trans_9 | Katzenjammer [Open]

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Katzenjammer [Open]

Aside from the comatose state she reached after Cassie finished her post-exorcism first-aid, sleep hasn't come easily to Eva since the possession. What little she's gotten has been interspersed with nightmares, so it's while all the Animorphs are sleeping that she slips out of Cassie's house and finds herself at the Drunken Dragon.

It's all too much. Too much going through her head and too much space alone in there. When she woke up it was because she was thrashing in her sleep and accidentally smacked her head into the bedpost. She found that she was clawing at her scalp while she dreamed.

She needs to feel a little bit out of control again, by her own doing, because that means less control that other people can take away from her. And she needs to dull the knowledge of how many bad memories she dredged up for Marco by going and getting herself possessed.

"Wine. Whatever you have. Keep it coming," she says, then, as if clarification is necessary, "I'm going to get drunk."

(( OOC: Open post but since Eva's going to be bemoaning the state of everything everywhere, please poke me first if you want to throw a character she's never met before at her. ))

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"Okay," she nods, still looking away and starting to tap her fingers on the jug again. "Perfect? How about I work on basic autonomy before we start bandying words like 'perfect' around?"

She takes a deep breath. "What do I have to do to get rid of this vacancy sign on my head? What do I have to do so that this crap stops happening? I thought it was over, I really did. When does it - I thought it was - I - never mind."

She's still got that instinct not to do this sort of thing in front of a kid. She's a parent. She needs to be strong, a role model, an impervious adult who can't be cracked. But she's badly damaged and the events of the day have rubbed some of the polish off her facade.

He laughed softly, humorlessly, hands curled around the glass. "You're doing better than a lot of people. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction."

He still woke up feeling hollow and spoke to the voice in the back of his mind expecting to hear an answer. She was doing great. He could swear his forehead had a big neon sign that said 'Tenet needed, apply inside.'

"I don't know. I really wish I did, Eva. I'd get signs for all my friends." He swallowed hard, smiling weakly. "You thought it was over. Done. Finished. You'd never have to worry about it again. That you'd won, that whatever you'd suffered to get to this point, it was done. And then it wasn't, and you'd forgotten how weak it made you feel. How helpless."

It could never be over. Never. Not so long as everything seemed desperate to remind them that they weren't alone in their heads, much less the universe. "Sam and Dean know a lot about demons. They're apparently common in their world. They might know of some way to protect yourself from things like that."

He hasn't been a kid for a very long time.

Helpless. It's her least favorite word in this language and sadly, one that she feels fits well tonight. She folds her arms on the bar and buries her face for a moment. She'd broken, before, at the zenith of her helplessness, when she thought Marco was infested. Every moment she's powerless is another step down the slippery slope, back into that sort of disaster. It's hard not to think if this, then that, if helpless now, helpless when it really matters.

"I still worried about it. I'd sleep better if I didn't. I don't sleep well."

She shakes her head a bit. "I heard. I'll talk to them more about it. But then what? If I protect myself from aliens and demons then what's next, telepaths and magical spells?"

It gets tiring, being scared all the time.

He understood. He understood what it was like to feel completely broken and empty. Barely having enough strength to stand up when the Yeerk slithered out and left the host alone. He'd wanted to break so many times, to given that last shred of sanity and just collapse into a boneless heap of nothing. But he hadn't. He still wasn't. As fragile as that balance seemed at times.

"It's hard being alone." The words were soft, directed at the wineglass. "I keep...waking up and expecting someone else to be commenting on my dreams. Sometimes I almost miss it. Like I need that second voice to explain things to me. It's easier. But... You're your own person, Eva. You always have been. As scary as it might seem, as much as the nightmares might trouble you, nothing can ever take that away from you."

He glanced up. "Perfect safety in an imperfect world is perfectly impossible. Sam and Dean can help you. Let them."

It's times like these that she wonders if it would be such a horror to be repodded, now that everyone know she's uninfested. No one would have to worry about her and she wouldn't be able to do any damage, or be victim to whatever fright of the week is going around.

