The Ghosts of the Past
Liara smiled tilting her head back, allowing the Thessian sun's comforting light to soak into her pale blue skin.
The warmth of Parnitha shining upon her face was something she didn't quite realize just how much she had missed. Nor was it truly something she ever thought she would have taken for granted. The alien sunlight from across the countless strange worlds that she visited in her life paled in comparison to the radiant beauty of her homeworld's star.
It's so peaceful here…, she mused quietly to herself while comfortably sitting alone on a familiar, sandy beach. Playfully, she plunged her hands and feet deeper into the sand, savoring the warm sensation as the smooth grains filtered in between her fingers and toes.
Flaring her nostrils and taking a deep breath, Liara inhaled all that the calm, sea air had to offer. The familiar smell of salt intermingling with the fragrant aroma of fresh flowers drifted lazily in the air, and her tired body relaxed as she breathed in all the familiar scents. The scents of home.
Armali.
She remembered it well. Her childhood home where she had lived with her mother, Benezia. An immense, peaceful city whose beauty was unmatched by any other in asari space. A city filled with an array of artists and scholars who brought science and art together to craft some of the most dazzling expressions of culture and technology that would inspire minds, asari and alien alike, across the galaxy.
But unlike most other asari, Liara cared little for what dwelled within the city proper. Her heart was drawn to its outskirts. To the countryside. To the places others cared little to tread. In her youth, she used to dig up the soil in the parks, inadvertently ruining the meticulously planned landscapes that gracefully flowed throughout the city, complementing the sensual curves of asari architecture. Even as a child, her young mind burned with curiosity, constantly wondering about what ancient, hidden secrets might be lurking underneath the surface.
But for now, she was just content to sit upon the sand, staring out into the rolling azure sea that wrapped around the city. The sound of the water playfully dancing upon the shore put her mind in a state of ease she hadn't felt in ages.
There was no worry here. No urgent missives from her operatives across the galaxy. No burning questions that needed answering. Only peace. Only contentment.
Liara chuckled softly to herself, foolishly wondering if she could stay here forever. To leave everything that had plagued her behind, and simply exist here. Where life was simple.
After a while of simply soaking in everything that the beach of her former home had to offer, she heard an unusual splash in the surf that stole her attention. Looking further along the beach, she was surprised to discover that she was no longer alone. Someone else had joined her. Or perhaps, she wondered, was with her all along and she only now just realized it.
The glare of the sun made it nearly impossible for her to see this strange person's face.
Letting the sand fall from between her fingers, Liara reached a hand up to block the light of the setting sun, hoping to get a better glimpse of her unknown companion.
But a sudden and unwelcome noise shattered her peace, causing the beach and the stranger to disappear from her consciousness.
Liara's eyes immediately sprang open, returning her to the couch in the starboard observation deck of the Normandy, where all she could see now was the familiar cold, gray bulkhead above the sofa she had been resting on, along with a bobbing white drone hovering brightly over her tired eyes.
"Good morning, Shadow Broker!" chimed the polite yet grating voice that had so carelessly broken her pleasant dream. "Would you like me to see if breakfast is available, Shadow Broker?"
Liara groaned as she groggily reached up to rub the sleep from her eyes.
For the last few days she had sequestered herself aboard the Normandy, putting the finishing touches on fixing her equipment so that she could bring her shadow network back online while the ship was in drydock for repairs. Ever since she had returned to the Sol system, Liara had worked tirelessly to try and find a secure extranet connection to any one of her operatives throughout the galaxy. But what few comm buoys that still existed within the cluster were working at max capacity, meaning all load times were hellishly slow.
"No, Glyph," she sighed, angrily waving off the drone that was hovering expectantly over her. "And I've told you already. Don't call me 'Shadow Broker.' Call me 'Dr. Tsoni.'"
"Of course… Dr. Shadow Broker!" chirped the white drone, now flickering erratically as if struggling to process her request.
Liara groaned again in annoyance, disappointed that her attempt to repair the malfunctioning drone had apparently failed.
Maybe I'll just see if someone else can take a look at it… she thought quietly to herself in defeat.
Remembering how she had wound up on the couch in the first place, her eyes went to the small datapad still sitting precariously close to the edge of the couch where it had slipped from her grasp as she slept.
She sighed looking down at it. Liara hadn't intended to fall asleep reading the various reports sent to her by Admiral Hackett, but she wasn't surprised it happened either.
