trans_9 | 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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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."

See How My Garden Grows [Very Open]

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