"Except for everything that can take that away," she says bitterly before taking another drink. Every time she tries to lay still it's the same thing, the same terror that floods over her even though she knows how irrational it is. And yet she knows about that moment waking up, too, if it's not from a nightmare, the sudden realization of how utterly alone she is, how private everything is, and the inexplicable pang that comes with that. It should be relief, a hundred percent relief every time, shouldn't it?

She wants to tell him he's being stupid, that she hasn't been her own person in a long time, but she knows how difficult it is for Tom to think that of himself and doesn't want to snatch that away for a momentary bid at preserving her comforting den of self-pity. "I just don't know anymore, Tom. I want to just...delegate everything to someone else. Lie in bed and let Peter take care of me and have no one else know or care where I am. But I don't actually wan that either."

She sighs heavily. "I don't like asking."

"Except that. But when you stop fighting...well." They both knew what happened then, he played the glass between his hands, rolling the cool curve of the cup against his palms.

It should be, it wasn't. It never was all you thought it would be. It was disconcertingly lonely.

"I know. I do too sometimes. Just...stop. You know? Just...stop fighting so hard and give up. Go to sleep and not wake up." He stared at the glass and the liquid sloshing inside it. "But Jake's still here."

It was a simple statement, but it said a lot about where his head was. "Sometimes we can't help asking, Eva. Sometimes, not asking hurts the people we're trying to protect more, you know?"

"Then you might as well not exist," she finishes for him. Funny, how despite the fact that that's such a horrifying prospect, there's something inviting about it, something familiar. The months she spent unresponsive with Edriss were the unhappiest of her life, but they were also the easiest.

"Not die. I wouldn't want to die. Came close enough to that a few too many times," she says with a bit of a shiver. "But I think I worry Marco more than I comfort him. And it's hard to look unfazed. It's tiring."

But it's her job. It's her job as his mother and as the person he rescued to live up to that image he must still have of her, even if they both know it's impossible. It's her job to protect him when there's not a thing she can do to accomplish that goal.

She thinks Marco's dead in her timeline. It haunts her even though he's here alive and relatively well.

She gazes somewhere into the abyss of her drink. "I know. It just can't help but feel like losing."

"Yeah." Then you were just an echo. Just an empty shell that dreamed it might have once been something, rather than nothing.

He had flirted with giving in only twice, once right after his father had almost died, and the physical therapy had been the sweetest torment he had ever experienced, and once after Rachel, but Dani hadn't let him. Sam and Dean hadn't let him. Everyone kept forcing him to matter and he couldn't explain in any words they understood that he didn't.

"I think it'd worry him more if you weren't here to worry over. He was always very much your son more than Peter's. He might seem like a grown-up and like he's got it all together. But he still needs his mom."

He stared at the reflections against his palm. "I think...I'm pretty sure anyway, that bit just makes us human."

It really is the worst trap of the Yeerks. Not only do they break you down, make it unbearably hard to do the most basic things, make you forget who you were and how to interact with people, but then they open your eyes to the other possibilities, that irresponsible, careless surrender. And you spend your free life seeing through stark contrast how exhausting doing and being are.

But then again, how much do you matter except in relation to other people? How can Tom not matter when so many people care about him? How can Eva? It's not like caring's even in doubt, just hard to not feel responsible for everything, after years of being responsible for nothing. Eva knew plenty of former hosts who felt guilty for the actions of their Yeerk, but she finds that stupid. Instead she just feels zealously responsible now.

She nods slowly and chews her lower lip. "I guess there are worse things to be than that."

Some of them wanted you to give up, wanted the sweet taste of surender. Termash had. Termash had broken every host he owned. And somehow that made it easier to fight, easier to foracbily hold the shards together and asset individuality. Iniss had allowed him to exist on such a limited level, had encourged that limited existance.

Had made him want it, had made him desire it, because it was better than what he had. It was a trap, a dangerous one, an easy one to fall into.

How could a full life be reclaimed when for so long, it was the half life he'd fought for?

"Much. We could be Andalites. Or Helmacrons. No human ego has any chance of standing against them."

Take it while you have it. Use your freedom or someone will take it again. Easy mantras, easy to internalize, hard to follow up on. 'We live each day to kill off death', a Guatemalan poem says. Some days that's all living is. Living each day free to kill off slavery.

