A/N: This story is happening in the same universe as my other stories (the character of Syrila T'Soni is briefly mentioned). However, it is perfectly possible to read this on its own. Thanks to Theodur for letting me use the name for Aria's and Tevos's daughter and for permanently implanting the entire concept of Shepard/Liara/Tevos/Aria friendship into my head.
Enjoy and please review if you can :-)
Thessia, 2214 CE
"Give it up, Shepard! You have lost!" Aria T'Loak hissed in anger. Exertion was palpable on her face, but her expression was as furious as ever.
"Never!" Shepard shot back. The human spectre was in equally disheveled state as she fought against her vicious opponent with all her might.
Both of them were pushing their body's limits but nobody was backing down…
Liara just rolled her eyes as she watched them.
In a hindsight, she should have seen this coming…
An informal get-together between Councilor Tevos, Aria T'Loak, Shepard and her at the T'Soni mansion. Too much alcohol and good mood. Shepard and Aria engaging in their usual bickering… it was the standard recipe, really.
Its current result was Shepard and Aria engaged in an arm wrestling match (since Shepard suggested that anything involving biotics was hardly fair). They were both sitting at opposite sides of the table, going at it hard while their respective bondmates stood by them and cheered them on.
Their rowdy behavior was further amplified by the fact the main house was a child-free zone for tonight.
Shepard's and Liara's two daughters were spending a week of their summer holidays at the house of their grandaunt and grandfather.
Ever since Syrila T'Soni, her aunt, and matriarch Aethyta, her father, got together, the familial relationships became slightly more complicated for Liara.
Syrila was now also her stepmother while Aethyta became her aunt-in-law. To make matters more complicated, the couple had two children together – twins named Amalia and Atala. They were Liara's cousins but at the same time, her half-siblings. For Liara's children, they were aunts but also cousins once-removed.
Of course, none of them were too big on using the proper titles for each other. Mainly, it just amused Liara to think about all of it.
Syrila's and Aethyta's new home was built on T'Sonis ancestral grounds, just few miles away from the main mansion. As a result, the children were growing up together. Especially since they were all roughly the same age – Liara's second daughter, Hannah, was born only two months after Syrila had her twins.
Together, the T'Soni girls were an unstoppable force that often left their parents trembling in fear at what was going to happen next.
And very often, they were augmented by a fifth gang member – Aria's and Tevos' daughter – Kalliria.
Since their families grew very close after the war, the councilor and the pirate queen bought a house in Armali, not far from T'Sonis.
Kalliria and the T'Soni girls became fast friends and would often do sleepovers. Like today.
Liara admired Syrila's and Aethyta's courage for willingly getting responsible for five asari children for an entire week.
Naturally, Liara missed her daughters, but she took comfort in the fact that they were both in a walking distance and under the care of the two persons she trusted the most beside Shepard.
Besides, it allowed her and her bondmate to spend some time with their dear and unforeseen friends.
"You are weakening, Shepard. I can see it in your eyes…" Aria mumbled as she moved for a final push against Shepard's hand.
Liara smiled as she leaned over and kissed her bondmate's tightened bicep, elucidating smile and renewed resolve from her.
"Hey, that's cheating!" Aria called. She looked over to Tevos pleadingly, but her bondmate turned her head, denying her silent request.
"Don't look at me… you are the one who wanted to arm wrestle with our best spectre"
Liara and Tevos grinned at each other, but before they could say more Liara's omni-tool rang.
She moved aside to take the call. "Yes?" Liara said.
"Mistress T'Soni…" the acolyte on duty replied. "There is a visitor at the gate demanding to speak with you immediately"
"Who is it?" Liara asked, wondering who could possibly want to see her at this hour. It would have to be someone noteworthy or her acolytes would not even bother her with it.
Liara was the most famous asari on Thessia and her guards were turning away dozens of nutcases and unwanted solicitors every day.
She could hear a commotion on the other side, but there was one sentence and voice she clearly picked up.
"…I don't have to explain myself to primitives…"
Immediately recognizing who her guest was, Liara sighed in exasperation. "Let him in… I will meet him at the main entrance" she commanded her acolyte. She excused herself from her friends as she walked to the entry hall to meet Javik.
To say that her relationship with the last prothean was difficult would be an understatement. After the war, Javik kept only minimal contact with anyone from the Normandy.
He and Liara wrote a popular book together, but other than that he did not keep in touch. He never settled down either, choosing to aimlessly travel galaxy as a vagrant.
It was not that he lacked the financial means to live differently. Between the war pension and royalties from Journeys With A Prothean, he had more than enough money to secure a comfortable existence.
