Title: Heaven in a Wild Flower
Summary: Ayla, Garth and Mekt. That was how the young girl knew all things and that was what kept her going in that form of a Wake Angel or dangerous cloud. It was such a pity that two from the trinity of siblings are often missing from her side. One-shot, sibling fic, minor hints at Lightning-cest.
Warning: Very, very, very light hints at incest, but not really; it's more like brotherly affection than anything else.
Disclaimer: I don't own Legion or any characters used in this and make no money off of this.

Does anyone else agree that Mekt is a really unappreciated character? I mean, really, Cosmic Boy gets more fanfiction time than him, and a lot of people don't like Mr. Pompous, so how is that fair?

-:-
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
-Auguries of Innocence.

There is no greater joy that Ayla now knows, than that of being back on Winath and out of the vortex and wave and ebb or flow of the rest of the universe. It wasn't at all a nightmare being out in the cosmos; a great entity that moved through stars and planets and space mammals that came about to listen to her in ways that so-called intelligent life could not really understand, but she was supremely glad to be back in flesh and blood and with a voice of her own.

Life now is strange, being suspended in time as she was, it is difficult to know Garth as he is now, when he can visit and get away from Legion duties. He is now longer her twin, not really, but her big brother, as Mekt was big brother before this happened and they were children.

Well, she is still a child, and they are young men.

She helps her parents tend to their farm again, with them so happy to have her back and keeping a close eye on her that drives her a little in a bad way, but she knows that they can't help it. She is still so small and though she is a little wiser now than she was then, it is not by much and she understands that they do not wish for harm of any kind to come to her. Not even by the sting of a red breasted bird coming down to snatch away little strands of her hair as when she and Garth tended the fields and picked out the nasty weeds that sometimes sprouted up to devour the crops. Her mother especially is so high strung these days, with Garth zipping about the galaxy with his friends to fight off that Imperiex person who Mekt had left to save her.

Brushing away these thoughts that she had been having a lot lately, she stood on tiptoe out in the fields, enjoying the warm sun touching every cell of her skin in the little green dress her father had brought out of the attic once summer started wandering the planet to set up residence again.

She was picking out the weeds that were stuffing themselves about every spare space that they could find where Ayla remembered she and Garth planting strawberries while Mekt shoveled and raked twelve yards behind them so that he could plant the blackberries and blueberries he knew that they'd end up eating because he cared much less for the darker shaded sweets and they cared even less for the pink delicacies that they had to wash so carefully in heated water and disinfectant before consuming.

They'd spent a lot of their childhoods doing things like that for each other and pretended that they weren't doing it so that the berries would taste even better when they handed over their bounty to the other. Mekt always cleaned the berries he grew very carefully before giving the blueberries to Ayla and the blackberries to Garth.

The older Ranzz sibling was even careful to spit out the dirt still clinging to the strawberries the twins gave in turn when he thought they weren't looking.

Ayla pulled with all of her might at the long grey and putrid green vine that was like the head of the rest and found herself quite inexplicably fallen backwards as it finally snapped from the ground in one long shoot with little wisps and hair of white roots sticking every which way.

The roots almost reminded Ayla of Mekt's new hair coloring when she picked herself from the ground and looked at them a moment. She ran her finger over all of them and they felt smooth to the touch.

She suddenly wondered if that's what Mekt's actual hair felt like now, or if it was as rough as a horse tail as when they were little and it was only he that was taller than her. She hadn't really made to notice before he had turned himself in to the Science Police. She had only noticed how happy he was to see her—perhaps happier than he'd been in a long time if his heavy walk and slumped shoulders were anything to go by—and how determined he was to make things right by going back to jail and absently thinking to herself: Now this is how Mekt must have felt to be without a double, he and Garth look just like polarized twins and I am the odd one out.

