Chapter 4

To say Lena was still riding a high when she made it back to her apartment would have been like comparing a firework to a supernova. She was veritably giddy with the excitement, and had spent the vast majority of her walk home staring at the digits and letters that made up Kara's omni-tool contact. It was like something out of a dream. One of those vids that featured human explorers venturing out into the galaxy and meeting gorgeous, exotic, aliens. It had always been laughable to her, to watch those kinds of vids after being born into a universe where humanity had known of, and interacted with, the alien life in the galaxy. Still though, her father had loved those old vids, and watching them with him was one of the few warm memories she could recall from her childhood.

"It was different then, Lena." He would tell her. "We didn't know back then."

Practically bouncing as she made her way back into her apartment, Lena couldn't help but to wonder what her father would have made of her situation. He probably would have found it hilarious, how hopeless she already was around Kara.

Her apartment itself was rather pitiful. The Alliance was hardly going to pay out for the more expensive accommodation that Argo City had to offer, but the room they had provided her with was little better than the various barracks she had lived in for the months of her training. There were four rooms that made up the whole space. A split longue/kitchen, two bedrooms little bigger than a matchbox each, and a bathroom that could be squeezed into a suitcase if one sat on the lid for long enough. Thankfully, the miserable state of her lodgings never bothered her. After spending a few months living out of a shoebox on a warship, having her own space was a luxury of magnitudes.

"Guess it's finally time to prepare for the horseman arriving." A dry voice suddenly pulled Lena from her reverie.

Her attention flickered across the room, eyes landing on her flatmate, who was sat at the kitchen island and grinning like an idiot.

"Because if you're smiling like that the world must be coming to an end, right?"

Lena really had been hoping she was going to have been in bed by the time she made it back to their apartment. Samantha Arias, for all her character defects, was usually an early sleeper, which Lena had valued tremendously over the time they had shared an apartment. Just like with working late at the labs, Lena worked better in her own home when there were no other distractions to occupy her attention. Sam had always respected that, and when the two of them were in the apartment at the same time while Lena was working, she always did her upmost to keep quiet so that she could focus, and Lena did the same for Sam in turn.

Outside of the mutual respect when it came to work, Sam had become a surprisingly good friend. It wasn't overly surprising to her to learn that the Alliance had made sure that her roommate at Argo was another human, there was still enough animosity between humanity and the races of the galaxy that they wouldn't chance it. However, Lena was surprised by how much she enjoyed Sam's company. The other woman had, like Lena, chosen to attend Argo to experience the opportunities the galaxy had to offer, and they had bonded while bitching about the miserable state of the Alliance's diplomatic strategy. At first, Sam had been shocked to hear that level of condemnation coming from a woman in Alliance Navy fatigues, but over time Lena had explained her reasons for enlisting and Sam had understood.

Sam, Lena had learnt, was a finance student, taking courses at Argo that were primarily centred around volus trading and investing techniques. It was a level of corporate hell that Lena had no intention of getting anywhere near, but it was clear from what Sam talked about how brilliant she must have been to keep up with it. Even without any real knowledge of the ins and outs, Lena knew full well the reputation the volus had as the economic wizards of the galaxy.

"Fuck yourself, Arias," Lena sniped at her, unable to bite back her grin as she draped herself over one of the two tiny couches they had in the lounge. "I'm perfectly capable of smiling."

Sam shook her head. "That's not smiling. That's 'I just met a total babe and now I'm in love,' smiling."

Lena grimaced at how on the mark Sam was.

"Oh shit! I'm right, aren't I?" Sam leapt bodily up from the stool she was perched on, study notes forgotten and dropped into the other couch. "What happened to Miss 'I'm here to focus on my education, Sam, not to screw every person who comes my way.'"

"Okay I never said that." Lena pouted.

She had, in fact, said something very similar at a bar one night when Sam questioned why she turned down every single person who attempt to hit on her. At first, Sam had thought it was some sort of prejudice thing, that she didn't want to sleep with aliens, but with Lena's explanation of her history Sam understood. She still insisted that Lena needed to get laid, but she stopped pushing her to find actual dates.

