Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Thank you biggestdisappointmentinwarfare for the angsty prompt. You know me too well.
TW for suicide.
Elegy at Draxis Major
"The bones of his former comrades have long turned to dust in the wake of past eons, but memories are not quite so easy to kill as Protheans." - Javik at the fall – because rest is for the weak.
In the end, the Cosmic Imperative has proven its truth. It was apparent in his cycle, and it is apparent in this one, as well. The universe rewards strength. And the weak are rightfully shunned.
Javik stands at the edge of a verdant valley on a little planet called Draxis Major in the Cronian Nebula. The bones of his former comrades have long turned to dust in the wake of past eons, but memories are not quite so easy to kill as Protheans.
Not every empire has yet fallen.
His fingers clutch around the curved grip of the dagger in his hand. So crude. And what an ugly way to kill it had been. To slit their throats, one by one, and to feel the sticky warmth of their blood between his fingers. To know he had once called each of them 'friend'. To know that the inevitability of war meant they were already lost to him long before he ever took a righteous blade to their flesh.
Indoctrination is for the weak.
But Javik is strong. Javik is a survivor. Javik has not shared their fate.
Even now he still remembers the sound of their laughter, and the pitch of their screams, and the low, gurgling gasp that had left the last of them as he stood watching them die. Watching, to be sure.
It is the duty of the strong to weed out the weak. And he has always been exemplary in his duty.
Javik looks out across the plain where he had buried them, the sun casting long shadows of his form over the green. The war has been won, and much has been lost.
But Javik is strong.
Blinking beneath the shade of his free hand, Javik grips the dagger tightly in his other trembling fist. Because this peace – this quiet, this still, this warless existence – makes him feel a stranger in his own bones.
The millennia-old graves of his former comrades are testament to the comfort the dead can bring. He wonders how he made his way here beyond everything – how when the end was present and clear and tip-of-your-fingers touchable – he found himself seeking them out.
For forgiveness?
No. Forgiveness is for the weak.
And Javik is strong.
When the last Reaper had fallen, Shepard had glanced back at him with a beaten smirk and a blood-drenched profile and the eyes of someone who had long forgotten how to live in peace.
"Well, shit, Javik. What do we do now?"
He hadn't an answer for the commander.
Warriors, each of them. Their hands so molded to rifles they hadn't known how to even hold silence when it finally found them, when it finally descended over the battle-worn troops, the shuddering, flame-lanced bodies of dying Reapers falling like burning October foliage along the horizon.
His answer has always been vengeance. It has always been a hardened rage. It has always been more war.
But now, there is nothing left to avenge. Nothing left to incite his rage. Nothing left to war against.
In the space that such empty purpose has hollowed out inside of him, Javik finds the strange, alien yearning for rest.
And this is where Javik learns he is not strong anymore.
Because rest is for the weak, and yet he can think of nothing else – nothing else but the way his dagger had slid across his comrades' traitorous throats, the easy, infinite flick of his wrist when he had ended them, the way the dusk had settled low and cautious over his trembling form when it was finished, the way he had wailed and wailed and never once told another soul.
The way he had walked from them, dry-eyed, and hadn't ever stopped walking away since.
The sun is low now, it's shadow against his form no longer stark, but a murky, unreachable thing.
Perhaps this was always how it was to end. Perhaps this is the fate of the strong.
Perhaps now – when the skies are no longer stained in ominous red, and the air is no longer splintered with mechanized thunder, and dark space is finally – finally – as forever silent as his fallen brethren's graves – perhaps now he may learn to forgive himself this one weakness.
Javik brings the blade to his throat and stills, breath caught, eyes unblinking. A moment – barely a blink of hesitation.
Javik reminds himself there is yet some good to be found in weakness.
On a trembling, resigned exhale, he pulls tight – ready to rest.
In the end, the Cosmic Imperative has proven its truth.
Every empire that rises, shall too, fall.