Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Not my dream alone, but our dream.

Not my world alone,

But your world and my world,

Belonging to all our hands who build.

-Langston Hughes

A hole.

I’ve fallen into a fucking hole in the middle of the goddamn desert and this is how I’m going to die?

This is my end at the end of the world. 

After everything….

After running for what must have been years upon years, after hiding in the goddamn dirt and filth like an animal, all in the hope of keeping one step ahead of the bugs that want nothing more than to steal my body from me. All in vain, it seems, since I’m stuck in a hole waiting to be served up to them. 

Well, the joke’s on those persistent little buggers, I guess, because this body of mine is already nothing more than a husk – a shadow of what was once a functioning specimen of humanity. 

But it’s mine, and when they come for me, I'll continue to fight tooth and nail to keep it.

“Mmmmm ugggghhh.”

The sound of a pained groan snaps me out of my rapidly escalating pity-party and focuses my attention back on the shitshow at hand. 

“Y’alright, Mia?” I ask, desperately trying to mask the concern in my tone with gruffness. My sister doesn’t need my panic over our situation, she needs me to be strong while I try and figure out how to get us out of this mess.  

She’s sprawled across the hard-packed dirt floor of our sandy prison, but immediately curls into herself when she hears my voice. The instinct to hide never really leaves us; just one more thing the aliens gifted us with when they took over. 

She moans again, rubbing her hand against her forehead. “Where the hell are we?” she mutters.

“A hole,” my tone is clipped and my explanation short. I take a second to glance around. The hole has corners that, upon closer inspection, betray the fact that it was dug with shovels, that it isn’t a natural part of the desert landscape. Who knew the Seeker bugs had gotten so creative with hunting down their prey? “From the looks of it, a man-made hole.” 

As if she can read my mind, Mia’s eyes fly open and she gasps, “Seekers?!”

I can only shake my head and shrug uselessly at her because I don’t have any answer she would want to hear. 

Who else but the Seekers would dig a human-sized pit in the middle of the desert, and then camouflage it with a sand-covered tarp?

“Shit shit shit,” she sputters, drawing in deep heaving breaths. Then she breaks my heart, letting out one distinct sob, dry and rattling with dehydration and starvation. It is the unmistakable sound of my baby sister giving up. 

No. Absolutely not. I fucking refuse. 

This is not how it ends for her…. It can’t be. 

“Henry, what happened?” she entreats after a few moments of weighty silence. I turn to look at her over my shoulder; she’s curled up on her side now, her head resting on one of her skinny arms while she prods at her tender ankle with her free hand. She doesn’t have to say anything about it, it’s clear that she must have hurt it when we tumbled down here. 

"You don't remember?" I ask as I run my hands up the sides of the hole, hoping to find some hand-holds or roots or fucking something that would make getting out of here even slightly feasible. 

No such luck, it seems. 

She shakes her head, but then winces at the movement and presses one palm flat against her forehead. "My head…," she whimpers, her voice rising into a high-pitched keen.

More than anything, I want to wrap my baby sister in my arms and hold her close. I’ve been running with her since a year after the first-wave of the invasion, when just a few days short of her tenth birthday, our parents came home from work with unnerving silver eyes and a strange lilt to their voices. I grabbed her hand and ran, never stopping, never looking back. I was fifteen, barely more than a child myself and forced to become a parent to another. The urge to comfort Mia is nothing new, but now that we’re both basically adults, she tends to regard my actions as smothering rather than soothing.   

So instead, I clench my hands into fists so as to keep them to myself and look up at the sky above us. I try to relay how we ended up in this holding pen. “Do you remember how long we were walking for? Forever, right? I saw that stupid fucking tree and said, hey let’s rest there! So we went to sit below it,” I explain, pointing to the ends of the branches I can see dancing in the breeze at the edges of the pit above us – taunting me. “I should have fucking known. The second we sat under it, the ground gave out,” I say through clenched teeth. Looking back at it now, the ground had been just a little too flat, just a bit too conspicuous; the bits of shade under the tree’s branches just a little too inviting. “I’m such a dumbass. I’m so sorry, Mia. How bad are you hurt?” I ask her. 

She groans again in response. “I think I twisted my ankle, and I must have hit my head on something; it hurts a lot.” She pauses, and I can hear her swallow loudly. “It’s not your fault, Henry,” she adds softly.

It is though. But rather than argue with her, I lean forward to brush her red hair out of the way so I can examine her head. “Not bleeding,” I assure her with a tight smile. 

“Thank heavens for small favors,” she mutters ruefully, with a small grin of her own. After a moment she turns her head to look up at the towering walls of the hole. “Can we climb out?” she asks, her voice low with fear.

I shake my head, returning to my full height. “Don’t think so; we're down too deep.” The sides of the pit extend a good three feet above my head. “And I doubt you’d be able to lift my ass up or pull me out.” I let out a rough exhale, abruptly coming to terms with my sudden unwelcome fate. “If we’re still in here by tonight, you’re going without me.” She tries to interrupt me, to contend with what I’ve decided, but I swiftly cut her off. “No! If I can get you out, I will. We don’t both have to die down here, Mia.”

“I’m not leaving you here, Henry! Don’t be an idiot,” she counters, reaching up to tangle her fingers with mine. 

I brush off the pain that threatens to crush my chest at the idea of separating from my sister, more my child than sibling at this point. “I may not die, Mia,” I try to reassure her. “But if there’s a chance you can get away from the Seekers, then we have to take it. Once you’re gone, I can fight them off on my own.”

“No!” she spits, tightening her hold on me, as though she can tether herself to me rather than abide by my plan. 

“Jesus Christ, Mia!” I snap. She’s breaking my heart, and I can’t handle that while I try to imagine my ass being dragged off by the Seekers. “Just – fucking just rest for now, ok? Regardless of what we decide, we need you to be able to walk. Alright?” And even while she wearily nods her assent, I know in my heart there is nothing to ultimately decide. My sister will get away, no matter what happens to me.

We run out of our already meager supply of water by the time the sun has made its way halfway across the sky. Mia dozes in the afternoon sun, flinching occasionally when she shifts in her sleep, jostling her head or her ankle against the hard ground. I’m restless, and I would pace if there was enough room. Instead, I study the cut marks on the sides of the pit, wondering how many Seekers it took to construct this fucking thing. It’s certainly ingenious, I’ll give them that. Lure the stupid humans with shade under a tree, trap them the second they let their guard down; the bugs are definitely getting creative, no longer relying on the tried and true methods of simple body-snatching. 

This goes on for hours, and by the time the sun begins to set, I’m almost hoping the Seekers would just hurry the fuck up and retrieve us already. 

I’m getting ready to start my second attempt at persuading Mia to take off without me when I hear something that freezes me in place. It’s faint, but after so many years of running, of hiding, we’ve trained ourselves to pick up on anything that seems remotely out of place. So after what feels like endless hours of only hearing the sounds of the desert winds rustling the sparse leaves on the desolate tree above us, the addition of anything else was bound to catch our attention. 

The sound moves closer, and with an icy wave of dread I realize it’s footsteps. There are more than one set of them, and they’re heading right for us. 

A group. Of Seekers. 

And we’re trapped in a hole. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

I’ve run out of time.

“Henry…,” Mia gasps, her voice little more than a breath. She pushes herself against the rough hewn walls of the pit, working to make herself as small as she can. 

I shush her harshly, trying to keep my own volume as low as possible, and move to brace my body above hers. The Seekers aren’t taking her if I can help it. I’ve spent years keeping my sister safe; I know in my bones that there is no way the bugs are getting her without killing me first. 

I bend my head over Mia’s prone form and squeeze my eyes shut. I feel like a child hiding from the monsters under the bed, hoping that if I can’t see them, then they can't see me either. My own bone-dry breaths echo in my ears, each one scraping my throat until it feels like I’m swallowing back my own blood-coated fear. 

No no no no – this can’t be it. I can’t – 

“Hello there!” A jovial male voice interrupts my swiftly mounting panic attack. “I see you found our doorbell, of a sort.” Then he chuckles. He laughs. I’m about to die – my sister is about to die – and this bastard is laughing at us. I remember the haunting smiles on the faces of my parents after they’d been taken, empty and mocking, waiting for Mia and I to fall asleep so we wouldn’t struggle. When that happened to our family, I was filled with a deep, unparalleled hatred for those awful invaders, one that could never possibly be wiped away. And this bug’s mocking certainly isn’t doing anything to help soften those feelings. 

“You a soul?” another male voice asks from the empty darkness above us. “Or maybe human?”

“Fuck off!” I spit angrily. I can't help it – I don’t care how fucking polite they are, no way am I bowing out gracefully. 

“Well, you’re unpleasant,” a female voice observes. She sounds almost amused at the fear and pain that’s fast-consuming me like a cold fire. 

I snap my head up, no longer able to hold back my incredulous fury. “Fuck you, you parasitic bitch!” I hiss, flinging each word at the dark silhouettes above me. I don’t want them to miss a single one.

“I’m going to go with human,” the second male voice mutters. “Never heard a soul talk that way.”

“Probably right, I’d say,” the first man agrees. He moans roughly, his shadow getting bigger against the night sky, as though he is crouching down to get a better look at us. I remember my dad making the same noise when he’d get down on the floor to play with Mia towards the end. The uninvited memory of something so human and innocuous makes me suddenly want to weep. The disembodied voice continues, “If it gives you any comfort son, you’re amongst friends.” A pause. “We’re human as well.”

One. 

Two.

Three full beats of silence. 

My heart stops. I swear it.

“Bullshit. Seeker lies,” I spit back at the shadows above, but my heart isn’t in it. I want to hope – to believe – more than anything. 

“What?” Mia’s cry comes up from below me. “Did he say humans?”

“Mia, shut up!” I bite out frantically. 

“Oh well now, there’s more of you down there,” the first voice chuckles again. This time it sounds less mocking, more kind. It reminds me of my uncle’s, softly finding amusement at my expense whenever I’d done something that resulted in my own upset. “Yes darlin’,” the voice continues without waiting for any response from us. “We’re about as human as they come.” With that, the man turns on a flashlight and shines it down on us. He catches my eyes and once he sees that there is no freaky silver reflection, he turns it on himself. He has a white beard that is surprisingly well-kept and light blue eyes that radiate sympathy. But there is no reflection, no light that bounces off his gaze that would immediately signal our deaths. 

He is human. 

Holy shit . 

“Would you like a hand out of there?” he asks gently.

I nod dumbly. I haven’t seen another human besides Mia in so many years, and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around what’s happening in this moment. The man steps out of view, but returns quickly, dumping a rope ladder over the edge of the pit. I head up first – no matter what they say, I can’t just send Mia up without me there to make sure it’s alright. As overwhelmed as I am with the discovery of humans out here in the middle of the desert, I can’t drop my guard just yet, not at the risk of my sister. Hands pull me up over the edge of the pit, helping to get my feet under me, giving me space to pull Mia out. They back away to stand in a loose group a few feet away from me, maintaining a safe distance between themselves and the two of us. 

The older man with the flashlight speaks after a few heavy beats of silence. “M’name’s Jeb. This here’s Andy, Paige, Heath, and Aaron.” He points to each person in turn, taking the time to make sure the harsh shine of his flashlight hits their eyes, reflecting back...nothing. They’re all human. Each one of them. Five people. Five more humans left on Earth. I’d never let myself hope for so much. 

“I’m Mia,” my sister speaks up from behind me. “This is my brother, Henry. We thought…well, we thought we were the only ones left.”

The man Jeb introduced as Andy snorts. “We all thought that at some point.” He steps towards the woman in the group – Paige – as he talks, and rests his arm possessively around her shoulders.  

Then Jeb proceeds to drop a bomb on us.

“There’s forty-five of us in our group,” he tells us, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. “We’ve made contact with four other groups, but we have the biggest.”

Mia inhales sharply at this revelation. I feel numb, my brain scrambling to understand through the confusion and astonishment, desperately trying to grasp that everything I’ve held to be true for years is wrong. As alone as we were, Mia and I were not the last ones left behind. Not at all. 

“I’m sorry,” I cough. I don’t feel like I’m getting enough air. “Can you say that again?” I must have stumbled a bit, because Jeb steps forward and places a steadying hand on my shoulder. 

“We know of about 80 survivors, give or take,” he explains, patting my arm comfortingly, as though to emphasize his words. He lets that sink in for a few moments before stepping back and gesturing to the others in his group. “We can offer you some water, but we didn’t bring any other provisions with us. Were y’all inclined to come along with us? At least to get yerselves sorted, maybe rest up a bit?”

Mia started nodding before Jeb even had a chance to finish his question. Eventually she seems to remember that I’m here with her, and she turns to me with pleading eyes, frantic for me to agree to this stranger’s offer. I had long ago lost my inclination towards easy trust, but Mia has never once shed her optimism in all the years we’d been on the run. She wants this badly – needs to believe there is something good and real within her reach. 

I exhale and nod once to her in acquiesce. I pivot to Jeb and make sure my terms are clear. “We can leave whenever we want? That won’t be a problem?”

Jeb scoffs, and raises a hand to pat his broken-in wide-brimmed hat. “Ain’t a problem for me, two less mouths to feed in that case.”

My chest unclenches just a little bit more with his easy agreement. Jeb strikes me as an honest man, and I want to believe he is telling me the truth here. 

When he sees that I believe him, he stoops to pick something up and clicks off his flashlight. “Let’s head back y’all,” he barks at the others. His silhouette turns to me and Mia, and says, “We move in darkness; I’m sure you can appreciate the necessity of such a precaution, even all the way out here.”

I hum in agreement, and even in the dark I can see Mia nod. We know what it is to move in the shadows. And anyways, the moon will serve us well enough out here. 

We hike for what feels like hours in the opaque blackness. I can tell we aren’t moving in a straight line, that we are being led on a circuitous route designed to confuse and disorient us. I even understand why  – we are strangers to these people as much as they are to us – but I can’t help but smart a bit at the realization. I need to remember, being the same species is ultimately not enough to place their trust in us, not entirely. 

As the sky begins to lighten with the first gray hints of dawn, the group comes to a stop. Jeb steps forward from his place trailing behind us. In the dim light, I can see that he has a long rifle slung over his shoulder. I realize with a start that this is likely what he picked up from the side of the pit when we set off into the night. 

“Were you planning to shoot us?” I question him dubiously. 

“I didn’t plan on doing anything,” he replies, his tone derisive and dry. “And I didn’t shoot you, so you got nothin’ to complain about, do you?”

When I don’t answer him, he continues speaking as though he wasn’t inclined to hope for a response from me in the first place. “Now, y’all are my guests, and while that entitles you to plenty, it does not entitle you to the knowledge of how to enter and exit my home.”

“But –” I move to interrupt. “You said –” 

“I am aware that I told you that you could leave whenever you wanted,” he interjects, already anticipating my protest. “And that will not change, ever. Whether you choose to remain my guests or take up permanent residence here with our group, you will always be allowed to leave. It’s your choice – I’m not anyone’s keeper. But I will have you escorted in and out, and you’ll be blindfolded at that. A precaution, you understand?”

Whatever softness was previously contained within this man, he is all sharp edges now. Jagged shards that won’t hesitate to tear apart anything that threatens him and his. And right now, Mia and I have the potential to do just that if we don’t agree. 

I narrow my eyes at Jeb, but ultimately agree. “Fine,” I murmur. I have no doubt that my tone betrays my displeasure at my lack of options. Heath moves forward to wrap a bandana around Mia’s head, adjusting it to make sure her vision is fully obstructed. Just before Andy does the same to me, I reach out to grab Mia’s fingers, pulling her body closer to mine. 

We’re in a cave system. I know it before they even remove our blindfolds, the echoing of our footfalls a dead giveaway. But to see what Jeb has turned these caves into is a marvel all the same. There are multiple fields filled with different kinds of crops and an elaborate system of mirrors that provides sunlight to grow them, no doubt designed by Jeb’s mad-genius mind. There is a goddamn kitchen where people bake bread every single day and prepare food that isn’t only warmed by the sun. There are bedrooms and a rec room, a bathing room, latrines, and a hospital with people who evidently know what they’re doing. There are storerooms that Jeb assures me will soon be full of food.

Mia would never starve again. I would never have to worry that she could get the flu or break a bone and somehow die of something stupid because I couldn’t make her better. This could be her home, and she would be safe. 

And the people. There are so many people. 

While they’re all slightly ragged and their clothes are rather worn, no one looks sickly or malnourished, or even unhappy. Everyone greets us with a wave and a half-smile before returning to whatever tasks they were in the middle of before we entered the room. 

And they’re human.

Jeb shepherds us around, explaining how he discovered the volcanic tunnels and built them out over the years, making sure we grab food from the kitchen and water from the underground spring, ultimately leading us on a winding trip to the makeshift hospital to get Mia’s injuries from our fall checked out. A man introduces himself as Doc, and I want to sob, because they have a doctor – an actual human doctor. He examines Mia’s head and her ankle, taking the time to wrap it in a pressure bandage to maintain stability and reassures me that she’s alright really, no harm done. 

“I think she musta hit her head on that damn rock at the bottom of the hole,” Jeb posits while Doc is feeling the lump beneath Mia’s hair. 

“I told Jared he needed to see to that,” Doc grumbles absently. “I told him someone would end up getting hurt by it the second I saw it. Didn’t I, Jeb?”

“You surely did, Doc,” Jeb drawls back.

Stepping back from Mia, Doc looks between the two of us and softly proclaims, “You’re both surprisingly healthy for two people who, from the sounds of it, have lived rather ferally. Just need to put some meat on your bones and up your water intake, and you should be good to go. And Mia, you should take it easy on your ankle for a few days. It doesn’t appear that you have a concussion, but if you experience any headaches, nausea, or dizziness make sure you come see me right away.”

I reach forward to shake his hand, because truly, I’d given up on ever having a doctor examine my sister again. “Thank you, Doc. I really appreciate it.”

He nods, grasping my extended hand firmly. Looking to Jeb, he adds, “Just make sure one of the guys gets that stupid rock out of the hole – for next time, Jeb.”

The older man genially agrees with the doctor’s request, but I can’t help posing my own question while we’re on the subject. 

“Can you explain to me why the hell you have that pit, Jeb?” I ask tentatively. I wouldn’t normally push – I’m aware it’s none of my business – but I figure since I spent the better part of the day in said pit, I’m at least a little bit entitled to more information about it. “You scared the shit out of us with that thing, by the way.”