The thoughts depressed her—almost like that time when she caught the boys alone in the creek without their clothes; their own private secret between boys that she would not interrupt and did not because no one was hurt and her older brother deserved a some fun when so many people judged him for being with no twin sister to level out his…being a boy, she guessed—and she tossed the weed into the pile that she was going to take back to the incinerator that she had finally convinced her parents to let her use again.

The strawberry patch looked perfect and she made to draw her hands to the rim of her dress and carry the weeds back like her skirt length was a net, but then she paused and looked over to Mekt's patch.

It was like nobody at all had taken care of it since she had disappeared. Her and Garth's patch looked like it had basically been maintained by Garth when he visited a few times a year and even by her parents occasionally, but Mekt's area where so many delicious berries had bloomed every April through August looked….

Ayla remembered Garth muttering occasionally over the vid-phone (every week that he called to check up on Ayla and tell her about his latest mission sometimes) to their parents that Mekt was making up for, well Ayla guessed, losing her those years ago and basically causing the accident that lead to the boys getting their powers. She got how her mom was starting to respond to the calls they got from Takron-Galtos when Mekt called when he got his time once every two weeks if he was allowed to, and her dad was toning down on this disappointed frown he got when Mekt was brought up in conversation, but now she was getting a bigger piece of the picture. Whereas Mekt had never been very much a part of the family when it was normal, he had basically become completely ostracized when the accident happened. It was worse than not being a twin on a planet whose population was built in doubles ("must have either a same-sex twin or an identical twin to sit here or go here or participate here" in a lot of school functions) and maybe she could understand why he had become a bad guy for a while.

His berry patch, while hers and Garth's had been a wreck, Mekt's was a nightmare. It looked as though the rain hadn't even given a thought of sparing water to it the day she turned into cosmic energy. The little wooden sign that the three of them had painted with little berries to warn what was there had broken—or perhaps been intentionally smashed—around the middle and lay in pieces covered in dust and the weeds she had spent the better part of the morning getting rid of for the strawberries to flourish had overrun the entire plot. The row that the berries had grown now served as little beds for the weeds to nest in and cultivate, some of their own gross flowers that attracted hornets standing tall as though to say "Haha, we win!"

She dropped the weeds she made to pick up to incinerate and, as though defending…Mekt or her own head, she wasn't sure; she leaned over and picked every last one of the weed flowers and made back the way to the barn. She had an idea and woe be it to mom or dad if they had something to say about it.

The Legion cruiser in all of its grand design and line and means of propulsion landed sleek and fine into the front yard of the Ranzz property. Dust scattered up from where it touched down and from the engines exercising that last ounce of power before turning off, but other than that it was like a mere and very sedate, over-sized whale beaching in the sand on the beach.

Garth stepped off of the cruiser, grinning ear to ear and quite happy that he'd finally gotten some time off from Legion duties. Begging Brainy for a break had been demeaning and humiliating, but it had worked and was on its way to being well into worth it as he looked about for a moment. His parents were nowhere to be seen, no doubt having a meeting with the other farmers in the area about getting ready to till and seed the soil, but out of the corner of his scar covered eye, he caught movement of light ginger hair and a green dress way out in the fields.

Whistling a song he had been plagued with for the last month because of Bouncy and his sprocking old movies, '…I would change my ways; No, never mind, God knows I've tried. Call me a sinner, call me a saint…' he moved in a sort of jaunty swagger to where his sister was moving about like a little bunny playing in a briar patch, in and out, in and out.

Coming upon the sight he had not been expecting, Garth made no motion or sound to draw Ayla's attention as she was hard at work and he just wanted to suck in the sight of it all at the moment.

With the old shovels and rakes that had been stored in the barn since as long as any of them could remember and had only ever really used when the machines and robots were out of commission—save for when he and his twin and Mekt wanted to have a bit of solitary fun among themselves, like digging a hole to the center of Winath or using the holes that only came up to their chests to fill up with water that they could wade in to take shelter from the blazing summer sun—Ayla was scurrying from one end of Mekt's berry patch to the other. She had dragged up and hauled out all of the loathsome weeds that Garth remembered from his last visit to having taken up the entire plot to raise their own seedlings and deposited them into a wheelbarrow. They took up quite a lot of room in the thing and he smiled at how much work must have been done because of that. At least an hour it might have taken, maybe more.

