[Closed to the animorphs cast]

[livestoannoy]

Marco couldn't quite remember how he got back home.

Did he morph? He must have morphed. Or maybe he walked, so that Samson couldn't have looked out the window and gotten a glimpse. But what would have been the point in hiding? He knew. He knew. Sure, not about the morphing. Not yet. But it was only a matter of time. Already he knew way to much, and Marco didn't have a clue how to stop him from finding out anymore. Not without setting the entire Council on his tail. On all their tails.

Marco ran straight up to the attic without even stopping to talk to anyone, and tried to think of how the hell he was going to explain this to Jake.

[[ooc: bendytimed to just after Marco's psych eval. Also guys, timelinewise I'm going to assume that all the threads with anyone except for Jake happen after Jake's talked to the others / they've had a meeting / whatever, and thus know about the eval and whatnot. Also Marco's pretty much going to be holed up in the attic all day]]

Comments

[pretty_lethal]

Rachel was pretty pissed at Marco, once she heard from him and Jake about the psychiatric evaluation. Doubtless he already knew she was angry, but that wouldn't stop her temper. Sure, she'd compromised them a bit right off-- but that was without knowing anything, and just to Iniss, who was bound to figure it out eventually-- but Marco had gotten them blackmailed.

Just how not-happy she was with that was probably pretty obvious.

She was angry enough that she'd actually gone looking for him. Once she found him (hiding out in the attic-- figures), she glared at him before she snapped, "So just how many of your stupid issues did you decide to show off?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco had been sitting on the bed, trying to distract himself by playing mindless games on the alien gameboy. He looked up at Rachel's appearance, and for a moment a hurt expression crossed his face. But then Marco shuttered down, and it was gone.

"Oh I'm sorry," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "If only I'd been more like the amazing and oh so well-adjusted Xena. Because everyone knows that when it's your turn to sit on the couch, he'll just think you're a normal girl, right? Because you couldn't possibly have any fucking issues, could you?"

[pretty_lethal]

If Rachel noticed that hurt look that flashed across his face, she ignored it. She was too lost in anger to worry about whether or not Marco was upset. Maybe she could regret it later. And maybe not.

Bristling with anger, her voice rose a tone in anger. She wasn't bothering with sarcasm or veiling her insults. She was just prepared to be blunt. "At least when I go I'm not going to have to worry about blowing our cover and getting conned by some therapist. You already took care of that for all of us!"

[livestoannoy]

"I'm sorry, alright?" Marco yelled back, his voice hoarse. "I didn't...fuck, you think I wanted to blow this? I didn't tell him anything, but he still..." Marco dropped his head into his hands, taking a deep breath.

[pretty_lethal]

Despite Marco's apology-- apparently earnest-- Rachel's glare smouldered on. He'd messed up, as far as she was concerned, his fault or not, and she was going to be angry at him for a while.

"What, so he just figured it all out on his own? No hints?" it was bitter, but maybe an opportunity for Marco to explain himself.

[livestoannoy]

"What, you think I went and wrote it all on my forehead?" Marco yelled. "I don't fucking know! It's like he could just tell when I was leaving something out, and then he pulled all this long-winded psychoanalysis out of nowhere."

[pretty_lethal]

"Well maybe you're just too god damn stupid," Rachel snapped, her own voice raising to match Marco's tones. "That you couldn't even think through the fact that you're talking to a psychiatrist! No shit he psychoanalysed you. Maybe you should have just come out and told him that you're a paranoid idiot with mommy issues!"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She gives him and the other Animorphs some space. She figured there probably would have to be debriefing after the evaluation, and she's known to give Marco his privacy for a while. Years of absence don't lend themselves well to suddenly being an overbearing mother.

In truth, she was worried about her son's psych eval even before he came home and hid in the attic. It saddens her that that's the result, but it really doesn't surprise her.

After a few hours, she peeks up into the attic. "Did he at least let you sit on a couch?"

[livestoannoy]

For once, Marco didn't actually want to talk to his mother. If she knew just how badly things had gone, she'd just worry about him. And Eva sure as hell didn't need more things to worry about. Not when she'd only just had to live through that whole possession crap not that long before.

So naturally, he defaulted to the usual: make a joke, pretend everything was perfectly fine, and hope no one noticed the cracks.

He tried not to think too hard about how badly that technique had failed with Samson.

"Alas, there was no couch. Obviously he's not really a psychiatrist at all. Everyone knows that you have to have the couch."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She's your mother, Marco. Worrying about you is her job. Lucky for you she's willing to play along with the laugh and nod, at least for a while.

But she notices the cracks in the facade. And given that he's been hiding upstairs most of the day, she's been bracing herself to see them for a few hours now. It's been a long time since he was a little kid who would tell her anything, when every expression was genuine and not a cover-up.

"Obviously he's an awful psychiatrist, since he clearly missed the whole part where you're supposed to make people feel better. Would a couch have killed him?" she says in that voice that implies that she'll be giving Samson a piece of her mind if she runs into him. She won't, because she doesn't know what's still supposed to be a secret, including whether or not she and Marco are related, but she'll at the very least be sending very, very angry vibes Samson's way.

"Can I come up, or is this a No Girls Allowed zone?"

[livestoannoy]

"Sure, but don't tell Jake. His small sense of masculinity will be threatened if he finds out you were wondering around in the No Girls Zone," he said, before shuffling up the bed to give her space.

