The meeting was not going how Javik expected.

They had landed on Earth, in a city called Belém. It was a large metropolis that was hit hard by the Reapers during the war. Buildings were destroyed and there was strife over trade agreements with the other nations on Earth, but it was the closest city to their navpoint that had also rebuilt enough to accept ships again. From there, they took a small shuttle to a ghostly village, no more than a blot on the map, before renting a land rover to take them the rest of the way.

Under Dr. T'soni's control, she maneuvered the vehicle down muddy roads and over fallen trees. Branches scraped against the rover and the tires spun in the muck. Several times they had to step out and make use of their biotics to remove debris from their path, but the trip was largely unremarkable.

When they arrived at the navpoint, they discovered a large building located in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest, still abandoned from the war by its previous occupants. Inside, a VI chimed merrily at their arrival- 'Welcome to Aquigenx Industries!'- and terminals flickered atop dusty desks, still powered by a stubborn generator that rumbled from somewhere deep below them. The structure had been designed with rainy seasons in mind, making it well sealed from the elements outside even as vines had begun to creep up the sides.

"I need you to stay hidden," Dr. T'soni said to him when they reached an office she found suitable for the meeting.

Javik narrowed all four eyes. "That is not what we agreed upon."

Standing her ground, the asari folded her arms and returned his glare. "I'm under an alias and you're too recognizable. Just stay within earshot of the conversation."

Javik was about to argue more when they heard the VI from downstairs chime the same greeting it had spouted at them. Their guest had arrived.

Azure eyes widened at the sound. "Quickly!" she urged, gloved hands reaching for his shoulders to physically spin him around and shove him toward her intended hiding place. "Get in the closet."

The location of the meeting itself was not what caught Javik off-guard. Nor was it the fact that he was expected to hide. Inside a moldy closet, no less- he had to force himself to ignore the feeling of something slithering across his foot. No, what surprised him was that he allowed it.

Javik pressed his fingers to the floor, careful of whatever had slid across his boot just moments ago. Concentrating, he felt around for sensations other than Liara's outside. He didn't have to wait for a trace of energy to tingle against his fingers, indicating the new arrival.

Javik pressed his hand against the durasteel door and felt, more than heard, a nasal and undoubtedly salarian voice.

"Aezina D'rava, I presume?" The newcomer said when he entered the room.

"Yes, it's good to meet you at last, Dr. Azik." Liara's signature moved across the room, presumably to physically greet her new guest.

Javik paid little attention to the details of what was being said- he knew Liara was paying enough attention to that for them both. The aspect of the conversation that interested him was how the words were said. The salarian's presence prickled uncomfortably at his skin. There was a coldness in his energy in contrast to the warm words he spoke.

Pleasantries fell from his mouth in a stream of poison.

Javik opened the door.

Dr. T'soni was mid-sentence when the door cycled open and her mouth hung slightly as she turned her gaze onto him. Without a reason to keep up the charade another second, she didn't bother to hide the resultant roll of her eyes. The salarian took one look at the approaching relic and stumbled back.

"M-ms. D'rava," he stammered, his black eyes widening like prey recognizing the snare it was in.

"He is lying, asari," Javik informed, steadily closing the distance between himself and their foe.

"Is he now?" Slowly, Liara turned a pitiless gaze onto the salarian, her mouth closing in the same motion.

"What is th-?" Words cut off the instant Javik grabbed his forearm, seizing it before it could be wrested away. Within seconds a flood of emotions and images flickered through his mind -messages from an Aezina D'rava, the building they were currently in, breath entering his lungs after a steadying pull of oxygen, preparing himself while orders entered his aural canal from the left.

"Think of the explosives as Plan B," the asari merc captain instructed, annoyed as if he was some sort of inconvenience. That fucking cloaca-sucking whore- he'd always hated her. "Just keep her talking. It's not difficult."

Javik allowed the forearm to go when its owner yanked it harshly from his grip and went toppling backward. "What the fuck was that!?" he stammered, dropping all pretenses of civility as he scrambled backward. His orb-like black eyes flickered between the prothean and the asari as he went.

"He is wearing a wire." From his periphery, he noticed the asari straighten to her full height, her face an impassive mask as the Shadow Broker sized up her feeble quarry. "A fact that he thinks you do not know."

At that, the salarian's gaze zeroed in on the asari, his eyes widening when he met her own icy stare. "I knew," she said and took a step toward her target.

"The wire records what you are saying," Javik went on. "But it serves another function, one that not even he knows." Now he had the salarian's attention. "It's on a timer, rigged to explode. We must go-"

Javik stopped as realization dawned in the salarian's terrified face- he had been tricked as well. Clearly, he was not aware that both he and his target would die once the information was exchanged and his superiors got what they wanted.

