The Future
DG32173

Sarah: hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I had any muse for the sister-series Setting Things Right. But I finally got an idea for another offshoot of the series, this time from Gemma's viewpoint in the far distant future when she awakens from her first trip to the past, the one that set Elena and Damon on the path of prophecy. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Sarah, if we get a glimpse of this distant future, isn't that giving us spoilers of the future of the series when you hate giving spoilers?" My answer is this: Nothing of major importance for the future of the series will be spoiled here other than a few things that I'm sure ya'll already figured would happen, given my normal tendency with my TVD stories and what has already happened and been 'leaked' in the series. Also, be aware that this offshoot is gonna be multiple chapters as ideas come to me and not all chapters are going to be from the same viewpoint but they will all be set in that far distant future, long after Damon and Elena fulfill the prophecy that will happen in the third book. The chapters will not, however, be in any particular order, neither by where they are located in the history of this universe nor by whose viewpoint they are from nor any other sense of order. They will be written as I have the ideas for them. Now, this author's note is getting much too long. It's time for the pre-story information and then the story itself.

CREDIT
Massive credit goes to my beta, crzykittyfangirl, for all her help (not to mention patience) with my stories and my overly stubborn muse. Thanks so much for everything.

DISCLAIMER
As with every other fanfic I've written, I have to do a disclaimer for this one as well. I own the universe I am creating with this sister-series and its offshoots. I own the things I've claimed in the other stories of this series, including Damon and Elena's unbelievable powers. Please don't use anything I've made up for this series, or any of my stories actually, without first asking me and waiting for a reply. If I give you permission to use it, I'd like to send me a link to the story when you post it as well as give me credit within the story for the original idea of whatever you're using to be at the very least in the chapter it first appears in of that story. Anything that you recognize from our world belongs to someone else with a much bigger bank account and is usually up for grabs in Fanfiction.

SUMMARY
(Offshoot of Setting Things Right sister-series) I'm sure everyone is curious about 'Gemma' from my only sister-series on the site and the distant future she is from. Well, here's a glimpse at that distant future from Gemma's viewpoint in the first chapter as well as others viewpoints for future chapters. WARNING: Potential spoilers for some parts of the future of the series, though nothing that ya'll won't have guessed at already.


Gemma

After my body created for this trip to the past dies nearly thirty years after my King and his brother are turned into vampires, surrounded by all the remaining Salvatores of the era, I keep my soul in the past just long enough to cast one last spell, a spell to erase my existence from this era except in the minds of those remaining Salvatores I had helped raise from infancy.

Then I allow my soul to be pulled forward through time and space, through the countless eons of history (and light-years of space) between that era and town and where my true body lies in a kind of stasis while I was on this journey. I know that though over 74 years have passed for me while on this trip, only a little over a cosmic hour has passed where my body waits.

The passing eons and light-years my soul is traveling through pass before my 'eyes' far to fast for me to make out more than a blur of color. I had once, as a very young child, gotten a ride from a vampire kind enough to give a child barely past their 'toddler stage' a very physical demonstration of the answer to her question about what it's like for a non-vampire to get a ride from a vampire moving at a top speed, with my mother's permission of course. This is very much like that experience; though I know this time I won't suffer windburn on my 'eyes' for keeping them open.

Far faster than I thought possible, I feel my physical form fast approaching through space and time. Soon after that, my soul snaps back into my true body. I feel heavy and sluggish from whatever the spell does that puts my body in stasis while my soul travels through time and space. I don't like the feeling but know from older members of my species that we all learn to tolerate everything about these trips to the past as we go on more of them, especially the parts we don't like. The King and Queen would not ask this of us or anyone if it wasn't so vital to keeping history 'correct'.

Though my body is still trapped in stasis, my brain is active and all my senses are attuned to what's going on around me. "She's back," I here the Queen murmur from very close to my right side. It is only thinks to the permanent translation spell cast onto anyone who travels to the past, or really anyone else who might want to converse easily in any of the multitude of languages in the universe, that I can understand her in my true body. Though I retain technical knowledge of what languages of the past I had learned while on my trip through time, those languages, except what was once called 'Wiccan', are all long dead in this era. Even what was once called Wiccan has changed and evolved over the eons, gaining new names over time.

"Good, then let's undo the stasis spell," the King replies from my other side. =

I feel their cool, soft 'human' hands each clasp around one of my species version of 'hands', the King on my left, the Queen on my right. I feel their strange magic surge into me and carefully take down the stasis spell holding me under. It takes a moment for my body to fully recover after the spell is completely removed. But then I open my eyes and nearly weep at once more being in my own body, with all the senses that are so different from humans, and even vampires that were once human, that few of them even now can even partially understand the sheer magnitude of the differences between our races for all that both our races are somehow compatible at breeding with each other.