Marco was really hoping this wasn't going to turn into one of those mushy 'let's talk about our feelings!' conversations. Because those always went so well in this family.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"I'll try not to compulsively make his bed and leave things smelling like roses, then." She sits down next to him on the bed, making a great show of avoiding all the things on the floor. "So what did he do, prescribe you peace and quiet? Put you under house arrest? And more importantly, does our insurance cover it?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco paused for a fraction of a second. "Well he kept wanting to talk about Lego," he said, trying to sidestep the issue. "Seriously. Lego. That's a trauma in and of itself."

[mynameis-jake.livejournal.com]

Jake was lying down. He was thinking about getting some sleep, but that didn't come easily these days. On the homemade posters across the room, he noticed that the lower half of Batman's face had been drawn to look very much like Marco's. No, wait, he'd noticed that before.

Downstairs, he heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, then footsteps up the stairs. Marco must have finished his psych eval. Right, Jake had been worried about that. He'd better look it.

He sat up just as the door opened, taking on a cautious tone when he saw Marco's expression. "...How'd it go?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco didn't move for a moment. He just stood in the doorway, eyes darting around nervously.

What was he supposed to say? He wasn't Cassie. He couldn't pull out some bullshit explanation for why this was really a 'good thing', like with Aftran. It wasn't even like when he'd revealed who they were to his dad. He didn't even have any kind of excuse. No reason. Just one, massive, mistake.

"Jake...I screwed up," he choked out.

[mynameis-jake.livejournal.com]

"O... kay." Admittedly not the good news he was hoping for.

"Don't tell me you killed him," he joked, but there was some nervous tension in the air that made it come out strained. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Marco this anxious. "So fill me in, man. We'll figure out how to fix this. Or pass you off as crazy."

[livestoannoy]

"It's not too late to go back and toss him off a cliff, right?" Marco tried to joke, before slinking over to his bed and sinking down on it. "I wasn't saying anything, but he still managed to figure out a hell of a lot. He knows about the war. Not the Yeerks, yet. Guessed that I've got powers, though he doesn't know what. It's like no matter what you say, he sees through it. And...fuck. I have to go back for another one, and if I don't co-operate he's gonna report me to the whole fucking council."

He looked up at Jake. "I can't figure out how to get out of this, man."

[mynameis-jake.livejournal.com]

Jake sucked in a breath, held it. "Not too many cliffs around here," he mentioned lightly, trying to think this one through. He'd been hoping that Marco of all of them would be able to fake his way through this. That was kind of what he did. Still...

"We're not exactly pretending we had nothing to do with the war, so that's no problem. And he can guess that you have powers, but... come on. He's from a comic book. He's gotta think everyone has super powers." Ticking the points off on his fingers, Jake suddenly came to a stop. "The the other thing, though - the blackmailing. That is not okay. Any chance he's bluffing?"

[livestoannoy]

"Ah, but we have skyscrapers. Lots of skyscrapers. From other worlds that probably have shoddy building practices that could totally explain why one of them suddenly fell on top of him," Marco said. Hey, you never know. It might just work...somehow...

Okay, that idea was nuts. But Marco could at least pretend it might be possible.

"We might as well just go around with a megaphone and tell everyone that we fought the Yeerks and can turn into animals," Marco said dryly. "I don't think he's bluffing. And even if he's not, I don't know if we can take that chance."

[mynameisax.livejournal.com]

After the meeting with the other Animorphs, Ax stood at the bottom of the stairs up to the attic where Marco had retreated. Was he really going to have to climb them? They weren't so steep as to be impossible, but the space did appear...closed in. Ax shifted his weight uncomfortably.

< Marco? > he called up to the attic. < Would you prefer to go over the details of the cover story now or later? > Possibly Marco wouldn't want to do it now, and so Ax wouldn't have to climb the stairs.

[livestoannoy]

For a moment, Marco considered being mean and refusing to move, so that Ax would have to come up the stairs. But then he remembered that he was the one who put them all in this mess, and he reluctantly got off the bed and walked over to stand at the top of the stairs.

"You really think this will fly, Ax-man?" he asked. He hated to even admit it to himself, but the fact that Samson had been able to see through so much had him had shaken his confidence. Three years he'd stayed hidden, not letting anyone know what he was. And this guys figures him out in one session.

[mynameisax.livejournal.com]

Ax hesitated, searching Marco's face and feeling perturbed by what he found there. He'd seen Marco upset before -- all of the Animorphs, from angry to terrified -- but it was never pleasant to look at a friend and see them appear actually ill with emotion. He shrugged his shoulders.

< I cannot judge that at this time, > he said uncomfortably. < If we can convince Elfangor to back up our story, perhaps there is enough truth to it to satisfy Samson. >

He'd pointed out during the meeting that it was possible that Samson had discovered that Ax and Tobias were living in Cassie's barn and drawn some conclusions from there. Conclusions supported by their successful attempt to abduct Tom and unsuccessful attempt to kill Iniss. But their cover story was rather...unwieldy.

[livestoannoy]

Marco wavered for a moment, still uncertain. "I can't mess this up any more, Ax-man," he said finally. "Jeez, if he reports me to the freaking Council? I'm screwed. We're screwed."

[mynameisax.livejournal.com]

< Elfangor is on the Council, > Ax reminded him. < While the situation is hardly ideal, it isn't nearly as bad as it would have been if this came out on Earth. Both the Council and the rest of the crew is already aware of the threat posed by the Yeerks and are in general supportive of our position. >

[livestoannoy]

"So what, he'll just have to 'explain' all about us to the rest of them?" Marco said, dubious. "And what if he's still running mazes, huh? We can't just sit around and hope that she'll have let him out again by the time this goes down. And we don't need more people knowing about us."