Her dress was dirty and mom when hate that, but she looked so cute all scuffed up and gritty. A real farm girl getting in deep where she was supposed to.

"Hey, Ayla," he finally spoke up after a few minutes of watching her trail the large rake with the fifteen long teeth of black metal behind her to make rows for whatever she hoped to plant, "What are you doing here?"

Dropping the tool in surprise, Ayla spun around with a bright smile on her face, "Garth!"

As she ran up to him, she almost tripped on one of the holes that came about because of a yanked weed, but caught herself and ended up hugging her brother's leg like a vice. He patted the top on her head with his flesh hand.

"Mom and dad didn't say that you were visiting today," the tiny ginger stated, reeling back her head so she could look all the way up at his face with her own bright smile lit up, "If they had I would have waited for you to help me with this!"

"Eh, I wanted to surprise you guys," he shrugged, crouching down so she didn't snap her neck just trying to make eye contact, "But what is all of…this?"

She flashed her arms out to present the plot, shovel sticking up from where she stuck it in the ground like a javelin at a target, rake laying in the fresh dirt like a comfortable twig in mud and the little sign cracked in half put back together with glue and bits of string, "Isn't it obvious? I'm getting it ready for when Mekt comes out of Takron-Galtos! It really isn't fair that our plot was kinda taken care of when his was left to rot."

And from the mere statement of truth that comes from the mouth of a child, comes a spike of embarrassed shame that wound from the top of Garth's frazzled, disheveled hair, all the way down to his dirt stained boots. His face contorted so that he was biting the inside of his cheek and his eyebrows crashed together like two star cruisers at high speeds, added on with an effect of his entire face going a lovely shade of bright red.

The childish urge to remark on the fact that Mekt had been engaged in crime for quite a while wanted to slither from his lips, but Garth stifled it by letting his shoulders sulk and his head sink between his knees.

"Yeah," he finally said when Ayla started poking the top of his head with a little worry that he could even move from being happy to see her to being kinda depressed in a blink, "That was really lousy. Um, sorry?"

Ayla smiled at her twin. It was fun knowing that she could still make him guilty over stuff when he was twice her size now.

"It's okay," she said innocently, "You can make it up by helping me clean the rest of it and then figure out how to dial Takron-Galtos so we can tell Mekt what we're doing."

Garth gave her an "I-know-what-you're-doing" look and, without warning, picked her up into his arms to tickle her sides, he squealing while he spoke, "Yeah? Will that make things okay?"

She wiggled in his grip and couldn't reply between breathless laughter and trying to be released.

After a few moments, he let up and let her regain her breath, "But, mom and dad really don't like you trying that dialing of the Prison Planet, so let's go call him now while they're out."

"Really?"

He nodded, swinging her up with one arm onto his shoulders, a position he and she had both come to like when she had first come back from being pure energy; he only looked back at the in-progress plot of dark berries once.

"Yeah, there's plenty of time to finish that later. We've got plenty of time now and at least if we call in the next few minutes, it'll be before Mekt will be having the lunch of kings: Galdorf noodles and Rimbor Dear meatballs. Yum."

Ayla scrunched up her nose at the thought of green noodles that glowed in the dark and moved and the meat that Garth spoke of. Mom had made them eat the meat once as a family and ever since, the whole family, stayed away from such food. She couldn't imagine having to eat it in prison.

She wiggled her legs a little to get more comfortable on her brother's shoulders, "Do you think that when the berries grow, we can send him a package in the mail?"

"I don't see why not," the ginger Legionnaire replied, "If they let some inmates have radioactive bird eggs from Titan, I don't see them turning down letting their best inmate have strawberries."