Thanks to all of my reviewers, favoriters and followers.
Thanks also to Bioware for the Mass Effect universe and its characters. Anything and anyone you don't recognize from the game is probably a result of my own ruminations and experiences.
May 6, 2169 - Front entrance of the Systems Alliance School, Kithoi Ward, and The Citadel.
It took several days for Sigren to be released from Huerta Memorial. Baselines for her linked and unlinked neural activity had to be established. Sigren also needed time for the injuries not related to her ability to see to heal fully. Not only that but her family needed to be moved to larger temporary quarters to accommodate Sithana and the commandos Sha'ira and Counselor Tevos decided were needed to protect them from retaliation by the Batarian warlord's remaining friends and family. Sigren's parents had wanted Marines but once they realized just how intimate the link was, they decided the commandos would be the best option because too many young soldiers would speculate too openly about what was happening between their daughter and the Consort's favorite acolyte.
In time, they hoped that the Alliance would buy one of Sigren's ideas which was to get at least one N-7 level soldier to liaise with the commandos so that the Alliance could learn more about the command, control and skills of the vast number of trained personnel hired by the Asari upper class. Fighters that the Alliance military would classify as "irregulars" but whom the SA had little experience of working with as yet.
All that was known was that as things stood, the Asari Republics had regular forces at least ten times as powerful as the SA military and that there were potentially tens of millions of commando-trained Asari who weren't members of the Asari forces who might be called to support their front line combatants. These highly skilled fighters had biotics—which Humans didn't have until less than 25 years ago—and tens or hundreds of years of military-style training and experience. They could potentially be a tremendous addition to Asari war-fighting capabilities. The SA believed that the Asari had the potential strength to match or exceed the Turian war machine which, despite revisionist protests to the contrary, had nearly crushed the SA Navy during the First Contact War.
The Shepards immediately turned Sigren's idea into a recommendation to their superiors. It was moving up the chain of command and, subject to further bureaucratic wrangling, a few candidates were being considered. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee the Alliance would be willing to dedicate a precious N7 officer to Sigren's protection. There were simply too many stakeholders involved and too much politics to be sure that someone with that rare skill set would be made available.
Sigren's therapy was going tolerably well. The headaches caused by trying to visualize things Sithana imaged for her via the link had been bad but, with a mix of pain killers prescribed by Dr. Chakwas and techniques she was learning from Sithana, they were slowly getting better. Along with the headaches, it was still emotionally uncomfortable for Sigren to have someone else in her head, particularly someone whose inner beauty, she now knew, was as the sun when held against the candle that was her outer perfection.
The counseling sessions Dr. Chakwas had prescribed were helping with the psychological impact of the link to Sithana and the effects on Sigren of the realization that she had taken a life. Although the Batarian represented a severe danger to Sithana and Sigren's actions were easily justifiable for this reason, he was still a thinking being and taking his life was hitting Sigren hard. Sithana couldn't help with these feelings as a counselor because she was far too closely involved in the situation. So, Sigren was seeing a Human counselor daily along with an Asari mind healer recommended by Sha'ira. It was already clear that Sigren's psychological treatment would continue for several months at the very least; probably for a year or two. Sithana used the time during Sigren's counseling sessions to forward twice-daily reports on Sigren's neurological state to Dr. Chakwas and the staff neurologist at Huerta Memorial. Unbeknownst to the Shepards at the time, Sithana was also in regular touch with Sha'ira trying to find ways to maintain emotional distance and, so far, failing badly.
After realizing just how much she was being affected by this amazing Human girl, Sithana now knew why this particular therapy was considered a last, desperate, resort by her teachers in the Asari equivalent of medical school. Hopefully she would be able to maintain enough distance to keep them from developing a full pair bonding by the end of Sigren's treatment but as bright, adventurous, strong, open, curious, driven, deep, and caring as Sigren was, Sithana feared a bonding was almost inevitable.
"Are you ready for this?" Hannah Shepard asked as the embassy car's door opened to let Sigren and Sithana alight onto the steps at the entrance of Sigren's school.
"Not really," Sigren said with a small grin for her mother and a squeeze on the hand she had to hold at all times in order to keep the visual link open between herself and Sithana. "I don't know if anyone can be ready to walk into a school full of Human teenagers with six Asari commandos while holding the hand of an Asari maiden whom you literally can't let go of for at least ten hours a day."
"True enough," Hannah said. "I'm proud of you for making this choice. We could have home-schooled you but, as you always do, you're taking the hard path in front of you with the strength of a Shepard."
"Thank you, mother." Sigren said quietly. "Let's see how we feel about this after everyone responds to the Asari invasion."
"It won't be that bad." Hannah said bracingly. With Sithana and half a dozen commandos trailing Sigren everywhere she went, some people at the school would feel there had, indeed, been an Asari invasion. Hopefully by the time the next school year was under way, Sigren would either be cured or C-SEC would have tracked down the Batarians who continued to threaten her daughter and the Asari healer/consort on whom Hannah worried her daughter was becoming too emotionally dependent. Now to get through the first day of what would surely be six difficult weeks before the end of Sigren's school year.
"Your teachers have been specifically instructed to say as little as possible about what happened to you or about Sithana's work. Much as we Humans have become more accepting of sex workers over the last fifty years, we know talking about Sithana's career around a bunch of teenagers guarantees disaster. People know what she does from the news stories and you'll have to deal with that with your friends but your teachers have been specifically told not to bring it up in any context where students are present."
"I know." Sigren sighed. "I'm not looking forward to that part of things but I'll bet most of the time the commandos will be enough to stop idiots from making a big deal about this to my face at least. If they talk behind my back I'll remind them that I've already got one fuckhead to my name and I'll be glad to collect a few more."
"Sigren," her mother chided while releasing her from one of her all-too-rare hugs.
"Yes, mother….."
"Have a good day at school. Alara has my com if anything comes up that you can't handle."
"See you when you get home from the embassy."
"Plan on it," Hannah said before the embassy car took off for the heart of the Presidium.
"All right," Sithana said via their link. "The camera on your glasses is working well. I will walk behind you as we've practiced at home and on the Presidium. I want you to maneuver through space as normally as you can. Don't forget, there's a slight delay between what the camera sees and my ability to send those images to you so this will be an excellent opportunity to sharpen your responses to unexpected environmental changes."
"Right," Sigren thought back, glad of the distraction that this demi-exercise would offer. Better to focus on this than on how people would respond to her entrance with six heavily armed commandos from the Consort's private guard force and one beautiful Asari in a white healer's smock.
The first five minutes went well. The school headmistress met Sigren and her entourage in the front hall, smiling broadly for her and the press whom Sigren hadn't realized would want lots of pictures and video.
One of the reporters tried to ask Sigren some questions but the commandos gently shooed him away, reminding him that she could not be interviewed under Citadel regulations because she was a minor.
Things started to go downhill when they got to Sigren's first class. The teacher, a Human male in his early forties, barely glanced at Sigren, instead choosing to give Sithana and the commandos funny looks.
"Hello Ms. Shepard," he said somewhat distractedly. "I'm pleased to see you and your *escort* in my class."
"Thanks Mr. Saracino." Sigren said to the substitute teacher who had been hired due to the same poisoning incident that had affected her classmates. Her mind was a busy place, however, mostly wondering why he had put so much emphasis on the word "escort".
Sithana's gentle mind-voice replied, noting wryly that: "Your Earth History teacher is doubtless aware of my work with Mistress Sha'ira."
"What do you mean?" Sigren wondered while Saracino lectured to the class about the First Contact War and the Human's "crushing victory" over the Turian Hierarchy.
"You know my service to Mistress Sha'ira sometimes means that I become physically intimate with her clients."
"Yeah," Sigren said flushing at the thought.
"Well, before Humans decided that it is legally acceptable for someone to be physically intimate with clients in exchange for money, the people who engaged in those acts were sometimes called escorts."
"Oh!" Sigren replied, realizing that Saracino didn't like Sithana because of her work with Lady Sha'ira.
"Well, no reason to listen to the asshole, then," she thought to herself, only half remembering Sithana would hear the thought. The sense of warmth and caring she received in response lifted Sigren's mood for the rest of the lecture. This was a good thing since Sigren quickly realized that Saracino was more than just an anti-Asari bigot, he was also a terrible teacher.
His lecture on the First Contact War was so far from what Sigren had learned around the dinner table with her parents that she nearly raised her hand to object to Saracino's flagrant recasting of history as she knew it.
The crushing near-defeat that the Asari Republics had saved them from was a frequent source of conversation between her parents. No matter how much her father might dislike the Asari, his fear of the Turians was far greater.
Sigren knew that even now, with ten years added time to learn and implement tools that hadn't been imagined on Earth until 2148, most Human officers were sure the SA was still far behind the other races in their understanding of, and ability to effectively use, mass effect technology.
The SA was still desperate to catch up with the rest of the Galaxy. Its efforts had begun immediately on the discovery of the Prothian Archive on Mars, even though at that point the existence of concurrently advanced civilizations could only be guessed at, not proven. By 2149 there was an all-out effort to push out through the relay system, leading to the direct discovery of more than 30 garden worlds over the next few years. Also in that year, SA citizens had willingly signed up to pay the highest taxes since the Second World War. This vast spending, still going on twenty years later, had given the SA the power to defend itself against pirates and , it was hoped, the Batarians, but its citizens were still expected to work fifty or sixty hour weeks along with getting ten to twenty hours of technical and other training.
Even with this massive effort, Sigren knew that many in the SA secretly feared it would take at least a century to get to the point where Human society would fully catch up with the other races' assimilation of mass effect tech. Sigren had also overheard her parents talking about how the leadership of the Systems Alliance was worried that catching up with the other races' mutual knowledge of social and cultural norms would take a century or more, too.
These fears never appeared in Saracino's lecture and for all anyone listening to him would have known, the SA was only days from a shattering victory over the Turians rather than the crushing defeat that people like Admiral Grissom once told her he was sure would have happened had the Asari not arrived to, as he put it, "save our bacon."
Second hour's biochemistry class went fairly well, Sithana helpless to keep Sigren from occasionally getting glimpses of her thoughts in response to the Salarian teacher's questions.
"I will have to work hard to keep you from seeing the answers to questions on your exams," Sithana's mind-voice came somewhat wryly. "How I'll transfer images to you without the knowledge behind them I don't know. Hopefully Mistress Sha'ira will have some advice."
"I don't mind," Sigren said, laughing aloud.
"You find the molecular structure of glutamine funny Ms. Shepard?" demanded her teacher.
"No, sir. Healer Sithana was saying that she didn't know how she would keep me from accessing her knowledge on exam problems and I told her I didn't mind being able to."
"Staff will have to consider this," her teacher said. "Academic advantages of your current situation not considered until now."
"I'd trade those advantages for being able to see, sir." Sigren said quietly…."but never for stopping that bastard," she thought to Sithana who sent her a gentle wave of thankfulness in return.
"Certainly certainly," her teacher responded before going back to the lecture.
Third hour's calculus course went like biochemistry. Snips of the answers to the problems the older Turian male teacher posed floating across Sithana's mind and into Sigren's more or less uncontrollably. Fortunately the lecturer didn't realize even though Sithana knew Sigren did.
Fourth hour was fine, although Sigren noted that Sithana found her Literature course particularly fascinating. How anyone could get into Romeo and Juliet Sigren didn't know but whatever floated Sithana's boat….
Lunch started badly and hovered there; never going fully off course but never getting better either.
Although edible to them, the food served that day was very heavy by Asari standards. Sithana, who was expending enormous energy holding the link open, ended up taking four of the ice-cream bars available for dessert.
"Are you sure you'll be OK?" Sigren asked worried for her caretaker. "I know you can use the sugar for calories but even you can't keep going on sugar alone."
"We'll be better prepared tomorrow. The commandos will bring eezo laced drinks and some Asari fruit juices for all of us."
"OK," Sigren sighed as they sat down after serving themselves.
Eating itself went slowly as they had to trade off holding onto the other's wrist so that each could use both hands for cutting food as needed. It also became clear that Sigren's peers, most of whom had always been a little intimidated by her general mien, physical height and the fitness that came from three hours of physical training a day with Marine specialists, were avoiding her. Sigren's few close friends were still sick due to their reaction to what had proven to be contamination by some dextro spices that a Turian merchant claimed were accidentally mislabeled.
"Just great," Sigren sighed quietly. "I really hoped people wouldn't freak out when I got back but obviously I'm not getting my wishes this week."
"I'm sorry this is so hard for you," Sithana murmured verbally. "We'll work on finding ways to make the commandos a little less obvious at meal times if we can."
"That won't help much." Sigren sighed. "I'm surely the first in my class to have killed someone, even if it was for a good reason. Add that to the fact that my head's swathed in bandages and I have an Asari caretaker who the reporters keep saying is one of the Consort's well….top consorts, and then throw in the fact that before last Monday I could have kicked half of these people's asses without breaking a sweat, even if they did all attack at once and it's just too much for most people right now. Some of it will go away and some will get better but it's gonna take a while and I've never been very popular in the first place."
"Why not?"
"I'm tall and athletic but I've never gone out for school sports. People get mad that I won't compete for the school when, according to them, I could help it win at almost anything. I also grew really early for Human girls and I'm already tall even for adult females. Then there's the physical and mental discipline I have from my trainers, the fact that I don't spend a lot of time socializing because I like my training and the people who work with me on it more, and, well, I'm just not like most of the people here."
Sithana could see this for herself. Most of the children were engaging in loud conversations some yelling, many eating sloppily. By contrast, Sigren was reserved at home and seemingly here at school. The notes from Sigren's teachers showed they respected her, although Sithana understood that the science class in which Sigren laughed this morning was usually very hard for her. Sigren's school records suggested an athletically gifted girl with disciplined study habits who could be in the top ten percent of her peers academically if three to four hours a day weren't spent on physical fitness and other skills training.
"Could you ask your parents about shifting some of your physical training into activities that would help you connect to your peers?"
"Yeah," Sigren sighed. "Dad thinks it would be good for me to go out for team sports because they would help with environmental awareness and team skills but the school doesn't have many team sports because it's so small."
"And individual sports?"
"They wouldn't teach me anything my trainers can't and I'm not gonna go out for something just to make people happy here. I liked how my life was until a week ago and so long as what we're doing works it'll get back to how things were when the treatment's done. Really it's more that a lot of people are freaked out by having you around. Human kids aren't used to having adults sitting at the same table at meals and you look like an adult … even if a blue-skinned one. Even if they were comfortable with that, they're going to be weirded out by how …um, beautiful you are and what you do. They're also probably wanting to ask about last weekend and know I won't talk about it. If I was Ok with talking about it—and I'm not—people aren't likely to bring up … what happened last Saturday with you sitting here. Until they get used to your being around, and until someone decides to get over themselves and just treat me like they would have before last Monday, it'll be kinda quiet for us. Hopefully some of the kids who got sick ten days ago will be back soon. I'm closer to a lot of them than I am this lot."
Sorrow at just how much Sigren's life had changed because she chose to save her nearly crushed Sithana.
"Oh, stop it," Sigren sent via their link. "I have friends here but as much as we move I don't ever get very close to people. There'll be a few that I'll miss when I leave here but not many and not for long. I'll have new people to know wherever I end up next and anyway, I made at least one new friend this week and I'm really glad I know her," Sigren thought forcefully before feeling embarrassed at being so open.
"I'm glad, too." Sithana replied, "and not just because you saved me. You really are a special being and I thank the goddess for the chance to have come to know you, even if I wish the circumstances were different."
"Thanks," Sigren replied, even more embarrassed. "Um, let's get to Econ and Finance."
