fateandfortune | Just two vampires, traveling the galaxy... [For Todd the Wraith]

"Unfortunately Rogue's powers have returned so be careful around her." Todd said. Communicating mentally with youngsters was hard, otherwise he would have relayed that info to them as such. Like learning to walk, they had to learn to use their telepathy.

The female and one of her brothers stepped forward regardless of the danger, but still, the others didn't back away at the news.

"Will you be able to control your powers again?" asked the female, curiously. Despite their physical age, they spoke as eloquently as Torren would at his age.

One of the other males came over and handed Todd a small portable tablet, he proceeded to sit down and look over the information, the youngster looking over his arm but also glancing over to Rogue when the female asked her question.

They really had been told about her. Clearly they knew about her powers if they understood the warning Todd had given, but what else did they know? There was an almost burning curiosity in Rogue to find out, but also a churning dread at the pit of her stomach.

"I hope so," she answered the young female, her words sincere where they wouldn't have been even five minutes earlier. "I'm certainly going to try."

The female's curiosity was apparently not sated by that and she asked another question. "How did you lose control of your powers?"

There was such innocence in those words that all Rogue could do was fumble her way to an answer that was truthful but wouldn't have an ill effect on the young minds forming. "To be able to control them, I have to feel safe," she explained carefully. "Until a few days ago, I was in a bad place where I was never safe."

Several of them looked at one another. In a place that was never safe? It sounded too horrible to be true.

"Couldn't you have just used your powers to kill those who made you unsafe?" asked the male getting help from the commander with his homework.

"Doing so would require taking them into her head" Todd answered. "And that's very unpleasant to do when those around you are doing cruel things to you that are unpleasant."

"Like eating broccoli? That's unpleasant" said another male.

Todd chuckled at that. "Worse." The little male pulled a face at that.

All of them were quite young, but even when they eventually matured to the age they'd typically start to feed, they'd never know what it's like to feed on humans. Or so that was the hope, that the gene therapy would be passed down. If not, they'd have to produce the serum forever.

If only that had been the reason she'd been unable to escape. Rogue was grateful when the young one working with Todd brought up the much easier subject of broccoli, because she honestly didn't know that she could have handled things continuing down the path they'd been on.

"I never liked broccoli much either when I was young," she told the one who had made a face. "But your tastes will probably change as you get older. What tastes bad now may taste good to you in a few years."

Lord, she'd missed this. Talking with children. She'd best enjoyed working with the younger ones back at the school, and it had been so very long since she'd been a teacher. They'd tried their best to always keep the students safe, to give them a brighter, safer future, but eventually...

Her smile faltered and she shifted uncomfortably, trying her best to hide it from the children.

The little male thought about the day he might come to like broccoli, shook his head and went back to his book.

The female was far more attentive to Rogue than her brothers and she cocked her head, noticing how she faltered a bit.

Todd got up, handing the tablet to the male who'd brought it to him. "Good work little one." he said, touching the top of the youngster's head and returning to Rogue's side. "Come, let's get something to eat." he suggested to her.

The female returned to her blob bed and settled down to sleep, many of the others also deciding to take their rest too now that the excitement was over.

Rogue could see the way the female watched her and it seemed like a good sign of how she might handle being a queen later in life. And that thought brought on a whole new line of questions that she would like to ask when the opportunity presented itself.

When they were back in the hall and the door had closed behind them, she looked up at Todd with a snall smile. "They're amazing, Todd," she told him. "The best possible additions to the crew."

"Hm, good to hear." he replied. "We're unsure how the gene therapy will effect them or whether or not it will kick in when they mature. They're only two and two and a half so it's still very early to tell. For now, we're teaching them as we teach all young wraith." he said, walking beside her as they headed for the kitchens.

"Doctor Beckett and Doctor Keller were rather unsettled by how little their sires get to interact with them, but that's just how our society works. They learn on their own and from those around them. Focusing on just two figures in their life isn't enough."

"It is different with humans," she acknowledged, "but our young are helpless for their first years. A two year old human is nothing like a two year old wraith. A human child at the same developmental stage as those young wraith, though, they would be sent to school to learn from a number of teachers and interact with others their age. So it's a little similar, but certainly different."

Having seen how wraith society functioned, it didn't surprise Rogue in the slightest that this was how their young were raised. Family ties were very different with wraith, so it would actually be strange for the parents to devote large amounts of time to the young when there were so many others around.

This was true, humans were born very frail things and took, by comparison, ages to get to where a wraith youngling was at the same age. And yet, wraith had depended on this fragile species for eons.