“Well I apologize for that, I truly do,” Jeb offers. He shoots a quick glance at Doc; I sense a hint of censure in Jeb’s expression, or at the very least in Doc’s grimacing reaction. Perhaps we were not supposed to be party to the details of the trap we fell victim to. “We dug the hole a while back to give us a chance at delaying anyone who wanders too close to the caves. Like I said, a doorbell, if you will.”

“You asked if we were souls,” I remind him hastily before he can navigate the conversation towards another, more palatable subject. “What would you have done if we were bugs instead of humans?” 

I watch as the underlying hardness of Jeb’s expression returns briefly, and I wonder what it is about this exchange that he’s displeased with. 

“We have procedures in place, strict ones, whether we happen upon humans or souls near our home,” he answers decisively, leaving little room for further discussion. “Now, let me show you where y’all can rest up tonight.”

Jeb brings us to a tunnel with a series of small doorways carved out in a long row along a narrow corridor. He explains that each one leads to a cave that serves as a bedroom; each one is covered with a different type of covering that serves as a makeshift door. One has a colorful sheet, another a patchwork quilt; one entrance even has a set of swinging doors propped against the inside and another has a plastic tarp.

“We had to start expanding the caves about a year back,” Jeb tells us as we follow behind him. “These are the newer rooms; the older ones are in the other tunnels nearby. Once more people started joining us, we realized we’d need more places for everyone to sleep – not the worst problem to have these days, I know.” As he speaks, his lips curl up into a warm smile. When we come to a stop in front of a doorway that’s covered with a thick plaid flannel sheet, Jeb gestures loosely for us to enter ahead of him. “This one will be yours for now. No one’s using it at the moment, so don’ worry ‘bout that. It’s not much, but we managed to get our hands on some more mattresses a while back, so you’ll at least have that.”

“It’s more than enough,” Mia quickly assures him. “Thank you, Jeb.”

He nods, patting her shoulder in appreciation at her words. “Think you can find the kitchens from here?” At Mia’s reassurance that we won’t have a problem, he turns to leave. “Get some sleep, y’all,” he bids us as he steps out into the corridor. 

The two of us stare at each other, twin looks of incredulous disbelief on our faces. Twenty-four hours ago, we were sleeping in the ruins of a ramshackle cabin in the middle of the desert, choking down sand and shivering as the night crept by. Now we’re in an underground cave system, surrounded by more humans than I ever imagined could still exist in the entire world. But they’re here – they’ve been here for years, it seems. They’ve been living while we’ve barely been surviving. 

So, as Mia and I settle into the small mattresses that take up most of the floor space in our small cave, I resolve to hold tightly to this little bit of luck I’ve been handed. And for the first time since the world ended, I fall asleep without fear that my sister may be lost to me in the hours before I wake. 

Days pass.

We sleep like the dead and eat more than we have in years. 

Once we recover a bit, Jeb has us work the fields and bake bread and make soap. 

We bathe for the first time in months and drink slightly sulfurous water and eat fucking homegrown fruits and vegetables, for Christ’s sake. So regardless of anything else, at least Mia won’t get scurvy. 

My sister looks clean for the first time in years, her red hair gleaming and her skin covered in only a light dusting of cave dirt as opposed to the layers and layers of accumulated grime that we’re used to. 

After I emerged from the river room, following my own turn cleaning up, the brat widened her eyes comically at the sight of me. You look like a guy – like a real guy, she said. Not like, you know, Bigfoot. I rolled my eyes at her and told her to shut the hell up, but in truth, I appreciated her words. 

Being here makes me feel like I’m slowly clawing my way back from the edge of no return and back towards the man I should have become if the world hadn’t ended. 

The most important thing though? 

Mia is happy. She smiles, and I can hear her laugh as she works alongside other people or when she plays with the small group of children who run wild around the cave system. If for that reason alone, I know I need to do anything to stay here, to ensure our place with these people. I’d do anything to make that a reality. 

But when I approach Jeb about staying in the caves long-term, he seems hesitant. “I’m glad you’re partial to my place, you and Mia both.” He pauses, his eyes drifting away from mine. “But let’s wait ‘til after the raiders get back in a couple weeks for you to make a final decision.”

“Why?” I question, my heckles immediately going up. I’m a man in my mid-twenties, I know my own mind; I can make decisions for myself and Mia. And the fact that we would be better off staying with Jeb’s group goes without saying.  

Jeb hums in thought, as though trying to figure out how to phrase what he wants to say to me. “Personalities may not mix,” he finally offers. “Everyone on the raiding party has been here for years, they’re family. I hate to be prickly, Henry, but I’ll choose them over you and your sister – well, most days at least. So, until I see how y’all get along, I’m unwilling to accept that you’ll want to stick around long-term.”

I get it, really I do. Sometimes people are dicks, it’s the nature of humanity. And Jeb doesn’t want me to say we’ll stay and then turn around and demand to leave if some jackass and I rub each other the wrong way. But I don’t think he understands how much I need this for Mia. “We’ll be staying, Jeb,” I inform him once again.

He hums again as he turns to leave, saying over his shoulder. “We’ll see, Henry. I surely hope you do.”

After my conversation with Jeb, I spend a lot of time wondering about these raiders. I’m told that they head out for a few weeks at a time, gathering supplies to restock the caves. Food, clothing, toiletries, medicines, tools, seeds – anything a rebel community could possibly need, and everything I haven’t been able to give Mia for the last bunch of years. If we stayed – when we stayed – I would talk to Jeb about joining the raids. While farming is all well and good, I want to provide, to take care of these people who are left at the end of things. 

I learn that a guy named Jared is the unofficial organizer of these raids, so he will be the man to ultimately convince. Jeb’s niece and nephew are out on this raid as well, along with a handful of others that are referenced in passing conversation. But whenever I try to get more information about these people or the specifics of how the raids go down, everyone clams up. I get wanting to keep trade secrets from an outsider, but what the fuck? This seems a bit excessive – even if I don’t stay in the caves because I can’t get my head out of my ass for some reason, shouldn’t the fact that I’m human allow for some friendly advice on surviving out there in the world? 

It’s some fucking bizarre bullshit, in my opinion. 

So, by the time the raiding party returns to the caves, I’m almost as excited about it as everyone else who actually knows these people. 

We know they’ve gotten back when one of the children tears through the kitchen at breakneck speed, announcing the raiders’ arrival at the top of his lungs. 

“They’re home! They’re home! THEY’RE HERE!” he screams as he shoots past Mia and I. 

A thread of excitement winds its way through the people who had been dispassionately picking at their dinners just moments before. Everyone rises from their seats and makes their way to the tunnel that leads to the large main cave, shaking out their arms and shoulders, gearing up to help unload supplies. Once there, Mia winds her way through the gathering crowd to my side and smiles up at me hopefully; she knows that Jeb has been waiting to make a decision about us staying until this group returned, so she’s full of budding hope that everything will work out after our meeting them. 

A dark skinned man I’ve never seen before emerges from one of the dark corridors, closely followed by a tall, burly man with pale skin and black hair who, upon entering the open space, immediately crows at the top of his lungs, “We have returned!” 

Others chuckle at his antics, but I want to cringe back at his volume. I’m used to the necessity of silence, and I have to fight the reflex to look for a place to hide Mia when his words echo loudly around the open cave. The rowdier man catches sight of Mia and I and arches one dark eyebrow at us. After handing off his load to one of the people on hand to help, he pivots towards us but addresses Jeb, who has suddenly appeared at our sides. 

“Newbies?” the man asks loudly, a half-smile on his face. 

Jeb nods and offers this man our names. “I found them in the desert. Jared’s pit trap finally came in handy.”

The pale, dark-haired man throws his head back and barks out a sharp thundering laugh. “I’m sure he’ll never shut up about it now.” After a beat in which he seems to quickly assess both of us, he adds, “Humans?” 

“What the hell do I look like?” I snap back at him harshly. 

The other man doesn’t outwardly react, other than raising his eyebrows at my words. Or my tone. Honestly, it could be either. Mia elbows me and smiles abashedly at the man in apology. 

She sheepishly says to him, “Ignore his attitude, we’ve been out of practice being polite for quite a while.”

“Years,” I add grumpily, because I get it, I do. I’m being defensive for no reason other than my own shit. Plus this guy is noisy and it’s throwing me off. 

“Ah,” he allows, his eyes shifting quickly to Jeb. “Well, this’ll be fun. It's nice to meet you both. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” He swiftly turns on his heel to jog back down the tunnel where he had emerged from. 

“That there’s Kyle,” Jeb explains quietly. “Kind of a hothead, but better as of late.”

My mind immediately goes to the prominently crooked nose that Kyle’s sporting and I can’t help but speculate how many times his hotheadedness has led to its being broken. 

Over the next few minutes, the other raiders begin to trickle into the open cave. A young guy, maybe a year or two older than Mia, with shaggy dark hair; a blonde man carrying a pallet of industrial size canned goods who chats amiably with a tall girl who looks close to my age, her chestnut hair pulled back into a messy ponytail; a man with brown hair and a beard; an older guy with salt and pepper hair talking to the same dark-skinned man from before; Kyle again, who’s followed closely by a another man who looks almost identical to him, except without the crooked nose; and a diminutive girl with an abundance of curly blonde hair, her silvery skin covered in freckles, who is practically dwarfed by the gigantic box she’s carrying. 

Jeb lists off everyone as they enter and exit the cave, hauling in goods and returning to bring in more. “Jamie – my nephew, that’s Jared and my niece, Melanie. Liam… Joseph and Brandt, Kyle and Ian – brothers, if you couldn’t tell. Though I rightly assume you’d have to be blind not to see it. And… there she is, that’s Wanda, just there.”

When we offer to help the group with bringing stuff into the caves, Jeb just waves us off. “Next time,” he mumbles, before stepping around us to move towards the raiding party, calling out greetings to each of them as he goes. Once the endless stream of activity comes to a natural pause and each raider has handed off their supplies from civilization, Jeb has alerted them to our presence amongst the larger crowd. The group comes a few steps closer, their bodies loosely facing Mia and I, but they keep a measured distance from us. 

I have no doubt they had already spotted us, probably as soon as they entered the cave. There’s a casual hyper vigilance about each of them, except for the small blonde girl, who is still struggling to neatly pile her items nearby; she notably lacks the casual athletic grace that the rest of them seem to possess in spades.

“This here is Henry and Mia,” Jeb gestures to us as he speaks, as though they may have somehow missed us. He’s positioned himself exactly halfway between this group and the two of us. “Found them in the hole, Jared.”

The corner of Jared’s mouth ticks up in amusement. “Glad it worked,” he replies simply. 

Melanie snorts derisively.

These raiders certainly seem to be a...rather restrained bunch. Well, except for Kyle. 

“I wanted them to meet everyone, before they make a decision about whether or not they plan on staying with us….” Jeb trails off, and as he does, I watch as some of the raiders physically close ranks, shifting backwards and closer to one another. I exchange a glance with Mia, both of us puzzled by their odd behavior. 

“Everyone’s been so wonderful to us,” Mia offers with a hopeful smile. “We really…well, we’d love to stay.”

Melanie crosses her arms in front of her chest, sends a harsh glance at Kyle’s brother, and then shoots a distracted look over her shoulder to where Wanda is still noisily struggling with her boxes. 

“It’s not really up to us,” Melanie bites out, her eyes flashing. “It’s up to you.”

Now I’m completely confused by the direction of this conversation…. Jeb said it depended on the raiders, and now the decision is being volleyed back to us. 

After a few moments of awkward silence, Kyle rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically with seeming impatience before reaching out to smack his brother in the chest. Ian grunts and clenches his jaw. He narrows his eyes as he assesses us in the same harsh way his brother did, before exhaling loudly and turning around to finally assist the small girl behind him. I hear him murmuring to her as he takes the items from her and hands them off to Heath with a pointed look. Ian already doesn’t like us, of that I’m sure.

I watch as he runs a hand through the small girl’s wild curls and smiles kindly at her; he glances back at us, his expression closed-off and grim, before drawing her forward slowly, her hand grasped firmly in his. 

I didn’t understand what the big deal is about this girl. She’s small and fine-boned, an interesting choice for a raider. The others all seem to be better-suited – the men are all in good shape, and Melanie is tall and athletic. What does Wanda bring to the table when this group ventures out into the world? 

Why does her opinion matter more than the others, when it comes to us staying in the caves? Is this Wanda a huge bitch? A great judge of character? Why does she hold the fate of my sister and I in her hands? I can’t make heads or tails of the situation.

But then I hear Mia’s sharp intake of breath and my eyes jump up to Wanda’s face. 

To her silver eyes. 

To her reflective eyes that mean only one thing. 

“She’s a fucking bug!” I yelp, immediately throwing Mia behind me. “What the actual fuck is this shit?! Have you all lost your goddamn minds? Fucking kill her!” Mia’s hands are clenched tightly in the back of my shirt and her heavy panicked breathing only serves to stoke my rage. 

I expect chaos to erupt at my words – for Jeb to shoot the bug parading around in this little girl’s skin. For the raiders to be rounded up and their eyes checked. I expect screaming. 

Instead, I’m only met with silence. 

In response to my wrathful indignation, Ian immediately pulls the bug behind him, effectively obstructing it entirely from my view. He keeps one arm behind him, likely wrapped around the alien in girl’s clothing. Melanie’s eyes narrow with rage as she, Jared, and Jamie all take a noticeable step closer to Ian, forming a barrier between the rest of us and the bug. The other men in the raiding party frown at my outburst and shift their weight back and forth while casting imploring looks at Jeb, their discomfort obvious. Kyle simply rolls his eyes once again and scoffs vehemently. 

“I don’t have time for this shit,” he grumbles loudly. “You need me, Jeb?” he asks the older man. At Jeb’s slow shake of his head, Kyle pats his brother on the shoulder and steps away from the rest of the group. “I gotta go find Sunny,” he says to no one in particular. But then he calls over his shoulder as he moves to leave, “I’ll let her know, Wanda.” Kyle strides down the tunnel that leads towards the bedrooms without once turning back. 

Jeb sighs audibly as the standoff doesn’t move to resolve itself without his intervention. I’m about to grab my sister and fucking run when he finally speaks. “Y’all go clean up now,” he bids the raiders. There’s a low murmuring from the gathered crowd that I now realize had gone silent when I’d started yelling; or had they been quiet before that, anticipating my reaction to the bug? The other members of the raiding group remain reticent, beginning their retreat without another word to anyone. First Brandt, Joseph, and Liam peel off, throwing frowns and expressions of disapproval my way. Then Jared gives Jamie a gentle shove to get him moving. Melanie scoots around to where the bug is hiding, but Ian uses his considerable bulk to block the two girls from my view. They all leave together, making their collective way towards the caves that house the older set of bedrooms. 

None of them even look at me. 

“Let’s take a walk,” Jeb quietly entreats.

“Fuck a fucking walk Jeb! What the fuck is going on?” I bark out, whirling on the older man as soon as they’re gone. I feel like I’m going insane. It sounds like Mia is hyperventilating behind me. 

“Watch yer mouth,” he snaps, his voice all sharp edges again. For some reason I can’t even fathom putting my finger on, I feel like I’ve failed some sort of test of Jeb’s. I don’t like feeling as though I’ve disappointed him, but I’m not fucking pretending that a bug isn’t just waltzing around this cave system where it can get a hold of Mia any time it wants.

“You take a walk, I’ll explain the situation,” Jeb drawls, his earlier calm suddenly returned. “I have confidence that with time you’ll be reasonable of mind,” he adds as he turns to leave the open cave room, with or without me it appears. 

God help me, but I feel compelled to please this man, to prove him right about me. I want his confidence in me to be well-founded. “Fine,” I spit out. I keep my arm around Mia though; now that I know what’s going on here, I refuse to let her out of my sight. 

We trail behind Jeb towards the east field, and when he turns back to check on us, he scoffs quietly as he catches sight of my defensive position, keeping Mia tucked half-behind me. When I glower back accusingly at him, he just chuckles, “Well you saw how small Wanda is; I rightly doubt she’d be able to do y’all much harm.”

But you know what? I don’t see the humor in this situation, at all. 

It’s quiet in the cavern that houses the vast east field; all work was completed for the day before we had gone to dinner, and now the first hints of moonlight cast an unearthly glow that highlight the shadows dancing around the edges of the large room. 

“Sit,” Jeb directs us without preamble. 

“Talk,” I counter, refusing to do as he says. 

“Fine, I’ll sit,” Jeb grumbles. “I’m old and I’m tired.” He makes his way over to the wall of the cave and lowers himself slowly to the ground. He makes a show of settling in, stretching out his legs and letting out loud sighs as he adjusts his back against the unforgiving stones. I roll my eyes at the old man’s dramatics and pull Mia down to take a seat next to me; I get the feeling Jeb won't be happy until we do as he says. As soon as we’re down, he begins talking. “A few years back, we found Melanie and Wanda under that same tree where we found you. Those girls were more than almost dead – exposure and dehydration had done a number on them. They were in real rough shape.”

“Why were they together? How the hell did your niece end up with a bug?” I interrupt, my anxiety making it difficult for me to hold my tongue.

Jeb sighs loudly in displeasure before answering me. “They were one in the same.” He pauses.
“Wanda was the soul that had been placed in Melanie’s body.”

An onslaught of thoughts race through my mind at this revelation. Why didn’t Jeb kill the thing that wore his niece’s body when he found it? Why the hell was it still here? How the fuck did they get it out of Melanie’s body? What the fuck –?

But I don’t get the opportunity to pose any of my questions out loud before Jeb continues with his explanation. Which is probably for the best; I have a feeling he won’t welcome another interruption from me. 

“Melanie had been with Jamie and Jared before all this. She threw herself down an elevator shaft to avoid being taken as a host, to protect those boys, and likely would have died if the souls hadn’t been right behind her and healed her right up.” He pauses, “Ironic, ain’t it?”

I suddenly respect the ornery Melanie quite a bit more than I did a few seconds ago. I’d rather die than risk Mia’s safety; and I would have done the same if I were in Melanie’s shoes. The only difference is I would have made sure I died.

When neither of us answer what is debatably a rhetorical question, Jeb rolls his eyes and grunts at our lack of response. “So, a while after she disappeared, Jared shows up here with Jamie in tow and their sad tale of what happened to my niece. It took some time, but the two of them really settled into the community. Those boys were destroyed at the loss of Melanie though; she’s a force, my niece.” He smiles fondly at some memory he chooses not to share. 

Jeb continues, his enigmatic grin firmly in place, “The day we found those girls out in the desert, something woke up in these caves. For some it was beautiful – exciting and enlivening and mind-blowing; for others it was harder. There was a lot of pain and fear and confusion, on our part and on theirs. Wanda earned her place here with us; she worked harder than anyone else in these caves, still does. She answered my endlessly annoying questions about the universe, and she immediately stepped in to care for Jamie, even though in theory he wasn’t hers. Eventually it became clear to me that more was going on than met the eye.”

