2185
Normandy SR-2
The Doctor entered Starboard Observation to find Samara sitting, cross-legged, on the ground. He walked around to where he was facing her. "Hello," he said.
"Doctor," Samara acknowledged, unfolding her legs and standing up. "Are you all settled in?"
"For the most part," the Doctor said. "I haven't met everyone yet. Shepard suggested a few names to me, but I - wanted to come here first."
"I am sure I need to meet many of the same people," Samara said. "However, I thought it might be wise to first spend some time in quiet meditation. This is a big change for me."
"Yes," the Doctor said. The silence stretched out for a long moment. "I owed you an explanation," he finally said.
"I am curious to hear it," Samara replied.
"Actually, it might be easier to just - show you," the Doctor said.
Samara looked puzzled. "You mean through connecting our minds? That is not usually how it works, Doctor."
"It worked with Liara T'Soni."
Samara gave that some thought, then nodded. "All right." She placed herself directly in front of him and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, they had gone black.
Then the world went white around them. When it snapped back into focus, they were standing in a bare room, white as far as the eye could see.
"This is … unique," Samara said. "It is almost more like melding with another asari than a human, but even then - different. Your mind is … focused. Clear is not the right word. Jumbled and confused, yes, but orderly. It should be a contradiction. But it is not. It is a chaos that I can make sense of."
"You're powerful," the Doctor said, in awe of the environment. "Focused and strong. This is … a canvas waiting to be painted."
Samara seemed to ripple as she moved, turning to face him. "What is it that you wished to show me?"
The Doctor lifted his arm as if to gesture, then thought better of it, lowering it to his side. Gallifrey came into focus, zooming forward from nothing to occupy the space around them. The Doctor's hearts constricted as he saw the splendor of it all again. "This is my planet," he said. "It's called Gallifrey." The background didn't change, but he felt something pass into the air around them, and into Samara. Information as a tangible thing that could be passed. If only he could recreate this in other circumstances…
"I see," Samara said after a long moment of absorbing the information. "You have had many faces. Lived many lives. That is … that cannot be an easy thing."
"No, it isn't," the Doctor said. Around him, the ghosts of his past flickered into existence momentarily. Susan. Sarah Jane, both when she was younger and the last time the Doctor had seen her. Peri. Ace. Rose. Donna.
Amy and Rory.
For a moment, the pair of them were so clear and real he felt as though they had somehow stowed away on the TARDIS and were nearby, Amy's ginger hair even moving a bit with a nonexistent breeze. They were holding hands and smiling at him. Samara's gaze landed on them, and then the landscape flickered out entirely, back to formless white.
"The people whose lives you have touched," Samara said.
"For better or for worse," the Doctor replied. "Most of the time … worse."
"You truly believe that," Samara said. "They chose to come with you, and then to keep going."
"Only because I gave them no choice," the Doctor said. "What kind of idiot would turn down the kind of chance I was giving them?"
"And would they not argue that their lives are richer for it?" Samara asked. "You dwell on those with bad endings, but you also have those who went on to do marvelous things, who left of their own choice and lived, Doctor."
"It's besides the point, anyways," the Doctor grumbled. "I needed - someone else to understand. Just this once. Because you can understand. Because asari lives are varied, and full, and rich, with the ability - the expectation - of going out and just seeing what's there. Because you truly are almost as old as I am, and -"
He paused as a scene came into focus around them. Their surroundings reconfigured themselves into an open chamber that the Doctor now recognized as a typical asari home. Two young asari were sitting on a couch, bearing a startling resemblance to Samara herself. Samara was speaking, but the words seemed to flow away before they could reach the Doctor's ears. In the blink of an eye, the compressed conversation came to him - the essence of what had passed, not every word. And it was just the words, too, with only a hint of the deep emotions that had been flowing through both sides.
I am leaving.
Why, Mother?
Your sister. I must find her.
We need you, Mother!
Mirala is my responsibility. Those she kills are on my conscience. I must stop her. I can do nothing else.
The scene faded away slowly as the Doctor turned to face Samara. "You showed me that," he said. "Why?"
"Those were two of my daughters," Samara said. "You know that asari can meld - reproduce - with any other species. My daughters' fathers, to use the human terminology, were also asari. Since encountering other species, a stigma against purebloods has crept into asari society. My daughters - others like them - are part of the reason." She was standing straight and steady now, gazing out across the nothingness. "They are called Ardat-Yakshi. When they meld, it is painful to their partners, even deadly. Mirala - she calls herself Morinth now - ran rather than enter a life of seclusion, as Falere and Rila did. They are the three most powerful Ardat-Yakshi currently living. I have sometimes wondered if that is because my biotic abilities are strong, even for an asari of my age."