The hive was home, school, work, and play all rolled into one, most youngsters not even touching dirt until well into their fifties when they've found a field of work that they excelled in.

They reached the kitchens, which had indeed gotten the full make-over. Two refrigerators, one marked "goods" the other "leftovers". A larger island, two stove-tops, four ovens, pots and pans hung from the ceiling over the island. A variety of small appliances were likely tucked away in the numerous cabinets. It was like walking into a fully loaded gourmet kitchen. The pantry too had doubled in size.

Rogue stared at the new kitchen with wide eyes, her jaw dropping a little at just how much everything had changed. They had grown, adapted, turned this into a real way of life where they could not just survive, but flourish.

And she hadn't been there to see it.

"I missed so much," she said softly, to herself as much as to him. "All of this. You've accomplished so much and I wasn't here."

"We have" he confirmed, turning an oven on to pre-heat before going to the leftovers fridge and pulling out some beef stew. He scooped out healthy portions for the both of them into bowls and put the rest back.

"But we still have a long way to go before we're independent entirely from Atlantis." he answered, sitting down at the island. "We're currently working on negotiating trade. Crops for herbs and spices, which are hard to come by in Pegasus unless you know what to look for, and even so, there are many only native to Earth."

She sat down beside him instead of across the island, because she needed to be close to him in order to remind herself he was really there. (Or rather that she was really there, and not still stuck back in that lab.)

"A trade agreement could be good," she acknowledged with a weak smile. "I'm sure negotiations would be better without our good friend Mister Woolsey involved, but I'm sure things will work out." She hoped they would.

Leaning her arms on the island, the sleeve of the robe inched up her left arm to expose the last number of her tattoo, which caught her eye. She could never forget it was there, but it still looked so strange marked on her skin. It was almost like she was seeing it through someone else's eyes.

"Surprisingly Woolsey has been quite cooperative regarding negotiations. He's getting on in his years so perhaps he's softening a little." he chuckled. He looked to her, hardly believing she was here himself. He expected to turn and find her gone again, or never having been there at all.

Todd lifted a hand and brushed her sleeved arm with the backs of his fingers, quiet a moment, then asked at last, "What happened that day, Rogue?"

She watched his fingerd brush at her arm, safe with the cloth barrier between them, and her heart ached when he asked that question.

"It was so stupid," she muttered quietly with a slight shake of her head. "I couldn't sleep, I was excited to see you and worried about what would happen with Victoria, so I went out on the balcony to read for a while. There was a strong wind and I dropped my book onto a ledge below. When I climbed over to get it, I fell." She took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. "I guess it was my survival instincts or something, but there was another portal and suddenly I was right back where I'd started. It hadn't even been an hour since I'd left. My team thought I'd hit my head when I talked about being in another dimension."

Todd listened to her story. He'd expected one of her friends to step through a portal and offer to take her back. That they needed her desperately and thus could not refuse. Instead, a near death experience and she'd returned home in the blink of an eye. He supposed he ought to feel glad the portal had opened up when it did, otherwise that day they truly would have been mourning the loss of her and she'd not be here.

He only stopped touching her when the oven beeped that it was heated. He got up, put their food inside and set a timer before returning to sit beside her again.

"We searched and performed every scan we could." he said. "Eventually a recorded energy signature was picked up at the time of your disappearance, which led us to conclude you'd somehow returned to your world. I've never been to a human funeral before but I suppose the ceremony Atlantis held in your honor was as close to one as any."

Edited 2016-04-06 06:01 (UTC)

At least they'd known, then. That she had gone somewhere and not just ended up in the water to never be found again. In her mind, the not knowing would have been more difficult, but she was looking at it from a skewed perspective.

"That was awfully nice of them," she commented, trying to keep her tone from sounding too bitter or upset. It really was sweet that they'd taken time to remember her like that. "Lord knows how many times over the last three years I've wished I had died that day."

But then she wouldn't be there with him, and she wouldn't have been there to take Kitty's power and see the plan through. If she had died, so very many things would have been different.

"One day I hope you'll tell me all that happened in your time back I your dimension." He said, getting up again, this time to get some biscuits. He wrapped a bunch in foil and put them in the oven along with their stew to heat up. "For now...I think it's your turn to ask some questions" he said, thinking back to when they first met and they agreed to go back and forth evenly with their questions for one another.

"I'll answer one for you, the seven are mine and Victoria's" he grinned a little proudly.

It was an endearing blast from the past to be taking turns with questions again. How many days had they spent doing that back in the beginning? With their rainy reunion, it truly was a day for nostalgia.

