trans_9 | So Long As I Can See The Stars (OPEN)

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So Long As I Can See The Stars (OPEN)

It was strange, after so many years, to be able to measure freedom in days. Not hours. As much as he enjoyed being around Sam and Dean, he needed some time to himself. Some time for hiding and stillness and not interacting with other people.

And he'd been allowed so few moments to continue his long running affair with space in peace, there really was no other place to go.

He’d tossed his bag down upon entering and his data-pad had joined it not long after he’d gotten here. He’d tried to read, but he kept reaching for Iniss to discuss some point and getting thrown off by finding nothing. No sarcastic wit, no helpful observations, no lecture.

Nothing but his own thoughts.

It was disturbing. He felt empty.

That probably made him a sick and disgusting human being.

Would it be like this when Iniss left for good? He’d spent so much time, wanting to be free…and now.

God, what was he turning into? When had his life gotten so pathetic? Was he really nothing but a body waiting for his master’s orders?

He kept his cheek against the view-port, staring out into space, silent and still and almost unnoticeable in his hidden corner of the Orbs Deck.

There was much to consider before his time was up.

((ooc: Bendy time to just after http://community.livejournal.com/trans_9/547388.html#comments ))

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Eva's humming Roy Orbison to herself, liking the way the inside of her mouth buzzes when she does so. She's walking because she has nothing to do, and walking keeps her from standing still. It's better than pacing, which just makes her feel caged and crazy. She needs to find a better way to waste the time. She's never been one for doing nothing.

She sees Tom in the corner and pauses a moment, because her first instinct is to be wary of the Yeerk that might be in his head, but Tom has the empty, sad look that host bodies have sometimes in the cages. Dani must have been honest about the three days of grace.

She wants to hug him and tell him he'll be alright, but she knows that news that she isn't Edriss might not have reached him yet, so instead she spreads both hands and walks towards him slowly, her body language all her own and not the stiff dignity of a Visser. "Tom?"

He had been so far away in his head, or more to a point, so far out in the stars and not connected to his body, that he hadn't really noticed her approach. He probably wouldn't have noticed anyone walking up on him.

He tensed a little, mouth opening to defend himself and then snapping shut, looking at her feet rather than her face. Vissers hated it when you looked at their faces, especially hosts. Hated it when hosts dared speak to them. So he stayed silent, watching her feet. Not daring to hope, not daring to dream for a moment that this might have been the woman he grew up with, and not the evil overlord bent on infesting them all as quietly as possible.

There's so little of the amiable kid she knew. Eva's looking at so much ingrained fear and doubt that she might as well be looking at scars. She holds her hands up shoulder height, almost shrugging. "It's only me, I promise. You can look at me."

She shifts her weight a bit from one foot to the other, something Edriss wouldn't do out of disguise. Edriss always had both feet planted firmly and equivalently if she could.

He stayed frozen, not looking away from her feet, worrying his lip between his teeth and trying to untie his tongue enough to speak. "You-Iniss-" The words were whispers only, choked off and strangled by the lump in his throat.

But he saw the little movement of her feet, saw the tiny shift of her weight that was all 'I can, so I will' and not yeerk, never yeerk. Yeerks didn't fidget unless they'd picked the habit up from their hosts and Visser 1 had moved so far beyond needing to pass as her host...She wouldn't need to fidget, and only Ms. Salazar would feel the need to validate her status as in control by moving.

His hands twitched convulsively and he balled them into fists against his hips.

She crouches down, still a foot away from him. She can empathize with the need for space. "It's just me. And just you, isn't it, Tom Berenson?"

She uses his full name in an attempt to remind him of his own, individual, not-just-a-host status.

He looked at her, finally. Eyes on her face, just studying her. Something young and very ready to bolt still obvious in his eyes, as though he might just vanish into thin air if she showed the slightest inclination of giving up the game and revealing her true form.

His shoulders slumped, fright and uncertainty draining out of him. "He asked me if you were lying. I couldn't tell." His voice shook slightly when he spoke again, remembering the woman who had dominated much of his childhood and many of his nightmares. Not because of who she had become, but because of the tattered edges the yeerks duplicity had left in her wake. "It-it's nice to see you, Ms. Salazar."

"I was lying. It was the first thing that came to mind. But the game's up by now anyway, so you might as well know that Edriss died a long time ago. I almost did it myself." She smiles, sitting down on the floor. "I guess you grew out of calling me Miss Marco's Mom a long time ago, didn't you? You can call me Eva still."

She holds a hand out to him. She'll reach out to him only as fast as he lets her. She's knows how well how important, and how disorienting, being the one in charge of a situation can be.

"Probably a good idea. He bought it, mostly. He takes everything with a grain of salt now." He grimaced, almost the proper muscle movements for a smile, but lacking the humor to give it a spark. "She's dead? But...does that mean they're just doing what they want now?" What would happen to Jake? Or his parents?

If there was an open invasion, like Iniss thought there might be if Visser 1 ever took her hands off Earth, what would happen to everyone he cared about?

