Lance Tidwell had learned to expect the unexpected over the past several years, but when he heard the sounds of computer games blasting from the lounge room as he unlocked the front door, it took him a moment to figure out what was going on. With a sigh, he pushed his way into the house, dumping the groceries just inside the door to deal with later. "I thought you were going to the movies?"

The sandy-headed kid on the couch didn't look away from the TV, but he indicated his face with one hand. His skin was oddly pale and unmarked for a ten-year-old, free of any scars or evidence of rough play, but his blue eyes were too quick for his face, which tended to put strangers ill at ease. He had to take his hand off the game controller for an instant to make the gesture, and was nearly beheaded by a zombie. Muttering something under his breath, he shot it. "Woman at the door carded me. Said I looked under fifteen."

"You didn't have your ID?"

"I had it. I just didn't want to make a scene. You know how it is."

Lance swallowed awkwardly. He walked over to sit next to the kid on the couch.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I don't have nearly enough ammo to finish this level, but other than that..."

"You know that's not what I meant."

The kid shrugged and shot a zombie in the face, causing its head to explode.

"Illim. We can't talk mind-to-mind any more. You're going to have to put some actual effort into communicating."

He sighed and paused the game.

"This is difficult," he said.

"As difficult as being a conscripted soldier in an intergalactic war? Or a secret revolutionary in said war trying not to be beheaded by an incredibly paranoid and violent boss?"

"Difficult in a different way. This... I don't know how to handle this."

"Being human, you mean?"

"Are you kidding? I spent years in your brain. Being human I can handle. Besides, I chose such a young body specifically because I'd be on par with actual human teenagers who are still figuring this out. But..." he bit his lip, considering his words. "But this... this is it. I can't really... I mean, in the war, it didn't matter how bad things got. We had a goal. We were working towards something better. And then suddenly it was over and this, this is our 'something better'? And we can't even fight any more. If there was a way to keep working on this, it'd be okay, but..." Illim paused and touched a finger to his eye. He pulled it away and stared at the tear on it, frowning. Lance handed him a tissue.

"I saw Cassie the other day," Lance said conversationally. "Just ran into her."

"Is it even possible to 'run into' an Animorph? I would've expected them to be surrounded with reporters all the time."

"Me too." He shrugged. "Those kids see this as a victory, you know."

"It was, for them. They won. It just would've been nice if we could've won, too."

Lance nodded. "Things didn't turn out as bad s they could have, though. This could have been much worse."

Illim glared at him. "Oh, yeah. A peaceful genocide is technically better than just killing everyone on the outset." He looked down at his own hands.

"I think 'genocide' is a little – "

"Is a little what, Lance? A little harsh? You're a history teacher. I've been in your head, I know you know about the attempts to sterilise the native Americans, to breed out the Australian aborigines. This is what humans do."

Lance recoiled from the unexpected venom in his friend's voice, but quickly rallied. "Humans do all kinds of things," he said, his voice low and angry. "It would be rather easier for me to characterise yeerks as a race of violent slavers than for you to characterise humans as genocidal maniacs."

Illim sneered at him and went to stand, then froze. "Wait, we're doing the thing. The anger thing." He shook his head, as if to clear it. "We're getting off-topic. This is so much harder to do verbally."

"Do you need to calm down?"

"No. I'm fine. Are you fine?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Illim took a few deep breaths before continuing in a much more measured tone. "I understand that from the point of view of the victors, this was the best possible outcome. A race comes along to enslave them as their introduction to the universe, and they defeat them against all the odds? This probably seemed like mercy. But it was our job to stop this, Lance. You and me, and the rest of the Movement. We were supposed to make both our races better. We were supposed to create a future where mine didn't enslave everyone and yours didn't wipe out anyone. And I... I guess it's hard to accept that we lost, and there are no do-overs. I mean, what can we do now? There is no yeerk empire in space any more. There's just a cordoned-off planet with those who refused to change, who are going to be trapped there forever, and... and a bunch of people who aren't yeerks any more."

"Do you regret the decision you made?" Lance asked after a pause.

"No. There wasn't a good decision to make. I could've let them deport me to the homeworld and lived in a lake of sludge my whole life, but that wouldn't have been any better. I was born in space. I've lived most of my life here, on Earth. They made me choose between my planet and my body, and given that I'd have to say goodbye to you as well to leave, I think I made the best of two terrible choices. I mean, what kind of a choice is that? Really? I was born on the run, Lance, most of us were. I was born outrunning a force bigger than us, better at space travel than us, and completely intent on wiping us out. We were outrunning the andalites, trying to survive, trying to do what we could with the resources we had, and for many there wasn't time or energy for moral debates..." he shook his head. "On reflection, I guess Earth was the best place to be. Slow, peaceful. And I met Aftran, and I met you. Anywhere else, with anyone else, I would've been somebody very, very different. All I wanted to do was share what you made me with everyone else. We had a chance to move forward as a peaceful, decent species, you know? A real chance. If it wasn't so rushed, if the andalites didn't arrive so quickly, if the Animorphs didn't force their confrontation with the Empire so soon... I feel like we would have had a chance.

I guess... sometimes it just hits me that we've lost, you know? And this... this is it."

Lance considered that. Illim was usually pretty happy as a human, and Lance was sure that these little fits of helplessness would fade over time. People were adaptive like that. Illim would grow up, and get a job doing something he liked, and meet someone to fall in love with. But right now... right now, he needed support. 'You'll get better eventually' hadn't helped Lance one bit after his wife had died, especially since it wasn't necessarily true. There were dozens of ways for someone in that state of mind to die, either on purpose or by accident. What had helped Lance was Illim, Illim as an enemy and then later as an ally, and after that, a dear friend. In all cases, Illim had given him something to fight for.

So Lance didn't recite some comforting waffle about just enjoying his new life and how things would get better. Instead, he lied.

"This is it for now," he said.

"If you're going to launch into a speech about how cool being a human is – "

"Would there be any point? You've seen my memories, you already know it all. No, what I meant was, the Empire still exists on the homeworld, like you said. And you're still as much yeerk as you are human."

"Neither, you mean."

"Or both. Look, nobody likes yeerks right now. We know that. There were a lot of messy battles and there are a lot of angry ex-slaves running around. But there are also people who The Sharing actually helped, and yeah, a lot of them did go on to get enslaved and be really angry about it, but some of them made friends. Some of them were like us, or some of them just got along without needing to become revolutionaries. Some of them were in a really bad place and weren't slaves for very long, and probably see the whole thing as a good thing, given that it may have saved their lives. And a lot of people are like you. How many yeerks chose to become human when selecting a new species? I don't know, but it was a lot.

"Right now, this is not a good situation. But that doesn't mean the Voluntary movement is over. We just need to bide our time. Give it ten years, perhaps twenty. You'll be a relatively young human adult by then, somebody who's lived as human and yeerk. Picture that. Now, let's say a bunch of people like you decide that you want to be Controllers. Let's say you ask for some of your former brethren to come to Earth, on the caveat that they only inhabit you."

Illim's eyes widened in realisation. "And once they're here, if anybody else wanted to form a partnership, it would be such a small step..."

"It worked the first time. This time, you just need to be careful not to be manipulative, slave-taking jerks about it. When the time is right, we, the fully human members of the voluntary movement, can back you up."

"Would humanity really let us do this, though? I mean, we don't have the best track record..."

"They wouldn't let me do it. But you? Talk about the need to preserve your culture. Garner support for the human yeerks who will, by then, be accepted in every level of society. You could do it if you make it a yeerk thing, if you make people feel like it won't affect them. We move slowly, we move sincerely and peacefully. We can do this."

"Without making it into an invasion."

"Without an invasion. We do every step in the open, we involve nobody who doesn't want to be involved."

"You really think we can pull this off?"

"I think we survived being secret revolutionaries under Visser Three and nearly lost our planet to first the Empire, then the andalites. I think we should by all reasonable laws of chance be dead several times over by now. I think that after everything, we have no choice but to try."

New fire burned in Illim's eyes as a grin spread across his face. As if only just remembering they were there, he quickly rubbed the tears from his eyes.

"Now help me put away the groceries," Lance said, and Illim immediately bounded into the hallway with that exuberant energy that only kids possessed.

Lance stared after him for a moment. He was a little surprised that it had been so easy for Illim to accept that the re-integration of yeerks into human society would even be possible in his lifetime. But then, it hadn't been all that long ago that Lance had been unable to lie to Illim. Why would Illim expect him to start now?

Unfortunately, everything hinged on people like Illim being afforded basic respect and concern by humanity at large, and that just wasn't going to happen. They'd managed to secure human rights for the new humans, after somewhat of a struggle, but Lance knew that the rate of violence was suspiciously high against them, the rate of employment was suspiciously low, and Illim couldn't pull out his ID in a supermarket without somebody causing a scene. He was pretty sure the kid used a fake, non-yeerkish name when Lance wasn't around.

Their cause was over, and they'd lost. Not as badly as they could have. A large chunk of their membership had actually survived the war, human and yeerk alike, and moving about freely, and most of the yeerks had made the same choice as Illim and were able to live fairly good lives without having to borrow anybody's body. Still, it was hard not to imagine and regret what could have been. The history they could have made. The things he could have announced to classrooms of attentive students, with passion and enthusiasm.

But they had what they had.

It could have been worse.

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