I knew it. The bug was probably planning something, it was the long con – 

“Melanie was still in there with Wanda.”

Jeb lets those words hang there between the three of us, the implications of such a thing expanding to fill up all the empty space. Mia drops the hands she’s been clenching in front of her face while she nervously bites her nails, her mouth wide with astonishment. 

“Can such a thing actually happen?” she whispers, her hand fluttering back up to her mouth. 

He clenches his jaw and nods once. “Oh yeah, it can definitely happen. Not always, but it does. Wanda says it’s the fighters that stay, but we think there are other factors involved.” Then he goes ahead and drops another bomb on us. “There are a few people in these caves who were once occupied by souls.”

“What?” I yelp, my voice echoing loudly around the cave.

“Mhm…. Eight, by my last count,” Jeb replies, a study in nonchalance as he scratches his jaw through his thick beard. 

“What…. How?” I sputter. I can’t seem to form a cohesive thought, let alone do more than sit here in the dirt and gape at this crazy man who has just blown apart my understanding of the world.

“Told you before,” Jeb murmurs gently, his voice a stark contrast to mine. “We have strict procedures in place for both humans and souls that we come upon. Souls are removed and shipped off-world; stopping by the shuttle port is a regular part of raiding.”

“How?” I ask again, desperately trying to get my thoughts in order. “How do you remove them?”

“Sorry kid, that’s a trade secret,” Jeb admonishes, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk. “Only about a handful of people in these caves know how it’s done, and we’re not giving that information out to anyone. Though I will tell you, you’d never get it right on your own, so don’t even try.” Quite suddenly, Jeb’s expression transforms into one I haven’t seen on him before; the man looks completely and utterly haunted. “You’d only be setting yourself up for a whole lot of death and heartbreak, kid.”

He must recognize the first hints of manic excitement in my eyes at the information he’s revealed – my mind begins to spin at the thought of having a way to fight back. We could take back the world and defeat the bugs at their own game. 

“Doc tried for years without success,” he continues, choosing not to acknowledge any of my reactions. “Nearly broke the poor man too. We never would have gotten it right without Wanda.”

“Wait,” I gasp, truly not believing it. “The bug told you how to do it?”

“Mind your manners, boy,” Jeb practically snarls at me. I flinch back automatically at the vitriol in his tone. “This is my house, and I will not have that kind of talk under my roof.”

I nod meekly, immediately chagrined at upsetting the man who has been nothing but kind to me, even if he is nuts. 

“So, um…. Why is...Wanda still here then? If you’re so strict, that is,” Mia asks tentatively, trying to figure out how to phrase her question without somehow offending Jeb. 

He offers her a small grin and chortles softly, all upset seemingly forgotten with her efforts. “Well young lady, as much as we try to get ahead of things, there are always complications. Wanda became a part of us – this is her home. She came here for Jamie and Jared, to make sure they were safe from the Seekers; in the beginning, Melanie led Wanda here with her love for them, but Wanda stayed because of her own love for them. Well, them and others,” Jeb grins. “Melanie and Wanda were intertwined. They loved the same people, as well as each other.” At my disbelieving huff, Jeb narrows his eyes. No more interruptions are invited or welcome, evidently. “Don’t have to believe me, kid, but look for yourself. Even now, those girls are closer than sisters, and they were the same way when they shared a body. But things got complicated, as I said.” Jeb clears his throat, signaling his discomfort. “We had losses and gains, and Wanda couldn’t bear to be the cause of any more strife, as she saw it. She elected to give Melanie back her body, and chose to end her life and be buried with the humans that died during her time in these caves.”

“But…why?” Mia asked softly, her voice breathless and incredulous.

“She didn’t want to take another human’s body – to be a bug or a parasite or whatever y’all accuse her of being – as a means of continuing her own life. Wherever she may come from, Wanda is pure, and kind; and when we found out about this little plan of hers, I can’t say I was surprised in the slightest.” Jeb smiles fondly, the corners of his mouth twitching up as he recalls this. “Stubborn girl almost got away with it too, but she underestimated the level of bonafide human pigheadedness that she had surrounded herself with.”

“You stopped her?” Mia wonders. At Jeb’s affirming nod, she asks, “Who saved her?” 

“Who didn’t?” he counters, his tone genuinely jovial once again. “Jared held poor Doc at knife point until the terrified man saw her safely into a cryotank; Melanie started shrieking like a banshee to save Wanderer, save Wanderer from just about the second she regained consciousness; Ian protected her in her soul-form for months on end during the aftermath, while Jamie spear-headed the raids to find her a new host body. All that’s to say, Wanda is loved.”

“But the host body…. Who is she?” I can’t help but ask. The bug was no longer in Melanie, but she was walking around the caves wearing another human face. She’d gotten it from somewhere, since she sure as hell hadn’t been born with it.

“Melanie knew how to find the right kind of host from the time she and Wanda shared a mind, so she employed Jamie’s gut feeling and Jared’s cunning to hunt down a body that would be the right fit for Wanda. Took a while, but their determination eventually paid off. We removed the soul and waited for the host to wake up. When it became apparent that there wasn’t anyone left in the body to actually come back, we made the call to put Wanda in.”

“It must have been relieved to find out it was still alive.” I need to know. Jeb’s pet bug must have been happy to have avoided dying.

“She was actually rather displeased with all of us,” Jeb corrects, a hint of annoyance coloring his tone. “But she got over it. Wanda has a family now, and she’s free to live her life with them, fully, and as herself.”

We sit quietly for a few moments, letting the strange tale Jeb has just told us settle deep into our bones. 

“So, you see,” he continues eventually. “This is why it’s up to you to decide whether y’all want to stay. That girl is just another girl to us. She works hard, she has a role in this community; she’s invaluable to us, on a number of levels. Life has only improved with Wanda here. But she also loves Ian, and dotes on Jamie; she reins in Melanie and keeps Jared smiling. She’s a real person, and she isn’t going anywhere. So y’all are welcome to stay, but you have to accept – and respect – Wanda.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “And Sunny.”

“What?” I gape stupidly at him, because come on. “There’s two of them?”

“Mmmmmm,” Jeb hums in casual acknowledgement, completely disregarding my further upset. “Did I not mention her? Sunny’s pretty darn shy and tends to stick like glue to Kyle. Reckon y’won’t see much of her. Y’all ever want a real redemption story, g’on and ask Kyle about how all this shook out for him with those girls.” He chuckles to himself, snorting in private amusement. “Though if’n you do, keep yer distance. Kyle’s got a short fuse and a long reach, and he doesn’t take kindly to anyone speaking poorly about our two resident souls.”

And with that final bomb dropped all over my life, Jeb slaps his hands on his thighs and pushes himself up to stand. “I’m gonna leave y’all to think it over. Some folks may end up wandering through here in a while – sort of a tradition after they return from a raid. Try to give them their  space, they’ll likely keep to themselves. Find yer way to bed and we’ll talk more tomorrow.” He claps a hand on my shoulder, and squeezes Mia’s arm before sauntering out of the large cave, whistling all the way.

Once he’s out of sight, Mia turns to me, her expression bleak. “Henry… I don’t want to go,” her tone is pleading, as though she suspects I’ve already made up my mind to leave. 

“I don’t either,” I admit after a pause. “But...Mia –”

“I’ll stay away from it!” she quickly assures me, already bargaining for my favor. “I won’t go near the bugs, I promise, Henry! It’s so wonderful here…. I don’t want to go back out there.”

Before I can formulate any sense of an answer, before I can tell her all the ways this is dangerous and stupid and that I didn’t spend years keeping her safe for her to end up sharing a home with a body-snatcher, I’m cut off by the sudden sounds of laughter. It’s coming from a cave entrance across the field from where we sit in the dirt – it must be the group Jeb had warned us about. I turn to Mia in hopes of ushering her away before we’re caught infringing on some sort of private gathering, but she isn’t paying me any mind at all. Her eyes are locked on the tunnel where the laughter is coming from – on the group that’s entering our cavern. 

Four shapes break away from the shadowy darkness of the cave tunnel, the moonlight catching the edges of their features and shining a spotlight on their identities. Melanie is the one who we heard; she is laughing uproariously, the sound bursting forth and filling up the wide-open field. She’s holding Wanda’s hand, swinging their arms back and forth like I remember my parents doing with Mia when she was a little kid. The moonlight bounces off Jared’s blonde locks while it appears as though it’s eaten up entirely by Ian’s own pitch black hair. The two men trail a bit behind the girls; Jared lazily moves his hands as he discusses something with Ian, while the other man casually holds the neck of a bottle in each of his. 

As we watch, the bug leans in close to the taller girl and murmurs something too low for me to hear, but whatever it is causes Melanie to shriek with glee, cackling wildly as she pounces on Wanda and bestowing her – it – with a loud, smacking kiss on its cheek before she tears off and throws herself wildly into Jared’s arms. He makes an exaggerated sound of distress at their impact, which only results in Melanie smacking him soundly in the chest before she snatches the bottles out of Ian’s hands. Melanie scrambles up onto Jared’s back, who then takes off across the field in an easy, loping run. Quickly though, they collapse roughly, hysterically, their bodies lost amongst the low crops in the middle of the field.

But it is the other two members of this little group that firmly seize my attention. 

The alien remains where Melanie left it behind; it stares up through the large hole in the cave ceiling, its attention focused intently on the night sky above it. Ian tucks his hands into his pockets, slowing his pace as he approaches the bug, a fond smile on his face clearly visible in the pale light. The parasite  must have heard him, because it turns its head, blonde hair everywhere and frightening silver eyes casting a shimmering reflection on the wall nearby. Ian stops just out of reach of the parasite but slowly, ever so slowly, he lifts his arm, holding his hand out to it. 

What was it that Jeb said? She loves Ian. How does the man even stand the horror of such a thing?

The bug smiles at the human man then, and if I didn’t know what I know about it, I’d swear she – it – is beautiful. She looks like any young girl from before the world ended, full to the brim with adoration and fondness. But it isn’t – it isn’t – a girl; Wanda is merely an illusion of one. And despite that very real fact, Ian pulls the creature to him and bends down to press his lips to its, his hands coming to rest possessively on its hips as I watch in confused revulsion. Their height difference is so substantial he has to bend at his waist to reach the alien girl’s mouth, but he doesn’t seem concerned in the least. He looks comfortable, practiced.

When he finally pulls away from the bug, even at this distance and in this low light, I can see the girl creature’s face is colored by a deep red blush. 

“Good or bad?” Ian asks, his wide, easy grin dramatically altering his face from the one marred by anger and distrust that I saw earlier tonight.

Wanda giggles – like a human girl would – and stretches her arms up to wrap around Ian’s neck. She has to stand on her toes to even think about reaching, but he stays hunched over to maintain the contact between them. “Good,” she tells him through her laugh. “Always good now.” Her voice is a high soprano, like that of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. 

For the first time, I wonder how old the body is that this alien wears. 

“Hey! You two! Stop being gross and come drink this wine!” Melanie’s voice calls out from the darkness, interrupting the idyllic and bewildering scene playing out in front of me.

The couple startle at the sound of her words, but neither appears upset; their smiles are rueful now.

“Wanda! Wan-der-er!” Jared’s slightly slurred yelling tears out of the night to join Melanie’s. “Lives in the Stars and traveler of galaxies! Rides the Beast and… all that jazz! You heard Mel – come and partake in the singularly human experience of drinking a bottle of crappy red wine that will leave us all with splitting headaches tomorrow morning! Come! On! Now!”

“Obviously, Howe has already started in on his share of the spoils from that last store we hit,” Ian snorts, his amusement softening his censure. 

“Why would I want a headache, Ian?” the bug asks, and her guileless tone is filled with mirth. As she speaks, she tilts her head to the side, as though she truly doesn’t understand the point of the activity she’s about to participate in. “That sounds rather unpleasant.”

“Oh my God, Wanderer! Stop being such a killjoy! We’ve talked about this!” Melanie’s disembodied voice scolds from afar. “You too, O’Shea! You’re only enabling her!” 

Ian snorts again but detaches himself from the bug, instead slinging his arm nonchalantly around her shoulders as they continue on towards the voices of their companions – as though touching it is second nature; as though this is fucking normal. 

How are they all so casual around the parasite? Touching her and kissing her and just being so kind to it?

She is loved , Jeb’s voice comes back to me, whispering in my ear like a plea. Where his words at first were strengthened throughout with threads of warning, now it feels like a sigh, a revelation. 

She is loved . 

And it appears she is. 

Over in the field, I watch as Ian and Wanda drop down out of our sight, their disappearance immediately followed by the hooting approval of both Melanie and Jared. As time passes, I can make out the gently raucous cadence of hushed conversation and the occasional burst of laughter, their voices raised in uninhibited excitement as they drift across the moonlit night towards Mia and I. Occasionally, I see a long arm emerge, pointing up at the stars, which is soon accompanied by the high-pitched melodic murmuring that I can discern as probably belonging to Wanda. 

After a while of this, I realize that what I’ve seen tonight isn’t so different from what my life could have looked like if the world hadn’t ended, if I hadn’t been forced into the man I became. If I wasn’t consumed with taking care of Mia – with saving Mia – would I be the kind of normal twenty-something that drinks with his friends to celebrate the end of an adventure? Who plays and teases, spending the night gazing at the stars and kissing his girl in the moonlight? 

Would this place allow me to become that man? 

Maybe, if I let it. 

I don’t sleep that night. 

Not at all. 

My thoughts bounce around my head nonstop, going back and forth and around and around all night. I don’t want to be anywhere near the alien – or aliens, I guess, because evidently they’re just opening the doors to them here – but I do want Mia to be safe and sheltered from the harsh realities of our world. Even after hours of dedicated thought, I’m not sure how to reconcile these unavoidable necessities of life in the caves. 

A couple of weeks ago, this wouldn’t even have been up for debate. Mia and I would be out the door at the first inclination that a parasite was living openly in the caves. But now, having seen how good this place could be for Mia…. Was it time to give her something more than just the survival I’d provided her with thus far?

Since arriving at the caves, she has been safe, and she has been happy. She’s been more hopeful and optimistic than she has been since our parents were taken, and as much as I feel compelled to leave this odd disconcerting place in the dust, I don’t know that I have the strength of will to take all that away from her. 

So the next morning, exhausted from the emotional roller coaster of the last twelve hours and proverbial hat in hand, I approach Jeb about staying on permanently with his community.

I don't expect additional opposition.

“Not yet,” he hums out, his eyes squinting in assessment as he takes in my flabbergasted expression.  

“But Jeb, come on man –” I try to argue. I’ve done as he’s asked and I’m willing to go against everything I know to be true to make this situation work for Mia. What the hell more does he want from me?

“I said yet didn’t I?” Jeb grumbles, cutting me off. “I appreciate you thinking over what I said, and believe me, I can tell yer takin’ it seriously. But I’ve had problems in the past with people’s fear gettin’ the better of them, and frankly, I’m gettin’ far too old to police things the way I used to. If y’all are stayin’ on, I need to know you can keep yerself in check.”

When I open my mouth to say something, anything really, to counter his words – his doubt in me – he bulldozes on. “I ain’t got any concerns ‘bout Mia. That girl is open and kind, and I think she’ll come around on her own after the first time she’s stuck on kitchen duty with Wanda or Sunny. But you, my boy, it’s your anger and fear that concerns me.”

His words are like a punch to the gut. I’ve only known this man for a matter of days, but the knowledge that I’m not living up to his expectations or, I don’t know, his hopes for me…. Well, it feels awful. I find that I do not like to disappoint Jeb Stryder, not one bit. 

“What can I do?” I mutter miserably, my voice as unsteady as a scolded child’s. 

“I want you to talk to some people,” he tells me immediately. It seems he came prepared to this conversation, wasting no time on indirectness. “Five people, to be specific. There are five people that have a story to tell that may change your way of thinking, and each one is important. I want you to talk to Melanie, Jamie, Jared, Ian, and Wanda.” I desperately want to protest, because c’mon, but he raises a hand to silence me. “Don’t try to talk to them together, they’re like to close ranks if given the opportunity. They are…. Well, they all have a complicated relationship that tends to manifest in shuttin’ down outsiders if they can. But I spoke to them this morning, so they’ll each be expectin’ you.”

“What do I talk to them about?” I ask, because this man seems to get crazier by the second. 

Jeb shrugs. “Don’t rightly care. Just talk to them. They’re people, all of them. Ask them questions that come to mind about living here, or whatever you’re moved to ask. But what’s more important is what you ask yourself at the end of each conversation.”

“And what’s that, Jeb?” I’m sure my tone betrays the exhausted resignation that’s slowly overtaking me. 

This batshit crazy man in front of me just grins. “Well now,” he says. “I think you should really ask yourself what it means to be human, and whether your firmly-held beliefs are really worth holding on to? Because at the end of the day, you may just learn something new.”

Chapter Text

Jamie

Uncle Jeb told me I’d have to talk with the new guy – the angry bigot with the cute sister. I'm not completely proud of how my mind immediately jumps to describe Henry, but Mia…. Let’s just say there aren’t many girls within a stone’s throw of my age left at the end of humanity, and she seems nice, so…yeah. That’s how I see the two of them. 

I know what Jeb’s hoping for, really I do; I just don’t love the idea of trying to force some guy to understand the complexities of my familial relationships. I mean, all of them are still navigating the oddness of their situation, even after all these years, and it’s just…hard, I guess, to make someone else get it, like, at all. 

But I’ll try. For them. 

And, you know, for Mia. Because, I mean, I am human. And a guy.

So, when Henry awkwardly approaches me while I’m weeding the east field under the harsh morning sun, I try not to grimace too openly at the quagmire of emotional messiness I’m about to wade into with a stranger.  

“Hey man, I’m –” he begins. I know he’s hating every second of this, because the poor guy can’t even manage to make eye contact with me. 

With a heavy sigh, I decide to be nice about this, because it’s what Wanda would ask of me. “Henry, right?” I offer, thrusting out a dirt-streaked hand for him to shake. “Nice to meet you, I’m Jamie – Jamie Stryder.”

His face is a study in both gratitude and surprise. “Did Jeb tell you I’d be coming?” he asks, his voice awash in barely-veiled distrust. 

“Yup,” I reply briskly. No reason to hide behind false politeness now. “He mentioned you’d be by at some point, if you decided you wanted to get over your prejudices and stay on with us.”

