trans_9 | That Dizzying Moment When Past and Present Becomes One [Closed]

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That Dizzying Moment When Past and Present Becomes One [Closed]

If Eva has a personal raincloud, she's convinced it's storming today.

She sits on her feet in the garden, wrenching plants from the earth, not caring about the hard dirt digging angry separations between her fingernails and her flesh. What she'd really like to do is throw all the silverware and dishes in the house onto the yard, but she can't justify that luxury on Stacy. So instead she digs aimless holes and uproots weeds and flowers alike, up to her arms in earth, face smeared with dust.

She's keeping herself in the mechanical headspace where the only thing she can focus on is the movement of her arms, the way her shoulder's old wounds ache, the unbidden clench in her jaw. If she thinks about anything less physical, she'll think about Marco, scared and maybe sick in the Med Bay. She'll think about that violation on the Quarter from the psychic wave. She'll think about how much she could use Peter to lean on right now. She'll think about the possibility that they won't find a cure for Marco and that his last memory of her will be her betraying his physical safety to Kang.

So she doesn't think. She digs, she pulls, and she waits for Rory.

[trigger warning]

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Despite how much he loved his job, it was nice to step away from Medical and contagion for a few minutes. It was exhausting, and draining, to simply be able to watch and not do anything to help them.

This at least let him feel proactive, even if the gathering of mundane details would likely prove useless in the end. He paused at the edge of the property, taking the moment to observe the dark haired woman and her seemingly single-minded task of weeding. She seemed almost...manic, if he had to put a name to it. And why not, her son was sick with something they didn't know how to cure. Family always had the very difficult job of simply trying to stay out of the way. And with this illness, it was even harder.

"Ms. Salazar?"

"Mr. Williams," she says flatly, not looking up from the pointless hole she's digging. The ground around her is strewn with upturned soil and plants ripped to ribbons. "You can come onto the property. I'm sure you can't damage it any more than I already have."

She takes a deep breath and finally looks up. "How is he?" Her voice cracks a bit.

He didn't comment on the damage, stepping up to the garden and watching her for a moment before he responded. "He's doing well, it seems to have stabilized for the moment and given us time to gather information. I think for the most part, he seems bored. He's rather...reticent with sharing information, though. Which is why I contacted you. You raised a very independent and intelligent son, Ms. Salazar. Don't worry, we will fix this."

He kept his voice level, confident and polite. That was one of the first things he'd learn, the ability to express confidence to patient's family that he lacked himself.

"What happened? Is it just his memories? Does he have a head injury?" She barely forms a half-smile at his compliment, ducking her head instead of meeting his eyes. Being complimented for raising him feels almost like a slap in the face, now that all the years she spent dead or hidden in her own head are so fresh in her memory. She pulls her arms from the earth and wipes a wrist over her forehead, leaving a muddy trail. She sits back on her heels and knees, eyes closed. "Can I see him, or is he still convinced that I'm not myself?"

"From what we can ascertain, Ms. Salazar, they're actually losing time. They're aging backwards, experiencing time in reverse. It's resulted in some rather...odd occurrences, as they lose memories of events, or move back through physical times when they were damaged, or in a different state of existence." He tipped his head, watching her. "It seems to leave their memories on the ship mostly alone, unless those memories directly conflict. He's paranoid normally, isn't he?"

He quieted at the question, frowning. "He's forgotten whatever events resulted in your freedom, Ms. Salazar. He's still keeping himself convinced that you must be infested, I believe to protect himself. It would probably be better to wait, even if just for a little while longer. I'll let you know the moment you can see him."

She takes a moment to process that, not opening her eyes. She has to ask, even if she knows that the answer will just breed new horror in her brain. "What happens when they regress through their whole life?"

And hope, too. Because if they could pause it - if Marco could go back past the war and then be stopped there - he could be saved from the war entirely. A fresh start. A healthy start. Would she want that? Could she make that decision? Could she accept it if she never got the chance to?