While she found the data on the Crucible and its mysterious capabilities utterly fascinating, she ended up finding it difficult to get through them. It wasn't the length or the technical jargon that bothered her. In fact, she loved reading through expansive dissertations about ancient cultures and their technologies in her free time.
But these last few days proved to be… distracting.
With everything that had happened, seeing the damage to the Citadel, along with the difficulty reestablishing communications outside the system, it was becoming harder for her to focus on certain tasks. Whenever she found her mind wandering, she tried her best to steer it back on track, but she wasn't always successful.
Now proved to be no different.
Liara was eager to resume studying the reports, but she couldn't help thinking about her dream. It wasn't the first time she had it these last few nights. Every time she managed to finally get some sleep she found herself back in Armali.
She frowned as she dwelt on it, wondering bitterly why her subconscious seemed so insistent upon bringing her back to that beach on the outskirts of her old home. Every time she thought about Armali, her thoughts would inevitably turn sour.
When the Reapers finally attacked Thessia, they came in force. She had seen the destruction with her own eyes. The beautiful world of her birth, with its ancient cities and cultures, was practically obliterated in a matter of days under an unceasing rain of plasma fire.
Armali was gone.
That beach that her mind was so fond of retreating to likely no longer existed. Probably nothing more than a smoldering hellscape by now. Its soft and inviting sand converted to a desolate wasteland devoid of any of its natural beauty.
She found herself hating that dream. While she was in it, she was happier than she could remember being for the longest time. But every morning when she woke, the pain of Thessia's fall would invariably outdo any relief the dream may have brought her.
But there was one other thing about the dream that disturbed Liara more than the destruction of Armali.
The stranger…
Liara banished the thought almost as quickly as it surfaced. She had no interest in considering what that might mean. Especially now.
"Have there been any messages for me? Has there been any word from Feron?" she asked the drone, its endlessly rotating form still hovering expectancy over her.
The drone paused for a moment and flickered faintly, eliciting a concerned look from Liara.
"Of course, Dr. Shadow Broker! Playing March of the Krogan as you requested!" In an instant before Liara could properly react, the flickering drone started blaring classical music so loud that she had to cover her ears.
"Goddess!" she yelped in angry surprise before quickly slamming the shut off command in her omni-tool to dismiss the crazed drone. Glyph sputtered awkwardly before vanishing into thin air.
"Why is it always that song…" she grumbled, bringing her hands to rub her now throbbing temples.
After all the time since the Crucible fired, Liara was still unsure as to what was wrong with Glyph. As far as she was aware, most simple VI's seemed completely unaffected by the Crucibles blast wave, with only the most advanced ones, like Glyph, suffering from some sort of malfunction.
Liara couldn't figure out if the problems stemmed from some kind of hardware failure due to the energy from the Crucible's blast wave, or if the Crucible somehow managed to corrupt logic processes within the VI's own unique neural interface. It tired her already overworked brain trying to understand the problem, so she opted to attempt something simple at first.
Liara tried rebuilding it using old data and memory from a backup storage device, which seemed to alleviate some of its problems, such as sometimes blaring loud music in her ears, but much to Liara's growing frustration, her fix didn't seem to last.
"You waste your time with that thing."
Liara's eyes immediately sprang open in sudden alarm hearing an unexpected voice. Perking her head up and looking to the far side of the room, Liara was greeted with the sight of a proud prothean warrior, standing like a statue with his back to her while staring out the wide viewport window.
Liara scowled looking over to him, silently wondering how long Javik had been standing there in the observation deck without her knowing.
"Being broken doesn't automatically make something worthless, Javik," she scolded. "Glyph has been extremely helpful to me. It would be a shame to simply abandon it without trying something first."
"Sentiment, asari. Nothing more. It is merely a machine. A machine that can no longer fulfill its purpose. Dispose of it," he continued, his voice laced with unmasked contempt for the little drone.
Liara rolled her eyes at him, not wanting to get drawn into another argument about the validity of synthetic life with the prothean.
"I suppose sentiment was another thing protheans had 'Little use for in the empire?'" she asked in a subtly mocking tone.
"Sentiment was a liability in my cycle," Javik answered simply, refusing to rise to Liara's obvious bait. "Sentiment for the world of one's birth, wasted ships and lives in unwinnable battles. Sentiment for one's own soldiers, could lead a commander to order a retreat, when they should have attacked. Sentiment has no place in war, asari."