The guy at least has the courtesy to flinch at my forthrightness. I know he doesn’t like the idea of Wanda being here, and now he knows that I’m aware as well. But, at least he’s here, which means he’s trying.

“Yeah…. Look, I don’t…. Fuck, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be talking to you about,” he admits, his voice low and urgent. He looks about ready to bolt. 

I shrug, and drop back down to the dirt, getting back to my chores. Maybe if I take my focus off him this’ll feel less like pulling teeth. “Me neither. But, I’ll be here if you come up with anything. In the meantime, start pulling weeds over there so I can finish this in a reasonable amount of time.” 

And to his credit, he doesn’t hesitate. He begins at the opposite end of my row and quietly weeds the crops, gathering the discarded leaves and stems to deposit in our compost pile. He’ll think of something to ask me eventually, I muse to myself. 

I’m not wrong.

By the time we’re a few arms’ lengths apart, he clears his throat and I see him look up at me from my periphery. “How old were you when you came here?” he asks.

“I was thirteen,” I answer without thinking. But I have a feeling that’s not his real question, so I throw him a bone. “I was real young when the invasion happened, and thirteen when my sister was taken. Jared and I came here before my fourteenth birthday, and I’ve been here ever since. Wanda brought Mel back after we were here for at least six months. It’s hard to always keep track of time, you know?” 

Henry nods absently at the excess of information I just dumped at his feet, his brows furrowed as he stares at the ground. “What was it like?” he murmurs.

“What was what like?” I prompt. I know the answer; it’s the same question everyone always has when they learn about my sisters. But if Henry wants to stay in the caves, he needs to get comfortable talking about this kind of thing. Wanda and Melanie’s story isn’t a secret; if he stays, he’ll have to grow some manners as he deals with the subject.

Finally he asks, “What was it like…to have your sister come back as a bug?” 

My eyes snap up and my gaze latches on to his face. My expression must convey how utterly sick of that goddamn word I am, because Henry’s eyes widen and he swiftly raises his hands in supplication. 

Regardless of the obvious immediate regret he feels at his misstep, I can’t help but bark out, “Wanda is not a bug, or a parasite, or a centipede, or whatever other stupid fucking name you feel moved to call her. She is a Soul, if you must separate her from the rest of us.”

“Look, I’m sorry –” he tries to interject.

“Good, be sorry, because she’s not actually bad or wrong or other. Whatever you think about her, she’s my sister, and I do not appreciate you being one more person who judges her for something she cannot help,” I practically snarl at him. 

So much for channeling Wanda during this conversation; I can practically hear her chiding me over my behavior. Jamie, he doesn’t know any better. He doesn’t have the same experiences with souls that you do. He’s allowed his pain, Jamie. Gotta love that Stryder temper; maybe I’m more like Mel than I thought. I exhale audibly and turn back to my task at hand. Calm calm calm calm….

“Sorry,” I mutter eventually, refusing to look up at Henry.

“No…. I shouldn’t have said that,” he concedes, his voice full of chastised apology. 

I shrug sullenly. “It is what it is,” I grumble. After a few moments of awkward silence, I finally feel like I’ve gotten myself under enough control to give him an actual answer to his question. “It was…hard,” I admit eventually, pausing in my work. “Melanie was practically my parent, and to lose her was devastating. Jared and I struggled a lot without her.” I dig aggressively at the dry soil as I remember that horrible time in my life. It was gut-wrenching on a good day, and the rest of the time.... God, it was a never-ending nightmare. “So when her body showed up here at the caves, I was eager to embrace her anyway I could have her. Wanda wasn’t Mel; they’re incredibly different people. I’m sure you can tell that just by talking to them. And it was…confusing to have Wanda speaking through Melanie’s body. But Uncle Jeb caught on that Mel was still there inside her body, and Wanda didn’t lie to me when I confronted her about it. Knowing she was in there, listening to me and loving me through Wanda, it was enough for me at the time.” 

Looking back, it was an incredibly simplistic way of navigating the situation, but I was young and I missed my sister. I know now that it was very hard and super painful for Wanda to be caught in the middle of Melanie’s relationships, but whenever I try to apologize to her or make amends, she waves me off and tells me there’s nothing to fix. Ian always says that she’s too good for this world, and nothing I’ve seen has ever made me think otherwise. “By the time everything came to a head with Mel and Wanda, it was devastating to imagine my life without either of them. They’re two different people, but they’re both my sisters.”

Henry’s too quiet for my liking after my long-winded speech, so I decide to rile him up a bit. 

“I helped pick out Wanda’s new body,” I tell him proudly, letting a smirk tug at my mouth. Henry’s head whips up at my words, and I’m not surprised in the least at the horrified expression steadily taking over his face. 

“But…. God, why would you do that?” he sputters. 

“Call it human selfishness,” I shrug again. I’m not ashamed of my choices, and I honestly wouldn’t do anything differently. “I didn’t know what Wanda was planning before she had Doc remove her from Mel’s body, but when I found out, I did volunteer to help choose the host to replace Mel. To be honest, they needed the help. Mel was an outright emotional mess without Wanda, and Ian was basically useless from the second she left. So, Jared, Mel, and I picked the host out, and then we waited for weeks to see if the body would wake up. When she didn’t, we put Wanda in, and the rest is history.”

“Was it…she, I mean,” he says, correctly himself quickly. “Was she happy with your choice – about the body?” he asks with deliberate purpose. 

I snort without thinking. “Not at all. She was so mad at all of us; well, as much as Wanda can get mad about things. Souls are inherently peaceful, so anger doesn’t come naturally to her,” I explain to him thoughtfully. “But in the end, Wanda is so loving that when she saw how much we wanted her to stay with us, she made peace with the whole thing. She was so annoyed with her body for that first year; it’s so at odds from what she was used to with Mel.” I chuckle, remembering how she used to complain whenever someone would pat her head, like they would a child or an errant pet. 

“She’s very small,” Henry offers quietly, like he’s afraid to offend. 

“Yeah she is,” I laugh. “It’s frustrating for her, because she wants to contribute so much, but it took a long time for her body to catch up. She had what Mel referred to as a nuclear meltdown of a shit-fit for Wanda – which really just meant that Wanda slightly raised her voice and was a touch less polite than normal – over everyone going easy on her, chores-wise. It was about six months after she woke up in the new body, and she told all of us off for treating her too delicately. Which, I mean, guilty as charged,” I accept ruefully. “But she’s stronger now, and for the most part Ian’s stopped hovering like he used to.” I remember how intense Ian was in those first few months when Wanda woke up in her new host body and can’t help laughing. Kyle always teased his brother that he was an intense clinger, and that Wanda was going to lose it on Ian one day after she stepped on his foot for the six hundredth time in one week. He’s come a long way, he even gives her room to breathe now. 

“I saw the four of them last night,” Henry says, bringing me back from the fond memories of my family. “In here,” he clarifies. 

I nod, understanding exactly what he’s referring to. I’m aware of their post-raid tradition of stargazing and imbibing. Mel says I’ll be allowed to join when I turn twenty-one; Jared promises he’s trying to wear her down to let me partake before then. 

“I’m guessing it was wine?” I wonder absently. “I thought I heard Melanie mutter something about Satan's grapes when she stalked past me this morning at breakfast.” I toss Henry a look that actually gets him to crack a smile. Go figure, he does have a sense of humor buried under all that grimness. 

“That’s what it sounded like, from all their yelling,” he replies, his voice awkward as it works around his reluctant smile. 

But he’s trying. 

“Ha!” I throw my head back and laugh openly at that image. Jared in particular is a very goofy drunk; I think it has something to do with how much tension he regularly carries around on his shoulders. 

“What’s…um…. What’s the deal with the four of them? They seem...close?” he stumbles over his words, but when he sees my eyebrow raise in response, he immediately backtracks. “I’m sorry! That was none of my business!” He moves to get up and run away but I hold up a hand to stop him. 

This isn’t the first time someone’s wondered about the layered relationships between Mel, Wanda, Jared, and Ian, but it is the first time someone has gotten up the balls to ask me directly. Usually I’m just looked at like the odd orphan taken in by a group of swingers. So, I’ll give the guy a bit of credit for his bravery, and for not making me feel like a freak. 

“It’s fine, you just caught me off guard,” I reassure him. He stays where he is, but he’s blushing so hard he could be Wanda, and he’s having trouble meeting my eye again. “They’re…,” I exhale in thought, trying to figure out how to accurately explain. “They’re complicated,” I begin. “Jared and Mel were together before she was taken, and her love for him – and for me – ultimately led Wanda back to us. It’s intense.” I will never doubt the fierce love felt by my sister; and I know that no one has ever been as wholly loved as I am. “But because Mel and Wanda shared a mind, Wanda felt that same love. She loved Jared and I, sight unseen. Then at some point, Ian and Wanda fell in love, making it all even harder. When Wanda gave Mel back her body, it separated everything…for the most part.” I pause for a moment in my explanation, because I don’t really know the messy details of how they all went about working things out – nor do I ever want to, I’m not a masochist. 

“They all have these slip-ups,” I allow quietly, like it’s a secret. And it may very well be; if Mel heard me talking about this, especially with a stranger, I think she may kill me herself. But it feels nice to unload a little bit of this on someone who isn’t directly involved. “When Wanda and Jared will look at each other for too long, or Mel touches Ian the way Wanda normally would. It happens a lot less than it used to, but I’ve always thought of it like leftover sense-memories that are still being worked out.” 

Poor Henry looks like his head might explode, so I hasten to clarify the simplicity of it to him. “Jared and Mel love each other so much that it’s disgusting, and Wanda and Ian are so stupidly happy it makes the rest of us so goddamn exhausted. They’re not all together, or anything like that. But they’re close. They’re just…they’re family, and they’re good, however they’ve worked it out between them. Regardless,” I shrug. “Remember how I said Mel was like my parent?” Henry nods thoughtfully. “Now it’s like I have four parents. Which, some days is as annoying as it sounds, but most of the time, it’s an embarrassment of riches,” I tell him, borrowing from one of Ian’s favorite phrases. He used it once to describe how much they all cared about me after I had an embarrassingly dramatic teenage reaction to Wanda and Mel fussing over me before a raid. Something about his words clicked, and now I think about it whenever I’m feeling smothered. The four of them love me with an overwhelming ferocity, and to know that four other people would give their lives to protect mine is a heady feeling that I’m still working to fully grasp as I get older and start to understand more.

My story isn’t as difficult as some, but it’s mine, and I treasure it. At the end of the world, I am loved by two sisters who have always been more like mothers to me, and two men who also love them with such intensity that they have defied death on more than one occasion to keep them safe. 

I’ve laid my soul and my story bare to Henry, and I hope I’ve done what I can to make it clear to him that Wanda isn’t a danger to him or his sister. That she’s just as human as the rest of us.

“Well man,” I say as I finally push myself up to stand. “I have to get on with my chores.” He stands up from his spot as well, and brushes his hands clean of the dirt from the crops. I extend my hand to him again, and after a beat he reaches out to grasp it firmly. “I hope you make good choices,” I offer kindly. He nods once and walks away quickly, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I smirk as I heft my basket of weeds to rest against my hip. 

I think he’ll get there, I just hope Mel doesn’t tear him a new asshole when he tries to talk to her.

Chapter Text

Melanie

Oh my God, I am already beyond sick of the askance looks the new guy has been shooting me all day. When Uncle Jeb told me the conditions he presented to this guy to stay in the caves, my eyes just about rolled right out of my head. I have no desire to set this guy straight; I mean, c’mon, I have shit to do. And I’m hungover; which is technically Jared’s fault. That beautiful asshole.

Bottom line, I don’t want to do this today, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on at this moment. 

Mel, you know he’s going to be nervous around me. You cannot blame him for that. Wanderer’s words from last night echo in the corner of my mind, sending shocks of nostalgia and pain dancing throughout my chest as I’m wrapped up in memories of how the two of us used to communicate when we shared my body. It hurts to remember, to imagine her back with me, safe inside my head, but I’m never sure whether it’s the memories that are painful or I ache because I miss being so close to her. 

And as I’m not inclined towards self-examination, perhaps I’ll never know for sure.  

I mean, I absolutely hit the jackpot with Wanderer. If I was going to be implanted with a centipede against my will, there is no one I’d rather share a skull with. But now that I don’t…. I don’t know, I miss her sometimes. All the time. She is my…. Well, we say sister, but we both know it’s more than that. 

There just isn’t a word for what we are, for what she is to me. 

And now Jeb expects me to extrapolate on that to some dude who was dumb enough to fall into Jared’s trap, which by the way, was meant to catch Souls, because they’re too trusting to imagine that someone would do anything underhanded. So, the fact that a human fell for it…. Let’s just say it doesn’t bode well for his survival skills. Close-minded moron.

I saw the way he looked at Wanderer last night, when we returned from the raid. He was disgusted – but more frightening than that, he was scared of her. And angry. I shiver as I remember when those emotions were aimed at me, at my body, and I was powerless to do anything about it. I couldn’t even fight them off when they came for me, for Wanderer. Every time I see those looks pointed at her, I feel compelled to shield her with my body once again, to take the blows for her, to spare her. She is an extension of me, and mine to protect. 

So bring it on, new guy. 

I'm wavering between baring my teeth and glowering at him like a petty brat by the time he finally works up the nuts to approach me after dinner. I’ve intentionally lingered over my food so I can get this over with. Jared enticed Jamie away with an offer of soccer in an attempt to make the guy more comfortable coming to talk to me, and Wanderer and Ian had already high-tailed it out of here after they spent the entire meal making goo-goo eyes at each other to such a degree that it’d make even the most cynical of us blush. So, come on new guy, let’s get this over with. 

Henry sits down and quietly introduces himself, but he’s smart enough to keep his hands to himself. He’s probably afraid I’ll bite one of them off if he gets too close. I’ve never been touchy-feely, and the whole alien apocalypse really didn’t help matters there. The only people I’m physically affectionate with these days are Jared, Jamie, and Wanderer. And Eamon, obviously. Jeb blushes and coughs it off whenever I even attempt to give him a hug, so I try to spare him that awkwardness for the most part; Aunt Maggie and Sharon can got fuck themselves after everything they put Wanderer and I through; and Ian…well, Ian and I try not to make it weird if we can help it. We’re getting better at it, finally. 

After a couple minutes of loaded silence, I roll my eyes and give up on him leading this conversation. “How’d you manage to fall in Jared’s pit trap? That wasn’t supposed to work on anyone who knew what the hell they were doing,” I snap at him. I can practically hear Wanderer admonishing me in my mind. Melanie Stryder, be nice, she’d say. Shush, I think back…to no one. It feels like a punch to the gut, just like it always does. 

Wanderer and I have discussed this strange leftover habit from our time together; evidently, she still talks to me in her head as well. While they’d be accepting, no one else really knows that we do it; no one else could really understand, because no one else loved the Soul they got paired with, not the way I did. We are alone in this, the two of us.

Henry visibly flinches at my words, and I resolve to try and chill the fuck out. My defensiveness will never get him to warm up to Wanderer. And that is the ultimate goal – get him to change his mind, even a little bit, so that she’s safe. 

“I’m sorry,” I mutter mulishly, dismissively waving my hand. “I’m not…good with people. You know, interrupted social skills at a crucial point in my cognitive development due to an alien invasion and all that. Blah blah blah.”

He actually laughs. Huzzah, it appears I can still successfully make a joke. 

But when he doesn’t say anything else, I end up whining internally but resolve to try again. “They picked that tree because that’s where Jeb and the others found Wanderer and I when we came here. We were close to death – dehydration and exposure, ironically. Didn’t think I’d die that way in the middle of an alien takeover, now did I?”

He clears his throat and quietly asks, “Is that its name? Wanderer?”

“Her,” I immediately correct him. He needs to cut that shit out right now. I remember when Wanderer absolutely schooled Jared on her gender identity after we were attacked by Kyle. Her pronoun preferences haven’t been a problem since, and I don’t need this guy’s intolerance stirring that shit up again. 

So, that’s strike one. He’s got three before I chuck a plate at his head and tell Jeb to get someone with more patience than me for this guy’s spirit quest. Hell, even Kyle’d be a better choice at this point. 

Henry looks apologetic at least. He nods his head and asks his question again, but at least he calls her her this time. Good boy.

“Yes, her name is Wanderer. At least here, on this planet. She’s gone by other names on other worlds,” I explain, my tone clipped. Worlds that I still see in my dreams and secretly wish I’d get to see for myself, instead of only experiencing them through Wanderer’s vivid memories. “Uncle Jeb shortened it to Wanda a couple weeks after we got here. To this day he claims it was just easier to say, but that old goat was doing her a favor, humanizing her for the others, getting them comfortable with her. It went a long way towards calming the villagers.”

“What other names does she have?” he asks. It’s obvious he’s curious against his will.

“Lives in the Stars, which is akin to Wanderer, I guess,” I muse. “And Rides the Beast, but that one embarrasses her.”

“Why?” he asks, his tone incredulous, like he can’t imagine Wanderer having such a blatantly human emotion. 

“Go ask her,” I retort harshly. Honestly. I’m not this dude’s gossip buddy. “That’s personal to Souls, and I’m not just going to tell you her life stories without her permission.”

“But…why do you care?” He actually seems confused by this. Oh buddy, strike two. I just can’t with this level of stupid today. 

I’m never going to hear the end of it from Wanderer when she finds out about this.  

“You wouldn’t ask me about all my personal shit without really knowing me,” I point out. I mean, other than what he’s being forced to do right now. 

He murmurs something that sounds like he’s conceding my point, but I’m swiftly losing patience. And my head still hurts from that God-awful wine we had last night. 

“So you…both, I guess, almost died getting here?” he offers, trying hard to make this conversation move somewhere so we can both say we tried our best. 

“Mhm,” I agree, tapping my fingers on the counter beside my half-eaten dinner. I’m radiating impatience, and if Wanderer could see me right now she might even slightly raise her voice while gently encouraging me to be less unpleasant.

“Why’d…she...do it?” he asks. “Why search out your family?”

And here we go. “Because I was still in there. I loved, so she loved. I talked her over to my side, and we wanted to find Jamie and Jared. They meant too much to us to just let them go. I – we – needed to make sure they were alive, that they were safe. Wouldn’t you try to do the same for your sister, if it was you?”  

He sputters, gaping at me like I just blew his little mind. “I...yeah, of course. It’s just…. It’s impossible to imagine still being inside, still being there, after being taken. You know?”

I chuckle ruefully. “No, I don’t know. Because I’m living proof that it’s not impossible, obviously. I don’t have to imagine anything.”

