trans_9 | See How My Garden Grows [Very Open]

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See How My Garden Grows [Very Open]

He hadn't done much laying around as a teenager. He'd always been too busy, one social event to another.

After the Yeerks...well, Temrash had less love for being lazy than Iniss did, but neither of them were really set on protracted periods of inactivity. And there was always something Sharing related, or feeding related, or just...something. Rank play had been a major time suck in his youth, and needing to be somewhere every three days made planning anything else a bit of a suck.

He'd flopped down on the hill next to the garden he had spent so much time losing time in, one hand gripping Bobby's leash to keep the dog from running off, but eyes closed and body relaxed.

Too much stuff was happening, lately. He wasn't used to keeping up with it anymore. Jake was back and Sam was dating Xander and Dean and Kaylee had broken up. He wasn't even sure how to handle half of that, much less all of it at once.

No wonder the garden looked so well tended, the neat rows gave him something to do, something to think about, something that made perfect sense because plants needed like...two things, water and weeding, and they weren't much on demanding an emotional investment beyond that.

Bobby shifted, licking his hand and resting his head on his shoulder, watching the chickens and their chicks poke around nearby.

Why couldn't life just be this simple?

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"Sounds like they were stealing everything else. Why not send them on a milk run too?" He smiled, quiet, burrowing his fingers in Bobby's fur.

"I miss doing things like that, it feels like it's been halfway to forever since I have. We used to go out and mom would buy all those little homemade jams and stuff and Jake and I would get sick on Cotton Candy and popcorn and waste all our pocket money on those games. Never could win them, Dad could sometimes. We came home with this giant elephant one time, it was purple. I think he gave it to Sara and Jordan."

Bobby licked her fingers, tail still wagging.

"And eggs! Do your chickens lay eggs? I have some spices squirreled away at home. I could make us some omelets."

She grins, rolling over onto her side and resting her chin on her fist. "I used to get those big stuffed animals for free at the end of every season. I worked there over the summers, in college. They paid really well to have a cute college girl showing off the fake rifles at the kid's shooting gallery."

Such a long time ago. Back before she was Eva the survivor, Eva the mother, the wife. When she was just dark-haired, bad-tempered Eva with her beat-up Pinto loaded with foil-wrapped roasted corn and giant stuffed cartoon characters, working sixty hours a week to save up for college classes she excelled in. It doesn't even seem like the same person.

How long ago was that, twenty-five years? More?

"Yeah they do. Some of them have hatched already. A couple of the ducks are sitting on nests, but no baby ducks yet. I didn't realize how prolific chickens were. We'll be up to our noses in them pretty quick at this rate. I guess we can eat them then, right?" He smiled. "The only problem with eggs is they're pretty good at hiding them. I thought I'd lost a hen and then out she came, twelve little chicks following her like shadows. It was pretty neat. They know I feed them, so they'll typically come if I make a noise with the bucket."

He grinned, an honest effort this time. "That sounds like fun, at least it was always different."

He'd never had a part time job, unless the Sharing counted (He didn't count it). But it might be fun, if he ever got home. Maybe he'd go work on one of those fruit farms for no money at all. Gardening was soothing.

"You could probably trade the eggs away, or make gifts of them. I'm sure there are plenty of people onboard who'd love some tasty protein." She smiles over at the chickens. "So which ones are the mommies?"

"What would I trade them for?" He blinked, honestly confused. He hadn't had much say in buying things for years, and when he did, all he'd bought were plants and animals.

"Those five. See the five bigger ones? The mid sized ones were all chicks when I bought them, they're growing, and the little fuzzy ones are the ones that have hatched. The big guy with the funny tail is the only adult rooster I bought. I thought having a few adults sounded smart, but mostly I bought chicks."

"I don't know. Maybe the Chancellor's ice cream, or some of the clothing on the ship. Maybe just every time the amorphous Christmas week rolls around, we could make those little decorated eggshells and hang them from the Beer Tree."

It's strange, trying to approximate a normal life again in the throes of an abnormal situation, with abnormal histories. It feels more like playing a role than anything, but she doesn't know what else to do with herself.

"They look like quite the little posse. Does the boy get confused with Stacy's weather?"

"Yeah I guess, I'll talk to Kaylee about it, maybe. She's always good about thinking of those things. Or Sam."

He shifted, staring up at the artificial sky and sighing quietly.

"He was pretty confused for a little while. Kept like....shouting on the hour. He came within a few more times of becoming fried chicken, but then I guess he figured it out. The girls are pretty calm about the entire thing."

