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

"That would be very kind of you, and I'd greatly appreciate it." She hadn't expected him to offer anything like that, the idea wouldn't have even occurred to her, but it was very kind. And it made her like him even more.

She plopped down into the desk chair and leaned back, curling her legs up into the chair. It was a tight fit, but not uncomfortable. "If I can actually manage to read some of those books, I'll have plenty to keep me busy on this trip, in between cooking and you kicking my ass in the arena." Because she was pretty sure that was going to continue for a while.

A chuckle at that, "I'm pretty sure you came out on top that last round." he said, setting his book aside and coming over to the desk. No reason not to do it now. He pulled some blank paper from one of the top holes in the wall, grabbed a quill and shooed her out of the chair so that he could write out the key for her.

His English text was stiff and all in capitals but the Wraith, for obvious reasons, flowed better over the paper.

But it wasn't just an alphabet, there were several characters that meant certain things, shorthand instead of spelling them out. Like "Queen", "Hive", "Atlantis" and a few others.

By the time he was finished, his fingers were stained black with the ink.

Rogue watched over his shoulder as he wrote out the English and Wraith scripts, recognizing a few of the foreign characters from the books she'd been pouring over. This key really was going to make things much easier for her.

She noticed halfway through the list that ink was beginning to cover his fingers, one of the hazards of using quills, she supposed. Stepping away for a moment, she retrieved a small cloth from the bathing room and set it on the desk beside him. If he decided not to use it, she'd just put it back where she found it, but he was being kind and so she wanted to return the gesture. As he was finishing, an even better way to repay that kindness occurred to her.

"Your English is really good," she complimented him, reaching out to pick up the top piece of paper to get a closer look. "It's completely legible, which is more than I can say for most humans." Grading the homework of teenagers was a special sort of torture that she didn't miss in the slightest.

She returned the page to the stack and leaned her hip against the edge of the desk. "You know, there's another script we use in English sometimes, mostly in personal handwriting, where the letters are more curved and connected to each other. If you're going to be working with humans in the future, you might come across it on paper - if you're not familiar with it, I'll write it out for you with some examples. A lot of the characters are the same, but they can look pretty weird in combination, especially if someone has messy handwriting." Doctors were notorious for it.

Todd looked up when she left for the bathroom but when she returned his eyes were on the page, finishing up what he was writing, though he did glance at the damp cloth once.

After he'd finished, he cleaned off his fingers as best he could with the cloth, though it'd take a scrubbing to rid his claws of it all.

He chuckled a bit at the praise but said nothing of it, though did get up to allow her to sit again. "Indeed? Show me." he said, giving her a fresh piece of paper to show him this other English.

Rogue did as she'd promised, removing her gloves before first writing out the alphabets side by side, print and cursive, capital and lowercase letters, as they were learned by children in school. Then she wrote out a few words, illustrating how the letters were joined together to make the writing more fluid.

"Someone who's younger will probably have a fairly simple style of writing," she explained, "if the Earth in this dimension has progressed as mine has. Most people use this script," a finger tap on the key he'd written for her, "but the older generations tend to prefer this. And any older documents will be in some form of this script as well."

Then she showed him different styles of handwriting, how some people wrote with barely any height to their letters, or crammed them into each other so it was difficult to discern some of the more similar ones. Some were characters by extra loops and others by blocky lines. A dozen variations were easily pulled from the people in her mind, the ones who were always helpful. When she was done, her own hands were as covered with ink as his had been. She'd tried to minimize the damage, but writing with the quill had been a lot more difficult than she'd imagined.

"That one's my handwriting," she pointed out with a smirk, indicating where she'd signed her birth name, Marie D'Ancanto, the signature precisely curved because of how rarely she wrote it anymore.

Todd watched and learned over her shoulder. Now Doctor Beckett and Keller's handwriting made much more sense.

And then she wrote out a bunch more variations. Wraith wrote about the same as one another, but that was how the language was written. Same with Lantean, it was all blocks and shapes with little change from one person to another, then again, with the except of the books he had, most of it was digital.