He turns white, like he just remembered who he’s talking to. I keep my mouth shut, but internally I’m scoffing at this guy’s idiocy. Mel, try harder, please, her voice, which sounds deceptively like my own, slides against my mind like a caress. Fucking fine. 

I take some deep breaths to help me deal with dumbasses that I have no ability to change and try to remember that I could have been this guy. If I had never been found by the Seekers, if I had never met Wanderer, I may still be filled up with my own paranoia and a healthy dose of anger at the state of the world. If nothing else, experiencing Wanderer’s endless joy and appreciation of this place and our human family has allowed me to let go of a lot of the feelings that I once had in common with Henry. Now I feel more happiness than sorrow, more acceptance than hostility.

But Henry isn’t there yet. 

“But wasn’t it awful, having someone else in control of your mind, of your body?” he sneers, obviously not sharing the same soft feelings I was just savoring.

Lord give me strength. “Of course it was! It was fucking miserable,” I answer. I don’t censure myself, sure that my tone contains enough antagonism to communicate just how much of an imbecile I think he is right now. “I was a wraith – a ghost of myself – except I was haunting my own body that was walking around without me. I couldn’t use my hands or make my own decisions. I had no say in what my body did, I couldn’t protect us from harm or hug my brother or kiss the man I loved. And to top it off, no one fucking believed Wanderer and I about it for-fucking-ever. My body was physically abused over and over and over again when we arrived here; no one knew how to treat us, and to this day some people don’t even have the decency to even play at having the intelligence to treat us equally. I’ll level with you, I would never wish it on my worst enemy.” But then I think of Kyle, and I wonder if he wouldn’t sometimes benefit from a bit of Soul-like zen. “It got better for me, but that’s only because it was Wanderer. She’s special.”

Henry at least looks a tiny bit chagrined at my tirade of bitchiness. Wanderer is going to scold me when I see her next, but I just cannot with any more of this tonight. 

“Look, kiddo,” I try again, more gently this time. The last thing I need is Wanderer – and by extension Ian, because he can’t actually detach himself from her for more than an hour – getting pissed at me and limiting my access to Eamon as some sort of punishment or ill-conceived learning opportunity. “You seem willing to learn, and regardless of the fact that you fell in a hole meant to trick Souls – who operate at the same level as toddlers in terms of their understanding of the concept of deception – you probably aren’t a total waste of space. You survived for what – a decade out there without help? That’s impressive, truly. And…. I get wanting to protect your sister. I raised Jamie by myself, for years on the run before I literally fell into Jared. Being a parent to a sibling is a powerful thing. I’m sure you would die for Mia the same way I threw myself down an elevator shaft to keep my brother safe.” He’s listening now, his defensive stare thawing slightly the longer I talk. “Just…don’t give her a hard time. Every time someone new joins the group, Wanderer goes through some sort of crisis of conscious, or faith, or whatever the fuck – I don’t know. My point being, she’s never felt like she deserves to be here. I mean, I get it, she used my body to get here, and everything that followed was complicated and ugly and hard. But she does – she does belong here; this is her home. I am her home. And while I’m not above threatening others into compliance, I prefer to do things the easy way, for her sake, if for no other reason. So be nice, and play nice. More than anything else in the universe, Wanderer wants to live here with the people she loves. And we fucking love her too.” I stand and gather up my dirty plates. “If I can forgive her…. If I can miss her while she’s standing right next to me…. Then I think that should be the precedent for everyone else who lives with her.” I move to leave, because I’m feeling overwrought and very much done with all this. 

But I pause, just to toss the new guy one last curve ball. I lean in close to him, making sure my voice is no louder than a low whisper. “Just so you’re aware, if you make Wanderer cry, I swear on everything you’ve ever held dear, I will fucking slice your Achilles in your sleep and leave you for the Seekers.”

I smile to myself as I mosey off, because when Wanderer hears about this she’ll just have to get over it.

And she will, because it’s us. 

Chapter Text

Jared

I’m more surprised than anything else when the new guy taps me on the shoulder after breakfast a couple of days after we return from the most recent raid. Mel didn’t even have to say anything for me to know that her conversation with Henry went poorly last night; she came back to our room spitting mad and raring to go. When she finally did relay what was said between them…. Well, none of it shocked me. From the first second I saw the kid standing with Jeb,  I could tell that he wasn’t going to be ok with Wanda; he held himself too tightly, ready to spring forward with all the aggressive righteousness of a one-man war. It isn’t something that will ever allow him to be at peace sharing the caves with Wanda, not unless he learns to let it all go. He reminds me of the way Kyle used to be, before Wanda, and ultimately, before Sunny. 

I remember what it felt like to carry around those feelings in my own chest, nestled up close to the pain of having Mel ripped away from me and entangled with the fear of losing Jamie. It was a tangible awful thing, the weight of it. 

It was horrible to feel it then, just as it’s awful to think about now. 

So, I guess I’m motivated by more than one reason to bring this guy over to our way of thinking. It’s not just for Wanda and Mel, or Ian and Eamon, or even to prevent the disharmony that I know will erupt in the caves if we have someone hateful or frightened in our midst. We just got Maggie and Sharon to shut the fuck up, for Christ’s sake. 

I want to help because I see so much of me in him. 

When he panicked at seeing Wanda, his words shot a horrible, hot sickly bolt of shame down through my stomach; I know what it is to hate that much, to fear a thing so intensely that it just gets bigger and bigger, mutating into something ugly and dangerous. I held on to those feelings for a lot longer than I should have, because it was better than the complete and utter nothing I felt without them...without Mel. I didn’t want to give them up, to take the chance that Wanda was telling the truth, if it wasn’t going to somehow work out in the end. When I eventually worked my way through what I was feeling – when I truly embraced the implications of what Wanda was trying to get me to understand – it was a weight I was glad to shed like a dead skin, allowing me to breathe deeply for the first time since I had lost Mel. 

If Henry does not have to make my same mistakes, then he shouldn’t have to. 

He drops down in the chair across from me, and when he introduces himself, I must startle him by smiling widely when I greet him. 

“I take it you haven't seen many friendly faces?” I ask, not trying to hide my smirk. 

He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, seemingly unsure how to respond. He clears his throat and says, “I mean, Jamie was pretty nice.” Thank God for the kid, otherwise Mel would have probably scared this guy off entirely. He clears his throat again, stumbling over his next words. “But, um – I met Melanie yesterday…. Your – um…?” His voice rises at the end of his almost-sentence, begging for me to toss some grasp of assistance his way.

I can’t help but chuckle, because it seems that Mel has scared the ever-loving shit out of this kid. “My girlfriend? Yeah,” I reply, nodding to let him know he's got it right. “Or wife or partner or whatever you want to call it. She’s mine and I’m hers; I’m not really hung up on labels.” Not like some people – I mentally roll my eyes thinking about how O’Shea doesn’t hesitate to correct anyone who deems to call Wanda by the wrong title. 

He clears his throat yet again, shifting in his chair this time. “She’s um…. She’s….”

“Intense? Unpleasant? Slightly unhinged?” I ask, grinning so as to soften my words. His eyes widen comically; he seems unsure whether to confirm or deny what I’ve just said. “Oh, I am very aware that my girlfriend is a fully terrifying human being,” I reassure him. I can’t help but add, “She was much much less dangerous when she was possessed by an alien.”

Poor Henry proceeds to spit out his water, managing to get it all over the table and down his front. “What?” he sputters, brushing down his shirt while I laugh softly at the mess he’s made. 

I shrug, because it’s one hundred percent true. Wanda is somehow still appalled at much of the shit that comes flying out of Melanie’s mouth, which is astonishing considering she lived in Mel’s head with her for the better part of a year. Even with everything she has seen, Wanda is still shocked at how quick Mel is to violence; when I picture the expression on Wanda’s face after I kissed her and Mel slapped me…. I could easily detect the difference between the two of them, even then. Wanda had been aghast, while Melanie had been out for blood. 

They’re still the same, those girls. 

“Wanda’s harmless,” I confirm, waving off the poor guy’s befuddlement. I know what I said about Mel could be taken as distasteful, but no one who actually matters to me would hear those words and get offended. 

I realize a moment too late though that anyone inclined to hurt Wanda could interpret what I just said as a reassurance – a blessing – to take advantage of her unwillingness to hurt others. Henry’s looking too thoughtful at my words, examining them for meaning or permission that I certainly would never give. “She may be, but I’ll only warn you once; if you ever so much as look at Wanda funny, Mel will have no compunction whatsoever with burying you alive in the desert.” When Henry snorts out a soft laugh, assuming I’m being flippant again, I add sharply, “And I’ll help her.”

That shuts him up.

Good. 

A few moments fill up with uncomfortable silence, but I refuse to backstep on this. I wronged Wanda time and time again in the past, and I’m still trying to claw my way back to being the decent person I once was – the Jared that smiled and joked with a careless ease that drew Mel and Jamie and Wanda to me in the first place; that Jared protects Wanda instead of hurting her. That’s the man I strive to work my way back to being every single day. Even if she doesn’t need me to do that for her anymore. 

“Jeb said you mentioned some interest in joining the raiding parties?” I eventually allow, conscious of my tone. Mel and Wanda both say that I tend to shift into business-mode when I talk about raiding; their description is usually accompanied by twin rueful teasing smirks – one that fills me up and follows me, and one that haunts me as it drifts away, because even if I occasionally want to, I cannot follow where it goes. 

I mentally shake off these thoughts as I remember to remain inviting to Henry; he needs help, not scorn from me. 

He nods, and proceeds to ask about the things we collect while out on the raids. He wants to know how long the stretches are that we travel for, how we move unseen; as I answer his questions, I’m struck by how drastically different our circumstances are from what they were during the first year or so that I was here. I’m told it was even worse before I arrived.

I need to make Henry understand – in this, if nothing more –  that we are blessed to have Wanda here with us. I remember the echoes of the people we used to be, our shadows inhabiting the spaces where our bodies should have been. We were the remains of the human species instead of our true selves. 

“Things used to be a lot tougher,” I begin, trying to determine how to effectively communicate this to him. “Raids were hard; we could really only travel at night, so we were gone for weeks and weeks at a time to make it worth the effort. We’d break into stores and pass out in the trucks, barely sleeping and never showering to stay under the radar. It was…,” I pause. “It was hell,” I say, emphasizing the word to make sure he gets it. “I lived on the run for years before I found Mel and Jamie, and then had years out in the world with the two of them, and not one moment in all that time was as hard as it was during my first year here in the caves. We were always running, always looking over our shoulders, ready to die at a moment’s notice to keep the group safe. That’s still the rule, by the way,” I inform him as an aside. He needs to know if he decides to raid with us. “You get a pill, and you have to be prepared to take it rather than let yourself be taken. We can’t ever let the larger group’s location be compromised.” Henry looks a little pale, but he nods hastily in agreement. “We all know the risks, we all prepare ourselves for it, even Wanda.”

At this revelation, Henry looks like I just told him the sky is yellow and aliens never took over the planet. “Wouldn’t it be fine?” At my raised eyebrows, he rolls his eyes and says, “She – wouldn’t she be fine if the group was captured by Seekers?”

I think of Wanda, and the night we were pulled over by Seekers at the tail end of her first big raid. She was ready to die to protect us then; I think of Ian, of Mel and Jamie, of Eamon, and appreciate all over again how much Wanda risks losing each time she goes out on a raid. Ian told me once that if she was caught, they wouldn’t kill her like they would us; but they would ship her off-world with the hope of providing her with an attitude adjustment. She would wake up to the knowledge that we were all long-dead, and that there would be nothing she could ever do about it. Imagining Wanda without Ian or Mel or Jamie or Eamon, or even Jeb or me…. I know she would choose death every time. 

“Wanda would lose more than most of us if we got caught,” I say simply, leaving it at that. “Wanda changed the raids for us. She’s our Trojan horse – she goes in, camouflaged in plain sight. She can get us all the food we need and books us rooms at hotels with actual beds to sleep in without anyone ever being the wiser. She showed us where to hit for medicines and cryotanks…. We’re alive – hell, we’re living – because of her.”

I remember that first night I smuggled her out of the caves, the night we took off into the desert to save Jamie; we were both half-crazed and completely frantic, racing the dawn and desperately hoping to defy the odds…. I was a mess, but she was incredible. It was the first time I ever really saw Wanda; she was no longer the creature of my nightmares that was wearing Melanie’s skin, but someone else. Someone worthwhile. 

“Wanda is a core part of the raiding teams,” I tell him. He’d best get used to the idea, if he wants to go out with us. “Mel steps in if she’s needed, because she knows everything Wanda does, even if she doesn’t have the benefit of those silver eyes to back up her knowledge.” Henry tilts his head, poised to ask a question, when I tap one finger against my temple in explanation. “They shared a brain, so Mel can navigate pretty well out in the world.” Ian refuses to let Wanda go without him, even now with Eamon waiting for them. I can’t bear to think of Mel out there with me, so I cannot hold it against him. That kind of fear never truly leaves you, especially once it’s already come to fruition once before. Now Jamie has started raiding with us as well, much to Mel and Wanda’s chagrin. I think the two of them would prefer if he remained a kid forever, staying behind in the caves for the rest of his years. But he can’t – he can’t – and I’d rather have him in front of me and within my grasp than running off with another crew so he can feel like he’s getting to stretch his legs. He may not be mine by blood, but I’d rather let the Seekers have their way with me than lose Jamie Stryder. 

“We can always use more hands when we go out, but you’ll have to be good with Wanda. She’ll never say anything about it if you aren’t, but Ian may kick your ass.” I smirk, thinking of the one thing worse than a solid right hook from O’Shea, awful as that may be. “And I’m sure you can imagine what Mel would do; she’s certainly more creative in her rage than Ian.”

Any semblance of blood left in the kid’s face drains away immediately. Oh, Mel would be mighty pleased to hear she’s had such a paralyzing effect on Henry. 

“Can I ask you something?” I finally ask. Henry nods, but doesn’t even try to meet my eyes now. “Why do you want to stay?” At his incredulous expression, I snicker quietly. His face practically yells at the top of its lungs, Are you fucking stupid, man? 

And for the millionth time and for the thousandth reason, I wish this guy wasn’t so afraid of Wanda. I know that’s a tall order; that it’s something that would never be possible outside the magic of what has happened in these caves, but if it had – if only it had – I think Henry would be welcomed into the fold of this place, cared for and accepted without question. I can see him in my mind’s eye, sassing Mel and playing soccer with Jamie, talking with Ian while Wanda fusses at me as I try and hold Eamon correctly. There is a real chance of having a full life in this place, he just has to want it, and to let go of what he believes stands between him and the rest of us. 

“For Mia,” he murmurs eventually. “I’d do anything for Mia.”

I nod, acknowledging this, because I understand. I came to this place in the grips of a furious hope that by keeping Jamie safe, I could somehow pull myself out of the devastation I was drowning in after I lost Mel.

What I got was so much more, eventually. I got my heart, my Mel back, and my wish for Jamie. I gained friends and was given the chance to love again; I have learned about the worlds beyond my own and made peace with what has happened to mine. I have found stability and a role in a thriving community. I’m slowly piecing the bits of me back together that shattered as I read ten words scrawled haphazardly across a scrap of paper; Not fast enough. Love you love Jamie. Don’t go home. 

I found hope, because I wanted it, and because I decided to take a risk in trusting Wanda. 

“She’ll get everything she needs here, I can promise you that,” I assure him. “If you can let yourself believe it’s possible, I think you will too.”

His face snaps up at my words, and he presses his mouth into a flat line. “Can I ask you something?” he asks. After being encouraged to go ahead, he says, “Jeb said you held the doctor at knife point when Wanda wanted to die. Why didn't you just let her? You know, when she wanted to?”

The events of that night have always sat in my mind like a boulder in the middle of a river; unmoving, as the rest of the world rushes past. I knew Wanda was up to something, and as soon as O’Shea took his eyes off her for five goddamn minutes, she went and proved me right. I would let the whole world burn to get Melanie back in my arms; but in that moment, in a dark hallway of an underground cavern, I didn’t want to let her captor leave us – to leave me. I couldn’t bear it. I craved Mel, but I’d come to care deeply for Wanda; I couldn’t let one go for the sake of the other, no matter how absurd it seemed when I took a step back. I just couldn’t. My chest had split open when Wanda asked me to let her leave Mel on her own, but whatever was left was promptly torn to shreds after I followed her and the full meaning of her words to Doc became clear. Let me stay with Walt and Wes. Wanda...dead in the ground beneath our feet, never to laugh or fear or tell stories or love fiercely ever again.  

No . That was the only thought that screamed out in my head as my brain slowly, stupidly pinned down what she was saying. No no no. NO. 

“Because I didn't want to,” I finally tell Henry, my voice rough, a solid ugly thing living firmly in my throat. “I didn't want her to go.”

And with that I know I can’t do any more for Henry. Spending time with these memories always stirs something sharp and jagged within me, something uncomfortable I don’t like to take out and examine. I would die without Melanie; I know that from experience now. I became a ghost of myself, a memory of the Jared Howe I once was. I was numb with grief, a creature without awareness of the parts of himself that made up a whole person. I existed as that thing for so long, until I was unrecognizable to both the people around me and to myself. Feeling is coming back though, slowly but surely as the time passes. I am once again a man set apart from the powerful anguish that once defined me. I love, and I live. I chase away the numbness, and I feel. But when I let these memories wrap me up in their hazy tendrils, they threaten to drag me back, and I don’t know if I can afford to ever become that man again – the one who wears his apathy like a shield. 

So I push myself up to stand, gathering my dishes like talismans against the darkness that hovers in the corridors of these caves. “If you do decide to stay,” I say. “You should ask Wanda how she got the name Rides the Beast. She’s a great storyteller, and…,” I let my words get lost in a memory, just for a moment. It’s one of the few I have of only Wanda and I, where it really felt like just the two of us, even though she was looking out at me through Mel’s face. It still stings a bit, the thought of that night. No Mel and no Ian there to soften the words exchanged between us or to distract from the feelings that they elicited, no matter how unwelcome or unappreciated they were. Wanda took my breath away when she told me that story about her previous name; I remember how it felt when I realized it, like a lightning strike in my chest – it was breathtaking to feel loved by someone so impressive. But I have never doubted my love for Mel, not for one single second since I kissed her on that first night she came screaming into my life, and that night with Wanda was a long time ago. 

I clear my throat, blinking away the shadows of that night, and say, “And it’s one of her better stories. I hope you stick around to hear it.”

Chapter Text

Ian

Here we go again.

Another newbie to convince that my wife isn’t going to go all Invasion of the Body Snatchers on them while they sleep in the next hallway over. As if she has the time. 

