#i was unable to write a full-blown fic bc of irl nonsense but i like this snippet

[choccy-zefirka]

Underneath his touch, the Commander's body comes alive. Yes, in *that* way as well. Quite often, and much to his satisfaction.

Javik never doubted that she would appreciate the Prothean anatomy, fine-tuned by aeons of evolution long before her ancestors leapt into their first mating dance.

But sometimes, when flesh meets flesh, when the Cipher crashes their minds together like opposing magnets... There is something else. A row of lights, snapping into being, stark, electric, to illuminate a vast archive.

Every inch of her carries memories.

Her skin thinks back to being grafted by careful hands in pristine gloves, to being pieced together out of charred flakes on petri dishes. Her bones ache with echoes of whirring machines that modeled them in 3D, layed them out into a building-block puzzle, coated them in raw, quivering fat and muscle.

Her nerves run taut, interlacing with cybernetics, a living spiderweb that once began at a scientist's fingertips. And at the apex of it all, her brain strains, thinks, panics... Deep within, far beyond her easy smiles, her nonchalant bravery, her impossible compassion for all the miserable creatures in this cycle — she asks herself, again and again, if this is really her. If the fragments that were retrieved from the black void of space, to be used as tissue samples in Cerberus' experiments, are enough to... count as her. If that foolhardy young human, once torn apart into a brilliant sunburst over a remote planet, is still alive. If she is even meant to be alive.

Her answer is, of course, silence. Something Javik knows all too well. He, after all, is not quite meant to be alive either. His was the last-ever intact sleeping pod, sustained through millenia by drawing precious sustenance away from scientists, pioneers, great thinkers, avatars of Wisdom and Resilience... The likes of whom the little Asari would so feverishly daydream about. One by one, they were snuffed out, lost in that black void, leaving behind pure Vengeance.

Vengeance is nothing but sharp edges and scorching fire. Vengeance knows nothing of soft, quiet comfort. So it makes no sense, bears no meaning, when Javik presses his lips against the Commander's forehead. This is not an act of Vengeance. This is something she would have done — and has done, in fact, much to his scorn.

His excuse is that it calms her, and this spares him from cringing through telepathic turbulence.

His real reason, however, is hidden far within his mind, where he hopes even the Cipher will never reach. Nor will he himself. He cannot afford to stop and think about it. Not now.