Liara looked at him skeptically. "The war is over, Javik. I think there is some room for sentiment in this cycle now."
Javik shrugged. "We shall see."
Liara shook her head in annoyance. "What are you even doing in here, Javik? Are you so bored that you have nothing better to do than pester me?"
"Only because you make it so easy," he replied with a sly grin.
Liara scowled at him again, eliciting a short laugh from the prothean.
"No," he finally admitted, dropping his smirk. "I grow tired of the humans. It seems they have nothing better to do other than to stare and ask pointless questions."
Liara figured he was referring to the many technicians who were now methodically working their way through the ship trying to get all essential systems fully back online. She understood his frustration. To the people of the milky way, Javik was an oddity. Most had grown up believing that the protheans were extinct. So to see a live one wandering around the ship was undoubtedly going to pique someone's interest.
Even Liara wasn't exactly thrilled about the sheer amount of new people wandering about the ship. She had kindly asked Ashley to try and keep the technicians out of her room as much as possible, worried that they may end up damaging her exotic, and rather expensive, communication equipment. Or worse, like finding something incriminating linking her to being the infamous Shadow Broker. Only a handful of people knew about her secret, and she intended to keep it that way.
"Have you tried speaking to Ashley Williams?" offered Liara. "Perhaps she can tell the repair teams to give you space."
"I didn't have to," he replied grimmly. "She came to me."
"What happened?"
"One of the humans making repairs in my quarters insisted on taking a picture of me to show his friends. I insisted on tossing him, and his friends, out an airlock. The human, and the lieutenant commander, did not take kindly to my suggestion."
This time Liara smiled and laughed, silently savoring the idea that the prothean had managed to find a way to force Ashley to send the proud warrior away. Javik ignored her, opting to return his focus back to the viewport window.
A subtle chirp from her omni-tool stole Liara's attention, and her eyes instantly lit up when she saw that her message inbox had finally updated with a myriad of new messages from outside the system.
She eagerly combed through them. Many of them were from operatives spread out around the galaxy. Most were simple status reports indicating that they were still alive and active. She scanned the names of the senders carefully, looking for one in particular. Her heart sank when she realized Feron's name wasn't among them.
Out of all her agents operating throughout the galaxy, Feron was the most dependable. Not only did he know his way around the galaxy and its many dark corners, but he was also a loyal friend.
Liara was immensely grateful for Feron. Even after everything he had suffered at the hands of the previous broker, he stayed by her side, helping her retain control of her new information empire that they had both fought to topple. Without him Liara doubted she would've been able to handle it on her own.
And now he was missing. The last she had heard from him was only a day or so before the battle of Earth. Feron, along with one of her more elite wetwork teams, went to Illium in an attempt to extract one of her informants that had been trapped by Reaper forces. She had yet to hear back.
Dammit, Feron… Where are you?
Liara sighed looking up from her datapad. Javik was still staring out the window. All four of his exotic yellow eyes were looking disapprovingly out upon the other ships stationed in the adjacent docking bays on the Citadel. Various ships; human, turian, asari were all in various states of disrepair, and each one was alight with a small army of workers and their tools busily at work.
Liara had made it no secret in the past about how disappointed she had become with the Protheans. She had spent most of her relatively short life studying the extinct race. Jumping from digsite to digsite, trying to learn every little detail or secret about them that she could find until she was considered to be the galaxy's foremost expert on the Protheans. A fact that she took great pride in.
Until she met Javik.
The last surviving prothean had single handedly managed to shatter all her preconceptions of the long dead race. Everything she knew about them, from their biology, technology, and their history was wrong. But the one thing that shocked her the most out of all of Javik's revelations, was their culture. The race she once thought to be benevolent and enlightened beings turned out to be cunning and ruthless imperialists.
During the height of their power, the Protheans managed to conquer or enslave every other race they had come across in the galaxy under the mandate of what Javik called, The Cosmic Imperative. The belief that the strongest race in the galaxy had the responsibility of guiding and ruling over all of the lesser species. Which, according to Javik, meant anything that wasn't Prothean.
And Javik was never shy to remind those around him of that belief. Typically by purposefully choosing to refer to everyone by their race instead of their name. As far as Liara knew, the only person he didn't refer to by his race was Shepard. Whether it was because of some Prothean custom to refer to one's superior officer by their rank, or because he harbored a genuine respect for Shepard, Liara couldn't guess.