Wanda has always stretched herself too thin, believing she needs to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove she belongs here; but now with Eamon in the picture, the girl barely has the energy to sleep, let alone come up with diabolical plans for a hostile takeover. 

Kyle had pulled me aside to warn me about the new guy’s testiness before Wanda and I even had the chance to make our way down the tunnel to the caves, but it wasn’t that hard to pick up on once I got a good look at him. There was a feverishness to his movements, an anxiety spurred on by ugly fear and constant anguish; it’s a characteristic that always helps me to tell the souls and humans apart before I can check their eyes. I’ve only ever seen that kind of disquiet on a soul’s face once – when Wanda was still peering out from behind Melanie’s gaze – when she was scared of us. Scared of me.

With all the fuss Henry kicked up when he realized Wanda was a Soul, I honestly expected him and his sister to be gone by first light. Well, color both Mel and I surprised the next morning at breakfast when Jeb approached us to encourage us to talk to Henry about Wanda. When I tried questioning the old coot about the value of doing such a thing, he pulled that same tired excuse, the one he knows neither Mel nor I can ever bring ourselves to refuse –  because once upon a time Jeb replied the same way, and it allowed us to keep Wanda. 

Curiosity. 

So, I agreed to his terms, but told Jeb that if the new guy pisses me off, I have no qualms with punching him. Kyle’s been far too pleasant lately, and I sort of miss the thrill of hitting someone. 

I know Henry has talked to Jamie and been threatened by Melanie; Jared said he spoke with the kid this morning, so I guess I’m next. I can only assume he’s working his way up to approaching Wanda. Why I’m less intimidating than my wife – who barely reaches my chest and is about as threatening as a box of kittens – beats me, but whatever. Can’t account for a lack of sense, it seems.

He finds me while I’m sorting supplies from the raid, arranging boxes of non-perishables by expiration date and grouping them by meals that are likely to be put together. No one’s going to eat black beans with spaghetti, right? We’ve moved far enough away from that level of desperation in the years since Wanda came to live with us. 

“Hey man,” Henry greets me. I don’t turn around, but I can hear him shuffling awkwardly in the darkness behind me. 

“Hey,” I reply. I feel myself sigh with preemptive exhaustion, but just as quickly I hear Wanda’s voice in my ear. Ian, you are kinder than most. Be good, Ian. 

When she was in her cryotank, I used to imagine I could hear Wanda’s voice. During those endless days and nights when I wasn’t sure I would ever get to hear her again, I’d pretend I could talk to her in my head the way I used to watch her do with Melanie. I would tell her all the stupid details about my day and what everyone was doing around the caves, how Jamie was getting so tall and how Mel was circling Kyle like a shark locked on to its prey; who my first kiss was and who I used to be before the invasion, before the possibility of her – how I wouldn’t trade any of it, as long as I got to keep her. 

When she finally came back to me in this host body, I told her everything all over again. 

So, I roll my eyes at the low ceiling of the cave and project some Lord, give me strength vibes out into the universe that delivered the love of my life to my doorstep, before acknowledging Henry over my shoulder. “Give me a hand, if you want to talk now.”

I explain my system to him, and let him get into a rhythm, allowing him the space to figure out how he wants to broach the discussion I’m already sick of having. 

He gets there, eventually. “How did you end up here?” he asks, his tone one of forced casualness. “In the caves, I mean.”

I clear my throat and tell him, “My brother, Kyle, and I ran from our parents’ house in Oregon at the height of the invasion. They’d been taken, and it was obvious we were next. Kyle’s girlfriend was already gone as well; we didn’t have any more ties, so we just started running.” I take a moment, swallowing down the fear that floods my body simply at the memory of that time in my life. The uncertainty, Kyle’s heartbreak over not getting to Jodi fast enough, our sadness at the loss of Mom and Dad. It’s physical, that fear; it clogs my throat and locks my muscles in place. “We made our way south, dodging Seekers and roughing it until we eventually ran into Jeb while we were robbing houses. I’m not sure how long it’s been, but we’ve been here ever since.” I pause, finally looking over at the kid. “You?”

He tells me about how his parents came home one day when he was in high school, and how he just knew something was wrong, that he knew he had to get Mia out. So he took his kid sister and ran. It’s a similar tale to mine and Kyle’s, and to Melanie’s. It sounds like it’s just plain old bad luck that he never found any other humans to run with. 

It softens my defenses a little bit; I remember how that life shaped me. The fear and sadness sculpted me into something angry and resentful. Aggressive. Dangerous. It made me willing to kill someone to keep a hold of the desperate grasp I had on what little was left; it made me question my humanity. 

Once, I tried to kill Wanda with my own bare hands. It's ironic now, that I’d give up every part of me to keep her alive. 

I think he can sense how alike we once were and how he could have been, if fate had allowed him the kindness of crossing paths with Jeb Stryder sooner. “How did you get from that to...you know. Um…,” he tries to ask, tripping over how to offend me the least amount possible, I think. 

“How’d I go from running from the enemy to being married to it?” I quip as I lift a pallet of tomato sauce. 

"You’re...?” Henry sputters, his face pulled into an expression of horror as his hands drop to his sides. “You're actually married to a bug…?"

"Careful now," I caution him, cutting him off with all the gentleness I can muster. Which falls somewhere between that of Jamie and Jared. I haven't reached the full-on batshit impatience of Melanie yet, but I will if this guy doesn’t mind his words. Piling an industrial size box of pasta on top of the sauce, I tell him, "I had to talk Wanda into it; Souls don't marry, not the way we do.” That was a conversation between Wanda and I with a lot of confusion and run-arounds, if there ever was one. “She wouldn't mind if we stayed partners, but I was raised Irish Catholic and making it official helps to ease the guilt that I'm sure my mother is projecting at me from wherever she is." My own smile at least seems to pull a small one out of Henry. “Wanda doesn’t truly understand the significance of it,” I divulge gently. “But she did it for me.”

Wanda worried that our wedding would upset people, or would be considered too frivolous. I’m sure a couple of the horrible hold-outs still felt that way, but Doc convinced her that it wasn’t a bad thing to have something to celebrate. Jeb was only too obnoxiously pleased to be asked to perform the ceremony and Mel walked Wanda down the makeshift aisle. Wanda wore a dress that she borrowed from Sunny and everyone was smeared with cave dust; it felt a little bit like kids playing at being grown-ups, and was interrupted by a flash thunderstorm, but besides the day Wanda woke up in her new body and the day Eamon arrived, it is one of the best days of my life. 

My wife, my constant, my anchor. 

My Wanderer. 

I eventually remember that Henry had asked me a question, before I either blew his mind or made him nauseated – from the look on his face, I’d say it could be either. “You asked how that happened though, right?” I check. He nods. He’s trying to be subtle about it, but he’s staring at me real hard out of the corner of his eye, like I might suddenly start projecting silver out of my eyes and tackle him to the ground. “I don’t really know,” I say. “How does anyone fall in love?”

His eyes narrow and he grumbles, “I don’t fucking know, I’ve been alone with my sister for the better part of a decade.”

I bark out a sharp laugh. I hope this kid gets over his hang-ups about Wanda, because we could certainly do with another someone who has an actual sense of humor here. 

“True enough,” I agree. “And I’m sure we’re all thankful you maintained those social boundaries.” At that, Henry looks at me like he just sucked on a lemon or wants to sock me in the gut. 

“Well,” I continue, ignoring his displeasure at my teasing. “I spent time with Wanda, got to know her. Not a lot more to it than that,” I shrug simply, because falling in love with Wanda was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

“But...she’s…,” Henry is gaping, no longer even attempting to hide his derision at what I’m saying to him.

“She’s an alien?” I supply, arching an eyebrow at him. 

Be kind, Ian, she says again. Her voice is a whisper behind my ear, brushing against my hair and sending a warm shiver down my spine. 

Henry doesn’t say anything, but it’s beyond apparent that he wants to run. Or throw something at me. Or some combination of the two. 

“She is that,” I admit. “I’m not an idiot, nor am I in denial.” The love of my life is a silvery glowing alien that can’t survive outside of a host body for more than a few minutes. She could easily live in Mel or Jeb, Sunny or myself. She isn’t the body she lives in, and yet she is. “It’s weird, I know; and certainly not how I expected my life to turn out. But I am human – I’m still me. So it’s my life and my choice, and I will live every moment of the rest of my days loving Wanda for who she is beneath the skin she wears.”

He looks thoughtful for a few moments, like he’s genuinely trying to absorb the things I’ve said. I shift another pallet – black beans can go with that giant bag of rice Jared insisted on.

Henry squirms as he gets the next words out. “Melanie said she was there the whole time the bu – Wanderer – was in her body. Like...did you, um – did you...shit, man.”

I want to help this guy out, if for no other reason than to be done with this fucking conversation, but I honestly have no idea where he’s going with this train of thought.

My thoughts must be painted pretty obviously across my face, because words start stumbling out of his mouth faster than he seems to be in control of them. “If there were two people in there, who did you love? Were you into both of them?” His face flushes bright red, like he can’t believe he just said what he did. 

I snort as I continue to organize the food in front of me. Everyone has questions about this, but very few people ask. I can probably count them on one hand – no, one finger. Kyle is the only one to broach the subject, his lack of tact and absence of social etiquette fully powering him forward – but thank God he’s only done so with me. He once asked me if we all – Wanda, Mel, Jared, and myself – were in some sort of elaborate quadruple relationship, as if that was the only way to explain how the four of us managed to get along without any blood being shed. If she had heard Kyle’s question, Wanda would die of embarrassment in this current body, and Melanie would probably just throat-punch him. Plus, I meant it when I told Jared Howe I could do better than him, if I were so inclined.

We’re not, for clarification’s sake. 

The four of us…. We’re just...family.

“No matter what anyone thought – or thinks – about the Souls, there can be two people in one body,’’ I tell him. “They are not the same being. Wanda has always been separate from Melanie for me, maybe because I didn’t know Mel beforehand. I know it was harder to separate them for the others, the ones that did. It was confusing and painful, for Jared especially. But also for me, because I loved Wanda and she came to love me, but her body loved Jared, and he loved Mel, who was still locked away in there.” Henry looks like he isn’t sure what to say. “Complicated, right?” I offer.

He nods, emphatically. 

“It can be confusing for them too,” I continue, shoving a pile of canned fruit into a corner. “Wanda says that humans are the most complex hosts she’s ever encountered, and that seems to hold true with the other Souls I’ve talked to.” He looks slightly ill at even the thought of that interaction. “The emotions… they’re overwhelming, entangling, even though most of the Souls have had hosts before. Humans are... something new to them. But, even with all that confusion, there’s never been any on my end. Wanda is Wanda, no matter what she looks like.”

“You’ve talked to other Souls?” Henry’s voice is disbelieving. 

While that’s not exactly what I was hoping he’d get out of what I was just saying, I may as well be the one to break this to him. “Yup,” I say quickly, like pulling off a band aid and taking the scab with it. “My brother’s partner is Sunlight Passing Through the Ice, or Sunny, if you’d prefer.” I wait a moment, and then decide to really blow this kid’s head off. Kyle deserves a fraction of the heat I’m generally on the receiving end of for falling in love with the enemy. “If you think my story’s nuts, you should hear Kyle’s. Maybe don’t talk to him about it, cuz no matter how calm he’s acting these days, he’s much more of an impulsive idiot than anyone else in this cave can ever aspire to be, and he won’t hesitate to knock your head against the wall.” The memory of how close he came to killing Wanda and Melanie still colors the edges of my love for my brother, even after all these years of forgiving him. “Sunny lives in Kyle’s girlfriend’s body, from before the invasion.”

I let that juicy tidbit sink in, and watch as Henry’s face rapidly loses all its color, much to my private glee. “I’m not so controversial now, am I?” I grin, clapping him on the shoulder. Getting back to the cans of fruit, I continue answering his question. “Besides the girls, there’s Burns Living Flowers, or Burns, who lives with another group. They’re the only three who we’ve allowed to stay with our communities.” 

Henry’s quiet for a long time, the only sound is the dull clanging of cans and the thud of cardboard and wood against the cave floor. It’s a series of sounds that fills me with relief; relief that my family will have food and we won’t be afraid of what comes next. That we’ll have what we need to keep on surviving. 

“I’m trying, I swear I am,” he murmurs, his voice barely louder than a whisper but so acutely filled with desperation that a thread of anxiety shoots through my stomach. “I just don’t know if I really get it. Is there no one else? Your...wife, isn’t a person like you or me. Is it desperation? Do you feel like you owe her for bringing supplies into the caves?” He hastily tries to backtrack when he looks up and sees my expression. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hands raised in supplication. “I didn’t...I just….”

I let out a long, loud sigh, because...fuck, man. Jared was optimistic about this guy, but I don’t know what more I can say to Henry to make him understand. Honestly, I may even prefer it if he leaves. But Wanda would want me to keep trying. 

You’re good, Ian. You’re better than any other human.  

“I wasn’t majoring in philosophy or any of that shit before the invasion happened. I don’t really know the answer to this question, but...what does it mean to be human? To be a person? Is it biology, or is it our actions?” I don’t look away from him, the same way I didn’t look away from Jared all those years ago when we first spoke to Wanda about the Seeker. This is too important – a last chance. “Wanda came to us as an alien, but she’s more human than anyone I’ve known before or since. That’s on you to try and understand. It isn’t about not having another choice, because I would rather give up my body to the Seekers than be apart from Wanda. For me, there’s no simpler choice. And it isn't about owing, although God knows I owe enough people for a lot of things. I owe my idiot brother for keeping me alive during the ugly years after the invasion, and Jeb for taking us in. I owe Jamie for convincing me that Wanda was her own person, someone other than Melanie, even when they shared the same face. I'll never be able to repay Sunny for calming Kyle the fuck down with whatever it is she does. Jared and I have had our differences, but when it comes down to it, I owe him for saving my girl's life when she couldn't see that it was worth saving. Melanie kept Wanda safe with her body, and continues to protect her every single day.” I let a beat pass as I realize something. “You know what? You’re right; I guess I owe Wanda most of all. She gave me a life, when before I was only surviving.”

I’ve done all I can do, revealed more of myself to a stranger than I ever enjoy doing; I’ve answered his questions and made my wife vulnerable. The storage room is organized and we’ll be healthy and fed for another couple of months, and then it’ll be time to venture out into the world once again. 

“I gotta get going, man,” I mumble, watching Henry out of the corner of my eye as I make like I’m inspecting the piles of food in front of me. “I hope you make the right choice for you,” I say, and turn on my heel to leave the dark hallway behind. 

Whether he stays or goes, I have my Wanderer. I have Eamon and Jamie, and Mel and Jared. I have Kyle and our memories. I have my life, and I have my home.  

Chapter Text

Wanda

Ian doesn’t want me to meet with the new human on my own, even though Jeb strongly suggested that I do just that. Ian worries, always. Ever since the night he fell asleep holding me in his arms and dreamt of everything working out the way he hoped it would, ever since I broke his heart and stole away into the night without saying goodbye, he worries. 

Ian fears that I will get hurt, either because this new body is uncoordinated or on the biting hiss of a snide remark from Magnolia. He frets that I will disappear again, that I will go somewhere he cannot hold me in his palms, leaving him with only shards of me that are too sharp for him to really grab on to. He agonizes that someday he won’t get to say goodbye, and all he’ll be left with are hints of me in Eamon’s eyes or Mel’s memories. 

Ian worries because he is kind.

So I do not begrudge him these feelings – this fear. Unlike me, Kyle and Mel tease Ian every time they see him grimace if he’s forced to be apart from me, calling him clingy or asking, what is wrong with you, bro? Only Jared truly empathizes with Ian’s fears, because Jared knows what’s possible if you let your guard down, if you assume that the people you love will always come home safe. He lives with the painful intimacy of truly understanding that you never know how much time you actually have left. So, Jared will clasp Ian on the shoulder, and shoot him a tight smile full of sympathy and empty words. But it helps; it helps to drive back the pain and blind panic and it allows Ian to get through the day. 

While Ian is concerned for me today, having to speak with Henry about his dislike of the Souls, to me it isn’t terribly different from every other day. Even though Jeb goes out of his way to tell me at least twice a week that I belong here in the caves, and Mel has assured me she will scratch the eyes out of anyone who makes me feel otherwise (a sentiment I tend to regard with much dismay), I am still a colonizer living amongst the conquered. Not every day is a struggle anymore, but neither are they all easy ones. But that is part of the experience of being human, I believe.

I do compromise with him though, and agree to work in the west field, which is full of other people in case Henry gets too agitated. Years have passed, but the scars of Kyle cornering me when I was alone and vulnerable in the shadows of the dark empty bathing room have never completely faded from Ian’s memory. 

Just in case, Wanda , he whispered against my collarbone as we lay in bed this morning. Just for me.

I am halfway through harvesting a row of peppers when I hear a throat clear nearby. I have to shield my eyes from the bright sunlight to see Henry clearly, but it also means I catch the flinch he attempts to hide when my eyes reflect the sun like the mirrors above us, shining bright flashes against the cave walls. 

It only hurts a little to see him do it. 

“Henry,” I greet him with a smile. He doesn’t return it, but nods in acknowledgement. “Please sit,” I invite, because I don’t think he ever will otherwise. 

He does eventually, but maintains his distance, settling a few safe feet away from me.

“How are you today, Henry?” I inquire, returning to my gardening. I’m itchy from the dirt that mixes with my sweat and I’m quickly realizing that I’m more anxious over meeting with this boy than I originally thought I would be. I’m slightly nauseated and there’s a strange aching clench in my chest, reminiscent of what I felt when I first realized that Ian had feelings for me, or when I knew that Eamon was finally finally coming. It feels unpleasant, unsettling, and a little bit scary.

But I employ my tried and true method of dealing with such things – keeping my hands busy with work as a means of distraction. 

“I’m...fine,” Henry replies slowly, still not smiling. But he’s looking at me with narrowed eyes – observing me, perhaps. 

“I am glad to hear it,” I say, and can practically hear Melanie scoffing somewhere in my head. Stop dancing around it, Wanderer, she would say. Even now, the not-hearing her is like a bruise – tender and dark. You’re being too polite, even for a Soul. So I channel the bits of Mel that are left in me, the tiny cuts that pinch at my heart and will never ever heal, and say, “It seems I am the last person on your list to speak with.”

The bright sun makes it so Henry cannot hide the blush that crawls across his cheeks, though it may provide him with an excuse of overheating as a means of disguising his discomfort. 

“It’s ok,” I hasten to assure him. “I understand that not everyone enjoys my company.”

He shrugs, muttering, “You seem to have a pretty outspoken fanbase, from what I’ve seen.”

