Arius did not meet with Javik immediately, aside from quickly introducing his chosen name, location aboard the ship, and occupation. Having one's entire understanding of the galaxy upended was anything but a soft landing, and he wanted to give the Prothean time to adjust and learn about his new world. Only, the Prothean's reintroduction was anything but smooth.
There was an air of superiority that followed Javik everywhere, and a lingering cloud of hostility followed. Arius understood it; Such attitudes had been normal once, and the shock of waking to find the equivalent of fish, hamsters and cows ruling the galaxy was not to be trivialized. But he also sensed from the Prothean an unwillingness to integrate, a lack of spirit that did nothing to encourage cooperation or camaraderie aboard his new home. Arius understood that in the Prothean's mind, he was isolated, alone with no kin, a stranger in a strange land. His entire life had been reduced to a struggle against an enemy who had already won. The most he hoped for was to rip out a Reaper's still-beating heart to avenge his people and go out in a blaze of martyrs' glory. Arius understood all this because he had once been Javik.
It was late in the day when Arius finally presented himself at the door of the Prothean's room. He waited until the Prothean had acknowledged his presence, then motioned him to follow. "I have something to ask if you are unoccupied. Please follow me."
He led the Prothean down the hall to his room. They stepped through. Arius's oldest personal effects were arranged on the desk in the starboard cargo hold: his sword and the tattered remnants of the plates of his original suit, now down to two and heavily damaged. Arius leaned on the desk next to them and crossed his arms. With a drawn-out sigh, he asked a question he wished for and feared: "Does the name 'Peregrinator' mean anything to you?"
The name was Prothean, and the name was old.
With interest, the Prothean's four eyes shifted intently to his face, then down to the sempiternal sword and the ancient, damaged plates. He nodded. "Yes. Many knew the stories. The Peregrinator had been once a dedicated agent of the Empire." He approached the table and slowly touched the items with extended fingers. The plates under his hands produced a low growl, recognizing its dark origin. When his fingers made contact with the sword, however, he recoiled his hand from it as if he had been burned. Something unpleasant had occurred, and Javik wrung his hands while he grumbled to himself, trying to clear the lingering traces he had picked up. "The stories were true, then… the weapon was genuine. Where were they found?"
"They weren't," Arius told him. Revealing the next part brought him no small measure of apprehension. "They belong to me. Always have been. Since the dawn of the Empire."
There was a slight pause from the Prothean at the mention of the Empire, as none aside from him had uttered it. "That is impossible. The Peregrinator perished in the fight against the Reapers fifty thousand years ago."
Arius lifted his left arm, holding it out to the Prothean to read. Javik, not understanding what he was trying to prove, narrowed his eyes in suspicion. The Prothean crudely reached out and made contact with Arius' arm, his touch resting for a moment before something unexpected caused him to add the other. "You are… not human. Older. You…" the Prothean whispered, realization quickly dawning on him as his eyes focused and widened. "You!"
There was a moment of turmoil on the Prothean's face: shock from the revelation, relief at finding a familiar facet of his lost life, then anger at the implication of his existence. He bared his teeth, incensed. "It was you! You abandoned us!"
Arius calmly withdrew and recrossed his arms again. He sighed, having expected the dreaded treatment. "The war was over, Javik. From the moment it began. It was not a war we could win."
The Prothean's voice rose. "We trusted you! We thought they had taken you!"
"I know, Javik," he began to explain, holding up a hand to calm the outburst. "If you permit me, I will expla–"
"There is no excuse," the Prothean spat, eyes narrowed with seething hatred as he pointed his fingers in his face. "You know how we dealt with traitors in our cycle–"
"I am acutely aware," Arius issued with deliberate, sharp words, gaze frighteningly pointed and his voice low. "Just who do you think you are talking to?"
Javik's mouth opened to retort, but his four eyes moved down to Arius' hand, and he silently closed it again. Arius looked down too, and he found that he had grabbed the weapon's handle without realizing it, pulling it halfway off the table. He gingerly put it back down and withdrew his arm. "Hmm. Old habits. Apologies."
Javik grumbled, still riled but wary. "Speak, Peregrinator."
"The Citadel is a relay," Arius began explaining, "that links to dark space where the Reapers wait in between cycles. This, we did not know. As Shepard discovered a few years ago on Ilos, when the Keepers of the Citadel sent the signal, the Reapers arrived instantly. In a blink, Central was enthralled, star charts and census data were taken, and the Citadel's primary relay console locked down the network. From the first move," he scoffed, "the war was already over. As they had planned."
Arius sat himself down. "You know what comes after; after all, you lived it. Freely moving between the systems, the Reapers carefully visited each opened relay and culled the population, wiping away all of the Empire's influences. I fought back for years, letting a world go to regroup at another. One by one, star systems were consumed. They bled us dry; It was a slow death. I realized that victory was impossible, that perhaps we could hide. I tried saving a colony," he said, gazing off into memory. "It wasn't listed on any star chart, far from a relay. I'd squeezed by Reaper detection before… but in the end, they found us. By the time I reached it, it was gone, like the others."
Unconvinced by his words, Javik grasped him, pulling the memory from the synapses of the forefront of the Peregrinator's mind. But the Prothean found reading him difficult; too much experience was spread over vast periods, and he could only catch glimpses: The outpost. The static. The moons. The run. The anguish.
The Prothean let go, strength sapped from the attempt. Javik stood unsteadily, collecting himself and processing what he had sensed. He nodded with hard-won acceptance; he had been telling the truth.