She suspects the Winchesters are careful not to do anything that'd upset Tom too much, and that includes killing and devouring his pets, but she doesn't say anything on that. "Girls always are. We're the level-headed ones to deal with all your manly emotions."

He bought the animals for food, it might have bugged him a little, considering he went out of his way to keep the six big ones out of trouble. But he'd have gotten over it.

"Hey." He didn't really sound offended by the comment, more like he knew he was supposed to protest. He rolled, resting his head on Bobby's side and watching her. "Are you on one of the ships now?"

Sam and Dean were well connected on the ship, so there wasn't much that Tom didn't end up finding out just due to them talking about it.

"The Quarter. They thought it was a stellar idea to let a woman with anger issues shoot things, but I'm doing pretty well, I'd like to think. It's a different sort of job than the ones I've had in the past, except not really. All reflexes and quick thinking determining people's lives. I guess ultimately it's no different." She shrugs. "Has Sam been taking you flying?"

"It sounds exciting. I guess they thought your anger issues might make you less hesitant on the trigger, huh?" He nodded, one hand petting Bobby. "He's been busy lately, him and Dean both, but we've still been practicing. I'd like to get out there for real, someday."

He paused, face screwed up, attention mostly on the dog. "I saw Jake."

"I...might not have exactly mentioned my happy triggerfinger when applying." But it hadn't hurt them yet, at least. "You mean in combat or just to see things?"

She pauses too, ceasing petting Bobby just momentarily. "Are you alright?"

"So it's an unknown bonus for them?" He laughed, more of a giggle, really and shrugged. "I wouldn't mind being helpful. But I just...I've seen it from the window, or Iniss has flown. Temrash didn't know how, but Iniss flew some. I wanna do it myself, I wanna see it. I wanna be in it..not just watching."

He curled a little, half hiding his face in dog fur and tried to remember to shrug. What was he supposed to say?

"..s'ok."

She nods, curling her lip up under her teeth, and gently puts a hand on his shoulder. "Okay isn't bad."

Strange that some days, that's the best they can hope for. The enemy isn't strangers - the enemy is your loved ones and yourself, all the people who remember you as you were, not as you are.

Edited 2011-08-02 04:13 (UTC)

"Better than it could be. Nobody attacked. Guess that's a step in the right direction, right?"

He sighed, chewing on his lower lip.

"I miss my mom, Eva. I know that's stupid and it's been years...but, I still miss her." Everything had gotten tossed around, screwed up until the form his life took was...completely unrecognizable.

She lets a long breath out her nose, then pulls Tom towards her - gently, not in a restraining way, always giving him the option to resist her. "Of course you do. I don't think Marco ever stopped missing me, and I was gone even longer."

She strokes hair from his forehead. "But I don't think you always will. She'll arrive, soon enough. Plenty of people have."

He turned, quietly resting his cheek on her shoulder and closing his eyes. He's starting to get used to this again, people touching him. He knew he couldn't handle it all the time, or strangers in his space.

But Sam and Dean and Eva and Kaylee can touch him and he doesn't jump anymore like he wasn't expecting to feel it.

"I just feel like I should..." He trailed off, he was supposed to be the older brother, the tough one, the one that protected. But he didn't even feel like he could protect his garden if someone was particularly devoted to ripping it out of the ground.

"Jake's older than me now."

She nods, careful not to shift too much under his head. She knows from feeling like she has to protect Marco, knowing she can't and couldn't. Knowing Peter doesn't need her the same way anymore, knowing she couldn't be there for him even if he did.

"There is no 'should', honey. We are what we are now. If that means you're the younger brother, then that's how it is." She lets out a deep breath, not a sigh but a sound of consideration. "There isn't a single reason out there that you shouldn't miss your mother."

There's a certain strange comfort to be found in blocking one ear off. But then he has a habit of sleeping with a pillow jammed over his head.

Paranoia, right? But then he'd spent six weeks dazed and out of it tied to a hospital bed and high as a kite on pain medicine while Iniss fed. He was fairly certain that that alone had come dangerous close to driving him mad.

The Yeerks crawl in, the Yeerks crawl out, the Yeerks play darts with crazy.

"There are a lot of shoulds." He signed, keeping his eyes closed. "There are a lot of...expectations. I've pretty much failed all of them. And they're going to start a fight with Kang, Marco will." He made a tiny, miserable noise.

