When the Battlestar Galactica makes their desperate jump towards Earth, lead by Kara Thrace and four of the Final Five Cylons, they don’t find the Earth they expect. They find an Earth encircled by giant black ships and a woman calling herself Commander Shepard telling them to leave before the Reapers attack them. With Earth not the safe haven they’d hoped for, a multi-species conflict raging around them, and the enemy Cylons still a threat, the Colonial Fleet and their Cylon allies struggle to make a place for themselves in this new universe.
Chapter 17 is up! In which Caprica and Baltar make decisions and Tyrol gets a rude awakening about Earth religion. (Going to try posting updates to Tumblr again. Let’s see how long that lasts.)
Are you a rare pair shipper? Do you love those pairings that canon never supplied? Or maybe you’re just good ol’ shipping trash who loves to ship almost EVERYONE in the Mass Effect universe? Then boy do we have good news for you!
The Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchangeis here! We’re a rare pair exchange that’s open for the Mass Effect Trilogy and Mass Effect Andromeda. We exchange fanfiction and fanart, and we welcome fans both new and old!
Nominations begin: January 24 Nominations end: January 31 Signup begins: February 1 Signup ends: February 14 Assignments:February 17 (at latest) Assignments due: March 27 Assignment reveal: April 3 Creator reveal: April 10
We’re baaack! Esteemed creators, Spectre Requisitions is returning for another year of rare pair goodness! Mark the dates on your calendar and get those thinking caps on for nominations!
If you’re not already in the Discord, come join us! It’s open year-round for all your rare pair needs.
Are you a rare pair shipper? Do you love those pairings that canon never supplied? Or maybe you’re just good ol’ shipping trash who loves to ship almost EVERYONE in the Mass Effect universe? Then boy do we have good news for you!
The Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchangeis here! We’re a rare pair exchange that’s open for the Mass Effect Trilogy and Mass Effect Andromeda. We exchange fanfiction and fanart, and we welcome fans both new and old!
Nominations begin: January 11 Nominations end: January 18 Signup begins: January 19 Signup ends: February 1 Assignments:February 4 (at latest) Assignments due: March 14 Assignment reveal: March 21 Creator reveal: March 28
We’re baaack! Esteemed creators, Spectre Requisitions is returning for another year of rare pair goodness! Mark the dates on your calendar and get those thinking caps on for nominations!
If you’re not already in the Discord, come join us! It’s open year-round for all your rare pair needs.
We will also be doing Comment bingo cards again this year! If you want one, let us know by pming us here!
What’s a Commenting Bingo Card?
Commenting cards are 5x5 bingo card with a free space in the middle. The free space is meant for whatever sort of rubric you want to set; “fic that was given to me” “ a fic with Tali” etc; the rest are different criteria based on the works in the collection.
Your challenge is to read and comment on as many as you can to fill up the card, make other rare pair writers happy, and have the Space Hampster smile upon you.
This year, comment cards come in two forms: safe for work andnot-safe-for-work; you may ask for a card made up of one type of prompt, the other, or both. You can see all prompts here, and can opt out of 5 prompts out of each table. (EG, if you only do a SFW or a NSFW-only card, you can opt out of 5; if you do a SFW AND NSFW combo card, you can opt out of 10).
If you get a bingo, report back, and we will make you a silly graphic and talk up your contributions after the anon period ends!
As always, some truly excellent stuff in the collection! Go check it out!!
@hanatsuki89 and I share an AU where our Colonist Shaprds are cousins and BFFs. Here’s a ficlet I wrote about our girls getting drinks at the Citadel.
Dakini Shepard watched her cousin Briar Shepard constantly rub the back of her neck. Since Eden Prime she witnessed Briar retreat increasingly inward. The cause was more than the weight of the Prothean Beacon’s visions, the duty of finding Saren, and the endless onslaught of Geth. Dakini knew her best opportunity to get her cousin to talk would be at the next time they stopped at the Citadel. She had a plan.
Devising a workable diversion was tricky, but lucky for Dakini, Garrus was eager to take instructions and she could swear she could see the Turian grin when she asked him to “Take Kaidan, Wrex, Tali, Liara and Ash on the longest and most excruciating tour of C-Sec you can manage, and we’ll rendez-vous back on the Normandy when we’re done. I’ll give you 100 credits for helping.”
