Regulikar: The Prothean central government.

Senarium - The Prothean government's science branch.

Kepala - The ridges of carapace that cover the top of a Prothean's head.

Gasin (Gasinu - pl)- Prothean male the age of majority. (Dropped from 20 to 13 over the course of the war.)

Takun (Takune - pl) - Prothean female the age of majority. (Dropped from 20 to 13 over the course of the war.)

Tapek Menru - Literal translation: The long defeat. The calendar was started from the date the Citadel was captured by the Reapers but not officially named until 10000 Tapek Menru.

Haksaya kubenar - A term of endearment, literally translates as my strong, true heart.

Cikabeknai - The reciprocal term of endearment for the above. Literally translates to brave love.

Dilan - (turian) Fiancee

79 Days ASR Horizon

Soft but demanding, an australian accent drew Shepard away from where she stood next to Wrex, the pair of them staring over the railing at the Crucible. She grinned at the krogan, his mouth hanging open as he gawked. Turning to face Miranda, the captain sighed softly as she answered the woman's summons. Judging by the operative's furtive glances toward where Garrus and Nihlus spoke with Giran and Javik, Shepard guessed the reason for the hail.

Miranda approached from the elevator, her steps quick, her posture even stiffer than usual. The operative nodded at the captain—a sharp tip of the head—then held out her arm, inviting Shepard to walk away from the others. "If I may speak with you for a moment?"

Shepard nodded, allowing the other woman to lead her away from what sounded like a tense discussion on the verge of leaping past heated to blasting them all with scalding steam. A couple dozen metres away, Miranda stopped, her ramrod demeanour softening just a touch through the lines of concern around her eyes and mouth. She looked drawn, saying a great deal about how taxing she'd found the weeks spent on Horizon.

"Miranda?" Turning to face the Cerberus operative, Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "Come on, I don't have time for drama, just spit it out."

"I have a great deal to discuss that I didn't trust to my reports, Captain, but most of it can wait." She glanced over Shepard's shoulder at the conversation as it ramped up another notch in volume. "I need to discuss Commander Javik before we board the Ypres. He is going to demand to remain on Horizon and turn its security over to him." Her lips pressed thin, the only sign on emotion on her cold, beautiful face.

"You mean this base or the human colony above it?" Shepard's gut sank. She must have been batshit crazy to leave Miranda here with Javik. Dammit. At the time, she just wanted to scrape off the two biggest hemorrhoids chapping her ass. She hadn't invested any thought into Javik getting into power struggles with a member of the organization devoted to torturing him for two years.

"Both. He believes that without the Alliance providing the colony with security, he needs to revive the protheans on Klencory and bring them here to garrison the planet." She shifted, drifting sideways to turn her back to Javik. "He believes we aren't able to protect the Crucible. He believes it's a weapon of mass destruction we need to not just control, but use."

Shepard inflated her lungs until her breasts pressed against the inside of her chest plate and then held the breath for several seconds before blowing it out. She nodded. "Okay."

Note to self: Don't let Javik get his hands on the Crucible.

She changed tacks. "Are the patients going back with us, or are they okay being looked after in the colony?"

Miranda's brow creased with exactly one and a third wrinkles, but those shallow seams in her calm screamed volumes. Still, she merely clenched her jaw, swallowed, and went along with the topic change. "They're all making solid progress under the care of the colony doctor. Dr. Longbear keeps them in the medical facility at night and then sends them out to help the colony during the day. She says they are integrating well. Probably best to leave them here unless their condition changes."

Shepard nodded, one of the weights balanced on her narrow shoulders lifting. "Excellent. That makes me really happy." A loud exclamation from Javik spun the captain around. "Take a good tactical position until this plays out. Just don't make a move until I actually go down. Let us handle it."

Miranda gave a nod crisp enough to be a salute and turned to walk down the catwalk.

"Captain Shepard? Is this news accurate?" Giran asked. Tashac's daughter looked taken aback by the news of more protheans surviving their race's apocalypse, but Javik's reaction shoved Shepard out onto a narrow, broken ledge.