Javik should have seen the pistol leave its holster, the action born of desperation from a man hoping to escape with his life. And later he would berate himself for not seeing the warning. Within the span of two heartbeats, an energy bolt exploded in front of his face, destroyed as it impacted the biotic barrier that had erupted around him.

It wasn't his own.

The asari's hand cut through the air and the biotic field followed, slamming into the stunned salarian and sent him flying across the room. A white flash went off before his body could even touch the ground, but Javik was ready this time. His fists closed and his abilities flared. Green energy flared up and around him and his partner, joining with the blue barrier she had conjured as well.

White heat blasted against their shields, the orange fire turned a bright cyan from the inside of the dual green and blue biotic energy. It swirled harmlessly around them, licking at the dark energy that protected them even as the floor gave way beneath them.

Airborne and with the inferno around them, Javik stole a glance at the creature beside him. Liara's arms were raised, her hands splayed against the hellfire that threatened to swallow them. Shadows from the flames danced along her fringe and when she turned her face towards him, he could see that they also swirled over her freckled cheeks.

Then she smiled as if to convey an apology, vexed at the sudden turn in her plan but unworried of its ultimate outcome. And neither was he. It was in that moment Javik realized just how much he trusted her.

The rest was a flurry of activity.

Debris rained down in all directions as they descended to the bottom floor. A mixture of smoke and eezo permeated his senses, but in a way in which he was familiar. In his experience, biotics and explosions tended to go hand-in-hand. Once their feet touched the bottom floor, they fled through the smoke-filled room, black clouds parting at the surface of their barrier.

Expectantly, they found the front door barred, but their opponents clearly had no idea who they were trifling with. Without needing to verbally communicate, the pair read each other's movements like a language only they knew, practiced from their shared experience on the Normandy. Liara kept hold of her end of the barrier while Javik focused his energy for a moment, gathering from within before sending it toward the door. Glass shattered and metal bent at the impact, resisting for only a second before the blockade was blown from their path and they hurdled out into the damp jungle.

Gunfire roared in the air before energy blasts pinged off their shields. Fortunately, their vehicle wasn't far. They ran, biotically slamming their enemies out of the way until they made it to the doors. Javik killed three mercenaries that had taken cover on the passenger side with a dark channel as Liara was slamming the rover into drive before they'd even settled in their seats.

As they pelted down the same path they had taken to get there, trundling over any bodies in their way, the asari released a long breath. "Goddess." Her gloved hands had yet to loosen on the wheel. "That could have gone better."

Javik glanced at the mirrors, watching the sight they left behind. Though it was still daylight, the area had darkened with smoke and the foliage was outlined with an angry orange hue. A black plume reached for the sky, no doubt visible to the closest Alliance base. They would arrive shortly.

Glancing back at the asari, he caught sight of a twitch at the corner of her mouth and he was suddenly reminded of the images he saw on her monitor. One of which being the 'Hackett' human. "You planned this," he observed with a tilt of his head.

"I would like to think I'm not that obvious."

"You are not," he conceded, almost smiling as he said it. Liara's eyes met his own for a brief second before they went back to the muddy road ahead, her fingers finally loose on the wheel. Javik was tempted to admit that he was impressed, to tell her that he enjoyed fighting at her side, that it reminded him of his time spent with those that once fought beside him.

Their faces, however, kept him silent.

Javik was surprised to experience a sense of… relief when Dr. T'soni asked for another meeting. The discomfort of reliving the memories was painful, but it was beginning to lessen somewhat. He found her presence calming and she seemed to be learning to read him, gauging his reactions and adjusting her approach accordingly.

Their sessions were beginning to feel more and more like conversations.

One day, after the topic of how the ranking system worked in the prothean military turned into a recounting of the day he had discovered that his commander was indoctrinated and also in the process of leading his troop into an ambush, she surprised him by asking: "Have you considered talking to someone about this?"

"I am talking to you," he replied with an incline of his head.

Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. "I'm… not referring to myself. My field is not in psychology."

"Perhaps not," he acknowledged, leaning back in his chair, his shoulders loose from the ease of the conversation. "But it is appreciated, all the same."

And it was. For a primitive Liara was… intelligent, even by his people's standards. While most in this cycle stumbled along like children in the dark, she never made a move without proper recourse. Speaking with her was unexpectedly... freeing, as if he was finally offered the space to map out his thoughts that he didn't know he craved.

Of course, as always, their interactions were not always amicable.

"If I must wake up to that drone hovering over my head one more time, I will throw it out the airlock, asari," he threatened as he stormed into her quarters, rubbing his sore hip after he had snapped awake and went toppling unceremoniously out of bed that morning.