But in English, the letter "A" had almost as many variations to be written as the entire wraith alphabet.

He looked down at the final entry she'd made, her own. Curved, but far more distinguishable than a few of the variations she'd written.

Todd held out the damp cloth for her to use on her own hands.

Rogue wasn't paying as much attention as she should have been. She was enjoying their sharing of knowledge, riding the high of finally having something she could give him to be useful, like with the cooking. That was why she was so careless when she reached out for the cloth, why her fingertips touched his skin when she shouldn't have gotten anywhere close to it.

The pull was there as her powers kicked in, but it was the light tugging of their first experiment and not the rushing wave of the arena. Still, it jolted her, his energy feeling like being shocked with static electricity, and she jerked her hand back with the cloth before any real damage could be done.

"Sorry," she mumbled, trying not to dissolve into the overly apologetic mess she'd been after the arena. She set to work cleaning the ink from her fingers, trying to be quick about it so she could put her gloves back on again.

Todd drew back too but then dropped his hand at his side. That had been like before. Not in the arena...He opened his mouth briefly while she focused on cleaning her hands, but then closed it.

There was no gain it for him...Or was there?

Would Atlantis be more willing to take her if she could control her ability?

But she'd be leaving his ship one way or the other, whether to stay with Sheppard and his people or to find a secluded world to live on.

...He was too curious for his own good.

"What of trying to pick up where Xavier left off?" Todd said. "There's something going on with your ability here, you know it."

Rogue's hands stilled their near-frantic motions and she looked up at him with wide, uncertain eyes. Was he seriously saying what she thought he was saying? It wasn't an outright offer, but it was pretty damn well implied.

"You're right," she agreed, straightening up a little, putting forth as strong a front as she could manage. "But it could be a long and painful process, with high risk. I couldn't ask that of anyone unless they really understood what they were getting into."

She could kill him. Something could go wrong, she could hold on a second too long or pull too hard and that would be it. "I can't just learn to turn it off, I have to be able to turn it back on again." How strange to be saying it, when for so long all she'd wanted was to switch off her power for good.

"We can work with a drone." he said. "It has no thoughts of its own beyond instinct, but I can gauge from it how your ability is working upon it. And if in the event it should perish, well, they are far less important than the rest of us."

He separated the two sheets of paper so that they could dry properly.

"Sleep on it." he advised before returning to his armchair and to his book to quietly occupy himself.

A drone. Their societal structure was so incredibly insect-like, she should have expected it. The idea of accidentally killing one of them was made no less palatable by his explanation, but it was a decent option. She needed the practice, and might never have this chance again. If she could learn to control it...

He was right. She should sleep on it. She took her cue from his reading in the armchair and took the bed for a few hours of sleep. Rogue never slept as long as humans should, too used to being on the run or waking from nightmares, but that night she got a bit closer than usual. Being in that room with Todd made her feel safe, as odd as it might seem to some, and that went a long way toward fending off the nightmares that frequently haunted her.

Todd eventually dozed in his chair, waking a couple hours later with a stiff neck. Perhaps he should find her quarters of her own...No, there were still too many on board who'd jump at the chance for powerful meal like her.

He got up and stole one of the many pillows off the bed before settling in his chair again. With nothing of significance to report by his underlings on the bridge, the commander fell back to sleep. And he'd still be out of it when Rogue awoke, just as relaxed with her in the room as she was him.

Rogue woke more peacefully than she had in a very long time. Just a slow blinking of eyes, her focus arriving on the streaking color beyond the skylight as they traveled through space. It was beautiful.

And then she saw Todd asleep in the armchair with a pillow and a pang of guilt hit her. She'd stolen his bed again. Had she been anyone else, they might have been able to share the bed, from a purely practical point of view, but with her powers that just wasn't possible. If anyone was going to be left sleeping in the chair, it should be her - she was the intruder in his space, and she was smaller and could fit more comfortably in the chair when trying to sleep.