I laugh; my voice is high and giggly. While I have gotten used to it, it’s still never what I expect to hear when I open my mouth. I wave my mud-caked hand dismissively. “They’re the exceptions, not the rule. This place is for humans, I’ve never forgotten that.”

He doesn’t say anything, but shifts back and forth in the dirt, as though physically weighing what I have just said. After a few minutes of silence, when it’s just creeping towards becoming awkward, he murmurs, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What made you different?” he asks, his words spilling out of him like water from a spring. “Why are you so unlike the rest of the bu...aliens? Like, why do you want to stay here with people and not try to take over this place or turn them in?”

As Henry speaks, my gut lurches at the mere idea of doing what he suggests. I have never doubted my decision to remain in the caves, but it is reassuring all the same that each time I’m presented with an alternative, my body and mind cringe away from it. I have found my home here, and no matter what happens to me it will always be mine.

“Well,” I begin, keeping my eyes on my hands as I work. “I don't know if this planet changed me, or if it simply revealed me for who I truly am. I wondered at that as Melanie and I became close, and years later, I wonder at it still.” I pause, rubbing some dirt absently between my fingertips. It is a strange sensation, and I wonder how alien it would feel against my hands as a Bear or my tentacles as a See Weed. “Looking back, I have always been alone, no matter how many other Souls I was surrounded by. We Souls do not see ourselves as violent or causing devastation, rather, we come to a planet to experience, to heal the ills we encounter.” Henry looks as though he wants to interrupt me, so I hurry to continue. “I came to Earth believing that – believing we were right. So many things – so many people – changed my way of thinking the longer I remained here. Melanie, of course, and Jamie. Walter and Wes were two humans that accepted me; they were my friends after I arrived here. They’re gone now; they died when I was still with Mel.” As I do whenever I remember my lost friends, I close my eyes and take a moment to think of their kindness and loyalty to me. “They taught me that the Souls were wrong to come here. We shouldn’t have taken Earth from the humans, I know that now.”

“Well…. Why don’t you do something about it?” he asks, his tone bordering on petulant. 

Easy for him to say , the ghost of Melanie sneers in the back corner of my head. 

Shush , I whisper back.

“I am one among millions,” I explain gently. “The Souls are not ready to hear this, and if I were to reveal myself as having gone native, I’d be branded a traitor and removed from my host body. I would be sent to another planet, so far away from the people I love that they would all be long-dead by the time I’d reach my destination. And each of them would be taken by the Seekers, either to be killed or implanted as a means of finding information about other humans.” My stomach heaves violently at the thought. “I would rather die than allow that to happen,” I say, my voice adamant.

After a moment I add, “Jeb and Ian have been encouraging me to get in touch with my human selfishness, to just exist here in the caves, and do what I can to help our people survive. I have hope though, that your kind and mine will be able to coexist peacefully someday. I’ve seen evidence of it, and I believe that the longer Souls are exposed to the complexity of human emotions, the more they will succumb to them. Human love is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced, in all of my lifetimes.”

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” Henry dryly informs me, a small smirk lifting the corner of his mouth.

“I have nowhere to be,” I grin. “You are free to unpack, and I promise I will be truthful if I have the answer. Evidently, I’m an atrocious liar, so I cannot be deceptive.”

This pulls an actual smile from Henry, but he tucks it back in as soon as he’s aware he’s doing it. He clears his throat again, his eyes darting away from me as a flush creeps up the side of his neck. “You called it going native.... That’s a pretty interesting term for it,” he says.

I giggle, and scrunch my nose up at the sound of it. This host is so reactive, and some days I miss the control Mel had over her body. It was so easy to hide behind her instincts back then. But I’m bothered by it less now, as Eamon gets older and is reacting more and more to the expressions that dance so openly across my face. 

“I can’t take credit for it,” I tell him. “Another Soul used it the first time I met him. We each had found our way to the humans on our own, and met when our two groups encountered one another. Burns believed he was the only one who had gone native before he met Sunny and I. Ian called me an expatriate before that, but I prefer Burns’s term for what we are.”

Henry’s smirk is back. It isn’t a full-on smile, but it changes his face into something so drastically different, it causes my breath to catch. The contrast reminds me of Kyle and Ian, back when Kyle was filled with sadness and wrath. His anger altered his face, differentiating him so starkly from Ian in my mind that it surprised me when they began to resemble each other once again. Two sides of a coin, Jeb used to say when he’d talk about the O’Shea brothers and their wild emotions.  

“I like it,” Henry says to me. Then, after a moment, he asks, “How is human love so different from what the...Souls...experience?”

He just called us by the closest thing we have to an accurate description of our kind here on Earth. My heart skips a beat, because he’s trying.

I have to work to keep my answering grin from becoming too obnoxious as I think about how to describe the enormity of what this planet and this species has made me feel. “On other worlds, the hosts we inhabit do not have the range of emotions that humans do, nor the individuality. Souls exist to serve the whole, not the singular entity. So it was jarring, when I arrived in Melanie’s body; Mel is nothing if not her own person. And then when I was put into this one, it was overwhelming all over again. This is my tenth life, and I am still learning something new every day as a human.” He looks intrigued against his will, the way Jared did when he was just beginning to accept the duality of mine and Mel’s existences. “I'm not sure why human love is so much more appealing, more meaningful to me,” I continue. “I've been wondering about it for years now; I still don't know why it is so, but I remember when I realized it was what I wanted more than anything else in the universe. Jamie had gotten hurt while on a raid, and he was dying from an infection.” He looks almost haunted by this information, and I recognize the expression on his face from my own memory – it is the face of a parent who is powerless to save their child. Mel told me that Henry cares for his sister Mia the way she and I do for Jamie, so the guilt of having sparked this fear is swift and hot in my gut. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” I speak quickly, anxious to get all the words out of my mouth as fast as possible so that I may quell his pain. “We did not have access to Soul medicines then, like we do now.”

He nods many times in succession, as though trying to shake himself loose from the alarm that gripped him against his will.

“When it was happening, Melanie and I were so scared that he was beyond saving, but I came up with a plan to steal Soul medicines that would cure him. No one trusted us yet, not fully; they didn’t believe that we would return to the caves once we were free. But Jared took a chance; he smuggled us out and we did it.” I remember that horror and devastation Mel and I felt when it looked like there was no hope for our brother. It hurts to remember – or to imagine it happening now – to Jamie or even to Eamon; the thought of it makes me want to curl up and weep. Perhaps one day, Henry will realize that he and I are not such different creatures after all. “We saved Jamie’s life, and I was so…. Melanie called it blissed out with love and relief, that it was clear to me there was no amount of ugliness or fear that could touch us. And in that moment I knew I never ever wanted to go back to who I was supposed to be, that I would never survive a life without the love that humans feel for one another. It was everything.” 

Henry simply stares at me as I finish speaking. 

I’ve been human for a number of years now, but without Melanie in my head with me to give me input and correct my missteps, I still find it...tedious, to thoroughly discern the full-range of this species' facial expressions. 

So it takes me what feels like the endless length of a whole minute for me to discern what Henry is feeling. 

Incredulousness. Rage. Pity.

I shift back a few inches from him, the response automatic rather than conscious. A leftover vestige of my early days with the humans, when those emotions meant nothing but pain and fear being painted across my skin with fists and boots.

“You can’t be that stupid,” he practically snarls. “It’s ridiculously naive to believe humans are all that good. It doesn’t matter how nice you are, no one is going to like you that much, no offense.”

I snort out a very inelegant laugh that I may be embarrassed by in any other circumstance. But I mean, come on. This is not news to me. 

“That’s direct,” I say, mimicking the exact wry tone Ian once used when I asked him why he hadn’t killed me yet. 

“Have people just been lying to you this whole time?” he sputters, something like annoyance cutting ugly lines in the corners of his mouth. 

I pause in my work, drawing in a deep breath that I try to imagine reaches all the way down to my toes. “No,” I reply simply. “I may have been wearing Melanie’s body when I arrived, but it was me who felt every single blow that was inflicted on it from the very first second I stepped foot in these caves.” I have long since forgiven those who hurt me – how could I not? They were driven by despair, suspicion, and terror; each human who matters to me has made amends, never asking for absolution but always receiving it from me. “Jared, Kyle, and Ian have all sought their pound of flesh from me,” I tell him. “I spent the first six months here scared out of my mind and covered in injuries. Jeb spent more time protecting me from them than he did taking care of the humans under his watch.”

“Ian? As in, your husband?” he asks, his tone drenched in disbelief. 

I nod. “Oh yes. The second time I ever really interacted with Ian, he strangled me until I almost lost consciousness.”

Henry’s eyes are as wide as they can get. “But…. But he fucking loves you.” Henry hurls this at me like an accusation.

I can feel the blush that comes so easily to this body make its way across my chest. “He does,” I agree. “It took me a long time to see it, but he absolutely does. He didn’t always, though.”

“Jared loves you too.” Another accusation, said as if he can prove my words to be false.

“Jared was frightened and devastated when I showed up with Melanie’s face,” I explain. An unrestrained shiver runs up my back at the memory of Jared’s harshness, so paradoxical to the easy smile he often wears these days whenever he and I speak, or to the tenderness he employs as he takes Eamon in his arms. “He needed time to believe in what was happening with her and I, but he came around eventually. Jared saved my life, in the end.”

Henry chews on this before saying, “The other day, Jeb mentioned something about Kyle – that he was the epitome of a redemption story, or something.”

Ian hates for me to talk about this type of thing; he doesn’t want anyone to think that because people have hurt me in the past, it’s something they can get away with in the present. But I told Henry that I wouldn’t lie. 

“Kyle tried to kill me,” I say flatly. “He almost succeeded, too.” The poor guy looks like I just reared back and headbutted him – something Melanie has threatened to do to Sharon many times since she got control of her body back. 

“What?” he asks, his mouth open in what I interpret as utter shock. 

“Kyle,” I repeat. “Almost killed me.”

“Your brother in law?” he interrupts.

I nod. Human relations are so bizarre, but Mel explained that if I went ahead and married Ian, I was tying myself to Kyle for the rest of my life. Needless to say, she was unenthused about the idea. 

“Your brother in law tried to kill you,” he states, as though I said it unclearly the first time. 

“He did,” I confirm. It took me a while to get used to saying the words out loud. I’d denied them for so long in the hopes of keeping Kyle’s place in the community safe. To finally make peace with his brother, Ian asked that I be truthful with him about what actually happened; he needed to know, he said, in order to forgive him. So I was, and it became easier to talk about over time. It became my story of survival, not just something awful that happened to me. 

“Who saved you?” Henry asks. “How did you survive?” He’s gaping at me, no doubt picturing Kyle’s large size and how he could easily wield his body like a weapon to cause harm to someone smaller than him. 

I snort softly, imagining Mel’s indignant voice in my mind. No one saved us, asshole. 

Instead, I say, “Ian came for Mel and I, but an accident occurred that ended up knocking Kyle unconscious.”

Tell him you saved Kyle, Mel whispers.

“I…,” I start to say. Even after all these years as a human, I still have difficulty boasting about my accomplishments. I clear my throat, averting my gaze from Henry. “I saved Kyle, actually.”

“What?” he asks, his voice incredulous once again. “You saved the guy who was trying to kill you?”

I nod, the phantom pains of my injuries from that day dancing across my skin. It doesn’t matter that it was Mel’s body and not this one, I can still feel the wet gasps for air in my lungs as Kyle held me underwater, as well as the helpless panic that raced through me when I wasn’t able to allow Melanie control over our body to fight back. It all hovers in the corners of my consciousness, even here in the dry heat of the fields, far away and many years apart from when it happened.

Don’t tell him the details, you can’t risk someone else succeeding where Kyle once failed, Mel murmurs. 

Just in case, Wanda, Ian’s voice joins hers, a whisper against the shell of my ear. Just for me.  

“Souls do not believe in wasting life – in causing harm,” I explain softly. “I couldn’t let Kyle go to his death, even though he wished for mine. Melanie and Ian were not very happy with my decision at the time,” I admit with a rueful laugh.

Henry and I sit in silence for a while, but it feels more contemplative than awkward now, weighed down by all the things I’ve revealed and all the decisions he has yet to make.  

After a while, in which weeds have been pulled and vegetables have been collected, Henry murmurs, “Everyone’s been real emphatic about how they feel about you…. But...how do you feel about them? The people I’ve talked to, I mean.” He keeps his eyes on the task in front of him, instead of meeting my eye, so he doesn’t see the blush that immediately bursts across my cheeks. 

Truly, it’s completely ridiculous the way this body reacts to everything. Love, praise, joy, excitement, embarrassment, pleasure – I flush thoroughly and automatically without differentiation. Right now, it’s due to the love and joy that I am overwhelmed with whenever I think of the people who I get to surround myself with every day. 

God you’re goofy, Wanderer. I can practically hear the taunting smile in Mel’s voice. 

I let my feelings for my wonderful humans wash over me, and it’s like slipping into a warm bath. “Jeb is a wonderful friend, my first, I’d say, on this planet. He believed in me and cared for me before anyone else,” I tell Henry, thinking of those terrifying early days in the caves. “I love Jamie like a brother, almost like a son. Melanie raised him, and I inherited her love for him before I even came to love him on my own. Jared is my friend – my family.” It’s always been hard on me to love Jared Howe, but loving him in this body made it less complicated. I trust him with my life, with Mel and Jamie’s lives, with Ian’s and Eamon’s lives; it’s as simple as that. “Melanie is my sister. You have a sister, so I can imagine that you understand all that that word encompasses.” I would be remiss to try and explain it more thoroughly to Henry, I think. I would end up leaving something out, because there will never be enough words to describe what is between Mel and I. 

“And Ian...,” I let myself drift off, because it is hard to put what I feel for Ian into words as well. He is where my day begins and my existence will end. “Ian is an unconquerable spirit. That part of him helped to change so much of how I thought about my own kind and what we were doing. He is…. I have lived for thousands of your human years, Henry, and I have never once met someone like Ian. I have never loved anyone the way I love him.” If I were so inclined, I could probably track the blush moving across my face and chest at this moment, but I try not to let my voice waver; this is too important. 

Be brave, Wanderer , Mel says.

“The people you’ve met are kinder to me than most, but I hope you can forgive them their protectiveness and find your place with us here. This is a safe place for humans, but I am glad they have made room for me as well,” I say. “Jamie once told me, you don't belong until you decide you do. And I think that’s as true in your case as it was in mine.”

Henry looks at me, his eyes soft for the first time since we started talking, and opens his mouth to say something when we’re interrupted by a familiar cry. 

Eamon. 

I grin, my heart kicking up and my stomach warming at the mere sound of his high-pitched keening. My Eamon. 

I turn to look over my shoulder and see Mel approaching us at a fast clip, her eyes narrowing as soon as her gaze locks on to who is sitting near me. She’s got a bundle in her arms, and I can see Eamon’s chubby baby legs kicking out below the crook of her elbow. His movements are sharp with an indignance that Lucinia tells me is something shared amongst all babies, and that Doc reassures me over and over again isn't caused by anything that I’m doing incorrectly. 

I take a moment to quickly assess whether something is actually wrong with Eamon, but I’m swiftly reassured when I catch sight of Jared and Jamie trailing along in Mel’s path, both of them rolling their eyes and alternating between calling Mel’s name and gesturing at her back as though to say, can you believe this?

Mel comes to an abrupt halt at my side and flicks a steely-eyed look at poor Henry, but to his credit, he doesn’t even flinch in the wake of the expression that has caused many lesser mortals to run from Melanie Stryder.  His eyes are locked on Eamon’s feet as Mel lets out a disappointed grunt at Henry’s lack of response to her. I hold out my arms, automatically reaching to take Eamon from her. Mel acquiesces, and then runs an affectionate hand through my hair as soon as he’s out of her arms. I lean into her touch, even as I arrange my son in my arms and reassure myself that he’s fine, just fussy, at the moment. 

“What’s wrong, Mel?” I ask, keeping my eyes on Eamon. She offered to watch him today (practically snatched him from my grip, if I’m honest), knowing I would likely be meeting with Henry at some point. Ian and I figured it may be too much, too soon for the new humans to be faced with the knowledge that a Soul and a human were raising their human baby together. I just didn’t expect to see her so early, is all. 

“He wouldn’t stop crying,” she replies vaguely. I look up at her, arching an eyebrow in question. Mel has been nothing but confident when caring for Eamon, and I practically have to climb her to get my baby back at the end of the day. She says she’s working on Jared about having one of their own, but for the time being, she’s perfectly content to share my baby. More likely, something’s going on here that I’m not picking up on; but as always, I’m too distracted by the child in my arms to devote much effort to figuring out what her motivations are. Mel knows this too, and I have no doubt she’s using it to her advantage. 

“Jesus Christ, Mel,” Jared huffs as he and Jamie reach us. “Eamon’s fine, and you know it.” He looks over at Henry, who’s gone more and more still until he resembles a statue in the dirt next to me, the longer he watches me interact with my son. “Hey, man,” Jared offers him with a tilt of his chin. He doesn’t get a response.

Jamie shoots a worried look at Jared, and then drops a hand on Henry’s shoulder. Henry jumps like he was just struck by a live wire and blinks up at the two men towering over us. 

“Oh, um,” Henry coughs. “Hey.” 

“Hi Henry,” Melanie replies, her voice syrupy and innocent. Jamie, Jared, and I exchange apprehensive glances, because Mel only uses this tone when she’s about to punch an unsuspecting person in the throat. The day after I woke up in my new host body, I heard her greet Kyle in that voice moments before she tackled him to the ground and held a knife to his jugular. Jamie said it was because she was finally allowing herself to feel something other than anxiety over getting me back, and that it was better to just let her work through it on her own. 

“This is Eamon,” she continues, running a gentle hand along the shape of Eamon’s tiny head. His wild black curls catch on her calluses, but her familiar touch calms his fussing momentarily. When she doesn’t get any reaction out of Henry other than a brief nod, she narrows her eyes and plays her hand. “He’s Wanderer and Ian’s son.”

To his credit, Henry doesn’t do much more than blink rapidly at this new piece of information. I can practically hear Mel growling in my head, but honestly, it’s incredibly obvious that Eamon is our child. He has Ian’s black hair and my wild curls. His eyes are grey like this body’s, but have flecks of Ian’s sapphire blue speckled throughout. His skin is pale as moonlight, but Ian and I both think that someday it may freckle like my own. He’s beautiful and curious and loved. 

He’s perfect, my Eamon Blue in the Dark O’Shea. 

