Are We Just Bad Parents?

Disclaimer: I do not own Animorphs.

In all honesty, I'm not sure if I hate the war or the post-war more. They both had their share of horrible, horrible moments and the pre-war was infinitely better. It's so weird to define my life by a war. This isn't the first war I've lived through, after all. There was Vietnam and the Gulf War but somehow it just didn't seem to make the same kind of an impression, probably because it took place so far away and only indirectly impacted my life. I wasn't even old enough to remember the start of Vietnam.

I'm not entirely sure when to mark the start of the Yeerk War either. Was it back in 1966 when the Yeerks first escaped their home world? 1969 when the Andalites realized they were going after the Hork-Bajir? During the Gulf War when the first Yeerks landed on Earth and enslaved a human? A few years later when the rest of the Yeerk Empire became aware of this mythical 'Class Five' species (though I'd like to think our victory means we'd be considered Class Four)? The night my son didn't listen to me and walked home through an abandoned construction site? The day I got infested?

The Andalites seem to mark it by the date that the Yeerks killed some of their people, stole one of their ships, and fled their planet but here on Earth people tend to look at Jake and his friends getting involved as the beginning. I can see the sense in that. Before they found out about the Yeerks and started fighting back (however unsuccessfully in the beginning) it wasn't really a war for us. Sure, the Andalites were off fighting somewhere else but it was more of an invasion that we were powerless to oppose. Had the invasion not been a secret it would have been a whole different story and we would have at least stood a chance but, well, that was why it was a stealth invasion in the first place.

I know that the war started long before I was made aware of it. How could it not have? It even touched my family a year before Jake got dragged into it (sure he said that he made his own choices but he was thirteen and they had his brother. What choice was that?) when Tom got infested. Logically, I know this and yet it doesn't feel real.

I know that Jake met Elfangor sometime in May seven years ago. I know that Tom was infested approximately a year earlier but nothing more specific than that. Jake might've known more but he never talked about his brother, hadn't so much as mentioned him since the funeral. My husband and I were infested mere weeks before the war ended. It was horrible and terrifying and so very difficult to deal with the knowledge that my only hope was my sixteen-year-old child.

And yet. And yet it was harder to face the fact that for three years my youngest had been fighting a war and I had barely noticed any changes within him and those that I did see I attributed to puberty. Hard to face the realization that he'd been a child soldier and would never forgive himself for not getting us out in time. Never forgive himself for doing nothing about Tom for three years. My first instinct was to blame him for that but I knew Jake – or at least thought I did. He'd always adored his big brother and even though they had been drifting apart since…well, since Tom's infestation, I guess, the only way Jake would have let things stand was if he thought that he didn't have any other choice. I'll probably never know all the details but I can trust that.

And then there was Tom. Even before we started losing Jake to the war, we lost him even more completely. At least with Jake, it was still him pretending everything was normal and he did so largely to protect us. With Tom, it might have been his voice and his body but the deception was all a Yeerk's doing. He kept us ignorant of what had happened to our eldest even while he plotted the complete subjugation of our entire species. It had been four years and I'd never even noticed. I'd actually been proud of him for his involvement with the Sharing when I should have been horrified. Jake noticed and he had to keep quiet but I honestly had no idea that anything was wrong until the day we went to go buy new lawnmowers and ended up with new Yeerks instead.

While I saw enough of Jake post-war to know just how much he had done that he could never forgive, I can only speculate on Tom since…well, since. It wasn't his fault that we got infested. I never blamed him for that. The only time I might have is when it first happened and I was confused and angry and trying to make sense of everything. I didn't, though, because I was too busy being horrified and waiting to wake up. I'm glad I didn't because that would have been difficult to forgive myself for and I already carry the weight of not noticing what my sons had been going through for years on end. Jake told me once that he was glad that I never noticed because if I had then it would have just put everyone in danger but that doesn't change the fact that I feel horrible for not even being really concerned. I knew that Tom was gone more and more in the weeks before I was taken and Jake spent most of his time at home sleeping. How could I have been so blind?

I spoke to Steve and he agreed that neither Tom nor Jake were to blame for what happened. I can tell he feels guilty, too, but strangely I don't blame him. It would make sense if I did since I blame myself but somehow I don't. I know that I still haven't forgiven myself for the Yeerk in my head trying to kill Jake right in front of our house even though there was nothing I could have done. Tom managed to probably save Jake's life by knocking the Dracon Beam out of my hand and I'm still in awe of the fact that he pulled it off given how desperate I was to drop the weapon but couldn't quite do it.

