Author's Note: We finally made it! The Epilogue! It feels so bittersweet. I'm so happy to be posting this and so glad the story is finally complete, but it's been such a fun ride, I'm sad to see it go.

So thank you all for sticking with me through this story, especially those of you who have been reading since "Human". You know who you are! :)

I'd love to see any feedback you have about this story or the series more generally, and I hope you will join me for more works in the future. Thank you all, and please enjoy the epilogue!

Update: As of now, there is a sequel to this story called "Zero Host", and it is the fourth and final installment in this series. At this time, it is complete, so if you enjoyed this story, I hope you enjoy that one as well!

Epilogue: Taken by the Sky

General Malkovich left the chaos of the general public as he closed the door behind him and stepped into the government section of the Federation Capitol Building on Daiban. After spending a month on Earth, he had been reluctant to leave his wife and daughters, but he had a duty to uphold, and that was not about to change just because someone had made an attempt on his life. After a month filled with long hearings and depositions about the incident on LV-426, he had finally been cleared to leave Earth and return to his regular life as a Federation Army General.

It felt strange to be back on Daiban, heading toward the Chairman's Chambers, and it felt like he had been gone for far longer than a couple of months. Still, this sudden return to what should been normalcy was almost calming in a way. After the uncertainty of the LV-426 incident and the various legal hoops they had jumped through on Earth, it felt good to be back in his regular role.

When he arrived at Keaton's door, he saluted to the massive, crustacean-like guards on either side of it as they allowed him to enter. The General stepped into a large, round office with a dome-shaped ceiling. Missile-proof one-way glass encircled the walls, giving a view of the world outside the unique chamber while maintaining privacy within. Oil paintings of past Chairmen hung upon the wall, and Adam silently noted a place being cleared for where Keaton's would soon hang as well.

"Good afternoon, General Malkovich," the small, green alien called from behind his desk, noticing the way the General had looked toward where the newest portrait would soon hang.

"Good evening, Chairman," Adam said respectfully, saluting the Commander-in-Chief and returning his hands to their formal resting pose behind his back.

"You're looking good considering how long you were supposed to be 'dead'," the alien drawled in his dry, dismissive tone. His wrinkles always made him look annoyed, and something about tone always suggestion a certain snide emphasis to anything he said. "You'll be glad to know that the prisoner you and Aran brought back is being detained in one of our maximum security facilities, and we'll be using some of our more creative interrogation techniques in the coming days if she doesn't start singing like one of those insufferable little yellow Earth birds."

"I believe they are called 'canaries', Sir," Adam said, still trying to maintain a respectful tone although Keaton did have a way of getting his skin. "While I'm glad to know Dr. Grey is being detained, I need to know why General Harper isn't. She was directly involved in the attempt on my life."

"Well, General," Keaton continued, "I'd like to see her and whole lot of them behind bars as much as the next person. Believe me. Knowing that they are card-carrying members of the Party that will be replacing me in the coming months is not something that sits well with me at all. Unfortunately, while we were able to have Secretary of Defense Green stripped of his rank and imprisoned for treason based on yours and Aran's findings, Harper has made the claim that she was simply following what she was told through the chain of command and was completely innocent as to the existence of any conspiracy. We have no proof that her statements are not true."

"But what about Dr. Grey's statements?"

"They don't point to Harper. They point to Green. He's their scape-goat, and given that he outranks Harper, it's entirely plausible that she had no idea what was going on."

"But what about what Harper said to Samus at the funeral?" Adam's normally impassive face betrayed his frustration as he mentally ran through the angles through which they might get to General Harper. "Surely there was something there we could use."

Keaton's wrinkly face shifted in a way that looked like he would have been raising his eyebrows if he had any. "You mean when Aran assaulted and threatened the life of a prominent Federation Army General? Trust me when I say Harper is not the one who incriminated herself in that scenario. And if you want us to stay out of your mercenary friend's hair, you will avoid bringing that up again. No one has pressed charges yet, but Aran's going to want to keep a low profile for a while and not try to screw around with the incoming administration."

Adam glared at the Chairman, silently noting the comments about Samus but refusing to acknowledge them. "So Harper just walks?"

"For now, yes. And like I said, unless you have concrete evidence against her, I wouldn't antagonize her too much, especially if you value your little mercenary friend's freedom." Keaton narrowed his beady black eyes as he stared at the General. "Grey's testimony, on the other hand, might prove to be absolutely damning to Harper, and if we can get her like that, her role in the coup will be irrefutable, and she will go away for a long, long time."

"Understood," Adam said quietly with a respectful nod.

"Until then, I don't want to see any half-assed bounty hunter heroics or anything like she pulled at the funeral, understand?"

The General nodded soberly. "Yes, of course."

