A/N: Just a one-shot not really planning to go anywhere with this , I had this idea and I couldn't stop thinking about this. So I wrote this. It was a lot of fun. I like Vorlons ( from Babylon 5 ) and I like ME just wanted to see if I could smash the two together.
Edit: Went back and cleaned up some mistakes. It's funny every time I reread this I keep finding new ones.
Tevos often found herself walking past humanity's embassy. There was something about them that caught her curiosity in a way she hadn't felt since she was in the earlier maiden years discovering the galaxy for the first time. She'd been through almost every possible scenario in her life, uplifts, rebellions, wars, heck even a machine uprising but this was different. There was an air of mystery about them and she figured if she hadn't become a councilor she would have defiantly liked to have been a detective, perhaps in a different life.
She walked to the humans embassy and again found the door locked and closed. They had requested their embassy to be a closed off one, there were no windows or a balcony in their room. She found it strange that even though that had given them exact instructions on the room's dimensions, they rarely used it. Entire years would go by, and the room still didn't maintain a single occupant since the turians made first contact with their species.
Now that she remembered, first contact with humanity was the most interesting one she had come to witnessed. It happened almost fifty years ago when a patrol fleet was chasing away a fleet of pirates off of the salarian colony Eden Prime. The fleet was pursuing their quarry into an unknown sector of space on the other side of the Arcturus Relay when the two fleets were never heard from again. Within in a few days and investigation fleet entered the unknown quadrant of space and they too disappeared for a few days. They were later seen again unconscious in their ships over Eden Prime. No one remembered what happened except for a single turian that kept saying " By the spirits, it's full of stars", over and over again. He was mostly confused and very disoriented, but he was able to explain they had made first contact with a race of beings known as humanity and that they had sent him back to tell the others of their interest in becoming a citadel species.
Afterwards a lone ship arrived at the citadel and it too was the strangest thing she had ever seen. Scans of the ship revealed it was made out of a material completely unknown to the rest of the galaxy and even odder yet it was completely solid, there were no insides. It was as if someone had made a spaceship out of stone, it certainly looked like it was. It looked like freshly blown glass, with its smooth swooping curves, but it was harder than diamond. C-Sec officers sometimes swore they had heard smooth harmonic music emanating from it, as if it was singing to them. She often wondered if that was true, but then again, she often wondered if anything about humanity was true.
The political talks with their species were rarely done in person and instead happened over the extranet or by the single VI hologram that was inside their embassy. Even when they did meet in person they were always concealed, and hidden within the dark robes they wore. They didn't know what they looked like. At least with the quarians you had a basic idea of their body shape. The robes worn by humanity's ambassadors obscured their figure and the inside of their hoods were darker than a shadow. One of her colleagues had once joked that if you were to place your hand in the robe you would surely fall in and would never be seen again.
She wasn't entirely sure what she was thinking, but out of sheer curiosity, she decided that she was going to have a one on one conversation with a human, something personal maybe. She really didn't understand their species and there was nothing known about them. She was curious. Just when she was about to press the signal button the door swished open. There within the darkness was a robed figure, simply standing there looking towards the door as if it knew she was coming.
"Oh, uh.." She cleared her throat.
It continued to look towards her. Its robe was a warm blue with gold accents. She was actually surprised by this, the last human she had seen had light brown robes with white accents, this was a different human. Or at least she thought it was, they could all be the same being underneath those robes.
" I don't believe he have met, I wasn't made aware that there was a new ambassador " she said
" Winter must make its way for spring " the robed being said as it tilled robed head. Just like the being, it's voice gave little to describe what it was. It spoke instead with two voices in unison, one female and the other a male voice. The voices sounded like that of a turian.
She had no idea of the meaning behind its words. Well, that was to be expected, they never spoke more than a few words and when they did it was cryptic. Although she suggested that it may have been a result of their machine translation. Researchers had said that their language was so complex it was almost impossible to fully understand their meaning. This was going to be difficult. She was begging to wonder if coming was a mistake.
