Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effects. There are no facts but speculations, such as trade, or inquiries of the personal sort; those are done by yours truly.
MI's Note: This story has been gathering digital dust, and I needed to get some gaming back into me. A gamer needs to play a game, no matter how boring, just to be kept alive. But there are times in which the need for something challenging surfaces, and my ME copy was gathering as much dust as this story. So the mood struck me to work on it even if it was for a little while, just to polish and polish; as I said, it has been with me for more than two years. And yes, this is how it begins, even though there's a pre-quel, this one was written first. To this pairing! May it inspire others.
Please, enjoy.
Joining of Hearts
Semblance of Minds
Even different realities have a point of harmony.
Reaching such point isn't hard, it's keeping it despite odds that is.
Prologue: ReUnion
Samara wasn't prepared for what was about to happen. For that matter, neither was her surprise. She remembered a child, barely sixteen, fighting for ideals not even her own, and overcoming the odds, a girl just turning to a woman, and growing quickly into one. During the time they got to know each other, Samara taught the human youngling about combat, more than what she already knew, about weapons, about the asari. The girl was adamant on keeping her name to herself, so despite her own code, she knew privacy was something the child required to trust her, especially after the obvious anti-alien attitude. The trust was hard earned, but it was, and Samara was glad to find someone capable to go at her speed as she chased her elusive catch. Her patience was rewarded with friendship, and a name. Hannah Shepard.
That was the woman, now-woman, who was standing at her door. Unlike their first meeting, it was a dry day, and the human was dried as well, looking almost turian. Once their eyes met, electric blue on soft blue did the corporal fall. Samara was, of course, ready to catch the almost-dead human; she smelled of recently decayed photosynthetic life, and the asari held the frail creature close. Despite time and space, origin and beliefs, they were close. At first, it was more like a mother kind of relation, afterwards . . . Samara had no idea about afterwards; it was too intangible, elusive even, and at some level, completely foreign. She took in the almost brown look of the hair, and the pale and leathery quality of her recent companion's skin and felt her heart being chipped. Never had she felt a need to protect someone, not even when the girl had been just a girl, with the innocence of her own ignorance leading her astray. Not even when there was an even more tangible threat then, in the past . . . .
It was right then that she knew — Samara knew with every fiber of her being that that threat posed an even more dangerous position in the present. She knew that they were behind her friend's recent state. The girl's illicit activities had come back to hunt the woman, the soldier, for her own standing. The justicar knew in that instant that she couldn't turn her back and leave the woman to her fate, just as she hadn't been able to leave the girl to her troubles. Her prey would have to wait, at least until her recent (and ever) stray could find her way back. It turned out that the delay had more effect than the asari could predict, and that her choice was to be the source of the discrepancy, not that either would ever call it that.