The King and Queen are on either side of the stasis chamber I'm lying in, both smiling warmly at me as I recover from the system shock of have my soul spend 74 years in a human-like body eons ago and my body suspended in stasis for 74 minutes. I blink my eyes as I see how different the King looks to my real body compared to that human body I had inhabited all those years ago. Every pigmented part of his body, from his hair to his eyes and even to his skin, are a million times more vibrant to my eyes, containing a thousand more hues of similar colors that humans just are incapable of making out with how limited their vision is. What human vampires have been able to get a 'peek' through the senses of someone of my species have long ago assured my species that while most of their senses are still very different from ours, their vision is a lot closer to ours than a 'mere' human's.

"How was it, Gemma?" the Queen asks gently after a bit.

"It was … far more and far different than I had thought to expect. I made mistakes, I'm sure. As you know, I didn't get everything across to your past selves that I should have," I start.

"You got what the Fates needed you to," the King interrupts me, his eyes twinkling mischievously. "We managed to have the right resources to figure out what you couldn't get across in time."

"Damon's right," the Queen says, squeezing her hands around my clawed one. "You did what the Fates needed done at that time to keep history on track. No one expects anything more from you, especially on your first trip. We knew you were the right one for the task the moment we laid eyes on you, despite your youth and even without knowing your name. We were right. Now, we need to get you to the cafeteria. No, don't argue," she warns me when I open my mouth to do just that. "The spells we cast on you drained far more from you than you realize right now. You're going to need a specialized recovery meal that we've figured out shortly after we first started using your species for these trips to the past. It will seem like almost too much at once, but believe me, if you don't eat and drink everything, you'll be in dire straits before you realize it. Now come on. All the recovery meals for trips to the past come out of the Empire's funds. You'll get your pay for your trip soon enough, and trust me, it will more than compensate you for what you had to deal with."

As she speaks, the Queen gently but firmly forces me to carefully climb out of the stasis chamber. I'm shocked by how unsteady I am on my feet, though the Queen seems to have expected it and gives me just enough time to recover my balance before ushering me to the cafeteria, which is located literally right across the hall from the room where those in stasis while on trips to the past stay.

Even with the cafeteria so close, I am shocked that by the time the Queen has ordered "the first time recovery meal" from the food replicator, which is a mere 2 cosmic minutes after I had regained my balance after climbing out of the stasis chamber, I feel like I hadn't eaten or drank in months rather than mere hours of this era as well as feeling outrageously weak.

While the order is being processed, the Queen quickly guides me to the nearest empty chair before I collapse on her. The others of my species at the table glance at me as the Queen heads back to the replicator to await whatever it is she ordered for me.

"First trip to the past?" a female who seems about four or five millennium older than me asks sympathetically. I nod. Her face, so similar to the lionesses of Earth's distant past, crinkles, her whiskers twitching and her long lion-like tail jerking. "Yeah, I remember mine. I made the mistake of disobeying the Queen and leaving some of the recovery meal because I thought I couldn't stuff another bite into my stomach. I definitely regretted it when I ended up in Critical Care mere hours later with my body in fierce revolt of the aftereffects of the spells. As nice as the Queen is, believe me, you do not want her to find out you left part of your recovery meal behind and pay you a visit in Critical Care. She won't yell at you, but she will treat you like a newborn cub that refuses to feed when it needs to and will feed you another whole meal. While she does that, she'll remind you that she had warned you that you need to eat every bite. And, that due to her powers and experience, she knows what she's talking about. By the time she leaves you and takes the empty platter with her, you know damn well than to ever disobey an order again, even if it sounds more like a suggestion than an order."

My golden eyes widen in surprise, pupils dilating with shock. But before I can think of a way to respond to that, the Queen returns with a very large platter filled with a variety of nearly raw steaks that my nose tells me are seasoned heavily as will as a large pitcher of this era's version of what humans once called hot milk, which I can smell is also seasoned, but more lightly than the steaks, and a cup to pour the milk into. She sets it all before me and I nearly groan at the thought of forcing all that into my stomach.

But given the Queen's warning as well as the experience that female shared with me about what happened to her, I simply make a face and begin eating and drinking, determined to somehow force all of it into me. I know damn well that after this, I won't need to eat for nearly a week. My species, which are sort of like vaguely humanoid versions of the various cats of Earth's distant past, both great and small, have a lot of similarities to those ancient creatures, though we developed millions of light-years and uncountable eons away from each other.

