Room 406, evening

[izzyalienqueen]

Isabel sat on her bed typing away on her laptop, trying to finish up her bill for US Government. She was not humming I'm just a bill, yeah I'm only a bill under her breath.

The door's open.

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[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin, going into his own room across the hall, stopping into Isabel's room when he saw the door was open.

"Hey," he said, smiling. "Heard you've had an interesting couple of days."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"Hey Anakin!" Isabel said and then rolled her eyes. "Interesting is one way to put it."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

He leaned into the doorjamb. "Amazing week of crappiness seemed so overdramatic," he said, grinning. He sobered. "You doing okay?"

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"That's true, and god knows we have enough drama around here already," Isabel laughed.

"But I'm doing okay. Thank you." She shrugged, her smile dimming slightly. "I might have been a little crazed on Friday after I found out about the broadcast. Rory got to see me put on a bit of a show in History of Art. And I don't usually do stuff like that."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, she mentioned it to me," Anakin said. "Seemed pretty impressed. She wanted to know if you were a Jedi, too."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're not, right? I haven't missed seeing you at the big parties or something?"

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"Sadly I've been missing out on the intergalactic party circuit," Isabel said.

She closed the laptop and put it aside. "We, my brother, our friend Michael and I, we don't know much about where we came from. All we know is that we were brought here to earth in 1947. The ship crashed and the government covered it up, including the fact that they captured everyone that had been on the ship. But that was only after they'd managed to hide our pods in the desert. We hatched, for want of a better word, nearly fifty years later knowing nothing about who or what we were, or where we were from. All we knew is that we were different."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin nodded, face sympathetic, as Isabel told her story. "And beings tend not to react well to different," he said quietly. "I'm guessing that's why this was a secret for so long?"

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"Exactly. When people found out last year, the FBI wound up involved. They captured my brother and tried to make him into some kind of lab rat. We got him back, fortunately. But it wasn't easy." She shrugged, "Add in the mysterious enemies we've been warned about and you can see you I tried to keep things quiet."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin came into the room and made himself comfortable on the floor. "Your brother okay?" he asked.

His pressed his lips together. "Had a bit of a personal experience with someone close to me getting tortured recently. Way up there on my list of things never to have happen again."

He ran a hand through his hair. "And why do the enemies always have to be mysterious?" he asked. "They should have nametags or something. Make life easier for everyone."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"He's okay. They had him just long enough to scare us, scare him. But with the help of some friends we were able to get him back before they did any permanent damage."

Then Isabel nodded, understanding exactly where Anakin was coming from. "It makes you feel helpless doesn't it? Even when you're doing something, you feel like you should be doing more, doing it faster."

"Most of our problems are the result of the crash. We got separated from the ones that were supposed to protect us and teach us, so we didn't know anything growing up. It's only in the last year, hell the last two weeks that we started to find things out." She laughed bitterly thinking of the cost of that knowledge. "Just little things, like where we're from. You wouldn't happen to know anything about a planet called Antar would you?" she asked, figuring it was a total long shot, but worth a try.

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

"Exactly," Anakin said, glad to find someone who understood. "This...thing...was why I had to leave here so suddenly. The beings who'd kidnapped my old teacher did it because they knew I was here and wouldn't be able to get there in time." He yanked at his braid. "I just about went crazy with the waiting."

He shook his head when she mentioned the name of the planet. "I haven't heard of it," he said. "But maybe the library here has something? They seem to have everything." He smiled. "I'm even mentioned in some of the Special Collections stuff from my home galaxy. It's kind of weird."

He looked up at Isabel and waved his hand. "You seem to have your powers under control, and they sound like they work kind of the same way as mine. I started my own training pretty late, but I've been working with it for almost a decade." He shrugged. "So if you hae any questions, I'd love to try to help." His mouth twisted. "I know the frustration that comes with feeling behind the curve."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"But you got him back. Right?" she asked as she slid off the bed and took a seat on the floor as well. "And in the end, that's what matters."

"I might have to ask about that. Hell, they might even have a biography of my brother. Apparently he was king on our world. Which was just what he needed to make him even more bossy."

"Thanks. That would be great. I'm still trying to figure out everything I can do," she said. "The simple stuff is easy enough, floating things, changing colors, temperatures. And can I say how weird it is to have this conversation?" she laughed. "It's definitely not something I'd be talking about with a classmate back in Roswell."

