This world has changed, Javik thought to himself as he picked carefully through the jungle, It was not so hot in my cycle. It seemed that many things changed in fifty thousand years, and not just the climates of long-forgotten planets. The primitive races of Javik's youth had grown up and conquered the galaxy; the races once good only for eating, enslavement, or...shore leave. While his people, the Protheans, were lost to time.
Time had a curious way of humbling the mighty. The WIlliams human had shared some of her culture's writings with him - some misguided attempt at "bonding", as though she and he had anything in common - and, though it had amused him to dismiss her at the time, the words haunted him:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains.
From the Echo Shard, Javik had learned that his people once believed they would rule forever; the Undying Empire, they called it. He couldn't help but snort as he recalled his first glimpse of this new cycle: the city of Kamin Marro on the planet the primitives called Eden Prime. It had once been a jewel of the Empire, and now nothing remained but ruined spires, old ghosts, and one tired soldier. Undying, indeed.
Sometimes, in weaker moments, he had wondered how history would have played out if the Reapers had never come, or if his people had been victorious in their war. But the speculation was foolish; wishing would not bring back his people. They were gone, and nothing remained but some broken fragments of their least-mighty works, a single soldier wandering the jungle, and the barest trace for those few who knew how to look. Javik sensed such a trace now. He knew the spot immediately. This was where he had buried his crew.
This was where he had killed his friends.
He had hunted them through these woods, many centuries before. He had cornered each of them, slit their throats with his blade, and buried their corpses in this earth. And now he, the last of the Protheans, would finally join them.
He drew the pistol from its holster and held it to his head, finger on the trigger, but something stayed him. He found himself compelled to speak, to mark the moment, to calm the ghosts of his men. They deserved to know their war had been won, even if they had not lived to see its end.
"Brothers. Sisters." Javik hesitated, struggling to find the words. "I have seen the end of the Reapers. Your sacrifices - our sacrifices - were not in vain. The Protheans have been avenged."
He turned away with a frustrated growl. What was the point of this? They were not here; their spirits had been taken by Reapers millennia ago, and their bones had long since turned to dust. He should just do what he came to do, and let it be over, let old ghosts sleep. He considered the pistol in his hand. "It is time for the Protheans to fall silent." He still didn't know why he was speaking, or to whom, but he spoke all the same. "The galaxy has moved past our Empire; I have no place here. So why do I hesitate?"
Even as he spoke, he knew the reason. He knew that the Protheans had not always been as they were in his time; once they had been scientists and philosophers, as the races of this cycle believed. They had always been warriors, but they had once been so much more. The Reapers had taken that from them.
That thought was what gave Javik pause. He was the Avatar of Vengeance, the last weapon of a dead race; his purpose was to defeat the Reapers. He had seen this done, had seen the Crucible weapon fire, had seen the lifeless bodies of his foe suspended in space. The Reapers had been destroyed. But there was more than one way to defeat an enemy.
"So be it," he muttered, more to himself than to the ghosts of his men. He had seen the Reapers destroyed in war, but now he would see them destroyed them in peace. He would be a monument to the Undying Empire, and make sure the best of his people would live forever. He would bring ruin to everything the Reapers believed, and to everything they had forced his people to believe. He would fulfill his purpose, and complete the vengeance of the Protheans.
With that, he stalked back to the tiny vessel he had commandeered for this, what would have been his final mission. He punched at the control console, grumbling to himself (for neither the first nor last time) about the inefficiency of primitives, until he had opened a communication channel.
"Liara T'Soni," he greeted the asari as her image flashed on the screen. "You will write your book."
A/N: Part 2 of the series. Not sure if I completely like how it turned out, but there you go. As always, more extensive author's notes on my blog.