"I...that feels a little weird." The smile was a tiny bit more genuine, but still a little ragged around the edges. "But if that's what you want.

He wanted to hug her, wanted to cling to the first maternal figure he'd seen since coming on the ship, but he settled for reaching for her hand, giving it a quiet, almost subdued squeeze.

"I come from when it ends," she says vaguely. "The Yeerks lost." She almost said 'we won', but how can she when in her world he died a bitten snake. "Edriss finally got convicted of all the things she's was guilty of. We just carried out her execution for them."

There's a certain hardness in her voice when she talks about Edriss' death. She's holding eager triumph and something approaching remorse just out of her vocal cords' reach.

She squeezes his hand back. "I just want you to do what makes you comfortable. I know every moment counts and I don't want you to waste them on being told what to do."

"Are Jake and my parents ok?" His voice was soft, uncertain. Nothing else really mattered to him anymore. Just so long as they made it, just so long as everything hadn't been for nothing.

He looked away, he could understand her hatred. He knew it himself, the wish to feel the parasite die under his hand, but there was no better reminder of how far they had come from what they used to be than to hear her sound so hard about another creature's death.

"I-if you don't mind, then, can I just keep calling you Ms. Salazar?"

"They survived uninjured." She won't lie to him if he presses it further. She can't quite say any of them are doing well. "There's peace now. Not just for Earth, but between the Yeerks and just about everyone."

She nods. She knows the violence scares him, so she tries to reign it in even harder, but it's so fused to her thoughts she can't really hide it sometimes. "If you want. Not many people call me by name these days anyway."

"I'm glad. I'm glad they're ok and it all turned out alright." He kept his voice soft.

He didn't ask after himself. It didn't matter what happened to him. Just so long as Jake and his parents were safe. "How'd they manage to make peace with the yeerks?"

He blinked a little. "Why? I mean...Marco, but, who else?" It does, he doesn't like violence. It made him nervous after so many years with the yeerks and waiting Visser Three to twitch at the wrong time.

"We brokered a deal where the Andalites gave them the morphing power. They could create their own bodies. Stop pretending they had the rights to ours."

"I'm a pretty recognizable face," she says dryly. But she isn't here to talk about herself, so she doesn't elaborate past that."

"Morphing power? How did you get the Andalites to agree...wasn't there a law or something?" He sighed faintly, considering the option and curling his free arm around his legs. "So like what Iniss is doing, just faster."

He arched an eyebrow, then rested his chin on his knee, just watching her for a moment. "Why would that matter? I- I mean. You're still you. Not her."

"Nothing a little political strong-arming doesn't solve. The people wanted peace. The Andalites couldn't save enough face."

Her smile is very sad at that. "How much can I expect people to tell the difference?"

"What sort of leverage did humanity have to force that? I mean... they're pretty advanced. Iniss theorized that they'd just use a scorched earth policy, turn the whole thing to glass like they did with the Hork-Bajir world so they wouldn't have the entirety of Earth as hosts. It's weird that they would help broker peace, no matter how much face they were trying to save." His voice was thoughtful, this was easy to talk about. Complicated though it was, it was what had dominated his life for the past three years. It was almost simple. "Even if humanity did find out..."

He sighed and gave her hand a tiny squeeze. "The host isn't the yeerk, Ms. Salazar. I still remember you as the woman who bandaged up Marco's knees and made sure he didn't just eat the entire bowl of frosting."

""Oh, they did go for a scorched earth policy," she says darkly. There's no love in her voice for Andalites. Ultimately she might dislike them more than Yeerks, for a variety of reasons. "We took the Pool Ship, exposed ourselves as victors to the Andalite populace, and pretty much dared them to blow us to hell in front of their peace-loving citizens. There's nothing like bad publicity to change a commander's mind."

Her voice is a bit tight when she says 'we', because really, who is she to include herself in that count? She stood in the background advising while the debt was paid in children's blood.

"That's nice of you," she says softly. Spider-Man bandages and manjar sauce. "But you're one of maybe ten people. In everyone else's mind, I'm the reminder of the family wrecked by the invasion, the symbol of the pretty mother woman turned evil alien commander. It's my face in everyone's nightmares, mine and Alloran's. Edriss did terrible things when she was alive."

"But it won't be like that for you, because you're not me. And believe me or not, who we are matters. It does now and it always has. Who you are, that is." She squeezes his hand softly back. "Do you want to talk about him? I know most other people usually don't care to listen to anything that isn't raging."

"The Andalite civilians are less blood thirsty than the warriors? I suppose that makes sense." It was odd, as much as his early time as a host had been spent hoping that the Andalites would come, Iniss had shown him that the Andalites could be just as clangorous, if not more so, than the yeerks.

The yeerks at least wanted them alive. The Andalites wanted to make sure the yeerks couldn't have them alive.

Two evils, and he couldn't decide which he preferred, his family alive and infested and capable of being free, or dead and free. "That took a lot of guts." He nibbled on his lip, thoughtful. "If he had decided he didn't care...."

