A/N: Sorry about the delay. Here it is. The final chapter. I hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you for reading and see you next time! :-)
Capital city of the prothean empire, Elerise
Shepard and Liara spent only three days on Elerise before Normandy headed back home. Still, it was probably the most interesting three days of their lives.
After undergoing all the official greetings and other ceremonies, the Elerisians told them the full version of the story that started 50 000 years ago…
As a last bid for survival, a group of scientists from the Asari Uplift Project devised an active cloaking device. Unlike Normandy's silent running, it was able to hide them from all scanners, including those used by the reapers.
Sadly, by that point, the prothean empire was already shattered. Its fleets were gone and the remaining colony worlds crumbling as they became infiltrated by indoctrinated agents.
The few surviving groups could no longer trust each other. The scientists realized that involving anyone else in their plan was too risky and so they decided to act on their own.
A distant star system was selected to serve as a secret evacuation site. A location so inaccessible that the reapers or the other (potentially indoctrinated) protheans would never think to look for them there.
Two hundred thousand colonists, along with 80 000 asari subjects from the project, boarded their last remaining ships and journeyed there. Using the new cloaking devices, the ships passed unnoticed through enemy's territory and reached the planet in question.
There, they built the last bastion of prothean civilization and silently waited while the reapers murdered everyone else.
Many wanted to help their remaining brethren by sharing the cloaking technology, but they simply could not afford to take the risk. If it were to fall into enemy's hands, they could easily devise a countermeasure, rendering the technology useless. The reapers were nothing if not adaptive.
And so they watched with sorrow as the machines eradicated all signs of advanced life from the galaxy…
After killing everyone they could find, the reapers did one last sweep of the galaxy to look for any survivors.
Thanks to several cloaked spy-drones carefully hidden in the Serpent Nebula, the Elerisians had an advanced warning when one of the reaper capital ships finally headed into their system.
They employed the cloaking device to hide all signs of their presence. This was the pivotal moment of their history. Should the reaper detect them, they were dead…
The sentient machine methodically scanned all planets of their star system. When it arrived at Elerise, half a million souls stood with bated breaths.
They almost thought that it was over when the reaper suddenly focused the scans on the exact area where they were hiding…
But then it moved on.
It worked.
Shepard and the others were jointly gasping at the next part of the story which came in the form of 50 000 years old video.
On it, they saw thousands of reapers while evacuating through the Citadel relay. The spy-probes in Serpent Nebula recorded an endless stream of black ships passing through, leaving for the dark space.
It was time of great joy on Elerise. A moment they have been waiting for. Their plan was to reclaim the stars and rebuild the empire once the enemy was gone.
But something happened that put a serious hamper on that plan.
Shepard cringed when she saw Sovereign again. The one reaper remained behind even after the others left for dark space. It deactivated the Citadel relay behind them and shutdown the station's power. Afterwards, it departed to an unknown location.
That left Elerisians with a dilemma. They could not safely reclaim the stars with a reaper still lurking about. They no longer had the ability to destroy even one reaper and even if they did, the machine would probably just call back its friends from the dark space…
This was the first time the Elerisians had to consider the possibility of remaining on their refugee world on more permanent basis. Up until then, their plan has always been to leave once the danger was gone… but that might no longer be possible.
It was a horrible realization, but they did not get to ponder it for long before another unexpected thing happened.
Few months after the reapers left, their spy-probes detected an active distress beacon from the Citadel…
This was a total mystery to them as no ship came near the station since the reapers left. Eventually, they sent a rescue team inside a cloaked shuttle to carefully investigate. Many feared it might be a trap from the reapers.
But to their utter shock, the search team discovered 12 living protheans aboard the Citadel!
The 12 protheans were even more shocked that someone actually came for them.
They identified themselves as the only survivors from the Ilos project. Top scientists who travelled to the Citadel using custom-build mass relay.
Their mission was to sabotage the station and prevent the reapers from ever returning. With no way off the station and limited supplies, they expected a quick death.
They only activated their short-range distress beacons as a formality.
Their surprise was immense when help actually came! After thoroughly confirming their story, all survivors were evacuated to Elerise.
