The Legend of Samus and Ilia

So when I very originally planned out this fic, it was scheduled to move at roughly twice the pace it is moving now, with a lot fewer flashbacks and ponderances, and chapters which were slightly shorter overall. After publishing two chapters under this outline, I restructured the story and slowed it down to the pace it is moving at today.

This means that the third chapter for the old timeline, which was three‐quarters of the way finished when I made this decision, was never published. Within it is a slightly different take on the events which took place after Samusʼs awakening, featuring breakfast, and a little more perspective into Iliaʼs thoughts at the time.

Just for fun, I thought I would throw it up here! Much of this content was worked into chapters 02 and 03 in the current version of the fic, but some of it was changed, or otherwise never made it in. Perhaps you will find that interesting! Perhaps you just want to see what my first drafts typically look like! [They look like a long, cursive scrawl, but]

The following is completely unedited, so adjust your expectations accordingly, lol.

⟦§1⟧???

___

Samus awoke to a headache, and a good half of her face feeling like fire. She winced, letting the memory of her escape from Federation space and her crash on an uncharted planet come back to her. Sheʼd be amazed that she had survived—and, indeed, seemed to have somehow landed herself in an actually comfortable bed—if that fact had still been something capable of surprising her, which it wasnʼt, having survived much worse already many times over. Sheʼd keep surviving until she didnʼt, she figured, and then she wouldnʼt.

Samus turned her head to the side to appraise her surroundings—and then she did experience surprise, because alright what was going on here exactly?!

“Itʼs a fucking human,” Samus said, dumbfounded, to the fucking human sitting at her desk not too far away from where she was laying.

It was a fucking human, a girl, in her early twenties by the look of it, with her hair cropped short into a cute femme pixie, and a soft, slightly bookish look about her, lanky, but in the way that she used to lie awake at night imagining climbing on top of her, back when girls climbing on top of her still seemed like it might one day be a possibility, rather than just yet another way to invite state surveillance into the unsuspecting womanʼs life. Speaking of, that had to be why this girl was here—clearly she had not been as clever about evading the Galactic Federationʼs monitoring programme as she had thought.

Hearing this outburst, the woman turned and looked to her, her face instantly lighting up when she saw Samus was conscious. Then she spoke, and had Samus reassessing her assumptions yet again. The words werenʼt in any language she recognized—certainly not Galactic Federation Common.

As a matter of fact, nothing about the room she was in resembled what she would expect from the Galactic Federation—there were no cameras, for starters. These two facts challenged themselves in her head: If there were humans here, there must be the Galactic Federation; if the Galactic Federation was here, they definitely would have secured her in their facilities after her crash.

Unless: There was a human settlement that wasnʼt controlled by the Galactic Federation?

It was way too damn early in the morning for the universe to be defying itself yet again, and Samus needed her damn coffee. Actually, she needed to pee.

“I, uh, donʼt understand anything you just said,” Samus told the mysterious woman. “Is there a bathroom nearby?”

The way that the girl didnʼt laugh when Samus pantomimed using the toilet, but just smiled, found papers, and indicated directions with ehr hands, indicated to Samus that this probably wasnʼt her first time communicating with someone through a language barrier.

Samus indicated her thanks, then set off to relieve herself promptly.

___

Introductions were made as soon as the woman returned. She had indicated herself and said “Samus,” and Ilia had done the same and said “Ilia.” And that was that.

Ilia put a pot on for tea, and prepared eggs for the both of them on the stove, which Samus consumed happily and with thanks. Even if Ilia couldnʼt understand Samusʼs compliments, exactly, seeing her cooking being devoured so greedily made her heart swell. If only because silence made her so uneasy, she chatted idly the whole time, and although Samus remained mostly silent and didnʼt respond, she didnʼt seem to mind.

In truth, she had so many questions. She wanted to know who the woman was, how she had crashed her strange room in the middle of their forest, where she had come from and what the people there were like. But she sighed and tried to set her mind at ease. It would likely be many months before she had the answers to any of these questions.

Still, Ilia had a plan, and it wasnʼt long before she heard Bethʼs voice calling up to her through the window. “Hey, Ilia! You sent for me?”

“Beth!” Ilia replied, opening her door and inviting her in. “Just the person I was hoping to see.”

Rusl had stopped by not long after Samus had awoken to check on the state of things. Ilia had kept her description brief, but made clear that yes, the girl was awake and doing fine; no, she didnʼt speak their language; absolutely not, Ilia didnʼt want any woman in her care surrounded by gaping villagers muttering about “the lady who fell from the sky”—oh, and she needed Beth for something, if it wouldnʼt be too much trouble.

“So this is the lady, huh,” Beth said, giving Samus a once‐over. “Helllooo.”

Ilia elbowed her gently in the side. “Wave, silly, so she knows youʼre saying hi.”

Beth giggled and waved. Samus waved back, being more delicate about how she stuffed her face now that they were with company. Beth side‐eyed Ilia.

