Thanks to everyone who has favorited, followed, and/or reviewed.
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.
September 28, 2169 - Office of Dr. Marvin Martin, Huerta Memorial Hospital, Citadel Presidium
"What do you see?" Dr. Chakwas asked from behind Sigren's right shoulder.
"A light blue field with indigo letters."
"Can you repeat that, dear?"
"A light blue field with indigo letters."
"I see."
"Is something wrong?"
"Not precisely," Dr. Chakwas said somewhat distractedly. "You seem to be seeing things with the detail we would expect but not with the normal Human range of visual perception."
"So my brain's seeing things the way Sithana's does?"
"Not fully," said Dr. Martin, the hospital's new specialist in Human ophthalmology. "You now seem to have the Human norm in light perception and interpolation with added response to some forms of motion and high wavelength light. As you have learned recently, Sithana sees color at wavelengths a lot further into the ultraviolet range than we do and she doesn't see many reds we do. We see reds Asari don't because water doesn't transmit red light as well as blue light. Because her evolutionary ancestors left the water far more recently in real and evolutionary time than ours did, the Asari eye is more blue-sensitive than ours is. The need to see biotics which are blue in Asari may have also enhanced evolutionary benefits to blue light perception."
"Your response to wavelengths in what Humans consider the low to middle ultraviolet range has increased. Your eyes are near perfect copies of the set you lost in April but your brain seems to have found a way to force the cone cells in your retinas to perceive and interpolate signals for some ultraviolet wavelengths when you encounter them. For example, when I look at that screen I see a dark blue field with black letters."
"But there isn't anything truly wrong with Siren?" asked Hannah Shepard who was sitting beside her daughter in the ophthalmologist's office.
"No, nothing wrong with her, just a somewhat unusual result. At worst I think this will be a curiosity. It may prove to be helpful depending on what kind of work Sigren does in the future. The one precaution I would take is to be extra careful to wear eye protection on your first few dirt-side vacations."
"OK, doctor. Thanks for all of your help over the last few months."
"Happy to do it," the doctor said, smiling. "It's the least I could do for our young heroine."
October 24, 2169 - Rm 218, the Systems Alliance School
Sigren, who had lost a great deal of interest in her classes and other activities over the last few weeks, sat restlessly in the middle of her fourth hour Statistics course. She missed Sithana terribly, not having been allowed to see her since the last linking session a few days after Dr. Martin declared her sight fully restored. Nothing mattered quite as much as it had before, and there was a gaping sense of loss that followed her everywhere she went. Focusing on anything was difficult and so when David (call me Uncle Dave), Anderson's hand moved to cup his left ear, Sigren immediately took notice.
At the end of class, Uncle Dave hastened to where Sigren was sitting before she could get up and head to lunch to meet with the small group of friends with whom she was becoming increasingly disconnected.
"Let's head out for lunch," he said softly, nudging her toward the hallway leading to the front of the school.
"What's up?"
"Good news, but I shouldn't talk about it here for reasons you'll understand once I tell you what happened."
A few minutes later they found themselves eating food they'd bought from one of the better mobile serveries in one of the beautiful gardens on the lower Presidium. The garden seemed to have a Salarian theme, though Sigren couldn't be sure since she'd never been to Sur'Kesh.
"What's up?"
"I think you saw me get the call from C-SEC?"
"Yeah," Sigren nodded after finishing her current bite of a spicy Asari fish dish. "Why would C-SEC be calling you?"
"They finally caught the rest of the gang that was trying to kidnap Sithana back in April. Apparently the Batarian government has a very high bounty on Asari known for their empathy or ability as healers. We don't know why. Still, Command thinks that you and Sithana should be safe now so long as you're either on the Citadel or aboard ship."
"So you'll be leaving too?"
Yes," David said with a sigh. "Now that you're safe, I need to get back out there and keep an eye on things. The SA hoped the First Contact War would be the last one we'd fight but it doesn't seem to be going like that."
