why she stopped cold in her tracks and watched the tiny creature emerge from its leathery prison, but she was completely transfixed by the sight of it. It was the smallest Metroid she had ever seen, and rather than the cacophonous screeches of its mature counterparts, the Hatchling made only little squeaking noises.
So that is what the Queen Metroid was protecting, Samus thought to herself as she watched the tiny creature float confusedly, searching for its fallen mother. Searching for any of its own kind. Finding nothing.
It was an orphan, the sole survivor of a raid on its home planet, just as she had been once. This time, however, she had been the killer instead of the victim.
And despite that, it floated right up to Samus, seemed to study her in its own way before circling her excitedly. And Samus, still covered in the blood and remains of its biological mother, knew it had imprinted upon her. Somehow, despite all of the Metroids she had killed during that mission, all of the creatures she had killed in her career, Samus Aran could not kill the orphan Metroid.
Instead, she rescued it from the planet, took it into her ship, and set a course back to the Federation. Inside her ship, the creature squeaked and squished happily through the air, and she could feel herself developing a perverse affection for it. And something like guilt. It seemed almost to love her in the way a dog or a cat loves its person or perhaps even the way a child loves its parent. Samus was not sure. The thought of herself acting as anything's mother sent shivers down her spine. She was a walking weapon, and those who associated with her often met violent and terrible ends. Despite her efforts to protect it, this Metroid ultimately had been no exception.
It was not a terribly long ride to the Ceres Station, where she had been instructed to bring it, but it was long enough for Samus to relax and become unusually comfortable with the Metroid's presence. For most of the way, it rested perched on her shoulder and went into a type of stasis she figured was the Metroid equivalent of sleeping, and though she knew it could never stay with her, she found herself feeling something of an affection for the little blob. It wasn't quite maternal, but it was something, and it awakened feelings she had long fought to repress. Deciding it would be safer without her, she sold it to the scientists of the Ceres Station for a few credits and went on her way.
She stayed in a room on the Federation base just long enough to recover from a few minor injuries sustained in her battles on SR-388. Then she fled the station as quickly as possible, in search of new bounty to hunt. She was not gone long before she received the distress signal to return to the Ceres Station. And it wasn't long before she was defeated by her nemesis, Ridley, as he kidnapped the Hatchling and returned with it to the Pirate Base on Zebes.
Without a second thought, she pursued the dragon back to the Pirate stronghold on Zebes and waged her own personal war on the planet, trying to rescue the Metroid and keep such a dangerous life form out of the Pirates' grasp. It was several days before she returned from Zebes, empty handed, leaving another trail of catastrophic destruction in her wake.
And after her day in court, the Federation celebrated her as a hero. And they paid her generously, money for which she hadn't even contracted. And they declared it a victory, the official end to the war they had been fighting for three decades.
But Samus took her ship and flew away alone, back to a small apartment in a dilapidated building on one of the obscure Outer Planets. What they celebrated as a victory, she could not help feeling was her own personal failure. It made no sense to mourn for a Metroid larva, and yet part of her did. There was a sense of loss that ran deep through her, and she knew it was simply the loss of another that she was projecting upon the Metroid, the loss of a life she might have had at one time.
That mission had been months ago, but to this day, she refused to speak of what had happened on Zebes. Even now as she sat with Adam on the commercial spacecraft and it prepared for its landing, she knew she could not bring it up to him. He would understand. He was the only one who would understand why she mourned the loss of the Metroid the way she did because he was the only one who knew the sacrifices she had made to make sure that same fate had not come to another.
