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Shepard and Liara stopped outside the door of the cargo bay and looked at each other. "Are you ready for this, Liara?"
Straightening her jacket, Liara said, "I should be. I've prepared my whole life for this."
"But?"
"But … it's one thing to study ancient dead Protheans. It's quite another to come face-to-face with a living, breathing Prothean."
"He's not quite what you imagined?"
Liara looked anxiously at the door. "I don't know what I imagined."
"Well, let's go explore the reality, then, shall we?"
"Certainly. Let's do that."
Shepard noticed that her friend hung back and let her go first, however.
They had found the Prothean on Eden Prime—a planet Shepard hadn't been anxious to revisit, given how the Prothean beacon had changed her from the inside out. A hot tip that Cerberus had dug up a very important Prothean artifact had led them to the planet and to the stasis pod left there fifty thousand years ago … and to the Prothean still inside it.
He had been confused at first—and then Shepard had put a hand on his arm and been transported in her mind back to his time, seeing what he had seen, feeling what he had felt. Another lingering effect from the beacon, she presumed. It had helped—the Prothean had learned from that psychic link enough of her and what they were facing to be willing to come aboard the Normandy. But he had to have questions, and god knew Liara had questions for him. And Shepard just hoped that bringing aboard a member of a long-vanished race wouldn't turn out to be a terrible mistake.
Inside the room, the Prothean knelt in some kind of meditation while some of the Alliance soldiers hovered over him. Protocol, they said. As if the Normandy was the kind of ship that operated on strict Alliance protocol, Shepard thought with some amusement. She sent them off about their duties and approached the Prothean.
"How are you settling in?"
"The surroundings are … adequate." He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "It is strange to be on a ship built and crewed by such primitive species. In my cycle, your kind were considered too rudimentary for the Reapers to pay attention to, and we left you undisturbed in hopes that you would rise up in the next cycle. As it seems you have," he added somewhat grudgingly.
"Thank you. I think."
"Just the humans?" Liara asked.
"No. The turians and the asari, as well."
"What of the salarians?"
He glanced at Liara for the first time. "The lizard people evolved?" He grunted in surprise. "They used to eat flies." A spasm of pain crossed his face. "So much has been lost, so much has changed … and yet the Reapers are still here."
"We're going to stop that," Shepard told him.
"Others have said so before. They failed."
"I know that. I won't." She spoke with more bravado than she felt—but what would be the point in letting others see how afraid she was? There was none.
For his part, the Prothean chose not to pursue that line of conversation any further.
Liara stepped forward. "I have some questions, if you don't mind."
"Why?"
"Why? Because I've been studying your people my whole life."
Shepard chuckled. "Here it comes."
The Prothean looked Liara over dismissively. "I see the asari have finally mastered writing. Charming."
Liara's eyes widened in outrage, but she didn't rise to the bait. She put a dozen questions or more to him, about art and science and technology and politics and economics, but the Prothean made it clear that by the time he was born, the Prothean empire was breathing its dying gasp. He had experienced nothing but the war with the Reapers his entire life, and all he knew was fighting.
Liara was crushed to learn that he wasn't a philosopher, or a scientist, and in fact, was as bloodthirsty as a krogan. He could feel the presence of Grunt, the room's previous occupant, and they seemed to be much akin to one another.
Shepard couldn't wrap her head around a war that lasted for centuries, the way he described his. She thought if she knew that was what lay ahead for her cycle, she would rather Cerberus had left her dead so she didn't have to fail that spectacularly.
At last the Prothean held up a hand. "I cannot educate you about thousands of years of Prothean history all at once."
"Of course," Liara said quickly. Too quickly, Shepard thought, looking at her friend and seeing the distress in her eyes. "You should rest."
"Do you have any questions for us?" Shepard asked.
"I have learned all I need to from you."
She decided to take that as an indication that he had gained more from the psychic link between them in those first moments than she had instead of as an insult.
"Understood," she said crisply. "One last question, then: Will you help me fight?"
He studied her carefully, then nodded. "I will. And the last thing the Reapers hear before they die will be the last voice of the Protheans sending them to their grave. Yes." Straightening his shoulders in an unmistakably military posture, he looked Shepard directly in the eye. "You may count on me, Commander. I am known as Javik."