" Is there a problem?," It asked inquisitively
She stepped into the room and approached the human. It was taller than her. " I was wondering if you could perhaps join me for a walk among the gardens "
" Why?, " It asked. It wasn't in a condescending or an aggressive tone. It actually sounded like it wanted to know why she had asked such a thing from it.
" There is so little that we know about your people, I was hoping that we could learn about each other." It felt odd talking to the human. She had no idea what it was thinking. Was it annoyed or angry, she couldn't tell.
It stood there looking at her for a moment until it finally spoke. " Yes "
She smiled slightly, " Yes to the garden walk, or the cultural exchange "
" Both " was its only reply.
The other ambassadors in the citadel looked on at the strange scene. Tevos never thought she was self-conscious, but here standing among the human and walking within the garden made her feel a little on edge. The others watched the human in interest, for many of them it was the first time seeing it.
She and the human only talked a little on their way to the garden and from what she could gather the new ambassador's name was Anderson. It was much different from the other, more stoic Udina that was here before. She realized that she preferred this new ambassador over the previous one. Udina was ruder, and more cold-hearted. She figured that if it was still here she would have never been even able to have entered the room at all. It would have ignored her.
She decided she'd start with small talk and then move on to something more interesting " So, how old are you?" She asked casually. She wondered if they were a long-lived species like her people, or if they were like the salarians or the turians.
It didn't reply
" Oh I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend, age in our society is associated with wisdom. I know in some societies its impolite to ask such a thing."
It turned to her " greater than a white star, but less than the beginning."
" You can't be older than a star that would make you billions of years old. That isn't possible" She really only understood the first part of its reply.
"10 to the 2,640,000" was its only reply.
" What? " She didn't know what it was getting at.
" The odds that you exist, right now"
She thought about the number 10^ 2,640,000. It was such a small number.
" and yet here you are, Impossibility is a word with an empty meaning " It turned away from her and continued walking.
She quickly followed after it. Surprised by what it had said. Could it really be that old?. That would make them older than the protheans and even older than the citadel.
" Then that must mean that you knew the protheans, what happened to them? "
It stopped in its tracks and it slowly turned towards her. " They were devoured "
She blinked " I don't understand "
It lowered its robed head. It almost looked saddened. " You will " it replied solemnly
She wasn't sure what it meant, but asking it that question seemed to have caused it some distress. She decided that she wasn't going to press the subject any further. She continued talking to it and it continued to give her vague answers. An hour later is stated it had business to attend to and it left to return to its embassy.
Over the next few days she found herself dwelling over what they had talked about. She was thinking it about over her council meeting sessions and during her break hours until finally she couldn't put up with it any longer. She deiced that she wanted to know everything that she could about humanity, but when she made her way back to humans embassy, Anderson was not there. She returned to her own chamber on the citadel and asked every contact she had to scrounge up as much information on the humans they could find, no matter how obscure. The next day she was sent a file of over a thousand different sighting of the robed figures across history.
There was one of them during politics talks they had after first contact with humanity, that was to be expected. She kept searching. She then found a photo of when the quarians had asked for the citadel's help with the geth uprising. In the background there was a blue robed figure standing in the back of the crowd. Her eyes widened. The looked at the next photo, it was the meeting with the krogan warlord before the rebellions and there it was again a blue robed figure hidden within the shadows. She looked at another, the rachni wars, and there it was. Then there was the day the Asari started the citadel council, and there the figure was again. She sat back in her chair. Maybe what Anderson had said was true. She continued looking. She found minor mentioning of them within prothean caches. There were even some paintings of them from unknown tribal species that were long since extinct.
She let all the information seep in until she realized something profound. They only appeared during important historical events, and nothing else. They were watching history as it happened. She remembered what Anderson had said to one of her questions. " Time is a tree, not a line, we can see branches within the tree but cannot climb to them."
She wondered why they made themselves known now, and she became frightened by what she thought next. What big historical event could they be waiting for?