"But I'm still trying to figure out everything else. I can dreamwalk. Which means I can get inside someone's head and see what their subconcious is thinking about," she explained. "It's easier if I go to sleep myself and have a picture of the person I'm dreamwalking as a focus, but when we were looking for Max last year, I found that I could do it when I was awake. It's amazing the things you learn when you're under pressure."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, we got him back," Anakin said, eyes shining fiercely. "And taught those responsible a lesson about Jedi."

He raised an eyebrow. "Your brother was king? That make you a princess?" He smiled. "Do I need to call you by a title now?" He gave her a wicked smile. "If this kind of stuff is around, it's probably in Special Collections. I'd demand a note to get into it from Professor Skeeter, personally."

He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. "Dreamwalking? I can't do that, but I can get inside beings' heads if I want to." He paused. "It doesn't go over well here. Just saying."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"Good. We got Max back and managed to fix it so that the FBI would leave us alone." She recognized the glint in Anakin's eye. While Michael might feel guilty over taking Pierce's life, she certainly wasn't going to shed any tears. Not when his death meant that they would be safe. "You can't ask for more then that."

"He was king. Possibly, but I don't know for sure. All I know is I was betrothed to Michael, who was my brother's second in command." She shook her head. "Which was really bizarre to find out considering I've spent the past ten years treating him like a second brother."

"I'm afraid to go near Skeeter since I'm still pretty angry. I'm likely to float her up to the ceiling and leave her there if I saw her," she said grimly. "I've never even met the woman, yet she had to spill my personal business all over the radio. The bitch."

"Yeah, univited trips into people's heads are never appreciated. Fortunately the one time it happened here, it was an accident and the person understood. I actually made a good friend because of it," she said with a smile. "But as a general rule, I try to stay out of my friends' heads unless invited."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin's eyebrows went up at the part about Michael. "Okay, that had to be really weird. You were sent here without any memories of what happened back home? Mindwiped or something?"

He smiled at the image of Professor Skeeter stuck to the ceiling. "She'd deserve it," he said. "But anger is bad, et cetera, at least from everything my teachers have told me. Using powers like we have when we're not thinking clearly can lead to some pretty nasty consequences." He thought about it for a minute. "Maybe someone else instead. I mean, if you want to get into the Special Collections at all."

He spread his hands. "I was using it as a kind of pre-emptive measure to, um, avoid violence. But yeah, it didn't go over very well."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

Isabel shook her head. "I think the memories are there. We just haven't been able to access them other then occasional flashes. From what we've been able to piece together, our planet was at war. With who, or what we have no clue. But somehow, some way, we were killed. Our alien essence was combined with human DNA and we were sent here to earth to grow and learn to use our powers so that we could eventually return to our planet and save our people."

"But the ship crashed and the government got involved. Somehow the the survivors of the crash managed to hide the pods we were incubating in in a cave in the desert and that's where we stayed until we hatched ten years ago. The only problem was, the lone survivor of the crash didn't make it back in time. We were found by the authorities and considered abandoned children." She sighed, "Max and I were lucky. We were adopted together. But we'd gotten separated from Michael and he wound up in foster care. We didn't find him again till we started school a year later."

"It's only in the last year, since we finally made contact with the survivor, that we were able to figure out even the most basic of facts," she finished.

"As for Special Collections, maybe I'll ask Prof. Lyman. I pretty sure he'd help."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin looked at Isabel for a long time before saying,"There are techniques I've learned for memory retrieval if you really want to know. But sometimes there's a reason things like this have been blocked. Or maybe the survivor you're talking about has a plan for when they want you to know things."

He glanced at her. "Is the survivor a good teacher? Giving you some answers? It must be so frustrating not to know."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"I might have to take you up on them. Max and Michael have both gotten flashes of memories, usually when they're in a state of heightened emotion." She snickered, "Like when they're making out with their girlfriends. Since I've yet to meet anyone I feel that strongly about, I haven't had any flashes of my own. So another technique might be useful. I don't think that the memories were hidden on purpose, I just think we can't remember because we never had anyone to teach us."

"Nacedo, the survivor I spoke about? He left when we got Max back from the FBI. He was a shapeshifter and was able to impersonate the head of the unit that was hunting us. That's why we were finally safe, at least we thought we were. But he's dead now," she said flatly. "The enemies we had on our planet have apparently followed us here. Shortly after I came to Fandom, they came to Roswell. Nacedo was killed by them. So we really are on our own now."

