Chapter Text
It was a truth, universally acknowledged, that in the grand scheme of things, humanity was royally screwed over by the protheans. They didn’t know it, of course, not until after the First Contact War, until after peace and diplomacy was established, and that very first question arose around romantic entanglements: how do you know your soulmate?
Soulmate, those first humans laughed at the inquiry. Soulmates were a literary trope, a fiction. Except, no, for every other race in the universe, it wasn’t.
For the asari it was instinctual. Their natural biotics acted as magnets first among their own people, and because of how strong they were, even occasionally to other species. With nearly a thousand year lifespan, they could have any number of soulmates, and theirs could appear and fade as the centuries passed. It was just a natural part of their social life, hardly even commented on.
The turians still scoffed at that behind the asari’s back. There could be only one soulmate. The metal in their carapace would only shift colors once in a lifetime by emitting faint radiation when soulmates came into contact. It was an open secret, with the mandatory military service, that the government would find your soulmate if it was within the population. They’d take scrapings of the carapace and there was a literal corps of dedicated lifers who would pass the samples around until there was a reaction.
Not that it helped turians when their soulmate was beyond their species. Those turians, and those that avoided military service, tended to turn to the salarians. Pheromones initially aided the salarian reproductive cycle, but as they evolved and expanded across space, it became too ineffectual a method. Their genetic pedigree system wasn’t just a way to find compatible mates, they’d isolated the unique ribosome base-acids that indicate a soulmate pairing. That research has been expanded, able to do the same for turians, asari, even humans.
Only the quarians could understand the difficulty humanity had with the revelation and the nebulous existential grief at not being like everyone else in existence. They once had an easy way to identify soulmates, but since they became isolated in their enviro-suits it was nearly impossible. Their vision into the ultraviolet allowed them to see Blaschko lines upon bodies, which identified their soulmate. Since their bodies were completely covered now, it was exceptionally rare for them to discover their soulmates nowadays. As a race they had to essentially give up on soulmates in order to survive.
That wasn’t even addressing the bioluminescent method of the hanar, the incomprehensible scent method of the elcor, and the less said about batarians blood biting the better. No, every species was able to identify their soulmates. Every species except humanity. From the heavily redacted reports from the first human Spectre, the protheans did something to remove it. The debate was wide-ranging, from being a science experiment to some sort of evolutionary edge to a tweak to improve focus on more important issues.
Which boiled down to the fact that the Andromeda Initiative made it a high priority in their screenings to either identify soulmates to depart together, or people who didn’t care about finding a soulmate and would, like quarians, focus on reproductive survival, not the romance of discovering the other half of their soul. Which, for some, was easy. Human biotics took after asari, and though far duller, at least had a compass giving them a general direction. On a planet, on a station, in space.
Sara was one of those lucky ones. She was a biotic, and she felt nothing. She knew she had no soulmate, because no matter where she went, there was no pull, no directional feel that there was someone for her. She was happy to sign up. Low and behold, she woke up in Andromeda and the first thing she noticed? That compass was pointing in a direction. Lexi T’Perro, the ship’s doctor, had to explain what it was.
After traveling across darkspace to a new galaxy, it turned out that angaran had soulmates too. It wasn’t like back home. Or rather, it was in that their bioelectrics helped them identify their soulmates. It was more that angaran had multiple soulmates, often at the same time. What was practically an anathema back home was common practice here. And Sara, lucky, lucky Sara, discovered her soulmate by accident, having him assigned to the Tempest almost immediately.
The kett didn’t have soulmates. They thought it was inefficient, a distraction. There wasn’t a physiological benefit to having a soulmate, just a psychological one. And their psychology was perfectly programmed to not need that emotional support. The horror of their reproduction was only multiplied by the fact that, apparently, the protheans were likely trying to modify humanity to be just as ruthless and uncrippled by that emotional need.
Except humanity did need that support, just like everyone else back in their old galaxy. Or so Scott Ryder explained to SAM for the fourth time in nine months.
“That’s why the prothean experiment was bullshit,” Scott hissed, curled up next to the SAM node, his knees raised up and his forehead resting upon it. “They didn’t tweak us enough. They weren’t as good at genetics as the kett.”
“I believe many would argue that is a good thing, Scott. A humanity removed of their emotions may have led to actions similar to the kett. The Citadel races may not have been as accommodating after the First Contact War were we like them.” Scott grunted at that. He was silent, and SAM used the opportunity to reduce the inflammation in Scott’s head. He relaxed marginally as the migraine pain dimmed.