“Youʼre not gonna need, like, a chaperone with you out here in the woods, right?” she said. “Because this woman is seriously good‐looking.”

Ilia turned a little pink. “Stop it, Beth. I didnʼt call you out here to comment on the sexual attractiveness of my charge.”

“Okay, okay, to business then,” Beth rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated sigh. “Iʼm just saying, I wouldnʼt blame you…”

“Beth!” Ilia put on her business face, and, true to form, her friend sobered up. “I need you to get Shad.”

“That nerdy boy with the magic words who… helped you‐know‐who with the statues?” Bethʼs voice had lost all tones of levity, and her volume was barely above a whisper, as was always the case when they discussed things from the Twilight Crisis.

“So you remember him, then?” Ilia asked.

“Of course I do,” Beth said. “How could I forget.”

Samus had finished eating, and she grabbed Iliaʼs attention, offering to take care of the dishes. Ilia nodded and pointed the way.

“You really think heʼll be able to talk to whatʼs‐her‐name?” Beth asked.

“Samus,” Ilia said. “And I donʼt know, but I figure itʼs our best shot. Find Colin, Iʼm sure heʼll be able to help. And Iʼm sure I donʼt need to tell you this, but bring Luda along as well.”

“Oh, if you thought for a second Iʼd miss the opportunity to spend my eighteenth birthday alone with my girlfriend and far from parental supervision, youʼdʼve had another thing coming.” Beth winked at her, and it was back to lighthearted fun. It was something Ilia really admired about her friend, the way she gave moments of seriousness their time and place, but not a second longer.

Ilia rolled her eyes in response. “Ah yes, a tent in the middle of Hyrule field, surrounded by rocks and bugs and grass. How romantic.”

Beth scoffed. “Oh, donʼt start with me, pony girl. I know youʼre into that.” And yeah, Ilia was.

“Harvest season is coming up,” she replied. “Be sure to pack blankets.”

“Yes, mom,” Beth said. “I better go home and pack, tell my folks whatʼs up, abscond with my girlfriend. Donʼt get too wild while Iʼm gone, out here. I expect to see this house still standing when I get back.”

Ilia waved her off, smiling. “Take care,” she said.

___

It had taken some creative charades for Samus to communicate to the girl—Ilia—that she needed to go back to her ship, but altogether not as many as she expected, reïnforcing the idea that this wasnʼt her first time having someone communicate to her through gestures rather than words. As a matter of fact, as she had been talking earlier, Samus had noticed Ilia making motions with her hands that might have been signs from a more formalized language system. If it was—well, it might be an easier first step at communiciation than trying to learn and decypher all of the sounds coming out of the girlʼs mouth.

Now, she was retracing her steps from the night before, with Samus following close behind. As usual, Ilia kept up a light stream of unintelligible, one‐sided conversation as they walked. Samus was, all things considered, an introvert—she worked alone, and spent much of her time in a solo craft hurtling through space—but the girlʼs voice had a singsongy quality which made it incredibly easy to listen to, and Samus found that she didnʼt mind the constant chitchat at all. Although it had worried her a little bit when the man had shown up that morning—less so the teenager—Ilia had fed her, clothed her, given her a place to stay, and now was guiding her back through the woods, while asking for nothing in return. Samus didnʼt trust anybody, but she was inclined to believe that she was on her side.

Samus had never actually spent time on Earth, but this forest looked straight out of a picture book, but for the strange, rattling plant‐creatures that would sometimes rise out of the ground. Ilia would always just grab her firmly by the arm, and lead her safely around. Samus tried not to think about how this casual bit of contact made her heart pulse.

There was so much here, on this planet, surrounded by trees, walking with this girl, that Samus wouldnʼt have been okay with in any other context, but was somehow fine. The talking was one, the touching was another. The fact that she had been undressed and re‐clothed while she had been unconcious during the past night. The boys in the Federation Science Lab certainly seemed to enjoy getting their hands on her unconscious body—even as her mind went there, Samus found herself reaching to touch Iliaʼs hand for reassurance. She was rewarded with a light squeeze, and a smile.

Gods, what is happening to me right now?

They arrived at the crash site, and while Samus judged her ship to be “definitely not flyable”, she had to admit that it could have been a lot worse. Wasting no time, she stepped inside.

She didnʼt even have to ask Ilia to carry a suitcase—the girl offered as soon as she realized what was going on. Quickly, Samus set about packing her other one. Medication was the important thing; Samus took all but the most trivial of her medications by injection, where possible, because it was easy to interface with her suitʼs life support systems (not that that mattered now; her Power Suit was still, as best as she could tell, out of commission), so she packed the necessary equipment, and backups, and backups for her backups. Then she set about searching her ship to see if there was a single piece of technology which would still turn on.

She found one: a pocket flashlight, which she packed. That was encouraging; it meant that she might have a shot at getting at least some of this stuff up and running eventually if she could just find a power source. But, she had no luck with anything that depended on the shipʼs power to run. To her slight surprise, her Paralyzer pistol also seemed out of commission—although there was a chance it had been damaged in the fall.