"You absolutely did," Sam grinned treacherously, and leant forward. "Don't make me beat it out of you Lena, you know I will."

Lena fixed her with a glare. "I could always just shoot you, you know? I have a gun."

Her mind turned to the M-5 Phalanx that sat in a lockbox under her bed. She hadn't taken the gun out in weeks to maintain it or to hit a range and practice. The Alliance standard issue heavy pistol was notorious for its reliability, but she really did need to check up on it from time to time, just to be safe.

"Bitch, you wouldn't even land a shot." Sam fired back.

On top of her other talents, Sam was a rather impressive biotic. While biotic abilities weren't totally uncommon in humans after several generations of messing around with Element Zero, Sam's were pure in a way that was typically only seen in races like the asari, whose planets were naturally rich in the element. According to Sam, she had been scouted by the Alliance when she was still young, and was shipped off for basic biotic training to control her abilities, but she had never so much as entertained the idea of enlisting, it wasn't the life for her. Still, she was an absolute fiend in a brawl, Lena had seen it first-hand.

"Now, are you going to tell me who she is or am I going to have to start making some real threats?" Sam pushed again.

For a brief moment, Lena considered how much effort it would take to keep shutting Sam down. The woman was relentless, and if Lena didn't give her an answer that was acceptable, Sam would probably stoop to bullying her (see: asking once, politely) into going to a bar where they would both have far too much to drink until Lena spilled everything anyway. She would save herself a lot of time, and a brutal hangover, but that would require admitting defeat.

For Kara though? That was worth it.

"I may or may not have gotten a cute girl's number." Lena admitted. The look on Sam's face told her that wasn't going to be anywhere near enough, so she continued. "I met her at the labs tonight, she's a member of the science guild."

The joy she drew from needling Lena into defeat melted from Sam's face instantly as Lena said it. She had expected it. Hell, the thoughts that Sam was undoubtedly having in that moment had crossed Lena's mind more than a few times since she had first laid eyes on Kara. Kryptonian tradition was a stubborn thing, it made it difficult for them to look at and take new opportunities that ran against the things they had been doing for centuries. Humans were better on that front, they had a baseline flexibility that Lena knew made them more willing to run and grab at the next thing that caught their attention. When it came to relationships, those things were doubly true.

"A kryptonian, Lena? Really?" Sam asked, the look on her face somewhere between concern and disbelief.

"Sam, I know what you're going to say—" Lena tried but Sam held up a hand to stop her.

"Just, let me say it anyway because lord knows you won't say it to yourself," Sam gave her a wan smile. "Ever since the diaspora humans have been hooking up with aliens. For some reason, we seem to be hardwired to want to screw damn near every new species we come across. That's all well and good. I mean, shit look at Thessia, something like nearly twenty percent of all asari bondings in the last few years have been with humans. But kryptonians…well it's pretty much an open secret that out of all the races in the galaxy, we're their least favourite. When's the last time you heard about a kryptonian undergoing the joining with a human?"

She was right, of course, Lena wasn't going to argue the point with her just for the sake of trying to satisfy her own ego. While most of the other races in the galaxy had welcomed humanity into their new-normal, kryptonians had been especially reluctant. It wasn't uncommon, humanity had learnt rather quickly after the diaspora, for members of different species to be in relationships with one another, even if they were only short term ones. For the asari, who could reproduce with any species in the galaxy, such relationships tended to be more common, and long term. For most other races, companionship would be enjoyed, even if it was fleeting. Even the turians, who had shown the most animosity to humanity at the beginning, had been noted as taking human partners from time to time.

Kryptonians, as they often were, tended to be the outlier. Even before humanity's introduction to galactic society, kryptonians had mostly only kept to themselves for relationships. To the best of Lena's knowledge, something like less than five percent of all kryptonian relationships occurred with members of another species, and of those virtually none were with humans. It was a strange cultural quirk that hadn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the galaxy, one that seemed especially odd.