She'll be more confident, more pigheadedly autonomous in the morning. After she sleeps.

She snorts. "Edriss once got a pretty fantastic jab in about Visser Three and Helmacrons. I like to think she was tapping my razor-sharp wit."

One moment at a time. His life since he had been fourteen had been lived one moment at a time. One exhausting, horrible moment at a time with barely a moment taken to remember to breathe.

"I never understood the infighting. Iniss stayed away from it for the most part. He said that was the quickest way to assisted suicide. Wit requires being clever, they're not very clever, she probably did." He smiled faintly, making an encouraging noise. He wanted to hear the rest of the story.

"Oh no, she was clever. She just wasn't especially funny. Even when she picked up sarcasm from me, she was just so heavy-handed about it. Me, I'm just naturally hilarious and subtle at all the right moments," she says with a silly grin, back into playing the part, back to being cast-iron Eva. "Have you ever had to sit through one of Esplin's tirades? It's like watching a bad Shakespearian actor try and sink his teeth into King Lear. You're cringing and laughing at the same time." Internally, of course.

"Did she try to make jokes? Iniss still can't do jokes. It's kinda pathetic. They're pretty..unsubtle for a creature that tries to exist by dissembling. When they're not pretending to be someone else, they're pretty suck actors."

He took another sip of the drink, shaking his head. "Rants, but not his speeches. They were something of a legend around the pool, though. People would talk about his latest confrontation with the bandits. You?"

"Even when they are actors! Personally, I'm a little offended that no one noticed when I stopped joking about pop culture. Clearly the answer wasn't that I was watching less TV, it was that I had a slug in my head ." She shakes her head and laughs.

"Oh God, I was subjected to so many of his speeches. And the rants, too. Edriss and I used to sit back and correct his grammar and point out his lies," she says, then stops a bit short and takes a drink. Not time to be thinking about the scarce good times with Edriss. "He had bombast down, all right."

"Well, you know. Noone commented when I stopped playing basketball either. Hobbies come and go, or something like that. No one thinks to blame alien brain slugs." He smiled faintly, finishing the last of the liquid in his glass and rising to get another one. Or at least a refill.

"What was he ranting about? Aside from the poor state of the Disabled Hork-Bajir Alliance?"

She touches his arm. "You sure you're good for another one? Feeling dizzy yet?"

She snorts and giggles at that. "Oh, you know, the usual. Things not going exactly according to his grand plans. Life was just so hard for poor Esplin. I can't imagine what it's like to spend your whole life that worked up over nothing important."

"I'll be fine." He did feel a little dizzy, but it was helping. He could talk easier with the faint buzzing in his head.

"I don't understand why they made all their egomaniacs the leaders. Iniss used to say the people who led were the people who were either smart enough to get there, or the ones with the highest body count. Or both. He didn't even want to speculate on the relative sanity of the Council. I think at the middle, they're all scared of getting enough power to get noticed, but not enough to gain protection. Worst position to occupy, apparently."

"Alright. You shouldn't do more than two. Your mother would be very angry at me," she says as she takes another drink. She's tipsy enough that she ends up bumping the jug on her chin on the way up.

"Ugh, Sub-Vissers. I think there were a few years in there where we were going though them like potato chips. The Council was relatively sane, I thought, if political. And if you got past how their answer to everything was 'torture it to death'. They weren't very imaginative," she says darkly. Edriss had one of those sentences and Eva still bears the scars.

"I thought you said my mother trusted your judgment." Just a hint, barely noticeable, of a typical teenager. A quietly sly smile, a tiny hint of sass. But it faded quickly. "I won't push it past this. Not unless I really ant to black out."

He fell silent as she discussed the Sub-Vissers and the council, merely listening. "Yeah. Iniss stayed away from Visser Three. He almost got me once, just me. Before Iniss. I had to get six stitches and we had to really work up an explanation for mom. Fell off those stupid stairs, headfirst. They're not very imaginative, Yeerks. Or at least I haven't met any that are."

"And she'd be very upset if it turned out she overestimated me," she says with a smirk.

