Heuristics

Chapter 2


It did not escape Javik's attention that from there on out, he was brought on every single mission. Even during routine trips to the Citadel, Shepard insisted that Javik accompany her. "Just in case trouble crops up," she'd explain, although from the narrowing of all four of Javik's eyes, she was sure he didn't buy it.

She didn't explain herself, though. She allowed Javik to wonder openly at her whenever she called him to her side in pre-mission briefings. She allowed him to glance surreptitiously at her from cover during their many run-ins with Cerberus. She allowed him to linger near the elevator on the crew deck, knowing he was hoping that she'd run across him and feel the urge to engage him. All of these things she allowed, and it began to drive Javik absolutely mad.

"Commander," Garrus drawled as they sat playing some strange two-player turian card game, "I think you should talk to Javik."

Shepard calmly drew a card. "Oh?"

"Well," he went on, taking her placated tone as a bid to continue, "I'm sure you've noticed he's been staring at you during missions." A pause. His mandibles twitched in agitation. "A lot."

She scoffed and drew another card. "Garrus, you worry too much. He's just watching my six."

"Oh, he's watching it alright. He's watching it real well."

Shepard laughed at his obvious discomfort and attempted to half-heartedly make sense of her hand. She hadn't quite grasped the concept of this game yet, but she'd mastered her poker face. Plus, she was mostly certain Garrus wasn't quite adept at reading human facial expressions. "Feeling threatened?"

"Threatened?" He laughed, peering at her from over his cards. "No. Not threatened. A little uncomfortable? Maybe." He set two cards face down on the table, looking all too smug. "It's just not every day that a 50,000-year-old prothean starts paying special attention to your, ah, former mate."

Shepard hummed as she rearranged her hand. "Still have a soft spot for me, Garrus?"

Before Garrus could manage a response to her teasing, the door to the observation deck whooshed open and Javik stepped through, heavy footsteps rattling the smooth plates of his armor. He saw Shepard and Garrus sitting at the table and stopped.

"Javik," Shepard called, and Garrus grinned as a blatant told-you-so, sharp turian teeth showing from behind his mandibles. "Care to join us?"

He hesitated for a moment, glanced from Shepard to Garrus and then back, and then took a step backwards. "No, Commander." With that, he turned and left, just as abruptly as he had come.

Shepard continued to stare as the doors closed on a sigh of air. "Huh."

"Interesting that he'd come looking for you," Garrus said in all too smug a manner before laying his cards out face-up on the table. "Also, I win."


Shepard kept Liara updated on the progress of Operation: Get Javik to Talk About the Protheans, but it was slow going. Javik was resolute if he was anything, and despite how many times he deliberately "accidentally" ran across Shepard, he never mentioned her sudden interest-but-not in him. At one point, he entertained a brief conversation with James about human food, but during this conversation he kept his eyes trained purposefully on Shepard—who was sitting at the mess table and eating her dinner—and only ended up confusing James. "He's a strange one," James told her later, going over some mission reports in his usual place in the shuttle bay. "Stares at you an awful lot, too."

And so life moved on with Javik thoroughly creeping everyone out and Shepard pointedly ignoring it. By the time Shepard heard word of Cerberus stirring up trouble planetside again, two more people had already mentioned Javik's bizarre propensity for watching her. "He's openly ogling you," Joker had supplied, with a simple word of agreement from EDI, and later on, Kaidan had gently let her know that she should talk it out with him. "He's the last of his kind," Kaidan had suggested in that soft tone of his. "I can imagine he's probably feeling lonely. Maybe he's made a connection with you and is trying to reach out to you. Either way, I'd get it sorted out before it snowballs. I wouldn't want him on my bad side."

And then, of course, there was Garrus. It had seemed amusing to him at first, if a little discomfiting, but now he just seemed downright disturbed by it. She hadn't wanted to let anyone else in on she and Liara's covert operation, but with the annoyed growls and rumbles coming from Garrus's chest, she figured it was now unavoidable.

"Shepard, I feel like you're taking this thing way too lightly."

Shepard set the datapad down hard on her desk, and it clacked loudly against the steel. "Again, Garrus?"

Garrus raised his hands in defense and then paced near her fish tank. "Look, it's none of my business. I know that. But other people are starting to notice the way he looks at you."

She gave him a very stern look.