She closed her eyes and pushed back her hair. "The whole situation is frustrating. One part of me wants to know everything, but the other part of me would like to forget it all and just pretend I'm this normal girl with a normal future ahead of me. I don't want a whole planet of people depending on me to save them."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin went red. "Yeah, that's not exactly our technique," he said.

He reached out a hand, not sure how Isabel would feel about being touched. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said quietly. "The first person who was going to train and protect me was killed, too. It's a hard thing to get over."

His mouth twisted. "And I've learned that it's pretty hard to run away from destiny. What we want from our lives and what we get turn out to be two vastly different things."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

Isabel laughed when Anakin blushed. "I can't imagine why not."

"It's okay. I'd only met him a handful of times. We weren't close at all. To be honest I didn't like him all that much. He was too alien. He couldn't understand why we had human friends, or why we cared about them. And ultimately, he betrayed us." Her face grew shadowed as she continued speaking quietly. "There was another pod in the cave. It contained my brother's wife, Tess. Nacedo came back in time to find her. He raised her, while he looked for us. She turned out more like him, with no regard for human life. She tricked Max into getting her pregnant. But the only way for the baby to survive was for us to return to Antar. Something we found out just in the knick of time." Isabel took a deep breath. "This time two weeks, I thought I was going to be leaving earth in less then 24 hours and going home to a planet I didn't even remember. But with just minutes to spare we found out the truth. Nacedo had sold us out years ago. Tess was to get pregnant with Max's heir and we would return to Antar. The baby would be nothing but a puppet, Tess would live in luxury and the rest of us would be executed. Our human friends found all this out and saved us. They also found out she'd killed our other friend in the course of her plotting. Just used him up and threw him away. His funeral was the reason I'd returned to Roswell in the first place."

Seh was quiet for a few minutes, trying to process the still raw grief telling the story had exposed. Finally she laughed bitterly. "Destiny sucks."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin scooted a little closer to Isabel as she was telling her story, his eyes full of sympathy. He knew exactly how hard this had been for her to tell him about.

"Wow," he said finally. "That's awful." He nudged his shoulder against hers. "Anything you need?"

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

She nudged back, grateful for the concern. "Tess's head on a platter would be nice. But since she's returned to the home planet, I'll settle for the public humiliation of Prof. Skeeter. Xander's found out some information about her from a friend that's in her world. The potential for payback is growing rapidly."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin gave her a sharp smile. "I'm always up for the humiliation of Skeeter," he said. "She thinks I'm gay." He paused. "Which I'm not."

He looked at the wall. "She has this nasty habit of hurting my friends. This sort of thing shouldn't be encouraged."

He glanced back at Isabel. "So count me in for whatever help you might need. I'm in her not-advanced journalism class."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

Isabel nodded, Anakin's personal relationships were his business and no one else's.

"I just don't get what hurting people or spreading rumors about them gains her. Unless she's really that mean and petty and gets some kind of sick enjoyment out it," she grumbled.

"I'll keep that in mind. I haven't thought of anything myself. Mostly because I just can't fathom coming up with something that would be a suitable revenge for all the pain and suffering she's caused around here." She grinned, "I'm better at small and sneaky."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin laughed. "My old teacher would say that anything that didn't involve me and a lightsaber was a more advanced plan than he'd expect from me." He raised an eyebrow. "I don't do subtle, but if I think of anything, I'll let you know."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"I don't know, there are times when the straight-forward kick ass approach works best. It's when you start to get fancy that things go wrong," Isabel said. "And any input would be greatly appreciated. This has got to be big. I suppose it's wrong to say how much I'd like her to be the one talked about for a change?"

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

"That's what I said," Anakin replied, grinning. "Complicated plans tend to go badly."

He tapped his lips with a finger, thinking. "The way rumors get started around here, there's got to be a way to humiliate her."

[izzyalienqueen.livejournal.com]

"Well," Isabel said slowly, "Xander found out that's she been writing ad copy. For ads about making your monster grow. And yes," Isabel smiled wickedly. "That is totally a euphemism."

[emo-padawan.livejournal.com]

Anakin choked, then laughed until tears came.

"Perfect," he said, trying to catch his breath.