Heuristics

Chapter 4

Shepard groaned and shielded her eyes from the blinding white lights above her when Garrus moved away. "She's awake," he said to someone out of view. She sat up, putting a hand to her head, and tried to make sense of the events that had just passed. She remembered sitting at the table in the mess hall, eating, and speaking to Javik in Prothean. And then...

Then he had put his hand on her and transferred brief glimpses of memories about friends, family, and the losses and victories of prothean battles. And his lack of memories about the taste of—"Ferengi fish," Shepard muttered, rubbing her temples. She did not have a headache, but it was a soothing motion.

"Commander," Dr. Chakwas said, coming over to her bed and waving her omni-tool over her. "You took quite a spill in the mess hall. After you fell, Javik alerted me that you were unconscious."

"I fell and went unconscious?" Shepard asked incredulously. Even before all of the cybernetics, she had never been one to bump her head and pass out.

"Actually, you went unconscious and then fell," Chakwas corrected, pulling away her omni-tool to read the output of the scan. She looked up from her reading to give Shepard a curious look and added, "your eyes were also glowing green."

"Javik," Garrus said with an undertone to his voice that Shepard remembered as something he reserved for the names of criminals—reminiscent of his days at C-Sec, when there was no Reaper threat in sight and Garrus's biggest problem of the day was where the next petty crime was going to take place and how he could prevent it. It was a voice that she hadn't heard for a long time, and it was startling how much he suddenly sounded like the Garrus from back then—slightly unsure of himself, but still headstrong. She wondered just how much of this had to do with their lack of real, meaningful communication since they'd met on Menae and felt slightly guilty for a brief moment. "He must have transferred his memories to you."

Shepard's head immediately began to hurt, and she grit her teeth. "Yeah. I got some visions of prothean life and a Reaper attack."

"Now why would he show you that?" Garrus questioned, sounding genuinely curious. He leaned against a desk as Shepard slid off the table, still a bit wobbly on two legs. This was the longest transfer of memories that she had ever experienced, and her entire body felt frail and foreign, as if she didn't have control of her muscles and her bones would snap at the slightest pressure. She took a shaky step forward in an attempt to regain her composure after being stuck in the limbo of prothean memory-transference, but her left leg buckled and she fell backwards against the bed. Clearly, it was a process not suited for her very different human nervous system.

Only slightly embarrassed, she waved off the worried looks from Chakwas and Garrus. "I've never been...transferred that many memories before," she explained, righting herself and leaning heavily against the bed for support. "And never ones that whole. Usually I just see bits and pieces, but these ones played out like a movie. I could see everything perfectly."

"Do you think Javik can control it? How many were transferred?" Garrus questioned as Chakwas began to resume her medical duties at her desk.

"I doubt it." Shepard experimentally flexed her toes. The sensations of weakness were rapidly starting to go away. She hobbled to the next bed over and was satisfied when she found she could walk again, with little difficulty. She headed for the door, almost fully functional again, but Chakwas stopped her with a firm, "Shepard."

Chakwas had turned in her chair, her face pulled taut into a concerned frown. "We don't know what the effects would be of long-term exposure to prothean memories. You were only out for a few minutes this time—"

Shepard was quick to reassure her with some platitude—"I'll make sure and be careful,"—as her mind was elsewhere. Where had Javik gone? Had he just left her after letting Chakwas know she'd fainted? Why had Garrus been there when she'd woken up, but not Javik, the one who had caused this to happen? And, perhaps the most important of all, why had he shared those memories with her in the first place? Surely he wasn't just trying to get his point across about not remembering the taste of that fish.

The mess hall was empty and quiet as she stepped out into it—slowly, as she was not steady enough for her normal quick pace—except for the footsteps of Garrus as he trailed behind her, presumably either following her or attempting to retreat to his designated home in the forward battery.

He chuckled lightly behind her, a pleasant sound that made her heart feel full, and caught up with her in two long strides. "Need a hand, Commander?"

She stretched out her hand to him with one eyebrow raised and watched him fumble with what to do next, obviously not expecting her to take him up on his offer. Before he could take her hand to presumably help her steady herself, Shepard withdrew it on a sly grin and continued toward the elevator. "Kidding. What, you think some alien transferring memories into my mind could keep me down?"

"Not for very long," he said in a casual voice as he followed her, adjusting his pace to meet hers. "Of course, it did knock you on your ass for ten minutes, so I wouldn't get too cocky if I were you."

"Garrus," Shepard said with faux-compassion, "I'm touched. And you stayed by my side the whole time?"