Liara shed a tear at this point. She knew parts of that story from talking to Vigil on Ilos. By blocking the Citadel, the survivors from Ilos made a vital contribution in the fight against reapers.
But like the prothean VI, Liara feared that after completing their mission, they suffered a gruesome death on the deserted space station.
To know that these heroes not only survived but got to spend the rest of their days among their people was truly heartwarming…
After consulting with the Ilos survivors, the Elerisians had to come up with a new plan.
The Citadel relay was sabotaged, but Sovereign was at large. They knew it could one day become a deadly threat for the next cycle. They also suspected that there may be even more reaper agents left within the galaxy.
Therefore, they returned to the idea that the prothean empire once entertained but never implemented – a super-weapon capable of destroying all reapers at once.
The protheans were unsure whether the Crucible could reach the reapers in the dark space, but that was only secondary.
Their primary goal was to eliminate all remaining reaper presence within the galaxy. Once the imminent danger was eliminated, they could always use the weapon again to defend the galaxy against any attack from the outside.
And so the construction started.
Since they did not dare to venture far beyond the boundaries of their star system, it took over thousand years and countless generations of Elerisians before the weapon was build.
But all their work was ultimately for naught for they underestimated the necessity of controlling the Crucible's energy output.
When they activated the weapon, instead of sending energy wave through the entire relay network as it was supposed to, it irradiated their own star system…
By the time the Crucible was fired, the society on Elerise was very much different from the one that arrived there in the first place.
There were still two sentient species on Elerise, but only one nation.
After 1500 years, all the asari who were originally taken from Thessia were gone. Their descendants were not like their mothers.
For starters, the protheans did further genetic therapy on the asari.
They succeeded in implanting them with rudimentary version of the prothean "touch-ability". They also improved their eezo metabolism, allowing them to better survive in environment that was not as rich with the element as their homeworld.
But the most important difference was familial – virtually all of the second and third generation asari had prothean fathers, were raised as protheans, and thought of themselves as such.
It was the natural outcome of the situation.
Even back then, the asari were sensual and sexually curious. Due to evolution, they also instinctively desired the best individuals as parents for their daughters. Therefore, when an opportunity presented itself to mate with their goddesses, they all took it.
The protheans were so much more advanced, but even they were not immune to asari's charms.
Increasingly, both male and female protheans would embrace the daughters of Thessia as their lovers and wives.
Eventually, this could have become a problem for the protheans as the coupling with asari produced only asari children.
However, the wiser among them saw just how well such asari children functioned in their society. They realized that the asari's unique reproduction method was the best way to uplift them once and for all.
But they needed to handle it right. Laws were enforced so that all those mating with asari had to have a progeny of their own species as well.
This created an interesting family dynamics where a prothean couple would live with one or more asari. All their children, asari or prothean, would grow up as siblings.
Thus, the colonists utterly succeeded in their original project. Using love and parenthood, the asari were uplifted to a prothean level of culture and development within one generation!
By the time of the crucible activation, both species were flourishing on Elerise and numbered in millions. But sadly, their idyllic existence was about to change…
The dark energy radiation that flooded Elerise and its star system had a different effect on the two species.
On molecular level, the asari genes are extremely resilient to damage. This is a reason/consequence of their natural longevity and of their reproduction method. To withstand the effects of the meld, the genetic material in asari ovum had to be well protected from excessive irradiation.
Shepard remembered this fact from her biology lessons at the academy. Back then, her teacher jokingly compared the asari's genetic resilience to the Deinococcus Radiodurans – terrestrial bacteria that sometimes grew inside ship's eezo cores.
The asari on Elerise were exposed to the misfiring Crucible like everyone else. But thanks to their biology, they were able to use medical and technological means to recover.
On the other hand, the Javik's species (referred to as ancient ones by contemporary Elerisians) was not so lucky.
Those who survived the initial radiation blast were left with genetic damage and tumors. And while their advanced medical technology was able to repair most of the damage, there was one thing they could not fix – sterility.
The persistent radiation levels rendered both sexes sterile on the genetic level.
The ideal solution for the protheans would be to leave Elerise, but the relay was damaged in a highly unusual way.
It seemingly reported normal operations, but every probe they'd sent through would be immediately destroyed.