She felt a pang of guilt as she studied him. Watching him stand there, Liara couldn't help but notice that despite the war being officially declared over, the prothean continued to wear his ornate red and gold armor. Liara thought it somewhat strange that he never took it off. Even during situations where there was no clear threat or danger, he always wore it.
One reason that she thought likely, although she knew Javik would probably deny it, was that his armor, and what few artifacts he kept, was all that he had left of his people, and this was his way of holding on to them. Even with all her frustrations with the ancient alien, and all his talk about the dangers of sentimentality, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
"So, Javik," she said, adopting a soft sympathetic tone. "Now that the war is over, what do you plan to do? Have you given any more thought to my offer?"
Javik cast her a sideways glance. "Your book?"
"Yes. I was thinking of calling it, Journeys with a Prothean."
Liara frowned slightly when he chuckled at the name.
"I know it's… not the best name," she said blushing faintly. "I've got a list of others that might work."
Javik rolled his broad shoulders and shrugged. "I will help you write your book, asari. At least until the relays are complete. Then… I'm leaving."
Liara gave him a confused look. "Leaving?"
"The Cronian Nebula."
The scholarly mind of Liara was instantly intrigued. An assortment of possibilities instantly flooded her imagination, wondering if Javik was referring to some prothean secret hidden deep within the nebula. She couldn't help but press him. She had to know why.
"What's there?" she asked, trying her best to mask her growing curiosity. "A Prothean city, perhaps?"
Javik didn't respond right away. He simply folded his arms in front of him and sighed.
"I had a ship once…" he admitted quietly. "And a crew. Strong. Loyal. Together we traveled the galaxy. Fighting the Reapers wherever and whenever we could, without fear or hesitation. I was… proud of them."
Liara's excitement slowly evaporated, and she silently cursed herself for letting her curiosity get the better of her again as she began to guess where his story was heading. "I… think I understand. That's where they died, isn't it? You wish to go back and pay respects?"
"No... You don't understand. I was there when it happened. They were captured by the Reapers. I thought that I would never see them again… Until I did."
Liara's heart sank. Something about Javik changed in her eyes. His posture hadn't changed a bit since he started talking, but he seemed so different now. A side of the prothean that she didn't think existed. Quietly she stood up from the couch and strode over to him, trying to think of a way to perhaps offer him some form of comfort. "Javik, I'm so sorry. I-"
"They tried to kill me," he continued with a look of quiet anger settling on his face. "The Reapers indoctrinated them and sent them to destroy me. They deserved better. So I gave them better. I personally hunted each of them down and slit their throats. I left their bodies on the planet where I found them. A planet in the Cronian Nebula."
"Goddess…" she breathed, horrified by the picture the prothean was painting for her.
"The Protheans are gone. My people… are gone. I vowed to destroy the Reapers for what they did, and now that they have been…" Javik shook his head and sighed. "I don't intend to simply pay my respects to the dead, asari. I intend to join them."
"What?" Liara stammered in sudden surprise. "But Javik… Why?"
"My people have been avenged. I was the last voice of the Protheans, and now there is nothing left to say. I serve no other purpose."
"That's not true, Javik," she said in a form of gentle defiance. "Purpose isn't something that simply ends. People find meaning and purpose in different things throughout their life. When a child becomes an adult, does the parent that raised them no longer have a reason to exist? Or can they find new purpose? I was an archeologist, but necessity gave me a new path. It can be the same for you too. Saying you no longer have purpose, makes it sound like you see yourself as nothing more than a machine."
Javik's stoic demeanor remained unchanged.
Liara frowned but refused to be discouraged. "And If that's not enough, I too know what it's like to lose someone to indoctrination. We have more in common than you might think."
Liara grimaced as the memory of Benezia's death came rushing back to her. She had so desperately wanted to believe that she could save her mother, that Benezia could be brought back from the madness Sovereign had implanted in her mind. But when they found her, she was too far gone.
"My mother was indoctrinated by Sovereign," Liara admitted sadly. "Benezia tried to resist it. She fought against it with all her strength, but she failed… and tried to kill me too. Shepard and I had no choice but to stop her. We…"
Liara's voice trailed off as Javik started chuckling as she spoke.
"I- I'm sorry. What's so funny?" she asked, utterly confused and more than a little insulted.
"You, asari," he responded after letting his laughter die down.
"Me?"
"Yes. It never ceases to amuse me how much you presume to know."