That female who shared her tale with me is vaguely 'lion-like' in her appearance. While I am the same species as her, I've been told that I resemble one of the few partially domesticated cats that have somehow survived to this era: The Savannah cat. From tales I've heard from older members of my species, I actually look remarkably like a larger, humanoid version of the cat-form the Queen can take at will, right down to the odd question mark pattern on my forehead. It would explain why the King and Queen seemed highly amused when they got a good look at me a month ago when I was brought to the Imperial Flagship for my testing a mere cosmic week after my 500th birthday.

The 'testing' is done on members of my species who have turned 500 only once a cosmic year. It's to determine if we have whatever it is that will make us perfect as travelers to the past or at least dream messengers. Surprisingly, far, far more of those who gather on the Imperial Flagship, the space-faring 'Crown City' of the Empire, for the testing are denied and sent home than become Time Travelers or Time Messengers.

In fact, of the nearly two million of my species who turned 500 in the past cosmic year, only around two hundred and fifty stayed to begin Time Traveler training. Another two thousand stayed on for Time Messenger training. The rest were sent home, much to their disappointment.

Time Travelers and Time Messengers are highly revered by citizens of the empire, almost as much as the King and the Queen and the other Old Ones. Time Travelers and Time Messengers, due to how exceedingly rare we are and what we do, are often targets for the various criminals in the universe. Because of this, we are given a choice: stay with Imperial Fleet and be trained then spend the rest of our lives in the protection of the Fleet, or have whatever it is that makes us a Time Traveler or Time Messenger stripped from us magically and leave with those who did not pass the tests.

Despite how dangerous being a Time Traveler or Time Messenger is, with so many casualties occurring every cosmic year and not just from the criminals, it is exceedingly rare for someone who passes the tests to choose to have whatever it is that makes us special stripped even if not doing so means being in 'protective custody' for the rest of our very long lives.

Even though we reach the age of adulthood for our species at 500-years-old, that is really just a blink in our overall lifespan because as soon as we reach adulthood, our age slows down even more significantly, where though we're the equivalent of a sixteen-year-old human at 500, afterwards we only age one human year approximately once every thousand cosmic years. That lion-like female from earlier, for example, even though she was about three to four millennia older than me, only looked about three to four cosmic years older.

And after the Time Travelers have been doing their thing for about five millennia, or rather, aged to look around the age of a 21-year-old human, something about the spells we repeatedly go under to keep history correct starts slowing down our aging even more. We go from aging about one year a cosmic millennium to aging about one year every ten thousand cosmic years to even less than that later on. It isn't that extreme a jump at first. The first change is to about a millennium and a half, then two millennia, then two and a half millennia, and so on.

It's only after about 76,000 cosmic years of reduced aging that we finally reach aging once every ten millennia. Given that in that time frame those of our species who aren't Time Travelers age seventy-six years and we only age fifteen, we age an average of less than one-fifth as fast as others of our species in the same span of years, though it's not the same rate throughout that time frame. We'd only be like a thirty-one-year-old human while those born around the same cosmic year we were who aren't Time Travelers would be like 92-year-old humans.

They'd still have about twenty to thirty more millennia in them but still. And by the time that period is done, we're down to aging only one-tenth as fast as our fellows. And we'd have at least a million years of life left, if not more. Honestly, the first Time Traveler of our kind has had their aging slow so much since she first became one when she was around the equivalent age of a twenty-year-old human, around four-and-a-half millennia, that she's still alive over million years later and only looks to be around the age of a human in their early-forties.

Not even Time Messengers receive the benefits of the decreased aging a Time Traveler gets because the way they send dream messages to the past is a very natural ability of our species that requires no strange magic to work. From what I hear, not even the King and Queen, as great and knowledgeable as they are, can figure out why Time Travelers are affected so oddly by the spells we are born to be able to handle. Theories abound across the Empire about why the spells cast on Time Travelers slow our aging so much and are debated heavily.

My personal favorite is that the years we spend in bodies made for us in the past are somehow added onto our lifespan in our true bodies. A good portion of the Empire is a fan of that theory as being one of the more logical ones out there, though no one has yet to come up with a theory about how those years are added to our lifespan that hasn't been clawed to pieces. Of course, it's not the only theory out there that people believe is more plausible than others but it is my favorite one. It's sort of like cosmic repayment for what we go through in the past and enduring the side effects of the spells we allow the King and Queen to cast on us repeatedly, which I like the idea of.

