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He remembers sitting in his Healer’s office, staring at the wall, and trying to find the words to tell her that the body wasn’t right, but not because of the voice he could hear, invading every waking second and half of his dreams. That it wasn’t right because the hair was too long and the hips too slender and the feeling of it was wrong. There wasn’t anything he could change to make this body fit, and it ate at him. Was this an acceptable concern to have or something he was exaggerating?
After all, it isn’t every day you have to tell your Healer that your host is female but, despite what the Seeker records have written in them, you are not .
In the end, he doesn’t say anything at all, and the voice in his head stirs with interest.
--
He stumbles into the desert without a plan, desperate for what Melanie has promised him - a chance at finally meeting someone whom he can talk to, an opportunity to spend time with Jared and Jamie, no matter how much they might hate him. He feels the familiar spike in his chest, his heart, when thinking of Jared, and Melanie hums in the back of his head. << That’s interesting ,>> she says, but he’s too busy passing out to listen.
--
“It’s my niece, Melanie,” Jeb says, eyes crinkling in a kind threat, and Maggie backs away with a huff of anger.
--
“What do you call yourself?” Jeb asks him, and he thinks for a moment.
“Wanderer,” he says. “Rides the Beast,” he adds.
Jeb looks at him for a moment.
“What about Rye for short?” The older man had asked, and Wanderer had stared at him for a moment before looking away.
“That sounds… alright.” He mumbles, and despite Jeb starting to whistle he doesn’t look up again until they’re at the bath.
--
Jamie tries his best to protect Rye from the worst of the whispering, but Rye’s not used to sound and that is something that definitely carries in these tunnels. The adults don’t try to hide their distrustful, suspicious looks.
Also, he’s not sure who, but somebody taught the two young human boys to run shrieking at any hint of his approach. The first time they did it he startled and dropped a basket of laundry everywhere, to his embarrassment.
--
Ian sits next to him, smiles at him, traces his fingers over Melanie’s knuckles and peers into Melanie’s eyes for a hint of Rye’s silver, and Rye knows it drives Melanie crazy, but she concedes that it at least keeps his mind off of Jared. He considers that.
<< I think that part of us was all you, >> he says to her quietly. << You’re too attached; it colored your memories and leaked into me. >>
--
“So,” Jared says one evening, as he’s helping Rye into a hospital bed after Kyle’s attack in the bathroom. Rye doesn’t look at him staring at him and searching for Melanie’s attitude, Melanie’s inflection. “You don’t like being called ‘she’. Is that an alien thing, or just a you thing?”
Rye stiffens. Well, at least he’s trying to be diplomatic about this.
“Just a me thing,” he says. “They, ah, hadn’t realized I might prefer something… not this. Usually souls don’t care either way, though it’s not uncommon for a host to not feel completely right.” Ian’s hand shifts through Melanie’s hair and pauses, but Rye’s too high on their primitive painkillers to deduce a reason for that right now.
“How does your species...ah, continue?” Doc asks, trying to stifle the hint of awkwardness in the question by turning away. Rye’s head lolls towards him. Melanie is listening in with amusement coloring their link. She’s like a pastel cloud, he thinks, and snorts his humor right back.
“Think bees,” he says, voice slipping off. He’s very tired suddenly, why…? “A couple of ‘queens’ with the ability to divide into millions of our kind, and the rest are drones, to continue the species’ work.”
“Millions…” Doc says quietly, fists clenching.
“They’d be too young to hurt you,” Rye sighs, wistful. He’s always wanted what the humans seem to have: the ability to meet their children, to watch them grow and expand and exist . He doesn’t want to be just a memory. It’s always been his personal selfishness, these thoughts. “They’d die quickly, without a host body to support them.”
“How can you tell a queen from the drones?” Jared asks, his voice fading in the rush of Rye’s ears.
“ You can’t,” he says, “but I would know just by looking. It’s instinct, so that we could protect them in the face of a threat. They’re respected for their sacrifice.” Nobody says anything at all after that, and he sleeps.
--
Rye will always help Jamie. No matter if these humans he’s come to cherish despise him, if they murder children and helpless souls and the host bodies they reside in. The one with the shredded brain had probably been trying to protect their host from more pain; a shredded brain killed instantly, painlessly, and would soon take the soul with it. Rye admired the soul’s bravery, to do something so certain to cause their own death.
But Jamie is Rye’s. His first child, his only child. If Rye had been a Teacher, he would have protected them from anything. It’s too bad there are no real soul children.
--
He goes to sleep to Doc’s teary expression, still laughing a little at Eugene and Doc’s expression when he’d said it, and wakes to the infirmary’s ceiling, stone and sand and cool heat.
Ian leans over him and helps him sit up.
“We chose something appropriate this time,” he says, and Rye can see himself in the mirror, all short brown hair and reedy-thin body and legs like a giraffe’s. He’s a gangly human, and he snags his fingers in Ian’s shirt and cries because you promised me, Eugene, you promised and Doc relays Jared’s threat and Melanie’s search and Jamie getting the final choice, how Melanie had said this body fit Rye’s mindset perfectly. He snorts at that. How can a body resemble a mind?
But everything’s perfect now, because he gets everything: his sister and her Jared and her brother, his Jamie, and he gets Ian and waking up to the warmth of their shared mattress, and he gets soccer and supply runs and helping his human family one step at a time.
If only he could share this feeling.