_________
“Dak? What are we doing in Chora’s Den?” Briar scanned her surroundings, the dancing Asari and pulsing beats didn’t appear to impress.
Dakini sat down at a table in a remote corner of the club, situated behind a group of young human men ogling a performer’s flexibility. She ordered two beers from the waitress and leaned back in the seat.
The lack of amusement was apparent on Briar’s face when the waitress arrived with beers. “Dak, we shouldn’t be drinking on the job.” Her eyes narrowed in skepticism.
“Currently, we’re not on the job, we have about two hours before Garrus heads back to the Normandy with the crew.” Dakini took her glass and raised it, waiting for Briar to do the same.
Briar sighed and grabbed her glass, clinking it against Dakini’s before they both drank.
Javik tosses his fresh kill at the soldier’s feet.
“Meat.”
He’s brought several plump, still warm bodies of… birds, he believes. At least, they had wings, and he shot them out of the sky. That counts as bird-like, as far as he is concerned.
They have levo-amino biology, judging by the smell of their blood. Should be tolerable for the crew, except for the Turian and the Quarian.
“Whoah…” the soldier breathes out, picking one of the birds up by its long, limp neck.
“Thanks, Prothy, but uh… We have enough rations to last before the repairs are done. Really.”
Javik snarls and flexes the fingers of the hand that’s not holding a rifle — stained darkly with the birds’ blood. A pulse of biotics leaps between his dripping fingers with a warning crackle.
“Do not. Call me. Prothy.”
And with that, he turns his back on the blinking, blank-faced human, and on the jagged carcass of their crashed ship, and strides back into the jungle.
The soldier… James… is right. There is no practical need to be doing this. He has better ways to aid those remaining on the ship — but he can’t. He can’t stay there, not now. Every corner, every seam of that great fallen bulk carries memories ofher.
The combat deck has absorbed the echoes of her voice — always so cheerful, so energetic for the sake of crew morale, even as her body language spoke otherwise.
The sleek white back of the canine mech that still prowls the shuttle bay, a bit dented but mostly intact, carries the unseen imprints of her hands, soft and small and with an utterly unnecessary amount of fingers. And so eager to reach out, to clasp the hand of another, to offer a comforting touch.
The seemingly boring, forgotten back rooms and storage closets are ripe with the scent of her pheromones — reminders of all the times when they sought release in each other, and found… If his people had a word for it, it was erased, carved off the faces of their worlds by the blinding red beams of the Reapers. All he knows is that she once looked into his want-glazed eyes and said cheekily, “Well, seems like us primitives are still good for one thing, huh?”… And he replied, without thinking, “Not just one.”
Even the very cargo hold that Javik claimed for his own, has as much of her in the air as it has of the erstwhile Krogan. There are traces left from every single one of her visits, when she’d challenge his views of the galaxy and offer him her own. When she’d ask him the most unnecessary questions, like how he was feeling and if he was lonely; when, again and again, she’d promise to remain his… his friend. And that he would never have to feel his old pain again.
The last time she made that promise, sealing it with a quick kiss, was in a ruined building that looked over the gray, crumbling streets of the human city of London. Once great, he was told; insofar as human cities can be great — and yet now little more than a carcass, with the remaining skyscrapers jutting into the dark like a gnawed ribcage.
“Soon, Javik,” she said, caressing his face. “Your nightmare will finally be over.”
He humored her with a smile, allowing the fleeting indulgence of getting lost in her eyes — regrettably, she had just two of them, but so dark and so bright at the same time, that they seemed to contain a galaxy of their own.
“I have been wondering what peace will look like,” he replied.
…Is this peace? Is it walking through a pathless thicket, hunting for poultry no-one will eat? Drowning himself in the unfamiliar sounds and smells of the green, hot, stickily stuffy wilderness, just to avoid thinking about the ship he’s left behind? The ship where he won’t be able to set foot without remembering its Commander, and wondering if she broke her promise at last…
The undergrowth rustles. Clumsy feet stumble over roots, snap twigs in two. Javik stops in his tracks and, with a weary sigh, turns around.
“What do you want, Asari?”
His panting pursuer wipes the sweat off her blue face. The climate is definitely not agreeing with her. No wonder; her kind were always spoiled by their idyllic garden homeworld… Until the Reapers reached there too, and turned their scenic rivers to blood and cybernetic fluid.
“I really don’t think you should be wandering off, Javik. What if these birds you are hunting are an endangered species?”