"You have been alone since the Empire's fall?"
"No. I went to Earth and waited until they developed space flight. I only rejoined the galactic scene a few decades ago."
Javik laughed mockingly. "That explains why you have become lenient. I have observed the way you interact with the crew. You act subservient to them."
"I support them," he corrected, "in whatever endeavours they design."
"Why? Why did you not just force them to help you?"
Arius laughed strangely like the reason was plainly evident and worthy of lament. "Because I was wrong, Javik. I made the wrong choices. A cycle's worth of work for the Empire, and I lost."
Javik shook his head in disappointment. "This galaxy has only grown weaker; your laxity abets that."
"It's not a matter of weakness. It's a matter of trust. For better or for worse, the plurality that has emerged in this cycle can only be maintained with cooperation. We both know how the principles of the Empire shaped it and how it fared when the bill came due. We needed to see if there was a different way: if soft power could be just as strong. We uplifted the asari for this very reason."
"I am not impressed by what I have seen. I have found the asari little more than amusing, and the Commander still believes an honourable war is possible."
Arius rose from his seat. "Javik. Your forces perished fifty thousand years ago, leaving you the last remaining Prothean soldier. You are without rank or representation and were nearly captured by the enemy, but for the graces of Shepard. I, too, have found myself again without rank. The days of Central backing are long gone; I no longer have the authority I once did. However, the Commander is the closest thing we have to an Imperator of the Empire in this cycle. I trust her with this charge, and her work against the Reapers has trumped anything I could accomplish, even with much fewer resources. We needed a different approach. Read about this cycle. See how it contrasts with yours. Spend time with the people on this ship, and see how they live and fight in their ways. Strength in this cycle is more than just dominion. We may not have the raw power the Empire once had - but you'll be surprised by its potential."
Javik stared at him, expressionless as he thought. He then shrugged, reluctantly agreeing at last. "I have told the Commander that I will fight, so I will fight. For the Empire, I can suffer the primitives." He turned to leave. "We will speak later, Peregrinator."
.
Shepard was passing through the engineering deck when she saw the doors to the starboard cargo hold open, and Javik walk out. The Prothean said farewell to who she believed had only been Arius, then disappeared back into his own. Shepard heard what Javik called him as he left, and it struck her - she understood perfectly what the Prothean said. In his speech, he had called Arius Peregrinator. She reflected that the Prothean monuments in the dossier had been true; they really had called him that. She then recalled previous Prothean words that Arius had said to her on occasion and realized with growing astonishment that not only could she understand them, she knew how to say them. In the crossed wires of their first contact, Javik had experientially uptook her native tongue, and she, his. Far beyond the murky understanding she had gained from the Cipher, she could now fluently speak Prothean.
She popped into the Prothean's room, curious about it. Javik had been washing his hands in the basin but greeted her in customary stoicism when she entered.
"Javik. Sorry to eavesdrop, but I overheard you talking with Arius just now; you called him Peregrinator. Did you know him in your cycle?"
"Only stories," he answered her. "By the time I was put into stasis, It had long been assumed he had perished. Now I know it had been a trick meant to fool the Reapers into overlooking a colony. It did not work - the indoctrinated betrayed him, same as us."
"Yes, he mentioned that once. Arius has shared many personal accounts from his cycle and this one, but he's been somewhat sparse about the Prothean era. What sort of stories did you hear about him?"
"Many. That he was found as the last warrior of a doomed race, cursed to wander the stars for eternity. That he assimilated into the Empire and became a dedicated agent, expanding its influence and vanquishing its enemies. That although some of his supposed feats seemed fabled, they were genuine; one only had to ask an Oravore. All members of their kind had his name branded on the memory of their homeworld."
"This is the first time I'm hearing about it. Who were they? What happened?"
"The Oravores were an aggressive race who raided worlds to exploit. They attempted to strip the asari's homeworld of its resources at a time when the asari were still primitive - using spears, they would have been exterminated had we not intervened. In retaliation for their open defiance, the Peregrinator crushed the Oravore homeworld into dust."
"Their entire homeworld? That sounds extreme."
"It was a necessary show of strength. The Oravores never rose against the Empire again. Those were the stories of the Peregrinator during my cycle: Effective. Decisive. Strong. One of the Empire's greatest instruments."
"The Arius I know doesn't seem quite like how you're describing…" she began to say, but as the words left her mouth, she realized it might have been a lie. Various conversations of theirs immediately came to mind, and unconnected dots suddenly linked, all subtly hinting at what Javik was telling her.
Javik gave a dark, throaty chuckle, chiding her for her naivety. "The Peregrinator's time living among your kind has made him lenient. He now tolerates weakness in others, even revealing his own, when once such a display of vulnerability would have been unacceptable. The Peregrinator of the Empire would have bent the current races to your will, and few would have dared challenge him. Now, he spends his time hiding in the shadows, securing cooperation from behind the scenes - a foolhardy waste of time and energy."
"He's spent the last fifty thousand years living, Javik, while you've been asleep. He probably realized at some point that the same approach wouldn't work this time."
"So he tells me," the Prothean acceded, leaning against the basin of water once more. "The galaxy has changed, Commander; I do not deny that. But it does not look stronger or more united; you still fight amongst each other while the Reapers raze you to the ground."
She could not refute that. The Prothean stopped talking then, and Shepard took it as her cue to leave.