Hell, she'd rather sleep on the floor than continue stealing his bed when he needed the rest, and it really wouldn't bother her in the slightest. Floors of all types and levels of cleanliness had been her bed for months now, and at least this place was clean and safe.

It was something she'd bring up when he woke. In the meantime, she moved quietly around the room, selecting one of the books in his collection and settling at the desk to try out her new key.

Todd remained asleep for a long while until he was jerked awake by his pillow falling out from under his head against the wall.

A mumbled grunt of annoyance and he decided it was time to get up, picking up and tossing the rebel pillow onto the bed.

Why was he so tired these days? Was it a side-effect of the therapy? He'd been the first to be inoculated and it was nearly a year before the go-ahead was given to start distribution, so he'd see any problems long before his crew did.

No, it wasn't the gene therapy. It was Rogue. She'd brushed against him several times already. His body had healed by now, but his energy had yet to catch up.

It was a bit startling to see Todd wake up like that, Rogue catching most of it from her spot at the desk. She watched him toss the pillow, studied the way he moved. He hadn't said anything, but he still seemed... tired. Worn out. While she was well-rested and full of energy.

Leaning her arms on the desk, she leaned forward slightly and tilted her head to the side. "My offer still stands," she said to him, voice quiet but without any sign of hesitation. "You can feed on me if you want. I don't mind."

Even if it would hurt like hell. She'd stolen energy from him, and she didn't really need it. He could take it back.

The wraith was tempted to, but touching her again, especially to feed upon her, might result in another moment like in the arena. The Hoffan drug all over again.

"I'll pass" he said "Can't risk only getting my energy withdrawn. Or worse, my life" he pointed out. The temptation to lay down now that's he'd vacated his bed was tugging at him, but this was a cycle he had to break now before it got out of hand.

Todd shook it off and then left to go about his rounds, promising to be back before the morning was out so that they could spar.

And there was another piece of motivation to somehow get hold of her powers. He sure as hell didn't deserve this, and he was right to be wary about even trying to fix what she'd done by taking his energy back. It was frustrating, but he had a valid point.

Rogue tried to push past that frustration and focused on her reading. It was a slow process, trying to learn the characters enough to recognize them and then piece together the words, but the symbols that represented whole words themselves were easier to distinguish. It was rewarding when she'd finally worked her way through an entire page of text and actually come away with a vague understanding of the content. Despite that small accomplishment, she'd be more than ready to take a break for some sparring when he returned.

Repairs were holding well, despite the age of the hive ships, they regenerated almost as well as the Wraith themselves. Todd made his usual rounds after that, borrowed a pair of full gloves from an underling, and then returned to his quarters to take Rogue to the sparring chamber.

Today they had the place to themselves.

He pulled the gloves on as they entered the ring. It was extremely strange to wear full ones, wraith rarely wore them at all, and when they did, they were fingerless with an opening in the palm so that their claws and feeing slit weren't confined. It was like putting socks on a cat. But, for his own safety, and to build Rogue's confidence, he had to wear them. Now the only way they'd touch were if one were to headbutt the other.

Todd took a stance and waited for her to make the first move this time.

Rogue had debated for a long while over which style of fighting she might try for this sparring session. After going over Todd's style and form from the previous session, Logan was urging her to go full-on cage fight, but she just wasn't feeling it. Nor were any of the Asian styles appealing to her that day. No, after having Remy pulled to the forefront of her thoughts the night before, she'd decided today would be Savate fighting, the style he'd preferred and really made his own. It had been perfect for his endless kinetic energy, and with the extra buzz she was still feeling from her brush with Todd, it would be perfect for her as well.

She took the offensive, going in strong and quick with kicks and quick jabs. The key was to keep moving, using her momentum to gain more speed and strength behind each attack. It wasn't true Savate that she used, but Remy's more fluid style, but it still remain true to the original technique. Her kicks were limited to striking only with the foot, the sole or toe or inside edge, not her shin or knee - it gave her an added distance that helped a bit when Todd had a longer reach.

Todd took the defense this time, and found she was fighting almost completely different from the day before. Probably due to those other consciousnesses swimming in her head.