They could not get out of their star system.
As their numbers dwindled, the protheans tried various desperate means to keep themselves alive, including cloning. However, the scarcity of undamaged genetic material meant that even this plan ultimately failed. The last of the ancient ones died out exactly 48 014 years ago.
The original protheans were gone, but their culture and society lived on. The asari on Elerise still saw themselves as protheans and proudly carried forward the legacy of their fathers…
Unfortunately, they were unable to fix the mass relay and could not get out of the galactic core by any other means.
Eventually, they also lost all means of monitoring or communicating with the outside galaxy.
Their last functioning spy-probe in Serpent Nebula failed and self-destructed about 6 thousand years before the asari from Thessia arrived at the Citadel…
Naturally, Javik was not happy that his species died out on Elerise and that the asari took over the empire. He voiced his displeasure, but the other protheans were unimpressed.
They proceeded to give him a very detailed lecture on the subject, but the gist of it was this:
"Well, tough luck. That's evolution for you, baby. We were strong and you were weak… we lived and you died"
Shepard would almost feel offended for him. But as she remembered, Javik told her those exact same ideas during the reaper war. It was fascinating to watch him squirm as every one of his annoying rants was suddenly turned against him.
In fact, the more she talked with the people of Elerise, the more she saw subtle character similarities between them and Javik. Despite their biology, she could no longer see them as asari.
Liara agreed with that assessment. After spending single day among them, she had to admit that the Elerisians were no longer her people. The instinctive connection the asari felt towards one another was simply not present with them.
Among the asari, consensus was usually achieved through empathy and subtle manipulation.
The Elerisians were, on the other hand, opinionated, argumentative and sometimes, outright obnoxious.
The prothean cultural assimilation was absolute. Biologically, they were like Liara, but everything else was different. From the day of their birth, the Elerisians lived differently than their cousins on Thessia.
They all had prothean sounding names. Their language evolved mostly from prothean, but they also used some words that Liara believed came from ancient asari.
They celebrated different holidays and worshipped different deities. Everything, including their fashion was markedly different from anything the asari had.
The climacteric stages of maiden, matron and matriarch were somewhat blurred with the Elerisians.
For instance, they typically had the first child when they were about a century old, much sooner than the asari. Consequently, their education system was speedier and their youngsters would start to work earlier than Liara's people.
By the age most asari were just starting independent life, the Elerisians were already raising family.
"Job right after school, children early… sounds familiar?" Shepard teased her.
Liara smiled. Her life choices always set her apart from her asari peers, but as it turned out, she would make a fine prothean!
Over the millennia, the Elerisians often wondered what happened to the original planet of their mothers and whether its people still existed.
Therefore, Liara was as much a storyteller to them as they were to her. Thankfully, Liara knew the asari history very well and was able to answer all their questions.
Curiously, the Elerisians were very baffled by the fact that Liara did not consider herself a prothean. More so than Liara was by the opposite.
Still, all of them were very eager to hear about the galaxy and what else their cousins from Thessia accomplished.
They had a 50 000 years of catching up to do. Liara imagined that similar sentiment would be felt on the asari worlds…
To facilitate the possibility of cultural exchange, the Exarch of the Prothean Empire, Ilerie Khasan, used the Normandy's QEC to communicate with councilor Tevos.
The councilor was shocked and amazed to learn that the protheans of Elerise were biologically asari now. News like that was going to shake the galaxy and they quickly agreed that it would be best to arrange the details of the official first contact in advance.
They also discussed the future relationship between the Citadel races and the Prothean Empire, now that it could once again join the galactic community.
The first issue would be to repair the system's mass relay.
It took some convincing to allow the Elerisians to let the Citadel and geth teams do it.
Apparently, the prothean's hatred of the synthetics was alive and well among them. Their laws required that all such machines be immediately destroyed.
When the Exarch learned of Chiktikka, she was close to having the Normandy stormed by her troops.
She only relented when Shepard told them the assistance of the geth was essential for defeating the reapers.
Seeing the explosive situation, Tali felt it was her duty to defuse it. The quarian narrated the history between the quarians and the geth, from their creation until this point.