Much like the asari, kryptonians didn't actually have to rely on traditional methods of conception. While plenty still chose to do so naturally, krypton had been using a technology called 'The Birthing Matrix' for generations in order for couples to have children. It had allowed same sex parings, couples who were unable to conceive naturally, or just those who didn't want to go through the ordeal of childbirth, to have children. By all accounts, the Matrix accounted for the vast majority of children born on Krypton over the previous several hundred years. It had been theorised by many that the Matrix could be used to scramble certain genetic materials, and allow inter-species couples to have children through an artificial parthenogenesis. Of course, it wouldn't be a true hybrid that was born, more so one of the parents would be the 'host' species, while the genetic material of the other parent would be used to account for variances in the genetic structure for the child. The genetic sample from a turian 'father' being used alongside a quarian 'mother' in order to create a quarian child with increased height, muscle density, and adrenal response, or any other possible combination.

The governments on krypton however, had expressly forbidden the use of their technology for that purpose. They had cited some pseudo-scientific justification muddled under centuries of religious dogma that to Lena, and most sentient individuals in the galaxy, smelt like so much bullshit.

Even with the strange reluctance among the civilisation to share a potentially galaxy altering innovation, there was a reluctance to form even short term relationships with other species. Cultural quirks, Lena supposed. It was just one more way in which Kara had already made herself a fascinating person.

"Look, Sam, I get it, but this…her…Kara…she's different," Lena said after a few moments of silence rang out between them. "There's something. I don't know what yet. She might be the most human kryptonian I've ever come across."

Sam leant back on the sofa, letting out a small scoff of amusement. "Jesus you've already got it bad, haven't you?" She shook her head a little, laughing to herself. "I could tell you this girl has seventeen split personalities and would have voted for Volkov in the last election, and you'd still want to take her out."

Lena gave her a shrug. "Did I mention she's cute?"

"Oh god, you're such a fucking sap," Sam huffed, getting to her feet and crossing to the kitchen space. She pulled open a cupboard, produced a bottle and two glasses, and returned to the sofa. The glasses were both filled with a clear liquid, far too much than was really necessary, and one pushed across the coffee table towards Lena. "I'm going to need vodka if I've got to do this, and as your one and only best friend it's my responsibility to do this," Sam paused to take a swig from her glass, pouring half of the liquid down her throat in a single, smooth motion. She let out a hiss at the burn of the alcohol going down, then looked back up to Lena. "Alright, come on, tell me about her."

Lena sniffed suspiciously at her own glass. It was vodka, as Sam had claimed. Sam, however, knew full well that Lena had absolutely no tolerance for the stuff. The chosen liquor of the Alliance Navy was scotch, and between boot camp and her few months of service on warships and Jump Zero, Lena had gotten used to it. Vodka had a habit of messing her up, something Sam always, without failure, exploited to her own advantage.

Well, you've already told her Kara exists, may as well commit.

Lena took a long pull from the glass, grimaced at the taste, and swallowed.

Sam had asked her to tell her about Kara, and so she did, until the bottle was empty.

CODEX ENTRIES

Volus: A squat, stout race from the planet Irune, the volus posses an ammonia-based biochemistry, forcing them to wear pressure suits and breathers when off their homeworld. While physically weak, the volus' mercantile prowess made them instrumental in developing a stable galactic economy.

Biotic: Biotics are the ability of some lifeforms to create mass effect fields using element zero nodules embedded in body tissues. Biotic individuals can knock enemies over from a distance, lift them into the air, generate gravitational vortices, or create protective barriers, among other abilities.

Element Zero: A rare material that, when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which can be manipulated into a mass effect field, raising or lowering the mass of all objects within that field.

Thessia: The asari homeworld, often referred to as "beating heart of galactic love". Naturally rich in element zero, resulting in a population of pure biotics.