But she probably would have done better to go with Logan's preferred style, for once the Wraith predicted where she was swinging her leg, he caught it almost every time. However, instead of flipping her on her back or trying to defeat her, today's spar was more to get the blood moving and keep active.

His thoughts of Atlantis and what was to come of Rogue distracted him and she managed to land a kick in his face.

He staggered back and when he stood up straight again, his nose was bleeding black. He lifted a hand to touch and look at it. Ow. yep, she broke it. A snarl and an audible crunch and he fixed it.

"Quite a blow, takes a lot to break a Wraith's bones, even the most delicate ones." he said "Not angry at me are you?" he teased.

She honestly hadn't expected the kick to make it to its target, he'd been so on game up until then, blocking her and maintaining his defensive position. But he seemed to take it in stride, even as she cringed at the sight of the truly alien blood and the crunch as he reset the bone.

Well, if he was going to take it so well, and even tease her, who was she to turn down the opportunity?

"Oh, sugar," she drawled, laying on the southern charm, "if I was angry at you, I'd do a hell of a lot more than break your nose. This is just me being friendly." It was the first time she'd called him that, sugar, a term of endearment she used with most everyone she was close to. It had just felt right to do so now; he'd earned it.

A roll of her shoulders, stretching the muscles in her back, and she continued playfully, "My former lover used to actually hide from me when my temper flared. He had excellent survival instincts."

Remy's laughter echoed in her mind and she wrapped it around her thoughts, pushing back the grief of his loss and instead embracing the fond memories of him running for the hills after pushing one too many of her buttons. He'd loved her southern spirit, but had also been fully aware that she could and would kick his ass in more ways than one. It felt a little strange to refer to him as her 'lover', it was such an antiquated term, but he'd been so much more than just another boyfriend, and they hadn't had the chance for him to become her husband. So lover it was.

He blinked at the...strange name he'd been bestowed, and the curiosities kept coming, she'd had a mate at one point. Not a question he might have asked but an answer he'd received nonetheless.

The bloody nose had stopped but now his gloves were all bloody. It'd be rude to keep fighting and spray her with it, so he removed the gloves and tossed them aside., which instantly helped clear his head. The feeding slit was more than just a way to suck the life out of humans, but provided a sixth sense. In combination with the heat pits beside his nose, it made Wraith lethal in the dark.

She still had her gloves on. He just had to keep his blows low and not touch her face.

They began again, this time, Todd pushed back.

Since Todd couldn't touch her face and she'd already done a bit of damage to his, Rogue kept her own strikes low as well, going no higher than his shoulders. She could see that she wasn't really getting anywhere with the kickboxing, but it was giving her a good workout, and she definitely needed it. Staying active helped her mental focus, and if they were actually going to try to pick up her control training again, she needed all the help she could get in the focusing department.

She fell into the same trap he did, her thoughts drifting as they moved around the arena, and he landed a blow on her knee at just the right angle to send her tumbling to the ground. And it hurt. A lot. Which was sure hadn't been intentional. Wincing, she rolled her feet again and immediately had to shift her weight off her left leg.

"Lord, sugar, you're good at this," she complimented him, leaning over to put pressure on her knee. "I think the point goes to you this round."

"Todd, Commander, or Sir." he reminded quietly. He wasn't blue jell-o.

"And I've been fighting longer than you" he said with an acknowledged grunt, coming over. Well, that did her in for the day. Best not play with injuries, and they'd been at it for awhile before the screw ups started.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

Not a fan of the sugar thing, then. She made a note of it, and would actually try to refrain from using it too often. Certainly never when his crew was around, just as she had yet to address him as Todd in their presence. It had been a polite sir the entire time during their cooking lesson.

She took a few testing steps, carefully putting weight on her knee. "I can hobble," she determined, noticeably limping but still managing to move pretty well. She'd had a lot of practice in the past - Logan's Danger Room sessions had put them all through the wringer in their early years. "Nothing's torn, just a little overstretched, I think."

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touches him again?

absolutely! :D

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