“We are all endangered species here,” he scoffs. “Some more than others. Now leave me be, if you do not wish to become endangered any further.”
She inhales deeply.
“Very well. I tried to avoid calling a spade a spade — ”
A human expression. Perhaps also an imprint of the Commander. She has — had? he does not know; he cannot choose the word — a way of rubbing off on people.
“— But frankly, it’s rather selfish of you to go hunting of all things, when we need all hands on deck to get the Normandy back in the air.”
“This is not about hunting!”
He cuts himself short, before he can let slip anything more.
Really, what can he say to her?
That he has failed to heed the very advice he once gave her, when she stumbled across the corpse of her planet? Numb yourself to loss?
He does not even know if he lost… if the charge of energy from the Citadel, which the Normandy just barely outraced, claimed the Commander’s life. He is not certain of that, not yet, but the sheer possibility is turning him too cowardly to stand where she once stood.
Can he really tell the Asari — T'Soni — all of that?
…It turns out that he does not have to. She is a clever one. All it takes is one long, questioning look, and she staggers back a step, with that quiet “Oh” of realization.
“It’s about Shepard, isn’t it?” she asks, brows raised. In… pity? For her sake, it had better not be pity.
“Your telepathic capabilities must be making it difficult for you to remain on the Normandy right now. So much must be reminding you of her.”
She shuffles about in the spot for a moment or two, before adding apologetically,
“I saw you two in London. It was… quite surprising to say the least, but I hope you made each other happy, however briefly.”
Javik sneers, angry not as much at T'Soni but at the pang of pain that ruptures something intangible within his chest.
“The Commander and I had an occasional physical dalliance; it is completely irrelevant.”
T'Soni shakes her head.
“I noticed the way you looked at her before you parted ways. You are — ”
Her voice is completely lost in the creaking and rustling of the trees and the terrified screech of a flock of birds that darts, bullet-fast, away… Not from Javik. From something much bigger. Much darker. All too familiar.
It floats so low that its underside brushes against the tree tops, casting the jungle into shadow. Its glaring red eye is dead, and it is not making that bellowing noise, which would have made Javik’s blood churn with hatred. But it is still, unmistakably, a Reaper. And it is moving towards the Normandy.
The carpet of dry leaves and alien moss is tugged violently from under Javik’s feet.
She failed. The Commander failed. Through no fault of hers, of course; he knows, with every fiber of his being, every millimeter of his skin, which she once touched, kissed caressed, warmed with the beating of her heart… He knows that she would have done her absolute best. But at the end, she was just one woman, bloodied and worn and bruised, half-crawling into the beam of light linking Earth and the Citadel.
She told them to stay behind, not to put themselves into any more danger. He should have ignored that; he should have come with her. So what if he could barely walk himself at the time; he is the last Prothean, the Avatar of Vengeance. It was his duty to stand beside her, and he —
T'Soni tugs at his arm.
“We must get back to them! We must all stay together!”
His body complies, even as his mind is still with the Commander, his eyes still looking into hers. He and T'Soni rush through the jungle like a dual whirlwind, their biotics trailing after them in a cascade of blue and green. The Reaper moves overhead, calm and implacable; along the way, they try to fire at it, with biotic blasts and with regular ammo. If only to slow it down, to distract it. It ignores them.
The Normandy’s communication systems are still among the many, many things that the little Quarian, the crew’s pet machine, and the others are trying to cobble back into shape. But T'Soni did bring along a childishly crude “walkie talkie”.
“Joker! Garrus!” she screams into it, while iridescent beads of tears fly behind her through the air, suspended by biotics. “Anyone! There is a Reaper headed your way!”
“Yeah, we noticed!” the pilot responds at last. The crackle in his voice is not all static interference.
“So Shepard must have died, huh… Damn…”
“Now is not the time, Jeff,” the machine chimes in, and even Javik cannot deny that its… her voice sounds organically stern and concerned. And a little bit pained.
“Wait a second!”
Now it’s the Turian.
“Are you seeing this?!… Spirits! ”
When Javik and T'Soni reach the Normandy and take a shortcut inside, by floating through one of the smashed windows, the realize that the Turian — Garrus — is being rather more… literal than they expected.