“I always wanted one,” Scott confessed, for the second time in nine months. “I came because of Sara, and because D-dad wouldn’t take no for an answer. But I always hoped…” He turned his head away from the light of the SAM node. “Probably useless now. Not enough people around, and the ones that are,” he let out a bitter laugh, “who’d want a broken guy like me.”
“You’re not broken, Scott. You are recovering from the intense pain and forcible interaction-”
“I sleep fifteen hours a day,” Scott spit out. “When I’m awake my eyes feel like sandpaper and my head is either full of cotton or full of nails. I can’t, can’t talk to anyone without them looking at me with pity and false sympathy-”
“Their sympathy isn’t false-”
“I live in my dead-” he swallowed, “I live in my dad’s room, because my sister, the Pathfinder, told them to let me. No one bothers me, or expects me to do anything because I can’t do anything.” SAM dulled the sensation of Scott’s knuckles hitting the floor. “At least in the fucking coma I didn’t know how much time was passing, I didn’t feel like, like a useless piece of-”
“Sara would not like you talking this way.”
“Sara hasn’t bothered to visit in two months.” SAM didn’t detect, as Sara would put it, venom in Scott’s voice, but there were definitely signs of resentment. “And even when she’s here she’s not here. It’s all, ‘we need you to look at this remnant node’ and ‘the artificial wildlife needs taming’ and ‘can we do another interview on you and your perfect, alien soulmate.’”
“I could put in a request-”
“No,” Scott’s head snapped towards the node, then winced at the light and quickly turned back away. “No,” all the energy left him at the second word. “I’m just bitching, SAM. She’s…she’s doing important work.” He let out a long breath. “They’re going to shift from the temporary government to a full council soon, right?”
“The tentative transition date is in eighty-four days.”
Scott took a deep breath. “She needs to focus on that, make sure it’s smooth. I,” he wiped a hand over his face, “I’m sorry. I…I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
“Doctor T’Perro has a list of recommended psychologists you could-”
“No.” He grunted and slowly levered himself to his feet. “No I…it just gets to me, sometimes. Everyone in the family found a soulmate, against all odds. I just,” he sighed, “I feel left out. It’s stupid.”
“As Doctor T’Perro would point out, feelings are never stupid.”
Scott snorted in reply. “It’s stupid because I won’t find mine. And I signed up knowing I wouldn’t.” He grimaced. “That’s the really fucked up bit of it all. We still have soulmates, SAM. We just have no way to find them.” He stumbled towards the door. “But I guess we’re all like that now, huh,” he muttered, exiting the node and heading directly for the Pathfinder’s quarters.
SAM kept monitoring Scott’s status, automatically dimming the hall lights to minimize the impact on his migraine. He also continued regulating Sara’s physiological and biotic functions, kept Port Meridian running efficiently, and analyzed what access he had of the remnant systems. Still, he dedicated at least 2.1% of his analytical capabilities to Scott’s situation.
Since being taken prisoner by the Archon and tortured, Scott’s physically healed, but the psychological damage has remained. Doctor Carlyle and Doctor T’Perro both agree the migraine symptoms were more than likely psychosomatic. There was nothing physically wrong on any of Scott’s scans. The damage done by the torture and forced remnant integration was both repaired and healed. The worrying irregular brainwave patterns were no longer detectable, and to every test they–and in fairness, SAM–could think of, the results indicated Scott should be fine.
Except he wasn’t. The directive left by Alec Ryder didn’t put his children’s health above the Initiative’s, but it did make it a priority for SAM. Sara currently had physiological indications of extreme stress, annoyance, and anger, but SAM rarely had to regulate that anymore now that Jaal Ama Darav took care of her emotional well-being.
He had previously brought up seeking a soulmate for Scott to Sara before, and she had set her pilot, Kallo Jath, on the mission, adding his limited connections to SAM’s own capabilities. Between the salarian methods and SAM’s processing power, they had the greatest chance of success. Unfortunately, no genetic match was found among the awakened Initiative species.
With no angaran genetic library to increase the search parameters, SAM’s calculated Scott had less than 1/1000th of a chance of finding a soulmate in Andromeda. If that solution was not possible, then an alternative one had to be identified. The current trajectory for Scott Ryder’s existence was a thirty-eight percent likelihood of returning to cryostasis, and an eight-percent chance of suicide.
Neither variable was acceptable to Alec Ryder’s directives or Sara Ryder’s needs.
Redirecting additional processing power to this conundrum was unlikely to result in any new avenues of analysis or data sets to process. He needed to shift trajectory, as Sara would say. This wasn’t a problem he or the Initiative could solve no matter what they threw at it. So SAM had to determine if there was a solution beyond the Initiative.
Fortunately, as Sara would put it, he had an encryption code to help him do just that.