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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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.

She nods, slowly, understanding. "You can take as much time learning to stop as you need to. I still haven't learned. It's not a matter of strength, but patience."

It's a tricky line to walk with Tom. On one hand, she wants to be his comrade in hurt, able to sympathize and remind him that he's not crazy or lost or irreversibly, untouchably damaged from him time with Iniss. To show him he's not alone. That she's the same as him, that it's normal.

On the other, she wants to make him believe, and believe for herself, that they can and will get better. Slowly, maybe, but that they can.

She's been free longer than he was even a host.

She doesn't know what to say, so she rubs his back.

For a long time, he didn't say anything, still under her hand and rubbing Bobby's ears. He was reminded, oddly, of his mother's warnings to not mess with Homer's ears, because it'd break down the cartilage and make them floppy, but he couldn't make himself stop. He sighed, letting the dog lick his face. Letting Eva touch him. Letting everything in his head try to settle.

"How can I move on when everyone treats me like I'm going to break whenever anything comes up? Sam doesn't, Dean seems to depend on the day, but Dean hides things from everyone. That's just how he copes. Everyone else draws back and goes "Oh Tom's so broken, we just won't bother him.""

He drew a breath. "If that was how it was going to be, what's the point of me not being Iniss' host? What's the point of all this? Everyone threw a fit, but they tell me about the same amount of everything. That's my family, my friends. People I care about and I only ever find things out after it's over. I know you're saying things about me. I know everyone is. I know that people are hiding things and using me in arguments." He kept his eyes on Bobby, voice shaking very slightly. "If all I'm going to be is Iniss' discarded shell and the only way I can help anyone is if he's in my head, why not just take him back?"

"Is that what you think, that we only are worth our own bodies as long as we're of some use to others?" Of course, it's an easy thing to think. It's pretty much what the Yeerks ingrain into you for years.

"I did use you in arguments. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but it was probably...I was probably being spiteful. I do that. A lot, lately. I'm sorry." She's sincere.

She lets him go, letting her hands linger enough that he can return to her embrace if he wants, but so she's apologizing with her body as well as her words. "We all have the best intentions, but that's why people have sayings about the road to Hell. But you - we - we're of some worth. Something, at least. It's just hard to find reasons to believe that sometimes."

He looked at her, barely managing eye contact, lower lip trembling. "Am I wrong, Eva?"

He looked away, back at the dog, back into the warm brown eyes that didn't ask anything more of him than ear scritches and petting.

"You're not the only one. Who was that guy even, at the council meeting?" His voice cracked, hands burrowing in Bobby's fur, feeling like a teenager again. "Just some guy Marco decided would make his argument for him? So he told him everything? You know the only one of the councilors that bothered to really talk with me was Kang, nobody else. But they all have opinions, like I'm some kid and everyone keeps fanning the flames because I'm such a convenient tool and it doesn't matter what I don't want people to know. So long as it suits the purpose of the argument, it'll keep coming back up." He swallowed back the bile churning in his stomach, he wasn't used to this, wasn't used to talking about how he felt. "But Marco gets upset when someone else tells on him?" He didn't speak again for a few minutes, hands moving reflexively on Bobby's fur. "I would have done it, if Kang hadn't. I would have told everyone they could morph. Because I didn't want anyone else to die. I didn't want Rach to die, or Marco, or any of the people that would have gotten invovled and suddenly been handling wild animals. Dean's on security, Eva." His family had nearly gone to battle against his family.

Again.

Kang had stopped that, Kang had made sure everyone survived.

His voice was flat when he spoke again, fingers utterly still on Bobby's collar. "Even if you're sorry, would you do it again if you thought it would hurt Iniss?" He just felt empty. He could build a garden and work hard and try so hard to mean something.

But to everyone on the ship, he'd only be a former controller, tied intrinsically to Iniss.

What was the point of trying if nobody would allow him to get anywhere?

"If our worth is the value others place on us, then yes. You are wrong. Because I value you, Tom," she keeps her eyes on him while she says this, even if he's avoiding eye contact, but then shifts her vision away to give him a reprieve from her gaze.

She bites her lip so hard she winces at that. It's a difficult line to tread, wanting to protect her son, the single most important person in her world, against what she knows is better for the safety of everyone. Any step away from viciously defending Marco feels like a betrayal. It feels like she's going to ask her smart, brave son to put a Yeerk back in her hands. Finally she sighs and says "I can't hold his paranoia against him, Tom. Not if he's not going to hold my injuries against me."

She reaches over and pets the dog. "I can't say I won't. You deserve better than mealy-mouthed promises that may not keep. But I don't want to keep contributing to this toxic climate for you. You're more than his ghost, you know."

She looks around at the garden, lip tucked in her teeth, rolling her thumb over her finger over and over.

He didn't speak, rubbing Bobby's ears in a slow, almost mechanical movement. He hated the feeling of people watching him, loathed it in a way that he'd grown immune to other things. Hated the feeling it evoked, that there was something wrong with him. That he wasn't right.

"I can't be paranoid." He didn't look at her, voice lacking tone. "I can be afraid, I can be sad, I can be angry but I can't be paranoid. I can't care about my secrets, because even if I wanted to hide, everyone would tell them anyway. I'm still everybody's tool, something to be tossed out in an argument. Even you, even my brother, I bet. Even if I haven't caught him in it. I can hold it against Marco, because he's angry about something that saved Rachel's life. I like having my cousin alive, you know? I like having lunch with her and teasing her and being able to interact with her on a day to day basis. Can't do that much with a corpse, can you?"

He looked at Bobby, finally, instead of off into eternity somewhere. "I am just his ghost. That's all anyone will let me be. I thought it'd be fixed, you know? You get free and it all goes back to normal. But it'll never be normal again. Right? We're just echos. Or I am, at least."

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See How My Garden Grows [Very Open]

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