The Reaper has frozen above the ship, not in any hurry to attack. And within, every shattered screen, every half-melted comm panel, every device in the hands of the gawking, stupefied crew, is broadcasting the same image. The same face that hovers before them, like a shimmering digital ghost. Looking, but not seeing: the slack-jawed shock on T'Soni’s face; the misty cloud behind Tali’s mask; the wild fanning of Garrus’ mandibles… The quiver in Javik’s hand when he reaches out on instinct, and then falls back, swaying in silent agony.
It’s… It’s the Commander. Shepard. Kore — his Kore… His one reason to have faith in this cycle; his mirror and his counterbalance. The Avatar of Hope.
Seeing her again, like this, as a projection, confirms his worst fears. The pain boils under his skin; it reaches its peak when she smiles, in a smile that is not hers. Placid and plastic, like on that primitive VI on the Citadel. This is just a recording. A copy of her, beamed into the Normandy by the Reaper.
“Hello friends,” she says. “Please do not be alarmed. You may have started seeing the Reapers all over the galaxy turn around, stop fighting, and act in ways you would not expect them to act. This is because they have been reprogrammed. They will repair the damage they caused, secure and reassemble the Mass Relays to resume galactic travel as soon as possible, return the people they took that have not yet been processed, and then leave the Milky Way forever. That is their new mission, and I, Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy, am personally seeing it done. Or rather, I used to be Commander Shepard. At this point, I have probably stopped being human and given the last bit of myself to create a new AI that will compel the Reapers to stop the war with minimal new casualties. The one thing I want you — all of you, on every planet in every system — to know, is that before I died, I made it to the Citadel. I finished the mission I was given. You are at peace now. Please rebuild, and be happy. Good luck.”
In the silence that falls, Javik breaks.
And in the shards of his own self, he sees the truth with crystal clarity. This is a hallucination. A trick of the Reapers, who are using the image of Shepard — their hero, whom so many trust and follow with unwavering loyalty — to placate them.
But in reality, she is gone. She never made it. And the worst has come to pass. They have all been indoctrinated.
“So the cycle has ended again; the Reapers have won,” he says, every word dripping through his teeth like he’s coughing blood. “But I will not go down as their plaything!”
He still has the rifle with him. He raises it, turns it in his hands…
“JAVIK, NO!” T'Soni cries.
There is a burst of blue.
Then, nothing but black.
“Is he awake?”
“I think so. Fortunately, he did not lose a lot of blood. If he had, I am not sure how we could have made a transfusion.”
“Oh thank the goddess. And thank you, Doctor… Can I see him?”
“Yes, but try not to over-agitate him. He injured several members of the staff with unconscious releases of biotics while he was being sedated.”
“Yes. Of course.”
The inky pall before Javik’s eyes recedes. At first, his world is a pale, bleary slit. Then, as he tears his primary eyes wider, that narrow window expands, and sounds come flooding in as well. The steady beeping of medical equipment. The rumble of voices behind closed doors. And the annoyingly loud breathing of the Asari by his bedside.
“Javik! I am so sorry!” she exclaims when their gazes lock. “I tried to get the rifle out of your reach with my biotics, and we struggled, and… I accidentally wounded you. But we managed to bring you to Huerta Memorial, and you are going to make a full recovery!”
“You… You kept me alive…” Javik hisses, gripping at the white, heavy slab on top of him, which keeps him shackled down. Trapped in his bed.
“How dare you?!”
“Javik, please listen!”
He is not yet strong enough, and she takes advantage of that to speak over him.
“I understand that what you heard on the Normandy shocked and terrified you — we all had the same reaction. But it was all true. We are not indoctrinated. The fighting has stopped; the abductions have stopped; the Reapers are repairing the cities, the relays, everything, at incredible speed! The Reaper on that planet — it was there to help us fix the Normandy! And then it guided us to the Citadel. Shepard truly did achieve the impossible!”
“And here I was assuming you were intelligent,” Javik may have lost the struggle against his slab-like blanket, but he is still glowering. “But no, your primitive mind is jumping from fear to admiration!”
The Asari frowns.
“Yes, I suppose I did get too overenthusiastic. A lot of people still have trauma associated with the Reapers, you included — myself included! Who am I fooling; I get nightmares of Thessia almost every night… I disrespected that. The Reapers will never be a truly benevolent force, of course. But I trust Shepard; she said she programmed them to leave when they are done, and I am confident that this is exactly what will happen.”