Ian and Melanie told me that humans sometimes name their babies in honor of something significant to them. Ian asked if we could name our son after his father, a kind man with a good heart and eyes that crinkled when he laughed. I agreed without even a hint of hesitation. He deserves to stay human, my Ian; he deserves to have everything he desires. He encouraged me to pick something that meant something to me as a second name – a particular detail that makes very little sense to me, but I’m told many humans have. Souls’ names change with their lives, we don’t just add on to them. But I thought and thought about it, and once it was there in my mind, I knew it couldn’t be anything else. Blue in the Dark, I’d said as I traced the curve of my newborn son’s cheek. It was what I saw when Doc took me out of Mel; it was a sight that gave me comfort in what I believed were my last moments, thinking of Ian’s eyes as I drifted away from fear. 

After I explained this, Mel looked irked and I was worried that I’d done something wrong, but she quickly explained it had nothing to do with my choice of name; she told me it was hard because that was the beginning of our separation, the first memory of mine she didn’t have access to. She said that she wished she could have somehow stayed with me throughout the process of leaving her; she wishes she could have kept me company with her mind and kept me safe with her body. 

When I told Ian why I wanted that name for our child, he took my face in his hands and kissed me until I was breathless and giggling. My beautiful Wanderer, he had whispered against my lips. You’re so wonderful, and now you’ve given me a son with the perfect name. Welcome to the world, Eamon Blue in the Dark.

“Did I hear the dulcet tones of my nephew?” Kyle’s voice suddenly bounces around the cavern, amplified so that it makes him sound closer than he is. 

I lean back to look around Jared’s leg and see Kyle jogging around the edge of the field, followed closely by Ian and Sunny. 

“Fuck off, O’Shea,” Melanie snaps, but her words are half-hearted at best, a sentiment easily expressed but barely meant. Melanie and Kyle have made their peace, but they’re loath to admit it if anyone asks. It’s simpler for them to fall into their prickly back-and-forth than it is to be polite to one another. I swear, humans are such a bizarre species. 

Kyle completely ignores Mel, immediately making grabbing motions with his hands when he comes to a stop at my side. I pass Eamon up to him, smirking at the grumpy look that skitters across Mel’s face. I know what she’s thinking – she’s mad that her plans to mess with Henry have been interrupted. Her gaze darts down to me, and she smiles bashfully when she catches me watching her. 

Ian reaches down and helps me to my feet, his lips finding mine as one of his hands tangles in my hair and the other draws me tightly against him. When he pulls back, he kisses my cheek firmly and winks at me. It seems I’m getting my charming Ian today.

Sunny is cooing at Eamon who is being held firmly in his uncle's arms, while Kyle is making an idiot of himself, as Mel likes to say, his face contorting into exaggerated expressions so as to entertain his nephew. Mel has her arms draped around Jared’s neck and is arguing good-naturedly with Jamie about her motivations for disturbing my conversation with Henry. 

These humans, my family.

It’s on the tail end of this thought that I catch sight of Henry stepping away, silently moving back from our group and down a side tunnel, disentangling himself from the bright orbit of our love.

Chapter Text

Belonging

My head feels like it’s on the verge of exploding, teetering on the edge, just waiting for one unexpected noise or sudden movement to set it off. I feel like my brain is fried from all of the information and personalities I’ve been privy to over the last few days. While I’ve been out in the world, running and hiding to keep Mia safe, these people have been living and loving and fighting, carving out their own little place at the end of the world. That, or everyone down here is crazy and I’m just desperately clinging to any semblance of sanity. But everyone I spoke to seems happy – ridiculously, obnoxiously so; it makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just wave goodbye to good sense and drink the kool-aid with the rest of these cave people. 

The day after speaking with Wanda, I’m picking at the remains of my dinner and distracted by all of these thoughts ricocheting around my skull, when Jeb sidles up next to me. 

“I hear you’ve been busy,” he says quietly. 

“Well, you’re the one who said I needed to talk to all these people.” I know I probably sound petulant, but I’m still a bit blindsided from the ambush of Stryders and O’Sheas yesterday. And by the chaos that is Melanie, who showed up toting a human-alien-human baby that no one thought to mention to me. It’s safe to say all of this has left me feeling a little testy towards my fellow man. 

Jeb just nods though, his eyes fixed on the smoke rising from the oven, swirling upwards into the darkening sky above us. “I surely did,” he agrees.

“How old is Eamon?” I ask eventually, keeping my voice pitched low and quiet, as if my words could disturb the peace of the moment if they became too loud. 

If he’s surprised that I’m aware of the baby’s existence, Jeb doesn’t show it. He purses his lips and squints, as though trying to suss out a difficult math problem. Who knows, maybe in the caves, something like time and age is just as difficult to keep track of as it is on the outside. “A few months,” he finally answers. “This last raid was the first Wanda and Ian’d gone on since he was born. I wouldn’t’ve asked, but we were getting low on a lot of things that only she can get for us.”

“Who watches the baby then, when they go?” The question slips out before I even realize I’m curious about the answer. 

“Anyone, really,” Jeb says, continuing his perusal of the kitchen. His focus has shifted to the cracks in the ceiling. “It’d be Mel and Jared if they didn’t go along. Trudy, Lily...sometimes I get a turn,” he says with a grin. “I think it was Sunny this last time.”

I let that information sit for a few minutes, picturing the baby with a human father and an alien-mother-in-a-human-body being passed around and cared for by all the members of this strange community of refugees. These rebels...these humans. 

My people.

And just like that, I know I can’t leave this place. 

I’m not sure if it’s because of the baby – Eamon, my brain immediately provides, picturing the gleefully predatory expression on Melanie’s face as she strode up to Wanda and I – or if it’s just the inevitable surrender to a fight I never had a chance of winning, but I know it’s the right choice. 

It’s the only real outcome of this decision that ever needed to be considered. I can’t imagine we were going anywhere, but I needed to come to that understanding on my own. I needed to make the choice for Mia, but for me as well. I owe it to myself to lay down the mantle of protecting my sister on my own, of barely surviving for Mia’s sake, and to seize the opportunity to become the man I could be – someone new, maybe someone kinder than the man I am now. 

“If you’ll have me, I’d like to stay, Jeb,” I tell my companion. 

There’s no excitement, save for a small grin that ticks up the corner of Jeb’s mouth. “Figured as much,” he replies, his pleased tone spreading a warmth through my chest that feels suspiciously like pride. Jeb suddenly claps his hands together, meeting my eyes for the first time since coming to find me tonight. “C’mon,” he says. “I have a treat for you.”

I rise and move to follow him out of the kitchen and into the dark corridors that I know I’ll have to start navigating on my own, now that I’ve elected to stay. “What sort of treat?” I ask as we walk. The only sign that he’s still there in front of me is his slightly more opaque silhouette moving against the black.

“Sort of a welcome home treat,” his voice echoes from a few feet ahead of me. “Been meaning to do one since the raiders got back, but I figure we can just toss y’all in there too.”

And so, I follow. I have a sneaking suspicion this will become a common occurrence in my life in the days to come; Jeb will call, and I will answer. 

A dim light up ahead gets brighter with each step that brings us closer to our destination, until I’m stumbling across the threshold of the game room and directly into a wall of sound. It takes me a few seconds to process that every single person from the cave system is down here right now, talking, stretching, hollering, socializing. 

Some of the men who were away on the raid are standing in a loose circle in the middle of the wide open space, laughing uproariously at something that Jamie appears to have said. Mia stands near him, an easy smile transforming her face into something beautiful and completely foreign to me. I have lived every day of the last decade with only my baby sister for company, and yet I have never, not once, seen her smile like that. If there were any lingering doubts over choosing to remain here, they’re swiftly dismissed by that smile on Mia’s face.

She catches sight of me, and I watch as she places a hand on Jamie Stryder’s arm and leans in to tell him something before making her way over to me. So it’s like that, evidently. I have to wonder what Mia has been up to while I’ve been making the rounds on get-to-know-the-alien duty. 

She’s breathless with barely contained excitement by the time she reaches me, bouncing up on her toes. “Hey!” She greets me. “Jamie says we’re playing soccer! Isn’t that great?” 

I can’t help the smirk that climbs up my face. “Jamie, huh?” I tease. 

“Oh my God, shut up, Henry!” she snaps, sounding dangerously like Melanie. 

I laugh, and it feels good. It feels like an exhale I didn’t even know I was holding. I think it may have been this feeling I was searching for – hoping for – in each conversation I’ve had over the last few days. 

“Yes,” I allow, smiling back at my sister for the first time in years. “Soccer will be fun.” I pause for a moment, suddenly nervous that I should have checked with Mia before I so readily consented to us staying here amongst strangers. But maybe they aren’t strangers anymore, and perhaps they haven’t been strangers to Mia for a while now. Maybe it was just me who was holding back, afraid to pull my walls down and let the light into our lives. “Mia...you want to stay here, right?” I tentatively ask.

Her eyes widen with hesitant glee. “Of course I do!” she squeaks. “Henry – Henry, are we staying?”

I smile again, and nod once. Before I can say anything else, Mia shrieks and jumps into my arms, squeezing me with a strength I wasn’t even aware she had. I chuckle, setting her on her feet and giving her a gentle shove back towards the group she was talking with before. “Go warm up, kid,” I tell her. “Make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves so badly we get kicked out before we even settle in.” She giggles, and it’s a joyous sound that makes me suddenly wish my parents were here to see us. They deserve to know that Mia made it, that we’re both still human. The thought is sad, but it noticeably lacks the deluge of swift, hot anger that usually accompanies it. It feels nice to think that perhaps one day it won’t be there at all.  

WIthout even deciding to do so, my eyes slowly search out the people who my whole world has revolved around lately. Jamie is pulling his leg up to stretch it out as he chats amiably with Mia once again; Kyle is nearby, boisterously talking to one of the other guys from the raid, his arm slung loosely over the shoulder of a wispy girl with dark curly hair. Suddenly, she looks up at Kyle, and her eyes catch the light from one of the solar lanterns. Silver reflections burst out, glittering against the wall and flashing bright light into the eyes of the man Kyle’s speaking with. 

But nothing happens. 

The other man raises a hand to block the silvery lights, and pivots his body slightly to avoid being blinded again. Kyle’s speech is uninterrupted, and the only other acknowledgement of the incident is one of his hands lifting to run absently through the alien’s curls. 

I realize this must be Sunny, or Sunlight something something Ice? Doesn’t matter, Jeb said she likes Sunny just fine. She’s a tiny thing, dwarfed entirely by Kyle, but there’s an easiness between the two of them that belies any of the rage and aggressiveness that Wanda described him as once having. 

Melanie appears in the crowd, looking like the sharp edge of a knife and moving like a snake through the people dumb enough to stand between her and her destination; her movements are determined and confident, reflecting her firm assurance of her place in the world. Without a doubt, she would be willing to snap her teeth at anyone if they got too close. 

I watch as she shoulder-checks a woman with flaming red hair, sending her skidding a good few feet before she’s able to catch herself. The woman scowls, but Melanie doesn’t even look back. 

She’s locked on her target, which appears to be Ian, Wanda, and Jared, who are standing together at the far edge of the makeshift soccer field. Ian is holding baby Eamon, unconsciously shifting his weight back and forth as he talks to the others. Wanda is giggling, and shakes her head at something Jared says. When Melanie reaches them, she comes up behind Wanda and wraps her arms around the smaller girl’s shoulders, resting her chin on top of Wanda’s head. The flow of conversation never once pauses, the four of them so at ease with their dynamic that the only acknowledgement of Melanie’s interruption is Ian raising his chin in greeting, Wanda reaching up to run her hand along the length of Melanie’s arm, and the widening of Jared’s smile. 

“Let’s get going, y’all!” Jeb’s voice breaks through the din, calling the room to order. When there’s finally a beat of quiet that lasts longer than a breath, he continues speaking. “Now, just want to say welcome home to the raiders. As always, the risks y’all take will keep us fed and in good health for many days to come, and we all appreciate everything you do for us. Right, y’all?” His words are pointed, and his gaze flicks over to the red-headed woman Melanie tried to bulldoze earlier and an older woman who looks like she could be Jeb’s sister. When no one says anything, Jeb calls out again, his voice notably louder, “Right, y’all?”

There’s a disjointed chorus of Yes, Jebs that seem to satisfy the man for the time being. “Also,” he begins again. “I’d like to formally welcome Henry and Mia, who have decided to stay on with us.” There are the same jumbled responses as before, except they’re all some form of welcome and glad to have you. 

I can’t help but flick my gaze back over to the group I was just observing, anxious to see their reactions to my decision. But it seems Jeb’s announcement has occurred simultaneously with some sound of distress from Eamon, because all four of them are crowded around the squalling infant held in Ian’s grip. Wanda reaches for him, but Melanie’s longer arms allow her to get there first, snatching up the bundle of flailing arms and legs before Ian even notices her. I watch as he rolls his eyes, pulling his wife towards him now that his hands are free. He lifts up the much-smaller Wanda, clutching her against his chest and kissing her soundly for all to see. Jared reaches for Eamon, but Melanie dances out of his grasp, a manic grin on her face as she murmurs to the child in her arms. When he finally gets ahold of her, Jared leans in to kiss the side of her head, whispering something in her ear. She tilts her head to rest against his, her eyes sliding shut as a small closed-mouth smile softens her face. He whispers something else, and Melanie’s eyes snap open like she’s just scented blood. I think I can just make out the words you’re on, from this distance on her lips. She swiftly returns to Wanda and Ian, somehow strong-arming Wanda away from the much larger man without jostling Eamon at all. She pulls Wanda away with her, speaking rapidly as she leans in very close to her face. After a moment, Wanda whips her head around, her gaze immediately locking on Jared in a movement oddly reminiscent of Melanie, the two women moving like mirror images of each other without seeming to realize it. When Jared notices that he’s been sighted by Wanda, he just shrugs, leaning in to say something as an aside to Ian. The dark-haired man claps him on the shoulder and says something that sounds like you’ll never sleep again in the odd acoustics of this room. 

Jeb’s been speaking this entire time, and Mia’s grinning like a lunatic so I assume it’s been in reference to the two of us staying, so I feel slightly idiotic and creepy that I’ve been focusing on the four people across the room instead of paying attention to the man in charge of the community I just joined up with. But his loud voice calling out, “Teams, y’all!” brings me back to Earth. 

“Ian and Kyle as captains!” someone yells. 

Kyle tosses a smirk at his brother, who has somehow managed to wrestle his child back from Melanie and looks irked at having been named captain without his say. “They can’t handle us, Ian!” Kyle hollers. “Fine, peasants! One day the O’Sheas will be on the same team once again, and you’ll rue the day you separated us!” I can see Ian roll his eyes in response to his brother’s antics before cracking a small smile. 

Ian passes Eamon off to Wanda, his grin teasing and relaxed as he leans in close to her and speaks quietly. She shakes her head, a melodic laugh escaping her mouth as she adjusts the squirming baby in her arms. He bends down to kiss her once more before jogging away, shoving his brother in the shoulder as he comes to a stop next to him. Kyle smacks a loud kiss of his own on Sunny’s cheek and she reaches out to squeeze Ian’s arm as she turns to go, making her way to the sidelines that have been marked by stones and other detritus. As she passes by me, she flicks her gaze up my way, her eyes once again catching the glow from the lanterns and sending glittering reflections of light across my skin. She offers me a tight smile before dropping her eyes to the floor and moving quickly away from me. 

It feels less frightening each time I see it. 

When I look back up, Kyle is watching me, a warning clear on his face. I look away, watching as Melanie and Wanda continue their whispered conversation, speaking rapidly to one another, their foreheads practically touching. Kyle calls out Jared’s name, claiming him for his team; Jared then swoops down to grind his face into the side of Melanie’s neck, causing her to squeal indignantly at the feel of it. When he emerges, Jared squeeze’s Wanda’s shoulder and runs a hand through Eamon’s hair. Ian calls out to Melanie next, and she leans in, kissing first Wanda and then the baby soundly on each of their cheeks. As she approaches Ian, she grumbles something unintelligible and he just shrugs before telling her something that sounds like, I live to serve. As other names are called and the teams begin to fill out, I watch Melanie and Jared pretend to shit-talk each other, each making their bodies bigger in a parody of sports players of the past. 

“Alright, new girl!” Kyle yells over the noise of the crowd. “Let’s see what you’re made of!”

Mia jumps up, running over to Kyle’s team and lifting her hand to smack the one he’s holding up to her with a welcoming smile. 

“Henry!” I hear. It’s Ian, waving me over to join his team. “You’re with me!”

As I start my slow walk over, Melanie shoots me a death glare, but when she leans up to whisper heatedly into his ear, Ian shakes her off and says to her, “I will call your keeper over if you can’t behave, Stryder.”

I honestly expect him to motion Jared over, but the two of them instead turn to glance at Wanda, who’s walking towards the sidelines behind me. 

When Melanie shifts her gaze back to me, she raises her voice and says, “Just don’t fuck this up for me, new guy! My future children are riding on the outcome of this game!”

Jared scoffs and rolls his eyes, but I think I catch a blush crawling across the back of his neck as he moves away into the crowd. 

Wanda’s path intersects with mine, and after the chaos of the last hour, her calm presence is oddly welcome. Or, it doesn’t make me want to puke with anxiety, at any rate. I’ll count that as a marked improvement any day. 

“Don’t mind them,” she offers quietly, pausing to lean in closer to me when our paths converge. “Melanie is just...invested in this game. If you guys win, she’ll be forever…. Well, not nice to you, but certainly less threatening towards you.”

I bark out a loud laugh at her words, because I can’t think of a more accurate assessment of Melanie’s general attitude towards me than that. Perhaps less threatening is the most I can hope for from her. 

“I’m glad you’ve decided to stay,” she says, her voice gentle. 

“Me too,” I agree. “You...you said a lot that made sense to me; it made a difference.” She smiles widely at what I’ve just said, and subtly moves her weight from hip to hip to keep Eamon settled. 

My attention is drawn to the large group in front of me as the teams begin to move to opposite sides of the playing field. With the addition of Mia and I, there are forty-five humans here, as well as two aliens who seem perfectly content to make their home amongst the savages. And according to Wanda and the others, there are more out there. This isn’t the end of the world, not yet at least. 

Wanda glances over her shoulder and follows my gaze to the group of rowdy humans about to play a game of soccer, deep in an underground network of caverns, far from prying eyes and the revealing glare of the sun. 

“This is a strange place,” I say, my voice teasing as I breathe in the optimism that fills the air like oxygen. 

There’s a fond smile on her face when Wanda looks up at me. “The strangest,” she agrees. After a moment, she starts walking again, but calls back over her shoulder, “Welcome home, Henry.”