Shepard stopped, watching the two protheans. She needed to know so much more about them as a people. She needed to spend some serious time with the rachni queen. The way surviving protheans were stacking up, they'd need all the help they could get.

For now, she'd have to figure things out on her own. Well, with Nihlus and Garrus. "Come on, Tashac, help me out here," she whispered, keeping her voice too soft to travel. "Give me some of your prothean intuition instead of a running diatribe about how Javik's the doom of the prothean race." She scoffed at her plea. She didn't need prothean intuition, Javik sharpened second by second until he might have been a bundle of needle-sharp, glass slivers wrapped in armour. She needed to shove Tashac out of her head and find a very human way to cool things down.

"Captain?" Javik called. "Why aren't my people being taken out of stasis?" He sucked in a massive breath making Shepard think of a dragon inhaling to fuel the fires in its belly. "Are they going to be taken to some secret facility and vivisected as I was?" His gold eyes fastened on Miranda's back. "Are they going to be turned over to the likes of that woman?"

The warning alarm at the base of Shepard's skull stabbed down her spine, tangling her muscles into knots. Maybe if she'd gotten to Javik's pod-of-blue-toes-and-bluer-giblets before Cerberus, she might have been able to bring him around.

Why are you thinking this way, Janey? You thinking he can't be brought around? What are you going to do? Ventilate his head or tell him there's a party on the other side of the airlock?

"Nihlus?" she said out loud, nodding him over. Drawing in a long, heavy breath, she braced herself for the ugliest possibility. Then, as her dilan strode toward her, she wondered if Miranda might be better suited to handle the ugliest developments. No, Miranda would blur the lines too much. Hell, if Javik needed to be taken out, and she saw it coming, she'd do it herself. She just couldn't guarantee she'd be looking in the right direction when the bullet flew.

"Jane?" Nihlus's instinctual whisper eased the grip around her throat, the tightness disappearing altogether when he glanced behind him. He saw it as well.

She swallowed and glanced the fifteen or so metres down the catwalk to where Javik and the others argued. "I'm feeling a hair trigger on our prothean commander. This might be Javik's breaking point. Keep him on your LADAR."

Nihlus glanced behind them again, a low rumble rolling deep in his chest. "He's building to a detonation of some kind, and I doubt it will be flowers and candy. He's convinced our reluctance to wake his people means we intend to turn them into experiments." His brow plates lifted, his expression almost keen, as if he wouldn't mind an excuse to just sweep the problematic prothean off the board. "Or that we'll arrange an accident to take out the power supply and simply kill them."

Shepard inflated her lungs with the musty, recycled air, shaking her head as she blew it out. "Yeah, just keep an eye on him." Another deep breath and she nodded toward the others. "Come on, we need to keep moving. We've got a fuck-ton of work to get done and sooner rather than later."

Nihlus stepped up to walk pressed against the back of her shoulder. One corner of her mouth tugged back when he leaned close to whisper, "And a wedding to plan."

Shepard shrugged, her humour warm but with a little nip behind it. "I don't know about that, you still haven't asked me."

"Captain Shepard!" Javik fairly leaped at her as she stepped between Giran and Garrus. "You must release my people from their stasis pods. They are the last protheans. With seven thousand people, I could return our race from the scattered dust and tattered remains of history."

Giran's mouth sprang open, her top lip pulled back … about as outwardly vicious as a prothean could look. Her eyes narrowed, as she spun to face Shepard. "Captain ... General Vakarian, while I'm pleased you've discovered more survivors, I would urge caution in waking them up."

Javik lunged, his teeth bared as well. Shepard threw herself between them, forcing Javik to shout over her shoulder at Giran. "How can you speak those words? We are the last of our people … the remainders of a mighty empire destroyed at the peak of its greatness."

Shepard spun to face him. "Stand down, Javik. The whole reason I'm worried about waking them up is all this great and mighty Prothean Empire crap." She stared him down, waiting until his kepala lifted, leaving his eyes unhooded. Once his lips covered his teeth, she moved out of the line of fire, but held his stare. "You're from a people who enslaved the other space-worthy races. If they wouldn't kneel, you beat them down. If you'd beaten the reapers, would victorious protheans be standing above me with their boot at my throat."