"She listens to you for some reason I don't understand. And look, I don't like Aran or her methods, but between you and me, General, she's one of the few people I trust right now. And I don't want to lose one of my most useful assets."

"Understood," Adam replied. He knew Keaton considered Samus to be more than just a "useful asset" but that was the most endearing term he could ever hope to hear from the gruff little alien. "Just one more question, Sir. What became of LV-426 and the species discovered there?"

"Oh," the Chairman waved his hand dismissively as he leaned back in his chair, "we took that moon out days ago. Too dangerous given the current political climate. It's nothing but dust and space rock by now."

"You blew it up?" Adam stared at the Chairman in shocked horror, remembering the Chozo that lived below the surface. "Samus is not going to be happy about this…"

Keaton snorted and made a strange sound in his throat that might have been a laugh. "Well, Samus hardly has a leg to stand on when it comes to lecturing anyone on the ethics of blowing up planets. Besides, I would think she of all people would be happy to hear we destroyed the xenomorphs and any remaining traces of the Metroids."

"But the Chozo…"

Keaton shrugged. "Sacrifices have to be made sometimes, and Metroids are far too dangerous to keep alive. Recall what happened when Ridley got word of the larva on Ceres. The Pirates may not be around anymore for the most part, but there are other enemies even within the Federation itself. The life of a single Chozo was not found to be anywhere near as important as preventing another war."

Adam stared quietly at the Chairman. He had told him of his initial encounter with Silver Wing after Samus had been killed, but he had left out the fact that there had been other Chozo living down in the ruins. Now, unless they had sensed the Federation ships incoming and found a way to escape the planet undetected, they were likely nothing more than dust and space rock as well. In terms of preserving galactic peace, destroying LV-426 may have been the right call, but Adam knew as far as Samus would be concerned, it was murder.

"Please," Adam said quietly, "tell me you broadcasted some kind of message to the Chozo before you destroyed LV-426."

Keaton nodded, now suspicious that the General knew more than he was letting on. "We sent a broadcast. It was all done to protocol. We gave anyone there a countdown sequence to evacuate. We didn't see any ships leave, however."

Adam just nodded quietly. That did not sound hopeful, but he knew the Chozo possessed technologies far more advanced than any other species in the known universe. Samus's ship had a nearly perfect cloaking feature that made it undetectable in most situations. He didn't say anything aloud, but he silently hoped the Chozo had the same. He was not sure he actually wanted the bird aliens to survive the blast after what they had put Samus through both on LV-426 and when they had abducted her as a child, but he knew that they were still important to her, and it would hurt her to learn of their deaths.

"Will that be all for today, Sir?" the General asked softly after a brief silence.

Keaton nodded. "That's all. You're free to go, General. But keep your ears out for anything else. I don't know who we can trust these days."

Adam nodded. "Affirmative."

Portia Grey sat silently in the cold interrogation room. There were no windows, clocks, or anything to show the passage of time. Her legs and remaining hand were shackled to the cold, steel chair that was bolted to the floor, and before her sat an empty table that was much the same way. Her hand-less arm was bound to her body with heavy restraints.

She was not sure how long she had been in the room. It felt like days, but there was no way of knowing. She had been in almost complete isolation since her arrest, her only reprieve from the solitude being the times people would come in to bring her food or allow her use of a bedpan. Whatever was coming, however, she knew would be infinitely worse than sitting in silence indefinitely, and she was terrified out of her mind.

It may have been days later when a young woman dressed in an officer's uniform entered the room. She carried a standard sidearm but otherwise held only a tablet for note taking.

"Dr. Portia Grey?" She said as she stepped into the room and bolted the door behind her. Her pale face was stern, and her ashy brown hair was pulled back into a severe bun. She had a stocky build, but she was a fairly tall woman. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Maroney. I'll be the one interrogating you this evening."

Portia looked up at the woman through sunken eyes. Her lips were horribly chapped from dehydration, and she thirsted terribly, but she almost wanted to laugh at how bizarre the other woman's words had sounded, as though she were introducing herself as a hotel concierge as opposed to her soon-to-be torturer.

"Not very talkative, are you?" Maroney asked as she stared Portia down. "That's a good thing. I trust you haven't spoken to any of the others?"

The only other people Portia had seen had been the ones bringing her meals. Her voice was no longer used to talking and her throat burned painfully, so the doctor just shook her head.

"Good," Maroney continued, setting her tablet down on the table as she took a seat across from Portia. "And we're going to make sure they can't get a single word out of you. Congratulations, Dr. Grey. General Harper was very impressed with your performance. You may not have taken out Malkovich, but you did prove one very important thing: the Hunter is killable. That information alone will be invaluable in the years to come."

Portia looked at the other woman in confusion.

