Stephenie Meyer owns The Host, not me.

Mixed Feelings

*Secrets and Lies*

Moon was in the back of a bus, heading towards the local college. Alex had fled from the souls before finishing high school, and so Moon had to suffer through a battery of placement tests for the next several days to find out where his education should restart.

The past two days had been the strangest that Moonlight had ever experienced in any of his lives. In neither of his previous lives had he ever heard of a host body which remained conscious after the insertion of a soul. He would have thought that Alex would try to retake control of his body, but he remained civil (though moderately hostile) the entire time. *Hey, I should have died in that forest. I figure any more time I get is just a bonus - I guess I'm kind of like a ghost. Anyway, it wouldn't change anything if I could retake control, would it? I couldn't call off the search for Sophia, right? * Alex responded to Moon's line of thought. He was hiding something, but Moonlight couldn't tell what.

Sometimes Moonlight got the feeling that Alex could read him far better than he could read Alex.

*No, you couldn't,* Moon responded guiltily.

*Heh. It's a good thing for you that Sophia's smart, then. Otherwise, we might have a problem.*

That was the one thing that Alex occasionally did use to make him uncomfortable - while neither of them believed that Alex had any information that would help the Seekers, Moon believed it was his duty to help them in any way he could. Alex... didn't. *You all have made her life a living hell. She's been hiding from you since she was seven years old. Just leave her in peace, and she'll be glad to do the same with you. What difference does it make if she steals some food?* Alex flashed through memories of hunger and terror during this tirade. Moon fought, but was drawn into the memory of a night Alex remembered when they were nearly caught, about four years before.

It's the best time of day to be moving; it's beginning to get dark, and even better, there's a light drizzle that covers the sound of our footsteps. We're going into town to try and scrounge up a new set of jackets, as both of us have outgrown our old ones and winter is coming.

We hear voices and drop to the ground like puppets with our strings cut. I look in the direction of the noise and see four humanoid shapes gathered around something directly in front of us - I can't see what it is. I'm behind a tree, but Sophia is in the open with only grass between her and them. The bugs don't know we're here, but if they look around the area at all they will find us.

What now? Sophia signs at me, using a set of hand signals we've been working out for the past several months.

We're too close to the road and we don't know how many of them there are, I sign back to her. One of them will hear us if we try and fight them. Crawl to that ditch on my mark. I point. One of them is looking in your direction right now. She goes very still. Wait... wait... Go!

She moves quickly and silently as soon as I tell her to. Once she reaches the ditch, she covers her face and hair with mud, effectively camouflaging the most visible parts of herself.

"Do you think there actually are any humans out here?" one of the bugs asks another. "I'd think they would stay far away from towns, nowadays."

"I don't think there are any, but suffering through the cold is a small price to pay to ease people's minds," another responds. "That's why I became a Seeker. Any humans out there wouldn't bother with such a small town anyway, but its something people worry about. If there was a real threat, I think a lot more than just eight of us would be patrolling. We're in more danger from bears than we are any humans."

Moon was slowly learning to deal with Alex's ingrained hatred, but this time it was suppressed a moment after he felt it. This was very strange, but Moon had no time to think about it as the memory continued.

Sophia snorts. We need to keep moving, she signs, shivering. I see now that there is a small current of water running through the ditch she's in. She had no choice but to move out of the Seekers' line of sight, but she can't stay there indefinitely.

Lets see what they do. Maybe they'll split up or move on, I hope.

After a few minutes the Seekers fan out into a line and begin ambling away from us. They're not very observant, but all it will take is one of them to walk in the wrong direction...

We stay deathly still, and soon the patrol line has passed by. I signal to Sophia we should get moving, and we run towards the sleeping town, away from the Seekers.

At least we know they're there now.

Moonlight felt another wave of malevolence from Alex, but again, it was oddly suppressed after a moment. He tried to figure out what Alex was up to, but was blocked by another wall.

*Leave me alone,* Alex thought.

His cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

It was the seeker he'd met his first day on the planet. "There's been a disappearance. Sophia was probably responsible. If so, she now has a hostage and a vehicle. You may remember the missing person; she was the one assigned to find your host's biological parents." Moon did remember her. It had only been two days ago, after all. He wasn't sure why the Seeker was calling him about this, though.

"How can I be of assistance, Seeker?" he asked.

"I need to meet with you later to discuss where Sophia would go if she had a vehicle, and everywhere the Conrads had ever been in the past. When's the soonest you'll be available?"

*No, no, no!* Alex protested furiously.

Moon ignored him. "I have a bunch of tests I have to take today, but I can see you tomorrow morning."

Alex's education had been cut short by the souls' invasion. Moon had known this on an intellectual level, but hadn't grasped the implications until he stared down at the pages of the test. He could read the text, but he had no idea what any of it was asking him. He was beginning to get discouraged, but Alex refused to stop thinking about the questions.

*No, no, I think x must be equal to seven.*

It was a blatant attempt to distract Moon from thinking about Sophia. It didn't work, especially since Alex disliked the test as well.

I have to do my civic duty, Moon told him.

*She'll leave you alone if you don't bother her,* Alex replied, trying to be persuasive. *If she sees a bunch of Seekers coming after her, many of them will die, and she'll just kill herself and the hostage anyway. Leave her be.*

I'll help the Seekers however I can, Moon thought. I'm certain they'll be able to catch her without any bloodshed.

*Yeah, that's what worries me.*

After distractedly working on the placement tests for a few more hours, Moon got back on the bus and returned to his apartment. The place was still nearly completely bare, save for a phone on the counter. The light on it was blinking.

*I wondered when you'd notice that,* Alex thought, wryly. *It's been that way since we got here two days ago.*

Who would be leaving him voice mail? Moon fumbled with the device, but eventually it ran the message.

"Hey, its me, Zoe!" the message began cheerfully. "I talked to you earlier about finding your host's family. It looks like they never moved, so I found them pretty fast. If you -"

Moon shut it off, disturbed by Alex's tumultuous emotions. Alex didn't know what he wanted Moon to do with this knowledge. He had no desire to see his family - he knew there wasn't anything left of his parents, and seeing them would just remind him of losing them the first time. He did, however, want to see the souls who had taken his family out of a morbid curiosity. These two conflicting things left him feeling quite lost.

Moon couldn't think, overwhelmed by the influx of emotions from his host. Finally, he recognized that there was little he could get done in this state, and decided to go to sleep. Perhaps he'd be able to sort out his emotions in the morning.

A/N As always, please review! You can even flame me or leave a one-word comment, just let me know what you think. If I don't know how I'm doing it's hard to improve!

Thanks to TK-MR, Jaffee Leeds, Evil-Clowns-Rule, fusedtwilight, Pantherfan, and TopKat90 for commenting on previous chapters!