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On the Normandy, when she'd felt like this— restless, rotten— Shepard walked the observation decks and stargazed, with the hum of the ship beneath her boots. But here the room was windowless, and silent; the door was shut against reporters and politicians and Alliance dogsbodies, and Shepard was grounded again, dying alone in the dark.
Maybe not yet. Felt like it most days. Still couldn't believe her arm was gone. Sometimes when the hours dripped past, she got her days and nights mixed up. Forgot what was dreaming and wasn't. Those other places, the hospitals with wide silver windows that opened on Prothean homeworlds or the burning face of Palaven, the doors that dead friends came through— all dreams. Though some of them were so convincing it was days before she shook them off.
One of the nurses had suggested she keep a journal. Like she was gonna type all that crap. Instead she surfed the news, trying to piece together what had happened since the Crucible blew. Took her two weeks to figure out if the Normandy was still in one piece.
Most of the stuff on Thessia was politics. Huntresses stranded past broken relays, diplomats dead or missing after the war. Not a goddamn mention of the Order.
At least she still had photos of everyone from that last party to look through. And those of Samara smiling at her from the hallway where she’d been admiring Anderson’s art collection, dancing with Tali and Jack, meditating in the Citadel dawn. Even on a malfunctioning omnitool she glowed.
There was a click from the hall. White light knifed through the doorway. Shepard looked up bleary-eyed and found Samara's shadow looming over the foot of the bed.
The world wobbled on its axis.
The omnitool clattered to her lap. Her mouth opened, shut itself, fell open again. Samara had a way of smiling without really smiling. It hung over her mouth like a holo. She sat at Shepard’s hip— and the bed creaked. She was real. Or she could be.
"Samara," Shepard whispered. She reached unthinking to take her hand, but Samara didn't flinch away. She let Shepard steal her fingers into her palm and folded her own strongly around them. "You're—”
That was all she could say before she started coughing up a lung.
"You're here," she finished. "I like the, uh, new look."
Samara smiled briefly. She smoothed her free hand over plain square robes and a wide sash. "My armor was so heavily damaged I was told it would need to be replaced. But I saw my—” the translator whirred, thought, compromised. "— sisters die on the battlefield, cut down in droves before the tide was turned. It may be I am the only justicar left to wear it."
"Hey, this is your chance for a redesign," Shepard suggested. "Don’t get me wrong, the neckline's fantastic, but..."
Samara shook her head, nearly smiling again, before she sobered. "I heard of the Crucible from your crew.”
The hospital’s night fell heavy as a hammerstroke. Shepard wished again for a little light, a little air. She wondered what time it was. Then fear seized her fully. She'd dreamed Samara before.
Samara had limped to her bedside— wounded in the war, or a garbled memory? The robes were unfamiliar. Real, Shepard told herself, and shifted beneath the sheets to feel them scratch. Real.
"There is so much I hoped to say," Samara went on. "But… Shepard, my heart is simply glad to find you well.”
“Mine too.” Legions of grizzled old huntresses called back to die in Thessia’s name. She gripped Samara’s hand. Her eyes stung.
Samara hummed. “If the Order rises again— if it should survive— I do not believe I would be suited any longer to its guidance.”
Shepard stared at her, and coughed. God, could she do anything else? But Samara didn't appear to be impatient for a reply. Just kept watching, with that ghostly smile over her lips.
She gulped air and croaked, "I know what you said before—”
"Shepard," Samara began, sounding pained.
"No, wait. Please. I know what you said before— in another life—" she paused for more air. "In another life. Samara, I— at the end, with the Crucible. I knew it would kill me. But now here I am, and it's all still... happening."
Samara's hand firmed around her fingers. "I understand."
"I'm here," Shepard said. She forced the rest past her throat. "After everything. I'm still here. In another life. What does that make me?"
"I don't know," Samara murmured, after a long moment. "But I’m not yet sure what I will make of myself, either.”
On the SR-2, hunted by the Collectors, hounded by the Illusive Man, Shepard had sat with Samara, embraced by stars and nebulae and the great black swath of space, and felt small and ignorant. Someone with all of Samara’s years, long-lived even for an asari, sifting through Shepard's scanty handful of decades and finding something in them to admire— it had been a frightening joy. Enough to skip her heart. Half wonder, half longing.
Now she looked into Samara's face and felt only hope kindling itself. “Where will you go?"
"After I visit my daughter, I... haven’t decided."
Shepard nodded. Thought of her dog tags poured in a useless heap on the bedside table, the splintered wreck of her armor, the eleventh hour in London when she wished she’d said something stupid and embarrassing to Samara over the FOB comms. "I'll come with you."
Samara's eyes shone in the dark, fathomless. She leaned close and closer. "Shepard," she breathed.
“Please.” Shepard’s voice was barely a rasp. "There’s no one else for me.”
"Yes."
"I—" She blinked. "What?"
"Yes," said Samara, and when Shepard clutched her wrist and pressed a fumbling, frantic kiss there, she laughed like music, and took her in her arms. Her heart beat hotly against Shepard’s chest. Real, real, real. “Yes. Come with me. I would have no other.”