"Yes. He is," she says. Her voice is choked with shame. He's paranoid because he's damaged, like her, because she couldn't protect him, because he risked everything time and again because her body got stolen for someone else's purposes.

"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Williams - it's not Doctor, is it? Should I be calling you Doctor?" She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, through her nose, and rubs a scar on her upper arm through the dirt. "What can I tell you to help this all along?"

"Our current intention is to find a solution to the problem before that needs to be considered, Ms. Salazar. We're working round the clock to try to figure out what happened and why this is happening."

His face softened, hand shifting on his notebook. "That's not always a bad thing. In this situation, it makes it harder to help him, but it's not a bad trait to have." He shook his head. "Nurse. I'm a nurse, but please call me Rory." He knelt, joining her on the ground, eliminating the fact that he had been towering over her. "You were with Marco on the planet, correct? Could you look at this list and cross off anything you were with him at, as you're obviously not infected? Do you know if they brought any food back from the planet?"

"Color me reassured," she says dryly. She picks a clump of soil up and scatters it with her hand, then drops the remaining clod into the hole.

"Rory, then." She snorts humorlessly. "Of course we brought back food. Damned if I know where his stash is, though. It's a tighter secret than the Pentagon Papers where the food's hidden. But no, I wasn't really with him on the planet. I spent my time in the library and shopping for things for the garden."

She still won't make eye contact with Rory. Between this and the events of the attack on the Ohm, she's running her shame meter pretty high lately.

He settled, crossing his legs on the grass. "I know. I wish I could give you more, Ms. Salazar. We're working as fast as we can, there are a lot of people infected. I know for you, the most important person is Marco, and he should be. But we're trying to assimilate a large amount of data to narrow down the possible root cause."

He echoed the humorless smile. "Well, anything you do know where it is, would you mind if I took a few samples to be tested? Did he mention anything to you, anything he might have forgotten but thought looked strange at the time?"

He noticed the lack of eye contact, and didn't try to force it. So far his judgment was that the paranoia was genetic. Either an underlying mental issue or a situational thing they had both experienced.

She nods, feeling almost abashed and as if Rory's accused her of not caring about the other patients. She kneads her hands through the dirt some more.

"I don't know where any of it is. I told you that," she says, frustrated. It's not Rory's fault, really. He's been perfectly polite, perfectly professional, and under better circumstances she might even classify him as comforting. But she can't help more because she knows even less than Marco does, even if she's willing to reveal a little bit more, and it leaves her feeling useless and hopeless. "No, he didn't mention anything to me. He doesn't exactly keep a curfew here. I don't get kept in the loop."

She grinds her teeth and ducks her head again. It's easy to get angry at everything and everyone, including Marco for getting himself into this situation, however that happened. With no target for her anger, it just ends up spilling everywhere. "There might be ice cream he ate in the freezer. I don't know."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. I don't mean to bother you. I realize some of these questions may sound repetitive, but often times it's the small details that help us discover the root of the problem. Marco is essentially patient zero, he's the first one that showed any sign of infection and therefore we need to find out as much about him as possible."

He frowned, restraining a sigh and observing the tension lining her face. "Thank you, Ma'am, that would be helpful. If you wouldn't mind, could I ask a few questions about Marco's vaccination history and childhood ailments? It might not help, but I'm trying to cover everything that could possibly be interacting with it. You are a resource we lack for most of the other infected."

She sighs, a deep motion that moves her entire body. "I know. I'm sorry. It's just...difficult." There's no other word for it, and yet that one doesn't quite capture how awful it is. She gets up slowly and motions for Rory to follow her into the house, wiping her shoes at the doorstep.

"Of course. I can't attest to his teenage years but I was there until he was eleven," she says, her affect going flat and detached again.

Zouichi watches for a moment as Eva digs; she did say she was willing to talk to him, but the dirt, weeds, and flowers she's uprooting don't seem to be following any particular pattern. It's not exactly the gardening style he would have expected from the poised, gracious woman leading the book club.