With a sigh, I finally finish the platter of meat and the 'milk'. The Queen had left me to finish my recovery meal on my own. She's the Queen; no matter how much she and the King care about the citizens of their empire, especially the Time Travelers and Time Messengers, there is far too much they need to take care of to hover over even a highly favored Time Traveler. I know I'm highly favored because of the first mission I was given when my training was as complete as it could be without actual first-hand experience of what I agreed to be subjected to for the remainder of my life.

That mission, as I had Emily transcribe in that long ago time, had been saved for one very special Time Traveler for so very long that people have started to wonder when that Time Traveler would be born and reach adulthood. The Empire's citizens only know for sure that the Time Traveler will show eventually because the King and Queen have confirmed that the Time Traveler had been around when the King was still human so very long ago.

Before I can gather the dishes from my meal to take to the cubicle that will transport them to the cleaning machine, a hand gnarled with great age though still quite strong lands on my shoulder. I nearly leap out of my skin but manage to control my fright and look at the ancient being that had startled me so. I'm shocked at the sight before me. From my training the past month in this era, I had learned much more about the Time Traveler species who had come before my people than most of the Empire's citizens know these days. The ancient being before me I recognize as a member of the very last of those species that had Time Travelers before my species encountered the Empire and joined it.

I can smell that the creature, bent and wrinkled with great age, is a female so far past breeding age as to be nearly sexless though I can scent a faintly masculine scent twined with her own in such a way that I know she has a life-mate somewhere. She looks vaguely like the humanoid reptile that her species typically resembles, though so greatly aged as to barely be discernible with all the wrinkles and sags in her scaled hide. Her eyes are reptilian but such a faded yellow as to denote even greater age than her body gives away. She reveals a mouthful of razor sharp teeth in what I'm going to hope is a smile of greeting.

"Ah, the young Catchara Time Traveler that has been awaited for since time immemorial, it is a great pleasure to meet you. A very great pleasure indeed. I had feared that even with the fact that I am one of the last two Time Travelers of my species living, neither I nor my mate would live to see the day of your arrival to the fleet," she says in a language where sibilants hissed out.

I blink slowly and look around to check for anyone nearby who might have overheard her give away my identity. Thankfully, the cafeteria had mostly emptied while I ate my meal and thought deeply. The very few remaining are far enough away that they would have to be straining their ears, even sensitive as they are, to hear us and they all seem to be focused either on their meals or whoever they're sitting with. I turn back to the creature before me. "How do you know who I am? Only the King and Queen know about my first mission," I say as respectfully as her obvious great age requires of me. My species has strict rules about how much respect is due someone based on age and known life achievements.

As a Time Traveler of a species that hasn't had active ones in over a million years, this ancient creature requires immense respect for both her age and her sacrifices to protect history.

"Ah, when you've been a Time Traveler as long as I have been, even though my mate and I have been enjoying our retirement since the Catchara were discovered by the Empire a million years ago, you gain enough magic tricks along the way that the young ones are always surprised at how much you know that you shouldn't.

"My mate and I had sensed the arrival of the Prophecy Time Traveler on the Flagship a month ago and were overjoyed. We've been waiting ever so patiently for your month of training and first trip to pass before we sought you out. As Nygara, we are born patient. Our primitive ancestors would lie in wait for cosmic weeks or even months at a time for a worthy meal to come near enough to snatch.

"That patience has been passed down through the eons even though the reason we developed it no longer has a place in this era. After waiting nearly ten million years for your arrival, we could be patient for a mere month."

My pupils dilate fully from shock. This creature has to be one of the oldest mortals living today. To my knowledge, there is no mortal other than a Time Traveler who can live ten million years. "I didn't realize a Time Traveler lived so long," I say as respectfully as I am capable of in my shock.

She hisses something that sounds like a reptilian laugh. "Oh, but young one, as soon as a Time Traveler stops Time Traveling regularly, their aging starts speeding up again. When the Catchara were first discovered by the Empire, my mate and I had our aging slowed to only one human year every hundred thousand cosmic years. And our species is nowhere near as long-lived as the Catchara normally. As soon as we retired from Time Traveling, our aging started speeding up, first one year every fifty-thousand, then every twenty-five thousand, the every twelve and a half thousand, and so on.

"We finally reached our normal aging rate of one year per every hundred cosmic years in the past millennium. The King and Queen offered to find a way to slow our aging back down once it was realized we would reach a normal aging rate and die, but none of the Nygara Time Travelers accepted their offer.

"We were no longer active Time Travelers, we had no need of the extended lifespan Time Travelers have when we don't spend so much of our time in the past rather than with those we care about. We could spend our well-earned retirement taking it easy and strengthening our relationships for however long we had left.