Sithana was deeply impressed that this Human school spent so much time teaching its students about personal finance and the larger economy. This lecture, taught by a Human woman, focused on accounting and the complexities of taxation. These were things Asari children who weren't from very wealthy families often had to learn by doing. Sithana had already seen how this quirk of her culture caused the privations faced by many of the indentured Asari she had treated as a healer on Illium.
Sigren's sixth and second-to-last scheduled course of the day was euphemistically called "health".
The teacher, a very young Human woman, was obviously uncomfortable with Sithana in the classroom. The reasons for this became apparent when the topic proved to be Human and alien reproduction.
Sithana was fascinated by the Human pathology about penetrative sex. For most of the galaxy's species intercourse as a recreational activity was less common than for Humans. After all, most, with the exception of Asari who enjoyed the physical act because the link to a partner meant that pleasure was multiplied because it was shared, simply hadn't evolved in ways that led to continuous fertility and the hormonal and physiological desire for sexual intimacy so characteristic of Humans.
Only five or ten percent of Mistress Sha'ira's clients sought sexual intercourse. Some, like the Krogan, most Asari couldn't accommodate without years of physical and mental training. Sithana didn't have the training and, much to her chagrin, she found sexual intercourse with Turians resulted in severe inflammation of her azure due to allergic response to Turian dextro-amino proteins. Sithana used physical intimacy in the form of massage or cuddling to distract her clients from the psychoemotional work she would do through bonds to help her clients deal with the kinds of problems that Humans would associate with seeing a psychotherapist. She freely used sexual techniques when applicable but found that sex itself often proved a distraction in her practice. Many of her clients were strongly attached to her due to her rare ability to use such a wide variety of emotional and physical techniques in ways that facilitated every aspect of their healing.
More than ten years after first contact, Humans were still the new flavor on the Citadel. Some of Sha'ira's acolytes were still taking Humans at a steep discount to better understand them and their physical, psychological and sexual needs. Sithana knew of at least three who reported on these things to Counselor Tevos in spite of Mistress Sha'ira's orders not to do so. In discussing Human sexuality amongst themselves, it had quickly become clear that it was often bound up in silly cultural rules that other species couldn't imagine without direct exposure to the Human mind. Although she took relatively few clients seeking sex, Sithana had more experience of physical intimacy than most Asari maidens approaching their matron stage, and Humans' cultural discomfort with discussing sexual matters fascinated her as much as it did many of Mistress Sha'ira's other acolytes. To hear the young Human teacher talking about sex with a level of clinical detachment that her medical school professors would have envied was hysterical to Sithana, particularly given the obvious mix of curiosity and discomfort the students (including Sigren) had on the topic.
Sigren's last class of the day was euphemistically entitled "Our Galactic Civilization". Sigren's memories of the course showed Sithana that it covered how modern technology was developed and used. The teacher was starting a new topic, taking some time to discuss how Prothean technology discovered on Mars had helped Humans achieve mass effect capability and taught them about the mass relays. Sithana, though a fully mature maiden, could not resist taking some pride in the fact that unlike the Humans, all histories taught in Asari schools said her species had built its civilization and technology without any external help.
After Sigren's classes were over, her entourage returned to the Shepards' temporary apartment in the inner Presidium. The first thing on Sigren's schedule was the first day of her heavily modified exercise routine. It had taken a great deal of thought to work out how Sigren would continue the exercise and training regimen to which she had become dedicated at only ten years old. It had been decided that a treadmill would be best for her daily ten kilometer run and that she would learn some of the Asari's more judo-like martial arts from Alara and the other commandos. These would replace Sigren's weight lifting and swimming routines for the moment, but only until she could be taught how to do them safely. Since the Asari martial arts didn't absolutely require sight for basic learning like holds and throws, Sithana was free to work on her self-defense with their other guards. Sithana's biotics were already known to be very weak. As a result, the commandos decided to do what they could to help her use what biotic ability she had to maximum advantage while focusing on teaching her physical self-defense. They would soon find that although incredibly graceful in many circumstances, Sithana simply didn't have the physical coordination or killer instinct needed to defend herself well. So, they would do what they could to teach her how to strengthen her limited physical defense with her biotics and how to avoid danger in future. Despite her personal and ethical discomfort they would also teach Sithana how to use a pistol.