"Do it, and I'll throw you out the airlock." Javik was about to argue further but his words caught in his throat as he looked at the asari from across the room. Per usual she was in front of her terminals, but she was drawn in on herself, her arms hugging around her middle. Most telling was that she refused to look at him, unusual considering he had uttered something she found offensive. She would normally meet him with fire in such instances.

"I received a notification from Admiral Hackett," she told him with a resonance in her voice that took him a moment to place. Sadness.

"Oh?" Javik tilted his head. "Does he wish for you to blow up another merc group?"

"No." Her tone was grave and she still refused to look his way. "The relay for the Cronian Nebula has been activated." She paused, still staring at the screen in front of her as if she expected some sort of question or interjection, of which Javik had none. His course was clear from the beginning. "He has agreed to meet you at the fueling station near the relay and take you the rest of the way. We're on course now, ETA is in one week."

Javik's eyes narrowed. "It is an odd thing that he agreed."

Dr. T'soni replied with a one-shoulder shrug. "Not really. He owes favors to both Shepard and me and since you were part of her crew…"

"I see."

"Javik?" It wasn't often she used his name and the way it left her now sounded almost distressed. It demanded his attention. Slowly, she turned in her chair to look at him and it took him a moment, staring at her in the dim room, to realize that she had been… crying. "Why do you want to die?"

There were two options laid before him. He could turn around without a word and return to his quarters, certain that the asari would not follow him. It would solidify a distance between them, a distance he knew had begun to close. Or…

"Do you recall the memory shard you picked up?"

The asari's tattooed brows knitted together before she opened up the top drawer at her desk and withdrew the very shard in question. "This?" she asked, studying it while she turned it over in her hand. Even from across the room, it called to him.

"Yes." Javik glanced at the only available place to sit- the edge of her bed. "May I come in?"

"Of course," she acquiesced, gesturing to a spot on her mattress directly across from her chair. The space between her chair and her mattress was small, with barely a half-meter-wide gap.

"It is called an Echo Shard," he began once he was seated. "It was a tradition to pass it along throughout the ages, prothean to prothean, soldier to soldier. Each adding their memories to it. On and on to a time before the Reapers."

"Goddess," Liara breathed and suddenly looked at the artifact with a renewed sense of wonder. "Javik… this is…"

"All that is left of my people." He could hear the solemn timbre of his own voice as he said the words for the second time in his life. Staring at his hands, he knew the asari was watching him, desperate to ask the question that was obviously on her mind. Javik raised his eyes up and did it for her: "Would you like to see? With your ability, I could show you what I saw-"

"Yes!" she blurted and scooted forward in her seat, eyes wide with barely contained excitement. It would have been adorable had he not known the horrors she would also witness along with the wonders. Suddenly remembering herself, Liara leaned away, tempering her enthusiasm. "If you wouldn't mind, that is."

"I do not," he found himself saying. "Give me your hand. I would like to try something."

"All right." A blue, five-fingered hand rested gently in his palm, sending electricity through his skin.

"Now it is your turn," he prompted.

The asari took a steadying breath and fixed her gaze onto his. It was almost humorous when she was momentarily undecided as to which set she would look into. Then, her blue eyes went black as night and she said, "Take a deep breath and relax. Embrace eternity."

Before he was drawn in, Javik tugged at her signature.

It was like a rope had been stretched out between them, each of them holding one end and leaning back on it, balancing on the heels of their feet. A fragile equilibrium that kept them balanced and upright.

It was a sensation he had never experienced before.

Mentally, he increased his strength, drawing the asari forward slightly, just enough to assert his memories with her abilities.

Stars erupted around them. The laughter of children. Disagreements with colleagues. Enormous ships in the sky. And then, solid walls around them, thick and impregnable like the fortress of lore that it was. Protheans walked briskly passed him, some even walked through him, completely unaware of their out-of-time visitors. Footsteps echoed off stone floors.

Beside him, a bewildered asari twisted and turned, desperate to take in as much of the architecture as she could. Javik felt the corner of his mouth tugging toward a smile as he watched her struggle to decide on what she wanted to look at more; her surroundings or the ghosts of the people that lived there.

"By the Goddess." The words left her lips in a hushed breath. Then her questions fell in rapid succession. "Where are we? What is this? Are these your memories?"

Javik chuckled. "This-" He gestured to the stone corridor they stood in."-Is the Quasar Fortress of the Tirandi Veil, seen through the memories of someone who lived in a time to experience it."

Liara completed a sixth -or perhaps tenth- rotation before she found the ability to ask: "How… how long ago?"