Tali's species had a reason to hate the synthetics more than anyone in the galaxy. And yet in the end, they managed to let go. And it was good that they did or else the galaxy might have ended up paying the price.
Getting both quarians and geth to join the alliance against reapers was one of the key moments of war. The quarians had enough ships capable of evacuating entire star systems within hours. Billions of lives would have been lost without them.
And after the reapers tried to enslave their collective intelligence, the geth threw literally everything they had against the genocidal machines. Their sheer force even forced the reapers into defensive for a while.
Both the quarian and geth engineers helped to build the Crucible and were half the reason it worked as well as it did.
Finally, when Liara told them the latest theory of the asari anthropologists, the Exarch was convinced…
The theory held that the reapers did not consider the possibility of organics and the machines working together. For untold eons, their entire mission was built on the premise that organics and synthetics cannot live in peace. That one must always destroy the other. And perhaps in all the past cycles, that was the case.
But when the quarians and the geth broke that pattern, they threw a monkey wrench into reaper's plans. Something, that never before even entered their considerations, somehow happened… and it led to their destruction.
All because the quarians were willing to let go of hate and make peace with their creations…
Seeing some painful parallels from their own history, the Elerisian leadership was suddenly unwilling to reignite that old hatred either…
But there was still the matter of the law.
To appease the people, the Exarch issued a special degree. It exempted all synthetics that were 'members of the military alliance that defeated the reapers'.
The degree was termed in this exact way so the Elerisian public would eventually be willing to accept it.
It would be some time before the Elerisians would fully stomach down the concept of synthetic life, but at least they were no longer going to invade Rannoch either…
With the relay repaired, Tevos had an immediate concern about the prothean's imperialistic tendencies.
Liara's book revealed them as ruthless conquerors. She needed to know if that was still the case.
When questioned, the Exarch admitted that many within the empire would wish to reclaim everything that was lost. However, she also stressed that they were unwilling to spill the blood of their cousins to do that.
Despite their ancient sundering, they considered their relatives on Thessia to be protheans as well.
And seeing as the asari were the most powerful species in the galaxy anyway, they were willing to accept the status quo.
In the practical sense, waging any kind of war was not possible for the Elerise and would not be for a very long time. They were more than capable to protect their own borders, but did not have enough ships to go beyond that.
The resources located within the Elerise system were all they had to work with for thousands of years. And building the Crucible super-weapon drained much of them.
As a result, the Elerisians had to adopt very efficient and sustainable society model to survive.
They got most of their energy from the system's star and possessed a very advanced mass fabrication technology. All materials were recycled.
However, there was one resource that could not be replicated and was always an issue for them – element zero.
After depleting the obvious sources in their system, they had to rely on mining the surrounding areas. FTL travel was difficult in galactic core, but using trial and error approach with unmanned probes, the Elerisians charted the Oort cloud of their star system. This allowed them to mine the asteroids and comets it contained.
Still, getting eezo remained exceptionally difficult and left Elerisians permanently starved for the element… literally, as the biotic population needed it in their diet.
At one point, they even had to cap their population growth. They still needed to effectively mask their presence on the surface if necessary and their element zero supplies did not allow them to extend the cloaking device range any further.
Now, had somebody else rather than the asari become the dominant race of this cycle, the Elerisians would have been in a difficult position.
Fortunately for them, their rich and powerful cousins from Thessia genuinely wanted to help them.
A program of economic assistance was soon drafted between Thessia and Elerise. To painlessly facilitate their entry into the galactic economy, the asari agreed to buy out any bonds issued by the Elerisian government.
Naturally, there were many disputes between the Citadel races and the newly rediscovered Prothean Empire. Choosing to maintain its independence, the Elerise never became a member state of the Citadel.
But for the most part, both sides enjoyed an amicable relationship for many years to come…
Javik's disappointment was obvious. While the prothean culture and the Empire he missed so much were still alive, his species was dead. And as was usual for him, he would complain about it…
"If I wanted this, I could have just stayed on Thessia… it's like asari are playing a theatre at being prothean," he told Liara after first seeing who the Elerisians really were.
Yes. Javik was definitely not happy among his fellow protheans.