Something begins to seethe within Javik, burning its way up his chest like acid. Anger, and disbelief, and something else. Something much like the pain from his memory shard.
“Why didn’t she destroy them? Why did she bargain her life away like this? Could she not have used the Crucible to kill them all?”
“I…”
As T'Soni fumbles for an answer, they are joined by a pitter-patter of insect feet. One of the Citadel Keepers, silent as ever, skitters into the ward, makes a straight line for Javik’s bed, places a small object down on the covers, and leaves, off on its routine tasks.
Javik strains to sit up and see what the creature has brought, but T'Soni picks up the object first.
And there comes another “Oh”.
“Maybe… Maybe you’ll find your answers here, ” she tells him, in an odd, small voice, handing the object to him.
Javik freezes up, fingertips a fraction of an inch away from it. This little black rectangle, no bigger than his palm, is… A primitive approximation of a memory shard. Clearly made by inexperienced, uncertain hands, and a mind with only a partial understanding of his people. Like a child’s scribble compared to a museum masterwork. Yet, in essence, the same thing.
“Shepard got curious about this technology at one point…” T'Soni whispers. Javik’s hearing is sharp enough to pick up what she is saying, although her voice is no louder than a soft breath.
“Glyph and I helped her replicate it. I guess she wanted to use the Cypher to leave you a message… If she…”
Javik has no more patience for her whimpering. He yanks the self-made shard out of her grasp.
In a nauseating spin, is transported to a vast chamber overlooking the arms of the Citadel, dark as nocturnal fields and peppered with firefly lights.
…That mental image is not his; it must have gotten entwined with this memory. Inadvertently, he smiles to himself. She did so love her planet, and she felt guilty that she got to see it bloom and thrive, when he never experienced that on his homeworld. She shouldn’t have, but she did. He sense that guilt as well, enveloping him at night, when she held him and murmured to him that he was safe, so long as he was with her.
His nausea mounts, and his physical form almost lets go of the shard. He sees her, standing in front of him; not a soulless projection, but a bright, poignant memory. Unsteady on her feet, in battered, lumpy battle gear, still smelling of blood and smoke. Just as he last recalls seeing her.
Beside her, glows an odd hologram, small as a child. Looking up at her. Waiting.
“Javik,” she half-speaks, half-chokes, clutching her stomach. “There isn’t much time… But I want to have my last goodbye… And say I am sorry. If my plan worked, you must be feeling outraged, betrayed, that I did not use Crucible as we had first planned. But…”
She swallows shakily, tears washing narrow stripes across her sooty cheeks.
“Even after all these cycles, the Crucible is still not perfect. If I’d just fired it, there would have been too much destruction. It would have burned through Earth and taken out all synthetic beings, not just the Reapers… And it would have shattered the mass relays. I cannot do that. You — you told me that in your cycle, the races of the Milky Way never came together like we did, and that was what made us strong. I cannot isolate the world that I worked so hard to unite. I cannot undo so much shared progress, on top of what the Reapers already took. And I — ”
She wipes the tears off her face, turning it into a wet charcoal mess.
“I know what you think of the Geth. And you know that I have always stood firm by my own beliefs. Something that you have always encouraged. Admired even. I believe that the Geth are alive. They are individuals, and their lives are precious. The Crucible would have taken these lives, and maybe targeted the Quarians alongside them as well. Who knows what it counts as a synthetic being. I cannot risk it. I have enough blood on my hands already. There will not be another Aratoht. The only life that needs to be exchanged for peace in the galaxy… is mine.”
She straightens up, balls her fists and jerks her head slightly to the side, pointing at the odd child.
“This is the Catalyst. Not the Citadel like we thought; that is just hardware. The Catalyst is the… AI, for want of a better word, which has been driving the Reapers to harvest organic life, cycle after cycle, as part of some insane algorithm. An algorithm that I intend to rewrite.”
Two sinews protrude through the sweat-slick skin of her throat. She draws a labored breath.
“I will take the Catalyst’s place, and command the Reapers to fix this bloody mess, turn around, and leave. And then… Then their new AI… the former Commander Shepard…”
She pushes out a feeble, bitter laugh.
“Will self-destruct. There will be no more Catalyst. The cycles will end. The Reapers will turn to space debris in the void beyond the Milky Way. And everyone… everyone will have peace again. You will have peace again. And a full, beautiful life. If you just — if you just hold out a little longer. If you put your trust in me one last time, even if it’s against your better judgement. I am… I am sorry I keep putting you through this. And I am sorry we can’t walk this new, Reaper-less world together. But I have to get it right. To save as much of the Milky Way as I possibly can.”