"I'll miss you and the commandos," Sigren said. "I really liked training with you and hearing some of your stories."
"You're a very impressive young woman," Anderson said with a smile for the increasingly depressed teen. "If you keep up with everything you're doing you'll be the youngest Marine commandant in history."
"Thanks," Sigren said, blushing.
"In the mean-time, you have my comm code and I want regular reports on how things are going."
"Yes, Sir!" Sigren said, with a sharp salute, before her face broke into one of the grins that were becoming all-too-rare for her of late.
January 27, 2170 - Apartment 1894, Alaron Towers, Citadel Presidium
"It's the tenth night in a row she's had nightmares and they're getting worse. Every time she wakes up terrified that everyone has abandoned her." Hannah Shepard sighed, eyes half lidded as she looked at her beloved husband's image on the bedside com-link. "I just don't know what to do anymore."
"You're going to have to make her tough it out," John replied from the bridge of the light cruiser on which he was the Executive Officer. "If we let her see Sithana the bond will fully reestablish and just like any druggie she'll just get that much more addicted."
"I don't know if we have a choice," Hannah groaned. "She's slowly losing interest in her exercise and the school is very concerned about her grades. If they go down much more they may have to put her in remedial classes this summer."
"She's got to tough it out," John repeated, worried for his daughter but unwilling to bend on the treatment the Human psychologist recommended over the strong objections of not only his Asari colleague but Sha'ira, Sigren and Sithana as well.
"All of the Asari I've talked with about this say tearing them apart like this will destroy Sigren and hurt Sithana too."
"But they're coming at this from Asari, not Human perspectives."
"Yes, but the problem is a bonding with an Asari, not addiction to red sand or something like that."
"Give it a few more weeks. If she's not doing better we'll rethink things."
March 14, 2170 - Office of Consort Sha'ira, Citadel Presidium
"She's down fifteen kilos, depressed, angry, withdrawn, and she has nightmares that are getting worse every night. I'm losing my daughter and I don't know what to do to get her back."
"I know well your fear," Sha'ira said softly. "Sithana is nearly broken. She interacts with her clients with none of the care and concern we became used to expecting from her. She was, until very recently, the most able acolyte I have ever seen in her ability to pick and use emotional, physical, psychological and sexual techniques at just the right moment to help clients find solutions to their problems. She would someday have been a consort far greater than me but even if she does recover from the injuries our choices have caused her, all of that is probably lost to Sithana now because of the incredibly close bond she has forged with Sigren. As it is, she talks little to the other acolytes and spends much of her time in her rooms, watching the gardens of the Presidium. She is breaking and there is really only one reason I can think of for this."
"What would that be?" Hannah demanded stomach tight with terror for her daughter and no little fear for the Asari who had apparently sacrificed so much to save Sigren's sight.
"I feared something like this would happen when your husband agreed with Dr. Harper's directive to keep Sigren and Sithana apart. The unfortunate reality is that they developed a full bonding at a very vulnerable time for both of them and they are suffering from the kinds of problems that Asari who lose their partners often do. Usually recovering from this takes decades…."
"We don't have decades, I'm not even sure we have days!" Hannah cried, horrified by what she was being told.
"I know," Sha'ira said, caressing Hannah's hands gently. "There really is only one workable solution and that is to allow them to spend time together. We can decide whether to wean both of them off the bond as often happens naturally when Asari leave bond mates but the unraveling of a bond by choice often takes years," Sha'ira said, thought seemingly turned inward in response to some unknowable memories.
After seeming to shake off the thought Sha'ira refocused on her most frequent visitor of late.
"Alternatively, it may be that they are destined to be together and the events of nearly a cycle ago were the goddess' way of helping them find each other. The only way to find out is to let them be together, growing as beings at their stages of development often can only when with others at similar moments of change."
"How can they be at similar moments of change when Sigren is sixteen years old and Sithana is 268?"