"You're probably wondering if this is some sort of good-cop-bad-cop routine," Maroney said, reading the thoughts Portia's addled mind was too sluggish to process at the moment. "It's not. I'm here from the Party to make sure that no one else can get to you. The torture techniques the Federation utilizes are absolutely unspeakably harsh. I don't want you to have to go through that after the way you served us."

Portia stared at her expectantly. Her wide-eyed gaze gave a mixture of fear and a glimmer of hope. "You're… here…" she tried to speak through her parched throat, but her voice broke sharply on each word, "to protect… me?"

Maroney nodded. "You're the only one who knows what happened on LV-426, and you killed the Hunter. You've served the cause so loyally and so well, we're not about to let you fall back into the clutches of Keaton's goons."

With a single, fluid motion, Maroney pulled the sidearm from its holster and fired a single shot straight into Portia's head. The doctor was dead before her limp form even hit the table in front of her.

Picking up her tablet and returning the gun to its holster, the woman stood up and nodded to the bleeding remains of Portia Grey. "Your Party thanks you for your service."

There were some mechanics who knew how to make beautiful, life-like androids that were indistinguishable from real humans, and there were some who just knew how to throw together something functional that would get the job done. As Samus Aran fiddled with a few connection tubes and circuits on the robotic leg laying on her work table, she knew she was very much in the second category.

As she had promised Ripley before the two women had moved in together, she was working on trying to restore Bishop's body so that his head could be reattached and the synthetic person who had saved her life could "live" once more. It was tedious work, but Samus didn't mind it. Sometimes doing such concrete, systematic tasks helped to put her mind at ease, and that was definitely something she needed this evening.

Over a month had passed since the LV-426 incident, and she was now the proud owner of a large five bedroom suburban home not far from where Adam lived. Even though it was technically her house, Ripley rented from her and she gave the flight officer and her newly adopted daughter the run of most of it. There were only a few rooms off limits to them: Samus's bedroom, her private bathroom, a second bedroom she had turned into her own private living room, and the garage workshop in which she now stood. There was a door leading into the main part of the house, but Samus mostly kept that locked, preferring to go up the spiral staircase she had installed that led to her upstairs living quarters.

It was not an ideal living situation, but Samus liked living so close to her son and being able to see him after school or on the weekends. She had also been ecstatic when Adam had suggested he help turn the garage into her own work space so she could tinker with various vehicles and robotics to her heart's content when she was not working. Indeed, Samus had taken full advantage of the situation, and beside the robotics section of her workshop was parked a brand new hover-car painted in a bright red. The other vehicle, however, was her real prize: a sleek black hover-motorcycle she had been working on customizing to perfection. Aside from the anxiety-induced variety, adrenaline rushes were hard to come by on Earth, and riding that hover-bike was usually the best she got lately.

That was not a bad thing, however. The galaxy was the most peaceful it had ever been since the start of the Space Pirate War thirty years ago, and it was Samus's first real experience with that kind of world. There was no pressing need for her to put on her powersuit and rush off into battle, and she was surprisingly okay with that. While she still occasionally looked online to see what positions were open for mercenaries, she had not seen many that looked worthwhile to her. There was one position working with a company called "Biologic" she was thinking of taking, but it was fairly light, steady work. They were just looking for someone with weapons training and alien species knowledge to escort their scientists to collect flora and fauna samples for some big space lab they were hoping to finish building within the next four or five years.

Samus set aside the robotic leg for the night as she stretched and took her hair down from its high ponytail. She slipped off her flannel shirt to reveal the black tank top underneath as she hung it on her workbench. Looking around her solitary little workshop, she smiled and walked up the spiral stairs to her living quarters. She found herself in the hallway between her two bedrooms and her bathroom. She paused only for a moment to wash up in her sink and take a look at herself in the mirror.

The black vein-like markings were still visible as ever, and while she was still extremely muscular, there was a slightly softer, better-nourished look to her face and body. Still, she rarely went out into town during the day, hating the way people seemed to stare at her. One thing about Earth she would never get used to was how uncomfortable the people were around a semi-human, especially now that she could no longer pass as a full human.

Samus sighed as she turned off the water and dried her hands. Living on Earth was difficult for her in a lot of ways, but being so close to her "family" was doing wonders for her health both physical and mentally. She had found a doctor who actually took the time to treat her and gotten on medication to make the acidity of her blood more manageable. Even her stubborn blood pressure was getting down into the normal range, and she had managed to see the same therapist for nearly three weeks now without storming off or accidently becoming violent. Most people probably would not have seen that as an accomplishment, but Samus was secretly proud of herself for it.

As she left the bathroom, she unbolted the heavy door that separated her living quarters from the rest of the house and locked it behind her as she stepped out into the main upstairs hallway. There were three more bedrooms up here: one for Ripley, one for Newt, and one for guests. Not that they had ever used the guest room. The only people who ever stayed over were Elisa and Hector, and Hector usually slept in Samus's private living room. Elisa, on the other hand, shared the bounty hunter's bed nearly every weekend.