As for the Elerisians, their reaction was more mixed.
When Liara learned their identity and history, she wondered how they would think of Javik. Would he be a god to them like the protheans were to the ancient asari? Or would they see him as a genetic fossil… a 'primitive' as Javik liked to call the races of this cycle.
In the end, it was something between the two options. Many on Elerise were amazed that an ancient was once again walking among them.
But at the same time, they were definitely not going to take any of his crap. These prothean-asari saw themselves entitled to their imperial heritage just as much as Javik did.
Therefore, when he started putting them down, they aggressively retorted with insults of their own. Some of them were so bellicose that it left Javik speechless and gaping in anger.
Even though it was interesting to see these people give Javik the taste of his own medicine, Shepard and Liara tried to act as mediators so things wouldn't escalate.
But they couldn't always be there…
The first day, the tension between them peaked when Exarch Khasan reminded Javik that he was still a soldier of the imperial army and therefore subject to her orders. She then commanded that he swore an oath of fealty to her.
When he blatantly refused, she told him that disobeying a direct order in times of war was punishable by death within the Empire.
Fortunately for Javik, the war officially ended a day ago and so she would not have him executed.
Javik was about to comment on what a weak leader she was, but before he could finish, she already ordered her guards to seize him.
As a punishment for disobeying orders, she ordered that he be publically humiliated and punished.
Just as was prescribed by the prothean law… he was going to be whipped in front of the people at the gates of the imperial palace.
The rest of the Normandy's crew did not witness this particular altercation.
When Shepard arrived at the imperial palace, Javik's punishment was already carried out.
The human spectre was worried for him and more than a little angry with the Elerisians for what she perceived as barbaric acts.
She expected Javik would want to leave the planet immediately, but instead something totally unexpected happened. She saw him enter with two asari/protheans flanking him and helping him to walk.
"Shepard… I was wrong," he mumbled over the pain before smiling for first time in decades.
"It seems that they learned something from us after all…" he said with laughter even as his escort pushed him into his prison cell and locked the bars behind him.
The Normandy was just about leave Elerise and Liara went to see Javik for the last time.
Fortunately, the last prothean no longer occupied a prison cell. After spending night there, the Exarch came to him the next day and offered him one last chance.
This time, Javik swore his loyalty to her and was released.
Liara found him inside his room, standing near the window and looking on the bustling city outside.
"Liara," he barely acknowledged her presence before looking out to the city again.
"Javik… we are about to leave," she told him as she joined him at the window. "Are you sure you do not want to come with us?"
Liara thought that he would take his first chance to leave, but two days later, Javik was forced to admit that he may have misjudged the people of this planet.
Despite the initial animosity between them and the unfortunate incident with him being publically flogged, he came to feel more at home on Elerise than anywhere else in the galaxy.
"Yes… this is where I belong," he told Liara. "I still think they are not my people… but perhaps they are close enough."
"I am glad to hear it," Liara smiled at him.
Javik was the only one from the Normandy who could never find his place in the post-war galaxy. Perhaps he would find it here.
She heard that the Elerisian scientists already contacted him about the possibility of reintroducing the ancient genes into their population.
Hopefully, they would eventually be able to restore his species by cloning.
Failing that, Liara suspected that Javik was about to become a father to great many asari daughters. From what she overheard during their stay, a chance for melding with an ancient was an enticing prospect for many Elerisians…
"I never thanked you for trying to bargain with them when they captured us… it was very nice," she then told him, thanking him for trying to save her earlier.
"No gratitude is necessary. It was merely a ruse… I knew that they would see me as a greater threat," Javik quickly explained to her.
"If they let you go, you could then get help for me… a creative tactics. Nothing more."
Liara stared at him in shock before seeing right through his game. "Of course… what was I thinking," she smirked at his explanation. She patted him on his back before turning to leave the room.
"Liara, wait!" he called to her, making her pause and turn. "I also wanted to thank you…" he began to say before fidgeting at the words.
"I wanted to thank you for helping me find this place…" he said in uncomfortable tone. "I suspect that I could never find all this without your help," he gestured at the living prothean city outside. "I won't forget it."
Liara nodded at him and smiled.
"Anytime, Javik."
The end.