"Ugh. Edriss blamed everything from stairs to muggings to car accidents. I think Peter thought I'd just been cursed with phenomenally bad luck for about a year before she discovered sedatives." And if only he'd had any idea of the bad luck. "Where'd Esplin get you, if you don't mind me asking?"

He laughed. "I'm sure you're doing fine."

He took another sip, letting the alcohol rest on his tongue for a moment while he considered. "He didn't really get me so much as he backhanded me off the staircase. You know the big one in the pool? Well, the Bandits' attacked and things got a little insane and I had the bright idea to fight back armed with nothing but my fists. It didn't go so well. Cracked my head on the way down. Temrash ended up making some excuse about roughhousing on the beach and a rock under the sand. Chapman backed him up." He lifted his hair back, showing the faint line of scar tissue. "Considering the thing was flinging fireballs, I got lucky." His brow furrowed, something tickling the back of his brain. Pieces trying to fall together.

"Funny, that was the first night the bandits attacked...."

A tiger, an elephant, a horse, a gorilla and a hawk. Nothing exotic, nothing not of Earth. There had never been a morph that wasn't of Earth.

Five, not the six that would later show up, no young Andalite.

Rachel could morph, he'd been avoiding thinking about the Bear Incident, but Rachel could, knew how. Jake knew she could. So did Marco.

There had been kids at the construction site where Elfangor died. They'd never found them, but they had been there.

Rachel could morph.

Oh god he was going to be sick.

He'd been falling, he'd been mid nose-dive, but he'd sworn someone had called his name.

Oh god.

"...oh god what did he do..."

"Eh. Some days. Probably not tonight," she says, waving her hand a bit.

She listens intently, remembering back when she first heard of the Andalite bandits, how they'd excited Edriss more than than they'd excited her. Edriss saw a thorn in Esplin's side, Eva saw yet more aliens turning Earth into their battlefield, and probably a short-lived one at that. And then when they'd started eluding Visser Three more and more, she and Edriss came to have a shared affinity for them, if for entirely different reasons.

But her reminiscing is set aside when Tom suddenly loses track of his sentence. "Tom? Tom? Are you alright? Should we go outside and get some air?"

He must be realizing something, but she can't figure what it is yet. She puts a hand to his shoulder. "What is it?"

Jake. Jake and Rachel and Marco. Three kids he remembered learning how to climb highchairs together. Their first day of first grade. Three kids he'd watched grow up.

No.

No, no, it just wasn't possible. They couldn't. It couldn't have been them. No.

What sort of person recruited a bunch of kids to do his dirty work? Why had Elfangor been so determined to be a god damned martyr that he hadn't just morphed before the Yeerks got there.

Why them? Why not some other kids, kids he didn't care so much about.

He dropped the glass against the table, not really caring if it fell over or not, pressing his face into his hands. They'd almost died, countless times. He could remember it.

Oh god.

"It's them. It's Marco and Jake and Rachel and those others kid. He-they-it's them."

Jake knowing was one thing, Marco knowing was one thing. His kid brother and almost adopted kid brother and his baby cousin going to war at the tender age of thirteen just made him want to cry and scream and punch an Andalite in the face. No matter how fatal such an action would probably prove.

Oh, crap. If Tom knows, it's possible Iniss will soon enough. Thank God he's not there now to take that information as soon as Tom realizes it.

But that's a secondary concern, as pressing as it is. Right now Tom's distress is her primary focus, and she doesn't know what she can do to ease that blow. She remembers how hard it was to accept when she realized, how hatred and worry had filled her up to the brim. It had given her hope, but it had also given her so much sorry, so much to worry about and to mourn.

What can she do besides put an arm around Tom and feel tears start to roll down her face? She can't go back and pull them away from the war. She can't undo all the corrosion the war left on them. God, even taking it out on Elfangor would accomplish nothing. Her baby's still paranoid and damaged. The children - children - will still have lived through unspeakable horror.

No way to undo. Nothing any of them could have done to stop it. No way to have protected them.

No way to have protected Tom, either. Holding him is practically a mockery, but she does it anyway because she can't find words for that kind of grief.

Katzenjammer [Open]

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