"I am a healer, a consort, a lover of beauty, not an avatar of death," Sithana said while trying to refuse the Armax arsenal brawler pistol she had received from Sha'ira via Alara who was handling this part of her training.
As this wasn't their first argument on the topic, the matron lost some of her patience with Sithana's seeming intransigence. "This may be, but because you didn't have these skills, a young Human had to accept responsibility for ending lives long before Athame would wish it. A Human child the equivalent of an Asari in her seventies could still face long-term impairment to her sight at a time when this is so rare that she will find it hard to get work or even read a news feed for as long as it takes to recreate technologies to help her do so. A Human child is spending ten hours a day linked to a being who knows more about Human intimacy than ninety-five percent of Human adults do….and will likely be in a full, and, in most circumstances illegal, pair bonding with that Asari before treatment whose effects are still not known is complete."
"These things are never far from me. I have terrible guilt that Sigren's life has been so affected and will likely be for as long as she lives. You know as well as I do that Asari who bond in their seventies face significant psychological consequences. This is why bonding before age 100 has been done very rarely on Thessia for at least five thousand years. What is worse, had I met her ten years from now I would have sought a pair bonding with Sigren who, by that point, would have been mentally and emotionally mature enough to be an equal, and not partially dependent on me as she will be for years to come. I know all of this better than you do and I am still very uncomfortable learning the skills that could help me take a life."
"Consider," Alara said gently, touching Sithana's cheek as she did so, "that for at least a hundred days you will be Sigren's last line of defense. She chose to risk her life to save you. She didn't know that she was also risking more than her physical well-being but the risk is there none-the-less. Can you really say you would not be willing to learn a skill, which you hopefully won't use, to ensure that the risk she took for you won't be repaid by injury, torture, or death because she couldn't protect herself from those who now seek to kidnap or kill her because she did the right thing by trying to help you?"
"You are right. If nothing else I owe Sigren everything I can do to ensure her welfare. Just because I am learning a skill that can be used to harm doesn't mean that I will ever use it."
"Correct," Alara said. "Now, make sure the safety of your weapon is in the "on" position. Once done, take up the stance I have shown you. As we are shooting at targets, your goal is to maximize the chance that you will hit the center. If you must ever shoot at something living, hitting it in the center gives the best chance of causing injury sufficient to give you time to escape. To have the best possible chance to hit your target in a one handed stance, the pistol should be pointing downrange, held firmly in your palm and snug to the meaty part of your thumb, fingers curled around the grip, trigger finger lying outside of the trigger guard until the range master says the range is open and you have checked to be sure no-one is standing in front of a wall-to-wall line running parallel to your shoulders…."
A/N: Thanks to Desert Sunrise, excellent author and honored veteran for her slight correction to the phraseology of directions I remembered from one afternoon's training on hand positioning on a pistol. It's been too long since one very enjoyable Monday when I shot targets with a friend who has nothing to do with this story other than giving me the experience needed to feel comfortable introducing weapons training to this fic. My exposure to rifle use will come in the next story if there is one.
An2 One of the places that Bioware dropped the ball in my opinion is the issue of timelines. How the SA would have been economically, technologically, and militarily ready to fight anything beyond a "incident" level action only eight years after opening the Mars Archive is a huge mystery to me. Science may jump by 200 years but it takes time to translate knowledge in the lab to real world application. How the SA and its citizens (who would have required massive reeducation) could have been ready to make a pivotal contribution to the battle of the Citadel in 2183 only 35 years after that central event, is also a curiosity to me given the challenges I note here.
AN3 On sexual behaviors, see Wikipedia most non- ape animals for sex behaviors. See frequencies for dolphins, wales, and elephants as examples of "intelligent" animals and their frequency for having sex. This BBC article shows how common kissing is outside of western culture and in the animal world and refers to material in the scientific literature. Bbc dot com slash earth slash story slash 20150714 – why – do – we - kiss