Title: Ancient
Pairing: None F!Shepard
Warnings: None, really. Historical references to past conquerors, both real-world and in-game.
Summary: As Shepard tries to unwind during some downtime in her cabin, she begins to think about the silver orb she found on Kopis.
Word Count: 345
Shepard watched the perfect silver orb hover silently on her desk. It wasn't the first time she'd seen such an artifact, though the one her her cabin was much smaller than the first. She still struggled to understand the vision she saw that day on Eletania. The entire chain of events was beyond her understanding, even in the middle of the Reaper War.
She pushed the datapad aside and leaned over her desk, folding her arms on the surface and resting her chin atop them, staring the orb once more. At the time of the vision, they had barely begun to scratch the surface of the implications.
Just three or so short years later, she understood more of what was taking place at the time. Undoubtedly, they could have easily conquered them, wiped them complete out of existence, but chose not to, which seemed at odds with Javik's explanation of Prothean society.
In many ways, it reminded her of the ancient Romans. Primitive cultures were conquered and absorbed or conquered and destroyed, there was no autonomy in between. Yet, primitive humans were left alone. Perhaps they were too undeveloped to be worth the Protheans time in conquering. Or perhaps plans had been laid, which were interrupted by the Reapers.
That thought made her brow furrow. The Reapers left Earth untouched during that later cycle of the harvest, allowing them to evolve. Was that why the Protheans built the archive on Mars? To prepare for humans to exist under the banner of Prothean? Or, were they attempting to hide their knowledge about the Reapers in the Sol system as they had on Ilos or Eden Prime. As Liara was going with her black boxes...
She sat up and resumed reviewing reports. Thinking that way was ultimately a waste of time. Postulating 'what-ifs' in the middle of the apocalypse was hardly a productive use of her time. If she continued to focus on what was lost to the past rather than the task ahead, she would undoubtedly join the fallen sooner than later.