"I don't presume to know anything… I was just saying-"
"You think we are the same," said Javik, slowly tilting his head so that he could glare at her. "I mourn the death of loyal soldiers. You mourn the death of a traitor."
"A… traitor?" she balked.
"I know of Benezia. Your mother willingly sought out Saren. She joined him and sacrificed the will of her own soldiers to a monster."
Liara's face immediately flushed with anger. "My mother tried to save him! She had no idea about Sovereign's capabilities. She thought she could influence Saren to a better path."
"A childish notion typical of those without true understanding," he said dismissively.
"My mother was wise beyond her years," hissed Liara. "She was a proud Matriarch, revered across asari space."
"Her wisdom nearly doomed you and the rest of the galaxy to the Reapers. You were right to kill her, but you were wrong to mourn her."
"Clearly…" Liara sighed, angrily shaking her head in frustration.
"I wasn't trying to imply that we were the same," she continued, hoping to drop the topic of her mother from the conversation and steer it back on course. "But despite all our differences, there are similarities. All I was trying to say is… You're not alone, Javik. We may not be the same species, but you have a place among us."
Javik grunted his disagreement.
"I know you've lost everything, but don't throw away all that you've gained. We can mourn the past without letting it consume us. We can move on."
"Ironic coming from you, asari," Javik chided.
"Excuse me?"
"For one who enjoys telling others to let go, you waste your time dwelling on what you lost."
Liara gave him a puzzled look. "What I lost? What are you-"
Javik slowly turned his head to better look her in the face with all four of his eyes. "The one who haunts your dreams."
Liara's eyes widened and she blushed, causing her face to turn a darker shade of blue as she realized who the prothean was referring to.
No… He can't mean…?
"You are conflicted," said Javik. "You tell yourself that you are at peace, that you are content, but you fear it is a comforting lie. You worry that your obsessions have cost you more than you realize."
"How do you know all this? Did you…" she asked, breathlessly. Her face quickly contorted into a look of outrage as the realization hit her. "Did you read me in my sleep?" she demanded, balling her hands into fists as she unconsciously built up biotic power to match her growing anger.
"I didn't have to," he confessed, completely unfazed by her aggressive posture. "The trinket you carry showed me what you refuse to accept."
"Trinket?"
Unfolding his arms and offering her one of his hands, Javik uncurled his fingers, revealing two small shiny objects. Unclenching her fists and letting the biotic energy she had gathered dissipate, Liara's anger quickly melted away as she stared breathlessly down at Shepard's old SR-1 dog tags resting in the palm of the prothean's hand. Liara reached for her pockets and gasped when she felt they were indeed empty.
"They fell from your pocket as you slept."
Liara struggled to find the right words as she looked down at the little metal tags. She was both stunned and horrified that he was apparently able to read all of that from them. Part of her had forgotten that she even had them. Before she learned of Shepard's survival, she held onto them as a way for her to remember him. A way to keep his memory close.
A sentimental memento, she thought, remembering Javik's earlier warnings.
"Perhaps you should take your own advice, asari. Spare yourself the pain. Let go…" he said in a snide voice.
Liara had finally had enough. In a huff, she turned away from the hardheaded prothean, stormed over to the couch, and scooped up her datapad.
"You have no idea what you are talking about," she said, doing her best to mask the anger that was welling within her once again. "I don't expect you to understand. How could you? I've studied your species my whole life and yet even I can't understand you. I don't know why I even bother anymore. Every time I reach out to you in friendship, you find some way to throw it back in my face."
"I'm not trying to anger you with the truth, asari," he sneered, "Nor do I care if you understand me. I am not here to be anybody's friend."
"No. You're here to kill Reapers. That's all you were apparently good for," she said callously. "Well they're gone now. So what do we need you for?"
Liara turned and stomped toward the doorway, but before she took the last step through the threshold and into the crew deck, she looked back and gave the prothean one final disapproving look.
"I won't bother you with any more questions. I doubt I'll ever write that book. After all, anyone who reads it will just end up like me… Disappointed."
Javik snorted dismissively before turning his back to her. "And why should I care about the opinion of primitives?"
And with that, Liara stormed out of the room, determined to put as much space between her and the prothean as possible.
Javik remained in the observation deck for a while, quietly stewing about his latest interaction with the inquisitive asari. He paid no attention to the outside window anymore. Watching the primitives attempt to repair their crude ships was entertaining for a time, but his mind kept wandering back to the asari.
