“Allura – ”

The interrupter gulped in terror as the brunette paused in her conversation and turned her mis-matched gaze toward him. One clear almost white-irised eye and one brown eye gazed at him with equally cold sharpness. He gulped.

It was possible sometimes to forget what she was. With one half of her face completely normal, clear skin, brown hair, tan skin, brown eye, it was possible to think of her as just another human. Then she turned and you got the full effect. Sure. Half her face looked human.

But the other half was not.

The skin was paler there and threaded through with a golden tracery of scar tissue. Golden, because that was the color of Alluran blood once their dormant genes had activated. Scarred because decades ago someone had blown up a building with hundreds of innocent people inside just for the chance to this woman before she got any stronger than she’d been at the time.

News flash.

They failed.

But they killed the Allura’s sister. And they’d burned away most of Allura’s memory and half her face and body at the same time. The web of scars were said to continue down that entire side of her body. She cocked her head to the side and arched the pale translucent-white eyebrow on the scarred side of her face. Pale and translucent like all the hair that had regrown through the scars. It gave her an interesting streak of white on her head and pale eyelashes on her scarred eye.

“You needed something?” It was cool. Professional. But the subvocalization and telepathic sending promised pain to anyone who dared interrupt her needlessly. No one was even sure if she consciously did that anymore, but she did tend to reinfore her words with non-verbal communication with pretty much everyone.

It was…

…unsettling…

“I…” the messenger licked his suddenly dry lips as he took in the rows of monitors and the camera set up for a conference call. He recognized two prime ministers, a couple of sheiks and at least three monarchs on the screens behind her.

“Is this an emergency, or not?” She prompted as the heads of state on the screens beyond her began to murmur.

“Is something wrong, Allura?” One called out with concern.

“I’m not sure yet. Please give me a moment.” She turned back toward the messenger who nearly fainted as he felt her mental caress, asking permission to enter his mind and retrieve the information he was now too frightened to deliver.

Her lips twitched impatiently as he fumbled the mental greeting and was clumsy in letting her though his shield. He should have just sent it to her. From the fucking hallway instead of bursting into her office like a rookie novice. It was fine though. She could take the information with or without his permission. Though she preferred to have consent to enter someone’s thoughts.

Once she had the information, she was not pleased by it. Her daughters conspiring to circumvent the security measures placed on the youngest was… not optimal. But it wasn’t something for her to be angry about. Just disappointed. Dispassionately disappointed.

“I see.” Her flat reply was mechanical, without the proper intonations and inflections of emotion that were considered normal for humans. That too, was part of the scars, part of what had been burnt away when the mind link with her sister-clone had been severed in the fire and pain of her death. Remembering that she needed to show more feeling when humans were watching, she smiled at the young man who had brought her the message.

“Thank you…,” pausing, she pulled his name from his mind, “Gordon. I appreciate you notifying me of this. Please close the door on your way out.” The young man bowed jerkily and rushed out, closing the door a little too loudly on his way out.

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“I beg your pardon. Gordon’s new among my personal aides and my…” Allura gestured to the scarred side of her face which, while it was perfectly symmetrical with the undamaged side, was so obviously discolored “…features still make him nervous.” Her serene and beguiling smile seemed genuine and self-deprecating. But there was something about her that was still so… alien.

“That’s quite alright.” An elderly monarch volunteered gallantly. He quite liked Allura and was always certain to let other heads of state know how much he appreciated having interstellar royalty among his peers.

“Did you just read that young man’s mind?” Another snapped sharply. They clearly found the idea that she might have invaded someone’s thoughts in front of them distasteful.

“He opened his mind and presented the information he was bringing to me. I did not need to go inside.” Her smile remained serene and polite. Regal even, one might say. An excellent copy of how a human monarch might behave. At least, it better be because she’d spent a lot of time practicing it.

Even now, decades later, the regrown flesh on the damaged side of her face wasn’t quite as responsive as the original. It was so barely noticeable, but it was there. That fraction of a moment of hesitation. The disconnect between her body and the parts that her symbiont had regrown in the desperate attempt to save itself since her crystal heart had not yet regrown after her first daughter’s birth.

That traitorous little bastard energy parasite wasn’t able to jump ship to a new body, so it fixed the one it was stuck in as best it could.

“You still entered another’s mind while in the middle of this international conference about mental privacy laws?” They snapped back at her. This particular man had been waspish all day and now she began to understand. It wasn’t about mental privacy. It was about aliens. And alien biology. And the powers that aliens had that humans didn’t.

“He willingly provided me access to the information.” She corrected him. “I did not take it from him without permission.” There was no need for him to be so upset about telepathy that was permissive.

“So, you say. But we have only your word to go on for that. You could have changed anything in his mind while you were there to make him think that he had given permission.” This… again. Always this.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you what the interruption was about? Then you could judge whether or not it is something that I would have reason to change his memories about?”

“Yes, actually.

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

“If it wasn’t something secretive or dangerous to world powers why else would you need telepathy to hide it? Why not just go through normal channels?”

“Oh, no, no.”

The responses were varied, but it was clear that there was a significant portion of the government leaders she was speaking with, who really couldn’t abide by her having a telepathic conversation with her subordinates beside her. With a slight snort of amusement she shook her head with what was now a genuine smile.

“Alright. I’ll share.” And her smile grew even larger as she leaned in conspiratorially. “My youngest daughter has been using her older sister’s security credentials to bypass some of the security measures placed on her.” She laughed in genuine mirth. That was the kind of thing her own sister had done. “Her father just found out that she’s got a human boyfriend and he is absolutely livid. Excuse me.”

Her hand covered her mouth as she chuckled.

“That, that could have waited.” The Allura leaned her elbows on the podium before her. “Like, he did not have to bring me that message right now. I don’t know what that kid was thinking. But my chief of staff if going to have a cow when she finds out he interrupted this,” she gestured around at the monitors each one having its own camera feed so it looked like she was looking at the person on whatever monitor she was looking at, “to tell me about teen drama that is clearly within the security purview of her father.”

“You don’t care that your daughter is dating? Or that she’s been hiding this boyfriend from you?” The monarch who liked her questioned her with confusion.

“Oh. I care. I do.” She assured him. “It’s just that, security and…how do I put it delicately? Umm… rules surrounding romantic relationships for future Allura have always traditionally been dealt with by their fathers.”

“Ah. Because even in your matriarchal society you know that a father knows best.” An elderly and very traditionally minded human man pipped in from one of the monitors on her left.

“Oh. No. That’s not exactly it. It’s because usually, Allura usually die giving birth and there is no mother present to have a say. That is how my ancestors were manipulated and controlled by human governments for several centuries, is it not? By making sure the fathers of Allura were loyal to a particular nation?” Her statement made her audience uncomfortable. The women glared at various directions obviously fuming about men in general because how typically male had those actions been.

“Regardless,” she continued sanguinely “it was something that could wait until after this meeting was concluded.” But it had been timed perfectly to remind her peers that telepathy and empathy was a two edged blade, one that had been used by humans to enslave her and her ancestors for centuries. She needed to remember to thank and possibly promote that new aide.