The problem was that he was not interested. He was not interested in anything lately.
On some levels, Liara understood why he was like that.
All he ever knew in his life was defending his people from the reapers. But protheans were long gone… and now, so were the reapers.
When Shepard revived him from stasis during the reaper war, Javik chose to join them in order to avenge his people.
His vengeance was now done and he felt like there was nothing left for him to do.
This led him into situations that made Shepard and Liara worried for him. As a shadow broker, she got reports of him getting into pointless personal fights all over citadel space. At one point, Javik even tried to join Aria's crime ring on Omega. Apparently, Aria's activities in the terminus systems impressed him, reminding of the prothean empire of old. But soon he saw that the pirate queen was not interested in building any kind of empire and he became… vocal.
In essence, he gave everyone the same kind of crap as he did on the Normandy during the war. Only this time, it was Aria T'Loak who was his boss, not the open minded and used-to-deal-with-bullshit spectre Jane Shepard.
When he openly criticized her authority, it was only for the sake of her friendship with Shepard and Liara that Aria did not execute him on the spot. Instead, she kicked him off the station, vowing to kill him if he ever came back.
It was for this reason that Liara did not tell her friends just who it was asking to see her.
Hopefully, she'd be able to deal with whatever Javik wanted without him and Aria seeing each other. Failing that… well, the house had a large insurance.
She arrived into the entry hall just as Javik entered, escorted by one of the acolytes. She and her principal nodded at each other before she left them alone.
Liara saw that the prothean was still wearing the battle armor he was originally frozen in. A last connection to his people, he was unwilling to part with it. As a result, it was now patched up about million times, albeit still functional.
"Javik… welcome and come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?" she asked him while examining the man carefully. There was a strange anxiety plastered on his face.
Instead of answering, Javik pulled a small datapad out of his pocket.
"Liara… I want you to look at this" he urged her, pushing the datapad into her hand.
Seeing his urgency, she took the device from him and read the headline.
"A report from the team examining the prothean Archives on Thessia?" she asked him.
For decades, the asari have been delivering progress reports of their work to Javik. They hoped to finally convince him to help them with deciphering the information.
With a living prothean helping them, they could learn in day what normally took years.
However, Javik adamantly refused any such requests, insisting that he was not interested in teaching primitives how to read.
"You told me that you did not even read the reports anymore" Liara pointed out as she held the datapad.
"I lied… I read every one of them…" he admitted. "And this one… it's important. Just read"
"The Elerise…" Liara silently whispered the word as she read the report.
This was the first time she saw any reference to Elerise in the data from the Archives. However, she was not sure where Javik was going with this.
"Why come to me? I primarily studied prothean history, not asari…" she wondered.
"Regardless, you are the only one in this cycle with enough intelligence to potentially help me with this" he told her plainly.
"Thanks… I guess" Liara sneered at him as she read more.
"Why not contact the people working in the Archives, though?"
"No!" Javik snapped. "I can't. I do not want the asari government hearing about any of this" he insisted.
Unfortunately for him, councilor Tevos was just on her way to find Liara to tell her the result of the arm wrestling between their bondmates.
She walked into the entry hall just in time to accidentally overhear Javik arguing with Liara.
"The asari government not hearing about what now?"
After accidentally speaking in front of Tevos, Liara convinced Javik that his plan for secrecy was pointless. She told him that she'd help him, but would not keep secrets from her friends.
The last prothean agreed and was set up in the guest room for the night.
The next day, they all gathered in one of the lounges to hear what he had to say – Shepard, Liara, Tevos and Aria.
Surprisingly, the pirate queen did not show any emotional reaction towards his presence beyond wondering what 'that loser' wanted. She was going to leave, but stayed for the sake of her bondmate who was very much interested in Javik's theory…
"Elerise is a myth…" Tevos said once everyone gathered. "Just one of the many lies that your people told my ancestors"
While Tevos argued with Javik, Liara silently explained everything to Shepard as the human was not as well versed in asari mythology.
According to the myth, the Elerise was a place where goddess Athame gathered her favorite asari to live together in eternal happiness and harmony. It was roughly equivalent to the human believe of heaven.
"That is not entirely true, asari…" Javik told her. "Elerise was very much real"
"Except it was not afterlife but a prothean colony world. An asari uplift project was stationed there"
"What are you saying?" Liara asked in shock. "You actually took asari away from Thessia?"
She knew that the protheans meddled in the affairs of her homeworld but outright abducting the asari was new to her.
Javik nodded. "The Elerise project ran parallel with the others, but yes."