I don't know if he ever forgave himself for what the Yeerk in his head did to us or tried to do to Jake. I don't know if he ever blamed Jake or was proud of his little brother for being the one to bring the Yeerk Empire to its knees. Did he understand when Jake sent Rachel after him or did he resent that Jake would send their cousin to kill him so close to the end? Did it kill him when he thought his Yeerk had killed Jake? I think I know the answer to that one, actually, but the only way I'll ever find the answers to the others is if I meet him in Heaven one day.

I have to say, I've become a lot more religious since Tom died. Before I was more agnostic but the minute Jake told me the news I knew that there had to be an afterlife because the last time I saw my firstborn just couldn't be twenty minutes after Jake had fled our house. I don't even know the last time I really saw him, not tainted by a Yeerk. And when Jake disappeared a year ago, that only confirmed my conviction that that just couldn't be the end. He had only told us that he was leaving and I got the feeling he didn't think he was coming back. Later Cassie had quietly let Steve, Marco's parents, Loren, and myself know what our children had been up to but though it was a relief to at least know, the fact remains that they left on a suicide mission a year ago and I don't know if I'll ever see my son again. At least I know the last time I saw him, even if he never said goodbye.

That's why I don't know which I hated more. I either had no idea what was going on while my son's were suffering or else I'm fully informed while one son is dead and the other severely depressed and now missing.

"Are we just bad parents?" I wondered. I hadn't really meant to say it aloud.

Steve, seated across from me at the table, raised an eyebrow. "What brought this on?" he asked carefully.

"Five years ago, did you ever think that it would end up this way? That we'd lose both of our children at nineteen?" I asked.

"We don't know that Jake's gone," Steve pointed out.

"And we may never know," I said bitterly. "How much time will need to pass before we accept that he's dead or will we be waiting for him to come home for the rest of our lives?"

"Longer than a year," Steve said firmly. "You know what Z-Space is like. They might not have even reached the Blade Ship yet." The Blade Ship where Tom died remains unspoken, as does the fact that he died a snake and was probably either fed to a Taxxon or disposed of as waste.

"And when they do, what then? It's one little ship against an entire Blade Ship," I pointed out. "They can't possibly win."

"They couldn't possibly win before and yet Earth was saved all the same," Steve countered.

"Yes, because that worked out so well for them, didn't it?" I asked sarcastically.

"I think I know where this is coming from," Steve said slowly. "This isn't about Jake going off on a suicide mission, is it? I think we both know that he would have gone even if he had been perfectly well-adjusted after the war-"

"Which he wasn't," I interrupted. "He was hurting and guilty and depressed and we didn't help him."

"We did the best we could," Steve disagreed. "And I'd like to think that we did help him. He just had some very serious problems and our support couldn't make all that go away. Maybe if he had sought help but he didn't want to and we couldn't force him to."

"We didn't even notice," I whispered.

Steve nodded. "It always comes back to that, doesn't it?"

Of course it did, how could it not? "One son became a slave and the other a battle-hardened general and we didn't even notice."

"What were we supposed to think? Yes, Tom was getting distant and then Jake started always being gone but they were teenagers. It was supposed to be normal," Steve told me.

That wasn't good enough. "It wasn't."

"We know that now but who would have looked at the distance, at the being gone, at the exhaustion and realized that aliens were not only real but were invading and Jake and Tom were caught up in that?" Steve demanded. "Jean, honey, you're expecting too much of yourself."

"You're probably right," I admitted. "But still, we should have thought that something was up! Peter said that he used to worry that Marco had joined a gang."

"And what do you think would have happened if we did get worried? We would have had to have tried to intervene," Steve pointed out. "If we got in the Yeerk's way then we probably would have only gotten infested sooner and endangered Jake and the whole resistance. If we started paying too much attention to Jake then we might have compromised his ability to sneak off and fight and maybe even alerted Tom to the fact that something wasn't right."

"So you're saying that it was for the best that we were so blind?" I couldn't believe it.

Steve hesitated before nodding. "I am saying that. I know that it makes you feel like a horrible parent and to be honest sometimes I get that way, too. But as hard as it is to accept, everything depended on that."

Logically, I knew he was right. Maybe one day I might actually be able to believe him.

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