She laughs again, blood bubbling on her lips.
“You know me. Always staying behind to ensure that everyone makes it.”
Suddenly, her eyes darken into those unfathomable galaxies. And all around her, other, older memories bleed through the image of the Catalyst chamber. Javik’s face, captured by her mind during all those moments when he thought no-one was watching him, and allowed his features to soften; his anger, to abate, just a fraction; his lips, to form a pensive half-smile.
“I… I love you, Javik,” she says. “This will probably make you laugh — so please, please laugh. It will do you some good.”
The shard goes quiet. Dead in Javik’s half-loosened grasp.
For the second time in not even an hour, he resurfaces from the dark. Deaf to T'Soni’s anguished questions, he stares at the hospital ceiling. The last parts of him that were left unbroken during the revelation on the Normandy, crumble away into a hollow nothing.
All that remains, is that word he was searching for. The word that his people forgot, buried under fear and rage and devastation.
True, he keeps seeking Shepard out. What they first thought a one-time fling in the Citadel apartment — a whirl of drunken post-party giddiness, sweet and heavy with the smell of bubble bath salts and oils — was followed by another encounter. And another. And so many more.
In the empty crew deck lounge, with the stars rushing past in a diamond dust blur behind his back, as he pinned her to the floor in front of the panoramic window.
In a makeshift campsite on yet another small rocky planet, under a splatter of purple light in the sky, while their other squad mate was off scouting, and they had to make it quick, gasping and fumbling under the wind-blown canvas, their armor still half-on.
In a narrow dead-end alley somewhere in the Wards, under bleary neon lights that carved blue and pink triangles on his cheekbones and his head crest when he threw back his head, gasping.
In the ruddy dark below the Normandy’s engineering, where Jack used to have her hidey hole, and where the proud last Prothean deigned to lower himself to his knees.
In fact, it seems that Javik has been seeking her out increasingly often. Perhaps he has started to overcome the lingering shame that his rapidly declining people tried to instill in each other over any kind of intimacy that was not a “reproductive ritual” — not an attempt to bring more little soldiers into their war-torn world.
But all the same, he does not stay.
He never stays.
Except this night… Or part of it.
She is uncomfortably stiff in bed, knees pressed against her stomach, going over the conversation they had earlier.
How he showed her the memory shard — the last echo of his dead civilization — that he’s kept in his quarters, not daring to reawaken it, not ready to burn in the hellfire of his people’s destruction all over again. How, with her encouragement, he reached for that shard at last… And how the memories tore through him.
He convulsed and clawed for air. Overtaken by the voices of the dead, by all those screams pushing out through frothing, bloodied lips — like what the Beacon showed her, Shepard imagines, only so much more personal, and therefore so much worse… Until she couldn’t bear to watch him any more, and slapped the shard out of his hand.
As it rattled off, knocked into the back corner of the cargo hold, he swayed so badly that she had to catch him. Like when they got drunk at that party… No, like that time in battle, before they became… Is lovers even the right word for who they are?… Like when he was stabbed by a Cerberus Phantom and she patched him up, while Tali ran around, talking to Steve over the comm in anxious bursts, trying to figure out how to best land the shuttle.
When he collapsed in the cargo hold, he pushed her away, eventually. Just as she knew he would. But he never told her to leave, either. Still shaky, half-blind to the present, with the vibrant turquoise completely drained from his face — so that it resembled a contorted lump of gray clay — he spoke to her.
He told her of the crew he’d once had, not unlike her own: good friends and trusted siblings in arms. She wonders now if they had any inside jokes, if they ever exchanged any playful jabs or cheeky flirtation. If there ever was a Prothean James and Prothean Steve; a Prothean Samantha, Prothean Gabi, Prothean Donnelly… A Prothean Liara, maybe, excited to learn the mysteries of the Inusannon, the tentacle-faced ancients before the Protheans, of whom nothing remains except the pale watchful statues in the rotting green murk of Ilos.
Javik never shared that with her.
All he said was that his comrades were captured alongside him and, when he failed to save them, were turned by the Reapers into soulless killing machines. Leaving him with no choice but hunt them down and kill them.