The commander's left foot drew back a half step, but he recovered within a breath, straightening and stiffening. "Evolution demands—"

"Evolution didn't save your people then, and it won't save us now. I wish it was that simple." Shepard shrugged, then winced at the slathered-on layers of snark. Dammit. Snark wouldn't calm things down, no matter how justified or honest. She glanced at Giran to make sure the other prothean wasn't taking offence before latching back on Javik. "While it might seem a position of little power, I've invited you onto the war council, a trust I intend to keep. However, I'm afraid if you're backed by seven thousand warriors, your half of our agreement will fall prey to convenient amnesia."

"Seven thousand of our soldiers will prove invaluable to you in this war," Javik insisted, his voice so tight he swallowed as if being strangled.

"Yes, as they were in helping us win fifty thousand cycles ago." Giran shook her head. "My parents believed the Regulikar lost its way in the last century of the war. Creating monsters to rivaled the reaper horrors and throwing children at their capital ships didn't help us. All it did was cost us our souls." She stepped up, standing so close her kepala nearly bumped his. "Would you use the old ways to win this war?"

"We have time to prepare." Javik straightened to attention. "Our war against the reapers ended before it began when they activated the Citadel. Archangel has resources in the geth and their fleet."

Shepard let out a long, strained hiss, her patience hitting the end of the tracks and careening straight through the buffer stop and down into the gulley. "The geth? I thought I was supposed to blow them all to hell? Our alliance with them was an … " Her expression melted into a wry thoughtfulness, her index finger tapping her bottom lip. "... abomination waiting to blow up in our face and destroy us all."

"I've seen the war you're facing," Javik said, his tone finally losing the condescension, but replacing it with derision. "The soldiers you'd leave frozen have all fought the reapers. Are you so weak that you would turn away our knowledge and experience out of fear?" He lifted himself up, spreading his shoulders, but he might as well have saved his energy. Someone really needed to send Javik a memo to tell him not to bother. He couldn't intimidate her on his best day.

"Afraid? No, Javik, I'm not afraid. Too damned smart to put guns in the hands of seven thousand people who might turn them right back on me in the name of knowing better than the primitive races? Yeah, absolutely. I have too many people counting on me to do anything else." She threw a hand up between them to still his argument. "Enough. This debate won't get us any closer to figuring out what to do." She turned to Giran. "The memories in my head warn me toward caution, but I also hate the idea of leaving so many people in limbo. What are your thoughts?"

The prothean turned and paced to the railing overlooking the Crucible. After a minute or longer, she turned around, leaning back against the railing. "I was raised by parents who told me to hold myself and others to a higher standard, and then trained by a government driven to the point of madness."

Javik sucked in a pointed gasp and stepped forward, bristled.

Giran rushed in to meet him, pushing him back as she demanded, "Do you deny it? Our people had no chance. They fought for hundreds of cycles despite calling the days of the war Tapek Menru: the Long Defeat. We knew it, and yet was retreat ever considered?" Chin jutting out, eyes wide, using force of presence alone, she shoved the commander back when he tried to interrupt. "Did we ever just fill our ships with civilians, scientists, guards, and provisions, and send them out to find somewhere safe beyond the edge of the galaxy? My parents proposed an ark ship program forty cycles before the end, and it was rejected by a government so obsessed with power and so deluded that they insisted our race fight to the last child."

Giran stepped back, allowing Javik space to gather his thoughts. She turned her calm, but earnest stare to Shepard. "My parents had a list of officers in their records. The Regulikar sent out a list to all the bases still able to receive transmissions. It's the leaders of the different sleeper cells and their profiles. My parents highlighted the few they trusted to be the most cooperative with the younger races."

"And what of me?" Javik's words sliced through the air, each one a separate blade.

"They tried to have you removed from the program entirely." The absence of venom in Giran's voice surprised Shepard. She'd expected Giran to mirror the terrifying level of venom Tashac was spitting all over the back of her mind. Maybe she'd better leave Javik to Garrus and Nihlus. Not even the Father of Light could manage the level of almost cannabinoid peace and goodwill it would take to offset the rage trapped inside Shepard's head.