Liara was confusing to him.
When they had first met, she spent most of her time patronizing him, and plying him with pointless questions about his people. It was clear, at least in Javik's mind, that she saw him more as a living fossil to be studied and analyzed, rather than a proud soldier to be respected.
And he was surprised that for someone who claimed to be an expert on the protheans, she knew surprisingly little.
In a way, Javik enjoyed her naivete. With every little question she asked, Javik happily chipped away at the ignorance she had built around herself. But as time went on, Liara's questions became less frequent, and her fascination with his people seemed to sour, removing what enjoyment Javik had in enlightening her. Everything came to a head between the two of them during the fall of Thessia, after his revelation that it was the protheans, not the goddess Athame or asari ingenuity, that uplifted her race to be the most advanced in the galaxy.
He half expected her to fall apart after that. To give into pointless despair upon learning that everything she thought she knew was a lie. But to Javik's surprise, she confronted him in his quarters, and nearly attacked him with her biotics, accusing him and his people of failing their duty to prevent catastrophe.
He discovered there was strength in her. A drive that proved to be formidable to anyone who stood in her way.
He respected that.
Javik looked down to the small metal tags clutched in his hand. It was such a simple thing, but in some way, it reminded him of the echo shards. Devices the protheans would use to store memories of events, places, people, even smell and taste.
While these were nothing like the relics of his people, it still had the unmistakable mark of experience.
In truth, he wasn't able to read much from it before the asari's annoying white drone disturbed her sleep. Much of what he told her was what he already learned after being on the ship for so long. Despite being a "shadow broker," she was surprisingly bad at keeping certain things a secret. Finding the tags and learning that she had kept them, merely confirmed what he knew to be true.
He ran a finger over the raised lettering on the tags reading: Commander Shepard, and with a single thought, he peered into their past.
He felt many different hands. Mostly human. One was that of a mentor.
The first to hold it, perhaps? He felt a sense of pride come from the mentor as his hands dropped them into the waiting palm of the tag's rightful owner. Shepard felt duty and honor as he placed them around his neck. Javik knew this feeling well. It was similar to when he was young, and given his first command in the war against the machines.
He saw glimpses of combat. The pulse of weapon fire and the heat of explosions reverberated through the tags. He did not feel fear from the commander. Only urgency and focus.
He felt camaraderie, a compassion for all those who stood by his side against the coming darkness. Shepard cared deeply for those around him. Another feeling that was familiar to Javik. But for him, those feelings now came with a painful cost.
He felt love. The commander's blooming affection for another. The asari. He felt her influence now. Not from her hands at first, but from her body as she pressed against the commander in a passionate embrace.
Then came destruction. He felt the blazing heat of his beloved ship smoldering all around him, before eventually succumbing to the icy, cold grip of vacuum.
He felt the unmistakable chill of death.
Other hands soon marked the tags. Hands of various scavengers or criminals. Javik couldn't discern who or what they were, for they only held them for a moment, but soon familiar hands came upon them.
Liara's…
Her mark was unmistakable.
He sensed her conflict. The fear and doubt that plagued her heart as she held the tags tightly to her chest was strong. Stronger than any of the others that dwelled within the tiny metal objects.
He began to get swept up in it, acutely feeling the pain she had tried so hard to suppress. He fought against it, but the more he pushed back, the more it pulled him in. Like a maelstrom, the pain of loss, the uncertainty of one's choices began to overwhelm him. He struggled trying to break free from its grip, but-
Javik quickly pulled himself out of his trance, hastily dropping the tags to the floor and taking a deep, steadying breath.
He frowned looking down at them, surprised at just how strong the imprints of so many people could be on the small unassuming pieces of metal.
He thought more about what Liara had said to him. About how there were similarities between them. He seriously doubted that notion before, but much of what he felt in the tags felt so familiar. The sense of duty and honor, the thrill of combat, and the unrelenting pain of losing those closest to you.
Javik soon began to wonder if the asari had been mistaken. That, perhaps, they understood more about each other than either of them were willing to admit.
Javik scowled and buried the unwelcome idea, worried that his thoughts had been contaminated by the echo of the asari's memories. He turned his attention back to the viewport window, determined to put the meddling asari out of his mind, and not let his interaction with her cloud his judgment. His mind was set.
His future, and the end he sought, was waiting for him in the Cronian Nebula, amongst the ghosts of the past.