"Sometime before the Reapers." Javik paused, watching the people as they moved. They were clearly much younger than him, likely in their adolescent years. "It was an ancient military headquarters, built by the ditakur. After my people conquered them, the facility was converted into one dedicated to the arts and education for the empire. That is all I know. Only rubble remained by the time of my birth."

"Can I- Can we look around?" Her eyes focused on him for the first time since their arrival.

Javik understood her excitement. He had been just as awestruck when he touched the shard that fateful night on the Normandy. From the commander's perspective, the experience likely appeared to take only seconds, but to him, it was much longer.

Javik nodded. "Of course."

Leading his starstruck companion through the halls of the past made his own excitement grow.

She gushed at the writing on a plaque they found.

"My translator can't even read this!"

He read it to her.

She unabashedly watched as a young couple stole small, affectionate gestures before their studies tore them apart.

"I had no idea your abilities could be used for that!"

He found himself tempted to show her.

She reached out uselessly to a plate of food they found sitting abandoned on a cafeteria table.

He tried to explain what it tasted like from his own memories.

Then, as it had for him the first time, the surroundings changed when the memory ran its course and a new lifetime started in the ice canals of Judor IV. Again, they walked among ghosts, observing the magnificence of their forgotten lives, lined by thick walls of glittering ice.

After that, it was the Palisades of the Verom Anjelik. It was at that point when Javik began to quiet. His explanations grew shorter and his distance increased. He had hoped that his asari companion would be too distracted to notice, but of course, he wouldn't be so fortunate.

"Javik?" She stepped up beside him and reached for his arm, hesitant at first, and turned him to face her. "What's the matter?"

"You will see."

As if on cue, a Reaper blared.

From that point on, as if to demonstrate his people's fleeting lifespan, their surroundings changed far too quickly for Javik to keep up with anymore. A result of the shard transferring from hand to hand at a much more rapid pace. And the more their surroundings changed, the more sickening the images became.

Javik could feel his heart hammering in his chest, heard it in his ears. He knew what was coming and panic began to sink cold and heavy in his stomach. Then it happened; his ship captured, his crew indoctrinated, their names screamed in vain battle after battle, until it ended in the Cronian Nebula with their blood draining from the slits he had carved into their throats. His knife fell to the dirt and an aching sob ripped from his chest, though he couldn't say if it was from his past or his present self.

A pair of small, strong hands took hold of either side of his head and his vision was suddenly filled by a lovely, blue, freckled face. Black eyes pierced into his and he was vaguely aware of that mental rope being tugged in the other direction, pulling him forward.

Suddenly, a lawn of lilac grass stretched out in all directions. Small, diurnal creatures chirped and buzzed in the afternoon sun, filling the atmosphere with a chorus that made him think of summertime. And a tiny, blue, asari child went running past him and into the waiting arms of assumedly her mother, dressed in a long, yellow gown.

Alien as it was to him, it took him a moment to realize Liara had dragged him into one of her own memories. Into a time set long after the brutality of his own. In the place of dying screams and convulsing husks, children laughed and played beneath a clear, smokeless sky.

It was strange.

At some point, she had released his face -though he could not say when- and she was gripping his hand hard in hers. "Are you all right?"

Instead of answering, he looked on at the giggling child and asked: "Is that you?"

"Yes," she replied, sounding relieved to hear him speak. "I'm sorry. You were…" She stopped to map out her choice of words, finally settling on: "I have never seen you act that way or heard you…" So that sob was from him. "You needed to get out of there, but I have never done this before, so I did the first thing I could think to do."

Distantly, Javik nodded, but his attention was on the woman in yellow. There was an undeniable sense of power radiating from the asari, even as she coddled the giggling child. "And your mother?"

Liara followed his gaze. "Yes. That's her."

"You look just like her," he observed.

"So I've been told." Turning back to him, her hand found his again, the motion more natural now, and she said: "I'm ready to leave if you are."

With a nod, Liara's cabin melted back into his peripheral and their hands, clasped in one another's, materialized into focus. Javik forced his fingers to loosen from hers and his hand fell limply between his knees.

"Earlier you said 'soldier to soldier.'" Liara's voice drifted in like a breeze and tugged at his attention. Looking up, he found her eyes glistening. "Is that why you passed the shard onto Shepard?"

"She was a soldier that demanded respect. The exemplar of Victory," he admitted. "It was my hope that she could impart her own memories on it."

There was a tranquility in Liara's presence, one that soothed his turmoil like a balm. It was tempting to stay and, somehow, he knew that he need only ask. Instead, he stood from his perch and moved toward the door, leaving the shard in her hand.

"Now, I pass it on to you."