"I can come back if this is a bad time," he says softly, so as not to startle her. Partially because he doesn't want her to hurl a trowel at his head in surprise, partially because she's no doubt got something on her mind and he doesn't want to add to that.

She sits back, taking in Stacy's fake sky for a moment. "No, this is as good a time as any. Better, even. You just...well, now that it's all over the front pages I'm sure you know my son's in the Med Bay with this memory loss thing."

She wipes her hands on her jeans, standing up slowly, as if her body hurts. She doesn't yet face him, instead examining the wreckage of her previously perfect rows of plants. "You can come into the garden. It's fine."

"Yes. Marco. I might have even met him before, although not in human form. However, I know several people in Medical. I know they won't rest until they find a way to help him."

With her permission, he steps forward, picking one of the flowering plants gently from where it had been hurled from its prior resting place, cradling it in one hand. "You have quite a few talents."

He almost reached out to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but there was something about the way that she carried herself that warned him against touching her without her permission. "I know, Ms. Salazar, you don't need to apologize for being worried about your son." He carefully wiped his feet before stepping inside, taking note of the mention of her being gone but not addressing it just yet.

"Anything you can give would be a great help, Ms. Salazar. Complete medical records are literally a life saver. Any allergies we should be aware of? Is he all caught up on immunizations?"

"Ooh, good to hear about Medical. Once I know persistence can cure cancer and strong work ethics are better than morphine, I'm sure I'll feel better," she snaps, turning her head to glare at him before she softens and looks away again. All this anger and frustration has nowhere to go, and so she's not only upset, she's downright cranky. Lashing out at innocents only provides relief for the half a second it takes for her to realize she's being inappropriate. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

She drops her eyes to the flower in his hand. Somehow it surprises her that someone from Security - or that anyone in this angry situation - can be so gentle, treat something with delicacy.

"Well, obviously this isn't me in my most professional attire-" or state of mind- "but what questions did you have? What did Iniss tell you?"

"I'm apologizing for being irritable, not for being worried," she corrects, as if there's a difference to her. She opens the fridge and pulls out the box of ice cream - what Marco was eating right before he decided she was Visser One again. She pauses for a moment, willing it to just be ice cream, then hands it to Rory.

"No allergies. No major childhood illness. Just chicken pox and the yearly flu and all that. I always took him to get his shots on schedule, but I don't know if Peter did." She highly doubts he did, actually. "And he hasn't needed them since I got back, because of the morphing."

"Aren't they the same thing?" He quirked his lips, accepting the ice cream. "Thank you."

He nodded, resting his pad on the paper and writing. "So he's had most of the normal childhood ailments, then. We won't need to worry about that." He frowned. "The morphing keeps him from getting sick?"

"No." She glares at the refrigerator door.

"It keeps him from getting injured and takes care of bacteria and viruses, almost always. It's based on DNA, but I'm no scientist. I don't know entirely how it works." She really wishes she did, although she supposes if this is happening to multiple people the morphing isn't causing any of the problems. Or fixing anything.

He looked slightly surprised -- if there was going to be yelling, he'd been expecting it a little later, not when he'd been attempting to reassure her. But made she wasn't in a mood for reassurances.

Now was probably not a good time to mention Howard's rant about uncooperative, paranoid patients who refused to give any patient history.

Zouichi bent down in the approximate location where the plant had been uprooted, placing it back in the upturned earth; it was not a species he recognized, so he had no idea how deep it should be planted, but he could at least put it back where it had been.

"My question is about the conflict between the humans and the Yeerks, the one that took place on your Earth. Iniss was not clear on why, exactly, he was afraid Marco and Rachel might make an attempt on his life. I myself know little about the Yeerks, other than what is commonly known by the crew."

"Iniss' host body was, until very recently, Tom Berenson. That's Rachel's cousin and Marco's best friend's brother." And what she wouldn't give to have Jake around right now, someone who could penetrate Marco's paranoia and who knew the guerrilla situation exactly as it had been. "Since being infested by a Yeerk is a living hell to make Hieronymous Bosch woozy, if they thought he was still infested they'd think themselves totally justified in trying to kill Iniss."