"Look at that grin," she said with a smile of her own. "You deserve it, though. They really are amazing, Todd. I can't wait to see how they are when they're older. I just wish I could live long enough to really see who they'll become." Her lifetime would be so short compared to a wraith's. It was a little depressing, but she'd tried not to think it about it too much during her time on the hive. She needed to enjoy what she had and not think about the inevitable. "Have many of the other queens had offspring since the end of the war, do you know?

It'd been a very long time since he'd been granted the chance for offspring, and six at once and then number seven soon after had been quite an ego boost.

Wraith matured quickly, it was likely Rogue would still see a lot of their lives in her time. And...her life could always be prolonged...

Todd nodded at that, "Most hives have started by now, several have far more than us already but this is Victoria's first brood. It's likely in another couple years we will have another, larger one" But that was up to the queen, he had no say in when and how many she produced. Tomorrow she could call on him and they'd suddenly triple their offspring, or she'd wait another decade before even thinking about having any more.

It was good that the other hives had started adding to the population. The war had been costly to their numbers from what she'd seen, and now that all of the wraith had taken the gene therapy, there was no reason for them to keep the population so low. It would be best to wait for any booms until they had worked out all the issues with farming and harvesting, but other than that, there were few good reasons not to grow in number.

"I know they're not human children, and that they have different needs and that your society is so different from what I've known, but when I saw them..." Her voice trailed off and she had to collect herself for a moment. "They remind me a bit of the children I taught before. They're younger than most that we saw, but that association is still there for me. And it's both wonderful and... painful."

Todd looked to her and cocked his head, "You may interact with them as much or as little as you like" he said "However, we should work on your ability and relearning how to switch it off" he said. If she happened to touch one of the young ones, it would be devastating. She'd likely kill them or at least send them into a coma like her first encounter.

He set her stew and water in front of her, putting the biscuits in a small basket and setting them in front of them before joining her.

Rogue stared at the bowl of steaming food in front of her, but her mind was a million miles away, remembering how she had lost control of her ability. She worried her lower lip with her teeth and fidgeting in her seat, then finally closed her eyes and shook her head slightly.

"I won't be going near them until I have complete control," she assured him in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. "They're too important to risk. I can't be the cause of more... of more children dying."

Todd was glad she'd come to that decision on her own.

For a little while there, he thought she might not want to get her ability under control again. That whatever horrible things they'd done to her made her think she deserved not to feel the touch of another, or live without fear of hurting another.

This decision meant she had a solid goal to reach and thus would be more determined in their training than if she hadn't had one.

He tucked into his dinner, and, to get her mind off dead children, he told her about what happened after they figured out what had happened to her.

They began the gene therapy right away on Victoria. It was jarring and the effects came and went for nearly a month before finally leveling out. The drones were far more difficult, their serum took several more months to perfect. And then once they and the queen were ready for a normal diet, they had to reproduce the serum on massive scales. While the wraith population had dropped in numbers, there were still plenty more of them than there were humans in Pegasus.

They finished distributing the base drug to the males as many already had been inoculated, and then worked through the females. By the time they were all complete, enough of the serum to give out to the drones had been produced.

"The final drones were inoculated after the final hive surrendered. Not bad for not even a decade of work" he said, taking another biscuit.

It wasn't an easy topic to shift away from, but Rogue did her best to follow the new line of conversation, listening attentively while Todd told her about the progress with the gene therapy over the years. She listened and nodded, occasionally asking a brief question, all while very slowly working her way through her meal.

Eating was still something of a chore for her after her captivity. It took real effort to remind herself to take a bite, chew, swallow. All of it felt unnatural even after the days she'd been on Atlantis; three years of mostly being kept alive by intravenous nutrients had changed her in a number of ways. But she needed the calories if she was going to regain a healthy weight, and if she worked at it long enough she knew it would get back to feeling 'normal' eventually.

"I really am in awe of how much you've accomplished in so short a time," she told him with a small smile. "It's hard to believe, with the way things were when I left. It seems like just another part of a dream I had once."

There was still a third of her bowl of stew left to go, but each bite was starting to become harder than the last. "That's what I thought you were, after a while," she admitted suddenly, her train of thought shifting in her weary state. "Everything here - I thought it was all something I dreamed up to help me survive."

"Rest assured that this is no dream." He said, touching her shoulder, even Irving it a slight squeeze to let her know he was solid and real, and getting up to set his empty bowl and glass in the dishwasher. They found the strange device used far less water than they did when they washed an equal amount of used plates and cutlery, so they'd had it installed.

When he saw she was trying to muscle through the last of her stew, he offered to take it. She need not force herself. In fact, in her fairly wasted state, it was best not to.

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