Beautiful Son

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"Mother, weep the years I'm missing, all our time can't be given back." -Smashing Pumpkins, Mayonaise

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I never wanted him to turn out like me. I always thought that if he turned out like Peter, it would mean that I'd been a good mother. That'd I'd shielded him until he was old enough to never become bitter and cynical. That'd I'd protected him so he could stay trusting and sweet, because no one had ever betrayed that trust. That I'd given him a safe, happy childhood.

I woke up knowing I had failed at that. I also knew that the last thing heard before I'd passed out was Marco telling me over and over, "you're free, Mom, you're free".

I didn't know which emotion to feel first.

I knew the instant I woke up that I was not in Yeerk hands. There was grass under my hands, a ceiling above my head. Dogs everywhere, some snuggled up next to me. My son holding my hand.

"Hey. 'Bout time you woke up and had a good look at the doggie motel," he said gently.

I was in what appeared to be an indoor dog park. Dogs and puppies ran about everywhere. Large trees grew underground. And to my surprise, glistening ivory and metals robots stood around, watching the dogs.

Watching us was a boy about Marco's age. He looked vaguely familiar, like I'd seen him while picking Marco up from school a long time ago. Another "Andalite bandit", perhaps? Were they really all kids, all along? Edriss had suspected, but she'd also assumed that an adult must have been in charge. I'd always assumed that, if I was ever freed, I'd kill the adult who pushed my child into this hellish war.

"What happened after I blacked out?" I said hoarsely. Sitting up, I noticed that my body was stitched and bandaged. I still hurt, but my wounds were clean and covered. Broken bones had been set. Almost the entire left side of my body was in a cast or bandaged. "Is Peter here?"

"Nah. He's working on something at the Hork-Bajir valley. I should be too, but I came down here so you didn't have to wake up to a bunch of dog robots." He was forcing levity. I could see tears in his eyes. "We got out of the Bug Fighter after you passed out. Then we lost their trackers and brought you here. These are the Chee, our allies."

"This is all new to me. The Yeerks don't know a thing about this. At least, Edriss didn't." It was bizarre, to be moving my mouth of my own accord. Even breathing on my own felt strange, knowing that I could continue to do so as long as I liked. Part of me almost expected it to be suddenly taken away again, and to be revealed to be a sweet dream I'd had while Edriss was feeding.

"Yep. The best kept secret of us Andalite bandits. Hopefully for a little while longer, too. They're the ones who patched you up. Gotta say, the eye-patch looks pretty stylish."

"It would be more stylish if it wasn't Ace Bandage beige." I said. I noticed myself tearing up, too.

The other boy looked uncomfortable. "I should give you two a moment. We can discuss business later." And then he walked away to attend to a group of terriers and labradors.

For a long time Marco and I just stared at each other. My son. My beautiful, brave, free son. For so long I'd thought he'd been taken, and then for so long I'd wondered if he was dead. The last time I'd seen him, he was giving me back to Edriss, at my request. I think both of us had sincerely thought it would be our last time seeing each other alive and free.

Softly, he said, "I want to give you a hug but I don't want to break even more of your bones." So I clutched his hand tighter and for many seconds, he pressed our clenched hands to his forehead and cried. I joined him.

"I thought we'd never free you. I thought they'd kill you, or I'd get killed first, or that I would…" He shuddered just talking about it. "You understood, didn't you? I didn't want to but I think I had to. I always wanted to save you."

"Honey, of course I understand." I extricated my good hand from his grip and pressed it to his face, wiping tears away with my thumb. I could barely see them through my own blurry vision. "I knew. I knew you were doing what you had to."

"Okay. Right, okay."

I kept holding his face in my hands. "You got that from me, you know. I hoped you'd never have to, but you did. I tried to teach you to see the good in things, but you're too much like me. You see opportunities."

