She was so blue, and it struck him that this was not a bad thing. Why shouldn't she be blue? It would be abnormal if she was purple, or any other color. And she'd look hideous—even he had to admit, asari were marginally more attractive than most species in this Cycle, which wasn't saying much—if she was green.

It took a Prothean to pull off being green.

Even her squeaky, high-pitched piping little voice—the epitome of annoyance—didn't seem quite so annoying. Or maybe that was because she wasn't levelling it at him, like lances through his soggy brain matter.

Javik knew he'd had too much to drink; it was the only explanation for how awful he felt. He should never have let those primitives—the word hit him like a kick to the gut—sucker him into such a ridiculous pastime as those drinking games.

It was with this sorry state of mind that he dragged himself off to be alone and wait for the effects to die down. He might have employed the little female's trick of using her biotics to burn off the alcohol, but wasn't sure how, past simply turning them on and leaving them on…and that was wasteful. And he didn't want to try and fail.

In the end, he took refuge in one of the upstairs bathrooms, ensconcing himself in the corner of the shower space with the lights off. It made him feel pathetic, weak, to be weltering in his own maudlin mindset, here in the dark.

Or maybe he was just too inebriated to care—though he thought not, since he could still count to ten without resorting to using his toes. He finally understood the saying, now. But he didn't need his toes, or his fingers, so he was fine. Right? Right.

Javik shivered a little, then curled in on himself a bit. He could hear noise from the party even through the walls—though, thankfully, nothing in particular. Just the rise and fall of voices, the upswing and downswing of laughter, the energetic exchanges of people who didn't believe they were doomed.

Sometimes he wondered if he believed they were doomed; but when he did, he always realized that they were, because the Reapers always won.

Here, in the dark, the thought made his eyes sting—all four of them. He didn't know how he'd gotten so attached to these primitives—who weren't, he thought gently, really primitive, just young and naïve, idealistic because they'd had the chance to be—he just knew that he had. Even Liara. It would pain him to see them die around him. Just the thought increased the stinging in his eyes. The galaxy would be poorer without the Normandy's crew, and there was no initiative to preserve them, to send them into the future as his people had sent him.

Javik curled up a little tighter, trying to push back the dark, morose, heavy thoughts. He shouldn't have let it happen; or, at least, he shouldn't have let himself get suckered into that drinking game—which, inexplicably, the little biotic won. Some called it cheating; he felt it was just a good use of her abilities. It wasn't as if he and Wrex didn't have the same abilities; they simply didn't use them the same way.

He closed his eyes, all of them, increasing the thickness of the darkness and relieving some of the pounding ache in his head. He didn't feel the need to vomit, but he reflected that this was probably a good place to be in case he needed to later. Nothing could get messed up from his exhalations, and there was a drain in the floor to handle them. Perfect.

That settled, he wiggled himself into a more comfortable position in the corner, arms crossed. He knew, though he doubted many of the others did, that this party was simply Shepard's way of saying goodbye. Things would start to happen very soon, soon and quickly, and she wasn't the sort who liked not having time to say goodbye.

He didn't want to contemplate goodbye. He didn't want to think about the crew broken on the rock that was the armada of Reapers, didn't want to find himself once again one of the last, scratching out survival minute by minute, watching others fall around him until there was no one left.

The thought caused the tears in his eyes—shameful, ridiculous things!—to slip gently free of their confines.

He would miss this crew, would mourn their passing until he too passed—and it frightened him, for he suspected each loss would bleed like a puncture wound until he simply had no more blood left in him.

Him, who felt he had nothing left of such feelings in him. He was Javik, the King of Airlock-age, as Joker had said just that evening.

But somehow, he'd been wrong. The treacherous tears sliding down his face, the sobs he muffled with one hand so no one—he wished not even he—could hear them, told a different story. His heart ached in time with the ache in his head as he considered his fellow crewmen, the softness they made into strength, the ingenuity, the hopeful optimism, the refusal to grant the Reapers even tiny victories like doubt. He had not appreciated at first how hard each and every one of them, even the ones who never touched a weapon, fought against this enemy. They fought so hard, and they were all going to die.

He wasn't afraid to die with them, even though they weren't Prothean, weren't his people. He was afraid he wouldn't die with them, and would be left alone and bereft once more, with only enemies to kill until he couldn't kill them anymore. Even then he didn't trust them not to find a way to leave him alive with his sorrow, because Reapers were cruel, and there was no blacker nightmare than 'being the last.'