"Sithana, like Sigren is going through a change in her life. For Sigren the change is from adolescent to physically mature Human female. For Sithana the change is from physically mature Asari with an adolescent's desire to experience everything she can to physically mature Asari who is driven, as most matrons are, to focus on her long term welfare and that of any children the goddess may bless her with."
"This is the change from maiden to matron?"
"Yes," Sha'ira said. "Sithana is going through this process several decades earlier than normal. Encountering Sigren seems to have jump-started the change that will make Sithana a full matron on or near her 275th anniversary."
"Are you sure about this?"
Sure? One can never be sure until something comes to pass." Sha'ira said thoughtfully. "However, I do know that when Asari could only bond to each other we developed a strong prohibition against letting maidens bond before their 100th anniversary for exactly this reason. They are extremely emotional which often adds to the depth and passion of bonding and not experienced enough to help an older partner through changes she might go through because of the bonding. Joining with Asari who were too young often caused older Asari to progress in their own development too quickly. This sometimes led to shorter lifespans and caused other health problems. As Sithana told you almost a year ago, there were risks for her in this process. We wouldn't have considered this treatment had Sigren had any other way to be sure of continuing her life as it was before an injury she wouldn't have had if she had not protected Sithana."
"All right," Hannah sighed. "John won't like this much but he knows I'm the one dealing with things here. He says he's willing to trust me on this. I can have her here right after school."
"I think that would be best. I'll see if there is anything on Sithana's schedule. I don't think she has commitments as she has been refusing new appointments for weeks now. I think it very important that both of us stay with them as both, starved of the connection to the spirit they have come to depend on, may seek more intimacy than Sigren is ready to handle now."
"You mean they might sleep together if we let them?"
"I wouldn't call it sleeping together," Sha'ira said. "This would be more akin to a wild, uninhibited physical coupling. Think about how you feel when you see your husband after many months apart. Now multiply that need for intimacy by a thousand and you will have some sense for how Sigren and Sithana will feel. It is possible they will be bonded for the rest of Sigren's life…."
"The rest of her life? You mean this will be permanent?"
"It doesn't have to be permanent, but the more time they spend together the more compatible to each other they will become. This kind of forced compatibility is very common in bondings between Asari and short lived races like Turians and Salarians. We have too little experience of Human-Asari bondings yet but what little we know does suggest that in all likelihoods the bond, in Sigren, will live until she dies…."
Sha'ira paused for a moment as if in thought.
"What feels good to one will feel good to the other. Both will want to avoid causing the other pain. Sithana is already deeply empathetic to others. Her empathy for Sigren may be uniquely intense in an Asari with a non-Asari bondmate by the time Sigren dies. Sigren's caring for Sithana has been proven many times; it will likely grow at nearly the same pace as Sithana's awareness of Sigren. The effect of Sigren's death on Sithana is something we will have to deal with when it happens many years from now. The reinforcement of behavioral patterns the bond causes in all Asari and strongly empathetic Asari like Sithana in particular, can be like an addictive drug in bondings like theirs. It often leads to very long term relationships between Asari who bond to each other or to Krogan. It is also the only reason I didn't object to Dr. Harper's suggestions more forcefully. I prayed to the goddess that by separating them as quickly as possible Sigren and Sithana might escape this consequence. "
"My god, what have we done?" Hannah asked herself, though apparently not quite quietly enough.
"We did what we thought was best. The Goddess often offers us choices with no clear best outcome. As you said to your husband some months ago, we take the one that we think is least bad. I still believe we made the best choice we could with the problems we had and no information on how a deep link would affect both of them, particularly Sigren. That said, just because it was the best choice does not mean it was a good one. I would remind you that Sithana would die sooner than hurting your daughter. Now we must prevent two deaths by stopping the pain we have inflicted on both Sigren and Sithana."
A/N: Speculation on Asari vision is based on a mix of the ME wiki, fanon, and the science of color discussed at the following link from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. oceanexplorer. noaa. gov/ explorations/ 04deepscope/ background/ deeplight/
Reading on molecular clocks and molecular evolution may also be helpful in understanding my thinking.