"Javik," she said at last, her voice carefully emulating the aforementioned Father of Light, "Tashac saw everything inside your head and your heart. What she saw there wounded her; she described your joining as torture." Shepard threw up her hands. "The fact you wanted nothing to do with your children was a joy to her: a real, holding your breath and crossing your fingers, relief. If she didn't even trust you to be involved in raising your own children, how am I supposed to trust you with the security of my galaxy?"

Nihlus stepped up, subtly placing himself between Javik and Shepard, but instead of providing a wall of protection, his stance felt as though Nihlus meant to make himself the bad guy, allowing Shepard to remain the face of cooperation. A shrug rolled the Spectre's shoulders back, seeming to brace him as he asked, "What happens when the War Council makes a decision or assigns your prothean troops to an op you don't approve of? What if you don't approve of any of our decisions; could we trust you at our backs then?"

Javik back away a step, his hands twitching as if judging their reflexes and distance to cover. "You never intended to save my people. You're jealous children playing at war. I can't … won't allow you to finish what the reapers began fifty thousand cycles ago." Almost too quickly to see, his particle rifle appeared in his hands.

Shit! Shit! Shit! Note to self: Leave frozen protheans buried under the peas, flank steak, and deluxe pizza.

In her peripherals, Shepard saw both Garrus and Giran moving to stay on Javik's flanks. When Garrus looked to her, she shook her head—they needed to let Javik take the first shot—and activated her overclocked shields.

Holding her hands out away from her weapons, Shepard stepped toward the prothean. "What good are you to your people dead?" She stopped advancing when he raised his rifle. "I have no intention of harming those men and woman in stasis. If anything, I'd move them somewhere more secure to wait out the war. I'd like to make them a part of Archangel, wake them all up and bring them into the fold. Get the scientists integrated into the research department, get the soldiers training with our troops as brothers."

"You're the wild card here, Javik," Garrus said, closing up Javik's right flank. "If Tashac and Merol left a list of people they thought could step up and lead, we'll wake them up and see if they'll work with us. If they're more reasonable than you, if we can get stable, cooperative leadership for the remaining prothean people, we'll bring in the rest."

"But right now," Nihlus said, pushing in on the end of Garrus's statement, his tone hard, his subvocals clearly threatening, "your options are: I shoot you dead, or I shoot you somewhere crippling enough to put you down and after we treat you, you're put back in stasis."

The prothean commander scoffed, the sound so loaded with disgust and condescension it hit Shepard like a boxing glove to the gut. "You're primitives, barely out of your cradles, allowing the memories of the empire's two weakest apologists to guide you into a war you can't even begin to imagine." The gun lifted into high ready. "You should be on your knees begging me to wake my soldiers and lead you forward."

Shepard blocked Nihlus's next words with a raised hand, her eyes never leaving Javik. "That's your last word on it?"

The slight shift in the prothean's posture in the split second before he fired sent Shepard into a roll. She came out of it on one knee, her Mattock in her hands, and before Javik could adjust for her new position, she sent three bullets tearing through his shields and armour. Bright, crimson blossoms burst from his chest. Stars of blood created short-lived constellations in the air as he fell.

Oh shit. Shit, no. What the hell, Janey?

The world stopped. Shepard's breath roared in her ears, the tissue in her lungs crackling audibly as the oxygen flowed through into capillaries, then branching out, further and further, the blood roaring into her brain, the neurons firing, each a tiny nova, a sun dying then being born again in the next instant. And Javik's last bubble of breath hovered, clinging to his face as if terrified to let go and find out what happened next.

Heart hammering in her chest, sweat prickling on her skin, she allowed the moment to hold her, suspended, everything beyond her still, going nowhere while she listened.

This isn't the spiders, is it? No, it's not leviathan. The rachni queen, maybe? Amalair? Please …. I feel it. I know it. This isn't the way forward. If we start fighting within the ranks, it all leads to death. Tell me … show me the way forward.