Would be totally justified, in Eva's opinion.

"As far as I know, the only people with a history of infestation on board are Tom, Karen, Sam Winchester and me. At some point, any one of our Yeerks were a direct threat to them, as well as to us hosts, obviously, Karen and Sam's probably for the least time, mine and Tom's for the longest." She pinches the bridge of her nose, mulling her teeth over her bottom lip.

"I'm fully aware that you hear this on every side of the war every time, but we really were the victims in this situation. I was host to not only the highest ranking military member of the Yeerk empire, but also the first Yeerk to reach Earth. Our Earth had no contact with alien races and the Yeerk invasion was started in secret. Her first contact with our species was to enslave and violate a passerby, kill him when she found a better body, and start a plan to enslave more of us in secret. And obviously it just went downhill from there."

Edited 2011-05-04 15:00 (UTC)

Zouichi frowned. "Can you elaborate on the nature of this infestation? All that I really know is that a Yeerk is able to make a host perform actions against their will."

"So the humans of your world did nothing to provoke this attack, and the invasion was carried out in secret, with no declaration of war and with most of the human populace unaware of the existence of this invasion force? What was the purpose of their invasion? Resources? Religious beliefs?"

"And you say that the Yeerks were a threat. Before they arrived on the ship, or after? And in your opinion, do they remain so?"

"It's more total than that," she says, voice suddenly sounding like she's reading from a textbook rather than talking about her bevy of personal experience. She brings her eyes up to meet his.

"It's complete loss of autonomy. The host can do nothing but witness what the Yeerks makes their body do. You can't scream, sneeze, breathe on your own, and even if they let you do something it's just them using your body like a puppet while you watch. They impersonate the host, so no one knows you're there in the back of your own head begging them to notice, but honestly you might as well not be, for all the good you do. You cease to matter. They go in and they go through all your memories like you're their personal life-experience filing cabinet; every shame, every degradation, every intimate moment, every secret, and they use it for their own purposes. They enslave you, they rape you, body and soul, and then they turn around and use you to do the same to your loved ones. And when they've had enough of you, they either kill you or pass you on to the next one."

She makes a noise that could be a laugh under cheerier circumstances. "So 'perform actions against their will' is a bit of a light way of putting it. They wanted our bodies because our right to not have them do that to us was superseded by their desire for mobility and eyesight. They see us as lowly animals compared to them, so they should be allowed to do whatever they will with us if it gives them the perk of seeing in color."

She scuffs her shoe into one of the dirt piles. "As long as they're infesting an involuntary host, they're committing a violation of sentient rights. That's a threat. But if they're not...it's possible to coexist with them, if we have to. Providing them other bodies removes their desire to use ours. Back home, I was a politician working on integrating newly morphed Yeerks into the populace. They were a threat during the war and they're a threat while they infest others, but on their own they're not necessarily harmful."

She sounds as if she'd rather swallow castor oil than admit that the Yeerks aren't wholly evil, but there it is.

Zouichi listens wordlessly to what Eva has to say; it's almost as if she's had practice reciting these things, like she's been constantly repeating those words, either to herself or to others. Or maybe it's just the result of years of impotent rage trapped inside a body that no longer obeyed her. A long time to think. A long time to familiarize herself with the exact nature of her predicament.

"It was your body and you memories they violated," he says, almost to himself. There are no Yeerks in his timeline, no real mental touchstones off of which he can easily understand what happened to her. "But it was and could be anyone else. Your friends. Your son. And they made you participate."

Raising his voice more clearly, he continues, "So the Yeerks aboard this ship use nonsentient bodies. Or they use the morphing power to gain bodies of their own. However, as long as they have bodies of their own, they will not seek to use anyone else's. Which is why they are tolerated on the ship?"

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That Dizzying Moment When Past and Present Becomes One [Closed]

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