Title: Requiem

Characters: Javik

Genre: Angst? I guess?

The corridor they paced down was clean and bright, in the fashion of this cycle, but it felt fearful. It did not yet hold the sharpness of panic, but the walls beat dully with the despair and anxiety of the troops stationed here. There was a bleak familiarity to it, a bitter taste of his own time.

"Thank you for coming," said the man leading him down the hall. A junior officer, young and new to this post, lacking the weariness that pervaded the other lives here. He had filled the trip with empty babble, and Javik wished that he would either cease or make himself clear.

"The commander thought you might have some insight into the situation." The guide (Smith, he thought the man was named) cast an unsubtle glance up at Javik. "It's an honor to meet you, sir."

"Get to the point, human. For what do you require my assistance?"

Smith's steps slowed and his face stilled. "It's… well, it's easier to show you. We're almost there."

He gestured to a doorway ahead of them, the only door in the hallway with guards stationed outside it. His guide stopped and spoke to one of them. A comm exchange followed, and the door slid open.

They stepped inside past another guard and rounded a corner, and Javik felt an icy shock of rage clutch him. He drew his sidearm, but Smith shouted and yanked at him and the shot went wide, burying itself in the ceiling. He found himself breathing hard, unable to take his eyes off the thing in the center of the room.

"Explain. Now."

"Our unit drops the Leviathan devices behind enemy lines," said Smith, quietly. "Usually, they all die. This one lived and surrendered to us."

There was a containment field around it, he saw now. Someone had provided a chair, and the Collector sat in it, staring blankly ahead, its hands folded incongruously in its lap. It was naked, faceless, atavistic.

His lip twisted. I will never again see another one of my people.

"Why did you not kill it?"

"It laid down its weapon and offered no resistance."

Javik rounded on him. "You are a fool."

Smith drew back. "You want us to kill an unarmed prisoner who surrendered peacefully?" He met Javik's eyes squarely for the first time. "That's not how things work in the Alliance."

"You think to be merciful?" he spat out. "The only mercy you could have offered it is a bullet in the head. It is less than an animal."

Smith continued to meet his gaze, and he felt a grudging respect for the man. "Sir, I don't believe that. It deliberately surrendered itself. It purposefully laid down its gun when it saw us. Those are not the actions of an animal. We were hoping you could tell us if you'd heard of anything similar."

A Collector surrendering itself? The thought was abhorrent. The Collectors were the Reapers' tools, and nothing more. They could not be anything more.

"No," he said after a moment. "Never. Execute it. It will betray you." He turned on his heel, ignoring Smith's protests, but before he could take a step, a sound halted him in his tracks.

It was a dry, bestial chittering, something he'd heard hundreds of times before on the battlefields of his own time. He spun, heart pounding, and found that the Collector had moved to the very edge of the containment field, its hands raised in front of it. It chittered again, and then, haltingly, it made noises like the ones the humans of this time made. Javik watched, mesmerized, a mounting tide of horror rising in his chest as it struggled to speak.

"No," it said, its voice hoarse and whispery. "No betrayal. Alone."

"That is a lie," he said harshly. "You are the Reapers' creature."

"We saw you," it said. "We recognized you." It was staring at him, its blank gaze fixed on his own.

He recoiled as if struck. "Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people."

"Once, we were more."

Once, we were more. An old, bitter grief rose in his throat, and he closed his eyes against it.

"Very well," he said quietly after a moment, and forced himself to return the Collector's stare. "Give it a weapon and allow it to fight its former masters. Be ready to kill it when the time comes." He turned and strode to the exit, leaving Smith and his questions behind.

The Collector's gaze followed him, but it did not speak again.

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.

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AN: Some context is probably required for this one for anyone who doesn't regularly play ME multiplayer. The Awakened Collector is a playable kit released in the last DLC. It's pretty lore-breaking, but the idea itself was high-octane nightmare fuel. (And therefore something I kind of wanted to write about.)