"Make a choice, but if you don't make the one we want you to, we're going to cause trouble about it forever. Is that how it's supposed to work? I didn't like what Iniss did, but it was my choice."

"That's not you failing, Tom. That's them being unreasonable." It sounds hollow to her ears, since she knows the same feeling. There's a deep pit of frustration, a well of 'why can't I be what I was?', 'why isn't it ever over?'. She can tell Tom it's because of the others, but they both know it's because hosts are broken little creatures.

"Tom, I..." She chews on the side of her lip. She knows she's one of those people who railed against Tom letting Iniss back in. Who used the facts of the situation like a bludgeon during the elections. If she's so guilty, does it make it a sham for her to try and say anything to alleviate his plummeting self-worth?

"I let Edriss back in by choice, too," she says quietly. "I understand, baby. I understand what it's like."

That doesn't mean she knows how to respond to it. She doesn't know how much grace she can give Tom. But she needs him to know he's not alone or defective in making that decision.

Unless they're both defective.

Eva thinks they probably are.

"What's reasonable when the world has gone completely crazy? They didn't see me. Nobody did." And that was the problem, Iniss had become his face. Iniss was a better him than he was. Iniss was the Tom that people remembered.

He was just...some guy, some guy wearing a face that hadn't belonged to him for a very long time.

He curled into her shoulder, keeping his eyes closed. It was easier some time, which was strangely ironic. Sight had been one of the senses that the Yeerks had been to slavishly devoted to having and it was the one he sometimes wanted back the least.

"Why did you do it?" The works were muffled and slightly choked, hands curled into tight fists.

He had done it because he thought it was the right thing, because Iniss could change, might change, but only if he were allowed to. Only if he took that one, fragile chance that Dani offered. Had known that Iniss, in a war, was so much more useful than he was.

She rubs his back, reminded viscerally and suddenly of that time she held Marco, despite her broken bones and burned body, before asking - begging, practically - to be reinfested. She can practically smell the blood, her own body infected and decaying, her son's salty tears.

But of course, it's just Tom's shampoo, and the garden, and the faint scent of chicken feed.

"It seemed like the right thing to do," she says quietly. She won't tell Tom it was wrong. Won't tell him that every moment she regrets it. She should have escaped with the Animorphs, fed them information, fought from outside instead of waging futile, hopeless war within. But it had seemed right.

How can she tell Tom the only major decision he's made so far was the greatest mistake?

So she doesn't.

There's a part of him that thinks it might have been the wrong choice. That thinks he should have run the first chance he got. Left with Jake, left with Loren, ignored Dani's pleas for him to find a balance, to empathize. It hadn't been his life for four years, hadn't Iniss had enough of his time?

But that voice had been squashed down. He'd chosen, he'd made a choice. He couldn't turn away from that or he'd never manage to choose again.

"Yeah." He curled a hand in her shirt, not tight. She could pull away from it if she wanted, but he needed to hold. To establish that she was there. He rubbed his cheek against her shoulder, sniffling softly.

"I just...want it to be over."

"I know, honey." She doesn't pull away - if anything she just draws him a bit closer. No point in regretting the past. No point in encouraging Tom to second-guess himself, when absolutely nothing can be gained from it. She could only crush the fragile shreds of autonomy he's swept together.

It's never really over. She knows that. But for his sake she has to have hope, because he thinks she's strong, and nothing is more discouraging than watching your role models buckle under the weight of your same problems.

She was the only one that got it. Karen was a little kid, a good little kid, but a little kid. She wanted to forget about it as quickly as she could and go back to being a little kid, and Aftran was a far different Yeerk than Iniss.

He drew a breath, leaning back and reflexively mopping his face, letting Bobby wiggle between them. "Good dog, Bobby." He had almost as many mental breakdowns on the dog as he had on Eva."Sorry. I'm...trying to stop. It's hard. I'm not used to it."

Emotions, feelings, the ability to express them. Opinions. "I think everyone thinks I'm broken. Iniss told me what they were saying at that council meeting, and I think even he whitewashed it a little. Kinda sad, when even the guy everyone is trying to protect you from is trying to protect you from the fact that everyone thinks you're insane." He hadn't meant to admit that he was still in contact with the Yeerk, but sometimes it was easier. Iniss knew when to leave him alone, knew when to talk, and was slowly adapting to Tom's habit of calling him at random times. He didn't have to explain himself to Iniss, Iniss already knew.

See How My Garden Grows [Very Open]

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