And then music poured into her. A familiar, ethereal voice sang, a voice of such exquisite luminosity that it sank deep into the ground beneath her feet and stretched out into every corner of creation. Crystalline and razor-edged, the shards pierced Shepard through, lifting away the body weighing her down. Unlike her experience while escaping the Cerberus base, the rachni song sparked no fear or pain; it simply cradled her, warm waters washing around feet buried in silken sand.

"Altering input parameters to test viability. Accepting new data. Hypothesis uploaded to primary mainframe for analysis."

The computer from Thessia? Collectors? Had the claws of reaper indoctrination finally pierced the protective shell around her mind? Heart racing, she struggled to get loose. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bubble, the terrible red orb hovering above Javik's face. As she watched, it begin to shrink as if his body drew his last breath back in. The crimson stars dotting the air, slightly darker against his armour, collapsed back into the blossoms on his chest. Mournful song painted over Garrus's horrified gasp in shades of deep, muddy purple.

Wait. Song? Not reapers or leviathan: rachni. "Amalair?"

Shepard allowed the warm waters of the rachni queen's song to wash away the panic. "I know he can be reached. I rushed. I pushed too hard." She closed her eyes, and when she spoke, she reached out to the song laving her in its peace. "It's all so huge, so terrifying, and so impossible. What are the three of us supposed to do against the reapers if I can't even talk one prothean down?"

Laughter bubbled around her, thousands of voices, some large, some tiny and new.

'Sovereign towered in waves of corrupted song and sour taint, each note shattering fleets.' The song whispered in a thousand hues. 'Bringing harmony to the quarians and the geth stretched before you in poisoned shades of blood and hatred, an arid desert singing from torn, violet throats choked with blood.'

Shepard sighed, belying the smile that met the rachni queen's answer. "Sure, throw my victories in my face when I just want to feel sorry for myself." Another sigh. "Okay, fine. I'm not sure what this is … a hallucination or some rachni version of the jedi mind trick, but okay. I need something to reach the tiny piece of decency and hope …."

Return and discover the answers, genesis child.

The slightest shift in the prothean's posture sent Shepard into a roll. She came out of it on one knee, her Mattock cast aside, and before Javik could adjust for her new position, she shoved his gun aside with one hand. Her free hand gripped the back of his neck. Pulling him down to her level, she pressed her forehead along the ridge of his kepala, she clutched him close to her.

"Remember what you told me just after I took you out of stasis?" she whispered, pressing her mouth against his tympanic membrane. "You told me that you didn't return to help Tashac bring your children into the galaxy because of your shame." She paused to take a long, slow breath, relaxing her muscles without easing her grip on him. "What you were hurt her. In our sharing, I sensed your desire to know a different life … a life free of the hatred and terror that grew inside you until it poisoned every cell."

In the space of a half second and one hissing breath, Javik collapsed in her arms, his gun rattling as it hit the floor, his arms gripping her armour in desperate fists. "Do you know how to create this miracle?" he asked, his voice pressed as close to her ear as she remained to his.

"Maybe. Maybe I do, but it means letting go of your old baggage." She slapped the back of his neck gently and pulled away far enough to look into his eyes. "I want you to see something Tashac shared with me." She held out her hand palm up. "Will you look?"

Javik took her hand.

Brushing Tashac's kepala with his own, Merol smiled and said, "I remember Giran's birth. Do you remember that?" He chuckled and pressed his cheek against her neck. "I believe it angered her that I helped ease Attit into the air before her. The birth-matrons had never seen the like of those little hands pushing from you, Giran pulling herself free from your folds." He sighed and nuzzled the sensitive spot along the edge of her kepala where it plunged down toward her neck. "You always said, protheans were born fighting."

His eyes glistened. "I have spent more than sixty cycles at your side, the only place I can imagine finding happiness. I eased five lives from the care of your body into this galaxy, watched Lulyak deliver two more. Raised seven, beautiful children … loved them all as my own. Each one of them grew up fighting and died fighting, but because of you, they knew more than battle. They knew hope and how to cherish joy wherever they could find it. You taught them to fight for a better life, not just to kill the enemy."