He made a "hmm" sound that made his voice rumble. "Maybe not the whole time." He stopped walking as they reached the elevator, and if it hadn't been before, it was now very apparent that Garrus Vakarian wanted something. He watched, waited for her to do something—select her floor, maybe, or scurry off to one of the viewing areas, but she didn't. She waited for him to speak, wanting him to get whatever was bothering him off his mind while they were alone and had some privacy.

He said nothing. Feeling the moment quickly getting awkward, Shepard activated the lift so that it would take her to engineering. The subtle shift in Garrus's mood was telling; his eyes darted from her to the elevator's access module and he tilted his head slightly to the side. He knew where she was going, and he wasn't terribly excited about the idea.

"Commander," he started, pausing, obviously trying to gather his thoughts, before continuing with, "just remember what Chakwas said. Be careful."

She smiled up at him, knowing there were a million questions he wanted to ask but didn't, and felt grateful that he wasn't going to push her. She wanted to talk about things with him; she wanted to sit in her cabin and go through every minute detail, comb through what he'd been through during their separation. Being with him—after Kaidan and Horizon, after waking to a world that had already written her off as some long-forgotten hero, and after joining with the enemy in a desperate bid to save the lives of those who didn't or wouldn't care—made her happy in ways she didn't know how to explain. He had been there to support her unconditionally, as a friend and then something more, right up until the end. But if he didn't ask, she didn't want to bring it up. It could be that he didn't want to distract either of them, or it could be that he didn't want to hear what she had to say about the whole issue.

And it wasn't that she didn't have questions of her own. She did. What were they back then? What are they now? Does he still feel the same about her? Did he ever feel like that, or was she really just a stress-relief, just a casual fling not unlike the flexible turian lady he thought so highly of? Maybe—for her, at least—it had started out like that, but she had learned early on that any kind of relationship with Garrus Vakarian was a dangerous slippery slope that led to feeling things.

Thinking about such old memories made her uncomfortable, so she stopped. There were more pressing matters that could be occupying her thoughts, starting with a moody prothean and ending with a race of hyper-advanced beings attempting to wipe out all advanced life in the known universe. It could wait. Garrus could wait. And she could wait, too.

He nodded to her and then disappeared around the corner, presumably to go off and find some work to do in the main battery. As Shepard stepped into the elevator, she found herself in rather a bad mood, and it only got worse the further the lift sank into the bowels of the ship. At last she came to engineering, the quiet hum of the drive core blanketing the deck in white noise. She noticed that Allers had left her door open, perhaps purposefully, but she ignored it, instead heading straight for the cargo hold. When she came upon the door, it opened easily for her, as always. For some reason, she had expected it to be locked.

Javik didn't turn around when she entered. He was standing at a workbench and studying his disassembled rifle, his long fingers fiddling with parts, holding them up to inspect before setting them back down again.

"Commander," he greeted in monotone when she didn't say anything for a while.

"How'd you guess?" Shepard asked, though it was more of a sarcastic quip than an actual question. Regardless, Javik answered:

"I could smell you."

She wrinkled her nose at his back, suddenly feeling self-conscious. What did she smell like? And was that a bad thing? Were all of her more sensitive alien crewmates smelling her and not telling her? She mentally shook herself from running away with that train of thought and got right down to business. "What happened up there, Javik?" she asked, nodding her head toward the ceiling, despite the fact that he was not looking at her.

Javik didn't even pause in his inspection of his rifle. "You asked about my favorite food. I gave you an answer." He glanced briefly at her over his shoulder. "Was that answer not satisfactory?" His voice was much calmer than before, as if the transference of memories had drained all of his stiffness and put it directly into her.

"You gave me more than an answer," Shepard responded, moving closer to him. He looked sideways at her and then took a few steps away, retreating to his water basin, as if he had something to do there. "I appreciate you sharing your memories with me, Javik, but I'd like a warning next time."

He was not staring into the water as he usually was but bracing himself against it, his hands clasped tightly on the lip of the basin. "I did not mean to transfer that much," he said, and Shepard figured it was as much of an apology as she was going to get. "When a prothean transfers to another prothean, he can choose what he does and does not want the other to see." His grip on the basin tightened when Shepard took a careful step toward him. "Our beacons may have altered you, but you are not prothean. I have little control over what memories I share with you."

Shepard stopped moving toward him. He was obviously uncomfortable at her proximity—a strange revelation, considering not too long ago he was trying to be as close to her as possible. "I saw you," she began, unsure of what else to say, "at a table with your friends, having a feast."

"Yes," he said shortly. "That was the memory I intended to give."

"And I saw you and a squad of troops—"

"I do not care to relive the past," he snapped, sneering at her from over his shoulder. "I know the memories, Commander. Or do you forget that they are mine?"

