I want to say these characters and this dynamic is an AU so it’s important to note that their motivations and dynamics are different then they would typically be!

Chief Science Officer and Captain Helena Voss is the grown of the two! She belongs to a friend of mine who is off social media, but she has quickly become a favorite (fork found in kitchen). Voss is a cruel woman, whose entire career is driven by her need for control, for her hatred of shapeshifters and magic, and her insane sexual wants and desires even though she will deny, deny, deny. She was raised within the constructs of the military, as her parents were the head officers of a research project surrounding the study of the accelerated healing factor and slowed aging present within Shapeshifters. Sometime when she was 17, there was a critical failure in the security systems that kept the Shifters away from the researchers, leading to a revolt as they tried to escape. A lot of people died, mostly shifters but including Voss’s parents, and it led to all but a few of the Shapeshifters being euthanized. WHICH LEADS TO….

Rita!! Rita is the little one! Rita was one of the surviving shapeshifters that was allowed to survive. She had recently been added to the program, and was barely 4 years old when the revolt happened. While she wasn’t the only one who didn’t fight back, she was the only child who survives the initial violence simply bc she hid when everything started to break out.

Voss enlisted very soon after, and worked her way up the chain of command with a special focus on science, and it was in her mid 20’s when another revolt happens with the remaining shapeshifters. Voss had just inherited the program, and while her fellow officers and superiors argued about scrapping the thing all together, Voss found herself entirely focused on the little girl that was left, who hid again and tried to avoid the conflict.

Voss never felt guilt or maternal instincts to the child, but she did see an opportunity to attempt to tame a meek shapeshifter to be her personal attack dog. Shapeshifters were bred for war, and have a reputation of being violent, bloodthirsty, feral creatures who needed to be culled after the military lost their control on them as they discovered the magic hopped bloodlines and could manifest in anyone. Voss is a calculating and awful person, who focused all of her hatred and anger on this little girl. Her attraction to her is an annoyance at first, and it quickly grows into something she can use to further craft this child into a dedicated pet. Their relationship turns sexual very quickly, with Rita somewhere around the physical age of 8 or 9 when touch is first introduced.

The goal is to ‘domesticate’ a shapeshifter. Voss will teach the creature to speak, to write, to recit the tenants, to polish her boots, to stand at parade rest, and to follow orders without a second thought. She will also nurture a relationship where it is dependent on her entirely. It is stripped of its gender and its name, known only as Subject 001 and with Voss correcting people who gender it as a ‘her’. But Voss is the only one allowed to interact with it, for better or for worse. Punishments are severe, but the rewards it receives are perfect for the personality of it. It leans into her warmth when it is given, and listens to everything it is told with the biggest eyes imaginable.

Since Rita doesn’t have Rick in this AU, Voss is her whole world, and Voss raises her to exemplify the hate that Voss feels for her species, as well as every tenant drilled into her head. Rita was ‘saved’ by the military, by Voss. She believes she was chosen because she could follow orders, excelled at her magic, and NOT because Voss has a taste for little girls and saw a horrible opportunity in her standing in her office, shaking with terror knowing that death was waiting right around the corner.