"I have forgotten … allowed the darkness to steal far too much from my mind and heart." Tashac let out a soft sigh, her entire being relaxing into his hands as he stroked her neck and shoulders, thumbs dragging along the ridge of ligaments tying her shoulder into her neck and back. "I have always hated those antecessor-cursed statues on Ilos, their heads cast down, spines dragging so low. An entire race's defeat carved into stone … how my spirit railed against them. And now my spirit bears that same shape."

Merol's hands slipped lower, following the line of her spine. "I know that the Vanguard eats away at you, beautiful mother of my last children. Does it hurt you to fight it? Have you truly reached the end of your strength?"

"She never lost strength or hope," Javik said, his voice a thick croak, the voice of a man too long in the desert. He swallowed and licked his lips, pulling away from Shepard. "Tashac fought their corruption to her end, never bitter, never filled with rage."

Shepard nodded, holding his stare. "You can get there, I know the desire sits inside your heart, festering, pushing at the hate." She clapped her hand down on his shoulder. "Let's start with just a little trust. You don't have to trust everyone, not right away."

"Just you?" His reply managed to leave out the earlier acid-coated condescension.

"Just me." She released him and pushed up. Nihlus slipped a hand under her armpit, helping her up off the floor. "Thank you, haksaya cubenar, my knees are singing your praises for the assist." She frowned, looking around again, something digging in through her temples—almost like the spiders—pushing her to recognize something, but clean, not tainted.

Shepard rubbed her eyes, deja vu scratching deep into her ocular orbits and down her spine, nettles insisting something had happened. Ridiculous. She shook her head and rolled her shoulders.

Sweet baby Jesus, stop being a superstitious idiot and focus on what needs your attention.

"Kahri!" Garrus rushed in, grasping her hands. "Are you all right?" He snatched her in tight against his side. "For a split second, I thought you'd killed him."

"No, but I have the strangest feeling." She shook her head again and wrapped her arms around him, wallowing in his refuge, but just for a second or two.

"Weak apologists," Giran said, a deep rolling growl spiking the words strong enough to pull Shepard back, anchoring her in the moment. Still, the young officer's demeanour felt conciliatory rather than confrontational. "Do you call them so, because they objected to my being sent off to battle before my kepalar ridge closed? Because they protested when you took thousands of children out to battle and came back with a handful?"

Imbued with the wisdom and might of the gods, so righteous in her wrath, Tashac's daughter glided across the deck plating to look out over the Crucible. "Our empire died because a sheltered government clung with trembling hands to old dreams of power, unable to conceive of anything but the lies of glory upon which they were raised."

After long seconds of silence during which Shepard held her breath, afraid to shatter the moment, Giran nodded as if she'd made a decision.

"There may be caches of other sleeper pods spread around the galaxy," she said. "We discovered many similar bases of inusannon personnel. We did not find any alive, but it gave our leaders the inspiration to create our own as well as spurring them to improve the technology. They thought to send millions of our best and most storied into stasis to wait out the war."

Something poked at Shepard, and she nodded. "We've found four bases so far, but it's a hell of a huge galaxy."

"I need some time to research other likely locations." Giran glanced at the chiastyllian gauntlet around Shepard's arm. "Would they know where my people are hidden?" She stepped closer, crowding into the captain's personal space. "They have existed as long as the reapers, they must know much."

Shepard nodded absently, her mind chasing the itch that had poked at her the moment before. "I'm sure they'll offer whatever help they can." She sent a request to the gauntlet, the chia releasing her arm, and then passed it over to Giran. Pacing to the railing, Shepard leaned over, butting up next to Wrex.

"Take Javik and Miranda back to the Ypres, please," she said, loud enough for the rest of the group to hear. "They can settle back into their quarters while I finish up here."

Wrex turned to exclude the others. "Why me?"

Shepard grinned and cocked one eyebrow. "You're an unknown to both. Don't be afraid to be intimidating." A wink sent him on his way, a wide grin on his face.

Once a cowed Javik and a pinched-faced Miranda allowed Wrex to herd them toward the elevator, Shepard returned to her torins and Giran. They were discussing sites of other prothean caches with the chia, so she waited until they all paused and turned to look at her.