He said that he had to slit their throats, and look into their blank eyes as they lay, bleeding out, at his feet… And that was when he realized: such was the reality of the war they were fighting. The galactic imperative of his cycle. Trust no-one. Fight tooth and claw for survival. Show no weakness. Because in the end, it is just you against the oppressive dome over your head — what was once the sky, and then turned into the heaving underbelly of a legion of machines.
“It is a lesson I wish I’d never learned,” he rasped. She can still hear that quiver in his voice — the closest to sobbing she’s ever seen him.
In the quiet of her cabin, which somehow feels as sickeningly empty as a bottomless well, she asks herself if she should have pushed him to relive this.
At that moment, she reckoned: if she were the last human in the galaxy, she would have wanted to face her people one last time. To remember them, to look into their eyes, to take in the sight of her lost homeworld… But this is just it, isn’t it?
She is not the last human in the galaxy; her world is not lost yet; and she is privileged to still have so many friends in her corner. That, at the end of the day, is why she and Javik are so different. She has not lived through the things that broke him; she will never truly understand his anger and his grief. There is a precipice between them, fifty thousand years deep, and much as she tries to reach across it, to pull him to her side, he will never follow. Their only narrow, precarious, wobbly bridge, they’ve built on hasty, secretive sex — and how long will that last?
The quiet, where until now, only her thoughts have existed, is disturbed. The well fills with the distant whoosh of the elevator — and then, a voice behind her door. Choking. Desperate.
“Commander!”
“Javik?!”
She leaps out of bed, one foot tangling stupidly in her linen — colorful linen, with a juicy pomegranate print, sent over by a Volus store owner as a token of thanks for helping out refugees from her planet.
“I have studied Earth Clan’s mythology,” the accompanying email read. “Your given name, Kore, is that of a goddess associated with these red fruits. I hope the symbolism pleases you.”
In a few bounds, Kore Shepard — Kay to most of her friends, to Liara and Kaidan and Tali, but never to Javik, on the other side of that precipice — reaches the door. The holographic interface swirls from red to to green. The door slides open, and there he stands, unsteady on his feet and racked by labored breaths.
He looks like death.
“What’s wrong?!”
“I… I am still experiencing the after effects of the… memory shard,” he pants, clutching his head. “They abated when you…”
“When I held you?”
When she says it out loud, Javik’s face seems to implode with distaste, like he’s eaten a sour lemon. It would have been comical if he were not so close to fainting.
“I am glad you came to me for help! There we go! Let me just… Lay you down…”
She ducks under his arm and drags him from the room’s threshold.
His head bobs feebly next to hers, and her warm, flushed cheek touches his. The proximity of bare skin calls to the part of her that knows the Cipher. Her mind is flooded by bright light, and out of that flood, shapes and colors emerge, as vibrant and realistic as though she were a Drell. Or, in this case, a Prothean.
A shadowy figure molds from the smoke, on delicate tiptoe like a ballet dancer; sword in each hand, cybernetics thrumming.
“Commander!”
She would have had no time to dodge, too preoccupied by waiting for her biotics to recharge so she could protect Tali… But he dashes in front of her, red armour a blur; the sword finds a weak spot and sinks in, with a wet squelch.
Prothean blood is red like human; the drops swell on the blade’s edge, dark as pomegranate seeds. A sharp outcry pierces the air: Tali is rushing in to help with her battle tech. The Phantom jerks and twitches in the spiderweb of lightning, and collapses, smoke trailing out of her mouth. But it is too late. The seed droplets are a river now, a hit, sticky torrent; and the wounded Prothean in her arms is heavier than this entire fucking planet.
Then, there is the sharp chemical tang of medigel; and four amber eyes, looking up at her, wet and unfocused.
“Commander… You… stayed behind… Foolish. I am… a hindrance in my current state. Too weak.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Javik! Of course I stayed behind; I would never abandon my friends! Now, lie still! Tali and Steve are on their way!”
“Why… Why are you like this? I failed to… eliminate the threat to you… And you still prioritize… my survival…”
“Well, we are not just losing the last Prothean, are we?”
“That would… have been logical… If I did not know… your true motivation. You consider me a friend. If you continue with such… distractions…”
“Shh. Save your strength. I’ve got you.”
“I’ve got you,” she repeats in the present, trying not to think too much about all that blood. “I’ve got you.”
