Private Finished Its not Polite to Drain People

Chloe laughed. The question caught her off guard. "Are you asking if my ex boyfriend turned me gay? ...I'm sorry." She felt like she could come off as ridiculing her daughter, and that's the last thing she wanted to do. She was still smiling, though. "That's not a dumb question. It's just, I never thought of it that way. I actually fell in love with Pandora because... she can be exciting and fun to be around. And she made me feel special."

That was the simplified G-rated version, anyway.

"What did you mean, though?" It also could have been a question about draining, and not about her ex being a jerk.

Chloe began to notice the streaks on her daughter's face where her tears had been running. There was a sink near where she was sitting. She stood up to grab a paper towel and wet it, then she moved her chair closer to Amber to sit down again. "Here, let me wipe some of that away."

She would tell her story while she tried to wipe the evidence of crying off of Amber's face. Hopefully, there wouldn't be more crying. Chloe almost hated herself for inflicting this guilt on Amber - but she felt it needed to be done. For everyone else's sake. "I met your mother at a Halloween party. I was going as a kind of alien in a space suit. It took me several months to get the costume right." Chloe then realized that she needed to explain Halloween to her daughter, since she had never experienced it before. "Halloween is great, by the way. It's a holiday that happens every year on October, which was over a month before I met you. Most people dress up in costumes for it. And you get to walk around neighborhoods and get candy from people, and people will try to spook each other a lot. It's silly, but it's great. Anyway, I met your mom at a costume party. Your aunt Malara was there, too, and she introduced us. And then, ah-"

As Chloe thought about it, she decided that most of the details of what came after that were not safe for young ears. The fact that Chloe was drunk, for one - this was before Chloe had cut down on her binge drinking. And then there was Pandora's behavior - how it repelled that other insectoid girl, and how it tantalized Chloe herself. It was all very un-wholesome. She felt like she needed to protect her daughter from the story of how she met her mother. This realization made her a little sad.

She seemed to be lost in thought as she finished wiping away the last evidence of tears. "Well, I guess, we were really good friends from then on."

Chloe ran her fingers through Amber's hair. "You probably wouldn't be anywhere. But I'm glad you're here."

The box Chloe was using for her experiment made a beeping sound. She took a deep breath, then let it out. "Well, here comes the moment of truth." After giving her daughter a short, tight hug, she stood up and looked at a panel on the box. She pressed a few buttons, and the panel showed some numbers and bar graphs. She leaned in and looked closely at them.

"Alright." She nodded. Her gaze fell to another set of numbers. She mumbled something. Another set of numbers, another bit of mumbling. Eventually, she stood up straight. "No difference," she said. "You didn't do anything to my soul. So... I don't think we're hurting people." She threw the capillary tubes with her blood into a hazardous waste container, then went about cleaning off her dagger and cleaning up after herself. "I'm sorry I made you worry so much. We are going have a talk about asking permission before using your powers on them, but... I think this was enough punishment. Do you want to get a treat on the way home?"

She was probably spoiling her daughter, but Chloe felt like she needed a little pick-me-up herself after all this.

Only when they got to the car did Chloe lose her composure.

It started with a hug. It tightened. She began to sob.

"I'm crying because I'm happy."

Amber had only gotten a glimpse of the anxiety and the self-loathing her mother had battled for years. And that was all she would ever have to experience: just a glimpse. Now it was over. It was behind them. It was a silly thing they could laugh about later.

She couldn't turn her relief into words. It fell from her eyes in drips and streaks, staining Amber's uniform.