"Even the youngest ones, who had passed on within a hundred thousand years of retirement, had enough wealth accumulated from Time Traveling that they wouldn't have been able to spend it all in tens of millions of years of retirement even if they had that time.

"All Time Travelers are allowed to will their remaining wealth after they pass wherever they want, but most who have passed will their fortunes back to the Empire for use for future Time Travelers, whether it be for training, to pay for what costs the Time Travelers have that the Empire covers, or even to pay the Time Travelers for their sacrifices. And believe me, young Catchara: you will earn every single credit of the immense wealth you will accumulate for Time Travels.

"A payment for a single Time Travel may seem like far too much in the beginning, but as you grow older, stronger, and more sure of yourself, you will start doing Time Travels that will make even this first one, in spite of how critical it is to history, seem as insignificant as a single speck of sand on a desert planet.

"Not all Time Travels have given us great respect by beings of the past. In fact, there are so very few of such Time Travels compared to all the missions there are that the King and Queen do their best to use such Time Travels to ease us into our chosen fates and slowly change the 'difficulty' of the Time Travels after we've gone on a handful such easy missions.

"In the beginning, Time Travelers only tend to get a day or two to recover from their missions because of how relatively easy they are. As the difficulty of the missions increases and the stresses and dangers we face in the past increase on par with the difficulty, the King and Queen give us more and more time to recover from the trips.

"By the time I retired, I was only doing Time Travel only once every other month, they were so taxing. Even the oldest Catchara Time Traveler takes a week between Travels to recover. Though, as with all creatures, some Time Travelers are far stronger than others and can go on even the hardest of Travels two to three times a week and only need longer breaks very rarely. They tend to age the slowest of all Time Travelers as time goes on.

"Unfortunately, such Time Travelers are the rarest of them all. There has yet to be a Catchara Time Traveler who has been able to handle such a life, but I don't doubt such Catchara will come in due time. In fact, there might even be a few around now and no one realizes it yet. Well, except for the King and Queen, of course. They seem to know exactly how much a specific Time Traveler can handle and how much recovery time they need without ever asking the Time Travelers.

"There have been Time Travelers who have been denied a mission even when begging for one because the King and Queen tell them they need more time to recover sufficiently. By the time they are allowed on a mission again, they realize the King and Queen were right, as they always are.

"The King and Queen, despite never becoming parents of children of their own, seem to have adopted all Time Travelers and Time Messengers as their children. They grieve every lost Traveler and Messenger as if they had lost a child. And they take care of us as if we were their children.

"They love all their citizens, of course, but Time Travelers and Time Messengers are the ones treated as family, even the ones that live to be a nuisance when they aren't Traveling. And you, young Catchara, hold the most significant place in their hearts of all of us, especially the King's.

"It was your first Travel where he first met you so many eons ago. You helped raise him when he was mortal and treated him and his siblings as your own. From what the Travelers and Messengers have managed to piece together and pass down since the dawn of the Era of Travelers, he has spent all this time searching for you because, despite your age difference, thanks to your mission, he considers you an adopted mother, unlike the rest of us, who are adopted children."

I feel like a cat dunked in water, shocked and terrified. But before I can figure out how to question this ancient one even further, her eyes glaze slightly before clearing. She rises to her feet. "I am sorry to drop all this on you and run, young Catchara, but I have been summoned.

"Due to how advanced our ages are, my mate and I are required by the King and Queen to have checkups twice a week to ensure we are as healthy as can be and I am running late for my checkup today. Do take care. I am sure we will see each other again," she says before leaving the cafeteria far more swiftly and silently than I would've thought a creature her age could move.

She moves so swiftly, in fact, that I don't even get a chance to find out her name nor to actually manage to introduce myself properly. With a sigh, I grab my dishes and take them to the cubicle for dirty dishes.

Then I make my way to the rooms I was given until I can afford to have a space of my own design added to one of the ships in the Imperial Fleet. With my stomach so overly full, I now feel extremely exhausted, despite having been in stasis while I was in the past. I need to sleep for a good long while before I'm ready for anything else.


Sarah: for those wanting a reference to what inspired the Catchara and the Nygara, I'll tell you. the Catchara are based loosely on the Taxabi race of cat-people in D&D as well as the Khajit in Elder Scrolls. The Nygara are based far more on the Argonians of the Elder Scrolls than the Dragonborn of D&D. The Nygara more resemble actual Komodo dragons, i believe the largest lizard alive today, after millions of years of evolution giving them a bipedal, humanoid form and a great deal of intelligence as well as the ability to use magic. Now, please, don't ask about the Catchara and Nygara and if they're based of species such and such from game so-and-so. I will reference you to this author's note without answering your questions.