She smiled as she thought of the police officer. It had been a long time since she had slept beside anyone so consistently, and she was sleeping much more peacefully than she had in years. Sometimes living on Earth was difficult, but the people in her life made it worthwhile. Still, Samus had always had a restless spirit ever since she was a child, and on nights like this, she still found it impossible to sleep.

As she walked down the stairs, she took care not to make any noise and wake up her housemates. The downstairs was an open floor plan with a kitchen, living room, and dining room all in one big area. The soft ticking of the clock on the wall made the dark room feel that much more peaceful. She loved how still everything was at night and how solitary it was, and she loved how homey she and Ripley had managed to make the house look. The walls were painted a soft blue, and her set of checkered couches matched well with the solid plush rug beneath them. Text books were still open on the table from where she assumed Hector and Abby had been doing homework while they were over earlier, but she had not come out to see them. She had just been having one of those days where she could not deal with being around people, and fortunately, Ripley and Hector were very considerate of that even if they didn't understand it. Still, it made her happy to see that the house actually looked like people lived in it.

Never having kept a regular nine-to-five schedule, the bounty hunter slept very different hours than the others did, and she often savored these quiet nights alone in the living room. Only Jones, Ripley's orange cat, was awake as he watched her from atop his fuzzy castle structure in the corner. Samus had not been crazy about having a cat around given that she had Archer, but the two animals mostly seemed to ignore each other. Tonight, she ignored the cat as she walked over to the coat closet and pulled out her favorite leather jacket. Putting it on, she grabbed a piece of sunflower stationary off her refrigerator door and scrawled a note on it in her not-often-used handwriting.

I'll come home before the weekend. Feed the dog.

Leaving the note out in the middle of the counter, she weighted it down with the first thing she could find, which in this case was a coffee mug. It might not have been the best way to let people know where she was leaving, but it was one of those restless nights where she got the itch to go somewhere, even if she was not sure where. Usually she was fine just riding her motorcycle for a few hours and coming home before sunrise, but tonight was different. There was a deep longing in her that had been growing this past month, and she no longer felt like trying to repress it.

Stepping out into the cool night air, she took a deep breath and savored it. Try as they might to recreate it, there was no air quite like Earth's anywhere else in the galaxy. With a grin, she walked around to the front of the garage and put in the code to open it. Her new bike greeted her like an old friend, and she was on it and riding away within a matter of minutes. She only waited to close the garage back up and secure the force fields around the house. Even if she was gone, she was not about to let anything happen to the people within. After that, she disappeared into the shadows of the night, flying down the streets as her body hugged the machine beneath her and it took her wherever she wanted to go.

Normally, she'd ride around the interstates with no real destination in mind, but now she flew full speed ahead toward the one place on Earth that really felt like her home. Not just the home of Hector's mother, "Rhonda Sinclaire", but the home of bounty hunter Samus Aran. She parked her bike at the private shipyards and used her ID to get inside. When she got to the hangar that contained her ship, she scanned her handprint and provided a small blood sample so the heavily reinforced door would open and give her access.

There, in the private hangar, was her ship, its golden orange glow as brilliant and welcoming as she remembered. Excitement surged through her as she jumped on top of it and lowered herself down into the hatch. She may not have been back here since buying her house, but everything felt familiar and just right as though she had never left at all.

As naturally as anything, Samus headed into the cockpit and took her rightful seat in the pilot's chair, inputting the codes so the hangar doors would open up. But she barely gave them time to fully open before the orange-gold ship raced out of them and into the night sky, the moon and stars calling to her as she blasted out of the atmosphere and back into space, her real home.

She had meant what she said in her note about being home before the weekend. At least, she intended for it to be true, but knowing how one way led to another, she never really knew how true it could be. As much as she loved her family and the life she was trying to build with them, there was a part of her that always felt like being on Earth was like being trapped in a cage.

She would return eventually. That she could swear on her life. She could never abandon her son, her dog, or the life they were working so hard to build together. But Samus was not the sort of bird who could stay in a cage forever, and as the vast universe stretched before her, she knew she could go anywhere she desired. Her freedom was as necessary to her as food or oxygen, and her restlessness would never go away until it was satiated.

And so she dropped all pretense of being a human and surrendered to the vast expanse of space's welcoming call. There were still planets to explore and battles to fight if only she could find them, and find them she would.

But now, unlike before, she could plan for "after," for the time after the battles were won and her adventures drew to a close. Now, for the first time since leaving the Chozo and ending up thrust into space without a lifeline, she had a home and people to return to. And that made all the difference in the universe.