“This was a mistake,” he wheezes suddenly, in the middle of failing, repeatedly, to extricate himself from her embrace. “I should have dealt with this weakness on my own.”
“You are not on your own, Javik,” she objects softly. And there goes her attempt to cross the precipice again. At least they so have one thing in common: their stubbornness.
“Not any more.”
They are near her bed now. She is no stranger to helping Javik undress and laying him down before her. But this time, this night, when he has come to stay, all she does is slide under the pomegranate covers next to him and wrap her arms around him from behind.
They remain like this for a long, long time. She hopes his keen Prothean senses are calmed by the warmth of her body beside his, the freshness of her linen, the shared rhythm of their breath.
“Rest,” she murmurs, with a small chaste kiss on his shoulder. “You are safe here.”
“You are lying,” he growls. His voice is considerably firmer now. “And I resent that I almost believe you.”
Almost believes her, does he? Has she made some progress with the precipice? Very cautiously, she decides to go a little bit further.
She shifts in bed. Her fingers gently trail along his back, tracing the alien folds and ridges. The motion makes him sigh softly, relaxing into her touch. Like he did on their first night together — but he was drunk then. Now, sober, if racked by his recent pain, he is slowly coming to his senses. Still not leaving.
“Javik…” she whispers, and takes in a breath. Ready to attempt the leap.
“Now that I know of your history… Can I share some of mine?”
“Go ahead, Commander.”
He is almost speaking in his usual tone now, though without that typical Javik harshness.
“Months ago, before the Reapers arrived in force, my team and I flew into a relay that took us to the heart of a black hole. This was an expedition many of us assumed would be a one-way trip. But… we all came back. We looked death in the face, and we came back. Together. More loyal to one another than we were before.”
Javik stiffens. Too late, she realizes how she just sounded.
“A grand triumph, I am certain, ” he drawls bitterly… And plants his face into one of her pillows like a sleepy cat. “So unlike my own failure.”
“No!”
Her outcry is so frightened that he parts with the pillow and turns around to look at her. If he finds her squeaking pathetic, he is not showing it outright, at least.
“I was not gloating! I just meant to say… We are a family. All of us on the Normandy. And you are part of this family now. We may be nothing like your people…”
He rolls all four eyes at that, but she only smiles.
“But we will be there for you. And not just on the battlefield. Not just until the Reapers are defeated. Beyond that. When we are done, when there is peace again, we will be helping each other heal. And you are always welcome to be part of that.”
“Do you intend for me to lay back on a couch and lament my woes while some Salarian doctor takes notes?”
Again, that is not anywhere near as harsh as Javik could have made it.
“You just have to promise not to mention all those ways to cook a Salarian’s liver!”
He laughs. The same darkly gleeful, overly dramatic laugh as when he was pranking James. But the amber of his eyes glows softly… And when he moves closer to Shepard, it is to kiss the top of her head.
“You are the most puzzling part of this cycle, Commander.”
“I will take that,” she grins. “Everyone loves puzzles.”
“Hm. The primitive table games are too simple for a supreme strategist like myself.”
“Even chess?” she proves, already hatching a mental scheme for a game night. Samantha will have a few ideas for sure…
But Javik has turned away again. His eyes close, the larger ones first, then the smaller secondary ones; and, exhausted by his emotional turmoil, he allows himself to drift off to sleep.
She has never seen him sleep before. Not since Eden Prime. He has always found the most irregular hours for that, so that no-one would catch him at his most vulnerable. She feels oddly honored; and whispers as much into what she thinks is the Prothean version of an ear. He mumbles something very smug, but does not open his eyes again. And in time, she dozes as well, nuzzling against his back.
She can feel his presence almost throughout the entire night. A solid form filling her fancy pomegranate bed, which did always seem too big for just the one of her. Staying with her until the very last.
And then — then he leaves. In the small hours, when her inner discipline is already stirring her up to face a new day; but before she is fully, properly awake.
She registers, with some backstage, not quite conscious part of her brain, how he gets up, puts his armor back on… And lingers over her. She thinks — she knows — she can feel his three-fingered hand, resting on the side of her face, and hear the low rumble of his voice, speaking to her when he probably assumes she is too fast asleep to hear him.
“Kore,” he says under his breath.
Not Kay; Kore. But still a start. A fragment of a sturdier bridge.
And in her half-drowsiness, half-wakefulness, behind closed eyes, she imagines him smiling.