Shepard furrowed her brow. All of that calmness had left him very quickly. She figured there was nothing left to do but leave and let him stew in it for a while. Javik was not to the type whose mood increased the more time he spent with someone. "Anyway, try not to make me faint next time," she told him as parting words, hoping that perhaps the light teasing in them would lighten his mood. It did not. She took a few steps backwards toward the door, considering saying something else, but then deciding against it. As far as she knew, Liara was still relying on her to keep the plan going.

She began to walk out, intent on paying Liara a visit to update her on all of her recent experiences—she would be absolutely delighted to hear descriptions of the food and architecture, for instance—but stopped when she heard Javik begin to speak.

"You smell of turian," he said under his breath, perhaps even as an afterthought.

Of turian? Garrus must have been the one to carry her to the med bay.

She said nothing in response to Javik, but continued on her way, the door to the cargo hold closing quietly behind her.

"Oh, Shepard, this is incredible." Liara positively floated around her room, pacing from one end to the other, presumably mulling over all that Shepard had told her. "I'd began to have doubts about our plan, but this changes everything. To have this empirical evidence—no, this primary source—is..." She stopped to take a breath. "Amazing."

Shepard's smile was wide, one eyebrow raised. She had her arms folded and leaned against Liara's doorframe, watching the doctor enthuse about this information as if she'd just given her an entire archive of prothean literature. "I take it we're making progress, then?"

"Oh, you have no idea," Liara said, immediately moving to her research diary to begin inputting all that she had learned. "To think that protheans had banquets. It was to our understanding—'our' meaning myself and other prothean experts—that protheans ate separately unless during a period of mourning." She shook her head. "It's enlightening to see just how wrong we truly were. And—oh—you mentioned seeing a grain-like food in the memory?"

Shepard nodded.

"We had no idea the prothean digestive system could even process non-meats. We were under the impression that protheans were strictly carnivorous."

"No, I definitely saw some vegetables in there," Shepard affirmed, thinking back to the table, lush with platters of food and cups of alcohol. All of the protheans had looked so joyous then. Even Javik had laughed and smiled along with all of this friends. She began to grin at the memory of it, but then she remembered what else she had seen: the Reaper, huge and imposing over the prothean troops, decimating them by the hundreds. She remembered Aabim, and how Javik had tried to save him. She remembered the wrenching pain she'd felt in her chest—in Javik's chest—when Aabim had been reduced to a pile of ash. For all the celebrating the protheans did after that battle, which they had presumably won despite the losses and retreat, it meant nothing in the end. The Reapers still summarily annihilated them, their culture snuffed out and now nothing more than a ghost that hung heavily on Javik's shoulders.

Liara's voice snapped her to attention. "Did he have any comments on your memories, Shepard?"

Shepard shook off the tightness she felt in her chest, pushing aside the question of "Is that what will happen to us?" for a later time. "I didn't give him any."

Liara's smooth brow creased, and she pulled away from her research diary. "I don't think you can control it. It is to my understanding that he can knowingly transfer you whatever he wants, but you will unconsciously transfer some memories to him as well."

All thought processes ceased. Shepard's stomach churned. "Any memories?"

"I haven't had much time to study this phenomenon, but from the data I've gathered from your and Javik's brief encounters, it seems as though he will experience only the strongest of your memories."

Is that why he'd been keeping his distance? What had he seen? Her life as a teenager on Earth, roaming the streets for something to eat? Her life as a young woman on Akuze, screaming and crying as her entire squad was wiped out? Or maybe he saw her life as an adult, taking comfort (and more) in Garrus's arms? "You smell of turian," he'd said, and maybe that was what he meant. For some reason, the thought of Javik knowing just how intimate she and Garrus had been made her wildly uncomfortable and somewhat indignant. Not at him, of course. He was an innocent party in this. According to Liara, he did not choose what memories he saw.

Maybe he hadn't seen anything like that at all, though. For all she knew, he'd only seen times when she'd almost careened the Mako of a cliff, or defeated a thresher maw on Tuchanka, or even when she witnessed the suicide of Saren. All of those had been major life events for her.

"Don't push yourself," Liara soothed, obviously sensing her discomfort, touching Shepard's arm gently. "I know the memory transference process can be...debilitating." She smiled sheepishly. "And try not to do it during battle."

"Yeah," Shepard said distantly. She pulled away from the wall, feeling tired suddenly and hoping that their next mission would take her mind off of current events. "I'm going to go check on our ETA with Joker."

Liara looked reluctant to let her go, but she nodded presently, wringing her hands. "Be well, Shepard."