"Natural development was too slow. We wanted to see if the asari could be culturally and genetically uplifted to serve the empire"
"How many asari did you take?" Shepard quietly whispered, afraid of the answer.
Javik shrugged. "About 100 000…"
"Goddess…" Tevos gasped. Given the small size of ancient populations, the protheans must have made a substantial dent in the asari numbers of that time.
"Fuck…" Aria summed up what everyone was feeling.
However, Javik was not interested in debating the morality of prothean policy of that time.
"What's important is that Elerise project existed on a single colony" he said.
"Where?" Liara demanded.
"In Pylos Nebula… but that is irrelevant" he dismissed her question. "The strange thing is that I have no idea what happened to that colony"
Aria snorted. "Ehh… perhaps destroyed by the reapers like the rest of them? Ever figured that, fish head?"
Javik shot daggers at her. "Hard to imagine how you ever built space ships, asari…" he shot back before answering his own question.
"Oh, that is right. You stole the plans from our Archive…" he said and laughed.
It was only Tevos' hand on her shoulder that prevented Aria from charging at Javik at full speed.
Trying to bring them back to the topic, Liara urged Javik to tell them more.
"The fate of Elerise was a mystery even in my time… that is the strange part" he then said. "There was no evidence what happened to it"
"Forgive me, Javik…" Shepard interjected. "But how is this strange?" she continued. "During our war with the reapers, I cannot even count how many of our colonies went silent without any trace… they were too small and the reapers simply blasted them from the orbit"
"Rrr. You forget that prothean communication technology was not as primitive as yours. We had the beacon network, the memory shards, our touch ability…." Javik explained.
"Thanks to these, the records of our extermination were very accurate" he said sarcastically.
"How accurate?" Shepard asked.
"By the time of my freezing, there were only six major colony worlds whose fate was a mystery" Javik added. "The rest was preserved in the memory shards"
"And Elerise is one of the six…" Liara deduced.
Javik nodded. "It is the last of the six"
"During the past two decades, I confirmed that the reapers destroyed the other five… as I expected. Elerise is all that remains"
"So that's what you have been doing!" Liara exclaimed. "But why?"
Javik looked her straight in the eyes.
"I believe that more of my people may have survived into this cycle"
After everyone's shock wore off a little, he began to tell them the story of his past twenty years.
It all started after the reaper war. Seeing that the enemy was neither invincible nor infallible, he asked himself a simple question.
"What if more of my people stayed hidden like me? What if they avoided the detection by the reapers? What if they are still out there?"
The idea became a warm beacon of hope in suddenly cold galaxy.
To verify it, he began searching all the potential fallback sites considered by the protheans of his time.
Finding graveyard after graveyard was causing him a terrible depression, but he did not give up.
When he found nothing, he began investigating the former prothean planets, especially those where survivors were a possibility.
That led him to Elerise. This colony was still a mystery. When he physically got there, there was no evidence to point in either direction.
"I still don't understand how our Archives have anything to do with this…" Aria jabbed the words at him.
Javik snarled as he pushed a datapad across the table in her direction. Aria effortlessly caught it and began to read.
"Recently, the asari primitives that have been desperately trying to grasp prothean technology made a relevant discovery…" he explained.
Aria finished reading and handed the datapad to her bondmate.
"A virus?" the councilor asked as she began to read the report.
"Indeed" Javik said as he explained.
There was a virus found within the Archives' system. It was designed to eliminate any references to the project Elerise from the databanks and then erase itself…
It succeeded in the former but due to system error failed in the latter.
"They were probably trying to hide the full details of the project from the future asari" Shepard wondered out loud, but Javik turned his head.
"I see no reason why. Their opinion hardly mattered to us" he said tersely.
Tevos continued to read the datapad. "The timestamp, that's not possible"
"… 98 years after the protheans withdrew from Thessia, yes" Javik finished her sentence.
At that time, there was no more prothean empire to speak of. All major worlds were destroyed and the imperial fleet was gone.
"How is that possible?" Liara asked as she took the datapad for herself.
"Remote access…" Javik told her.
"Ninety-eight years later. The protheans that still lived have forgotten about Thessia long ago. And yet someone remotely accessed the Archives on its surface in order to upload a single virus…"
"And I ask a question… why would anyone do that?" Javik concluded his speech. "Unless…"
"Unless someone did not want Elerise found… in that cycle or any other" Shepard supplied.
Everyone was silent for a moment as they digested the information.
"It sounds like you have a plan… what do you suggest?" Liara spoke.
"I believe that some of the colonists from Elerise escaped and managed to stay hidden during the harvest. Possibly even along with their asari test subjects" Javik spoke.