She turned to face the Doctor. "What I showed you was a scene from four hundred years ago. That is how long I have been hunting my eldest child. Because Ardat-Yakshi only arise among pureblood partnerships, and I am also a pureblood, I took a great risk - I did not know how great - when choosing another asari as my partner." Samara's features softened slightly, a difference so small that the Doctor almost missed it. "But I love my daughters. My life is richer for having borne them. Falere and Rila are content in their monastery, with their life of seclusion, hurting no one - choosing to hurt no one. Was I irresponsible in introducing dangerous children into this world, just to fulfill a maternal need?"
"You didn't know they would be dangerous," the Doctor said.
"Exactly so," Samara replied. "Just as you did not know when you brought your companions on board. But are there any of those whose company you would have forsaken? If you could do it again…"
"I'd take them with me," the Doctor replied. "Every one of them. Well. Maybe not Rory."
"You do not mean that."
"No. If only because Amy would be very cross with me." The Doctor let some of the tension he'd been carrying drain out. "Thank you, Samara."
He paused a moment before looking back at her. "Have you seen them? Falere and Rila?"
"I - have been hunting my eldest child continually for four hundred years," Samara said.
"Four hundred years," the Doctor said, well aware of the irony of the situation, "is a long time not to see one's family."
"Yes. It is." Samara paused again, and the landscape flickered to reveal the younger asari again. They were sitting together, both of them smiling.
"One of the responsibilities of a justicar is to conduct Ardat-Yakshi who have not yet melded with anyone to the monastery," Samara said, her gaze firmly fixed on the images of her daughters. "We justicars are frequently in contact with one another. Others … have mentioned Falere and Rila. How they serve as mentors to some of the younger asari who come in. How they are frequently together, the best of friends as well as sisters."
"I would imagine such knowledge gives you comfort," the Doctor said.
"It does," Samara said, turning away from the image and letting it fade. "Tell me about them. The young couple. Amy and Rory."
"What, you didn't pick that up from me?" the Doctor asked.
Samara turned her calm, serene gaze fully towards him, and it didn't take long for him to relent. "They are my dearest friends," he said. "I met Amy when she was a young girl. Then I left for twenty minutes and came back to a grown woman. She loves Rory. Fiercely. I - was very close to destroying that love." The pair of them were standing there again, but in Amy's arms was a cloth-wrapped bundle. Their heads were bent over the bundle. "Because of me, their child was taken away from them. Brought up to be a killer. A psychopath. They saw her grow up, all right, but not in the way that parents should. And now-"
The forms blurred again, and River Song was standing there, smiling as if she was about to say Spoilers, her frizzy hair going in all directions. He wanted to walk over and bury his hands in that hair, pulling her towards him, feeling his heartbeat increase as she looked up at him-
He swallowed. Banished the feelings. "River Song. Melody Pond. We never got things in the right order, she and I. Sometimes she looks at me and sees - more than me. The me of the future. She trusts me in a way that few others have. Perhaps none. I have-" and he had to stop and swallow before continuing - "demanded blind faith, at times, from those who travel with me. River's faith is not blind. Or, well, it was, but I had faith in her in those instances. It balanced out." He stared at her image, her ghost, for a long moment, unwilling to banish it.
"You love her," Samara said quietly.
In this place, the space formed by his and Samara's minds, he could not bring himself to deny it. "I have never clearly articulated my feelings towards her," he said. "Never truly expressed the complicated tangle inside me whenever she's around. I have tried to run from her, and not gotten very far."
"I would say that you should do that before you run out of time," Samara said, "but-"
"I will," the Doctor finished. "I know I will at some point. I know we are not done." He bowed his head, and the image of River faded. "It is one reason why I am here. I know my own future, a small portion, and what I know, I cannot change. Therefore - I will not die on this quest. I will return to my own time and place. And before I do that, I can stop the Reapers."
"With Shepard," Samara said.
The Doctor grunted. "She made that quite clear. Not used to being ordered about by someone else, but I'll … make it work."
"Because she deserves your respect."
"I'm not used to having someone finish my thoughts like that," the Doctor said, feeling a bit irritable. Donna ghosted in front of him again. "Don't ask me about her."
"No, I think that we have done enough," Samara said, closing her eyes again. The vivid reality of the Normandy snapped back into place around them. He could no longer feel her mind. No. He could feel it, but there was a distance now. He hoped there was some distance on her end. He disliked being an open book.
"I would like it if you would visit me again," Samara said, folding herself onto the floor.
He lied all the time. But he couldn't lie to her. She'd know. "I will try," he said instead.
Author's Note: After a lot of indecision on how to split the next bit of the narrative, you'll be getting another character-focused chapter after this one before it kicks into high gear with the disabled Collector vessel. Enjoy!