He shrugged, looking at his other hand, then out at the stars. "We've all done terrible things. Or our bodies have. Even if our hands did it..." He grimaced, squeezing his hand into a fist almost absently. "So how can I hold you accountable if I want to be forgiven?"

He sighed. "I don't know if it does anymore. I'm trying." He smiled, sharp-edged and painful. "It's hard, to put them into words. It's hard to explain. How do you explain living for three years in constant contact? How do you explain any of it... It's just confusing. I don't know how."

"The other result would have been certain death for the whole planet. There really wasn't much to lose."

She shrugs back, half mimicry and half just more superfluous motion. "I don't blame myself. I was a helpless passenger. Whether or not there were even things she did that I would have done, I didn't have any agency, so I'm not accountable." And she believes that entirely. "It's the rest of the world that sees me and thinks of her."

She sees right through his smile. She sees the doubt and guilt and self-abuse there. "Oh, Tom," she says as she reaches over, pulls him close and hugs him. "You're much too young for this. There isn't a language on Earth that can adequately describe how you feel right now."

"True. It's still...it took a lot of courage."

He sighed, not able to say anything, not able to explain that he blamed himself. That so much had been done and seen and happened that he couldn't breathe anymore. He should have been smarter. It was his own stupid fault that he had gotten involved, and he had been reminded of that too many times to let it go so easily.

The hug was a surprise, but a welcome one. It took him a second to remember to return it, wrapping his arms around her and burrowing his face into her shoulder and clinging. "I wish it could. Maybe if I could...."

She can tell from the way he's clinging that it's much needed. She keeps him held closely and rubs a hand up and down his back reassuringly. "I think we both know that naming the problem wouldn't be able to just fix it. It'll take time, Tom. You need time. You deserve time and to work things out."

She closes her eyes. "None of this is your fault. None of this could ever be your fault. Whatever mistakes we made to end up in this situation will never make this our fault."

What he wanted was to hug his mother, just hide against her and be absolved for everything that had been done. Eva wasn't his mother. But for the moment, she was close enough. Close enough to hide against, dry eyed and silent. "It'd make me feel better." The word could be invasion or yeerk or infestation or any number of other horrible words he'd learned over the course of the last three years. He felt old and tired, and so agonizingly young that he swore he still felt the need to hold his mom's hand before school started.

He wrapped his fingers in her hair, not tugging or pulling, just taking the comfort of real human things while surrounded by so much alien. He let her talk, sensing that it was as much for her as it was for him.

She finds herself thinking that she's able to hold Tom close in a way that she can't hold her own proud, stubborn son, whose moments of vulnerability are fleeting and hidden. Tom's all vulnerability, all bruises and wounded softness and youth. She can do what a mother should, comfort and protect. Marco moved past being comforted and protected a long time ago. In a way no matter how much she returns, she will always be pushed slightly outside that sphere.

But she can try and comfort the boy who lived in her neighborhood, whose family ate holiday dinners with hers, who taught her son how to dribble a basketball.

"Tom, what do you want? Not what everyone else wants for you, but if you could do anything, what would you want?"

It's nice to be held. It's nice to burrow close and let her sooth him. While he might have been physically nearly adulthood, his mind was too young for it yet. Probably too young forever, now. Battered around for so long, it was hard to remember what social norms said you shouldn't do.

Big boys don't cry, right?

He still remembered her as the woman who came over every time Jake had a birthday to help her bake the cake. Store-bought never tasted the same.

He hesitated, probably longer than he should have, face against her shoulder. "I don't know anymore."

Her sigh comes from deep inside her lungs. It's not an exasperated sigh, just a very empathetic one. She has an inkling of what Tom feels, but she was an adult. She wasn't a teenager trying to grow up without any autonomy. She can dip her hand into the well of empathy but she'll never understand it entirely and she knows that.

"I went and talked to Dani earlier. Probably made a bigger mess than everything already was. She kept insisting that you agreed to keep Iniss in you and I kept insisting that whether you did or not, it was wrong." She bites her lip, hand moving up and stroking his hair gently, motheringly. "Do you feel like it was you agreeing to it, or other people making that decision for you?"

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Page 1 of 4

So Long As I Can See The Stars (OPEN)

Llorando, llorando...

A caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

Re: A caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

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He looked at the door as if he did not know what it was for.

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied

Mankind has lost a face, an irretrievable face.

Things unknown but longed for still

What whim of fate makes me so fearful of a glancing mirror?

They would not find me changed from him they knew

We have seen her armed with loveliness.

Minerva's snow-white marble eyes, Without the gift of sight.

Time has the conquests, man has the defeats.

A bird that stalks down his narrow cage

The pride of history will not let die the memories.

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Thou art arrived to a hemisphere opposed to you.

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother

I shut my doors on that dark guilt.

For now we see through a glass, darkly,

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Young bird bones which do not hurt or rattle.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

O sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave.