It took a few years for Erin to get her big break, once everything had settled down. It both surprised her, and didn't surprise her at all that that was still possible. Sure, there had been a war. Sure, there were aliens now. Sure, Erin still woke up in sweating terror some nights. Sure, she still had difficulty going about in public every now and then.

But Erin was just meant for a career in music. It was what she had always wanted to do with her life. Yeerks couldn't change that. And life on Earth went on... much as it always had.

Both her therapist and her friend Nick thought that writing about her experiences during the invasion was a good idea. "You're not alone, Erin," Nick had told her. "There are a lot of people who went through what you did. And it's something big that the whole country – hell, the whole world - is coming to terms with, even those who weren't personally affected. I think people want, people need to hear about it."

So she'd written her songs, and she'd worked hard, and it had finally paid off.

The doorbell rang. Erin looked up from where she was sitting, curled up on the couch in the sun with her guitar. She tucked a curtain of red hair behind her ear, letting the pencil fall from her fingers. It rang again.

"Fine, fine," she muttered. "Somebody's impatient."

She put the guitar and writing pad aside and padded through the living room in her socks.

"Hello?"

There was a young man on her doorstep. He had long, untidy dark hair. "Hello," he said, in a quick, edged way that made the word sound like a challenge. He didn't look familiar at all, but he looked at her like he knew her.

"Do I know you?" Erin asked.

His eyes met hers, almost insultingly direct. "Yeah, you do."

"Uh, pretty sure I don't, actually." She edged the door shut a little. This guy was... unsettling. Maybe she ought to just slam the door in his face, but she couldn't bring herself to be that rude. "You must be mistaking me for someone else."

"Oh, no, definitely not," he said. He stepped forward, his gaze intense, his voice mock-casual. "I was listening to the radio this morning and I heard one of your songs. And you know the funny thing, it sounded awfully familiar. In fact, I distinctly remember writing some of it, sitting at your piano after..."

Panic shot through Erin. She stared at the stranger, frozen. "You!" she yelped.

She had not expected her old yeerk to show up on her doorstep. If she had, she didn't know what she would have imagined she'd look like. But it wasn't this.

Erin came to her senses and went to slam the door shut, but she'd left it too late. Before she could get any real force behind it, the young man had pushed forward and shoved the door open. She backed into the house and he followed her.

"Yeah. Me," he said. He swung the door shut behind him with one hand and smiled at her with a sudden flash of teeth. "Hello, Erin. Missed me?"

"Get out," Erin said, her voice wobbly.

"I'm not going anywhere, Erin," he said. He stabbed a finger at her accusingly. "Why is there music that I wrote playing on the radio? Without permission or even credit?"

"Get out!"

"No," he said flatly. "You. Stole. My. Music."

"What are you doing here?" She kept retreating, her arms crossed over her body.

"Talking to you. Obviously," he sniffed. She thought she could see a hint of the old Irdane in that. It was so hard to connect the ideas, to think of this young man with intense eyes and a butterfly on his shirt as her. Irdane was a yeerk, a haughty voice in her head. "About a certain song. That I helped write. That is currently playing on the radio. Are you not listening to anything I'm saying? Helloo, Erin, anyone home?" He gave a sarcastic little wave.

"I - I want you to go away," Erin said. Maybe if she said it often enough something would happen. "You can't be here. My – my housemate's going to be coming home soon -"

"Oh, tsk tsk," Irdane said condescendingly. "He's not. It's Nick, right? He won't be home for hours – he never is." He had managed to back her into the living room. "Anyway, I am not leaving until we..."

Why had she let him into the house? Why was she letting him push her backwards? Erin swallowed and planted her feet. "No. I don't care what you want, you're not getting it. Get out of my house."

Irdane planted his feet equally firmly, crossing his arms dramatically, and glared at her. "I want what's mine. That's all."

Erin felt like screaming. "How dare you! After everything you've - How dare you come in here and try to take any more from me! What's your problem? Can you just not stand it that I might be happy?"

"Hey, hey, I don't think so!" Irdane said, raising his voice over the top of her. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. I was quite content to leave you alone. You're the one who stole -"

"Stop saying that!" Erin yelled. She looked around the room for a weapon and saw the bookshelf. She snatched a book up and threw it at him. "I didn't steal anything from you! Leave - me - alone!" She threw another book, and then a shoe.

He avoided the shoe, his hands raised defensively. "Come on, Erin! You know that song is as much mine as it is yours!"

"Just because you were in my head when I wrote it doesn't make it yours!"

"No, you're right, that doesn't make it mine," he agreed. "What makes it mine is that when you gave up on it, I stepped in and finished it. By myself."

Erin started to speak, but stopped. It was true. Irdane had finished that particular song without any help from her. She'd refused to work on it; too upset, that particular week. Too full of hatred to do what the yeerk said, even when it was music. The yeerk had needed it finished, a school thing, so she'd done it herself.

"And as for the others," the new Irdane said, scowling, "What makes them mine is that I wrote at least a third of the music, at least, and helped you with the words sometimes too. Are you claiming those too? I won't let you."

"I... No. No, stop it," Erin said. She clenched her fists. How had this happened? No, she thought, Irdane didn't put in that much of them. Sure, she'd helped, a bit, but the songs Erin had written while she was infested were still fundamentally Erin's songs. No way anybody – least of all one of them – was going to take any of her songs away from her. "They're mine."

"Mine, too," he said fiercely. "They're mine too."

"Well – well maybe I'm taking your share," she said. "You took from me. I'll take it as payment for the year of my life I spent as your puppet!"

"You can't do that!"

"Says who?" Erin demanded. "How are you going to take them away? What can you do to me?"

Irdane looked taken aback for a moment. "I – what?"

"What are you going to do to me?" Erin repeated. Was she... winning? She pushed forwards, finding confidence. "You say you won't 'let' me, but how are you going to stop me? What power do you have to make me do anything?" She tipped her head on one side, putting on a fake honeyed tone. "Tell me, Irdane, how much money do you have? Can you afford a lawyer?"

He blinked rapidly. Hah, Erin thought. That's a no.

"I – But. But they are mine," he said. "I wrote... you know I wrote..."

"Good luck convincing people of that," Erin said. "Whether it's a legal thing or public opinion, if you want to fight me about this, I'll win. What proof do you have that you contributed anything to those songs? It all happened inside my head."

He stared at her for a few seconds. "I don't have any proof," he said quietly.

She poured all the scorn she could muster into her voice. "Make all the crazy claims you want. You think anybody is going to look at this situation and side with you? You're a slug."

He was silent.

Erin gave a small smile. Inside, she exulted. I was right, she thought. The therapists were right. They can't hurt me anymore.

Erin turned around and strode to the phone, hanging on the wall. "I think that settles that," she said. "Everything I wrote is mine and there's nothing you can do about it. If you don't get out of my house in ten seconds, I'm calling the police."

He opened and closed his mouth, looking lost. "I don't – wait," he said. "Wait." He pushed a hand through his hair, and looked at her with pleading eyes through a fringe of dark strands. "Aw, fuck it."

Erin glared at him. She put her hand on the handset of the phone. "I said, get out."

"Erin, please," he said suddenly.

Erin was struck by the strangeness of it. She didn't think Irdane had ever used that word to her before. Why would she have done? There was nothing she'd needed to ask Erin for. Anything Irdane wanted she could just take.

"No," she said.

"Wait," he said quickly. "OK, OK, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here like this." He raised his hands in a pacifying gesture, and smiled at her. "That was stupid. I'm really sorry. I just got kinda worked up, you know? Surely there's some way we could work this..."

Erin snorted incredulously. "Work this out? You've got to be kidding me. How delusional are you?"

"I'm not really your enemy, Erin," he said, his voice wheedling. "I always liked you, you know? When you consider..."

"Not my enemy?" Erin's voice rose. She bit down the urge to argue -it wouldn't achieve anything. He probably wanted to draw her into an argument, but she wouldn't bite. "I'm not even giving you one more minute of my time. For the last time – get out."

For a few moments he looked at her. He bit his lip and looked away, brow creased in a scowl. "Fine," he muttered. "I'm going."

He kicked her shoe stand over as he left, a surprisingly childish act of temper. Erin followed to close the door behind him.

She let out a huge breath. Her chest still seemed full of angry, shaky butterflies. But she also felt... kind of good about herself, she realised. She had stood her ground, and she'd won. He was gone.

She would still ring her agent and tell her about this. Just in case. But for now? She'd chalk this one up as a victory.