"Don't misunderstand. This isn't a jealousy thing. This is an I-don't-want-you-getting-murdered-in-your-sleep thing."

Shepard had every intention of ripping Garrus a new one—she really did, honest—but when she looked up at him, she saw him with his eyes trained on her, his mandibles fluttering lightly—saw the genuine concern in his posture—and her anger immediately deflated. Damn him and damn Liara, too. Damn her weakness for people showing signs of caring about her. "Okay," she said on a breath. "Okay. I should probably explain something to you."

By the end of the conversation, Garrus looked visibly relieved and Shepard was hoping Javik would crack very, very soon. She didn't want the entire crew of the Normandy to be in on this thing.


As hoped, Javik cracked.

But not in the way she would have liked.

She, Javik (of course), and Liara had descended upon a Cerberus operation, intent on sabotaging what they could of the research facility. The planet they were on was hot, humid, and overall a hellhole. She and Liara were miserable, but Javik seemed no worse for wear. During a break in fire, she had apparently been staring at Javik, cursing him for his resistance to this terrible weather and for piquing Liara's persistent curiosity, and he seemed to notice. At first, he looked surprised to find her looking at him, but then the expression faded and he motioned for her to join him in cover. She did, wondering if this was the moment when he would bare all to her. From behind a ruined crate to their left, it seemed Liara was wondering the same thing.

You were looking at me, Javik said in a voice that was deeper than Shepard remembered.

Liara's eyes grew wide and for a moment Shepard wondered why. Then it occurred to her, hitting her with the force of a freight ship: he was speaking to her in Prothean! The translators they all wore would not translate Prothean, so Liara was completely in the dark. In this one aspect, she and Javik were alone.

Yes, she responded brusquely and with ease, and it became obvious that Liara was having trouble focusing on anything but Shepard and Javik.

Javik huffed, though it sounded distinctly like a laugh, just as another group of Cerberus troops descended in the distance. "You speak to me now?" he said simply in a language that the translator could catch, leaning out of cover to gun down an engineer attempting to set up a turret.

"I speak to whomever I please, whenever I please," Shepard responded on a grunt that came from recoil, sniping off a Phantom that had been heading toward them at a frightening rate. I think a more pressing question is why did you speak to me in Prothean?

Beside them, Liara deployed a singularity, and Javik took care of the hopelessly floating Cerberus troops.

You and I are all that is left of the Prothean language, Javik responded, again in Prothean. He looked at her, his gaze intense again, and continued: I will speak in Prothean to whomever I please, whenever I please.

Shepard opened her mouth to speak, ready to launch a volley of heavy-handed words about insubordination and teamwork, but a rocket whistled just above their cover and sailed straight into a wall behind them, rocking the facility by its foundations. All thoughts of communicating in Prothean were dropped from Shepard's mind as Liara shouted, "Atlas!" and rushed for better cover.

Shepard cursed and scanned the area for a better vantage point, now hyper-aware of the lurching mech, where before she hadn't even noticed its presence. The idea that an Atlas had snuck up on them didn't bode well for her, and it didn't seem to make Javik feel particularly good either. A glance over her shoulder showed her that he was sneering and stiff-necked, holding his rifle against his chest in a tight grip. To her horror, he turned to look at her at the precise moment that she was sizing up his body language, perhaps sensing she was watching him or perhaps just getting lucky. Immediately, his posture relaxed and he tossed his head away from her and toward the mech and dashed out of cover to take a few potshots at it.

Presently, Shepard found an access ladder to the facility's catwalks and scrambled up it and into cover. She heard Liara shout as the mech opened fire at her and then felt the ripple of energy in the air as Javik unleashed a dark channel upon the Atlas. Again, he rushed out of cover to get in a shot or two. A bullet cracked and then shattered a portion of the mech's glass window. Shepard smirked from her post above the action. The hole in the glass was directly in front of the mech operator's head.

"Shepard," Javik yelled, "you have a clear shot!"

"Oh, I know," Shepard mumbled while putting the Cerberus grunt's head in her crosshairs. Before he could so much as register that there was a life form up in the catwalks, Shepard fired, and the inside of the mech's cockpit was suddenly splattered with reddish gore and chunks of brain matter. When she pulled the sight away and checked her handiwork, Javik's eyes were on her, and he looked positively predatory.