"Their descendants could still alive… if so, I want to find them"
"Do you have any idea where to look?" Shepard asked.
"Yes," Javik confirmed. "The virus that was uploaded into the Archives originated from a prothean supply depot in the Michrah system in Perseus Veil. That should be a good place to start"
"Wait a minute, I heard about that place during my studies!" Liara informed them.
"They discovered prothean ruins there. The quarians were in the process of exploring them just before the geth rebelled and drove them off"
"They found only the ruins. There were no living protheans… I am sorry, Javik"
The prothean growled. "There might be some trace of what happened to them. We have to go there!" he yelled at her with desperation in his voice.
Liara sighed. "I understand your desire to see your people alive, Javik. I do. But we have all witnessed what the reapers were capable of"
"How did the VI on Ilos describe them? Brutal, relentless, and absolutely thorough" she repeated the words they heard long ago.
"It is hard to imagine they would overlook anything"
Javik frowned at her words, but Shepard understood her bondmate's skepticism.
In billion years, there was seemingly only one advanced species that managed to survive the reapers – the Leviathan.
But they had the advantage of having created the reapers. They knew exactly how their enemy thought and worked. They also had some powerful technology they never shared with their creations, allowing few of them to survive unharmed.
Many feared that the Leviathan would become the next galactic menace as soon as the reapers were defeated.
Fortunately, by joining the fight they also inevitably permitted the organic engineers to examine their mind controlling artifacts in detail. They developed effective ways of detecting and countering their influence.
With their main weapon of conquest useless, the enigmatic species broke all contact with the Citadel races and disappeared below the oceans of their world. Nobody heard from them ever again and the Council eventually imposed a permanent quarantine of their solar system…
Javik could very well be grasping for straws with his theory, but there was also the bigger issue to consider.
"I think it makes sense…" Shepard said before explaining to them her theory. It was something she has been thinking about for a while.
The galaxy was a very big place and they explored only about 1% of it. There was no doubt that the reapers explored much more, but she doubted that even they have seen it all.
Potentially, there could be entire civilizations that managed to hide from the reapers in the past harvests. There were many systems too far away from any mass relays as well as rogue planets that could serve as sanctuary.
And even if the reapers truly controlled all of Milky Way, it was only a single galaxy and not the end of the universe.
Survivors of the past cycles might have escaped into one of the dwarf galaxies that orbited our own. Or they could have travelled into Andromeda, the other great galaxy of the local group.
The odds of making such long journey through the dark space were astronomical.
But even if the success rate was one in a billion, it was certain that somebody still made it in the long eons that the reapers carried out their cycles of extinction.
"Interesting…" Aria reluctantly admitted. "But if somebody was hiding from the reapers, why didn't they show themselves already? The machines are gone!"
Shepard had to concede that this was a weak point of her theory. There truly were no advanced civilizations coming out of hiding anywhere.
It was possible they were unaware of the reaper's destruction or were unable or unwilling to reveal themselves.
Alternatively, the reapers were truly absolutely thorough and there was no one out there. But Shepard did not believe that…
After they discussed everyone's opinion, it was time for a decision.
"Even if we are lucky, I only expect to find another graveyard" Javik sorrowfully admitted at the end.
"However if there is only a small chance remaining, I have to see it through…"
"Would any of you do otherwise in my place?" he finally asked them.
Nobody, even Aria, did challenge that point.
Ultimately, the decision was up to councilor Tevos.
"What Shepard said about the largely unexplored galaxy is true… we have discussed the possibility among the Council" she told them and turned to Javik.
"However, I was already convinced by your initial argument – the protheans could still be alive. And if they are, we owe it to them to thank them for making our victory possible"
"Not to mention our own people who were kidnapped… this makes it an asari internal affair. Therefore, I am assigning a spectre to find out what happened to them" she said as she found a political loophole. Aria broadly smiled at that. She always found her bondmate's political prowess very sexy.
"Shepard, since Michrah system is deep in the geth space, I believe you would be the best choice for the job" Tevos tentatively suggested to which Shepard saluted.
The geth still held Shepard in special regard and it was usually her who would negotiate with the machines on behalf of the Council.
"Wherever you go for this, I am coming with you" Javik said resolutely before he and Shepard shook hands.
"And so am I!" Liara decided as she stood up and walked next to Shepard. "You need an expert on both prothean and asari history and that's me!"
Shepard smiled at the dancing flame of excitement in her bondmate's eyes and the two of them shared a kiss.
"I suppose that we will need a ship…" she said afterwards. "I'll make the call"