He nodded. Still my Marco. He still had my eyes, Peter's nose, Peter's mouth and my inappropriately-timed sense of humor pouring out of it. He was still short, still waiting on a growth spurt that had yet to happen. He was still thin, still wore his hair a bit long, still had the wave in his hair from my side of the family. Still wearing a Weird Al t-shirt, of all things. I'd taken him to that show when he was nine, only a few weeks before I'd been taken.

The shirt was so old, threadbare and much too tight. It must have been almost seven years old.

I didn't see a trace of the trusting child I'd left behind. No laidback, sunny attitude. Instead he was a ball of tension, fidgeting one leg and his free hand. Glancing around even as he assured me that this place was secure. Shifting dark, haunted eyes that looked too old for his face.

So much like me. So little like the boy I'd been taken from.

I thought of all the birthdays I'd missed. The middle school graduation I'd never attended. The summer vacations never taken. The homework I'd never helped with. The dates I'd never given unwelcome advice on, the parent-teacher conferences I'd never gone to, the drives home from school where I'd never asked him how his day had been. I even missed the times we would have undoubtedly fought about the music on the radio, or whether or not he could stay up past ten to watch some teenage comedy show, or why he had to call if he'd be back late from Jake's.

All the times he'd probably been scared and bleeding, or staring down Visser Three, or running for his life, or walking into an attack half-expecting death, and I hadn't been there to reassure him. The time he'd moved to kill me to stop Edriss, and I hadn't even been able to tell him "Honey, I understand. I know you're doing what you have to do". He'd been carrying that weight for more than a year.

"Honey? Who's in charge of this whole thing?" I asked him. "Is there someone leading you?"

"Jake, I guess. He's our de facto Fearless Leader. He hates it, but I mean, if Rachel led us we'd all get killed in a week and if Cassie led us we'd all end up getting killed on some mission to save the whales, and if I led us we'd never do anything. And Ax and Tobias are both too weird to lead. It'd make for a terrible retrospective."

So they were all kids. "Jake Berenson?"

"Yeah, that Jake. The one and the same "couldn't shoot a basket if it was two feet off the ground" dumb jock Jake. Which is really scary, when you think about it," he grinned self-deprecatingly.

"Visser Three would spontaneously combust if he knew he was getting his ass kicked by a bunch of high schoolers."

"A bunch of high schoolers who can't even pass algebra, even."

"Young man, saving the world is no excuse for a bad report card," I teased, but the light atmosphere was still so forced. I could blame the Yeerks for taking me, for making me a prisoner inside my own head, for crushing my family with my faked death. I'd been the ideal target, a campaign manager for congressional candidates. It had made sense that the Yeerks wanted me, hoping my position could be used to put some of them in power.

But I couldn't blame them for everything that had happened to my son. It didn't made sense to use human children, innocent children, as soldiers. It didn't make sense to leave them with a leader who was only a few weeks older than Marco. It was cruel, not pragmatic.

I needed to know. "So how did a bunch of high schoolers get the ability to turn into animals?"

"Elfangor crash-landed and gave it to us, about two and a half years ago. One last chance for Earth against Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," Marco said. He stood up. "I should go tell Erek we're ready to talk business. You could probably help with that thing Dad's working on."

"Alright. Don't be too long or these puppies might smother me to death," I said lightly, to hide the fact that my whole body burned in rage.

Elfangor. I knew the name. An Andalite warrior. And now I saw that the Yeerks had been right, that the Andalites were meddlesome, that they did cross the line when dealing with other species. Human children were fair game in their little feud. They found it acceptable to consign my child to a life of terror, despair, trauma, paranoia – all this and they wouldn't even send reinforcements to this "low priority" planet, this backwards, primitive species. Why send their own adult warriors when they could give this curse to innocent kids? To my innocent kid?

I'd been taken from a little boy who forgot to lock the back door and came back to a paranoid teenager with dark circles under his eyes. When I hadn't been there to protect him, he'd been thrust into a war. By the Andalites.

Elfangor. The Yeerks hated him as if he were the Antichrist.

They were not the only ones.