Letting the silence last long enough for the previous topic to drift away, leaving the air clean, she cleared her throat and looked to Giran. "You said your people got the idea for putting your people in stasis from the inusannon? And you improved upon their technology?" She crossed her arms, both haste and necessity pushing her toward the prothean contingent. "The beacons too? How much did you learn about what came before you?"

"Yes, we discovered beacons and the stasis cells, but also weapon schematics and a great deal more." Giran's eyes focused on Shepard with a sudden intensity. It burned hot enough to make the captain think some very important link had clicked into place.

"The prothean homeworld boasted a wealth of ruins traced back to a couple of ancient races," Giran continued. "The most obvious one was the inusannon, but traces of another race lay beneath their layer." She wrung her hands, her entire body becoming more charged by the second.

Shepard hoped it didn't result in some sort of detonation. They'd suffered enough of those for one day.

Giran froze, her entire body snapping dead straight and dead still. "What my antecessors discovered accelerated our evolution and technology from very early in our development as a species." She swallowed hard, her expression dropping to one so stricken that Shepard reached out to grip her shoulder. Where had all the excitement gone? What had the takun realized?

Giran backed up a couple of steps, tugging her shoulder free, and turned to her people. "Go fetch the information we copied for Captain Shepard." When only one moved to follow the order, she waved them all off. "All of you. Check the computers to be sure Commander Javik didn't leave any stray code behind. Full infiltration protocols."

Shepard leaned on one hip, patient but eager, as she waited for Giran to reveal her revelation. What if humanity evolved on Mars, the ruins there discovered centuries—maybe even millennia—earlier? How far out into the stars would they have pushed? How different would the galaxy be? How far ahead would they be in their preparation for the reapers?

She chuffed, the grunt punching up her throat. Look how long the asari had possessed prothean tech and how little they'd done with it. Judging by what she knew from Tashac and Javik, the protheans groomed the asari starting early on … where were all the warnings about the reapers? Why hadn't the asari been building instead of embracing eternity for the last several thousand years?

So, yeah … maybe all the knowledge the protheans possessed wouldn't have changed a single Enkindler-blessed thing. The protheans had been caught with their pants and undies tangled around their ankles despite their discoveries. They'd taken all their advanced knowledge and used it to subjugate the galaxy rather than uplifting it. Could she claim humanity would have done any better?

"Captain?" Giran's voice grabbed Shepard by the giblets and dragged her back onto the catwalk.

Shepard nodded, blinking away the thoughtful fog. "Sorry … wandered off there. Go ahead. You looked like you realized something important."

The prothean paced to the railing and back a couple of times, so obviously trying to puzzle through something that Shepard just left her to pace in silence. After nearly five minutes, Giran stopped. Facing Shepard, she said, "I think my people knew about the reapers before they came through the Citadel. What I saw in my parents' memories … the secrets … the lies … all the times they worried about projects launched by the regulikar and senarium …."

"It was your government trying to prepare for the reapers in secret," Shepard said, sparing Giran the completion of her thought.

"And they enslaved the entire galaxy to do so." Squaring her shoulders, Giran looked down at the gauntlet gleaming around her wrist. "You will help me discover where my people are hidden?" she asked the chia.

"We will." A trickle of sparking light shimmered down the length of the chiastyllian construct.

Giran met Shepard's gaze with one of pure, dear sweet baby Jesus, Enkindler-forged steel. "I will assume command of my people, Captain, and on their behalf, I swear every ounce of knowledge, every piece of technology, and every drop of our blood to your cause." Her eyes looked up toward the surface. "All I ask is when the battle ends, my people are allowed to settle somewhere and discover the one, elusive thing we've never experienced: peace."

Awed into silence, Shepard took the prothean's hands between her own. "You have my word, Giran." She smiled and closed her eyes, rolling them a little at the wash of love and respect flowing from behind Tashac's door. She opened them and nodded toward the elevator. "Come on, I'll get you in touch with the people already searching."

When they stopped to wait for the elevator to return to their floor, she grinned at the prothean's new commander. "Care to visit the Citadel?"

(Thanks for reading and saying howdy. I appreciate your support tons and tons. *hugs and muffins*)